by Orrie Hitt
“Always the cocky, Johnny Reagan.”
I put my feet up on the desk and waited. I could afford to wait.
“Know something, Johnny?”
“What?”
“You’re plenty smart.”
“Thanks.”
“I thought we might be able to work out a deal, something reasonable and profitable for both of us. I don’t mind saying that you’ve cut deep into us, Johnny. Real deep. And I’d like to remind you there’s a law against doing it the way you’ve done it. Encouraging people to give up their insurance. In case you don’t know, the insurance department says you can’t do that.”
“Well, write them, baby. Don’t tell me.”
“You know I couldn’t do that.”
“Of course I know it,” I told her, grinning. “You do the same thing all the time, so what would you want to get yourself in trouble for? The only thing is I’ve got you stopped on rates and you can’t do a thing about it. You know you can’t, so why don’t you just forget it?”
“I wish I could,” she said slowly. “I wish I could tell you to go — but I can’t. You know I can’t. We’ve stretched out far down here, Johnny. Bigger offices, more space, more of everything.”
“That’s smart. Now you can starve in luxury.”
“It isn’t very funny.”
“I don’t think so either.” I took my feet down from the desk and leaned forward, cupping the phone in my hands, my fingers curling hard around it, almost wishing that the black rubber was her smooth neck. “I never thought it was funny, baby. You tried to break me in the lousiest way possible. You’ve done it to others and you figured you could do it to me. You made your plans on doing it. And you lost, because I don’t whip easy. Why don’t you admit it?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” she demanded angrily. “I’m asking that we throw in together. We’d make a good team, Johnny.”
“Yeah,” I said. “With you at bat all the time and me out on a slide in to home? No, thanks, baby. My back’s too broad. You couldn’t miss.”
“Or I could buy you out,” she suggested quietly.
“If you had the money.”
“I might be able to get it — for that.”
“My price is high, baby.”
“What do you think I’m paying now?”
I knew, then, that I had her. She had to have my renewals to back her up and she’d do almost anything to get them. If she could do that she could arrange to have her Family Protective premiums reduced and in this way she could, eventually, assume the accounts from The Provider.
“I’ll have to think about it,” I said. “Maybe I’ll buy you out.”
“Please, Johnny!”
“Well, you’ve got to give me some time. Say, until the end of next week?”
“I’ll drive up.”
“Hell, I don’t care what you do.”
I hung up and let her say good-bye to herself. Another week or so over the fire wouldn’t do her any harm. She’d be plenty hot by that time.
I put on my coat, locked up and rode the elevator downstairs. It was cold outside and the sky was leaden gray. I didn’t care much if it snowed. It could snow so hard it got to be nine feet on the level. In a couple or three weeks I’d have my carcass stretched out on a sand pile at some beach in Florida. Maybe I’d be alone and maybe I wouldn’t.
I drove toward home, thinking about Connors and his wife and Beverly.
Just a couple of days before, Beverly and I had moved into a four-room furnished apartment on Hillcrest Avenue. It was plenty ritzy and cost one twenty-five a month. There were thick rugs, colored drapes and modern furniture that’d break your back in two sittings. I’d felt about as much at home in that place as I’d have felt in an overturned barrel in the middle of the town square. The day after we moved in Beverly had a couple of pains. The doctor said she ought to take it easy, just lie around and do nothing, otherwise the baby might come too early. That deal was going to cost me another two hundred a month because I’d had to hire Martha, a fat young kid who had two children by a runaway husband and both eyes fastened on an easy buck. For a guy who wanted to live it was like getting nailed up to a cross.
When I got to town I stopped at a drugstore, bought a pack of Camels and had a coke. I wasn’t in any hurry. I hung around there maybe fifteen minutes, listening to some young guys argue about a hot rod they were building, and then I decided I might as well go along and get it done with.
They were sitting in the living room, lapping up the last of the coffee, when I breezed in. The way Beverly said hello you’d think it was putting a lot of wear and tear on her span of life. She just sprawled out in one of the chairs, giving everybody a good chance to see what was bothering her. She hadn’t put on any make-up and she looked so white you’d think she was bleeding to death. I got the impression that she’d known they were coming.
“Welcome, home,” I said.
Her old lady nodded and went back to staring at her toes. I couldn’t blame her. She had feet big enough for a guy in the infantry.
“Nice place you’ve got,” Connors said as I put my coat in the closet.
“Yeah.”
He’d lost some weight but other than that he looked about the same.
“We got tired of waiting for you,” Beverly said. “We already had dinner.”
“Okay.”
“Martha’s got stuff in the kitchen.”
“I’ll get something later.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I will.”
The old lady jerked her head up and Connors scowled and chewed on his cigar. I guess they could feel the tension, the rising force that was always there between us. She’d throw face powder all over the bathroom and then she’d scream at me because I used too much coffee in the morning, or not enough, or that I should go to a restaurant and not make it at all. She was wound up all the time like a big spring in a tiny box.
“We’ve got to get the house opened up,” Connors told me. “I’ll bet it’s cold over there.”
“It must be.”
“Maybe we ought to put up at the hotel tonight.”
“Maybe you had, at that.”
He was just making conversation, killing time, trying to find a spot where he could move in.
“I guess you wanted to talk to me,” I said.
“Well — yes.”
“Then let’s get going with it.”
He glanced from his wife to his daughter, then to me and around the circle again.
“It can wait until we get down to the office tomorrow, Johnny. I don’t want to drag the women — ”
“We can go in the bedroom,” I said. “Or up on the roof. It won’t take any longer now than it will later.”
“You listen to Dad!” Beverly told me, sitting up straight. “If he tells you — ”
“Shut up, baby!”
There was a shocked silence.
“Well, of all the toughs!” Mrs. Connors exploded, her thin face getting red. “Young man — ”
“Look, Mommy,” I said, pushing the bedroom door open, “these are my marbles and I’ll pick them up when I feel like it. Your old man has something on his mind, he should get it off.” I gave Connors a nod. “Okay, Dad, let’s go to confession.”
He came on in and I closed the door. His face was white and mad. I motioned for him to sit on the bed but he shook his head and kept standing. I went over and leaned against the dresser and lit a cigarette.
“You got something to say,” I told him, “say it.”
I was fairly sure he had it figured that I’d crawl for my job and yell for another chance. He had it figured wrong.
“I didn’t know you folks were going to have a family,” he said. “I just didn’t know it.”
“That’s one thing I don’t have to prove.”
“I was — surprised.”
“Maybe I wasn’t.”
He took out a fresh cigar and stuck it in his mouth
. Some of the anger had left his face but I could feel the bitterness in his eyes as he looked directly at me. And it was in his voice, too, crowding up fast and choking him.
“If it wasn’t for Beverly, Johnny, I’d — I’d — ”
“Don’t let that bother you,” I said. “You don’t have to fire me. I quit. When you get in the office tomorrow, look in the upper left hand drawer of your desk and you’ll find my resignation.”
I could see that I was taking it all away from him. He’d come back boiling mad and now I was giving him just what he wanted even before he could ask for it.
“I want you to have an audit,” I went on. “Get yourself a good CPA in there and tear those records apart. Then I want you to put on a piece of paper that they’re okay. That’s all I ask.”
A CPA or any other accountant who could add would find those big deposits and they’d wonder about it. Twelve thousand bucks in three weeks! But they wouldn’t be able to prove anything and the overall picture would come out right. I was as safe as cash in the bank.
“I wasn’t going to fire you,” Connors said, staring at his fat hands. “When I found out about the baby I changed my mind. For her sake, Johnny — not yours.”
“I don’t want anything,” I said. “You can stick it.”
“She’d be better off if she left you.”
“I hope you can talk her into it.”
“Johnny!”
“You creeps give me a pain!” I wandered around the room, smoking furiously on the cigarette. “You think I like this set-up?” I demanded hotly. “You blowing a spoke, or something?”
“Beverly’s in a delicate condition,” he said. “We ought to let all of this go until later.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“She ought to be in a rest home, Johnny. You should have made arrangements for her to go someplace where she wouldn’t have to do anything.”
“She don’t do anything around here,” I said.
“That isn’t the point. It’s the mental strain. It’s easy to see you two don’t get along.”
“You’re really clever, Pop.”
“I don’t know what it is.”
“Well, I do.”
“I don’t think I want to know, Johnny.”
It was a good thing he didn’t, because he wasn’t going to get told by me. Thinking back, remembering all of it, it was easy to understand that she’d married me because she didn’t have much choice. We’d been sleeping around together and when the inevitable happened there wasn’t anything else she could do about it. But after we were married she must have started looking for something else other than safety and she hadn’t been able to find it. I didn’t love her and she probably felt only shame everytime I came near her or whenever she thought about it. And I guess maybe I felt shame, too — or, at least, I felt something hollow and hopeless in my stomach that threatened to make me very sick.
“I don’t like to rush you,” I said, “but I’ve got to get back to work. If there isn’t any more, let’s knock it off.”
He walked in silence to the door.
“There isn’t any more,” he said.
We went out into the living room. Beverly was crying and her mother was shouting and they were having a hell of a good time.
“Maybe you people want to fight in private,” I said.
Her mother glared at me.
“I think you’ve done enough,” she said. “Why don’t you just go on out and leave us alone?”
“Where?”
“Any place. Only don’t come back.”
“You telling me to get out?”
“I don’t think I have to write it out for you,” she said. “You’re no good for Beverly.”
Connors plopped down into a chair and stared moodily at the floor.
“I wish to God we could stop arguing,” he said.
“I get myself all worked up and my heart starts thumping around.”
“Then you keep out of it,” his wife said. “You don’t even have to listen.”
“He’ll need cotton,” I told her. “It’ll take a yard of it for each ear.”
I was looking at the old lady so I didn’t see Beverly get up from the chair. I didn’t even hear her moving around. The only thing I heard was the coffee cup break when she rapped me across the back of the head with it. It didn’t hurt very much and it didn’t make me mad. I just knew that it was the end of something or other, and whatever it might be was okay by me.
“I’m going with them,” Beverly said. “It’ll be better that way.”
The cold grounds from the coffee dripped down my back. I scratched my skull and tried to stop it from itching.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Don’t get any ideas about a divorce,” she said. “This is your baby and it’s mine and you’re going to support it. You’re going to support it every day that it lives and breathes. I’m going to see that you keep remembering this for a long, long time to come.”
I didn’t give her any argument on that. I knew the kid was mine. I’d never told her it wasn’t, or thought that way, either. The kid would be mine, as much as hers, and I’d take care of it for as long as I walked, or swore, or drank. Maybe it was a lousy way to put it, even in my own mind, but when a guy stopped doing those things he just stopped all the way. And that’s how long I’d take care of that kid.
Beverly went into the bedroom and got her things together. After a while her old lady went in and helped her and I could hear them talking like crazy. Connors sat in the chair staring at me. He looked away when I found a bottle in the closet and put aboard a couple ounces of cheer.
None of them bothered to say good-bye or so long or go to hell. They just gathered her stuff under their arms and took off. I guess every window in the building rattled when Beverly slammed the door.
“Happy New Year,” I said to nobody in particular.
I thought about calling a lawyer to find out about a divorce but I decided to shave instead. There was plenty of time to take care of that later.
And, besides, maybe something else might happen.
CHAPTER XXII
Stillborn
SATURDAY I moved out of the apartment and checked into a hotel room in Waymart. I was working over there all the time anyway, so it didn’t make sense to drive back and forth just for the privilege of rattling around in four rooms.
“You all by yourself?” the bell boy wanted to know.
“I don’t see anybody else, son.”
“They should’ve given you a single, mister.”
I looked at the wide double bed and gave him a wink.
“Forget it. Something like this is great in an emergency.”
He snickered, pocketed the buck and left.
I spent maybe an hour unpacking and getting things put away. By the time I finished it was almost four. Too late to go back to the office. And I’d had enough of it for one week, anyway. There was just one thing I had to do yet and that was the biggest of all. I’d kept it until last because I had to be sure of where I was going. Now that I knew that, now that I was certain about how it would turn out, there was no point in waiting longer.
I changed into a sharp gray suit, put on my dark blue overcoat and left the hotel. The car was in a parking lot, so I walked down there, tipped the kid a half and got the Ford rolling.
I wondered how she’d act, how she’d see it, and if it’d be the way she wanted it, too. Of course, I wasn’t free yet, I was still married to Beverly, but the lawyer had told me it shouldn’t be difficult to get a divorce. After all, she’d walked out on me and I’d stayed right there for a couple of days, waiting for her to return. The only thing the lawyer suggested was that I wait until after the baby was born. He said if we did that I could go into court and say how I wanted to support the kid and it would look better all around. As for the rape business, that didn’t amount to much, since she couldn’t prove anything and she’d lived with me as a wife for quite a while afterwards. If Bev
erly wouldn’t see things my way I might have to go to some other state but that wasn’t important because I intended to take a trip anyhow. One way or another, though, I’d get the divorce and that was all what counted.
When I reached town I drove right to the restaurant and parked. The shadows of an early evening hung low and it was getting much colder outside. I kicked the door open and went in.
The little guy in whites who usually sat at a rear table was behind the counter. He wiped his hands on his apron and came over as I sat down.
“Coffee?”
“Where’s the girl?” I wanted to know. “Julie Wilson. She working?”
“Who the hell knows?” he demanded, watching the door. “She never show up.”
“Not today?”
“Not two days. The boss he get sore. I get sore — plenty. She do this last week, too.”
“That’s funny.”
“Not funny,” he said. “I work butt off.”
That’s tough, I thought. Two, three months ago you were sitting in a pile of junk on the other side and now you’re too damned lazy to breathe.
“Thanks,” I said.
I went out and got into the car. I felt as though something had been cut loose inside. I was a jerk. I was completely gone on a dame and I had to do something about it.
I drove down to Main and turned right. The Saturday night crowd was boiling over the sidewalks. I took it easy until I got to South Street and then I cut off to the right. I could swing around that way and stay out of the traffic.
At the next block I went left again and picked up speed. But when I rolled up to the first intersection my foot just slid off the gas pedal. It’s funny how some things strike you, rolling right up out of the past and smacking at you deep inside. Like that old brick house on the corner, the one without any lights, where I’d followed Janet up the stairs one night a long time ago.
It all came back then, just for a second, the hotel and walking down here and how warm it had been. The darkness of the hall, too, and the sweet taste of her lips, and her scared and excited breathing when we’d gone into the room.
I cursed silently and felt the tires spin on the ice. It was all over — the apartment and the hospital and the six thousand bucks. It was finished. She’d been smart and I’d been a chump. So what?
