Thus I walked for hours, madly, with my cheeks flaming and my hair flying. My heart thumped; I was dead tired, but my cruel passion was not exhausted. I, at last, came home. It seemed to me that once there, I could take off all my clothes, bathe my skin, and even lacerate it, tear it so that the boiling blood would rush out. Nothing could satisfy me, of that then I was quite sure, and I wondered what I would do when I was married to some man in a solitary home and these dreadful loves, the love of those who die of love, overcame me.
I reached home in the same state, behaved furiously to my sisters and mother, spent a long time in a cold bath, and came out raging. This went on for three days. But by this time I had so outraged everyone in the house that I could only go to my father’s place for company. He never took things hard, and that cool individual, Persia, always laughed at me. On the way up in a bus, the air from parks and the river blew upon me; I felt that I was getting better. I asked myself, “What was this visitation?”
But I did not know. I wanted for the first time to catch Persia alone and ask, was love so, in adult life; well, not ask it, but guess.
Persia was glad to see me. I could answer the telephone while she was out marketing; and scarcely had she gone when Luke Adams, the cartoonist, rang at the doorbell and walked in, shaking himself like a shaggy dog and embracing me casually and genially, as all women. He was a shabby, dark, thin-faced man whose personal beauty poured out of him intermittently. He made men and women love him and behaved with the nonchalance of the coquette. He made moves to catch his prey; but once caught, he left them to themselves, knowing they would be tamed. He had a pack on his back which he was taking to the devil; once he caught your soul, he was done with you, though he had a certain possessive feeling— would not let others steal you—my merchandise, he thought. “They,” he thought, “will cry at my funeral.” He had, nevertheless, a manly heart; brave, free, beyond a certain point no one could possess him, though everyone seemed to be allowed to love him to this point. He possessed himself. Dangerous possession. He had the art thus of pleasing women without troubling himself at all, and perhaps thus came the strange legend he had about his women: “I do nothing really; women attack me.”
He troubled men and women. He was the possessed. He had that possession they all longed for. He had liquid, squinting, wise smiles and the unreassuring predatory absences of the cat. Hardly anyone in the country called him Mr. Adams, but Luke.
He kissed me as a matter of course, and in kissing him, I put my arm round the small of his back. He drew away and looked at me with a yellow gleam, but seeing how it was, an accident, he smiled and went into the dining room where he took off his pinched and stained hat and threw it on the floor. He tumbled his books, satchel, and newspapers on a chair.
“Well, little Letty, how’s school?”
“I’ve left school. I’m looking for a job.”
“Oh? That’s smart! Something intellectual, eh? Or a typist, eh? You’ve changed since I saw you! Seen a bit of life?”
He smiled and spread his newspaper, his eyes chasing down the columns.
“Not intellectual! Advertising copy, perhaps. My grandmother knows people in Lord and Taylor, Bonwit’s—that sort of thing!”
He lifted one eye, laughed, “Good! You ought to see what kind of a fist you can make of it—hullo!” and he returned to his reading. He looked up to say apologetically, “They’re—uh—expecting— where’s Persia?”
“Mr. Adams! Why do you ignore me! I’m not a child. I’m a woman. I was a Y.C.L.’er—I wrote plays—I’m a human being too.”
He looked at me over the top of the paper, smiling quizzically, “I noticed you’d changed; you’ve been knocking up against life a bit, is that it?”
I frowned. He grinned and went back to his paper. Presently, after considering me, he folded his paper, took a pint bottle of whisky out of his satchel, and put it on the table.
“Don’t get mad, little Letty; I brought this along. Thought Perse might have a nip. She likes it. Do you know where the glasses are? Are you allowed to drink, though?”
“I’m a two-bottle man,” I cried, running for the kitchen.
“Two bottles of orange juice, pickled sunshine, eh?” he chuckled, and from the end of the passage I saw him casting his eyes sidelong at the newspaper. We had a couple of ponies each and Luke began to sit toward me, with his hair tousled and his eye merrily fixed upon me, “You’re a pretty girl, Letty. How’s that Clays? I read some of his stuff. Good stuff!”
“Clays is all right. But he’s a long way away. I’d like to go over and join him.”
“Be a vivandière, eh? Be soldier’s mate? That’s all right.”
“Be a gun-moll. But I’m fighting here too, for Spain.”
“Ye-es,” he said, pouring some more whisky. “Where’s Solander?”
“At work.”
“Well, he’ll be home soon, I suppose.”
I looked him over. He was unshaved and one tooth was missing in front; he looked rascally and downtrodden, but he didn’t seem to know it. He beamed upon me.
“Have you had lunch, Luke?”
“No-o. But I had late breakfast.”
“There’s some cold chicken fricassee out there; do you want some?”
He said Persia would feed him when she came. She always did. “I’ll heat it.”
“No, no, I—”
“Yes, do, Luke.”
He gave in, was ill at ease, and after a minute took up his paper and began to read it. Everyone knew how badly he ate and how sick he was with his chest. I heated the food in a rough sort of way, and set the table. I said, “I see there’s some black bean soup, too. Would you like that first?”
He said genially, looking at his paper, making a concession, “All right.”
I had already heated it, set it in a plate, and now put it before him. I felt the service, which I had never done, suited me badly, but I did it, because he looked so poor. He was genially awkward, but sat and ate, waving his hand, however, and saying, “If Perse comes and—she’ll wonder—she wants it for dinner, maybe—?”
Although irritated by waiting upon him, I went and got the chicken and sat down to look at him eating. He put away his paper, “Letty, you’re a good cook!”
“A good canned cook.”
He put down his spoon, and felt in several of his pockets. At last he brought out a couple of packets.
“Look, some phlox seeds. Why don’t you put them in your window boxes down at home. Girls like flowers.”
“Thanks, Luke, but I don’t want ’em. I hate watering things and no one else would. Give them to Perse.”
When I brought in the chicken and the coffee, he looked at it, with hesitation, “We oughtn’t to rob Perse this way.”
“You mean, she wouldn’t feed you?”
“Oh, that’s true, she always has something to eat. Sign of a good woman, Letty.”
He laughed reminiscently through his chicken. I told him I didn’t care if I cleaned out the larder, for they wouldn’t care. They didn’t live that way. When he had finished his mouthful, he felt through his pockets again and brought out other little packets from several; “Do you do any cooking yourself, at home?”
“No. I hate the kitchen!”
“Well—” he said. “Well—anyhow,” pushing the packet at me, “anyhow give the packet to your mother. Saffron’s good, rice dishes, paella, fish, Spanish dishes. Mm!” and he went on eating.
“Oh, look, my hand is bright yellow!”
Luke looked for a few seconds and the meaty palm I showed him stuck out boldly. He mumbled, “See you don’t waste it.”
I laughed to provoke him. Luke said, “He’s a Spaniard. He lives behind the shop. The man who gave it to me. His brother mends watches. He plays the guitar. He’s saving up to see Mexico, mi tierra, he calls it.”
“Yes?”
Luke said, “They came in through Miami and tried to get a job, but they chased him away; they don’t like them down the
re, or any other South Americans. They think they’re a kind of—uh—Negro.”
“Yes.”
“He says he doesn’t like the women down there”; Luke shook his head. “Poor girls,” very intimately, he went on; “no free women there at all, slaves in marriage, slaves outside marriage.”
“I know, it’s the same here.”
Luke took no notice of me. He went on eating his chicken and looking at his plate intimately. He murmured, “And then the outcast—women; the pariahs; you know—” he did not say the word, “and even some of the wives—stupid, slovenly, go about in dressing gowns with their hair in wisps—fah! slovenly. And the gutters— smell, you know.”
I said I was never there in the South, but I had heard. Luke continued quietly, “But a good climate, it’s very healthy; the children ought to be healthy. The Negroes love children; the Spaniards too; all native peoples.”
Luke Adams had a wife with wispy hair and with one stringy child and I was embarrassed, but not he; he was not referring to his family. He murmured instead that this Spaniard with the guitar had adopted a ten-year-old boy that he had found hanging round the Union Hall, a Spanish boy whose parents had died in a bus accident. He slept sometimes at one place, sometimes at another, sometimes in the Union Hall. Now, he slept with the Spaniard, Antonio, and his brother; and they had no place but a curtained-off place in their shop, where they were not supposed to sleep, but which they used for their living.
“So,” said Luke Adams, “I took him, of course. But now Elsie doesn’t want him. I don’t blame her. He’s noisy—of course; can’t settle down. I thought—Perse and Solander might take him. Or perhaps they know a place in the country, he needs the country. Thin, nervous—”
He chewed at the last chicken bone, and his tooth-lack showed as his long, dark lips curled in a confident smile.
“Thought they might be glad—there’s a bed here.” He had become quite cheerful.
“I don’t know,” I said, much displeased. So the saffron and the phlox were for that.
“Perhaps your mother would have room—no boys—perhaps she likes boys,” he ventured, with much simplicity.
“My mother—doesn’t care for strangers.”
“No, no,” he grumbled. Then he became angry.
“I took him to Cassell’s, and they said they had no room. When I went to stay at Mark Handel’s he took me all round the damn town looking for someone to put me up. I could have slept with little Mark—his son, that is. I said I’d take the boy.”
“Where was Elsie, your wife?”
“She was—” he waved his hand, and after thinking, said deeply, seductively, “In the country, we have a little place, good for children. Children need air. And I thought Leon—that’s the boy—but naturally, she had enough on her hands.”
“Where are you staying, then?”
“I was at the Union Square Hotel,” he said resentfully, “and they gave me a little room, like a box without a window. Jesus!” He looked at me.
“Then Leon—the boy—I left him with Ethel Brown, a woman I know in Brooklyn. I met her at the meeting—a meeting I was at—she has a heart as big as a whale,” and he repeated, staring reproachfully at me, “big as a whale!”
“Luke!”
He looked up quickly, with a smile, “Yes?”
“Luke!” But I shook my head.
He smiled eagerly.
“What is it, Letty?”
“We’re guests, girls of my age, we have no homes. If this or that were my home, you could have ten of your adopted children there,” and low, I added, “and not even adopted.”
“Letty!” he cried, “come here. I would kiss you, but if I did—” and he did so. I broke away. “So you’ll take him here or down there for a few days? It’s only till we get a decent place for the poor kid.”
He had begun to walk and had reached the wall. I came to him against the cream wall and held my face up to him; he laid his long, dark lips against mine, and this was the first time that ever I was really kissed. A spark flew between us and I became a woman of fire. I felt the shape of my limbs from within; they were dark, round, pouring downwards with the blood. I trembled. I thought at the same time, Can I learn from him to kiss like that? But this is it, I thought; oh, the rest—poor men—
“A little girl,” he said, with a wondering voice, “just a little girl.”
He stood against the wall, himself trembling. I kissed him beside the mouth. He said, gutturally soft, “You’re wonderful, Letty, you’re a wonderful girl.”
It came so mechanically from him that I thought, This is the thing he says, and I simply echoed him, “You’re wonderful to me, Luke.”
“Letty, Letty,” and in a deeper voice, “Letty!”
“To me you are so wonderful, Luke; I’ve always thought about you.”
“You’re sweet, Letty, you’re sweet.”
“You’re a great man, you’re different from all other men, everyone knows—everyone feels it—you are a man. What we mean by a man.”
He broke away with a sob.
“Don’t go,” I muttered.
“I must go.”
“Don’t go.”
We embraced again, nearer the door. He had, strangely, collected his hat, his books, but not his satchel. Luke looked down at me, and put his hand on the roots of my hair on the forehead. He cried fervently, “I could give you everything—everything in my life. I want to tell you so much. If only I could talk to you. I want to love you, Letty, I want to—” he muttered and muttered, words deep and obscene.
“Why don’t you, Luke?” I said, quite drunk with him. We were at the door. He had jammed on his hat and slightly opened the door. He looked round at me with wild, black eyes, his hair flying. He looked as if he had just come out of a street fight. He smiled and bent toward me, “The boy—is it all right? Can you really take him? Persuade them. I can’t face them—now. I’ll be back, after dinner.”
“I’ll ask them, but for how long?”
Luke said carelessly, “Oh, a few days—till I get the ticket back— to where I got him from, southwest, a—place—here he’d be all right. Good company. Good food. A clean place to sleep. You’ve no idea what a difference that makes. Nice boy.”
“I understood he was a regular little hobo—”
“Just had no opportunity, he’ll be all right. Just tell Solander. Well, I’ll tell him—but you,” he leaned forward mysteriously, “you break the ground.”
He sauntered over and rang the elevator bell. I went out. He tangled with me again, his eyes maddened, “I want to love you, Letty, I want to love you.”
“Will you come and see me at my own place?”
“Where’s that?”
The elevator had come to the floor, and he scribbled the address in a small breastpocket notebook.
“I’ll get round there sometime,” he said, smiling.
As the lift was going down, Persia and Solander came up the stairs. They had seen Luke Adams in the lift, and they found me as I was then standing, leaning against the wall, inside the door which was on the latch.
“What’s the matter with you?” said Solander. “You look mussed up; you look tousled.”
“No; Luke was here, and he’s coming back after dinner.”
Persia let out a cry, “I thought he was coming for dinner,” and in an ill temper, went into the kitchen. When we entered the dining room, the bottle of whisky was standing on the table, with the plates, glasses, and the rest of it, and Solander said irritably, “What? He ate, and you had drinks?”
“Can’t I hide anything from you, Papa? Oh, that Sherlock.”
“Well, you look queer, and here are the remains—now you clean the place up. It looks like an illicit love affair,” he said, looking me in the eyes.
I laughed, but I was frightened when I saw my appearance in the mirror.
Luke would be very angry with me when he heard the result of the night’s negotiations. They refused to take the orphan boy, L
eon, into their home. Solander said, “This is just the anteroom to my keeping him forever. Everyone knows our Luke. Nothing doing.”
I went home early, in a fit of passion, like nothing I had felt before; I was madly in love with Luke Adams. A hopeless affair it was, for he was forty, newly married after a wanton life, and with a young child; he had settled down at last. But I now knew I had never even known what love was before; and I say now, a Lovelace he is, no doubt, but this is the only man I ever met that I really loved fatally.
I did not escape a homily. My father went out with me, and I was glad of that. I was not now used to walking about the streets at night without a man by my side. But my father took me to a cafeteria, brought two coffees to our table, and told me he thought I was getting into loose ways and I must look to myself. As to Luke Adams, he was a married man and a well-known libertine. What could he offer me? I looked at my father with exasperation. This kind of man, the loyal one, does not understand that a woman does not need to be offered something—for my poor father supposed I wanted a home, an income. And as to the married state in which Luke found himself, I scarcely thought Solander had the right to comment upon that. I kept silent; but my father continued, I must find a job and settle down to work. He would give me no more money to waste.
“What can Luke offer you?” he asked irritably. “I see you’re going to turn into a bum, unless I spank you.”
I laughed blackly. What could he offer me? Marijuana; but you can’t explain that to Solander.
Papa refused to go home with me, and I bussed drearily all the way home. I tossed about at night, thinking over my sins—but after a short time there came back this flame, the love between Luke and me.
Jacky had said foolish things to him and been turned down by him, on account of her youth, perhaps. Many other women had had him and lost him. I hoped I would enjoy him. For the first time I was really in love. As to his wife—she had the leavings of many women and who could believe that Casanova would be faithful? Who worried about her?
Letty Fox Page 46
