Go to the Widow-Maker

by James Jones

  It hadn’t been much of a phone conversation really, that time, not actually. Grant had apologized for his conduct the night before. Lucky had told him he ought to, but had not verbally accepted it. Grant had then suggested awkwardly (How did one ever disguise these things? they were always so blatantly obvious) that he might come over and look at her play for her. “At least I could tell you whether there’s any hope at all or not for it,” he added, because he wanted her to think he was serious about it.

  “Thanks!” Lucky said sharply, then softened her voice. “But don’t you have anything more interesting than that to do today?” Soft or not, there was a dangerous edge there, he thought.

  “No, nothing. I got a date for cocktails dinner and the theater for tonight is all.”

  This was the first of the two new secretaries in his producer’s office, the one he had not yet made because she first had stood him off and then departed on a January vacation. This date had been made before she left, and now Grant sincerely regretted it.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he hemmed, “but it’s a date I—”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” the lovely low voice said airily. There was a pause. “Okay, come on over. I’m not really doing anything.”

  Like the other remark, just before, this too could have been an ego ploy with an extra meaning, a little dig. But he was soon to learn that Lucky, incredibly, never said things like that. She always said simply and directly exactly what she meant, and so far from playing upon other people’s sensibilities with double-entendre she leaned the other way, almost too far, by ignoring sensibilities almost completely.

  For a man used to the bitcheries of the average Middlewestern country club woman, amongst whom his own ‘mistress’ was a past master who would never give a phrase just one meaning if two or more were available, this was hard to believe and once believed harder still to get used to.

  For example she had met him at the door, looked him over and said simply but forcefully, “You look like the wrath of God!”—“Well, I do feel a little rocky,” Grant had grinned. “Some asshole drinking buddy called and woke me at eight-thirty.” He was nervously aware he had just told Lucky his first lie involving his mistress.

  “Well I was still in bed when you called,” she admitted smiling, quite clearly now aware of the lie, but then why should she be?

  Anyway he didn’t really care. Hell, not even his producers knew for sure about Carol Abernathy, although they might suspect what they wanted. He wasn’t about to tell of her to some girl he had just picked up.

  It wasn’t really the most auspicious beginning in the world, but Grant felt fine enough to weather that because something good had happened to him on the way over from the New Weston.

  He had decided to walk. It was only fifteen short blocks. And during the walk he had fallen in love again with New York, that was what had happened to him. It had been nearly eleven when he had telephoned to Lucky and by the time he had dressed, deodorized and scented himself for whatever might happen, it was almost noon. The sun had come out a little by the time he came out into the street, and while it was crisp it wasn’t that bonenumbing cold the town had lots of the time in winter. Girls with their bare heads tucked down into coat collars and young guys in their almost brimless hats and narrowshouldered topcoats were beginning to pour out of the midtown offices for the long lunch, and Grant suddenly wanted to holler. He passed by Random House where he knew some people and made a mental note to call. He loved and liked these sharp, smart Madison Avenue cats and chicks, though he detested and deplored just about everything any of them did for a living—as, he knew, most of them said they did too themselves. They only did it to live and love in this town. And who could blame them for that? This town that was Number One Target, both propaganda and nuclear, to the whole fucking world. The feeling stayed with him, brimming up out of his eyes and grin, all the way up Madison and over to Park of last night’s holocaust. He noted the wickerwire baskets were all put back, now.

  Actually he didn’t know whether it was this mood that had him turned on and going so good, or whether it was some subtle essence extruding from under the exquisitely shaved armpits of Lucky. Maybe it was both. She had the ability to do that, to quietly and without pointing it somehow make a man feel more of a man than most of the time he was willing to believe he was. Whatever it was, he was male, vital, supersensitive, nearly omnipotent, gentle and because of it able to handle everything beautifully today. So naturally he was lying magnificently, about himself, about life, about work, about anything which contained no depression or fear or despair, which today was everything.

  Later he was to think back in a nervousness bordering on collapse about how if he had been different that day, everything else might have been different too and he might never really have known her.

  Her play wasn’t very much, and he told her this with a rather blunt honesty. Then it turned out she was rewriting it to trim down and Hemingwayize the dialogue and it was the rewrite he was reading. When he asked for the old original, it turned out to be better but it still wasn’t very good, and he told her so. There were some fine ideas and two remarkable scenes in the first act (which shamefully, was as far as he got, and he didn’t even finish all of that). Mostly it was the style, and that extreme selfconsciousness that came through and to which amateurs were so prone. But he couldn’t really think about it much, or bother. He was too caught up and enraptured by her, and by himself even being there with her. Later, he noticed that while they talked on she had quietly and unobtrusively gathered it up and put it away.

  He had been caught up again breathless by her beauty, and swept by it as by some violent summer storm. The moment he stepped inside. She was wearing a tight fuzzy white sweater over those magnificent tits and tight brown slacks that molded into the crack of her ass all the way up. It was almost impossible to believe in that incredible rounded, flatwaisted, high-hipped ass. Half the time he didn’t know even what he was saying really, but it seemed to be working apparently. Finally they walked down to P.J. Clarke’s for a hamburger and beer lunch, and that was where it happened.

  Grant was good friends with all the waiters and guys who worked at Clarke’s, and the owner Danny, because this was another of his drunken-bachelor hangouts and they all waved and called out to him. But that couldn’t have had anything to do with it. Maybe it was the two or three other couples scattered around at tables in the dim back room, all selfcontained and complete and therefore throwing you into a closer intimacy, a neater rapport than you would have had at home in the apartment or on the street. That can happen sometimes. Anyway, over the hamburgers and two tall steins (which Grant augmented with a large bowl of chili) they were suddenly simpatico, together, a couple sealed against other couples, and finding they liked it.

  Grant talked until he almost missed his cocktail date, and had to leave her at Clarke’s and take a cab. He talked about himself with that freshness which only comes when one is with a new girl. All those things he had wanted to say about himself to someone for so long, but was too embarrassed. He talked about his life, his way of life, his new play, his earlier plays, about work in general, about his contemporaries and their work. He even talked about his ambitions, and whenever he mentioned Carol Abernathy and Hunt in talking about his life or way of life, he always referred to her as his foster-mother.—“Who is this woman, Carol Abernathy?” Lucky said once, her eyes glinting mischievously. “Are you her lover?”— “Are you kidding?” he said. “She’s old enough to be my mother. Actually.” But everything else was totally the truth. And Lucky’s warm eyes followed every gesture of his excited commitment and got warmer. When he put his hand over hers on the table to emphasize some point and then left it, she did not remove hers. Two days before he could not have talked to any girl like that, not without coughing and turning red.

  Later on he wondered about this sudden spurting spout of honesty and freshness from himself. It was as though it had been backed up there behind whatever
dam, waiting for some key that would open the sluice gates and then it all just poured out. So he was not incapable of freshness and reality after all. He decided that it must be that it had to be seriously a new girl, not a one-night quickie, and it must be at a time when one is not attached or in love with somebody else. Otherwise it was a pose, a game on both sides, and wasn’t really fresh which made it stale and profitless. He had had that, too. But then . . . What the hell? He still didn’t understand. He wasn’t planning on marrying this girl Lucky.

  It was Lucky who made him realize the time by reminding him of his cocktail date. Outside Clarke’s there was only one cab around, and she made him take it. She could get home all right, she said. Pulling away from her standing there with those beautiful wide shoulders, Grant almost couldn’t stand it. If it had been anybody but his producer’s secretary, who was a sweet kid, he would have stood her up and gone back. As it was, all he could do was stick his head out and waving his arm shout over and over, “I’ll call tomorrow! I’ll call tomorrow!”, and look back at this girl standing there who was in love with him, or soon would be. It was on her face. What a body, and also what sweetness, she had.

  The marvel of the afternoon stayed with him all the rest of that day and the night, enhancing everything. In some peculiar odd way, almost before it even began to get itself started, he had divined that this was going to be the Clark Gable—Carol Lombard love affair he had always dreamed about. For the next two or three weeks he would be in town, before going back to Indianapolis and then on to Jamaica, he was going to show her such a time as few girls got to live even in this town. And after that, well she would be here and every time he came back to town he would look her up and take right up where they had left off. Maybe he could come to town oftener than he had in the past few years?

  Grant was so happy that even the thought of his ‘mistress’ could not make him feel hollow for more than a moment.

  And the peculiar thing about the evening was that the producer’s secretary, after having stood him off several times before, tonight after her cocktails date dinner and show, sensing his preoccupation and disinterest, offered herself to him practically on a platter.

  It seemed nothing could go wrong for him, now. Then back at the hotel in the morning, scrubbing religiously from himself any sign of last night before even calling Lucky, the phone rang and without thinking he picked it up and answered it while still toweling himself. The result was that, while panic attacked him with sickness in the stomach and goosebumps on his bare flesh and the sweat began to run from under his arms down his bare flanks, he had to listen to a sharp, angry, virago, ten-minute lecture from Carol Abernathy in Miami on the subject of New York broads.

  Grant was tempted several times to just hang up on her, but he could not quite bring himself to make so seemingly final a gesture. Naturally, oozing guilt in his panic, he became angry back at her. But underneath all of this old stuff, way down deep, was a new steadfastness in him. Totally selfishly, whether it hurt anybody or not and no matter what it destroyed, he was going to have his fun.

  “I know exactly what’s going on, you bastard,” Carol’s voice said clearly, sounding because of the excellent connection as if she were in the next room. Grant was immensely glad that she was not. “You’ve found yourself some soft luscious pussycunt who is telling you how marvelous you are, what a great mind you’ve got, what a great lover, what a great talent, what a great man. And you’re lapping it up. A piece of flufftail who wouldn’t have looked at you before I made you rich and famous. It’s what you always do. Everytime you go. You weak pimp.”

  Grant didn’t answer. Ruefully he wished it had been even half true those other times, what she said. It hadn’t always happened. It hadn’t ever happened—yet.

  “Hello?” she said. “Hello?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t you dare hang up on me, you son of a bitch,” she said. She waited. “Hunt is coming down soon.”

  How could all this shit she said sound so sane out in Indiana, and sound so ridiculous here in the New Weston?

  “I said, Hunt’s coming down soon,” Carol said. Again she waited. “Then we’re going on to Ganado Bay. I want you to get your ass down here now, right away.”

  “I’m not coming,” Grant said thickly.

  “What? What? What do you mean you’re not coming?”

  “I’m staying here. For—for an indefinite period. Couple of weeks.”

  “Then I’m going without you!” Carol Abernathy shouted threateningly, and hung up leaving his ear ringing from the broken circuit.

  Grant had sweat so much that he went in and took another shower, though he probably wouldn’t have noticed it if he’d had clothes on. Only then, after his hollow stomach and the nerves in his knees had settled down, did he feel up to calling Lucky. Whence this feeling all the time of getting caught, this fear of getting caught? That same figure. It was always that same figure: black-clad, mantilla-ed, dark-hidden face, standing on the cathedral steps pointing. Carol Abernathy couldn’t do anything to him. If she had thought he would call her right back, she was wrong.

  The warm rich voice was like a kiss in his ear. And what little she said said everything, and Grant knew he had been right about her face yesterday.

  “Where’ve you been?” Lucky said. “I thought maybe since you didn’t call you were on your way over already.”

  “I am now,” Grant said simply.

  On the way over he stopped off in some bar and had two quick, delicious martinis, savouring the quiet late-morning slack time of the bar, savoring the time he could afford to waste now, before going on to what he had waited for so long.

  It always seemed to Grant afterwards that their two naked bodies had met in the center of the room with a smack like the clap of two huge and irate, omnipotent God-hands summoning a recalcitrant Universal Waiter. But he knew that couldn’t be true. She had had clothes on he was sure, and he certainly had to be dressed, coming in from the outside as he was. So there must have been some conversation, if only to fill up the time required in getting clothes off. But he couldn’t remember. The most enduring image he had of that day was of himself lying on the livingroom couch and Lucky astraddle him and kneeling over his face, then drooping like some stricken flower with the champagne hair falling over her face almost to those beautiful breasts as she cried out, and collapsing on him. It turned out that Lucky, either because of the way she was built or maybe it was psychological she admitted shyly, could have a real orgasm in only one way. And Grant, whose first play about a sailor’s love affair with a Honolulu whore was more autobiographical than generally supposed and who had learned his lovemaking in one of the toughest schools in the world, was her boy. He was oral-oriented if he was anything.

  This did not for her however injure her need of and liking for simple sexual intercourse, and so it was growing scratchy dark outside the windows when her roommate Leslie knocked discreetly on the apartment door. She did this because Lucky had taken the precaution of hanging a DO NOT DISTURB sign from the Beverly Hills Hotel on the doorknob outside. The knock came while they were eating, shortly after she had finished making scrambled eggs for them, standing nude in the dusk-painted, nearly dark apartment before the little two-burner hotplate of the efficiency kitchenette.

  “Wait a minute!” she call and grabbing her robe from the bedroom threw something at Grant. “Here, put this on, Ron.” It was a man’s dressing robe.

  Looking at it, Grant felt distinctly peculiar.

  “It belonged to my South American boyfriend,” Lucky said as if reading his mind. “He was smaller than you, especially in the shoulders, but you can get into it.” Then she went to the door.

  “Oh ho!” Leslie said as she came in in her brusque shortstepping little walk. Then she stopped. “My God, this place smells like the Bronx zoo!”

  “Go to hell,” Lucky said. Then she turned slowly, that sun-bright, wall-penetrating (and now beatific) smile Grant had noticed before shining on her
face, stretching herself.

  “I take it,” Leslie said, “that you two have been making it together with each other while I have been spending the day in the office breaking my brains.” She threw off her coat and slumped in the one big chair. “Well, it’s only what I might have expected after the way she talked last night. You be good to her, you hear?”

  “I intend to be,” Grant said. “Hello, Leslie.”

  “He’s built like a Greek god,” Lucky reported. “A regular Greek god!”

  “Yes?” said Leslie.

  “You’d never know it to look at him dressed. We’ve got to see about getting him some decent clothes.”

  “I am not currently up on men’s shops,” Leslie said.

  “Instead of those hick Indiana suits with the padded shoulders that he wears.”

  “Listen, now wait a minute,” Grant said. “I bought that suit at Broadstreet’s on Fifth Avenue.” He had finished his eggs and was enjoying himself more than he could remember in a very long time. Maybe ever.

  “Then they saw you coming,” Lucky said.

  “I think I am forced to agree,” Leslie said.

  “Absolutely,” said Lucky.

  “You think so, hunh?” he said.

  Grant grinned at her. Even though Leslie had come in Grant had hated seeing her put on the robe, cover up. Her body without clothes was even more incredibly beautiful than it was with clothes on it. The heavy beautiful slightly drooping breasts, that long lean line from armpit to the widely swelling hips, the high rounded bottom, the width of shoulder, not an ounce of age anywhere but not scrawny model-thin, not a bit of fat except perhaps the little delicious belly which wasn’t fat so much as the way she was constructed and which she called her “baby fat”, above the triangular bush on the protuberant Venus mound. And it was the most flexible female body Grant had ever come in contact with. She could actually put both feet behind her head at the same time if she wanted to. Grant sighed in the shoulder-tight dressing robe. Who was this South American guy, anyway? Even now this late in the day and after so many times, he wasn’t sated and didn’t want to quit.