Black Widow Read online

  BLACK WIDOW

  By PATRICK QUENTIN

  CHAPTER ONE

  I MET NANNY ORDWAY at one of Lottie Marin’s parties. It was a very ordinary beginning for an episode that dragged us all into disaster. My wife had taken her mother to Jamaica to recover from a gall-bladder operation, and I had too much work on hand to go with them. That same day, around midnight after the show, Lottie Marin called from upstairs.

  “Come on up, Peter. There’s a party.”

  I didn’t want to go to a party or to encourage Lottie Marin’s obvious determination to organize me as a grass widower. But I was missing Iris, and the apartment, which reminded me of her at every turn, wasn’t helping. I thought: I might as well go up just for a while.

  So I went.

  Lottie’s apartment, which was immediately above our own, was full of assorted guests, the way it always was on Saturday nights. I didn’t notice Nanny Ordway for quite a while. She wasn’t at all a conspicuous person.

  “Peter, darling!” Lottie came to the door for me herself. “I knew you’d be lonely. I knew you’d just be sitting there moping for Iris.”

  Lottie and I had known each other around the theater for years. But recently, since she and her husband had become our neighbors and I had produced and directed her latest show, Star Rising, she had developed one of her sudden and celebrated infatuations for Iris and myself. Most people in the theater, although Lottie was a great star and a world-wide celebrity, avoided intimacy with her because she was nosy, bossy, and insufferably demanding. But Iris and I had put up with her bullying crush not only because I had to work with her but because we were both, in a funny way, fond of her. She was a bitch and a bore, but she didn’t mean to be. She just terribly wanted to be liked and had never learned how to be likable. That was her trouble.

  That night she was wearing a very grand white evening dress which made her look as if she were just about to be presented to the Court of St. James or, rather, as if the Court of St. James was just about to be presented to her. She never hit the right clothes for the right occasion. That was a hang-over, perhaps, from Oatfields, Wisconsin, which, although she kept it a dark secret, had been her birthplace.

  “Darling, Alec Ryder’s just in from London. He saw Star Rising tonight and he adored me. He’s dying to talk to you. Come on. Brian will fix you a drink.” She looped her arm through mine, giving me a meaning glance from that peculiar, memorable face which caricatured so effectively in the Theater Section of the Sunday Herald Tribune. “At least—I suppose you are drinking tonight, aren’t you?”

  That was one of those irritating remarks for which Lottie had a genius. She knew that years ago, before I met Iris, I had gone off the rails after my first wife’s death. I had drunk much too much and ended up in a nervous breakdown. At the time of my cure the doctors had told me I should never drink when I was depressed. It was something everyone else had forgotten. But Lottie remembered, and now she was dragging it out to show what an old friend she was, how sympathetic and understanding.

  I snapped, “Why the hell shouldn’t I be drinking, Lottie?”

  She squeezed my hand. “You know best, darling, of course. I was just a little worried. That’s all.”

  She took me to a bar where Brian Mullen, her latest and most successful husband, was mixing drinks. The bar was all chromium and blond wood and had been given to her by a television sponsor. Brian grinned at me.

  “Hi, Peter. Be right with you. Have to take a lemonade to a forlorn little female in a corner.”

  He carried the lemonade to a girl who was sitting alone by the window. That girl was Nanny Ordway, but I didn’t know it at the time. I hardly glanced at her.

  Brian came back and got me a drink. Lottie brought Alec Ryder over. Alec Ryder was a very successful and smooth English playwright married to one of London’s brightest young theatrical stars. He said all the right things about Lottie and Star Rising, and Lottie started to purr like an ocelot with its spine tickled.

  She purred less when Alec Ryder told us why he had flown to New York. He had just finished a new play and was looking for an American actress to do the lead in London. He thought my wife, who was an actress, too, would be perfect in the part. Did I think she might be interested?

  Almost before the words were out of his mouth, Lottie broke in, “Darling, it’s quite impossible. Iris has decided to take a year’s vacation.”

  That was perfectly true. But Lottie had no right to say it. I should have said it.

  “Yes, darling,” she continued, “Iris is just going to be Mrs. Duluth for a whole year. You know how crazy she and Peter are about each other. Just like Brian and me.”

  Some blond actress whom I vaguely recognized had come over and was talking to Brian. When Lottie had a couple of drinks in her, she always got possessive about her husband. Now she neatly edged between him and the actress and twined her arms around his neck. I knew what the routine would be next. We’d get a speech about how perfectly mated she and Brian were and how second-best perfectly mated were Iris and I. The easygoing Brian never seemed to mind, but I didn’t feel in the mood. I pretended to see someone I knew and drifted away.

  Lottie had depressed me. Not only with her crass remark about drink but by her very Theaterness. Occasionally, only occasionally, I start hating the theater with its narrow interests, its detachment from the rest of life, its passionate cult of itself. I decided that if I didn’t find someone nontheatrical to talk to, I’d slip back down to the apartment and settle for loneliness.

  I saw quite a few people I knew, but no one that fitted my mood. Gordon Ling, to whom I’d given a biggish part in Star Rising, flashed me a smile. But Gordon, too handsome at forty-five, too cheerful, too determined not to admit failure, was a most actorish actor. I knew he wanted to complain about a couple of lines of his I had cut at a recent run-through and I couldn’t have faced him right then. I pretended I hadn’t seen him and turned away, walking toward the window.

  That’s how I met Nanny Ordway. I hadn’t the slightest intention of stopping to speak to her, but as I passed she put out her hand and surprisingly touched my arm.

  “Won’t you talk to me?” she said. “I don’t think I’m terribly dull. Let’s find out what you think.”

  I am always cautious with young girls I don’t know. By bitter experience, I know that ninety out of a hundred of them think of a producer only as something on which to grind an ax. The most innocent greeting is usually the first step toward the casting office.

  I paused and looked down at the girl sitting there in front of the expanse of undraped window below which the East River was glittering. She wasn’t pretty or at all smartly dressed. Those were the first things I noticed. I noticed, too, that she was very young and she didn’t seem to be wearing any make-up. She held a half-empty lemonade glass in her hand. I remembered Brian’s remark then. I’m fixing a lemonade for a forlorn little female in a corner.

  “I wish you’d sit down.” Her voice was light and pleasant. “My mother always told me that a girl who couldn’t get a man to talk to her after the first thirty minutes at a party might as well go out and shoot herself.”

  I liked her voice. I rather liked her face. It was intelligent and not trying to be anything it wasn’t. Her hair was dark and she wore it in a page-boy bob with bangs. She was a little Greenwich Villagey, but then, that made her so completely unlike Iris, and it was Iris’s absence I was trying to forget.

  I sat down next to her on the edge of the window seat. “Is your half hour up yet?”

  “You mean my half hour for shooting myself? Oh, yes, long ago. No one’s talked to me at all. Some people brought me but they’ve gone off being glamorous. I hope you’re not glamorous. I hope you’re not an Important Figure like everyone
else.”

  “Don’t you like important figures?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose I should. But I’ve never met any before. I don’t know what to do with them.”

  “You just tell them how important they are and they give little grunts of satisfaction.”

  “They do?” She turned to me, tucking her legs under her on the window seat. “You’d better tell me who you are. If you’re important, I’d like to hear you grunt.”

  “My name’s Peter Duluth,” I said.

  The blood flooded her cheeks. She was one of those girls who can look charming and embarrassed at the same time.

  “My God!” she said.

  “Why—my God?”

  “You—you’re a producer or something terribly grand in the theater and you’re married to Iris Duluth, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I never realized—I mean, I wouldn’t ever have—Iris Duluth is wonderful. She’s the most beautiful, moving actress I’ve ever seen.” She got up. “I’m sorry I was so brash.”

  “My dear girl, I’m not Stalin. You don’t have to organize Youth Parades with banners—The Workers of the Fifth Fish-Packing Soviet of Odessa bring homage to Peter Duluth.”

  She sat down again and suddenly laughed.

  “What are you laughing about now?”

  “You. You’re a fraud. I told you how important you were and you didn’t give little grunts of satisfaction.”

  “That was the grunt in reverse. The modest grunt. The really-I’m-not-anything-special-just-a-person response. Who are you?”

  The smile, slightly sardonic now, was still in her eyes. “I’m not anything special. Just a person.”

  “In the theater?”

  “Heavens—no.”

  “That’s a relief. What do you do?”

  “I get up. I eat. I go to bed.”

  “No visible means of support?”

  “Not very visible. Really, I suppose, I’m a writer. I haven’t got anything published yet. I don’t think I’m very good.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen. No, that’s a lie. I’m twenty. I try to pretend I’m not in the twenties because in the twenties you’re supposed to have done something.”

  Until then, I’d started to forget what a kid she was. You have to be terribly young to make a remark like that. I was feeling less depressed.

  “I know,” I said. “Mozart wrote an opera when he was twelve.”

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” she said almost angrily. “You can’t just grow up. At least you’ve got to show talent.”

  “And you haven’t shown any talent?”

  “I don’t think so. Sometimes it’s terribly depressing.”

  “Isn’t that lemonade terribly depressing? Have a drink.”

  “No, thank you. I don’t drink. I used to. I gave it up. But if there’s anything to eat—I’m simply starved.”

  “Lottie never serves food. Brian cooks her a great T-bone steak right after the performance. By the time the guests arrive, she isn’t hungry any more.”

  I didn’t know why I said that. It was unattractive and disloyal to disparage Lottie in front of a stranger. But this girl didn’t seem like a stranger. Suddenly an idea came to me. I was bored with the party. I had been planning to leave, anyway. The girl was hungry. Why shouldn’t I take her out and give her something to eat? The scheme was a little exciting to me. It was so different from anything I would ever have dreamed of doing if Iris had been there—different enough to act as a tonic to my spirits. An innocent change of pace never harmed anyone.

  I said, “Are you tired of this party?”

  “No tireder than it is of me.”

  “Do you have to wait for the people you came with?”

  “Mercy, no. They only brought me because they were stuck with me. They’ve probably left.”

  “Then how about coming out and getting something to eat?”

  She said quickly, “But what about Iris Duluth—your wife?”

  “She’s away.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t have to say, ‘Oh.’ I’m not one of those husbands who suddenly discover their wives don’t understand them.”

  “You’re very much in love with her, aren’t you? One reads about it in columns.”

  “Yes, I’m very much in love with her.”

  She smiled then. “Fine. I’ll come. I’d like it.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nanny,” she said. “Nanny Ordway.”

  I didn’t want the complication of saying good night to Lottie, but as we were making for the door, she came swooping over.

  “Peter, you poor darling, I’ve been neglecting you.” She stopped and looked penetratingly at Nanny Ordway. “Who’s that?”

  “That,” I said, “is Miss Ordway. One of your guests. I’m taking her out to get something to eat. Then I’m going to bed. Say thanks to Brian for me. See you tomorrow.”

  Lottie stood quite still in her white dress that looked like the tent of some wealthy paladin at the Crusades.

  “Well!” she said in her theater voice which can suggest a dozen simultaneous overtones. She gazed at the empty glass in my hand with all the anguish of a tenderhearted woman seeing her best friend galloping to perdition.

  I could have killed her, but instead I kissed her. “Good night, Lottie. Don’t rock the boat.”

  When we were out in Sutton Place, Nanny Ordway slipped her arm through mine.

  “She was furious. Charlotte Marin. Simply furious.”

  “Lottie only likes things she sponsors herself.”

  “To think of it! Charlotte Marin furious about me! That I should live to see the day.”

  I was wondering where to take her to eat at that hour, but she decided for me. There was a Hamburger Heaven on 55th at Madison, and we could walk. You get in a rut in the theater. You end up feeling you have to go somewhere expensive, and you take taxis. It was warm for October and refreshing to be walking through the still-active Saturday night streets. Hamburger Heaven was very white and clean. We sat on bar stools and ate hamburgers with coffee from thick china mugs. In the harsh illumination, with her dark hair flopping around her shoulders, Nanny Ordway looked even younger. Most very young girls make me feel decrepit at thirty-seven, but she didn’t. I felt amused and kindly—and amused at myself. For over ten years my interests, my desires, my affections had been exclusively tied up with my wife. It was improbable that I should be out with a girl only a few hours after Iris’s departure, but it seemed to be the right therapy.

  “Better for the food?” I asked.

  “Wonderful. Once I lived for six months on hamburgers.”

  “Didn’t you get tired of them?”

  “Oh, that was a lie again. Sometimes I ate hot dogs.” She turned on her stool, looking at me solemnly. “Have you ever been poor?”

  “Not terribly.”

  “It’s fun. It’s almost like being in love. You wake up in the morning and you’re yearning for something. You have the feeling: how long can I wait? You count the minutes till noon. And it isn’t a man you’re yearning for. It’s a hamburger.”

  “Are you still poor?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Live with parents?”

  “No. I live alone. Kind of. With a girl from Boston.” She put down her empty milk glass. “You’re rich. Rich and in love. That must be fun, too. But mostly the love part. Isn’t it?”

  “It’s fine.”

  She talked about Iris then. She had seen all her recent plays and quite a lot of her movies. She was intelligent and enthusiastic about her. It always pleased me to have Iris praised. Somehow Nanny Ordway bridged the gulf of Iris’s absence. Instead of brooding about the fact that she was away, I started to think: It won’t be long before she’s back.

  After she’d finished her coffee, Nanny Ordway got up. “Now I must go home.”

  “So soon?”

  “Oh, yes. I have to be at my
desk at nine every day.”

  “Mozart got up at six.”

  She laughed. “That’s right. Kid me when I get pretentious. That’s my trouble. I’m pretentious.”

  Outside on Madison Avenue, I started looking for a taxi, but she stopped me. Whoever took a taxi? she said. Hadn’t I heard of the subway? I could walk her to the Lexington Avenue station. We talked all the way. She entertained me. I didn’t want it to be over so quickly.

  At the head of the subway stairs, she held out her hand. “Good night. You’ve taught me one thing. I do like Important Figures.”

  “And I like twenty-year-old girls who haven’t Achieved Anything.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’m just a whim. Good night.”

  She started down the stairs. I called after her impulsively, “I can phone you?”

  “I’m not in the book.”

  I could hear a train roaring into the station below me.

  “Then give me your number.”

  Without answering, Nanny Ordway hurried down the steps and disappeared. I stood a moment at the head of the stairs before I turned away.

  As I walked home, New York seemed different. I smelled it, saw it, felt it, almost as if it were an unfamiliar city. I was conscious of all the life going on around me—people meeting and saying good-by and arguing and making love. New York was a lot of Nanny Ordways. Through her, I had stepped for a moment out of my own restricted little circle.

  When I got back to the apartment, a cablegram had been slipped under the door. I picked it up. It said:

  Arrived safely. Mother doesn’t miss gall bladder. I miss you. Don’t let Lottie swallow you. Love. Iris.

  Without Iris, the bed seemed impersonal as a hotel bed. Wasn’t it Swedenborg who had the theory that a man and his wife are two halves of the same soul? I drifted into sleep, feeling very much a half.

  I had forgotten Nanny Ordway. At least, I thought I had.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I WAS AWAKENED next morning around ten-thirty by the phone. It was Lottie.

  “Peter, are you alone?”

  “For heaven’s sake, what else would I be?”