Read Then We Take Berlin for Free Online

makeup, the sense of a beauty contrivedly off-duty—but he didn’t.
    “C’mon. I’ll introduce you. Arthur and I go way back.”
    Spoleto pushed back his chair and threaded his way through the tables.
    Cantor got a Frank backslap that jerked the linguine off the end of his fork.
    “Arthur, long time no see.”
    Cantor looked as though it had not been long enough and he might just be able to do without Frank for a year or two more, but good manners got the better of him.
    “Hello Frank. You know Ingrid?”
    “I never had the chance.”
    “Ingrid, Frank Spoleto—one of Madison avenue’s shnorrers . Frank, Ingrid Bergman.”
    Bergman nodded, a soft-spoken, “a pleasure” on her lips, but she was looking at Wilderness.
    Spoleto slipped in quickly, “And my old English buddy, Joe Holderness.”
    She held out her hand for Wilderness to kiss. He was not one to resist the irresistible.
    “And I believe you’ve met . . .”
    The other woman cut Cantor off with “Clarissa Troy.”
    She too held out her hand, the kiss to the fingers claimed as a right, then she winked hammily at him. And still not a flicker of recognition from Frank.
    “We were just making plans for The Cherry Orchard ,” Cantor resumed.
    “You own a cherry orchard? Jeez Artie, the things I don’t know about you.”
    “It’s a play, stupid. Clarissa’s translating Chekhov for us.”
    “Are you in New York for long, Mr. Holderness?” Bergman asked.
    She was looking right up into his eyes now. It was a moment Wilderness would have strung out for ever if he could.
    “Probably not. I’ll be at the Gramercy for a day or two. All rather depends on Frank.”
    Frank drowned out the moment.
    “Say, Arthur, when am I going to get tickets for one of your plays?”
    “When you pay for the last lot, Frank.”
    All this earned Cantor was a hearty guffaw from Spoleto. He was lucky, Wilderness thought, to be spared a second slap on the back.
    Outside, under the yellow awning, Spoleto said, “I wonder what got into him. Fuckin’ skinflint. He’s known as one of the wittiest guys in New York.”
    “Perhaps you cramped his style, Frank.”
    “And what the fuck’s a shn . . . shn . . . shnucker ?”
    “ Shnorrer. You amaze me sometimes. How can you live in this city, work with men like Steve and not know a little more Yiddish? It means cheapskate.”
    “Cheapskate? He called me a fuckin’ cheapskate?”
    “If the cap fits?”
    Spoleto was on the metal kerb of the sidewalk looking out for a downtown cab.
    “Let’s walk a while, Frank.”
    “Eh, what?”
    But as Wilderness led off down Second Avenue, he was bound to follow or lose him.
    He zigzagged, down a couple of blocks, over a couple of blocks to Lexington. He stood on the corner and waited while Frank caught up with him.
    “Jesus H. Christ, Joe. Are you trying to give me a heart attack? I haven’t marched like this since I got out of the army.”
    “When was that exactly, Frank? When did you leave the Company?”
    “Fifty-eight, about six weeks after we last met.”
    “Aha.”
    “What the fuck does ‘aha’ mean?”
    “Frank, what are you up to?”
    “I thought I was trying to offer you a job and buy you dinner.”
    “You could have bought me dinner two nights ago.”
    “I was busy.”
    “Bullshit. You left me to drift around New York. You left me to get to like New York, you wanted me to taste New York. And maybe I did get a taste for New York. The Bronx is up, but I skipped that. The name alone could put you off. The Battery’s down and the view’s great. I even rode in a hole in the ground. But that’s exactly what you did Frank—you sent me out on the town. Dancing with Sinatra and Gene Kelly. And yes, I got the taste for New York—so damn good I could lick it. Then you sent your secretary round to fuck me. You dangled temptation in front of me. If Manhattan wasn’t enough there was Dorothy, and if Dorothy was not enough, there was dinner at Elaine’s. Tell me Frank, did