by Peter Rabe
He didn’t have an idea what she was talking about. He had stopped next to Tober, and he spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Tober, tell her to wait. Tell her to have one farewell drink and spike it hard. Do you hear?”
“But, Benny, all I got is-You didn’t want me to give her-”
“Load her till her top flies off, but stop her!”
The three figures in the hard light of the sun were immobile. The motor was murmuring, then it howled, then it murmured again.
“Oh, Patty…” The singsong again. “One for the road, honey?”
“What?” She blinked at them in the sun.
“Running out is one thing, honey, but running dry is another.”
She sat still, thinking. Only her foot was nervous, making the motor growl.
“Oh, Patty…”
“Stop that yammer,” Benny whispered. “Tell her again.”
“All right,” she called across the yard, “but that Tapkow swine mustn’t move. I don’t want that Tapkow piggy to come any closer.”
“He won’t, Patty-cake,” Tober called. He went into the house and Benny stayed where he was.
It seemed an eternity in the white sun, each muscle an ache of its own, and the cold sweat a slippery itch on his skin.
“Clink, clink, Patty-cake!” Tober came down the stairs and into the sun with a tray that held a pitcher. The liquid was almost green and it slopped with each step. When Tober got to the car she took her foot off the clutch and the jerk made her head snap back. Then the motor was dead. There was a discussion about it for a while, and then she started the car again. She said, “You didn’t bring a glass.”
Benny watched her hold the tray while Tober bounded back to the house. She stared at him while they waited, staring to see that he didn’t move.
Tober got back then and he poured her a glassful. “Now this’ll jolt you a little, but don’t let it throw you. I’m here to catch you when you land.” He giggled.
Pat lifted the glass and drank.
She didn’t cough or shudder or do any of those things. She drank it and said, “How did you get it so bitter?” and then she finished the rest of the glass.
“Now we need about five minutes of silence while that heavenly stuff starts to pop.”
Was that hophead going to give away the show? Benny started to tremble. He heard Patty say, “I haven’t got five more minutes,” and he couldn’t hold it any longer. He kicked up dust when he started his sprint, dust almost like the cloud that churned up behind the car as the gears crashed again, the car lurched, and Tober weaved to balance the tray. Benny heard the buckling sound of the straining motor, the cough of the exhaust while the car tried to make it in high. Pat’s head was nodding with stubborn jerks, and as the motor died she slumped out of sight. Then Benny was at the car and looking at the blank eves that were not yet quite out. He opened the door, picked her up, carried her into the house. He noticed how limp she was but he hardly gave it a thought.
Chapter Fourteen
Benny stayed in her room for a while, watching her. Finally the sight of her drugged sleep made him turn away. He turned his chair to the window and sat in her room.
That’s why he didn’t hear the phone. It rang for a while with nobody around to answer it Then Tober went back into the hall. The phone was in a niche there and the sharp ringing set his teeth on edge. He picked up the receiver and yelled, “Hello, hello, hello! This is Tober speakin’ and squeakin’. Do I know you?… Do I know you, Fingers? Why, Fingers, if anybody in the whole world were to ask me how many fingers I know, do you realize what I’d say? Do you know-Fingers, I’m not finished. The story isn’t finished. Right now I’d say to you, ‘Yes, dear sir, I know eleven, ten of which I have on my two hands and one of which is you!’-Fingers, I don’t hear laughter. I don’t hear laughter. I don’t hear- That’s better, Fingers. Now, what did you say?”
He listened for a while, saying ooh and aah and of course I know Tapkow, and you say she is a sweet young thing? Then he said, “How should I know, dear Fingers?” and hung up the phone. Right then he had it in mind to find Benny, but he got distracted by a bunch of people in bathing suits who came jumping and singing down the hall. A guy called Harry was hoisting a girl on his shoulders and she had only half of her two-piece suit on. But nobody paid any attention to that. Instead they all started a dance, with Tober providing the music and lyrics. It went, “Harry likes to carry little Mary” and on and on, and by the time that game was over Tober had forgotten all about the phone call. And later that night, when he saw Pat, he didn’t think of it either, because she and the rest were doing handstands on the beach and there was much brushing of sand and drinking of beer from cans.
Benny had awakened after she’d left. He had run down as he was, unshaven and hungry, but when he saw where she was, on the beach, he had gone back to the house and taken a shower. Then he shaved, found some food in the kitchen, and sat on the dark veranda watching the beach. Later, when Pat went to bed, he saw to it that it wasn’t with Tober, and for the rest he left her alone.
They took care of two more days like that, until they hit one of those afternoons when nobody was partying. The sun made a thick heat outside, noiseless, and the cool house was like a tomb. He heard her bare feet padding on the tile of the hall and he followed her out to the back. From the veranda he could see the beach chair farther down, and one brown leg stretched out He sat and smoked. He had been wondering how long she could stand it there when her leg moved out of sight and then her face looked at him, around the back of the beach chair. “Seen enough, Tapkow?”
He didn’t answer.
She got up, shrugging the thick bathrobe over her shoulders, and came to the veranda. “I asked you a question,” she said. Her knee showed bare when she sat down on the railing.
“Don’t waste your talents,” he said. “I’m just the chaperone.”
She laughed. “I forgot. I’m business. And Saint Benny doesn’t mix business with pleasure.”
He flipped his cigarette across the railing and watched it hit the sand. “Pleasure!” he said, and started to get up.
It had stung her. She jumped off the railing and stood in front of him. “How would you know, choir boy?”
“I’m not buying.” He pushed her aside and walked into the house. Even when he heard her come after him he didn’t stop, and all the way up to the room, while she talked at him with her voice like steel bars hitting each other, he never turned or opened his mouth. Then she slammed the door and they were alone in the room.
He turned and his face made her stop short. “What do you want?” he said.
She didn’t answer right away.
“What do you expect?” he said.
“From you? Nothing.” She sat down on the bed, not caring about the bathrobe, and lit a cigarette.
“One dull afternoon,” he said. “It’s one dull afternoon, so with nobody else around, why, let’s go pick on Tapkow.” He went to the bureau and pulled out a shirt “Would you believe it, Pat, I’m sorry that this happened.”
“What a stink!” She got it out like a hiss. “What a stink when you open your mouth! You know something, Tapkow? You don’t know your place. You’re a thing in a gutter and don’t know it” She was standing again when he turned around. “And I’m only trying to help, making it easy, so you don’t have to overreach yourself.”
He shook the clean shirt out and gave her a short look. “Don’t bother,” he said. “Just leave the robe the way it is.”
When she jumped forward to claw at his face, his hands came up fast and she couldn’t move. A short push and she fell back on the bed.
“You don’t understand.” He said it before she was up again. “I don’t go to bed with a machine. Like a cash register where you push a button and the drawers fly open.”
He was changing shirts now and couldn’t see her. And there wasn’t a sound from the bed. Then she was still sitting there. her eyes looking almost white in the tanned face, with no expressio
n that he could place. So her voice, low, came as a surprise to him. “And I’ve always been that. It’s either been business or a machine with a button to you.” It sounded like a question.
“No,” he said.
“No? In the cabin?” But when she said it she left herself a safe half-smile, crooked and hard.
He reached for her face, slowly, and stroked his thumb down her cheek. “Don’t laugh,” he said.
And then she wasn’t laughing; she cried. She cried not showing him her face, until he held it in his hands, close now, and after that close had no meaning because there was no distance any more between them.
When she woke it wasn’t all good. The bed was empty and he wasn’t there to hold her and make it real. She got off the bed, still tired, and through the windows, in the yard, she saw him by the car, leaning across the door and straightening up. He looked dark in the setting sun, and the way he walked back across the yard-a meaningless thing-became a terrible casualness in her anxious imagination. Because why was she here? Because he’d lied, pretended, to make good some large, ugly plan in which she was the button that made the thing fly open.
Her eyes narrowed into nervous slits and she started to pace. A shower, maybe. She took a shower, first hot, then cold, and dried herself hard. When she was dressed it wasn’t any better. The tense and anxious fear was there, unnamed, and even Benny, had he been there, couldn’t have made it go.
She left the room and went downstairs. Seeing Benny in the distance, she turned the other way in order to avoid him. Then she found Tober. And a little later, not much, in the soft skin inside her arm, there was another small red dot.
She was peaceful now and went back to her room to sleep on the bed.
Once Benny looked in on her and found her all right He hadn’t come to check, he had just wanted to find her all right. Then he went downstairs.
They were still going strong. They had drinks on the veranda, more on the dark beach, and somebody was making a racket with the piano. Benny stood in the night air outside and then he went to the kitchen. He sat at the long table and drank a cup of coffee. While he sat he watched the tall girl in slacks at the stove, heating some beans from a can, and once she asked him for a cigarette. He watched how she moved and he watched the smoke curl from his cigarette. Then he finished his cup and left the kitchen.
He didn’t go into the room with the racket, but stood near the door. Some had their clothes on, some didn’t. There were beach clothes, swim suits, or improvised things, and then there was one in an overcoat. The man had a hat on his head, and his legs, Benny saw, were in regular trousers. And another man was walking around the piano. He had no overcoat, no hat on his bald skull, but there was a suit and a tie. The bald man was short and beefy, the one in the overcoat tall, with an Adam’s apple bobbing along his neck. Benny saw that they both held drinks, but they weren’t drinking. They were looking.
Benny stepped back from the door.
“Afraid of big crowds?” said Tober, and he made to pass Benny, heading for the door. “Now watch how I do this, Benny boy, fearless, forward, fanatic-”
“Wait a minute, Tober.” Benny caught him by the sleeve. “Look inside. See those two guys?”
“Really, Benjamin. I’d rather look at the dolls. And speaking of Santa Claus-”
“Will you shut up for a minute? Take a look, Tober. Who are they?” Benny pointed.
“Aah!” Tober craned his neck and then said, “Aah!” again. “They are dressed to kill, I would say.”
“Tober, concentrate. Who are they?”
“Vagrants, I think. I can always tell vagrants by the way they are dressed. They look different.”
“Tober-”
“Now there’s no sense in those clothes, now is there, Benny? Unless you are dressed to kill-” Tober hesitated and stopped. He took Benny by the arm and started to whisper. “Never trust a junky, Benny, I’m telling you as a friend. Never, not even your own friend. And I’m-”
“Tober, let go.” Benny was tensing with anger.
“And I’m your friend, Benny, from long ago. Please, Benny, listen!” Tober talked fast now, and urgently. “You should listen, Benny, because all I did was forget. I’m a junkhead and you should have reminded me.”
Benny was listening now. The words didn’t make sense, but the voice was almost normal.
“It’s just that I forgot, Benny, I swear it. Do you know Fingers?”
“I know one Fingers.”
“And he’s with Pendleton, right?”
Tober made sense now.
“Go on. What’s on your mind, Tober?”
“He called, only I forgot. He asked about you.”
“What else?”
“And Miss Pendleton.”
Benny glanced into the room where the two men were making the rounds.
Tober went on. “So Fingers calls me, just checking, because he and everybody’s working around the clock on this thing. Pendleton’s out of his mind about his daughter’s not being there and he figures you’re his man.”
“Go on.”
“Why they came here I swear I don’t know. I don’t think I tipped-”
“Forget it. Back, quick!”
The two men, the tall one and the short one, had ambled toward the door. Then they turned and went out through the French windows.
“Tober, you with me?” Benny held the man by both arms and shook him once, hard. “Come upstairs.”
They took the steps two at a time and Benny led the way to the room where Pat was sleeping. They stood by the bed looking at her and she woke up.
“Benny,” she said.
“Listen, Pat, we’ve got to leave, this minute. Your father’s men-”
“Men,” she said, and sat up. “Men, men, men.” There was a smile on her face.
“Pat, for chrissakes, pull yourself together.”
She cocked her head, listening to the music from downstairs. Her arms were out toward Benny and she said, “Let’s float, baby. Let’s.”
He thought he saw two dots on the inside of her arm and he stepped back. His face creased hard. “Pat! Get up. Are you with me?”
She wasn’t. She wanted to dance and she didn’t want to go. Then she lay down on the bed again and eyed Benny. He turned away, holding his lip between his teeth. One hand was punching the palm of the other. Once, twice, three times. Pat was humming a melody.
When Benny turned there was sweat on his forehead. “Tober,” he said, “there’s no other way. She needs one more charge.”
The skinny man shrugged and left the room.
“In the vein,” Benny called after him.
When everything was ready, Benny held her arm and Tober came with the needle.
“Why, Benny,” she said.
“Lie still.”
“But, Benny,” she said, “I don’t want any.” She tried to get up.
He held her down and jerked his head at Tober. Pat lay still. Even when the needle went in she didn’t move. And afterward, lying there, she looked at Benny with wide, blank eyes, looked at him until he thought the blank-ness knew everything. And then she went under. Benny wiped his face.
“How much did you give her, Tober?”
“Enough to keep her under a while. It’s a waste of the stuff, but-”
“You got a gun, Tober?”
“I think so.”
“Get it. I’ll dress her and then we blow.”
The gun was a. 22 target pistol and Benny struggled to get the long thing into his pocket. “Thanks, Tober, thanks for your help.” Benny started to hoist the girl off the bed.
“Benny, wait. Think a second. How do you figure she’s going to act when she comes out?”
Benny let the girl down again.
“I’m sober, Benny. I’m talking sense. How do you figure you’re going to keep her around?”
“Don’t worry about it I got ways.”
“Not with a hophead, you don’t.”
Benny got it then, and downsta
irs two hoods were prowling the house, maybe upstairs, or near the cars. He bit his lip. “You’ve got to give me enough for another pop, Tober. Enough for a day or so, till I can get out of these parts.”
Tober shook his head; he looked worried. “She hasn’t been eating, you know, and she won’t as long as she’s on the stuff. You trying to starve her to death?”
“I’ll give her less. Just so she stays limp.”
Tober moved his arms in a helpless gesture. “Benny, I’m trying to tell you. That’s not the way it works. You give her less than she’s having and she’ll act just the opposite. She’ll feel like a million and ready to jump from here to the moon and back. You remember, on the stairs. Benny, I mean it, I’m sorry I ever-”
“Come on, Tober. Don’t get weepy. I’ll just have to risk it. I know what she likes, and hopped up she’ll like it even better.”
“You trying to get her hooked, Benny?”
“Hell, no! Just enough for a day or so. By then-How soon is she going to get that way?”
“Depends. Through the vein, maybe two weeks. If she eats it, longer.”
“All right, then, there’s no worry.”
“But don’t forget, it’s faster if you give her enough to knock her out And the waste, Benny, such a waste!”
Benny gave him a mean look and went to the door. He looked down the hall, the stairs, and came back. “Those goons might come around any minute, so let’s get going. Get me just enough for another day or so. You figure it out, Tober. Get going.” He pushed him out of the door.
“The waste!” Tober kept saying. Then Benny waited.
When Tober came back he brought two folded squares of paper. They were no bigger than a match book and had a little bulge in the middle.
“Here’s number one.” Tober handed it over. “Give it to her an hour after she comes around. Longer, if you can. Here’s number two. If you need it, give it to her twenty-four hours later. No sooner! Now remember, this stuff isn’t candy. It’s cut only a little and tastes bitter as hell. Put it in a drink like a Martini, or black coffee with a lot of chicory. If you can find a food that’s bitter, try the stuff on that and maybe she won’t tumble to it. Got that?”
