Purcell gave his face a dry wash with his hands, ran his fingers through his hair, and opened the door. It was only Peggy Furman, the Social Hostess. “Hello, honeh,” she said. Furman came in, sat down, and managed to look busy even in repose. If appearance counted for anything, Purcell told himself, Furman was the busiest girl south of where they drew the line. All the guests, except the young unmarried women who were inclined to be uncharitable, felt terribly sorry for Furman because she worked so hard at giving them a good time. Furman was particularly good with middle-aged women, made them feel almost her own age.
It was only coincident that almost all middle-aged women had stalwart sons and husbands and nephews to keep them company during the season when the music was maddest, the prices highest, the climate coldest and rainiest.
Purcell mixed a stiff drink for Furman, another for himself. “You’re all right, kid,” he said thickly, even if he didn’t believe it, and then they had been on the bed. But he found himself still thinking of Mary.
This was a hell of a note. He supposed maybe it was love, but it was ridiculous not to be able to enjoy an easy, legitimate lay. They were all alike, he assured himself. Ben Franklin was right. A pillow slip covered the difference.
But they weren’t all alike. Furman, he realized, bored him. She was a fair hostess but she was a lousy lay. It was possible, of course, that Furman wasn’t any more interested than he was, was only trying to hold her job, give him his money’s worth.
Still, if it had been Mary, he wouldn’t have been bored. He would have been content just to hold her hand, touch her hair. If Julie Templar herself came into the room, he wouldn’t even look up. Any farther than her knees, he supposed. Purcell tried to think of some plausible way of getting rid of Furman without hurting her feelings. So he told her finally that she was tired, all in, done out. He gave her the rest of the day off, peeled a five off a slim roll, and told her to go buy herself the biggest chocolate soda in town.
By degrees, Furman’s musky Prenez Moi was displaced by the odors of the pantry. Purcell sighed and wished that some enterprising parfumeur would come out with a flat-footed Fornication. Forniquer. Fornicateur. Fornicatrice. The French are a wonderful little people fond of light wines and dancing.
He opened a newspaper. BUZZARD IN CHICAGO the banner headline read, but he had heard that one before. The Psychic Reader, the Colonic Irrigation, the Church of Christ, Scientist, offered health, knowledge and power in fourteen-point caps to every lonely heart. Everybody wanted something for nothing. Even with three million dollars, old man Goodenow in 709-10 had to parlay four cups of coffee out of one Club Breakfast.
Mary wasn’t like that though, he told himself. She was different, not on the make at all. He wondered for a little why she was in Florida. Whatever it was, though, it was legitimate, he was sure of that.
Purcell wished that he had a date with Mary tonight. He would take her to the movies, buy her a milkshake. He might even put his arm around her. He was a hell of a fellow, he was. Christ, he’d be carrying her books home next.
He put on a fresh shirt, combed his hair with water for his Christmas conference with J. Arthur. He wanted to call Mary, but his certainty that the operator would be listening in made him sheepish and hesitant.
He’d try to catch her on her way out. Keep it casual. Between five and five-fifteen, he told himself. Just now, however, the Madam was paramount. The timekeeper had taken on a new pantrywoman. She was a little old, but she knew one end of a fish fork from the other and how to pickle artichoke hearts.
Purcell was worried about one of the elevator boys, too, not that there was much choice. George was over twenty-one and an experienced operator, but somehow George’s eyes made Purcell uneasy. Sometime, with a full cab, he supposed, and about eleven o’clock at night, George would decide that he was Jesus Christ and try to make the elevator go sideways. He had seen eyes like that before.
Oh well, what the hell. He would see J. Arthur, get it over with, and then he would try to catch Mary. His heart skipped and tripped awkwardly like a little boy at dancing school.
Yes, damn it, he supposed it was love. This would change everything and he had been fairly content with his life before. Nothing like this had happened to him since, let’s see, 1950. There hadn’t been anybody since Denise, and he cringed a little. Denise could still hurt.
Love was a hell of a lot more like a chancre than it was like a red, red rose, this Burns to the contrary. He was, Purcell admitted to himself, nuts about Mary Street. The prospect appalled him. He’d be better off with tick fever, Purcell’s common sense assured him as he straightened his tie for the last time and headed for the Madam and the elevator.
306
“Please don’t take a drink till after breakfast,” Ann McCannon said. “Please, darling. Don’t.”
Bill McCannon was in the bathroom mixing a drink at the ice water tap but he stopped and kissed her. “My baby, my baby, my baby,” he said, fitting the curves of her body into his so that nothing was left out, nothing left over, and she snuggled sleepily into his arms. “Don’t make a drink yet,” she said.
He displaced her and was firm, businesslike, with a muddler. “You always marry rum-dums, remember?”
She sat for a bit, eyes still closed, on the edge of the tub, then struggled into Bill’s arms again. “The dirty sons of bitches,” he said. “They didn’t love you like this.”
Bill was right of course, Ann thought. She had been married twice before and it hadn’t meant anything. “Once around like this is enough,” she said with a tinge of malice.
He inched her purposefully toward the bed, lifted his hand, and slapped her resoundingly with an open palm. She staggered and slipped, her cheek a dull roar penetrated by little slivers of light. Damn him! Damn him! Damn him! He’d never hit her as hard as this before, but was just like everybody said, you saw stars.
“Dirty slut,” Bill said, and grabbed her. “Darling dirty slut! Ah-h, forgive me,” he murmured, imposing his body upon her, taking all the hurt out of it, until they had melted and run together in little rivers and tremors of delight, clutching at one another in the old desperate way. They clung, lips resting, breasts touching, straining against the barriers of self. “My darling, my heart’s darling.”
“I love you, love you, love you,” Ann said, nuzzling his bare shoulder comfortably with her mouth. “Ever love anybody before?” she asked.
“Not like this.”
“What about Dirty Dora Fenhagen?” Bill still believed everything the Fenhagen had told him. “That awful woman! I could laugh, I could scream I—” And she hated him again suddenly although her lips still absently caressed his shoulder.
She would like to show him, muss him up, she thought, and the shivers of pleasure turned to little cold slices of satisfaction. I’d like to take him apart and kiss him together again.
“I hate every bastard who ever looked at you,” Bill continued.
“You’re the first,” Ann whispered. “You know what I told you. I never did before. Only with you. You know that.”
Bill really was the only man in her life. Ah, she should have been a mountain girl, should have married Bill at fourteen before so many people—things—got in between. And then she was suddenly agitated. That Trudy! she thought in a red rage.
“Let’s have one drink,” Bill said quickly. “Just one and breakfast. I’ll be good today.” The drink had been wonderfully satisfactory. Ann and Bill had sat facing each other, their glasses on the floor beside them, her hand resting lightly on his bare knee, his hand on hers, and they had been gay, starved in an unmannerly way at breakfast. They had had one more drink during breakfast and then another to go swimming on.
The water in the pool had been clean and cool and they had slept, curled up together on the warm chaise longue, Bill’s leg thrown over Ann’s thigh. When they woke it was noon and they had had another dip and gone in.
In their rooms again, they had showered, had luncheon, and stretc
hed naked side by side on the bed, looking out through the big picture window of 306 to the haze where sky and water met in a blue-green ribbon. Destroyers, Coast Guard cutters, patrols, stalked the horizon purposefully. Gulls wheeled in antic curves. Ann and Bill read and talked and smoked, exploring their contentment.
It was so wonderful just to be together. They would never fight again, they promised, breast to breast. It was so silly when they asked nothing more than each other.
“But what did you and Honora do after you bought her the white evening dress?” Ann persisted.
“We went to a party,” Bill said with finality.
“Whose?” Ann kept on.
“Senator Tomlin’s,” he replied.
“What did you do at the party?”
“We danced,” Bill said and reached for a cigarette.
“So you danced?” she went on. “And what did you do after that?”
“We had drinks with a lot of people.”
“And then what happened?”
“Honora said, ‘Come on home with me,’ “ he finished savagely, “and I bounced the be-Jesus out of her in her little white bed. Anything else you want to know?” he asked.
“Ah-h-h, God,” Ann sobbed. “Oh, my darling, darling, darling. How could you do that to me? How could you get mixed up with a woman like that? Why didn’t you wait for me?”
“You married Xerxes,” he pointed out, and his lip curled. “There couldn’t be more than one guy in the world with a name like that, and you have to hunt him up and marry him.” He fixed himself a drink, a big one, and swallowed. “Dirty bitch,” he continued, his voice darkening, and knocked her roughly out of bed.
Ann lay on the floor, savoring her indignities and quietly awaiting an advantage, her heart a little black kernel of malice.
“Baby,” Bill said. “Did I hurt you?” and dropped to his knees.
She hit him then with all her strength, her ring, a big marquise, catching him just under the eye.
“Bill, darling, darling!” she said swiftly, her arms around him. “Now I’ve hurt you. You know I didn’t mean to do it. Ah, Bill, what have I done to you?” she panted, embracing his knees. “Why do I want to hurt you when I love you so much? I didn’t mean it, my darling. You know how much I love you,” she crooned from the floor.
Bill spat blood into a towel and fingered a tooth. “Dirty bitch,” he said into her breast. “I love you so much.”
They had abased themselves then. “It was my fault, you know what a bastard I am.”
“No, no. It was mine. I’m such a jealous bitch because I love you so much.”
They had murmured into each other’s throats.
It didn’t matter. Nothing that had happened before made any difference. This was all that counted, that they had each other at last. If other people hadn’t got in their way, if neither of them had had anyone before, they wouldn’t have been so sure, so able to appreciate what they had now—their crazy luck.
“I had it coming to me,” Bill said reflectively, touching his eye.
“I know,” Ann said, “but I started it. I picked.”
“You’re a shrew,” he said fondly, putting his arm around her and pulling her down beside him. “A mean, nagging witch of a wife, and the best in the business. After you, a nice woman would bore me.”
“There won’t be any more women for you, nice or not,” Ann said positively. “This is the end of the line. All you’re going to know about other women, you can read in the papers. You couldn’t love anybody else now, could you?” she pleaded. “I love you, love you, love you so much, and you’re so awful. You’re a wife-beater, that’s what you are. If I weren’t so crazy about you, I couldn’t stand you. You love me, don’t you? You couldn’t stand anybody else now, could you?” she whispered into his shoulder.
“Hell, I can’t even stand you,” he said cheerfully and kissed her knee.
“Your eye’s beginning to get black,” Ann observed.
“We’ve been married a month, and this is the first black eye you’ve given me!” Bill told her. “Let’s go out and celebrate. Let’s go to the Royal Hibiscus and dance dirty.”
“We make a very handsome couple,” she told him, kissing him, clasping pearls at the throat of her evening sweater, pinning a spray of dark-red carnations on her evening bag. They waited, hand in hand, for a cab.
The drinks at the Royal Hibiscus had seemed even more wonderful than any drinks they had ever had before, dinner seemed wonderful; Ann’s heart centered in the tips of the fingers Bill held. The world, now, was only a sacred grove through which to dance, the eager young Dionysus and his bride.
At the table again, Ann recognized a little blond man with a party of four several tables away, and her heart jumped with apprehension. The little blond man bowed drunkenly, without surprise, and kissed the back of his hand to her. Ann acknowledged his greeting with a soft flutter of lashes and bent sedately, intent only on her plate. “Darling,” she said, laying her hand on Bill’s knee and running it along his thigh, “I love you so much.”
Don’t let it happen. Don’t let Bill notice anything, she prayed. Oh, God, we’ll have another one, the worst row we’ve ever had. A real brannigan. “When did you know this low form of life?” Bill would ask. “I thought you’d told me everything. Well, I don’t blame you,” he would say. “He’s something to keep quiet about, all right. What has he got that anybody else would have? Xerk, the Jerk and Kim the Kelli-kek. Ashby, the Asinine Amoeba.”
It would be awful. She didn’t know how she’d missed Ashby Wharton except that he was so unimportant. It was hard to remember everything you’d done, everybody you’d known, even at twenty-seven. “I like your manners, baby,” Bill said. “You’re a gent and you eat like a lady.”
A bottle of champagne appeared on their table in a frosted bucket. “Where in the hell did this come from?” Bill asked and Ann saw Ashby struggling to rise, but the girl at his left, arms about his neck, was importunate.
“Didn’t you order it, darling?” Ann said quickly, her eyes innocent and unblinking. “You promised me a party, you know. All the people we like—you and me.”
“A damned good idea, too,” Bill said and poured the champagne.
After so much whiskey, the wine was light and cool, delicate against their throats, and they danced again, effortlessly, with a sort of formal abandon. She’d have to try to get Bill out of here before anything happened.
“Darling,” Ann whispered, pressing closer to him, brushing his ear with her lips. “Let’s go home, darling. Let’s go home and go to bed.”
“You’re damned right we will,” Bill said. “Just as soon as we finish the champagne.”
“No, now.”
“At these prices, we finish the champagne. Did I tell you?” he said. “Did I ever tell you that I love you? Did I ever tell you that you’re the prettiest girl and the sweetest girl and the most wonderful goddamned buntzel in the business?”
“I don’t want any more champagne,” Ann said. “I need more champagne like I need twelve toes. Let’s go home.”
“Later,” Bill told her. “In about fifteen dollars’ worth. Ah-h-h, baby,” he said. “You never did, did you? You wouldn’t lie. You never had it like this before either.”
They returned to their tables, finished the wine, paid the check. With her fingers crossed, Ann rose and headed quickly for the door.
“Ann! My lovely, lovely Ann,” Ashby muttered thickly, lurching toward her. “Dark Helen! Nicest girl I ever knew. Want to see you. Talk to you. Talk about old times. Talk about Dark Helen, the big one that got away.”
“Why hello, Ashby,” Ann said carefully. “My husband, Mr. McCannon. Mr. McCannon, Mr. Wharton.”
“How do you do it?” Bill asked bitterly, propelling her suddenly from behind. “Where did you find him? In a state institution? Things like that ought to be kept locked up on the third floor. That’s what they do with them in fine, old families. Why is it Uncle Harry never, never comes d
ownstairs? Did he ever touch you? Did that—that thing ever touch you?” he asked, wrenching her arm savagely as he helped her into a cab.
“He kissed me once,” she replied.
The cab purred along and Bill was heavily jocular with the driver.
Silence hung between them like a wet curtain. “Bill,” Ann said tentatively after a bit, holding out her hand. “Please don’t be silly. I’d rather have kissed Aunt Gwennie.”
“Slut!” he said, slashing the air with his arm. “Dirty slut!” They couldn’t win, she decided. She and Bill would always be at each other’s throats, their high emotion wasted.
They entered the lobby, and the big gold clock frowned the hour down at them. “Pretty thing,” she said, her finger tips caressing its rosy garlands, its delicious cherubs, but the clock was not to be cozened. Three! It chimed malevolently, and despair surged suddenly through her.
If they had been fourteen, it might have been all right, she didn’t know, but too much had been lost—and she shrugged her shoulders—in transit, she supposed. The door of 306 banged shut behind them and Bill locked it carefully with his key. “Mr. Wharton, for Christ’s sake!” he said.
The House Phone
On an impulse, Purcell called the Executive Suite. Hell, let them listen. He’d ask Mary Street to have dinner with him, and she’d say yes. Quick. Simple. Easy. No harm done. He’d buy her a fine dinner; after all she was just a kid away from home, and maybe he’d be so bored with the good life that he’d get her out of his system in one easy lesson. Mary was strictly an ingenue, of course, and it had been quite a while since he’d been a juvenile lead.
“Two-oh-one and two,” he told the operator.
The Pink Hotel Page 8
