Always and Forever (8 page)

“Our work is done here,” he said quietly. “I’m anxious to find out how I begin to operate in Berlin.”

“It may take a while,” Phil told him, “but you’ll collect a fortune in reparations from the German government. Keep your eyes open, old boy.”

“The German government can never repay for the lives they took.” David’s face was etched with rekindled rage. “The world must never forget.”

“There’s probably a frightful shortage of doctors in Berlin,” Rhoda said softly. “They’ll be fighting for your services.”

After dinner David shook hands with the men, kissed each of the girls on the cheek—Kathy last of all—and with valise in hand walked down the hall and out the door. Kathy was conscious of a painful sense of loss. David was Phil’s cousin and her close friend. She had expected to see him when they were back in New York. She had thought that of all those in the group David and Rhoda would remain part of her life after Hamburg.

“David couldn’t bear to stand at the harbor and see you leave,” Rhoda said sentimentally when they were alone in the kitchen on dishwashing duty.

“You’re way off base,” Kathy said defensively. “David and I were close friends. There was nothing romantic between us.”

“David was mad about you. We all knew that.”

“He never said a word to me.” He’d never even tried to kiss her. He’d asked her to wear the brooch because—she sought for his words and then remembered—"
”Seeing you wear it will be like seeing a bit of home.
”

“Hey, Kathy—” Phil hovered in the doorway. “What about a refill on that Turkish coffee? Is there enough left for one more pot?”

Again, the group crossed the Atlantic in primitive quarters. The days seemed to drag for all of them, though Phil labored to create a sense of conviviality. On their last evening before arriving at their port, Kathy stood at the railing with Phil and gazed at the spill of moonlight on the water. She was eager to see her family, yet apprehensive about telling them about Phil. She should have given them some warning.

“Why don’t we both stay over tomorrow night at my place in town?” Phil said, an arm about her waist. “I feel so deprived.”

“You’ll make up.” She lifted her face to his.

“This is such a teaser,” he reproached but kissed her with passionate promise. “What about staying over?” he tried again.

“I’d feel so guilty at not going right home,” she confessed.

“Okay.” He sighed and slid a hand around to the curve of her breast. He laughed as she glanced around in instant alarm. “Nobody can see us.” He pulled her around to face him, moved with her in arousal. “So when’s the wedding?”

“As soon as my parents can make the arrangements.” Her voice was unsteady. “They don’t even know you exist—”

“We go home tomorrow night, but the next night,” he said firmly, “I show you my place.” He chuckled with pleasurable anticipation. “Among other things.”

“Why not? But I can’t stay all night.” Even knowing she was marrying Phil, Mom and Dad would be horrified if they thought she had spent the night with him.

“My folks won’t believe it.” Phil was amused. “They’ve been trying to marry me off since I finished college. And here I’m bringing home a nice Jewish girl. Mother was sure I’d marry a
shiksa.
Dad figured I’d play the field forever.”

How would his parents feel about his marrying a girl whose father ran a candy store in Brooklyn, Kathy asked herself. At intervals she worried about his parents’ reaction. She’d grown up in an apartment above the candy store. Phil was raised in a mansion in Greenwich.

Aunt Sophie had said it was important for her to go to a prestigious college—translation, where the students came from rich homes. If she hadn’t gone to Barnard, she wouldn’t have been part of the group that went to Hamburg. She wouldn’t have met Phil. She wouldn’t have met David, she thought involuntarily.

Their ship docked early in the afternoon. Their group exchanged fervent good-byes and promises to stay in touch. Duffel bag over one shoulder, Phil insisted they find a cab to take them to Lindy’s for a late lunch before she headed for Brooklyn and he went to his father’s office and a ride to Greenwich.

“Oh, let me get my film out of your valise before we eat,” he said as they climbed out of the taxi and the driver circled to the trunk to bring out their luggage.

“Phil, you’re opening my valise right here on Broadway?” she reproached with laughter while he reached for the valise that contained his package.

“Why not?” he shrugged, ignoring the curious glances of passers-by. “Here it is.” He withdrew the package and closed the valise again, shoving the package into his duffel bag. “We could go to a hotel—” He managed an appealing grin. “Walking into Lindy’s with all this gear could be awkward.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” She was too excited over being home to think straight about anything, she admitted subconsciously.

“We’ll go over to Seventh Avenue to the Taft,” he decided, his eyes amorous. “We’ll make love, then call room service for thick roast beef sandwiches and real coffee. I dare you to say no.”

“Roast beef and real coffee?” She pretended to be weighing this. “Now how could I turn down an offer like that?” So she’d arrive in Borough Park two hours later.

At shortly before 5
P.M.
, Phil put Kathy into a taxi and gave the driver instructions to take her to her address.

“In Brooklyn,” he repeated, and erased the driver’s grimace with the bill he dropped onto the seat.

“Drive carefully,” he ordered. “This is my bride-to-be.”

He watched the taxi pull away from the curb, then flagged down another to take him down Seventh Avenue to his father’s office. He hated that drab area, the ugly manufacturing loft that was set up around his father’s lushly furnished oversized office, plus the loft on the floor above where the furs were dressed and dyed. All the worktables and machines were set up around the old man’s office like a colony of peons around an exalted master, he thought with a touch of humor.

He’d heard a million times about how his grandfather Peter had come to America from Russia back in 1881 to build a fur empire, as his father and uncle had done in Russia.
“Your great-grandfather Nathan was furrier to the Czarina herself, as well as to the Royal Court,”
his father loved to brag.
“Your grandfather on my side came to New York, he learned the place to trade was Alaska
—
and he went there and bought raw furs from the natives on the mainland. That was the beginning of the Kohn Fur Company. And I don’t do so bad myself. Look at the movie stars who come to Julius Kohn.”
It became Julius Kohn Furs at the death of his grandfather.

His duffel bag over one shoulder in the image of the returning GI, Phil walked into the elevator in the turn-of-the-century building where his father had moved the manufacturing section of the firm twenty years ago. The Kohn Furs retail store was a huge expanse of lush decor up on Madison Avenue, but the old man spent most of his time here, though he made a habit of summoning favored models from the store to his office. “To model the new styles for me” was the way he put it, Phil recalled. Most of their modeling was on the maroon velvet sofa that dominated one wall of his office.

Riding up in the ancient elevator, Phil remembered how his father had brought him into the ostentatiously furnished office on his sixteenth birthday and pointed to a tall, rather flat-chested young model sitting on the sofa with her legs crossed so high he could see velvety white skin between stocking top and lace-edged panties.

“Phil, this is Daisy,” he’d said with a wink. “Daisy, my son. It’s his birthday—be good to him.”

Dad didn’t know that he’d been pulling up skirts since he was fourteen. Still, it was fun to do it with a high-class model ten years older than he was. She’d been surprised that he wasn’t exactly inexperienced.

He walked from the elevator onto the huge floor, deserted now because the workday was over. As far back as he could remember, Dad made a point of bringing him into the work area three or four times a year, showing off “my only son.”

For a moment he hesitated before the closed door to the office. Was he interrupting a little something? Then with a shrug he lifted a hand and knocked.

“Come in.” Expectancy in his father’s voice. He opened the door and walked inside. “What took you so long?” Julius Kohn reproached, but he was on his feet and rushing to embrace his son. “I thought you’d be here this morning.”

“I didn’t say what time,” Phil reminded, always uncomfortable when his father kissed him. “We just docked. You know what traffic is like this time of day.”

“I told Wally to hang around at the garage until I called him to come and get us.” He dropped an arm about Phil’s shoulders and prodded him toward the sofa. “Well?” he asked with a sly grin. “You brought back my paintings?”

“Right in here.” While his father watched, he reached into his duffel bag and brought out the tightly wrapped parcel.

“Thirty thousand bucks and I don’t even get frames?” Julius lifted his eyebrows questioningly.

“Dad, you didn’t expect me to smuggle them out of the country in the frames?” he demanded. “These are two old masters. If I’d been caught, you’d have one hell of a time bailing me out.”

For a few moments they were silent while Phil ripped open the parcel, brought out the two canvases, then spread them on the floor.

“That’s worth close to a million?” Julius was dubious.

“In ten years they’ll be worth more,” Phil surmised. “When the museum realizes it’s lost for good. You can’t brag about them all over town,” he warned.

“I just want to hang them in the house,” Julius soothed. “And show them to a few neighbors.”

“If it ever comes out that you have them,” Phil pointed out, “you’ll have to pretend to believe they’re copies. You bought them from some refugee who came into the shop,” he said, instructing him.

“It’ll be worth thirty thousand to show some of our bastardly neighbors,” Julius said complacently.

“Did you tell Mother about them?” Phil asked.

“Am I nuts? She’d be worried to death that you’d be caught and thrown into jail. We’ll tell her tonight after dinner.”

On the drive toward Greenwich Phil debated about the best time to tell his father about Kathy. Meanwhile he listened to the latest Greenwich gossip.

“You wouldn’t believe the housing boom out here. Houses that went begging at $7,500 five years ago are selling for $20,000 now. Everybody who can afford it wants to live in Greenwich and commute to Manhattan.”

“What’s happening with that United Nations deal?” he asked. The little while he was home between coming back from camp in Texas and leaving for Germany, everybody seemed to be talking for or against bringing part of the United Nations organization to Greenwich.

“People voted against bringing it here.” Julius frowned. “They’re scared to death it’ll bring a lot of Jews into the community. I don’t know why they think it’ll be mostly Jews coming in, but you know the thinking out there. I ran into Bert Baldwin in town. He was sure that Sound Beach Avenue would be a line-up of hot-dog stands. “‘Another Coney Island,’” he mimicked caustically.

“Dad, I have some news,” he began tentatively.

“You didn’t come home with the clap?” Julius demanded—his smile belying such suspicion—and slapped Phil on one thigh.

“I met a girl in Hamburg—”

“Wherever you go, you meet girls.” But his eyes narrowed in speculation.

“I mean to marry this one.”

“So fast, Phil? What’s the matter, no nookie over there?”

“Plenty for the taking,” Phil assured his father. “But this girl’s something. David was drooling over her.”

“But you got there first?”

“David didn’t have a chance once I campaigned,” he said nonchalantly.

“What’s she like?”

“Small, features like a Hollywood starlet. Built.”

“Jewish?” Julius appeared self-conscious at this question.

“Yeah.” He grinned. “That’ll please the old lady.” He paused. “She graduated from Barnard last June.”

“What about the family?” Julius pursued. “From New York?”

“Brooklyn.” Phil paused. “Her father runs a candy store in Borough Park.”

“She knows about the business?” All at once Julius was suspicious. “She knows your father owns Julius Kohn Furs?”

“She may,” Phil evaded. “I didn’t talk about it with her.”

“So a smart little girl from Borough Park meets the rich son of Julius Kohn in Hamburg.” He was grim. “She figures she’s marrying into a lot of money.”

“Nothing like that,” Phil rejected.

“She’s a hot little number?”

“From all indications. I didn’t sleep with her, Dad. I’m marrying this one.”

“So she won’t let you in,” he pinpointed in triumph, “and you’re so overheated you’re ready to marry her.”

“Dad, I’ll be twenty-eight in a few weeks. I thought you’d be glad to see me settle down.”

“You’re coming into the business?” He saw the cagey glint in his father’s eyes. “How else are you going to support a wife?”

“I’m taking a flier in the theater. Give myself a year to see if I can make it as an actor.” He had a bankroll—most of that thirty thousand from the old man. He didn’t have to settle for the fur business just yet. Coming over on the ship he’d thought about theater. He had the looks for it. He’d take some classes. It ought to be fun for a while.

“Because you did a couple of plays in college?” His father’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. “Who makes a living as an actor?”

“Clark Gable, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn—”

“They’re in the movies,” Julius pointed out.

“First you do a play, then Hollywood takes you out there.”

“You’re
meshuggeh.
This some idea you got from that little broad?”

“She doesn’t know about it. But if I want to do it,” he predicted, “she’ll go along.”

“Your mother won’t be happy,” Julius warned.

“Mother won’t be happy unless I marry Princess Elizabeth,” Phil chuckled. “And she’s not my type.”

“Your mother wouldn’t be happy if you married Princess Elizabeth.” Julius grinned.
“Maybe
if she converted.”