Experiment in Springtime

by Margaret Millar

  By the time he’d finished the four drinks, he felt better. He didn’t want to annoy Martha anymore, and he didn’t want to fight with sailors, not even one sailor. They were a good bunch of boys. If they felt like whistling, let them whistle. He, too, could whistle. He could whistle even after eating soda crackers, just watch him.

  The waiter was sorry, they were fresh out of soda crackers.

  Fresh out of soda crackers even for a man who could whistle through his teeth like this? Well, that was a fine thing. He wouldn’t be seen dead in a joint with no soda crackers. Come on, Martha, let us not demean ourselves. Goodbye, Charley.

  The bars were strung along the street like bright beads. The Zanzibar, The Top Hat, The Roscoe, Chez Henri.

  Saturday night? People crawled from bead to bead. A whole conga line of people passed from the Zebra Room to the Casino Latino to the Bar Nine, in shunts and staggers. You met the same ones all the time because the string was limited, there were just so many beads, and all alike except for their names and the lavatories. Some had clean lavatories, some had not.

  The real difference, he explained, is lavatories.

  The Kit-Kat.

  The same people. It was extraordinary how other people remained the same while you changed, from bar to bar, minute to minute. Under the rosy lights of the Kit-Kat, you looked pretty good. Not handsome, no, but fresh and appealing. The other jerks looked worn out and tired, and their women were bags.

  Martha was eating pretzels. She looked like a little girl. That was fine, because he himself looked fresh and appealing.

  Just a couple of kids, sexually precocious.

  The Monkey House.

  A mistake to come here. Bad lights, too yellow and garish. They seemed to coax your liver bile right up into your face. They peered into each pore of your skin and glared at your sweating forehead.

  The waiter was too obsequious and there were too many single girls hanging around the bar. They were all young and dressed with a smartness that was too extreme. Whores feel a kinship with movie actresses and they copy their clothes, zipper for zipper when they can.

  “Really?” said Martha.

  Yes, really.

  She had switched to peanuts, and while she ate she watched the girls at the bar while they watched each other. Two of them had given up the chase for the night. They sat with their arms entwined, talking softly.

  They are lovers.

  Lovers?

  And the headwaiter is a pimp.

  A pimp?

  She was very excited, she had never seen a pimp or prostitute lovers before. She beamed approval at him, imagine being so clever, knowing these things.

  Her eyes wide and avid, she stared at the performing animals through the iron bars of the cage.

  I am ill, it’s too hot in here, I wonder if I’m getting jaundice?

  You need some food, Martha said. You need some real food.

  Real food could be had at Luigi’s. Real sizzling steaks, real Italian spaghetti, real homemade pies.

  Other restaurants might be in the habit of serving papier-mâché pies and steaks of painted plaster, but not Luigi’s.

  When the spaghetti came, it was quite real, but it had unrealistic elements, exotic bits of green and shreds of yellow and hard little lumps that might have been meat. It slid around his mouth like soap with slivers of wood in it.

  Viva Italia.

  I think I’m getting jaundice. Will you excuse me while I go and relieve my jaundice?

  He went to the lavatory. Someone with a careless aim had soaked the floor, and the walls were covered with dirty words, pictures, invitations and condemnations.

  “Come to Jesus” had been scrawled over “For a b.f. call Harry, Bellflower 23664.” Harry was an artist, it must have taken him hours to carve his message in the plaster. He wondered if b.f. meant boyfriend, or something earthier.

  And where was Harry now? In a V.D. ward, with a case of hemorrhoids? Golden lads and girls all must like chim­ney sweepers come to dust.

  Come to Jesus.

  Not a bad idea. Must try it.

  He went back to the table. Martha was gone. She had finished her spaghetti and vanished.

  She’s gone home, back to Charles.

  Charley dear, I’ve been thinking. I don’t like that man Ferris. He takes me to the oddest, places, he knows the oddest people, he’s the oddest fellow. It is all very interest­ing, of course, to observe how the other half lives, but really, one doesn’t care to live like that oneself, does one?

  One does not.

  She returned with her nose powdered and fresh lipstick on. She had the relaxed, contented air of a healthy young animal with a full belly.

  Healthy. No jaundice, no hives, a big appetite.

  He picked up his fork and began to push the sickening mass of spaghetti around his plate. It coiled and uncoiled, it slithered like long, white eels. He couldn’t eat eels. He got quite bitter because certain people could eat eels, could eat anything, while he couldn’t.

  Pretzels, peanuts and then eels. My God, darling, you’ll get fat.

  I won’t.

  You will.

  I won’t.

  You will.

  Poor old Charles. It was no life for any man sitting around night after night watching his wife get fat.

  He looked around the place. Funny how most women were fat. There was only one really thin one in the whole room. She was sitting at the bar with her back toward him. She had a bony little rump and long skinny legs twined around the bar stool. She was with a boy and from their backs alone you could tell they were both very young and shouldn’t be in a place like this.

  The girl disentangled her legs and then tangled them all up again the other way. She laughed a great deal and fingered her drink and shook her floppy hair around. She couldn’t keep still. In contrast, the boy was very quiet, as if he were too scared to move.

  A Minor Is a Person Under Twenty-One Years of Age.

  Should be a law.

  Is a law.

  Should be a law to enforce the law.

  The girl turned and said something to the boy.

  “Come on, Martha,” Steve said. “Let’s go to another place.”

  “But why? I like it here.”

  “I know a better place.”

  He wasn’t drunk anymore. He could spend hours get­ting drunk and then suddenly something would sober him up, just a little thing like recognizing the young girl. He felt old, jaded, irritable.

  He picked up Martha’s coat and helped her put it on, standing directly in front of her so she couldn’t see the bar.

  “I know where we can get some more peanuts.”

  “I’m not hungry anymore. Besides, you told me I was too fat.”

  “No, I didn’t.” For the past few hours a number of thoughts had been pushing around inside his head and he couldn’t quite remember which ones he’d put into words. He was sure he hadn’t told her she was too fat, though, because he hadn’t thought it. “I don’t like thin women, anyway.”

  Like the girl.

  “Their bones stick out,” he said. “Now, your bones don’t stick out, so let’s go.”

  She rose like an obedient child, not sure where she was going or why, but anyway there would be peanuts and anyway there were no bones sticking out on her. When she walked to the door she was steady on her feet, but her eyes had a blurry quality.

  “I feel good,” she said. “I’m not used to drinking, except sherry, and I feel good.”

  “That’s fine.”

  The night air was still hot, as if it couldn’t forget the passion of the sun.

  There was a bus bench a few yards away and he led her toward it.

  “Wait here for me, will you? I have to go back a minute.”

  “You are always saying, ‘
Come on, Martha,’ or ‘Let’s go, Martha,’ or ‘Wait here, Martha.’ You’re so—so active.”

  But she really didn’t care. Dreamily she closed her eyes. It was nicer when he said, ‘Wait here, Martha.’ Much much, much nicer.

  He laughed, hoping his laugh didn’t sound as hollow as it felt.

  “I won’t be long. I forgot to leave a tip.”

  He returned to the bar. He walked up behind the girl and said, “Hello, Laura.”

  She turned with a convulsive jump. Her legs were so tangled up with the bar stool that she nearly lost her balance and fell off.

  He didn’t want to frighten her or make her weepy or belligerent, so he said in a calm low voice, “I’ll call you a cab. Martha’s outside. You wouldn’t want her to see you here.”

  Laura stuck her chin out. “Well, fancy seeing you! I’d like you to meet Bill. Bill, this is an old family friend.”

  She was trembling, but she had a lot more poise than the boy.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Bill said. “Oh, for God’s sake. I didn’t want to come here, you made me, you did so, you made me.”

  “Stop blubbering,” Laura said. “Steve won’t tell your father.”

  “He’ll never give me the car again, he’ll . . .”

  “I won’t tell a soul,” Steve promised.

  Laura turned on him with a vicious little snort. “I’ll say you won’t, not if you’re smart. I could do some talking myself.” She turned up her nose. “So Martha’s outside, is she? Well, what do I care? You don’t suppose she’d have the nerve to say anything to me after what I know about her?”

  “It isn’t her,” the boy moaned. “I don’t care about her. It’s my father. He’ll never give me the car again.”

  The bartender had been watching them closely. He came over now with quiet deliberation, a heavy, middle aged man with a fastidious little mustache.

  “Any trouble here?”

  “Oh, not at all,” Steve said. “It’s just that I don’t like to see sixteen-year-old kids lapping up liquor. I’m per­suading them to go home.”

  The bartender gave a quick look around to see if anyone else had heard. Then he leaned across the counter and said to the boy, “Take your girlfriend and beat it.”

  Laura’s self-assurance had infected the boy. “I’m twenty-one,” he said. “You can’t talk like that to me, I’m twenty . . .”

  “And don’t show your nose around here again.”

  “I’m twenty-one I tell you!”

  “Little liar!” Laura said. “He’s seventeen.”

  “Oh, God!”

  “While we’re on the subject,” Steve said to the bartender, “don’t you check up on ages in this joint?”

  “I asked them how old they were,” the bartender said. “They said twenty-one. It’s not my fault. I asked them.”

  “Pretty gullible, aren’t you?”

  “Look, I don’t want any trouble. The kids are going home. All they had was a couple of drinks . . .”

  “Three,” Laura said.

  The bartender shot her an ugly glance but he kept his temper. “Maybe three, but that’s all. And if they didn’t get it here, they’d get it some place else, or the boy would steal a bottle from his old man and they’d drink it in a car parked in a lane. You gotta be reasonable about these things.”

  “I don’t like your kind of reasoning,” Steve said. “It makes me want to call in a policeman.”

  “No!” Laura said, with the first hint of real panic in her voice. “Don’t you dare!”

  “You’ll ruin the kids’ reputations,” the bartender put in smoothly. “You wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “I’ll tell Charley!” Laura cried. “I’ll tell Charley what you’ve been doing behind his back. You and Martha— you—you’re dirty! Dirty!”

  She put her hands over her eyes. “You do dirty things.” Tears slid down between her fingers. “Oh, God! Oh, Bill!” But Bill was a man, he, too, could do dirty things. Oh, the despair, the loneliness, there was no one, no one. The horror, the dirt, the fascination . . .

  Steve was silent. There were no words to bridge the gap of years and experience, none even to relieve his own melancholy.

  Martha, I love you.

  Dirty.

  You are my wife.

  You do dirty things.

  In dark corners and parked cars, behind drawn blinds, on davenports and benches and musty mattresses, between sheets of grey cotton and white linen and striped flan­nelette, in lanes and doorways and murky halls, dirty things were being done.

  Flesh of my flesh.

  “You’ve ruined my life,” Laura whispered. The boy sprang off the stool and made a beeline for the door. No one paid any attention.

  “His life, too,” she added. Two beautiful young lives ruined, and nobody even looked up. What a waste to have a life ruined without any witnesses except Steve and the bartender, neither of whom would be likely to talk about it: Ah, yes, I was there the night young Laura Shaw’s life was ruined. Where is she now? Ah, no one knows. In a nunnery, perhaps, or a degraded dive. Her name is spoken only in whispers.

  Degrading dive. That sounded better.

  “Are you ready to go home now?” Steve asked.

  “I have no place else to go.” Her tragic tone was marred by a yawn. Her eyes slid to the clock. Eleven. What a night! Wait’ll she told Susan and Becky. They’d die, they’d simply die. As for that drip Bill . . .

  Steve gave the bartender two dollar bills. “See that she gets into a cab.”

  “It’d be a pleasure.”

  He looked at Laura once more. She had the resilience of a pup, and the gift of melodrama found in the adolescent. A few minutes ago she faced real despair—she had been betrayed by the man she was infatuated with and her own sister, and betrayed in a way she couldn’t understand, that seemed to her dirty and evil. But at sixteen, despair is too bleak and naked a thing to face in a room by itself. To be bearable it must be staged and costumed and made un­recognizable by greasepaint and spotlights. Then you could sit back and enjoy the show, and you had the satisfaction of being creator, narrator and audience all at the same time.

  He went outside. Martha was standing on the sidewalk just outside the door. She wasn’t tapping her foot, but she looked as if she’d just stopped or was about to begin.

  “Well?” she said.

  He gave her his best smile, knowing in advance it wasn’t going to do any good.

  “Well, what?”

  “You might at least have taken me home first. Then you could have come back and picked her up later.”

  “What?”

  “The girl. The girl you were so anxious to pick up.”

  “She’s the daughter of an old friend of mine. I wasn’t picking her up. I was telling her to go home, she’s just a kid.”

  A streetcar roared up and hissed to a stop like a well-trained dragon. It opened its mouth, swallowed a few people in a good-natured way, dropped a few more as leavings from its other end, belched, and bolted on again. Its antenna shuddered and gave off fiery crackles. The cars scurried past, trying to get ahead of it before it stopped and swallowed them, too.

  Steve thought he saw the old lady who’d been on the bus with them. She was smiling, happy in captivity in the dragon’s bowels.

  But of course he couldn’t be sure.

  “If she’s just a kid, why is she in a place like that?”

  “For a thrill, maybe.”

  “I don’t believe it.” She began walking away from him. She had nice hips and good legs, but she didn’t walk grace­fully. She was too businesslike about it: Let’s have no shilly-shallying. Walking is putting one foot in front of the other. Well, let’s get on with it.

  He followed her without hurry. He didn’t care whether he caught up with her or not. If he did catch
up, he might be tempted to tell her the girl had been Laura, and that wouldn’t do anybody any good.

  She stopped, waited for him.

  “I’m beginning to think my mother was right about you. You’re a lady-killer.”

  He saw a cruising cab and whistled for it. They got in and sat carefully apart.

  “You can’t help yourself,” she said. “You’ve got to chase skirts, and as soon as you grab one, you have nothing but contempt.”

  “If it’s sleazy material, yes.”

  “And I am, I suppose?”

  “No, darling. Sleazy implies cheap silk. You’re not cheap and you’re not silk. You’re all wool, finest grade, tightest weave, hand-loomed. A nice piece of goods, but you make me sweat, darling.”

  “Stop calling me darling.”

  “All right.”

  They both looked blindly out of their respective win­dows.

  She’s a jealous woman.

  He’s a skirt-chaser.

  She distrusts me in every way, even when I tell her the truth.

  He’s a liar. Charley at least isn’t a liar or a skirt-chaser.

  Martha and I never have anything to talk about. Even Bea and I can talk together, and Bea laughs when I’m funny, which is something, which is a great deal, in fact.

  Charles would never humiliate me in front of a waiter by trying to be humorous.

  But I couldn’t go to bed with Bea. There’s something sexless about her.

  But Charles would humiliate me at home. I admit that.

  Martha isn’t sexless, God, no.

  If Steve had some of Charles’s good qualities . . .

  If Bea looked like Martha.

  If . . .

  If.

  “Martha.” He held her hand, stroking the long white fingers. “Do you still want to marry me?”

  “What?”

  He repeated the question, aware that she had heard it the first time, but didn’t have an answer ready.

  “I—of course I do.”

  “I thought perhaps you’d changed your mind.”

  “Did you?”

  “Didn’t you, a couple of times tonight?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, sometimes you confuse me. I don’t know what you’re going to do next. I think I under­stand Charles better than I do you.”