“Yes,” said Faye, “everybody is brave, they say.”
“You know,” Beda said, “people like you give a bad name to people like me.”
“Lover, I didn’t know you cared,” answered Marion.
“I’ll visit you in prison.”
When Beda was gone Marion walked into the bedroom and looked at Elena. She was lying on her back. “I should have gone home with that man,” she said stonily.
“He would have kept you for a day.”
Elena turned on the bed. “You don’t say anything about marrying me any more,” she said.
“Do you love me?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at the wall. “Who could love you?” she said.
He laughed aloud. “I don’t understand it. So many chicks think I’m the jack.”
Elena let her breath out. “I feel very rotten. I feel sick.”
He was angry suddenly. “You’re like everybody else. Do what you feel like doing, and then you think because you feel rotten that it wasn’t really you who was doing it.”
“So what if you’re right?” she said.
Faye had to explain it to her. He had to explain it to everybody. “Take the bullshit of the whole world,” he said. “That’s love. Bullshit mountain.”
“You’re not so happy,” Elena said.
“That’s my fault. If an idea won’t work for me, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” He lit another stick and blew tea-smoke down on her. “Elena, you thought you wanted to marry Eitel. You loved him, you say. Do you still love him?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Let’s forget him.”
“The more I think about it, the more I decide that you were in love with him.” Marion laughed. “That’s it. I understand it now. You were really in love with him.” “Stop, Marion.”
“It’s pathetic.” he said. “There you were, with your hard Wop heart, and yet you loved him. Would you say you loved him passionately?”
He was beginning to reach a very private part of her, that he knew, and so he went on.
“It’s a pathetic story,” he said, “because you and Charley missed the real connection. Let me tell you a secret about Charles Francis. He’s a frustrated teacher. Can you begin to understand that type? Deep-down, a John like Eitel is always obsessed with wanting people to trust him.”
“What do you know?” Elena said.
“You couldn’t bring yourself to trust him, could you, Elena?”
“Leave me alone, Marion. Maybe too many people let me down.”
“Just didn’t they? No wonder you never got around to telling Eitel about some of the men and boys you did to get a two-bit booking in a night club.”
“Not as much as you think,” she said. “Believe it or not, I had my pride.”
“Yes,” Marion said, “and maybe you were too proud to see that Eitel was in love with you. He didn’t know it, and you were stupid and didn’t play him right, but he was in love with you. Elena, you just don’t have the brains of a slob to get married and hide under a stone.”
She took every word he said, and then tried to smile back at him.
“Stick with me, Elena,” Marion said. “I don’t care if you trust me. I’m a specialist on stupid girls.”
“I told you to make me a call-girl,” she said in a dull voice.
“Well, I don’t think you can make it as a call-girl,” Marion said.
“Why not? I could be a very good call-girl.”
“No,” Marion said dispassionately, “You’re raw meat. You lack class.”
She winced as if he had struck her. “Then make me a prostitute,” she jeered.
“Let’s get married,” said Marion, sipping at his stick.
“I’d never marry you.”
“Proud, aren’t you? What would you say, dearest, if I told you I’m the one who won’t marry you.”
“I want to be a prostitute,” Elena repeated.
“I don’t handle prostitutes,” Marion said. His chest hurt him. “I could send you to a friend though. He has a job where you could work sort of half in a whorehouse.”
“What does half-in-a-whorehouse mean?”
“It means in a whorehouse,” Marion said. “Like on the Mexican border.”
Elena looked frightened. Fear showed and then lapsed again. “I won’t do that, Marion,” she said.
“Are you a snob, doctor? Think of all the poor creeps down there and how they’re crawling for you.”
“Marion, you can’t make me do that.”
“I can’t make you do anything,” he said. “Only, look, Elena, I’m bored with you. I’m just a little bored with you. Maybe you better get out of this house.”
“I’m getting out,” she said, but her voice lacked size.
“Then get out.”
“I’ll go,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
Elena lay on her back and stared at the ceiling again. “I wish I could be dead,” she muttered. “I’d like to kill myself.”
“You haven’t got the guts.”
“Don’t taunt me. It doesn’t take guts.”
“You couldn’t do it,” Marion said.
“Yes, I could. I could do it.”
He left the room for a minute, felt his fingers trembling among tubes of medicine and hair pomades and plastic bandages in the cabinet, and then he came back with a small bottle which held two capsules. “I’ve been saving this for myself,” he said. “They work like sleeping pills.” He set it on the bedside table. “Do you want some water?”
“You think I won’t take them?” Elena asked. She seemed a great distance from him.
“I don’t think you’ll do anything.”
“Get out of here. Leave me alone.”
He returned to the living room and sat there listening to his heart beat. The sound seemed to fill his body. “It can’t go on like this,” he thought, and his heart gave another jump when he heard Elena get up from her bed and go to the bathroom. He could hear the water running and then there was silence and then she turned the water on again. It was the bathtub this time. With a kind of surprise at himself, he was wondering, “Can I really go this far?”
The water had stopped running in the tub. He no longer had any idea of what the sounds meant, and he sat immobile, determined not to move, not for an hour at least. He saw this as his duty to Elena for he suffered remaining in his chair. If only he could have walked around the room or even lit a cigarette he might have felt some relief, but he kept repeating to himself that he must know what she was feeling. And convinced she was dead, he mourned her. “She was better than the others,” he said to himself. “She was the strongest of the whole lot.”
For all that hour he sat with his eyes on the clock, and when the time was up, he went to the bathroom door. Elena had locked it and he rattled the knob, he called to her, “Elena?… Elena?” There was no answer and he thought if he waited the door would be unlocked. He rattled it again. He drummed against it with the palm of his hand. Then he began to sob a little. A childhood panic had come on him as if he were locked inside, and furious at his panic, he was going to force the door, but he remembered there was a utility key among the collection in his pocket. By an effort he managed to keep his fingers steady while he turned the lock, and there before his eyes was Elena sitting beside the water-filled tub with a robe over her body and the bottle of pills squeezed fiercely in her fist so that she sat like a statue with all her force concentrated into the bones of her fingers, that hand projecting forward over her knees in a mute emphasis so nearly permanent she might have been of stone. Down her cheeks ran tears, and her eyes stared at him as if she had to cling to something, no matter what, even him.
Faye reached forward and pried the bottle from her hand. It still contained the two pills, and he made a sound as if he had been scalded, for he knew what he felt at that instant was relief, and hatred for Elena followed his relief, hatred so intense he could have struck her to the floor.
Elena looked up and mana
ged to whisper, “Oh, Marty, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I didn’t want to do it, I don’t want to … stop, I swear I don’t want to stop,” she pleaded, as if he were an Italian gang bully and she was begging him for his one possible drop of mercy. Then she began to weep a little, softly, out of fatigue. “I’ll get out of here in a day or two. I swear I will.”
Faye knew he was defeated. He could not help it—he had his drop of mercy after all. So he put her to bed and lay beside her through the night, not sleeping, not even thinking, his body aching from exhaustion. The next day she was depressed, and the following day she was depressed, but he had lost, and lived instead in a new despair.
When she began to pack her bags he made no objection, and when she told him she was leaving he merely nodded. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“I’m going to get a job in the city.”
“All right. Let me drive you back.”
“I don’t want to ride with you.” She shook her head.
“Then I’ll give you a lift to the airport.”
“I don’t have money for a plane.”
“I’ll buy your ticket.”
“No, you can’t do that.”
“You have to let me,” he said, and the sound in his voice made her look at him. “Please,” he said again.
“I don’t understand you,” Elena said.
“I don’t either, but let me buy your ticket.”
So she agreed, and he called a travel agency, made the reservation, and put her luggage into the rack of his foreign car.
On the way to the airport, he passed a car around the only curve in all that reach of desert highway, passed it with the knowledge another car was coming for he could see its light. Too late, he discovered it was a truck. As he raced to reach his own lane there was a passing instant when he realized he would never succeed, and then he heard a shriek from Elena, and felt an impact which struck him with surprising force as the front of the truck slapped at his rear fender, and the wheel twisted out of his hand. Then he felt as if parts of his body were being torn in all directions, and through the sensations he knew that they had rolled to a stop and his head was locked against his arm and he was in pain. He tried to clear his mind, he felt there was one thing he had to remember, and listening to Elena sobbing beside him, he wanted to tell it to her. There was the gun in his glove compartment and if he could only collect himself to speak, he would tell her to throw it into the ditch for they would use that against him, and he had always known that the way he would go to prison would be for something ridiculous like keeping a gun without a permit. “It’s all right,” he thought, holding on to consciousness as if it were something to grip with his battered mouth, “it’s all right. To make it, maybe I need a year like that. More education,” he tried to say, but a spasm of pain was carrying him into coma.
The truck stopped, the car behind them stopped; in one minute a crowd of a dozen people collected about Faye’s car. They lifted Elena out first and she was conscious. Her nose bled and she moaned when someone touched her arm, for it was broken. Yet she had strength enough to push to her feet when they had taken her clear of the car, and one arm supporting the other, blood spilling from her nose to her mouth, she took a step and then another before they caught her and set her down, and in her mind she believed at that instant that she was running from them into the darkness as a child flees from a night-haunted bed, and through the blood she whispered—although to her own ears it sounded like a scream—“Oh, Charley, forgive me. Oh Charley, forgive.”
And yet there was something else she must say, for it was all confused and the puzzle of love was as mysterious as it had ever been. “Marion, Marion,” she thought, moving into sleep as pain released her, “Marion, why didn’t you like me a little? Why didn’t you know you could have loved me?” Then the ambulance was coming up, and she heard the threat of its siren as she lay on the shoulder of the road.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
AT THE HOSPITAL, Marion was under police guard, and they would not admit anyone to see Elena until morning. After arguing with the floor nurse for an ugly ten minutes over who would pay Elena’s bill, I emptied my wallet of my week’s wages, gave it to the nurse, and decided to make a phone call to Eitel in the capital. I was thinking that if he did not come, I would have to make Elena my responsibility, and I knew now that I did not want that at all. Which made me feel that it would be more than a little while before I would enjoy thinking about my character.
Eitel’s number was not listed and neither was Munshin’s, but I remembered the name of Eitel’s agent, and managed to place a call to him. From the way the agent spoke I had the picture of a nervous man in a bathrobe, with a cigar in the corner of his mouth, but for all I know he could have looked like an account executive.
“Well, who are you?” the agent was saying.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. I’m a friend of his from Desert D’Or.”
“I don’t even want to hear of that place. Look, you leave my baby Charley alone.”
“Will you give me his number?”
“What do you want it for?”
“I want it,” I said. “Believe me, it’s urgent.”
“Leave Charley Eitel alone. Everybody persecutes Eitel with their troubles.”
“A very dear friend of his may be dying now,” I exaggerated.
“A woman?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Look, Charley Eitel don’t have to get out of bed for any woman. He’s a busy man now, thank God, so stop persecuting him.”
“Listen, if he doesn’t get this message tonight,” I shouted into the receiver, “he’ll persecute you in the morning.”
So, after half an hour of perspiring in a telephone booth and two dollars in change and a missed connection, I succeeded finally in reaching Eitel. I was so irritated by then and so agitated that I must have babbled. “What kind of agent do you have anyway?” I asked him with my first words.
“Sergius, are you drunk?” Eitel said into the phone.
I told him then, and I could hear nothing but silence for twenty seconds. Perhaps I was imagining it, but I had the feeling the news put him in a rage. When he answered, however, it was to say, “Oh, Lord. Is she all right?”
“I think so,” I said, and gave what details I had.
“Do you suppose I ought to come down?” he asked, and when I remained silent, he added, “tomorrow we’re busy casting.”
“Want me to answer for you?” I said.
“All right, I’ll arrange something,” he said into my ear. “Tell Elena I’m taking the plane and I’ll see her in the morning.”
“You’ll be able to tell her yourself. They won’t allow visitors tonight.”
“It must be serious,” he said half-helplessly, and I had a moment of sympathy for him.
In the morning Eitel arrived at the hospital before me, and I met him on the steps as he was coming out from his visit to Elena. “I’m going to marry her,” was the first thing he said to me.
There had not been much choice. She was sitting in a hospital bed the hour he visited, her arm in a sling, and her nose covered by medical tape which made her look as if she were trying to hide herself. Elena’s eyes looked away from him until he touched her shoulder. “Oh, Charley,” she said simply. He could see she was heavy with sedatives.
They could think of nothing to talk about at first. She had looked at him, and whispered, “I hear you’re working again.”
He nodded.
“It must have been hard for you to get away.”
“Not that hard,” he said with a touch of his charm.
“Do you feel happy working?” she asked politely.
“It’s not so bad. Most of the people at the studio have been decent. I even get compliments about my testimony.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” she said.
They tried to smile at one another. “I guess you have your career back?” Elena went on.
“Part
of it. There’s a lot of mending to do.”
“But you’re going to make a good picture.”
“I’ll try.”
“I know you’ll make a good picture.” This time she nodded. “It’ll be the same for you again, Charley.”
“Not the same,” said Eitel.
There was a tone in his voice which made her turn the least bit toward him, and in a careful whisper, she said, “Charley, did you miss me?”
“Very much,” he said.
“No, Charley, I mean the truth.”
“I did, Elena.”
She began to weep silently. “No, Charley, you were glad to be rid of me, and I don’t blame you.”
“It’s not true,” he said. “You know the way I am. I haven’t let myself think about anything.” He coughed and his voice missed a word or two. “One night,” he said, “Elena, I thought of you, and I knew I would go to pieces if I didn’t stop.”
“I’m glad you felt a little bit.”
The moment he said the next few words he knew he had made a mistake. “How are you?” he asked. “I mean, the accident must have been terrible.”
It was as if he set a mirror to all the time which had gone by since she had left him, and he could feel her carried away from him on the tide of her misery until he was no longer present, but she was alone on a hospital bed, her past scattered, her future unmade, and the bed and the walls and the instruments of her aseptic room surrounding Elena in a cold white sea. “It wasn’t so bad,” she said, and she began to cry again. “Oh, Charley, you better go now. I know you hate hospitals.”
“No, I want to take care of you,” he said, the words coming despite himself.
“Marry me,” Elena blurted suddenly, “oh, Charley, please marry me. This time I’ll learn. I promise I will.”
And he nodded, his heart numb, his will sick, thinking there must be some escape, and knowing there was nothing. For on the instant she said these words he heard the other words she had said the night he gave his qualified proposal of marriage. “You have no respect for me,” she had said then, and like a beggar to the beggar of his own pride, he knew that he could not refuse her. All the while he held Elena he felt cold as stone, but he knew that he would marry her, that he could not give her up for there was that law of life so cruel and so just which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. If he did not marry her he could never forget that he had once made her happy and now she had nothing but her hospital bed.
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