I was frightfully uncomfortable. There didn't seem anything to say. His head was still facing front and he had not dropped the book, but even so his eyes were on me. He didn't have to speak. I saw quite clearly that he was greatly surprised to see me, then annoyed, and then ashamed. The visible portion of his face grew as red as his lips.
I came over to the bedside, holding out my hand. Slowly, he lifted his good arm and shook it. I don't know which one of us had the wet palm but I suspect it was me. Yes, he was suffering—but so was I, and every bit as much. All he was facing was a woman who had insulted his manhood; I was facing an over-sensitive boy I had almost killed. I was frightened and embarrassed and at a total loss where to begin to rectify things. The point had been reached where I could no longer pooh-pooh the notion that what he had attempted was due to quite another matter. Everything indicated I was to blame.
“How are you feeling?”
“Oh, I'm all right.”
“You're not in pain?”
“No not much.”
“Is your arm broken?”
“Just dislocated.”
I was feeding him lines, like in a play, anyone of which might be the cue for his replying, “What do you care, you selfish bitch?” I half expected to hear that each time he opened his mouth.
Just then the nurse entered with a vase and arranged my flowers in water. “Aren't they beautiful, Mr. Kildare?” she asked, taking them over to a little table by the side of the bed. Raoul looked at them absently for a moment; I don't believe he even saw them.
“Yes. Very. Thanks.”
“Oh, it's nothing. When do you imagine they'll let you go home?”
“Home?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Oh, I don't know. In a few days. Maybe a week.”
We both fell silent and there was a tension you could all but hear. I began to fidget with my gloves, my bag and a thread that was loose on his bedspread. Although we were facing each other our eyes did not meet. What, I asked myself, could a person say in a situation like this? I was wishing I hadn't come. If only he would get on his high horse, curse at me and demand an apology it would be a relief. Or if only he took revenge by commenting upon my qualifications in the dark! But no. He sat there saying nothing, looking whipped and very ill at ease.
“You're looking well,” I said, when I couldn't stand it any longer. I didn't realize how ridiculous that remark was until later. There he was in a hospital, literally covered with bandages!
“Thanks. You're looking well yourself.”
“Thanks. ”
“Not at all.”
Another long silence. The noises of the hospital crashed in my ears and I decided then and there that no sound is louder and more disturbing than that of persons taking pains to be quiet. Then, suddenly driven to make conversation, we both started to say something at once. Then we both stopped and politely waited. God, it was terrible. In desperation and before a series of you-first-my-dear-Alphonse could commence, I held out my hand. “I've really got to run along now, Raoul. I'm on my way to an appointment. Just thought I'd stop by and tell you I am sorry for what I said the other night. I didn't mean it, of course. I must have been high.”
He didn't flush this time. He merely dropped his eyes.
“Oh, that's all right. It doesn't matter now.”
There was a hopelessness in his voice that worried me no end. Was he going to try it over again when he got discharged from the hospital? He answered that question himself a second later in reply to my, “Well, I hope I'll see you again very soon.”
“I don't think it's likely. I expect to leave for New York immediately. I have a chance for a nice part in the new Harris production that's going into rehearsal this month.”
I can't begin to tell you how relieved I was to hear that. At once all nervousness left me and I came back to his bedside from the door. “But that's marvelous, Raoul! It's a break to work for Harris. He's the biggest man on Broadway.”
“Oh, I haven't got it yet. I'm only going on spec.”
“You'll get it, all right,” I said encouragingly. “I've seen your work. You've got loads of talent.”
He thanked me quietly, but as though I had only told him something he already knew. However, the attitude was empty. Every trace of conceit and his former armor of braggadocio had vanished in him; a person could scarcely recognize Raoul Kildare in the meek, easily embarrassed figure on the bed. If my words had stripped him of his manhood, they had also taken his self-confidence and his poise. I realized instinctively that my brief apology would never restore all this. The only thing to do was to get to the bottom of it.
“Raoul,” I said, despite the fact that I have always been one never to arouse the sleeping dogs, “will you tell me why...”
“Yes?” His voice came as a dare.
“Why you did it?”
He frowned in displeasure for a minute. Then, as his face cleared, I saw the answer. You can see those things, you know—if you'll only look. But what was immediately so plain almost floored me, and inside my head everything became hopelessly jumbled. I dropped my bag on the floor, stooped, picked it up, and then I dropped it again. I was that flustered.
“You don't...” Then it broke, like Niagara. “All right. Now you know. You weren't satisfied before. You had to come sneaking around here to find out more. Why can't you let me alone? Haven't you done enough harm? Now get the hell out of here. Get out, God damn you!”
I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He stopped shouting but I could feel his face trembling under my lips. From beneath the bandages covering his forehead a thin trickle of blood commenced to trace a path to his brow. I was completely shaken. “It's all right, Raoul,” I heard myself say. It's all right, I love you, too.”
Did I or didn't I? That was one whale of a question and I tried to answer it honestly over four Scotch-and-sodas. If I didn't, what was that feeling I had, that warm, enervating glow that made me want to cry? I knew—and there was no sense trying to deny it—that if it had been possible he could have had me right men and there in the hospital. I shouldn't have been able to stop him—not that I would have wanted him to stop. Something about his love struck a responding chord in me. Yes, he did love me. I knew it—certainly much better than I knew my own feelings. How could I be so positive? How did I know he wasn't just acting? That I can't tell you. I just knew.
On the other hand, if I was in love with him, how could I explain Alex? That was the rub as Hamlet would say. Without Alex there would have been not the slightest doubt in my mind; I would have surrendered myself to the fact that I loved Raoul and been done with it. But I loved Alex, too. Is it possible for a person to be in love with more than one man at a time? It never happens in the movies or in The Saturday Evening Post.
With my fourth drink in front of me I commenced to balance the two men, one against the other. In many ways they were much alike. Both of them possessed that “little boy” quality, that air of not being able to care for himself, sort of an innocence, which both took great pains to hide. Alex concealed his beneath an easily cracked shell of cynicism; Raoul, beneath a ridiculous and actually nonexistent conceit. Men do not like to think themselves soft. They believe it is unmanly. They don't realize that a woman can usually see through whatever pose they strike. Physically, of course, Raoul and Alex were in different classes. Raoul was handsome while Alex looked like something the cat dragged in. Yet, when a person knew Alex and liked him, his face did not seem to matter. Not that he was very ugly; he wasn't. He was just plain. It was only when you compared him with somebody like Raoul that he seemed a mess. Then you would begin to consider things that had never struck you before: his ill-fitting suits and the careless way he let his socks hang, the months he'd go without a haircut and the days without shaving. Raoul would never have dreamed of going about like that. But then, I remembered, Raoul was an actor. It is far more important for an actor to look well than for a musician. As a matter of fact, musicians are alwa
ys sloppy by tradition.
But when it came to talent, I had to hand it to Alex. I had seen Raoul in several pictures and what little he had to do he did well; however, in no way could he approach the genius of Alex when he had a fiddle under his chin. I don't care much for highbrow music—maybe because I don't understand it sufficiently to appreciate it—but I'll never forget how he could stir me at times just by laying on his back and going to town on his violin.
After the club, when I invariably was tired and my head ached (to say nothing of my feet), I'd stretch out beside him on the bed with my eyes closed and he would play me to sleep. I never knew what the numbers were. I think most of the time he improvised. They were soft and of a pattern, yet, somehow, they didn't seem to have a tune. Surely, without even knowing the man, anyone could tell he was neither hard nor cynical. Very often after he had played for a little while, my headaches left me and either I fell asleep at once or gradually got the urge to take him in my arms. He was never rough in such things—which was more than I could say for Raoul.
Sleeping with Raoul was an adventure, impossible to experience without a great deal of wear and tear on the emotions; with Alex it was accomplished so gently and tenderly that after it was over you scarcely could believe it had happened.
Which one of them did I love?
Even after all this went through my mind I was still as much in the dark as before. I tried to imagine them standing one beside the other against a wall. They were going to be shot at dawn or something. I had the choice of saving one of them... After minutes of reaching out first to one and then the other, the only decision I arrived at was that I needed another drink. I downed my fifth Scotch in a dither.
Raoul needed me most, naturally. He had problems, he was over-sensitive and his career was not going the way he had planned. When a film actor has to travel all the way to New York on spec, work must be scarce and hope pretty low. In that sense, Raoul and I were very much alike and I could understand him. Alex was different. He had no worries, no grave problems. All he had to do was apply to any bandleader and sign the salary list. He didn't need help from anybody.
After the seventh drink it was time to leave for the drive-in. I took a cab, recklessly throwing away a hard-earned seventy cents. How I arrived there and how I managed to get through the night I'll never know. I was just beginning to sober up when Selma came on at midnight to relieve me. She didn't say anything to me when she took up her post, but after I had changed and came out of the dressing-room she told me the boss wanted to see me.
“I can't have drunks working for me,” Mr. Bloomberg said when I asked him what he wanted. “This is your last week. I'm sorry.”
I don't think I would have suspected anyone's fine Italian hand if I hadn't noticed Selma grinning like a fool, on my way out. I knew then that she had tattled to Bloomberg. At any other time I might have been furious, but that night, with Raoul and Alex on my mind, it didn't seem to make much difference.
Yes, Raoul needed me more. If I wasn't sure then, I was sure when I arrived home. For when I opened the door to the bungalow, Ewy was sitting in the living-room waiting up for me. She was crying as she told me Alex was dead.
V. ALEXANDER ROTH
IF there is any worse spot than for a man to find himself a slave to a woman's whims I'd like to know about it. What makes it so tough is you never can be sure what a woman will do. At one moment she's calm and everything is velvet; then, in a flash, it all explodes sky-high and she's got it in for you. And when she's got it in for you, brother, look out. There are never any halfway measures. A woman loves or she hates. Pity and all the feelings in between she never even heard of.
Now you men won't believe this. You were brought up by your mothers to kiss the ladies' hands, to watch your language in their company, to be gentle with them and to realize and appreciate how noble and soft and superior they are.
You were taught from the cradle that men are the hard ones, the roughnecks; and maybe sometimes you wonder why in God's name women have anything to do with us, why they condescend to marry us, to live with us, much less to give in to us.
I used to wonder myself. But that was before all this happened. I can see now that like the lions and the spiders and the snakes, the female human is more vicious than the male. That must be the reason why nobody likes women on juries. If Christ Himself was being tried again, with Liebowitz defending Him, you'd never know what verdict a jury of women would return. Yes, all women are dangerous—and this Vera was no exception. No siree, I should say she wasn't. Vera was like a frozen stick of dynamite; you never knew when she was going to blow.
If a person could believe her, here was a dame who'd touched bottom, who'd been batted around for five or six years from one job to another until she was groggy. She'd been a movie usher in Pittsburgh, a shoe-worker in Binghamton, a cashier in Trenton and God knows what else. She'd washed dishes, scrubbed floors, picked pockets, rolled cigars; she'd lived with cops, clerks, floor-walkers, and every brand of visiting Elk imaginable. Also, she'd kept Haskell's bed warm from Shreveport to El Paso. She'd reached the stage where she hated men and when I say hated, I mean hated—almost as much as she hated women. That little girl was just a bundle of hate.
But she wasn't going to turn me in. “It won't do me any good, having you pinched,” she said. “The cops are no friends of mine. If there was a reward... but there isn't.”
“Gee, thanks, Vera.”
She laughed, like the Romans must have laughed when they saw some poor Carthaginian slob being mangled by a dozen lions. “Oh, don't thank me yet, brother. I'm not done with you by a long shot. Let's see that wallet.”
I handed it over and she helped herself to the wad of bills. It broke my heart to see my newly acquired fortune disappear into the top of her stocking, but I didn't holler murder. She had me by that well-known place. If only she'd keep her trap buttoned up she was welcome to the money.
“Is that all Haskell had?”
“Isn't it enough?”
“I thought he had more.”
“Not that I know of. You can search me if you think I'm holding out on you.”
“Well, maybe I will at that. He told me he was going to bet three thousand dollars on Paradisaical in the fourth at Belmont.”
“He must've been stringing you. He meant three hundred.”
“Maybe.”
“Sure, three hundred; or three bucks. He was a piece of cheese. Big blowhard.”
“Listen, mister. Don't try to tell me anything about Charlie Haskell. I knew him better than you did.”
“Yeah? Then you know he smoked the weed. That explains his three grand bet.”
“I'm not so sure he didn't have that three grand. Why should I believe you? You've got all the earmarks of a cheap crook.”
“Now wait a minute—” Yes, she had me. But it went against the grain, having a woman of that caliber tell me the score.
“Shut up. You're a cheap crook and you killed him. For two cents I'd change my mind and turn you in. I don't like you.”
She didn't a appear to be bluffing and I was frightened. Those eyes of hers were cold. She wasn't playing poker.
“All right, all right. Don't get sore, Vera.”
“I'm not sore. But just remember who's boss around here. If you shut up and don't give me any arguments you have nothing to worry about. If you act wise... well, mister, you'll pop into the can so fast it'll make your ears sing. ”
“I'm not arguing, Vera.”
“See that you don't. Crooked as you look, I'd hate to see a fellow young as you wind up sniffing that perfume Arizona hands out free to murderers.”
“I'm not a murderer.”
She gave me one of those sandpapery laughs of hers.
“Of course you're not. Haskell knocked his own head off.”
“He fell. That's how it happened. Just like I told you.”
“And then he made you a present of his belongings. ”
“Aw, I explained why I had to
—”
“Oh, skip it,” she cut in on me. “It doesn't make any difference one way or another. I'm not a mourner. I liked Haskell even less than I like you.”
“Yeah. I saw what you did to him.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Those scratches.”
“Oh, sure. I scratched him.”
“I'll say you did.”
“Well, you give a guy an inch.”
We were coming into Pasadena by that time and the traffic was so heavy I had to concentrate on my driving. It was a pretty town, all right; but I wasn't enjoying it. I was experiencing a feeling I hadn't had in almost twenty years: that leaden sensation I got when I was smoking a cigar in the bathroom and my father walked in.
“Pull in to the curb in front of that drug store,” Vera commanded. “I want to get a pint.”
I pulled in.
“No, park the car and come in with me.”
“This is a Bus Stop, Vera. You run in. Then if a cop comes I can move.”
“Nothing doing. You're coming in, too. From now on you and I are the Siamese Twins. Drive around the corner if you think we'll get a tag.”
I shrugged. It was too hot to argue. “Have it your own way. But I don't get the point.”
Vera got sarcastic. “The point is I don't want you to get lost.”
“I'm not going to beat it, if that's what you're afraid of.”
“I'll say you're not. I want the dough we're going to make on this car.”
“That's O.K. by me. But what then? After we sell it can I go?”
“After we sell it we'll see.”
I parked the Buick two blocks away and we walked back to the pharmacy together. Vera bought two pints of Ten High, a carton of Chesties and a pair of sun-glasses. She also got some cosmetics—cold creams, vanishing creams, tissue creams and that sort of truck. The bill came to more than seven bucks. When I asked her to buy me a pair of sun-glasses too, she squawked.
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