Alone at Night

by Vin Packer

  “Someone who doesn’t drink?”

  Rich Boyson laughed; he stretched out the laughter. He had almost put his foot in it. He had just started to blurt it out, when somewhere in the middle, he had checked himself. God knows Slater Burr would find out somehow, if he did not know already, but Rich Boyson was not going to be the bearer of bad news. It was none of his business; he prided himself on staying out of other people’s business, and for all Francie heard of his nightly gossip, he was clean when it came to keeping things to himself.

  He intended to let his question get lost in his own laughter, then to shuffle away—fast.

  But Slater Burr said, “Who was in using the phone?”

  “Santa Claus!” said Rich Boyson, trying to sound as though he believed in the joke. It fell predictably flat and embarrassing between Burr and himself.

  Burr responded with a thin snort, and swallowed down his martini. He swung his big legs off the barstool, and reached for his black wool cap on the counter.

  “Seeing you, Rich,” said Slater Burr.

  Rich Boyson watched him push through the revolving door.

  Santa Claus, he thought disgustedly, as he made his way back to his office… But still, he knew it was better saying that, than saying Buzzy Cloward was back in Cayuta… large as life and free as a bird—eight years later, using Boyson’s pay phone, with his bags set on the floor outside the booth.

  three

  It was ten-thirty before the excitement died down. Its death left an uneasy embarrassment. The red and green Christmas lights blinked on and off on the small plastic tree set on the window sill of the apartment. The radio on the table played O Holy Night, and Selma Cloward, seated opposite her father and her brother, in the living room, glanced at her simulated diamond wrist watch. Her thoughts were spilling in every direction—getting to mass, what to do now Buzzy was back, and then on Oliver Percy, on why he would unbutton his shirt that way, just sit there with his shirt unbuttoned—period.

  She said, “If you want to come to mass with us, Buzzy, it’d probably be all right, but you wouldn’t have much fun, all girls and—”

  “No, thanks, Sel.”

  His refusal made her glad she had asked. For the past hour she had wondered if she should chance the invitation. She was not attending mass with five other Ayres salesclerks, as she had pretended. She was going alone, and afterwards to Boyson’s, and somewhere along the line she hoped to connect with Oliver Percy.

  Selma Cloward was 30, three years older than Buzzy, and still unmarried. It was on her mind how Buzzy’s return would affect her relationship with Percy. He was new to Cayuta, the new personnel director at Leydecker Electric. She had never mentioned Buzzy to him. He was a plump man in his late thirties, with a round apple-cheeked face, and bright blue eyes behind heavy black-shell glasses. A few weeks ago in Boyson’s, when she was having the usual drinks with the crowd after work, he had come in, and they had struck up this conversation about winter. Right away, she had liked him, and nights she hung back when the other Ayres girls went on home, and they had drinks together. He was very much the gentleman, neat as a pin and one to order his scotch by brand. Martin’s V.O., he always said, and his bills were never crumpled or old, but spanking new ones, as though he had just come from the bank.

  Then last night he had asked her to his place for a drink. They had both had a lot to drink, and Selma had already decided on the stairs going up to his apartment that she would let him make love to her. She realized he was very drunk when they got inside. He had tripped against his table, and stumbled against the refrigerator when he got the drinks. They had three drinks while sitting on the couch, and on the fourth, Oliver Percy took off his coat, his tie, and unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled his shirt open and said, “There!” Then he took off his glasses.

  “Well, you are quite well built!” Selma had said, for lack of anything else to say.

  Oliver Percy responded: “I don’t want you to think I did this because I don’t think you’re a nice girl. You are a nice girl.”

  So they sat there that way through another drink, Oliver Percy with his shirt open, Selma Cloward wondering what it all meant. At eleven o’clock he called a taxi for her, led her carefully down the stairs, and said, “Don’t feel bad tomorrow. You’re a good girl.”

  Well, drink did strange things to people, was all. Buzzy was proof of that. Selma Cloward loved Buzzy more than she had ever loved either parent, but she never fooled herself that Buzzy was not trouble. Long before he had ever met the Leydecker girl, he was making his way. As a youngster his idols were the Italian numbers men from the 2nd Ward, and he would run their errands for them, but late in his teens Slater Burr became his idol, and he picked out Laura Leydecker to make his way by new means.

  Selma had grown accustomed to having her brother “away”. His letters from prison were filled with talk of parole, but she had not counted on it. The truth was, she had counted on never having to worry about Buzzy returning to Cayuta. In prison he had worked in the kitchen, and taken correspondence courses. Selma had figured that when he got out, he would get a job somewhere miles away. In her mind’s eye, she had seen herself one day years off, taking a train to visit him. She had imagined him older, gray-haired, stoop-shouldered, thin… meek, somehow.

  It was true that he seemed more serious (glum was closer) and older, but his hair was the same fire red, combed in the elaborate pompadour he had affected eight years ago, and his gray eyes were solemn, but striped with a certain distant bravado, as though he were waiting for something to happen which would restore the cocky gleam there in the eyes of his photograph, on the mantle. He wore a light-colored sports coat with dark pants, and a jaunty, black-and-white striped floppy bow tie, loafers and red wool socks. He still had that habit of combing his hair every five minutes, then playing with the comb, twanging its teeth with his fingers.

  He did have a job; he could not have been paroled without one, but to Selma Cloward’s way of thinking, it was a very strange job for Buzzy. He was going to be a secretary to a man named Guy Gilbert, while Gilbert wrote a book… Way in the back of Selma Cloward’s mind was the hazy suspicion that Buzzy might have broken out of Brinkenhoff… Still, he had written about this Gilbert, a newspaperman who had taken an interest in him. He was carrying matches from the Algonquin Hotel, where he had stayed last night with Gilbert. Gilbert had bought him the sports jacket and slacks. Gilbert had given him money for Christmas gifts, and in a week, when Gilbert came back from Florida, Buzzy was going to New York to work for him.

  Maybe it was all the way Buzzy said, but The Whole Thing made Selma nervous, and for the first time since he had called from Boyson’s, Selma Cloward was able to admit to herself that she wished he had not come back… Not when she was just getting to know Oliver Percy… just beginning to wonder how S.C.P. would look embroidered on the scarlet bath towels in her Hope Chest.

  “Want some more wine, son?” Milton Cloward reached down beside the davenport and picked up the jug of grape wine. He poured some into Buzzy’s glass.

  “Thanks, pop.”

  “Wine don’t hurt. Goes down smooth, don’t it? It’s not like the hard stuff. Now, you can hardly feel a thing, can you, son?”

  “No, I can’t feel anything.”

  “Not dizzy or anything, is that right?”

  “I feel fine, pop.”

  Milton Cloward’s way of showing intoxication was to get dizzy, a moment before he passed out. He seldom drank, only on holidays. He did not understand men who became wild and crazy when they drank, but he knew that it happened, and he blamed Alcohol for all Buzzy’s troubles.

  At ten-thirty that Christmas Eve, he was beginning to wonder if the wine had been a good idea. After all…

  He said again, “You can hardly feel a thing, can you, son?”

  “I’m really okay, dad.”

  “Yes,” his father went back to the subject they had been discussing, “Cayuta’s changing all right. Used to be the Stewart Building wa
s the cat’s meow with an elevator and one operator. But we got a team of six now, working two shifts, right up to eight at night, and nine on Fridays.” Milton Cloward was Starter of the elevator men. He was not a janitor, but off-duty hours he kept an eye out, like a night-watchman, which earned him the right to have this small apartment on the Burr Building’s second floor. He could never get used to calling it The Burr Building; he had worked Car 1 when it was Nelson Stewart’s place, and there were no other elevator men… Now The Burr Building belonged to Cayuta Trust. Slater Burr had lost it to the bank last year. Before he signed the papers, Slater Burr made sure Milton Cloward kept his apartment there; in the midst of all his troubles, Slater Burr thought of Milton Cloward. Another man—his wife run down by Milton Cloward’s son, might have put the family out years ago, but Slater Burr was different from other men… Milton Cloward could remember when he was Fran Burr, a kid too big and busy for his age, and he supposed that was what made Slater different from other men, and he never had trouble remembering he wasn’t Fran any more, but Slater—to Milt Cloward, Mr. Burr.

  Selma Cloward said, “I’ll say things have changed. Oliver Percy says we’ll get more industry now, things are looking up.”

  “Oh yeah,” her father said, “there’s talk General Electric might move here, ’ploy about 300 men. Buy-build-boost Cayuta! See all the banners and signs saying that, Buzz?”

  “Yes. It was the first thing I noticed on my way from Syracuse.”

  “It’s hitting Mr. Burr hard, though. I hate to see that.”

  “He’s paying slave wages down to his place, pop! It’s about time he got it. Oliver Percy says he pays slave wages.”

  “Now, Sel, I told you that kind of talk ain’t necessary.”

  “It isn’t necessary, pop, but it’s true. You can make more in the yam department at Ayres, than you can make down to Burr’s.”

  “Well, he needs to fix his place up. Repairs cost.”

  “He isn’t fixing anything, Oliver Percy says.”

  “She just don’t like Slater Burr’s wife,” said Milton Cloward. “You know Mr. Burr remarried?”

  “Yes, I remember Selma writing.”

  “Married Jen McKenzie. Brother’s a vet here now. Now, maybe she’s a little hoity-toity, but she’s a young—

  “A lit-tle hoity-toity!” Selma cut in. “A lit-tle hoity-toity! Har-de, har, har, har! She comes into Ayres like she was Miss Queen of England, and I can tell you I’d rather wait on Miss Queen of England, than on young Mrs. Burr, any old day of the week! She talks as if she lived in Paris, France, up ’till last Tuesday! ‘Miss!’ she says, ‘I’m looking for a little envelope blouse, something to show off a seed-pearl choker. I saw one in Paris in shrimp-pink, which I adored!’… Oh, I can tell you, she’s just what I need sauntering down the aisle on a Monday morning! And I hear she drinks like a fish too!”

  “Now, now, Sel,” Milton Cloward wagged his large hand back and forth, “that’s just their way, rich folks. But I want to tell you, Buzzy,” his face took on a serious expression, “Mr. Burr’s been decent about everything. Do you know from time-to-time he asks about you?”

  “He sent a Christmas card a week ago. Sent one every year.”

  “You see! Now, I don’t want to go into all of that, but I just want the record straight. Slater Burr is a decent man, been decent about everything!”

  “And Mr. Leydecker?” said Buzzy Cloward.

  “Don’t see him, s’all.”

  Selma said, “You know damn well you see him, pop, and he don’t speak. For all I know, one day he’ll put a bug in Oliver Percy’s ear, and it’ll be curtains for me.”

  Milton Cloward looked up at the clock on the mantle. “Holy Mackrel!” he said. “You see the time? It’s quarter to eleven.” He got up and reached for the jug of wine, carrying it to the kitchen. “I got to get going,” he said.

  Selma told her brother: “He don’t speak to pop, and he don’t speak to me.”

  “And Laura?” Buzzy Cloward finally said.

  “She’s a re-cluse.”

  “What do you mean, Sel?”

  “A re-cluse. That’s what everyone calls her. I don’t know what it means. She don’t come out.”

  “I know what a recluse is, but what do you mean she doesn’t come out? She doesn’t ever come out?”

  “Un-uh. Never.”

  “That just doesn’t make sense! Do you mean she doesn’t go places, do things? Movies? I know she didn’t go to college, after all. You wrote me that in one of your first letters, but—”

  Selma said, “Buzzy, Laura Leydecker hasn’t left that house in years!”

  Buzzy just sat there, staring at his sister with a look of amazement. Selma Cloward looked away. She stood up, glancing again at her watch. She said, “Earl Leonard gave me this for my birthday last year. You remember Earl?”

  “Yes. Sort of.”

  “We was going hot and heavy for awhile. I mean, it looked like the Real Thing… Then he got transferred, when the Wright Plant left Cayuta… That’s what happens. We get a new industry and new men, two—three years… then pfffft!”

  “What’s the matter with Laura?” said Buzzy.

  “Only thing I hear is rumors. She’s crazy, she’s sick—nobody knows the truth… I got to meet the girls, Buzzy. If we don’t get there early, then we have to stand.”

  “Somebody ought to know the truth.”

  “Look, Buzzy, want my advice? Stay out of it! She sure isn’t up there on the hill pining away for you, so just stay out of it! Want my advice, she’s flipped her lid or something—I don’t know. She’s a recluse.”

  “It’s been eight years. Eight years. It still affects her?”

  “What affects her I don’t know anything about, but my advice is, look what it done to you, Buzzy!”

  “I haven’t had such a bad time of it, Sel. Meeting Guy Gilbert was the biggest break in my life… No, I haven’t done badly. It’s just that, it wasn’t fair. If I could only explain—just to myself, Sel—why Leydecker lied about giving me the keys to his car that night… then… then I’d forget the whole thing.”

  “I know you always said that, Buzz, about Leydecker giving you the keys to his car… but I been thinking about it for eight years, thinking about it and watching Mr. Leydecker prance around Cayuta, and it just don’t seem like he’d be the kind to give his keys to a drunken kid he hated.”

  “I think he wanted me to kill myself, so I wouldn’t marry Laura.”

  “Buzzy, that still don’t explain how you got into Slater Burr’s car. If Leydecker gave you his keys, you would have been in Leydecker’s car… Naw, Buzzy, it don’t add up. You was drunk, Buzzy… There I go again, saying you was. Oliver’s always correcting me. Live around pop, my education goes down the drain… You should have heard Earl Leonard talk. Remember?”

  “No, I don’t think I really knew him.”

  “Maybe that’s right. It was ’58 or ’59. Yeah, you wouldn’t have known him. Well—pffft, like I said. But he was a talker. Propinquity, he says: that’s why we fell in love, he says. It was propinquity. I looked it up and it means nearness. I always wondered if he felt so near to me, why he didn’t ask me to go to Rochester, when the Wright plant moved. But he didn’t. Anyways,” she said, “I got this watch from him. And now… there’s this new man. Oliver Percy. Oh, he’s a gentleman… intellectual type.”

  “A recluse,” Buzzy Cloward said. “I remember her hair. You know, Sel, in prison you read a lot. An awful lot. There’s not much else to do. I even read poetry, if you can imagine. I remember this one about this farmer, married a girl who didn’t want to sleep with him.”

  “What’d he marry her for?”

  “I don’t know… He did. Anyway, he used to lie awake nights and miss her, you know?”

  “He had a legal right. He could have gone to court.”

  “Well, he didn’t. He just missed her. And there was this stanza, I remember.” Buzzy Cloward sat up straight, looking down at his hand
s as he recited:

  She sleeps up in the attic there

  Alone poor maid. ’Tis but a stair

  Between us. Oh, my God, the down,

  The soft young down of her, the brown

  The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!

  He coughed self-consciously, reached for his wine glass, and took a long swallow. His sister was embarrassed too, and she coughed and murmured “… the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.”

  Buzzy said, “Between you and me, maybe I was never really in love with her, but I used to remember that. Her hair. That line: ‘The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!’”

  Selma said, “Well, her hair was her best feature.”

  “Yes.”

  “Laura Leydecker’s hair was her very best feature… Other than that, she was peculiar.”

  “Not that peculiar. She was sick a lot. Shy too.”

  “Well, now she’s a re-cluse.”

  “We used to have good times. I never minded the way she was.”

  “It’s the way the cookie crumbles, Buzzy… I got that expression from Earl. He was a great one for expressions.”

  Milton Cloward walked into the living room wearing his overcoat, carrying his hat. “We better push on, Sel.”

  “I’ll get my coat, pop.”

  “You understand don’t you, son? I wouldn’t leave you alone on Christmas Eve, but I didn’t plan on you. Didn’t even know you was coming.”

  “It’s okay, pop, honest! I’m tired too.”

  “You just pull out that hide-a-bed…You know how it works? They had them things before you went up, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, pop.”

  “I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

  “It’s all right. I was ‘sent up.’ There’s nothing wrong with calling a spade a spade, pop.”

  “And you understand about tonight?”

  “Sure. Of course!”

  “You see, Olinski’s new on the job. Heck, he didn’t have nothing steady working for him for years, you know? Watchman this place, parking lot attendant that place, sort of a drifter. Now, he’s got something steady, something regular and decent. I put him on Car 2, right before the holidays. That’s the most important, gets the most traffic. Should have seen his face, son! Well, when Olinski asks me to drop in on the festivities at his place tonight, was about a week ago. I didn’t think I’d have much to do, so I said yes.”