Top of the Hill Read online

  To appease his mother, at least geographically, he took the winter off, after he got out of Stanford and before entering the Wharton School of Business, to go back East, to a small ski resort called Green Hollow, in Vermont, where his mother visited him often, although she lamented the fact that he had chosen to spend his last free holiday, before the duties of adulthood engulfed him, in the hazardous and to her eyes demeaning occupation of ski instructor. She was pleased, however, that he was seen out so often with so many different girls and women and not the same one, as she knew he was too young to be married.

  She and her father died that summer within two weeks of each other and between them left a surprisingly small trust fund that they had prudently arranged in such a way that nothing but the interest would go to him until he had reached the sober and fiscally dependable age of thirty-five.

  At his mother’s funeral—where he sobbed, to his surprise, at the graveside—he was distracted by the dark beauty of a girl whose mother had been a classmate of his mother at Vassar. He found out her name—Tracy Lawrence—but did not meet her until eight years later, when he was working in New York for a management consulting concern called Cornwall and Wallace.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He was in a theatre lobby between acts when he saw her again, the dark thick hair, the small white pointed face and blue eyes. She was talking to an older woman, her eyes lively and smiling. He was alone. One of the men at the office, a man he rather liked, had asked him to have dinner with him, but he hadn’t wanted to talk about work and had declined. When he had begun at the firm and while he was moving up in the hierarchy and learning the politics and intricacies of the trade, he had gladly associated with his colleagues. But now he had to drive himself to the desk and it was only with an effort of will that he could make himself plunge into the work that was being sent his way, in greater amounts, each month.

  He had been invited to two parties that evening, but New York parties, like the sessions at the office, had begun to pall on him. After years of foraging among them, always invited as an extra man, that most precious of a hostess’s commodities, hearing himself talk, sounding, he now realized, like everybody else, he was bored with himself as well as with the repetitive inconsequential babble. He could not count the times that he had gone home from those parties with women he had not known when he had entered the room and hardly knew two weeks later.

  In the theatre lobby he remembered the funeral, the dark blue coat she wore, his quick feeling of guilt as he felt her attraction, with his mother’s coffin before the altar, receptacle of so many confusing memories for him. He remembered her name—Tracy Lawrence. In the lobby of the theatre she happened to look his way and, after a hard glance at him, smiled. He made his way across to her and said, “How do you do, Miss Lawrence?” hoping it wasn’t Mrs. Somebody by now.

  She didn’t correct him, so it probably wasn’t Mrs. Somebody. “We didn’t meet at the funeral,” she said. “How do you happen to know my name?”

  “I asked.” He grinned. The death was far enough in the past so that it could be relegated to the status of just another ordinary occasion of everyday life, a wedding, a christening, an anniversary, with no marked connotations.

  The girl—woman—looked momentarily amused, complimented.

  “This is my aunt, Mrs. Grenier,” Tracy Lawrence said. “Mr. Storrs.”

  He greeted the aunt. She was fashionably dressed, her hair groomed over a gentle weary face.

  “How do you like it?” Tracy Lawrence asked. “The play, I mean?”

  “Good for an evening. I’m going back for the second act. And you?”

  “We, too,” she said. “Better than bed.”

  “Perhaps we all could go out for a drink after it’s over.”

  The girl glanced quickly at her aunt.

  “I’m tired,” the aunt said. “I’ll just take a cab home. You young folks go have your drink.”

  The buzzer rang for the curtain and he followed the women into the theatre. She walked erect, her shoulders squared, lovely legs, no coquetry as she moved, a simple, nonrevealing dress, dark green in color.

  She sat three rows in front of him and he could see the dark head, distinguish her laugh, full and unconstricted, from the other laughter. He paid very little attention to the play, thinking about her, knowing that he was attracted, not in the generic male way in which he had been attracted often enough by other women, but in a specific stab of feeling, a message across the darkness from her to him, as though he heard a voice whispering, “That one.” A look, a smile, the memory of a glance across a mourning congregation. He wondered why he hadn’t searched for her before. It would have been easy to find out how to reach her. Guilt before the coffin, probably. Mother, on the subject of decorum.

  After the play was over they bundled the aunt into a taxi and she took his arm lightly and they walked over to Sardi’s because neither of them had had dinner and when he said that he was hungry, she said, “So am I.”

  In the restaurant as they were escorted to a table by the head-waiter, he saw that the men along their passage turned their heads and stared at her. She must be used to it. Well, women always looked at him too, and he was used to it. He resolved not to be daunted by her beauty. Or at least not to show it. He had long since given up trying to impress women. There was no need. With his spare good looks, his athlete’s body, his increasingly important position in the business world with its accompanying easy money, he had become accustomed to women trying to impress him. That, too, had begun to pall on him.

  He ordered a bottle of Chianti and spaghetti for both of them. They discussed the play. “A lot of talent,” Tracy Lawrence said, as she ate with gusto, “and not enough thought. The blight of our age. What did you think?”

  “I wasn’t paying much attention. I was thinking of other things.”

  She lifted her head quickly and glanced at him, her eyes on his. “Were you?” But she didn’t ask what the other things were.

  “Business,” he lied. “I should have stayed in the office tonight. I have some things on my desk I’ll have to report on Monday morning. But by Friday night I get tired of business.” He laughed, low. “The fact is, I’m beginning to get tired of business quite early in the week these days. Like Monday morning at ten o’clock.”

  “What sort of business?”

  “Managerial consultant.”

  “What do managerial consultants do?”

  “They consult with managers in the managerial society which enslaves us all,” he said.

  “More specifically?”

  “We go into factories, we examine books, we roam through offices, we interview employees and we strike terror in hearts wherever we go.” He realized he had never talked like that to anybody he had met before. Somehow he felt free to say whatever came to his mind with this woman whom he had just encountered.

  “Why terror?”

  “Because we are trained ferrets, armed with computers, statistics, expertise, coldness of heart. We ferret out incompetence, waste, larceny, nepotism, tax evasion, incompetent bookkeeping, sickly correlations between profit and loss, lack of attention to important aspects of the consumer society such as relations with Washington and unrewarding advertising campaigns. We advise changes, Draconian measures. We are the church militant of efficiency. In some cases on which we have worked, companies have looked like a battlefield after we have passed-with bodies strewn everywhere, factories closed down and left to rot, presidents and chairmen deposed, men who have grown too old for their jobs out on the street.”

  “Are you good at all this?”

  “A rising star.” This was no lie. Old man Cornwall had told him the month before that he was pleased, deeply pleased with Storrs’ performance, that he was the best man the firm had and had virtually promised him a junior partnership the next time somebody resigned or was fired.

  “You don’t make it sound very attractive,” Tracy Lawrence said. “It is not the business of business to be
attractive. Whatever attractiveness we can muster we save for evenings and weekends.”

  “I suppose in today’s world it’s necessary,” she said thoughtfully, “but knowing that you’re responsible for putting people out of work. . . .”

  He shrugged. “It’s a living. I do what I’m hired to do. That’s what they come to us for—our glorious, rock-bottom neutrality. We’re managerial consultants, not the Salvation Army. We leave our hearts at home every morning at nine and pick them up at six in the evening.”

  “You’re putting on an act. I don’t believe you’re as hard as nails at all. I think you must hate what you’re doing.”

  “Hate it or not, it’s what I do,” he said soberly. Then more brightly, “Now that I have told you the worst about me, my dear Miss Tracy Lawrence, what have you to confess?”

  “First of all,” she said, sipping at her wine, “it isn’t really Miss Lawrence.”

  “Oh.” He felt a dull ache somewhere in his body.

  “I’m still married. Mrs. Albert Richards.” She laughed. “Don’t look so woebegone. I’m in the process of getting divorced.”

  “How many years?”

  “Two. Years of error for both of us.”

  “What does the man do?”

  “He’s a theatre director. Like tonight-a lot of talent and no thought. Also, overequipped with ego. Necessary in his profession, he’s told me, but not so hot for marriage.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Safely out of the way. Running a repertory company out in the Midwest. He sends me the good reviews. He’s a hero in the Midwest. We’re good friends when we’re a thousand miles apart.” She said it carelessly and he found it unpleasant, too much New York, too much like some of the career women he had met who were making it big in the professions in the town and wanted to prove they could be as hard as any man. She was too beautiful, he thought, and too warm, to sound unpleasant, even for an instant.

  “And how do you earn your daily bread?”

  “I’m a designer. I do patterns for fabrics, wallpaper, things like that.”

  “Good?”

  “Not so bad.” She shrugged. “I earn my way. People seek me out. You have probably sat on dozens of chairs and sofas upholstered with cloth that I’ve designed.”

  “Happy in your work?”

  “More than you, I’d think,” she said challengingly. “Actually, I love it. The joy of creation and all that jazz.” She smiled. She had an enchanting smile, childlike, crinkled around the eyes, without affectation, and she didn’t smile too often or merely to ingratiate herself. “Now,” he said, “the preliminaries are over.”

  “What preliminaries?” She suddenly looked stem.

  “The exchange of biographies. Now we go on from there.” “Where?” Her tone was hard.

  It was his turn to shrug. “Anywhere we choose.”

  “You seem too practiced,” she said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’re too expert in talking to women. Everything falls into place too quickly. A little night music, a well-rehearsed aria before falling cosily into bed.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said thoughtfully. “I apologize. The truth is, I haven’t talked to anyone else in the whole world the way I’ve talked to you tonight. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why I have. I hope you believe me.”

  “That sounds rehearsed, too,” she said stubbornly.

  “I have a feeling you’re too tough for me.”

  “Maybe I am.” She set down her glass. “And now I’m ready to go home. I have to get up early in the morning.”

  “On Saturday morning?”

  “I’m invited out to the country.”

  “Naturally,” he said. “I’m invited out to the country tomorrow, too.”

  “Naturally,” she said.

  He laughed. “But I’m not going.”

  “Well, then, I’m not going either.”

  He shook his head wonderingly. “Your moves are too fast for me, Tracy, darling. You could make any team in the National Hockey League. I’m dazzled.”

  “I’m free for lunch tomorrow.”

  “By a happy coincidence . . .” he began.

  “Come up to my place at one o’clock. I’ll give you a drink. There’s a nice little restaurant down the street. Now; shall we leave?” He paid the bill and they got up and walked toward the door, the other men in the restaurant staring at her and the women staring at him.

  They got into the cab and she gave Storrs an address on East Sixty-seventh Street. He repeated it to the driver.

  “I live on East Sixty-sixth Street,” he said. “It’s a sign.”

  “A sign of what?”

  “I don’t know. Just a sign.”

  They sat apart from each other on the way uptown, not touching. When the cab reached the converted brownstone house in which she had her apartment and studio, he told the cabbie to wait and went up the steps with her to the front door of the building.

  After she had unlocked the door, she turned to him. “Thanks for the spaghetti and the wine. I’m glad my aunt was tired.”

  “Goodnight,” he said formally. “Until tomorrow.”

  She frowned. “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight?”

  “I didn’t know matters had progressed that far,” he said stiffly. She had put him off balance and he didn’t want to give her any more advantage than she had already acquired in the restaurant.

  “Oh, don’t be a goof,” she said and leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. Her lips were soft and sweet-smelling. He didn’t put his arms around her.

  “ ’Night,” she said casually and opened the door wide and went through it.

  He stared at the closed door for a moment, then went back down the steps and into the cab and gave the driver his own address. As the driver started the car, he turned around and said, in an Irish brogue, “I hope you don’t mind, friend, but that there was a really beautiful woman.”

  “I don’t mind,” Storrs said.

  By the time the cab had turned the comer and drawn up at his own apartment building, Michael knew that he was going to ask her to marry him. Probably at lunch the next day.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They were married three months later, at the home of her parents, who had a house in the Hamptons, where Tracy had grown up. It was a small wedding and except for old Mr. Cornwall, whom Michael had invited to be his best man, all the guests were friends and relatives of the bride. Mrs. Lawrence had looked surprised when she had asked Michael for the names of the guests he wished to be invited to the ceremony and he had only come up with one. “I know a lot of people in New York,” he had said, “but except for Cornwall I don’t think any of them gives a damn whether I get married or not.” He had grown to like Mrs. Lawrence and Tracy’s father, a tall, scholarly man who had retired comfortably from the presidency of a small pharmaceutical company and spent his time reading, bird watching and sailing a twenty-five foot boat on the sound in the summer.

  Tracy had two younger sisters, ebullient and pretty, but not with the touch of formal old-fashioned beauty that distinguished Tracy. All the family approved of him and the wedding was a festive affair, although Mrs. Lawrence, when she kissed Michael after the ceremony, wept a little when she said, “It’s a pity your poor dear mother couldn’t be here for this.”

  Michael made no comment.

  While waiting for the last two months for Tracy’s divorce papers to come through, he and Tracy had been sleeping with each other, sometimes at her place and sometimes at his. He was never allowed to keep any of his clothes at her place and she refused to leave any of hers at his. She didn’t explain why she was so adamant about the matter and he didn’t press her. He was completely in love and absorbed in the deliciousness of her body and was secretly amused with himself because now he never even glanced at another woman, no matter how pretty she was.

  They followed no routine. Some nights, Tracy would call him and say she was busy.
She never said what she was busy with and her tone made it clear any questions would be unwelcome. When he had to spend the night alone he went to the movies or watched television or caught up on his reading. For a little while some of the other women he had known would call him to invite him to a party or to the theatre, but he invariably said that he was working that night and after a few weeks there were no more calls.

  While Tracy had a regular job at an office in the East Fifties, she often worked at home, too, and Michael had seen some of her designs, flower patterns, abstract designs, some of them in muted colors, others in bold splashes, but all of them delicate and controlled. When he went into a strange room he always looked around to see if he could pick out any of her creations and he was delighted when he found them. His own taste, he knew, ran to undergraduate monotony and disorder and he had the comfortable feeling that when he and Tracy finally moved into their own home, it would be a cheerful and comfortable place. Tracy started to overcome his mother-inspired loathing for works of art, and he happily allowed her to tow him to galleries and even to the opera. “Thanks to you,” he told Tracy, “the Philistine in me is in full retreat.”

  “Give me ten more years,” she had replied.

  “Now, how can I change you?”

  “You can’t, friend.”

  “Good,” he said, “I don’t want you changed.”

  “Liar,” she said, but kissed his cheek.

  At the office he found himself daydreaming at his desk and remembering, in the middle of conferences, a certain expression in Tracy’s eyes, an impatient twist of her head, her erect, straight carriage, the slender but voluptuous body, the satin feel of her skin, the excited but graceful gesture of a hand as she talked, the abandonment of her lovemaking. After the conversation the first night about her husband in the Midwest, they never talked about him again, although on a walk with Mr. Lawrence along the beach one day, the old man had said, abruptly, “By God, you’re an improvement over the other one.”