He said finally, “What else she say on the phone?”
“She told me to go fuck myself.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Anything else?”
“No. I hung up on her.”
“Nothing about us, then. Her and me.”
“No. What about the two of you?”
“We broke it off,” he said.
“Broke it off? You mean your engagement?”
“The whole thing. It's finished between us. Kaput.”
That threw me a little; it was the kind of surprise that usually comes only on birthdays and Christmas. I said, “When did this happen?”
“Tuesday night. Big goddamn battle. I haven't seen her since and I won't either.”
“What was the battle about?”
“What do you think?” he said. “She kept bad-mouthing you and Kerry. Drinking vodka like it was water and ranting like a crazy woman. Kept saying she was gonna get back at the two of you. Do something drastic, she said. Talk to one of her ex-husbands, get him to throw a scare into Kerry some night—shit like that.”
“She'd better not go through with it.”
“She won't. It was just crazy talk.”
I said diplomatically, “Well, I guess she had a right to be upset.”
“Upset, sure, but not out for blood. Not crazy. No damn right to act that way at all.”
He defended us, I thought, Kerry and me. That's what the big blowup was all about.
“Made me look at her different,” he said, “made me think maybe she wasn't the woman I figured she was. Made me compare her to Kerry, you want to know the truth.” He looked away from me abruptly, out into the airshaft behind his desk. “Ahh,” he said, “the hell with it. She's a bitch, that's all. I always did have a knack for picking bitches.”
“Eb …”
“Look at Dana. First-class bitch.”
Dana was his ex-wife and not nearly as bad as he tried to paint her. Maybe Wanda wasn't either—but I wouldn't have wanted to bet on it.
“Eb, why didn't you tell me this on Wednesday or Thursday?”
“Didn't feel like talking about it,” he said. “I needed to get away for a few days, get her out of my system.”
“And? She out of it now?”
“Not completely. But she will be. All I got to do is keep thinking about what she called me.”
“What did she call you?”
“Never mind.” He lit his pipe and puffed up enough smoke to make the office look and smell like a grass fire.
“Come on, Eb, what did she call you?”
“I said never mind. I don't want to talk about her anymore, all right?”
I let it drop. But a while later, as I was getting ready to leave for San Rafael, Eberhardt said out of the gray of his pipe smoke, “Tits aren't everything, for Christ's sake.”
“What?”
“Tits. They're not everything.”
“Uh, no, they're not.”
“Man is attracted by more than that in a woman. Man looks for somebody he can be comfortable with, somebody he can talk to. You know what I mean?”
“Sure I do.”
“She said I was a piss-poor excuse for a man because all I cared about were her tits. Said I was a baby—a tit wallower. How the hell do you like that?”
“The nerve of the woman,” I said, straightfaced.
I managed to make it out of the door and over to the stairs before I burst out laughing.
Kerry laughed, too, when I told her about it that night. In fact, she thought “tit wallower” was the funniest expression she'd heard in months. She kept repeating it and then sailing off into whoops and snorts.
When she calmed down I said, “So now you're vindicated, lady.”
“Vindicated?”
“The Great Spaghetti Assault. It was a damned stupid thing to do, but it got all the right results.”
“Mmm,” she said. Her eyes were bright with reminiscence; she really did hate Wanda a lot. “And I'd do it again, too, if I got drunk enough.”
“I'll bet you would.”
“For Eberhardt's sake.”
“Right.”
“God, what a relief she's out of his life. The idea of having to attend their wedding gave me nightmares. She probably would have worn white, too.”
“Probably.”
“And Eberhardt would have been in a tuxedo. He'd have looked like a big bird, I'll bet. A black-winged, white-breasted tit wallower,” she said and off she went into more whoops and snorts.
I sighed and picked up her empty wineglass and went into the kitchen to refill it. We were in her apartment tonight, because the weather was still good and the view from her living room window is slightly spectacular on clear nights. When I came back she had herself under control again. “I'll be good,” she said when I handed her the wine.