He drew back, and looked away.
“I think she’s broke, and I’m a lot more successful now than I was when she left me. Maybe she got wind of Lepton’s review at the studio before it was published and decided that I was worth cultivating. If that’s it, Avery’s review in the Tribune this morning should scare her off again.”
“If not, what are you going to do?”
Amos shrugged. “What can I do? I’ll meet her at the airport this afternoon and drive her to your house. I owe her that much. When the party’s over, I’ll come back here and leave her there. No need to see her again. Tony and Gus, between them, should be able to keep her out of my hair.”
Philippa eyed him curiously. “Why are you so passive, Amos? Already you’re letting Vera push you around. Why do you have to meet her at the airport? Why not let Tony do it?”
“He wanted to, but I said no. I want her to see me once so she can see for herself how utterly indifferent I am to her now.”
“If I were you, I’d hate her.”
“You probably would. I—well, as the young people say, I couldn’t care less.”
“Maybe that’s the best attitude. Hate is a compliment, like love, but indifference is devastating. If you can really make Vera believe you don’t care, she may leave you alone. I’m beginning to feel almost sorry for her.”
“Sorry? For Vera?”
“I feel sorry for any woman who has to do with you, Amos.” A sudden recklessness came into her eyes. “You don’t really care for me, do you?”
“I enjoy being with you,” he answered cautiously.
“But you don’t love me, do you?”
Their eyes met again. His were honestly puzzled. “Phil, what in God’s name does a woman like you see in a man like me? I’m not young or strong or gay or gallant. I’m not even good-humored and lovable. Sometimes I think you’re more in love with my writing than you are with me. There are a few clever women who unconsciously seek greatness of mind in their men just as the dull majority unconsciously seek greatness of fortune or strength of body. Is that what you’re looking for? The extra kick of being loved by a man with a great intellect? It would explain why your conscience doesn’t bother you. Historically, genius has always palliated adultery.”
“What a nasty word!”
“Genius or adultery?” Amos sighed again. “All right, I’m conceited, but I believe that’s it. You’re in love with the idea of loving a man of genius, the way some women are in love with the idea of loving a man of great wealth or power. Would you care for Amos Cottle if he were a garage mechanic? I doubt it.”
“You don’t care about money or ordinary power because you’ve been familiar with those things all your life in one form or another. But you do care about intellectual power. It’s an unfamiliar mystery that inspires wonderment. Women always love the thing that overawes them. Isn’t that the real clue to your feeling for me?”
“Does it matter?” Her voice was husky. She leaned toward him, the green sweater molding the firm lines of her breasts, her lips parted, her eyelids drooping. Desire took sudden possession of Amos.
“No. It doesn’t matter.” His hands shook as he fumbled with her clothing.
Afterward Amos was appalled at the risk they had taken. “Tony might have walked in at any moment!” Philippa was amused. “You do feel guilty about Tony, don’t you?”
“He’s done a lot for me.”
“Just because he published your first book? He didn’t lose anything by that.”
“But he’s so unsuspecting. It would be such a shock to him if he ever found out. No knowing what he’d do. That bothers me and it ought to bother you.”
“It doesn’t, but then I’m not analytical. Most writers analyze their own emotions too much, but now and then they forget they are writers and remember they are human beings. You never do. You’re always the observer, never the participant. Always the audience, never the actor. Even in your own love scenes part of you is detached—damnably detached. It’s as if—as if you weren’t all here. As if some part of you were missing. Why don’t you ever tell me anything about your early life? Your mother and father and things you did at school and the first girl you ever kissed. Most men like to talk about themselves. You don’t. Tell me something: has Vera any hold over you? Could she blackmail you, if she wanted to? That would explain why you don’t talk about your past and why Vera seemed so sure in that newspaper interview that she could come back to you.”
“No. Vera couldn’t blackmail me.” His voice was even, but she saw a sudden uneasiness in his eyes. Somehow the shot had gone home and he was trying to conceal it. He got up and walked over to the window.
“Is there anyone else who could blackmail you?” she probed. “Come to think of it, you never talk about your early life.”
“It’s all on the jacket of my latest book.” He picked up a copy and tossed it at her. She caught it deftly and laughed.
“Tony writes all those jacket notes.”
“But I gave him the material,” retorted Amos. “Do you know it’s nearly three? Mix yourself a drink while I take a shower. Then I must be off to the airport.”
But Philippa didn’t walk over to the bar. When water gushed in the bathroom beyond, she sat on the bed reading the jacket note on the back flap of Passionate Pilgrim.
Amos Cottle was born in China in 1918 where his father was a Methodist missionary. He attended mission schools and was graduated from the University of Peking. Then began a rolling-stone existence that gathered moss—a rich treasure house of varied experience for his future writing career. Cottle has been a sailor, a bartender, a Hollywood press agent, a cattle rancher, a chemist, a construction engineer and a barker for a carnival show. During World War II he served with the Seabees in the Pacific. Out of that interlude came his memorable first novel Never Call Retreat. He is married to Vera Vane, Hollywood actress, but he spends most of his time in a modern house in Connecticut where the walls are either all window or all bookcase.
Philippa put the book down thoughtfully. Tony’s glib, hackneyed phrases really told very little about Amos as a man, and Amos had never talked about his childhood in China or his rolling-stone period. She was not a sensitive woman but now she was overwhelmed with desolation as she realized how purely physical their intimacy had always been. Amos was inaccessible. She didn’t really know him at all. Now that Vera was precipitating a crisis in their lives, Amos’s responses would be utterly unpredictable.
Suddenly she was aware of a tiny seed of distaste for Amos. His remoteness, his fatalism, his fear of Tony’s suspicions, his indifference to Vera’s onslaught—was this really the sort of man for her to love? She knew the seed would grow. Once again she was on the verge of falling out of love, as she had fallen out of love with Tony himself, long ago….
She wandered into the living room and saw the Tribune Book Review section crumpled into a ball. She smoothed it out and reread the article by Emmett Avery which she had glanced at this morning. She recalled Tony’s rage. “That little pipsqueak Avery! To think that I introduced him to his first publisher because I thought his stuff wasn’t quite good enough for us. I suppose he’s never got over our rejection.”
The water had ceased to run. In the silence, she called softly: “I must go, Amos. See you later.”
“We’ll be there around five,” he called back cheerfully.
“Good-bye.” She went across the terrace slowly to the tree where she had tied the dog. An unwelcome thought invaded her mind. Suppose—just suppose—that Maurice Lepton was wrong for the first time in his long and distinguished career as a critic. Suppose that this Emmett Avery was right in all his nasty sarcasms about Passionate