Desperate Characters by Paula Fox

Author:Paula Fox
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1970-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

NINE

Sophie ran down the stairs and through the lobby, coming to a breathless halt outside the entrance of the building. A hairpin that had worked loose slipped down the back of her dress and fell out on the sidewalk. She looked at her watch. It was four o’clock. She didn’t think that the two of them, back up there on the second floor, would be talking about her. Her visit had been only a slight distraction for them, even a vexation, perhaps. She grew aware that someone was watching her, and looked up to see an old man staring at her idly. A gray poodle sat at his feet. How familiar he looked! A character actor? One of those familiar nameless faces she had seen a dozen times—the Duke, my Lord, is in the hands of the French. She smiled at him and he bowed.

In a hotel lobby on Central Park West, she found a phone booth. She dialed Francis’ office. There was no one there today, of course. She hadn’t indulged her little vice in a long while. Once again, by electronic extension, she moved among the battered file cabinets, the piles of books, beneath the meringue ceiling. She let the phone ring a long time. Then she called Charlie Russel’s number. A child answered. She had a sudden wistful memory of the Russel children years ago, small, profane, and brown, during a summer’s visit to Flynders. “Is this Stuart?” she asked. “This is Sophie.”

“Okay,” said the boy. “You want my mother?”

“Yes.”

She heard him shout, “Ma!” He breathed into the phone. “Wait a minute.”

“Yes,” said Ruth.

“This is Sophie.”

“Yes.”

“How are you, Ruth?”

“Extremely well.”

“I called because of all the trouble. I’m sorry about it.”

“What trouble? What are you sorry about?”

“Charlie and Otto…the end of all that.”

“I wouldn’t call it trouble.”

Sophie tightened her hand around the receiver.

“How are the children?”

“The children are fabulous.”

“Stuart sounded so grown up.”

“He is grown up. Fantastic. He’s going back to that tennis camp this summer. It’s incredible how his self-image improved. It’s a very serious camp. I mean, the director knows what tennis is all about. Three hours on the court, then an hour of constructive criticism.”

“And Bobby? Linda?”

“Bobby is going through a little phase of kleptomania. It’ll pass, of course.”

“Linda?” whispered Sophie.

“Marvelous! She certainly knows who she is.”

“Ruth? I feel terrible about the breakup.”

There was a long silence. “They’ll be better off,” Ruth said at last. “I’ve always thought there was something odd about their dependence on each other. They’re big boys now, you know, Sophie…mustn’t let them be babies. It castrates men.”

“And you? Are you really extremely well?” asked Sophie.

There was a click; the operator asked for another dime.

“Couldn’t we have lunch?” Sophie said.

“I’m on a diet. I don’t eat lunch any more,” Ruth said. And then she said—or did she?—Sophie wasn’t sure what she’d really heard but it sounded like, “Go away, Sophie.” In any case, the phone went dead and she didn’t have another dime.

When she got home, Sophie went directly to the phone and called their doctor.

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