I called out, “It’s Archie Goodwin, expected by Mr. Koven at noon! It is now two minutes past twelve!”
That got action. The female voice, not quite so loud, told me to come up. The maid, looking frustrated, beat it. I took off my coat and put it on a chair, and my hat. A man came through a doorway at the rear of the hall and approached, speaking.
“More noise. Noisiest goddam place. Up this way.” He started up the stairs. “When you have an appointment with Sir Harry, always add an hour.”
I followed him. At the top of the flight there was a large square hall with wide archways to rooms at right and left. He led me through the one at the left.
There are few rooms I can’t take in at a glance, but that was one of them. Two huge TV cabinets, a monkey in a cage in a corner, chairs of all sizes and colors, rugs overlapping, a fireplace blazing away, the temperature around eighty — I gave it up and focused on the inhabitant. That was not only simpler but pleasanter. She was smaller than I would specify by choice, but otherwise acceptable, especially the wide smooth brow above the serious gray eyes, and the cheekbones. She must have been part salamander, to look so cool and silky in that oven.
“Dearest Pete,” she said, “you are going to stop calling my husband Sir Harry.”
I admired that as a time-saver. Instead of the usual pronouncement of names, she let me know that she was Marcelle, Mrs. Harry Koven, and that the young man was Pete Jordan, and at the same time told him something.
Pete Jordan walked across to her as for a purpose. He might have been going to take her in his arms or slap her or anything in between. But a pace short of her he stopped.
“You’re wrong,” he told her in his aggressive baritone. “It’s according to plan. It’s the only way I can prove I’m not a louse. No one but a louse would stick at this, doing this crap month after month, and here look at me just because I like to eat. I haven’t got the guts to quit and starve a while, so I call him Sir Harry to make you sore, working myself up to calling him something that will make him sore, and eventually I’ll come to a boil and figure out a way to make Getz sore, and then I’ll get bounced and I can start starving and be an artist. It’s a plan.”
He turned and glared at me. “I’m more apt to go through with it if I announce it in front of a witness. You’re the witness. My name’s Jordan, Pete Jordan.”