Jack and Susan in 1953 Read Online Free Page A

Jack. “What was so surprising about it?”
    â€œWell,” said Susan, “I had heard that you’d married a New Orleans demimondaine and that she attacked you at the reception with a cake knife when she found out that you’d made her maid of honor pregnant.”
    â€œSorry,” Jack replied after a moment, swallowing his anger to see what it would turn into. It turned into quiet sarcasm. “It wasn’t quite like that. I’d gotten the bride’s mother pregnant.” Jack lifted his head and rubbed his neck with two fingers.
    At this meeting, their first in four years, Susan could have been coldly polite and distant, to indicate how little she cared for him now. Instead, she chose an undisguised attack, showing that her animosity was still very much alive. That was interesting, Jack decided, but he couldn’t make any more out of it than that. Susan shook her head. “Isn’t it strange how the truth gets distorted?” Susan briefly pondered whether she should jump down off the barstool and stalk away. Jack’s mistrust of Rodolfo was apparent. His questioning of her was rude, and he ought to be punished. But if she did jump down, and in the process manage to land with her spike heel on Jack’s foot, where in the room would she go? She stayed where she was.
    â€œYes,” said Jack. “It is strange what passes for truth these days. For instance, I’d heard that you’d married a senator’s son and moved to Washington, but that he’d abandoned you for a Brooklyn laundress. I felt so bad I nearly wrote to you. I wouldn’t have believed it to be true, but so many people came to me with the story…”
    â€œNo,” said Susan, looking into her glass, nearly empty. “I haven’t accepted any proposals of marriage lately.” She waved to Rodolfo across the room.
    â€œAnd I haven’t made any.” Jack smiled in the direction of distant Libby. “Not this week anyway.”
    Susan Bright signaled the bartender for another drink. “And I wouldn’t either, if I were you. At least not till you’ve learned to take a little better care of yourself. Has that suit been pressed in the last year? Or cleaned ?” she added, peering at the spot on the front. “I see your hair has continued to recede. Have you considered the advantages of a toupee?” Susan knew she was touching a sensitive point. Jack had straight brown hair that he combed straight back. Now that his hair was thinning in front, his forehead—always high, broad, and unlined—seemed even higher and broader. But that brow lent him a certain nobility of expression and a suggestion of intellect—at least when he was in repose. His face was sculpted, with a sharply defined jaw and high cheekbones, giving him an enormous expanse of shaven cheek. Susan had always thought him handsome, but she knew that Jack had always felt his features were too angular. Though, so far as Susan was concerned, the features of a man’s face could never be too distinctly defined. “Or perhaps,” she went on, “you’re just worrying too much about what it would be like to be married to a margarine heiress…”
    Jack suddenly stood up straight. He cast a cold eye on Susan. “The intervening years haven’t dulled your tongue. Don’t start in on Libby, and I won’t say anything against Señor García-Cifuentes.”
    â€œI can’t imagine what you could say against Rodolfo. Sometimes I think he’s the only real man I’ve ever met.” She looked at Jack meaningfully.
    â€œI have nothing to say against Rodolfo personally,” said Jack, paying no attention to the insult, “but I have been wondering about his friends. Do they all have such heavy jowls? And such dark beards? And smell of bay rum? And carry guns?” Jack nodded around the room, at the doorman, the croupiers, and the tuxedoed