The Shark-Infested Custard

by Charles Willeford

  I have never been in love. I’m not even sure that I know what love is, in fact, or whether I would recognize it if it ever happened to me. But I was not, in the sense that the term is used generally, in love with Jannaire. All I really wanted with Jannaire was to screw her and screw her and screw her, and that was all. But that “all” was getting to be an obsession.

  It was Sunday morning.

  Saturday night, Eddie Miller and I had gone to the White Shark to play pool and drink a few beers. The place was crowded, and it was hard to get the pool table. Once we got it, when our turn came to challenge the winners, we were able to hold it all right, but on our last game we played an old man and Sadie. Sadie, who owns the White Shark, also works the bar (The White Shark is a beer-and-wine bar only), and she had to keep leaving the game to serve customers, usually when it was her turn to shoot. The old man took a maddeningly long time to make his shots, and the single game of eight-ball we played with Sadie and the old man lasted for almost an hour. Eddie decided to quit.

  Two or three times during the evening, Eddie, preoccupied with something, had started to tell me what was troubling him, but each time he changed his mind.

  I knew, or thought I knew, what was bothering him. He was still living with the wealthy widow in Miami Springs, a move he had made stubbornly against the advice of Larry, Don, and myself, and he had now discovered, I suspected, what a mistake he had made. The woman, who was still attractive, with a good, if rather lush, figure, was almost twice as old as Eddie, and she was undoubtedly smothering him. He wanted to talk about it, but was too embarrassed. I would not under any circumstances have pulled an “I told you so,” and Eddie knew me well enough to know this, but he was still reluctant to talk about his problems. I didn’t push him. He would eventually come around with his problem, whatever it was, and I would advise him as well as I could.

  We left the White Shark at eleven p.m., Eddie to drive home (to the widow’s house in Miami Springs), me to drive home alone to Dade Towers. He handed me a folded sheet of paper as we stood for a moment in the parking lot to suck in a little fresh, humid air.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “For now,” Eddie said, “just put it in your pocket. D’you remember that game we played one night? The night you had us all make a list of everything we had in our wallets? Then you had a psychological analysis of each one of us from our lists…”

  “Sure, I remember. But it wasn’t fair as far as you and Larry were concerned. I knew you guys too well already. But I hit the girls pretty well, I thought.”

  “I thought so, too. I don’t know how you did it, but that little chick I had, the Playboy bunny, turned as white as rice when you got onto her about her father…”

  “I can explain how I reached that conclusion. What she…”

  “I don’t want an explanation, Hank. We all laughed at the time, and you said yourself that it was inaccurate, at best, but I was impressed as hell. I never said so, Hank, but I was. I really was.”

  “It isn’t a trick, Eddie. There is some validity to the analysis, but it’s too general to be conclusive, for Christ’s sake. On Larry’s girl, the chubby brunette, I could say positively that she was a poor driver and she knew she was a lousy driver, because she had all of her earlier driver’s licenses in her wallet. She had kept old ones, even when she got her new and current license. And she admitted, as I recall, that I was right. She felt, she said, that she really didn’t deserve a driver’s license, and it made her feel more secure to have as many as possible.”

  “That was sharp to spot that, though. I was impressed by that analysis.”

  “Hell, Eddie, you could’ve made the same comment. I was lucky on that one. She could’ve just had her current license, and I never would’ve figured out that she was, or thought she was, a lousy driver. Actually, she was a pretty good driver. She never had an accident, she said. If more people thought they were lousy drivers and drove more carefully, there’d be fewer accidents.”

  “I know. I know. That isn’t the point. But what I’ve given you is a list of the shit Gladys carries in her handbag. In her wallet, and in her handbag, too. And as a favor—I hate to ask this, Hank—I’d like you to kind of look it over and give me an analysis of Gladys some time.”

  “Is there anything else you want to tell me about the problem, Ed? I mean, if there’s something specific, I might be able to do a better job, even though it won’t actually prove anything about what kind of woman she is.”

  “No, there’s nothing specific I want to get into. I think I know what kind of woman she is anyway. Besides, I don’t want to prejudice you any. I want you to be objective, as objective as you can, as if Gladys was a stranger, you know. I already know you don’t like her…”

  “I never said I didn’t like her.”

  “I know you didn’t. But I still want you to be objective.” Eddie looked away from me, and took a rumpled Lucky Strike out of his beatup package. This was a sure sign that he was nervous. Eddie, to my envy, only smoked one package of Luckys a week. This single pack, by the end of the week, was usually wrinkled and battered because he carried it with him all the time. Sometimes he would go for two full days without even thinking about smoking a cigarette. I smoked two packs a day, and if I was drinking at night, I often went through a third. So when he did light a Lucky, it was easy to see he was agitated about his problem.

  “That old trick of yours came back to me the other night, and I decided to try it,” Eddie said. “On Gladys, but without her knowing anything about it. So this morning, when she took some clothes out to the washer in the utility room, I grabbed her purse and made this inventory—the one I gave you.” He blushed, and took a deep drag on his Lucky. “I found out something about her already I didn’t know. She’s forty-seven, not forty-five. She lied to me, Hank. She told me she was only forty-five. But it was on her driver’s license, her age, I mean, forty-seven.”

  I nodded. “She might be even older than that,” I said. “She might’ve lied to the Highway Patrol, too. A woman who’ll tell a black lie to her lover wouldn’t hesitate to tell a white lie to the Highway Patrol.”

  “Jesus, Hank! Cut it out, will you? It’s bad enough she’s forty-seven without making her fifty, for Christ’s sake!”

  “I didn’t say she was fifty. All I said was that she might’ve taken off a couple of more years on her license. The possibility is there, isn’t it?”

  “I asked you to be objective, Hank.”

  “I am being objective. That’s what psychological analysis is, looking at every possible angle. There’s nothing tricky about a wallet survey, Eddie. It just happens that we had this professor at Michigan, a Harry Stack Sullivanite, he was, who taught us how to look for shortcuts. We played this game in class with each other, and it was fun because it was so half-assed. The reason I got good at it was because I tried it again when I was staff psychologist at the Pittsburgh Recruiting Station. For example, if a draftee told me he was gay, and then I looked into his wallet and found a couple of condoms, a picture of his girl friend, and about five scraps of paper with girls’ names and phone numbers on them, the evidence was contrary to what he said. It also worked the other way, with gays who claimed that they weren’t gay, guys who wanted to get into the Army. I remember one sonofabitch…”

  “Look, Hank, just go over the list for me, the one I gave you, and do what you can. It might be helpful to me. Okay?” “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “There’s no hurry, man. Next week, the week after—I don’t give a shit. Okay?”

  “Sure, Eddie. I’ll call you.”

  “I’m sorry, Hank. I got a lot on my mind these days. And that old man in there tonight drove me up the fucking wall.”

  “We should’ve gone to a flick. The White Shark’s too crowded on a Saturday night.”

  “I couldn’t have sat through a film. Goodnight, Hank.”

  So on Sunday morning, after I finished typing my sales reports and had them ready to mail out to
Atlanta the next morning, I pulled out the inventory Eddie had given me of Gladys Wilson’s handbag. As I started to unfold it, a long yellow legal-sized sheet of paper, the phone rang.

  It was Jannaire. The call was unexpected, because she had told me that she and her aunt were going to spend the weekend in Palm Beach.

  “My aunt went to Palm Beach, Hank, but at the last minute yesterday afternoon I begged off. I tried to call you last night, but you didn’t answer your phone.”

  “I went out to play some pool, but I was home by eleven-thirty, baby.”

  “I called around nine, I think it was.”

  “You said you were going to Palm Beach, so…”

  “I know. But I was lonely as hell last night. I wonder if you could come over for awhile this afternoon—around twelve-thirty or so, and I’ll fix us brunch. Did you have breakfast, or are you still just eating one meal a day?”

  “All I’ve had this morning was coffee. I’ll be there at twelve-twenty-nine. What shall I bring?”

  “Just yourself. Park in the street, not in the driveway. That’s the arrangement I’ve got with my neighbors downstairs. They use the driveway one month, and I use it the next. And this month they’re parking in the driveway. You’ve got my address?”

  “Your address and your number.”

  “Push the bell twice so I’ll know it’s you.”

  My heart was beating a little faster when I racked the phone. At last, I thought, my patience has paid off. I refolded Eddie’s list without looking at it, and threw it into the waste basket. Eddie’s problems were probably unsolvable anyway.

  I had about an hour and fifteen minutes to shave, shower, select the right clothes, and get ready for what I could envision as the greatest afternoon in the sack I had ever had.

  10

  Jannaire lived on LeJeune, in Coral Gables, in a two-story two-apartment duplex. Her apartment was the one on the top floor. There was hardly any yard in front of the duplex, and there were no garages. The neighbors below, whoever they were, had parked both of their cars in the short circular driveway.

  I had forgotten, when she told me on the phone to park in the street, that there was no parking allowed on LeJeune in the Gables. LeJeune is the main four-lane artery that leads from Coral Gables to the airport, so parking is wisely prohibited. I drove around the corner and parked on Santa Monica. As I walked back I noticed that Jannaire’s Porsche was also parked on Santa Monica, half-hidden by a huge pile of rotting vegetation that should have been collected weeks before.

  I buzzed twice, and Jannaire pushed the buzzer from upstairs to open the door. The stairs, in the exact center of the duplex, were steep, and I wondered, as I climbed them, what this architectural horror did to the unhappy people living below, with the big wedge slanting through the middle of their downstairs living room. Of course, architects do terrible things like that in Miami to build houses with additional space on small lots; but Jannaire, with the top apartment, certainly had the better deal of the two.

  Jannaire was wearing a shorty nightgown and a floor-length flimsy peignoir, both sea-green. Her long brown hair was held in place with a silk sea-green headband. She didn’t wear any makeup, not even the faint pinkish-white lipstick she usually wore during working hours, and her remarkable odor, which reminded me—perhaps because of the colors she wore—of the Seaquarium at midday, assailed and stung my nostrils like smelling salts. But instead of my eyes watering, my mouth watered, and I felt the firm stirring of an erection. The dark tangle of inky pubic hair was an irregular shadow clearly visible beneath the two thin thicknesses of gown and peignoir.

  She kissed the air, not me, trailed two fingers lightly across my cheek, and told me to sit down. I sat on the long white couch, and gulped in a few quick mouthfuls of airconditioned air as she went into the kitchen to get the coffee.

  The room was furnished ugly with oversized hotel-lobby-type furniture. There were two Magritte lithos on one lime wall, and an amateur watercolor of the Miami Beach skyline on another. A third wall, papered with silver wallpaper streaked with thin white stripes, held a blow-up photograph of Jannaire, taken when she was about nine or ten years old. The blow-up, about three by four feet, was framed with shiny chrome strips. In black and white, it held my interest, whereas the rest of the furnishings only indicated Jannaire’s taste for impersonality. Everything else in the room, except for the blow-up photo and perhaps the two Magrittes, would have served as lobby furniture for any of the beach motels north of Bal Harbour. There were even two lucite standing ashtray stands, holding small black metal bowls filled with sand. There were no books or magazines, and two droopy ferns, in brown pots, looked as though no one had talked to them in months.

  I studied the blow-up photo, astonished that such a pudgy, unattractive child, squinting against the bright sun in her eyes (the shadow of the male photographer—probably her father-slanted across the foreground of the lawn) could turn into such a lovely woman. For a moment, the photo reminded me of Don’s daughter, Maria, and I shuddered. I was immediately cheered, however, when I thought that there could be a similar future for Maria. Perhaps Maria, too, would be a beautiful woman some day; and for Don’s sake, I hoped so.

  Jannaire returned with the coffee, and set the silver service on the glass coffee table. I drank my coffee black, which I hated to do, and pointed to the blow-up.

  “Whatever possessed you, Jannaire,” I said, “to blow up that snapshot of yourself?”

  “How do you know it’s me? Do I look like that?”

  “Not any more you don’t, but it’s you, isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t me. It’s my younger sister. She’s dead now, and that was the only photograph of her that I had. She had others…” She shrugged, and twisted her lips into a rueful grimace “…but she burned most of her personal things before she killed herself.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s always sad when a child commits suicide…”

  “She wasn’t a child when she died. She was twenty-two.” “That makes it even worse,” I said.

  Jannaire stared at me for a long moment with her glinting, sienna eyes, shook herself slightly, and said, “Yes, it does. Now, what would you like for brunch?”

  “Do you have a menu?”

  “No, but if you tell me what you want, I’ll tell you what you can have.”

  “I’ll have you, then.” “Scrambled eggs? Bacon? Ham?”

  “No. Cottage cheese, with grapefruit segments, two four-minute eggs, fried eggplant, and an eight-ounce glass of V-8 juice.”

  “You don’t much care what you eat, do you?”

  “Not if I can’t have you, I don’t. And that’s the truth when I’m only eating once a day. I’d rather eat things I don’t like when I’m dieting this way, because I’m not tempted to eat any more of the same later on in the day. And I’ll have a St. James and soda, too.”

  “I’ll give you Chivas instead, and fried plantain instead of eggplant, but otherwise, you’ll get the breakfast you ordered.”

  “Good! I hate plantain worse than eggplant, but it’s just as filling.”

  That was the beginning of a strange afternoon.

  I could not bring myself to believe that Jannaire did not want me to seduce her. I tried everything I could think of, but I got nowhere. After eating the bland, unappetizing breakfast, and I ate alone because she had either eaten already or said that she had, I had two more scotches, switched over to beer when I began to feel them, and talked and talked. I grabbed her, I kissed her, and she got away from me. Once I chased her and got one hand between her thighs from behind, but she cleverly eluded me, fled to the back bedroom and locked the door. She stayed in there for almost an hour, while I drank two more beers, saying she wouldn’t come out again unless I promised to let her alone. I promised, reluctantly, and she came out—this time fully dressed, wearing one of her slack suits.

  I was sulky, pissed off and puzzled. There are ways to play the game, and there are certain unwritten rules to b
e followed. There are variations to the rules, which make the game interesting, but reliable patterns eventually emerge, one way or another, sets of clues, so to speak, and the game is either won or lost. I have won more games than I have lost because I have practiced the nuances and studied the angles a little closer than most men are willing to do. The discernible pattern, insofar as Jannaire was concerned, was the waiting game. By playing hard-to-get and yet by always holding out the musky carrot, I had recognized the classic pattern of her play early in our acquaintanceship.

  She had called me for a date, or a meeting, almost as often as I had called her. She also, when we had met at a bar or a restaurant, paid her half of the tab, thereby establishing her independence. I didn’t mind that. Tab-sharing, five years ago, was a rare phenomenon, but during the last couple of years it has happened as often as not—or at least an offer to pay half is made frequently. The insight required is to gauge whether the woman’s offer is sincere, or merely a half-hearted gesture to indicate a show of independence. If it were the latter, and you guessed wrong, accepting the proferred cash, you could quickly lose the girl and the game. But there was no doubt with Jannaire. She would pick up the check, put on her reading glasses, total it silently, and hand me the correct amount of cash for what she had ordered. She didn’t share tipping, of course, and in this respect I admired her perceptiveness. Women, when they tip at all, and most women truly hate to leave a tip, undertip—especially in Miami, if they are year-’round residents—whereas men like myself, who have a tendency, on other dates, to return to certain places, usually overtip. Overtipping is one of my faults, but I like to do it because I can afford to do so. By getting out of the tip altogether, but by still paying her share of the tab, Jannaire was able to establish her independence and essential femininity at the same time.