Miss Lonelyhearts / the Day of the Locust

by Nathanael West

  He was surprised and mumbled something about there being no cigars in the house but that he would go to the store for them if… Having to say all this made him unhappy and he took the whiskey around again. He poured very generous shots.

  “That’s a becoming shade of green,” Tod said.

  Faye peacocked for them all.

  “I thought maybe it was a little gaudy…vulgar you know.”

  “No,” Claude said enthusiastically, “it’s stunning.”

  She repaid him for his compliment by smiling in a peculiar, secret way and running her tongue over her lips. It was one of her most characteristic gestures and very effective. It seemed to promise all sorts of undefined intimacies, yet it was really as simple and automatic as the word thanks. She used it to reward anyone for anything, no matter how unimportant.

  Claude made the same mistake Tod had often made and jumped to his feet.

  “Won’t you sit here?” he said, waving gallantly at his chair. She accepted by repeating the secret smile and the tongue caress. Claude bowed, but then, realized that everyone was watching him, added a little mock flourish to make himself less ridiculous. Tod joined them, then Earle and Miguel came over. Claude did the courting while the others stood by and stared at her.

  “Do you work in pictures, Mr. Estee?” she asked.

  “Yes. You’re in pictures, of course?”

  Everyone was aware of the begging note in his voice, but no one smiled. They didn’t blame him. It was almost impossible to keep that note out when talking to her. Men used it just to say good morning.

  “Not exactly, but I hope to be,” she said. “I’ve worked as an extra, but I haven’t had a real chance yet. I expect to get one soon. All I ask is a chance. Acting is in my blood. We Greeners, you know, were all theatre people from away back.”

  She didn’t let Claude finish, but he didn’t care.

  “Not musicals, but real dramas. Of course, maybe light comedies at first. All I ask is a chance. I’ve been buying a lot of clothes lately to make myself one. I don’t believe in luck. Luck is just hard work, they say, and I’m willing to work as hard as anybody.”

  “You have a delightful voice and you handle it well,” he said.

  He couldn’t help it. Having once seen her secret smile and the things that accompanied it, he wanted to make her repeat it again and again.

  “I’d like to do a show on Broadway,” she continued. “That’s the way to get a start nowadays. They won’t talk to you unless you’ve had stage experience.”

  She went on and on, telling him how careers are made in the movies and how she intended to make hers. It was all nonsense. She mixed bits of badly understood advice from the trade papers with other bits out of the fan magazines and compared these with the legends that surrounded the activities of screen stars and executives. Without any noticeable transition, possibilities became probabilities and wound up as inevitabilities. At first she occasionally stopped and waited for Claude to chorus a hearty agreement, but when she had a good start, all her questions were rhetorical and the stream of words rippled on without a break.

  None of them really heard her. They were all too busy watching her smile, laugh, shiver, whisper, grow indignant, cross and uncross her legs, stick out her tongue, widen and narrow her eyes, toss her head so that her platinum hair splashed against the red plush of the chair back. The strange thing about her gestures and expressions was that they didn’t really illustrate what she was saying. They were almost pure. It was as though her body recognized how foolish her words were and tried to excite her hearers into being uncritical. It worked that night; no one even thought of laughing at her. The only move they made was to narrow their circle about her.

  Tod stood on the outer edge, watching her through the opening between Earle and the Mexican. When he felt a light tap on his shoulder, he knew it was Homer, but didn’t turn. When the tap was repeated, he shrugged the hand away. A few minutes later, he heard a shoe squeak behind him and turned to see Homer tiptoeing off. He reached a chair safely and sank into it with a sigh. He put his heavy hands on the knees, one on each, and stared for a while at their backs. He felt Tod’s eyes on him and looked up and smiled.

  His smile annoyed Tod. It was one of those irritating smiles that seem to say: “My friend, what can you know of suffering?” There was something very patronizing and superior about it, and intolerably snobbish.

  He felt hot and a little sick. He turned his back on Homer and went out the front door. His indignant exit wasn’t very successful. He wobbled quite badly and when he reached the sidewalk, he had to sit down on the curb with his back against a date palm.

  From where he was sitting, he couldn’t see the city in the valley below the canyon, but he could see the reflection of its lights, which hung in the sky above it like a batik parasol. The unlighted part of the sky at the edge of the parasol was a deep black with hardly a trace of blue.

  Homer followed him out of the house and stood standing behind him, afraid to approach. He might have sneaked away without Tod’s knowing it, if he had not suddenly looked down and seen his shadow.

  “Hello,” he said.

  He motioned for Homer to join on the curb.

  “You’ll catch cold,” Homer said.

  Tod understood his protest. He made it because he wanted to be certain that his company was really welcome. Nevertheless, Tod refused to repeat the invitation. He didn’t even turn to look at him again. He was sure he was wearing his long-suffering smile and didn’t want to see it.

  He wondered why all his sympathy had turned to malice. Because of Faye? It was impossible for him to admit it. Because he was unable to do anything to help him? This reason was a more comfortable one, but he dismissed it with even less consideration. He had never set himself up as a healer.

  Homer was looking the other way, at the house, watching the parlor window. He cocked his head to one side when someone laughed. The four short sounds, ha-ha and again ha-ha, distinct musical notes, were made by the dwarf.

  “You could learn from him,” Tod said.

  “What?” Homer asked, turning to look at him.

  “Let it go.”

  His impatience both hurt and puzzled Homer. He saw that and motioned for him to sit down, this time emphatically.

  Homer obeyed. He did a poor job of squatting and hurt himself. He sat nursing his knee.

  “What is it?” Tod finally said, making an attempt to be kind.

  “Nothing, Tod, nothing.”

  He was grateful and increased his smile. Tod couldn’t help seeing all its annoying attributes, resignation, kindliness, and humility.

  They sat quietly, Homer with his heavy shoulders hunched and the sweet grin on his face, Tod frowning, his back pressed hard against the palm tree. In the house the radio was playing and its blare filled the street.

  They sat for a long time without speaking. Several times Homer started to tell Tod something but he didn’t seem able to get the words out. Tod refused to help him with a question.

  His big hands left his lap, where they had been playing “here’s the church and here the steeple,” and hid in his armpits. They remained there for a moment, then slid under his thighs. A moment later they were back in his lap. The right hand cracked the joints of the left, one by one, then the left did the same service for the right. They seemed easier for a moment, but not for long. They started “here’s the church” again, going through the entire performance and ending with the joint manipulation as before. He started a third time, but catching Tod’s eyes, he stopped and trapped his hands between his knees.

  It was the most complicated tic Tod had ever seen. What made it particularly horrible was its precision. It wasn’t pantomime, as he had first thought, but manual ballet.

  When Tod saw the hands start to crawl out again, he exploded.

  “For Christ’s sake!”

  The hands struggled to get free, but Homer clamped his knees shut and held them.

  “I’m sorry,”
he said.

  “Oh, all right.”

  “But I can’t help it, Tod. I have to do it three times.”

  “Okay with me.”

  He turned his back on him.

  Faye started to sing and her voice poured into the street.

  “Dreamed about a reefer five feet long

  Not too mild and not too strong,

  You’ll be high, but not for long,

  If you’re a viper—a vi-paah.”

  Instead of her usual swing delivery, she was using a lugubrious one, wailing the tune as though it were a dirge. At the end of every stanza, she shifted to an added minor.

  “I’m the queen of everything,

  Gotta be high before I can swing,

  Light a tea and let it be,

  If you’re a viper—a vi-paah.”

  “She sings very pretty,” Homer said.

  “She’s drunk.”

  “I don’t know what to do, Tod,” Homer complained. “She’s drinking an awful lot lately. It’s that Earle. We used to have a lot of fun before he came, but now we don’t have any fun any more since he started to hang around.”

  “Why don’t you get rid of him?”

  “I was thinking about what you said about the license to keep chickens.”

  Tod understood what he wanted.

  “I’ll report them to the Board of Health tomorrow.”

  Homer thanked him, then insisted on explaining in detail why he couldn’t do it himself.

  “But that’ll only get rid of the Mexican,” Tod said. “You have to throw Earle out yourself.”

  “Maybe he’ll go with his friend?”

  Tod knew that Homer was begging him to agree so that he could go on hoping, but he refused.

  “Not a chance. You’ll have to throw him out.”

  Homer accepted this with his brave, sweet smile.

  “Maybe…”

  “Tell Faye to do it,” Tod said.

  “Oh, I can’t.”

  “Why the hell not? It’s your house.”

  “Don’t be mad at me, Toddie.”

  “All right, Homie, I’m not mad at you.”

  Faye’s voice came through the open window.

  “And when our throat gets dry,

  You know you’re high,

  If you’re a viper.”

  The others harmonized on the last word, repeating it.

  “Vi-paah…”

  “Toddie,” Homer began, “if…”

  “Stop calling me Toddie, for Christ’s sake!”

  Homer didn’t understand. He took Tod’s hand.

  “I didn’t mean nothing. Back home we call…”

  Tod couldn’t stand his trembling signals of affection. He tore free with a jerk.

  “Oh, but, Toddie, I…”

  “She’s a whore!”

  He heard Homer grunt, then heard his knees creak as he struggled to his feet.

  Faye’s voice came pouring through the window, a reedy wail that broke in the middle with a husky catch.

  “High, high, high, high, when you’re high,

  Everything is dandy,

  Truck on down to the candy store,

  Bust your conk on peppermint candy!

  Then you know your body’s sent,

  Don’t care if you don’t pay rent,

  Sky is high and so am I,

  If you’re a viper—a vi-paah.”

  23

  WHEN TOD went back into the house, he found Earle, Abe Kusich and Claude standing together in a tight group, watching Faye dance with Miguel. She and the Mexican were doing a slow tango to music from the phonograph. He held her very tight, one of his legs thrust between hers, and they swayed together in long spirals that broke rhythmically at the top of each curve into a dip. All the buttons on her lounging pajamas were open and the arm he had around her waist was inside her clothes.

  Tod stood watching the dancers from the doorway for a moment, then went to a little table on which the whiskey bottle was. He poured himself a quarter of a tumblerful, tossed it off, then poured another drink. Carrying the glass, he went over to Claude and the others. They paid no attention to him; their heads moved only to follow the dancers, like the gallery at a tennis match.

  “Did you see Homer?” Tod asked, touching Claude’s arm.

  Claude didn’t turn, but the dwarf did. He spoke as though hypnotized.

  “What a quiff! What a quiff!”

  Tod left them and went to look for Homer. He wasn’t in the kitchen, so he tried the bedrooms. One of them was locked. He knocked lightly, waited, then repeated the knock. There was no answer, but he thought he heard someone move. He looked through the keyhole. The room was pitch dark.

  “Homer,” he called softly.

  He heard the bed creak, then Homer replied.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me—Toddie.”

  He used the dimunitive with perfect seriousness.

  “Go away, please,” Homer said.

  “Let me in for a minute. I want to explain something.”

  “No,” Homer said, “go away, please.”

  Tod went back to the living room. The phonograph record had been changed to a fox-trot and Earle was now dancing with Faye. He had both his arms around her in a bear hug and they were stumbling all over the room, bumping into the walls and furniture. Faye, her head thrown back, was laughing wildly. Earle had both eyes shut tight.

  Miguel and Claude were also laughing, but not the dwarf. He stood with his fists clenched and his chin stuck out. When he couldn’t stand any more of it, he ran after the dancers to cut in. He caught Earle by the seat of his trousers.

  “Le’me dance,” he barked.

  Earle turned his head, looking down at the dwarf from over his shoulder.

  “Git! G’wan, git!”

  Faye and Earle had come to a halt with their arms around each other. When the dwarf lowered his head like a goat and tried to push between them, she reached down and tweaked his nose.

  “Le’me dance,” he bellowed.

  They tried to start again, but Abe wouldn’t let them. He had his hands between them and was trying frantically to pull them apart. When that wouldn’t work, he kicked Earle sharply in the shins. Earle kicked back and his boot landed in the little man’s stomach, knocking him flat on his back. Everyone laughed.

  The dwarf struggled to his feet and stood with his head lowered like a tiny ram. Just as Faye and Earle started to dance again, he charged between Earle’s legs and dug upward with both hands. Earle screamed with pain, and tried to get at him. He screamed again, then groaned and started to sink to the floor, tearing Faye’s silk pajamas on his way down.

  Miguel grabbed Abe by the throat. The dwarf let go his hold and Earle sank to the floor. Lifting the little man free, Miguel shifted his grip to his ankles and dashed him against the wall, like a man killing a rabbit against a tree. He swung the dwarf back to slam him again, but Tod caught his arm. Then Claude grabbed the dwarf and together they pulled him away from the Mexican.

  He was unconscious. They carried him into the kitchen and held him under the cold water. He came to quickly, and began to curse. When they saw he was all right, they went back to the living room.

  Miguel was helping Earle over to the couch. All the tan had drained from his face and it was covered with sweat. Miguel loosened his trousers while Claude took off his necktie and opened his collar.

  Faye and Tod watched from the side.

  “Look,” she said, “my new pajamas are ruined.”

  One of the sleeves had been pulled almost off and her shoulder stuck through it. The trousers were also torn. While he stared at her, she undid the top of the trousers and stepped out of them. She was wearing tight black lace drawers. Tod took a step toward her and hesitated. She threw the pajama bottoms over her arm, turned slowly and walked toward the door.

  “Faye,” Tod gasped.

  She stopped and smiled at him.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said. “Get tha
t little guy out of here.”

  Claude came over and took Tod by the arm.

  “Let’s blow,” he said.

  Tod nodded.

  “We’d better take the homunculus with us or he’s liable to murder the whole household.”

  Tod nodded again and followed him into the kitchen. They found the dwarf holding a big piece of ice to the side of his head.

  “There’s some lump where that greaser slammed me.”

  He made them finger and admire it.

  “Let’s go home,” Claude said.

  “No,” said the dwarf, “let’s go see some girls. I’m just getting started.”

  “To hell with that,” snapped Tod. “Come on.”

  He pushed the dwarf toward the door.

  “Take your hands off, punk!” roared the little man.

  Claude stepped between them.

  “Easy there, citizen,” he said.

  “All right, but no shoving.”

  He strutted out and they followed.

  Earle still lay stretched on the couch. He had his eyes closed and was holding himself below the stomach with both hands. Miguel wasn’t there.

  Abe chuckled, wagging his big head gleefully.

  “I fixed that buckeroo.”

  Out on the sidewalk he tried again to get them to go with him.

  “Come on, you guys—we’ll have some fun.”

  “I’m going home,” Claude said.

  They went with the dwarf to his car and watched him climb in behind the wheel. He had special extensions on the clutch and brake so that he could reach them with his tiny feet.

  “Come to town?”

  “No, thanks,” Claude said politely.

  “Then to hell with you!”

  That was his farewell. He let out the brake and the car rolled away.

  24

  TOD woke up the next morning with a splitting headache. He called the studio to say he wouldn’t be in and remained in bed until noon, then went downtown for breakfast. After several cups of hot tea, he felt a little better and decided to visit Homer. He still wanted to apologize.

  Climbing the hill to Pinyon Canyon made his head throb and he was relieved when no one answered his repeated knocks. As he started away, he saw one of the curtains move and went back to knock once more. There was still no answer.