Free Cabot Wright Begins: A Novel by James Purdy

smart person will come along and do it for you. For while I mentioned the boobs, I didn’t mention the brains. I pick them both.”
    “I feel I have already signed the papers,” she was smiling, though disconsolate.
    “Come, come, Zoe,” he said. “No posturing and let’s have a cup of hot tea now to make us both feel better.”
    He called to a boy in Arabian costume, and gave him the order.
    “And I can’t even think the offer over,” she said when the tea had arrived and its warmth and excellence began to cheer her.
    “Only until you’ve heard the whole proposal, my dear. I’ve only told you half.”
    She looked up then as if she had suspected as much, and an expression of uneasiness passed over her face and clouded her eyes.
    “You probably can guess what the second part of the proposal is in any case,” he was firm, but she felt he too looked pale and worried despite his jauntiness and cold confidence.
    “I don’t want you,” she heard Princeton Keith’s voice, “I don’t want you merely as a writer, good as you are. And as a matter of fact while we’re talking about writing, let me say something. It was you who were the writer. That’s why your marriage to Curt, I suspect, never worked out so well as it might. He should have supported you, and you should have written, not him. You’d be rich today. However,” he took out his pocket watch with the heavy chain, “I don’t have forever even with you. After all, we are planning to publish other books next season too in my house. I’ll come to the point. You’ll have to see Cabot Wright. That is, you’ll have to see a lot of him. You won’t run any risk or danger that you wouldn’t be running right home in Chicago. I’ve seen to all of that in any case. If necessary we’ll get you a bodyguard, but it isn’t that way of course. I know all about him, Cabot. He’s harmless and, if you ask me, he always was. Then there’s Bernie for protection for you. We want you, though, to talk to Cabot, and find out the things that have to be found out. Cabot’s the kind of chap who wouldn’t talk to another man, mind you, and never in an eternity to someone like Bernie. But I think he’ll talk to you. I have a sixth sense about such things. Sometimes I’m wrong, of course, but hardly ever in a case this refined. As I said, it’s not an easy assignment, and there’s some danger, but I think that’s why you’ll take it. Don’t refuse me, Zoe, or it’ll break your heart. Just say yes, dear, and then I can run on back to work.”
    Mrs. Bickle didn’t disappoint him after all. She looked at him hard and said yes.

6
    SECOND ENCOUNTER
     
    I t is doubtful if Mrs. Bickle would have ever been able to meet Cabot Wright or get one word or fact from him had she not, during a three-alarm fire, fallen through the skylight directly above his quarters.
    Before her descent and encounter with Cabot, Mrs. Bickle had suffered mental and moral anguish, as a result of her having signed the pact with Princeton Keith and (from her own viewpoint) Madison Avenue. Though she felt more or less guilty, if not dishonest, after agreeing to carry out her assignment, she came to a quick decision that if she was to “see” Cabot Wright, the only sensible, if most unpleasant, plan was to cart herself bag and baggage to the See-River Manor .
    Zoe Bickle, as Keith had reminded her so many times, had known nothing but genteel poverty all her life, and she had just begun to enjoy the luxury and ease of the Gramercy Park apartment. But it was for that very reason she moved to Brooklyn, for she saw that otherwise she would do her assignment from a false and distant standpoint, whereas, once uncomfortably settled in the Manor , she might at least be able to face the truth, even if she did not entirely understand it.
    She had telephoned Princeton Keith about her change of address. His attitude toward her, now that she had agreed to what he wanted, was that of watchful waiting and