“What’ll it be?” said the little chef. He had a large fork and plate poised but Roy took them from him, to his annoyance, and said he would fix what he wanted himself.
Memo helped. “Don’t be stingy, Roy.”
“Pile it on, honey.”
“You sure are a scream the way you eat.”
“I am a picnic.” He kidded to ease the embarrassment his appetite caused him.
“Bump liked to shovel it down—” She caught herself.
After his plate was loaded, Memo placed a slice of ham and a roll on her own and they sat at a table in the far corner of the room—away from where Flores was standing—so Roy could concentrate on the food without having to bother with anybody.
Memo watched him, fascinated. She shredded the ham on her plate and nibbled on a roll.
“That all you’re eating?” he asked.
“I guess I haven’t got much appetite.”
He was gobbling it down and it gave him a feeling of both having something and wanting it the same minute he was having it. And every mouthful seemed to have the effect of increasing his desire for her. He thought how satisfying it would be to lift that yellow dress over her bare thighs.
Roy didn’t realize it till she mentioned it that his plate was empty. “Let me get you some more, hon.”
“I will get it myself.”
“Food is a woman’s work.” She took his plate to the table and the busy little chef heaped it high with corned beef, pastrami, turkey, potato salad, cheese, and pickles.
“You sure are nice to me,” he said.
“You are a nice guy.”
“Why did you get so much of it?”
“It’s good for you, silly.”
Roy laughed. “You sound like my grandma.”
Memo was interested. “Weren’t you brought up in an orphan’s home, Roy?”
“I went there after grandma died.”
“Didn’t you ever live with your mother?”
He was suddenly thoughtful. “Seven years.”
“What was she like? Do you remember?”
“A whore. She spoiled my old man’s life. He was a good guy but died young.”
A group of girls flocked through the door and Memo hastily excused herself. They were her showgirl friends from a Broadway musical that had just let out. She welcomed them and introduced them around. Dancing started and the party got livelier.
Roy polished his plate with a crust of bread. He felt as if he had hardly eaten anything—it was sliced so thin you could hardly chew your teeth into it.
Memo returned. “How about having something different now?” But Roy said no and got up. “Lemme say hello to some of the gals that came in.”
“You are all alike.” He thought she sounded jealous and it was all right if she was. The girls she brought him around to were tickled to meet him. They felt his muscles and wanted to know how he belted the ball so hard.
“Clean living,” Roy told them.
The girls laughed out loud. He looked them over. The best of the bunch was a slightly chubby one with an appealing face, but in her body she did not compare to Memo.
When he told Memo she had more of what it took than the rest of them put together, she giggled nervously. He looked at her and felt she was different tonight in a way he could not figure out. He worried about Gus, but then he thought that after tonight he would be getting it steady, and then he would tell her he did not want that glass-eye monkey tailing her around.
Memo led him back to the table. She pointed out what she wanted for Roy and the chef ladled it into the plate. Her own came back with a slice of ham and a roll on it. He followed her to the corner table. He wondered if Flores was still standing in the opposite corner, watching, but he didn’t look.
Gazing at the mountain of stuff Memo handed him, he said, “I am getting tired of eating.”
Memo had returned to the subject of his mother. “But didn’t you love her, Roy?”
He stared at her through one eye. “Who wants to know?”
“Just me.”
“I don’t remember.” He helped himself to a forkful of food. “No.”
“Didn’t she love you?”
“She didn’t love anybody.”
Memo said, “Let’s try some new combinations with the buffet. Sometimes when you eat things that you didn’t know could mix together but they do, you satisfy your appetite all at once. Now let’s mix this lobster meat with hidden treats of anchovies, and here we will lay it on this tasty pumpernickel and spread Greek salad over it, then smear this other slice of bread with nice sharp cheese and put it on top of the rest.”
“All it needs now is a shovel of manure and a forest will grow out of it.”
“Now don’t be dirty, Roy.”
“It looks like it could blow a man apart.”
“All the food is very fresh.”
After making the sandwich she went to the ladies’ room. He felt depressed. Now why the hell did she have to go and ask him questions about his old lady? Thinking about her, he chewed on the sandwich. With the help of three bottles of lemon pop he downed it but had to guzzle three more of lime to get rid of the artificial lemon taste. He felt a little drunk and snickered because it was a food and pop drunk. He had the odd feeling he was down on his hands and knees searching for something that he couldn’t find.
Flores stood at the table.
“If you tell them to go home,” he hissed, “they weel.”
Roy stared. “Tell who?”
“The players. They are afraid to stay here but they don’t go because you stay.”
“Go ahead and tell them to go.”
“You tell them,” Flores urged. “They weel leesten to your word.”
“Right,” said Roy.
Memo returned and Flores left him. Roy struggled to his feet, broke into a sweat, and sat down again. Fowler grabbed Memo and they whirled around. Roy didn’t like them pressed so close together.
His face was damp. He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and felt Iris’ letter. For a second he thought he had found what he was looking for. More clearly than ever he remembered her pretty face and the brown eyes you could look into and see yourself as something more satisfying than you were, and he remembered telling her everything, the first time he had ever told anybody about it, and the relieved feeling he had afterward, and the long swim and Iris swimming down in the moonlit water searching for him, and the fire on the beach, she naked, and finally him banging her. For some reason this was the only thing he was ashamed of, though it couldn’t be said she hadn’t asked for it.
Fat girls write fat letters, he thought, and then he saw the little chef looking at him and was astonished at how hungry he felt.
Roy pushed himself up and headed for the table. The chef shined up a fast plate and with delight lifted the serving fork.
“I’ve had a snootful,” Roy said.
The chef tittered. “It’s all fresh food.”
Roy looked into his button eyes. They were small pig’s eyes. “Who says so?”
“It’s the best there is.”
“It stinks.” He turned and walked stiffly to the door. Memo saw him. She waved gaily and kept on dancing.
He dragged his belly through the hall. When the elevator came it dropped him down in the lobby. He went along the corridor into the grill room. Carefully sitting down at the table, he ordered six hamburgers and two tall glasses of milk —clean food to kill the pangs of hunger.
The waiter told the cook the order, who got six red meat patties out of the refrigerator and pressed them on the grill. They softly sputtered. He thought he oughtn’t to eat any more, but then he thought I am hungry. No, I am not hungry, I am hungry, whatever that means … What must I do not to be hungry? He considered fasting but he hadn’t fasted since he was a kid. Besides, it made him hungry. He tried hard to recapture how it felt when he was hungry after a day of fishing and was sizzling lake bass over an open fire and boiling coffee in a tin c
an. All around his head were the sharp-pointed stars.
He was about to lift himself out of the chair but remembered his date with Memo and stayed put. There was time to kill before that so he might as well have a bite.
A hand whacked him across the shoulders.
It was Red Blow … Roy slowly sat down.
“Looked for a minute like you were gonna murder me,” said Red.
“I thought it was somebody else.”
“Who, for instance?”
Roy thought. “I am not sure. Maybe the Mex.”
“Flores?”
“Sometimes he gets on my nerves.”
“He is really a nice guy.”
“I guess so.”
Red sat down. “Don’t eat too much crap. We have a big day comin’ up.”
“I am just taking a bite.”
“Better get to bed and have plenty of sleep.”
“Yes.”
Red looked glum. “Can’t sleep myself. Don’t know what’s the matter with me.” He yawned and twitched his shoulders. “You all right?”
“Fine and dandy. Have a hamburger.”
“Not for me, thanks. Guess I will go for a little walk. Best thing when you can’t sleep.”
Roy nodded.
“Take care of yourself, feller. Tomorrow’s our day. Pop’ll dance a jig after tomorrow. You’ll be his hero.”
Roy didn’t answer.
Red smiled a little sadly. “I’m gonna be sorry when it’s over.”
The waiter brought the six hamburgers. Red looked at them absently. “It’s all up to you.” He got up and left.
Through the window Roy watched him go down the street.
“I’ll be the hero.”
The hamburgers looked like six dead birds. He took up the first one and gobbled it down. It was warm but dry. No more dead birds, he thought … not without ketchup. He poured a blop on three of the birds. Then he shuffled them up with the other two so as not to know which three had the ketchup and which two hadn’t. Eating them, he could not tell the difference except that they all tasted like dead birds. They were not satisfying but the milk was. He made a mental note to drink more milk.
He paid and left. The elevator went up like a greased shot. As it stopped he felt a ripping pain on the floor of the stomach. The wax-faced elevator man watched him with big eyes. He stared at the old scarecrow, then stumbled out. He stood alone in the hall, trying to figure it out. Something was happening that he didn’t understand. He roused himself to do battle, wishing for Wonderboy, but no enemy was visible. He rested and the pain left him.
The party was quiet. Flores had disappeared. The lights were dimmed and there was some preliminary sex work going on. Olson had his blonde backed into a corner. A group near the piano were passing a secret bottle around. In the center of the darkened room one of the girls held her dress over her pink panties and was doing bumps and grinds. A. silent circle watched her.
Roy buttonholed Fowler. “Stay off the rotgut, kid.”
“Stay away from the stuffin’s, big shot.”
Roy swiped at him but Fowler was gone. He wiped his sweaty face with his sleeve and searched for Memo to tell her it was time. He couldn’t find her in the fog that had blown up, so he left the party and reeled down the stairs to the fourth floor. Feeling for her buzzer, he found the key left in the lock and softly turned it.
She was lying naked in bed, chewing a turkey drumstick as she looked at the pictures in a large scrapbook. Not till he was quite close did she see him. She let out a scream.
“You frightened me, Roy.” Memo shut the scrapbook.
He had caught a glimpse of Bump’s face. I’ll take care of that bastard. He unzipped his fly.
Her green eyes closely watched him, her belly heaving above the red flame.
Undressing caused him great distress. Inside him they were tearing up a street. The sweat dripped from his face … Yet there was music, the sweetest piping he had ever heard. Dropping his pants he approached for the piping fulfillment.
She drew her legs back. Her expression puzzled him. It was not—the lights were wavering, blinking on and off. A thundering locomotive roared through the mountain. As it burst out of the rock with a whistle howl he felt on the verge of an extraordinary insight, but a bolt of shuddering lightning came at him from some unknown place. He threw up his arms for protection and it socked him, yowling, in the shattered gut. He lived a pain he could not believe existed. Agonized at the extent of it, Roy thudded to his knees as a picture he had long carried in his mind broke into pieces. He keeled over.
The raft with the singing green-eyed siren guarding the forbidden flame gave off into the rotting flood a scuttering one-eyed rat. In the distance though quite near, a toilet flushed, and though the hero braced himself against it, a rush of dirty water got a good grip and sucked him under.
Judge Banner had a money-saving contract with a small maternity hospital near Knights Field (it was there Bump had died) to treat all player emergencies, so that was where they had rushed Roy. The flustered obstetrician on duty decided to deliver the hero of his appendix. However, he fought them deliriously and his strength was too much for the surgeon, anesthetist, attendant, and two mild maternity nurses. They subdued him with a hypo only to uncover a scar snaking down his belly. Investigation showed he had no appendix —it had long ago been removed along with some other stuff. (All were surprised at his scarred and battered body.) The doctors considered cutting out the gall bladder or maybe part of the stomach but nobody wanted to be responsible for the effect of the operation upon the Knights and the general public. (The city was aghast. Crowds gathered outside the hospital, waiting for bulletins. The Japanese government issued an Edict of Sorrow.) So they used the stomach pump instead and dredged up unbelievable quantities of bilge. The patient moaned along with the ladies in labor on the floor, but the doctors adopted a policy of watchful waiting and held off anything drastic.
His belly racked his mind. Icy streams coursed through the fiery desert. He chattered and steamed, rarely conscious, tormented by his dreams. In them he waxed to gigantic heights then abruptly fell miles to be a little Roy dwarf (Hey, mister, you’re stepping on my feet). He was caught in roaring gales amid loose, glaring lights, so bright they smothered the eyeballs. Iris’ sad head topped Memo’s dancing body, with Memo’s vice versa upon the shimmying rest of Iris, a confused fusion that dizzied him. He hungered in nightmare for quantities of exotic food—wondrous fowl stuffed with fruit, and the multitudinous roe of tropical fish. When he bent his toothy head to devour, every last morsel vanished. So they served him a prime hunk of beef and he found it enormously delicious only to discover it was himself he was chewing. His thunderous roars sent nurses running from all directions. They were powerless before his flailing fists.
In delirium he hopped out of bed and hunted through the corridors in a nightgown—frightening the newly delivered mothers—for a mop or broom that he snatched back to his aseptic chamber and practiced vicious cuts with before the dresser mirror … They found him on the floor … At dawn he warily rose and ferreted a plumber’s plunger out of the utility closet but this time he was caught by three attendants and dragged back to bed. They strapped him down and there he lay a prisoner, as the frightened Knights dropped the third of three hot potatoes to the scarred and embittered last-place Reds. Since the resurgent Pirates had scattered the brains of the Phils, three in a bloody row, the season ended in a dead heat. A single playoff game in Knights Field was arranged for Monday next, the day before the World Series.
Late that afternoon the fever abated. He returned, unstrapped, to consciousness and recognized a harried Memo at his bedside. From her he learned what had happened to the team, and groaned in anguish. When she left, with a hankie pressed to her reddened nostrils, he discovered his troubles had only just begun. The specialist in the case, a tall stoop-shouldered man with a white mustache and sad eyes, who absently hefted a heavy gold watch as he spoke, gave Roy a bill of particula
rs. He began almost merrily by telling him there wasn’t much doubt he would participate in the Monday playoff (Roy just about leaped out of the bed but the doctor held him back with a gesture). He could play, yes, though he’d not feel at his best, nor would he be able to extend himself so far as he would like, but he would certainly be present and in the game, which, as the doctor understood it, was the big thing for both Roy and his public. (Interest in the matter was so great, he said, that he had permitted release of this news to the press.) Public clamor had compelled his reluctant yielding, though it was his considered opinion that, ideally, Roy ought to rest a good deal longer before getting back to his—ah—normal activities. But someone had explained to him that baseball players were in a way like soldiers, and since he knew that the body’s response to duty sometimes achieved many of the good results of prolonged care and medication, he had agreed to let him play.
However, all good news has its counterpart of bad, he almost sadly said, and to prove the point let it come out that it would be best for Roy to say goodbye forever to baseball—if he hoped to stay alive. His blood pressure—at times amazingly high—complicated by an athlete’s heart—could conceivably cause his sudden death if he were to attempt to play next season, whereas if he worked at something light and relaxing, one might say he could go on for years, as many had. The doctor slipped the gold watch into his vest pocket, and nodding to the patient, departed. Roy felt that this giant hand holding a club had broken through the clouds and with a single blow crushed his skull.
The hours that followed were the most terrifying of his life (more so than fifteen years ago). He lived in the thought of death, would not move, speak, take food or receive visitors. Yet all the while he fanatically fought the doctor’s revelation, wrestled it every waking second, though something in him said the old boy with the white mustache was right. He felt he had for years suspected something wrong, and this was it. Too much pressure in the pipes—blew your conk off. (He saw it blown sky high.) He was through—finished. Only he couldn’t—just couldn’t believe it. Me. I. Roy Hobbs forever out of the game? Inconceivable. He thought of the fantastic hundreds of records he had broken in so short a time, which had made him a hero to the people, and he thought of the thousands—tens of thousands—that he had pledged himself to break. A moan escaped him.
The Natural Page 18
