by Gil Meynier
“Come on, honey,” he said, “tell Joe what it was.”
He went on dreaming for a while. This was better than a problem. But it brought up a problem. How would he get rid of the old lady? Would he sit on her legs and push a pillow over her face? He’d have to pin down her skinny arms in some way. Would she let him come near or would she shy away if he came up with a pillow in his hand?
He rose from the chintz-covered box and went over to the bedside. She did not move. He sat on the bed and looked at her. He kept on talking to her.
“Come on, baby, tell me what it was you were going to ask.”
She was still looking out the window. Her white hair was gray in the evening darkness. It covered her ears beneath her hat. Joe’s chest constricted in a nervous spasm of laughter when he thought of how she would look when they found her, with her hat still on. Then, with the excitement of an experimental venture, he leaned over toward the trunk at the foot of the bed and caught a cushion by its ear. It was fat and heavy. There were three cushions on the trunk and this just happened to be the fattest. It was covered in heavily ribbed, dusty corduroy.
“Here, honey,” he said, “put this on your tummy and keep yourself warm.”
She did not move when he put the heavy cushion on her stomach. Joe wondered if he’d have to get her to turn her head or if it could be done with her head turned sideways. Might break her neck instead of smothering her.
The excitement was still there but it was dwindling away because he knew he was not going to do it now. The cushion did not have very far to go. It was touching her chin. And she was lying there as if she were in another world.
“Are you going to tell me?” he asked.
And he shoved the cushion a little higher.
“Or aren’t you?”
He clenched his teeth. The excitement was coming back. And she was lying there, in the dark, as if someone were making love to her. At the thought of it Joe felt a sudden, shivering revulsion and he thought he was going to vomit.
And this was the moment Dorry chose to come home.
Hearing footsteps on the porch, Joe jumped up, fled through Mrs. Jard’s room, leaving the cushion on the old lady’s stomach, and threw himself into the darkness of the living room as the front door opened.
Yellow bathing suit over her arm, Dorry went to her room. Coming home tonight was not like so many other nights when a rented room had seemed like the end of the line, an inevitable stop when there was no further place to go unless you went back where you just came from. Tonight was unlike those other nights when she had closed the door slowly and had found herself shut away, alone with thoughts she did not like.
Tonight was quite different The bathing suit still folded over her arm, she sat in the big chair and thought about it. The Italian had been nice. Not just nice to be polite, but real nice. She had discovered how nice he was after Joe had left them at the pool.
Dorry’s idea of someone nice was not based on moral character. A fellow did not have to be a saint to be nice. No matter what he did, if he was frank and straightforward, he could be nice. An old teacher who did nothing more than pat you on the fanny could be nice, or not nice, depending. She felt sorry for Joe because something kept him from being nice.
Stringer, on the other hand, and not because he had made her a present of a bathing suit and even though she still meant every word she said when she told Joe that he could get into trouble running around with him, well, Stringer had been nice. And he had tried to help.
She had told him about Johnny, and Walter, and how her family were trying to get the first marriage annulled. Most people would have done one of two things: they would have imperceptibly drawn themselves away and quietly changed the subject and eventually left her alone, or as some had done, would have moved in closer with brightened eyes and hands that said: well, what the hell!
Lying on the grass, their faces in the shade of their own folded arms, Stringer did not smile. He said:
“Kid, you’re in a jam. Is there anything I can do? How do things stand now?”
So she had told him about Johnny and the annulment and this time she did not make up any lies. He nodded his head when she told him how Johnny had managed to break away from barracks just long enough for them to hurry out and get married.
“You have to admire the guy for that,” said Stringer.
Then Johnny went directly from the minister’s to the boat and he wouldn’t even let her go with him because he said it would be tricky getting back in at the embarkation point or wherever it was.
“Why did you marry Johnny?” said Stringer.
And when she answered: “Because he loved me so much,” the Italian closed his eyes and seemed to be thinking for a long time. Then he said:
“What about the other one?”
Walter was something else again. Even now, as she sat in her room, she felt that she would have died if she had not married Walter. What happened had nothing to do with the way the lawyer described it. It had been a breathless matter of prolonging a melting, sweeping moment in which their whole being, their whole living had been in the touch of lips, the touch of hands. It had been as if the feeling that wells behind the closed eyes of an unending kiss had lasted throughout those few days and she had married Walter because she loved him so much and her mind, at the time, was empty of all other thoughts. They had had several days before Walter went away. They had been wonderful days.
And then the family had started in. Her family was trying to get the first marriage annulled and Walter’s family had been nasty and wanted their son to have a divorce. And because she didn’t want to divorce Walter, ever, she had run away and she would wait here until he came for her.
“Do you think it was wrong to run away?”
“No,” said Stringer.
And then he had gone over every point of it.
“They’re tough on babes who marry servicemen for the allotment checks. Did you cash any of them?”
“No! I sent them back.”
He nodded. After a while he said:
“What are you going to do about Johnny?”
And that was when the confusion and the unhappiness had seemed to clear up, just from talking about it with Stringer. It was really because she did not know what to do about Johnny that she had run away. She was not running away from the legal stuff, but from seeing Johnny, who loved her so much, and from having to tell him. She could, perhaps, explain it to Walter when he came back. But Johnny, how would it be explained to him?
“I’ll tell him,” said Stringer.
And, quietly, he promised to see Johnny. And, because she understood that sometimes people want to do something nice, she trusted him even though there was no reason to believe him. Sitting there on the green lawn near the pool, in the warm desert breeze, it had been as if they were planning a new wedding with Walter, and Stringer had elected to be the best man and to make all the arrangements. Because Stringer was what he was and hadn’t smiled and had been understanding, Dorry, for the first time in a long time, felt happy and unconfused. All it took was a little hope, even if you didn’t believe in it very hard. Walter would never get to know that she had met a man like Stringer, and Johnny still would have to be told, but it had been nice of the Italian to offer to help. Well, maybe she just felt happier and less confused. Whatever it was, it had been a nice day, and tonight was not like all the other nights and her skin was tingling warmly from the sun.
10
MAYHEW had taken Mrs. Jard to dinner. It had been a most satisfactory experience, he thought. The dear lady may not have been dressed according to the latest fashion, she may have been a trifle shy, or perhaps one should say self-conscious, upon entering the small, unpretentious restaurant on Sixth Avenue, but she had overcome her hesitations very nicely and had turned out to be a pleasant dinner companion.
Inclined to be old-fashioned, by age and disposition, May-hew was not so crude as to lay immediate siege to Mrs. Jard’s hand and heart; neither w
as he so impractical as to leave her entirely in the dark about his intentions. Lingering over their after-dinner coffee, Mayhew said:
“I, myself, have never tasted the joys of marriage.”
Mrs. Jard, whose pert old face rippled with half-smiles that kindled a twinkle in her eyes, said:
“They say that a bachelor’s life is a splendid breakfast...”
Mayhew smiled modestly. A splendid breakfast! Well, you might call it that.
“...a tolerably flat dinner...” she continued.
Mayhew sighed.
“...and a most miserable supper.”
“Well, now, I wouldn’t say that,” said Mayhew, striving for something gallant to say. But the best he could do was to spread his hands to take in the checkered tablecloth, the coffee cups, the crumbs on the table and the confines of the narrow booth. He meant to convey the idea that if this be the supper of his life he was satisfied with his table companion. He hoped he was not being too subtle.
The waitress wished to hell they would drink their coffee and get out so she could clear the table.
In the booth near the archway that led into the kitchen, the deputy sheriff was eating spaghetti. His worries did not upset him too much, but he was convinced that everything happened to him. Take that hit-and-run victim, the one they’d picked up near the golf course. Well, he had broken out of the county hospital in his underwear and somebody else’s pants and had walked right in front of a truck half a block away. Now he was back in the hospital, banged up worse than before. It only made it harder to pin anything on the first guy who had hit him. And that case was getting pretty cold.
And then, there was that business about the Detroit boys. The city police were throwing the book at them. Every time those Italians showed up in town the city cops handed them citations for illegal parking, for jaywalking, for spitting on the sidewalk, anything and everything, just to show them, in the words of the police chief, that the gangsterous activities of Detroit hoodlums would not be tolerated within the city limits. “Stay out of the city limits,” the chief of police had warned. If they wanted to settle around here he didn’t care what they did in the county, just so they stayed out of the city.
Which made it just fine for the sheriffs office, with a county full of tough boys and an election coming up. Yeah, just dandy.
The deputy cornered the last remnant of tomato sauce on his plate with a crust of bread, settled back and belched comfortably.
He was not too satisfied with that nervous little guy and the black rental Packard, Joe what’s-his-name. He was pretty sure that the fellow had said he did not know any of the Italians and yet the next day he was driving around with one of them, by the Hermitage, near the golf course.
His right elbow on the tablecloth, his left hand draped over the edge of the table, he was picking his teeth when the waitress came over and stood by his table, a warm, soft thigh against his hand.
“Working nights?” she asked.
He wiggled his fingers against the soft flesh in the limp apron. If there weren’t so many people around...
“They got me working all the time...” he said.
“I bet you hate that,” she said, smothering his hand in the fold of her groin as she reached over to the far end of the table to flick an invisible speck with her napkin.
It was night again. The human wave had receded from the town with a gurgle of traffic, tires screeching and homeward-bound bodies packed in buses. This was the feeding hour. Some enjoyed their food, others silently ate. Soon the last mouth would be wiped and a trickle of traffic would dribble back to the lights of town in search of amusement. Later on in the night the movie houses would disgorge their contents and turn off their lights. The last buses would pick up the stragglers and call it a day. Lights would blink off in store windows and the tide would recede once more, leaving small islands of life around all-night gas stations, restaurants and depots. Trains would come through, airliners would fly over and rumbling transcontinental buses would pass through town, filled with drooping bodies and night smells. In vigilant quarters short-wave radio panels would cackle and whine in bursts of voice and code. There might be a fire alarm. Or a brawl on Meyer Street.
Beyond the city limits, in the county which was the sheriff’s worry, the countryside was settling down to sleep peacefully enough. The moon had come up, fat and yellow, over the Rincons. In the moonlight, out on Fort Lowell Road, a couple of kids, blood-brothers by dint of a messy ritual performed with a safety pin, threw rotten eggs at passing cars, as children will. They hid in the bushes when the deputy sheriff, radio crackling, skidded onto the scene. They decided that having fun was hardly fun any more and Indian-crept their way to bed.
Joe had just about given up the idea of the suitcase when Mayhew opened the front door and held it for Mrs. Jard. They whispered good night and thanks and Joe wondered what the hell was going on.
He was giving up the idea of the suitcase because there was too great a chance of missing. You have to figure percentages. He was working on another idea. Suppose he got a spray-gun like the one used for flies. Suppose he filled it with chloroform. Then, when Mayhew was asleep he could spray his room with it through the knothole. That would make the old man sleep pretty soundly and he could go in and just take the damn moneybelt and hide it somewhere.
The only thing was...would it leave an odor? And what would he do with the spray-gun after he had used it and where would he get the chloroform...goddamn it, there was always something in the way. That idea was no good.
Hell, he might as well admit it, he no longer wanted to use the suitcase. He had convinced himself that it wouldn’t work because he was just plain afraid to push it over. His hand had trembled the last time he had pushed the rod through the hole again and it had frightened him. Why was he shaking? Why had he suddenly felt helpless and weak trying to fight the whole world with a flimsy curtain rod? What the hell could he do with a curtain rod?
Everything was mixed up and sickening. There were too many things going at the same time. What had he gained by planting the rings in Jard’s dresser, what had he gained by pretending that Dorry meant nothing to him, why had everything gone wrong? Mayhew had gypped him, Mac had thrown him out, Stringer wasn’t going to do anything about the house, and the sheriff’s man watching the cars...
“Oh, damn it!” said Joe, stabbing his fist into his pillow. And he knew it would take more than ice picks and curtain rods to put him where he could start pushing other people around for a change.
Now the house was full again. When Dorry had come home, Joe, tense, his heart rattling loudly in his chest, had watched her go to her room—God knows what would have happened if she had come into the living room—and when she closed her door was when his trembling had begun. He had come so close to doing something to the old lady with that damn cushion, and Dorry had come in, and now he felt completely disorganized. He didn’t know whether he wanted to go in and hit her across the mouth for playing the bitch with the Italian, or make love to her, or confront her with those two husbands or cry in her arms and tell her he loved her. When he saw that she hadn’t turned on her light and, listening, heard her plump herself in the big armchair, he wondered what she was doing in the dark. Anything he couldn’t understand worried him. Was she just sitting there? Thinking? Here they were, all three of them, in the dark, silent house, the old woman beyond the great curtains lying there, the cushion on her stomach. Joe shuddered and felt cold, as if a sickness had come over him. He was frightened by the trembling he could not control and frightened at the thought of what would happen if he let himself go to pieces. Most of all he wanted to creep back to his room. He almost fell down as he hurried down the hall.
Time went by. He heard Mayhew open the front door. Then he heard him unlock the door to his room, turn on the light and walk out again toward the bathroom. Joe turned over on his bed and buried his head in the pillow. His arms were still thrashing and the bedsprings creaking when Mayhew knocked at his door. J
oe didn’t hear him. As he turned over again, his eyes open, his mind as tight as a fist, he felt as if a sudden emptiness exploded within him when he saw Mayhew standing in the doorway. His first thought was one of terror at the enormity of his carelessness in forgetting to lock his door. For a moment his mind refused to function any further and everything hung on that simple, all-obliterating thought. Feeling drained and empty, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and snapped on the light.
“What are you doing in here?” he barked, and a bark it was because his voice broke and grated and choked in his throat.
“I wish to speak to you,” said Mayhew.
Joe stared at him, breathing hard, his fists clenched, his mind still flurrying between the unlocked door and Mayhew’s hateful presence. He felt unfairly exposed to unknown dangers; he didn’t like to be seen this way.
“Is anything wrong, my boy?” said May hew, startled at Joe’s haggard look.
“What the hell do you want?” said Joe.
Mayhew shrugged his shoulders. So few people played according to the rules. Ah, well.
“There are certain things I wish to say to you,” Mayhew said, still standing near the door.
“Well, say them and get out.”
Joe wanted to lie down again, but couldn’t. Mayhew advanced into the room and seated himself on the chair near the dresser. Joe swallowed hard and wondered how it would be to throw the bastard out. Mayhew, seated, pursed his lips in preparation for a speech. Joe nearly lost his mind. If a man can harbor a tornado within his skull, that is what Joe felt he had, a whirling, twisting typhoon of hatred, littered with stray thoughts of doors, ice picks and people and violence and fury. For a moment he felt blinded by an exploding flash of brilliance, and when he recovered the use of his eyes, all he could see was the pucker of Mayhew’s mouth. He saw it as if he were holding a magnifying glass to it, ugly, meaningless and infuriating...
“...and, naturally,” Mayhew was saying.
