Mitchell Smith

by Daydreams

  “Not from that asshole, Maxfield,” Nardone said, moving an armchair off the living-room carpet. “-You tell him that for me.”

  “I’m not here for Maxfield,” Keneally said.

  “Sure. -You just take off O.K.?”

  “Why don’t you mind your own business, Tommy?”

  Keneally said, and stubbed his cigarette out into a round white china ashtray with a blue flower painted in its bowl. “-I was talkin’ to the lady. I came up to give her a hand-an’ fuck you.” He’d winked at Ellie again, and strolled out to the hall.

  At the front door, he’d called back, “Who the hell was this pig screwin’? -The Mayor?”

  Ellie listened for the door closing. “-Can’t we tell that watch cop not to let those people in here?” The watch cop, a stocky patrolman stationed in the corridor to protect the scene, had been discovered sitting in a chair provided by the building management, drinking coffee and reading an old copy of Field & Stream-had hopes, he’d confided, of going on the Stakeout squad.

  “We can tell him; he still isn’t going’ to keep a regular District guy out.”

  “It’s not fair. -They gave us the job; why don’t they stay the fuck off our backs?”

  Nardone was crouched, looking under the edge of the living-room carpet.

  “Kenny … he probably wasn’t here nosin’ for Maxfield. He hates Maxfield’s guts. He doesn’t like any black guys.”

  “Then why is he hanging around?”

  Nardone had pulled up another length of carpet. This had been tacked down, and he tore the carpet edge up with a continuous popping sound.

  “Got me,” he said.

  “-Don’t ask me why Kenny hangs around….

  The tram-car slid into its berth, humming, and Ellie saw there was no bus at the stop. She pushed through the iron-pipe gate with the others-the man’s daughter still lay across his shoulder like a soft stuffed toy, sound asleep—and set out to walk. It wasn’t far-down and around on the road, up to the street and apartment buildings. The night was cooling the day’s heat already. -An end-of-summer evening.

  “We’re not getting’ shit for new physical,” Nardone had said, the carpeting torn up in every room. (He meant physical evidence.) “-And we won’t have shit until we inventory every damn thing this woman had. .

  . . Who do we have to see next week?” Their two days off coincided with the weekend this month-unusual luck.

  “We’ve got Rebecca on Monday, and a friend of Gaither’s-Margolies. She’s a psychologist.”, “Rebecca-that bullshit artist.”

  “She’s what we’ve got. -At least she met Gaither.”

  “We got ladies’ day at the Turkish bath, that’s what we got,” Nardone had said, picking carpet lint off his furry forearm. “-Boy, I don’t want to use the bathroom here to wash, I can tell you that. -This can’s been spoiled for me.”

  “Why don’t I talk to Rebecca, Monday, and I’ll do the other lady, too.

  -The same time, if you want, you can check the registry, see what Fingerprints and Forensic have to say. . . .”

  “You looking’ for me to do those shoofly checks, too while you stay uptown havin’ a ball? Leahy’s going’ to want those reports. You didn’t forget that?”

  “Tommy, I’ll get right back on that with you.”

  “Why is it I don’t believe you? -I don’t know what it is. . . .”

  They’d said “So long” to the watch cop—due to be relieved in a few minutes, and sitting half-asleep-and Ellie had told him to pass it on that only she and Nardone were O. K. to go in, as far as detectives went. The watch cop, a nice young guy named Lehrman, had nodded and said “Right” (just as if he were going to bar the way, no matter what, no matter who) and woke up enough to start rereading an article on upland game as they walked away to the elevators.

  Outside, it had been near full dark. Cooler.

  Nardone had driven over to Second Avenue and down, to stop at the tram station. He said, “Listen, don’t worry about this one. -We’ll get it done,” and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, then open the door for her. “Take it easy.”

  When she watched him drive away, Ellie was sorry she hadn’t gone down to the garage with him. Little things like that … stuff she should do.

  He did too many of the chores. -Monday morning, she’d enter the reports into the machine. He could drink his tea, and make fun of Serrano….

  Ellie met a woman-whose name she never remembered-out on the street in front of her apartment building, and they talked for a moment. While they talked (the woman complaining about how dirty the streets werehow clean they had been) Ellie was trying to remember if she needed groceries … food for Mayo. She remembered milk and bread, but didn’t feel like shopping for them. She agreed with the woman-some name like Parry, or Perry-about the streets, then said “Bye-bye,” and went into her building.

  In the corridor, she heard music through her apartment door.

  When she unlocked the door, went inside-and smelled shrimp …

  curry-Mayo stood in the hall, complaining, to greet her, and she saw a tall florist’s basket of white roses on the small hall table, beside the phone and answering machine. A piece of white poster board was stuck in among the flowers. Forgive me had been printed on this in black marker.

  Ellie put her purse beside the flowers, and walked down the hall. One of the chairs to the kitchen table had been put outside the kitchen door. There was another basket of roses-these light pink-on the chair.

  The note with them said, Please.

  Clara Kersh, in a white blouse and the skirt to her cream linen suit, was standing barefoot, stirring some thing on the stove. She looked around at Ellie, then back to the stove without saying anything. When Ellie went over to her, Clara still didn’t turn.

  “Hell,” Ellie said, “-it’s O.K. I’m not mad. -I was, though, “

  Clara turned to her, and they hugged, Clara holding her stirring spoon away from Ellie’s gray blazer.

  “I know I shouldn’t have just let myself in-after I made that remark on the phone. I couldn’t believe I said it … made such an asshole of myself! But I figured-‘if she hates me, then she hates me; I’m not going to throw the weekend away.”

  “

  “I don’t hate you. -What’s that?”

  “Shrimp Bengal.”

  “No.” Ellie pointed a finger in the air.

  “Oh, that. Serenade to Music. Vaughan Williams.”

  Clara loved the British composers, and would take Ellie’s soft-rock tapes off the deck without even askingPut her tapes on.

  “Pretty …

  Clara turned again from her shrimp Bengal, and kissed Ellie lightly on the cheek. “-You’re not so bad, yourself,” she said.

  “Beautiful flowers .

  “I fed Mayo,” Clara said.

  Clara Kersh was four years younger than Ellie, and almost four inches shorter, a neat, small, coordinated woman (had been a gymnast at Yale) with short redbrown hair almost dark as boxwood honey, and as heavy, smooth, and shining. Brown-eyed Clara kept, it seemed by will alone, a mild but constant year-round tan, her skin still not too dark to contrast strongly with a neat pubic patch, which once, giggling almost like harness bells-a pretty thing she did-she had Ellie, also giggling, trim.

  Ellie stood by Clara for a little while, watching her shake pepper and paprika into the shrimp, then went to her bedroom, took off her shoes, went back out to the hall, and checked her answering-machine for calls.

  There was one call from Rebecca Platt, and a call from Classman.

  Rebecca’s was about lunch; Classman’s was an apology for no news from Frankie Odum … a promise to give them anything that might turn up.

  Ellie went to the bathroom to pee, missing Mayo’s usual visits at such times. -It pleased him, she supposed, to confirm that these tall and eccentric creatures produced familiar variations of odor. Now, he would have drifted to the kitchen, be coiling around Clara’s ankles, wishing for shrimp.

  E
llie thought about it, sitting on the john, and while standing to tug her panty hose up decided it was true she wasn’t angry at Clara. She had believed, as they grew closer, that Clara was a tough woman, severe and forward, who loved her. -That had given Ellie almost exactly the same firm, relaxing, pressed-down feeling that Klein had through their years of marriage, that Lennie Spears had for many months. It had been a constant, reassuring, occasionally uncomfortable sensation, as if Ellie were carrying a coil of mountaineer’s rope-and feeling both heavier and lighter than she would be without it, had it always looped around her waist, for safety.

  She had discovered since, that she was mistaken about Clara … had found that Clara was as uncertain as she.

  Was, perhaps, becoming less certain. Ellie supposed what Clara had said over the phone was because of that. “You cunt. . .”

  They had met more than a year before, when Clara, as one of countless Assistant Manhattan D.A.“s, and on her next-to-last case-she was about to join a Federal Task Force with more dignified prosecutions to make concerniing grand and complicated manipulations in the market had called Ellie to testify in a case of collusive theft-by taking. Then, having dismissed her after a long day’s waiting, had met her in the corridor and apologized.

  They had found an opinion on Judge Hoff in common, enjoyed that laugh, and gone across the street for cornedbeef dinners at Wellman’s.

  Almost a month after that, Clara had come up to Ellie in the lobby of the Federal Building, talked with her, and made a date for Sunday shopping and lunch.

  Some weeks later, after two or three such expeditions, after Clara had joined Ellie at the Met, once, and at the Modern to see a Tregaskis show, she invited Ellie for Food supper on a Saturday night near Christmas time (homemade french fries, round-steak hamburgers on toasted Thomas’ Muffins, butterscotch-vanilla ice cream) and, both warmed by cocktails before and wine with dinner, had kissed Ellie lightly on the mouth, and then less lightly.

  It had seemed to Ellie that such kissing on Clara’s couch-which went on and on, and finally involved strenuous and intimate dealings of their tongues-it seemed to her at last that such kissing was surrender enough to excuse any further, and ashamed and shaking, heart thumping hard, her vulva slippery wet, she’d followed (cold hand gently held) to Clara’s queen-size bed.

  There, after their undressing, slight Clara-first stroking, then sipping, then using (for the longest time) slender active fingers-had finally and at last employed her small fist and wrist in a determined way, producing in Ellie such considerable sensation that she cried out loud, and louder, and more than once, her joy being as much in the crying out as in the pleasure that caused it.

  She had wept, afterward, relieved of a dreadful weight of loneliness, and Clara had comforted her.

  They had been together ever since, sometimes serious, sometimes a little less so, Clara pleased by Ellie’s shame, her shield, the weight of the small pistol in her purse-as much as by her long legs, her pleasant parts, her mild confusion when confronted-and was quick to tell Ellie she’d had men as well, more than a few, as though that news might comfort her, make the matter much less queer.

  Ellie (though she lay embarrassed, flushed, eyes avoiding) often deeply enjoyed presenting herself, straddled, for Clara to see and handle-to invade her every privacy (Clara naked, crouched, intent). Ellie would have, if she could have, turned herself inside out on those occasions, so that no part of her would be left alone, left unseen and was willing enough, afterward, to do what Clara wanted her to. Enjoyed doing those things-and the companionship, very much. Liked to take her easel out of the closet, set it up beside the couch, and sketch her lover, too, when Clara, a collected, fine-muscled miniature, would lie still for it.

  -Beside that, though, even with the woman’s loveliness, her occasional merriment and quick wit, the riches of her fine education, Ellie found no fundamental sustenance. Clara was no happier than shemight be less happy. Also, Clara didn’t really know her, though she thought she did-never spoke to her seriously, about serious things-and, not caring to know the real Ellie, couldn’t very well claim she loved her. -In that way, Ellie thought, Clara was very like a man.

  The shrimp Bengal was good-a little spicier than Ellie cared for, but more than good enough for two portions.

  Ellie ate them, not wanting Clara to think she was still angry with her.

  “It was just bizarre,” Clara said, `-coming on like some jealous bull dyke over the phone like that. Weird!”

  They were sharing a kiwi fruit for dessert. It was like eating a slice of a little green animal-something out of the ocean, and not quite dead.

  “Weird!” Clara said, “—and, I’m afraid, a stone bore.”

  “Clara, will you cut the crap?”

  Clara stuck her tongue out at Ellie. “I’m trying to apologize-will you let me make my goddamn case?”

  “You already apologized; if you want to really apologize, then go get us some H5agen-Dazs. Coffee.” That was the right thing to say; Clara stuck her tongue out again, and got up happily enough to put on her shoes and suit jacket to go down the street.

  Ellie thought she could afford one more pound before she’d have to diet a little. There were already two skirts that weren’t really comfortable on her. -The trouble with women always saying how thin you were, was that you had to stay that way-or they’d be very happy to say you were getting fat.

  She and Clara sat on the couch through the evening, watching TV and eating ice cream until the Tonight show came on. Mayo had gone to sleep in Ellie’s lap during the early movie-a movie about twin sisters who were in love with the same man. (One of them was married to him.) The married sister died when the women were out sailing drowned in a storm.

  After that, the other sister (Bette Davis played both of them) pretended to be the dead one so she could live as the man’s wife. -Ellie loved these old movies, so full of shadows, of multiple views of every DAYDRE”S

  thing that no modern movie seemed to have … worlds a person could go and live in, if she knew the way. This movie about the sisters was very good, and Bette Davis was wonderful in it.

  They watched the beginning of the Tonight show, but the guests didn’t look interesting (a man from the San Diego Zoo with a kangaroo on a leash, and, to follow, a rock groupie who’d written a book, and a man who’d been in the CIA). Ellie poured the cat off her lap-Mayo fell to the floor moaning-and Clara collected the icecream dishes and put them in the sink. They went to the bedroom, undressed, took a shower together, and went to bed.

  Often, when they showered, they would soap each other, scrub each other’s backs. Sometimes they’d fool around, do breast examinations on each other, for lumps.

  “-That was how I got into this gay crap,” Clara once said, “fooling around in the showers with Jennifer Booth.”

  “In college?”

  “In college. -And we were both getting screwed at the time, too.”

  “At Sarah Lawrence,” Ellie had said, regretting her meager two years (barely college at all compared to graduating with honors from Yale, and then law school), ‘-there were boys in the showers, half the time.”

  This night, though, they didn’t do any of that. Didn’t soap each other.

  Just showered and went to bed. -Ellie supposed Clara still didn’t feel comfortable, after the phone call.

  Ellie’d thought she wouldn’t sleep well-thought the discomfort between the two of them (it had gathered again while they were sitting silent, side by side, watching TV), thought this unease would keep her waiting, awake, for some kind of talk. -But she did sleep, after all. The night was cool enough for no air-conditioning, the single bedroom window half open to the narrow slant of grass stretching between the buildings down to the road and the river’s edge. Cool air eased in, with the distant, constant, buffeting wind-sound of the FDR Drive, across the river.

  -After a while, Ellie dreamed of checkered cloth. She and some friend were shopping for a tablecloth for the country. Ellie seeme
d to have a house in New Jersey, north, in the hills. She could see colors in the cloth—so it was a dream with color. Red, and a color she’d never seen before.

  After that dream-and after a iong sleep not dreaming, or not remembering-Ellie heard Clara say something, quietly. Then Clara cuddled against her, snuggled along Ellie’s back, naked, smooth and warm. Clara occasionally wore the same stockings or panty hose two days in a row, so the stocking feet sometimes smelled a little.

  Except for that, she was very clean . . . sweet-smelling.

  Even her perspiration smelled sweet.

  “Do you love me?” Clara said, softly, into Ellie’s ear, so as not to wake her if she were asleep. Ellie heard her very clearly, and started to say something to her, to say “Yes, I love you.” But she didn’t. She pretended to be sound asleep-and then was afraid Clara knew she wasn’t, so muttered and shifted restlessly, as if she were dreaming. After a while, after listening to see if Clara would say anything else-louder, so she couldn’t pretend not to hear it-Ellie fell asleep.

  She dreamed again, later, and thought she was home with her mother. Her father was at work. Her mother was just the way she remembered her, short skirt, highheel shoes-always dressed to go out, even when she stayed in the house all day.

  Her mother was joking in the kitchen, saying all sorts of funny things about how she and Ellie’s father had met.

  Their first date-their first serious one, after her mother had broken up with Karol Ferenz, whose father had been a Freedom Fighter,”-who was handsomer than your dad, and already set with the electrician’s union.

  He wasn’t-I’m sorry to say-what a woman would call a live wire in the sack. -An area of your dad I have nothing to complain about.” Ellie’s mother had made a funny face, and stuck out her tongue, the same way Clara did.

  They were cooking something, after that, but Ellie never went to the stove to look and see what it was.

  Toward morning . . . almost morning, the air smelling coolly of the river, Ellie began to wake to small strong hands tugging the sheet down, pushing at her hip so she lay flat on her stomach. The bed trembled as Clara crouched above her in the dark, then, seated lightly on Ellie’s buttocks, began to stroke her back with her fingertips-slowly, slowly all the way up, then down, then up again as Ellie woke … stroking so gently, so lightly it was difficult to feel the touch. Ellie thought that Clara kissed her on the small of her back, but wasn’t sure.