“Hello, Mrs. Lawes,” Emerson said. “Decide to come in where it’s handy?”
“Yes. Avery is talking with someone, and it looks like going on for quite a while, so I thought I would have a martini. A third martini, to be exact.”
The bartender came along, and Emerson laughed and said, “A third martini, Roscoe.”
Roscoe made the martini and poured it and left on business. Lisa leaned forward on her stool and put both elbows on the bar and lifted the fragile glass in both hands.
“Your martinis are very good,” she said.
He smiled. “If you like martinis. Most women seem to. My wife Ed drinks them almost exclusively. Usually I drink bourbon myself. Did you have a good time in Mexico City?”
“No,” she said. “I had a perfectly horrible time in Mexico City.”
Which was, she thought, what came of third martinis. On an empty stomach, anyhow. You said things that you meant but had not meant to say. You were truthful, in short, and this was dangerous and should be avoided. Since the truth was out, however, and could not be retracted, there was probably nothing imperiled in having a fourth martini, which could be had just as soon as this one was finished. She finished it and pushed the empty glass away from her on the bar with the idea that Roscoe would soon notice it and fill it.
“Why do you call her Ed?” she asked.
“What?”
“Your wife. You called her Ed. Why?”
“Her real name is Edwina. I just call her Ed for short.”
“Oh. The affectionate diminutive. Is she pretty? Avery said almost everyone thinks she is.”
“Well, I think so, of course. I don’t know about almost everyone, however. She’ll be down pretty soon, and you can judge for yourself.”
“I can hardly wait,” she said.
And there, she thought wearily, you go again. You are really quite impossible. All that is required is to be compatible and pleasant and to say the right things at the right time, and this is what you want to do and arc: resolved sincerely to do, but every time you open your mouth, here are these words with the most sarcastic sound, and the reason for it is that you are a coward and are afraid of these people and of what they may do to you. You are anticipating the hurt that you feel they will surely do you sooner or later, and you are therefore trying to hurt them first, including Avery, as was evident at the table, in whatever little way is available to you. Is this logical? Is this actually the reason? Well, if it is not logical, it is at least very good rationalization, and I am quite clever to think of it, and here at last is this ridiculous bartender named Roscoe to fill my glass with the fourth martini, and so it no longer matters in the least.
She lifted the full glass and also her eyes and saw Avery approaching her in the mirror. He stopped behind her and said, “Oh, here you are.”
“Yes,” she said. “Here I am.”
He nodded to Emerson. “Been getting acquainted with Lisa, Em? Hello, Roscoe. Scotch for me. You know how.”
“Right, Mr. Lawes. On the rocks.”
Emerson stood up and said, “Here, Avery. Take this stool.”
“No. Not at all. You keep it.”
“Oh, come on. The guest always sits. That way he stays longer and drinks more.”
“Well, if you put it that way.”
Avery got on the stool and picked up the Scotch that Roscoe had poured.
“Did you have an interesting conversation with the old family friends?” Lisa said.
“Not very interesting, I’m afraid. I’m sorry it took so long.”
“It did, didn’t it? Take a long time. It took so long, in fact, that I decided to come in here and arrange for a third martini.”
“Good. I’m glad you did.”
“That’s not all, however. I am now drinking my fourth, martini, which is one more than the third, and this will give you an idea of just how long it took.”
“It’s difficult to get away from an old couple like that.” Avery twisted on the stool and looked over his shoulder at Emerson. “How did things go in Corinth this winter, Em?”
“Oh, fine. Everything as usual. Not as exciting as the places you’ve been, I guess.”
“I don’t know about that, Em. They’re really not what they’re blown up to be.”
“That is right,” Lisa said. “That is quite right.”
She smiled and lifted her martini. Avery did not smile and lifted his Scotch. Behind them, Ed came through the archway. Emerson saw her in the mirror and turned to meet her. She was wearing a very pale blue dress that left her shoulders out, and her shoulders, he thought, were something to make you want to know what the lest of her would be like out, which was something he already knew and was happy about. Watching her approach, he felt fiercely possessive and almost exultant. “Hello, honey. I was hoping you’d come.”
“Did you doubt it? Darling, I’ve been drooling over the thought of one of Roscoe’s martinis for an hour.”
“Good. You can have one with Mrs. Avery Lawes. Mrs. Lawes, this is my wife.”
Lisa revolved on her stool, and Avery vacated his, stepping back beside Emerson.
“Call me Lisa,” Lisa said.
“Thank you. My name is Edwina.”
“Your husband says he calls you Ed. Why does he call you that?”
“Because he thinks it’s cute, I think.”
“Really? He told me it was only because it’s short.”
“Isn’t that just like a man? He tells every woman something different.”
“I called a girl Al once. Everyone else called her Alison, but I called her Al. I was the only one who did it. It was my special name for her.”
Which was really an insane thing to say, a perverse expression of sudden pain that left her poised perilously on a razor’s edge between a chasm behind and a chasm before, and she looked into the glass that had held the fourth martini and wondered why, why, why. Why did she deliberately jeopardize herself, and why did she put her fingers around her own heart, and why did she now feel in an instant, with the appearance of Ed, the intolerable and destructive way she felt? She revolved again on the stool, facing the bar, and Ed got onto the stool beside her, and Roscoe came along with the soft look on his face that was the look he kept for Ed and no one else.
“Martini, Ed?”
“Dry, Roscoe. Very dry.”
“Do you have to tell me? I know just how you like them.”
He fixed it that way and pushed it across to her. From the same shaker he poured the fifth that Lisa was obviously ready for and expecting.
“Avery said everyone thinks you’re pretty,” Lisa said. “Your husband said he doesn’t know about everyone, but he thinks you are, anyhow, and I think you are too. I think you’re very pretty.”
“Thank you,” Ed said. “You are too, you know.”
“Oh, nonsense. You’re just saying that. I’m much too thin and pale. Don’t you think so, Avery? Don’t you think I’m much too thin and pale?”
He laughed. “I think you’re much too full of gin, if you want to know the truth. I think maybe we’d better be going home.”
“I don’t want to go home. Things are only now becoming interesting. I want to sit right here where this talented bartender can arrange martinis for me. You are lucky to have such a bartender, Mr. Page. He arranges martinis better than any bartender I have ever known.”
“All right. If you want to stay, all right. But I wish that you would come home.”
She looked up into the mirror, at his face in the mirror, and then she drained her glass and slipped off the stool and was at the end of the movement somehow small and contrite and all at once exceedingly tired.
“You are quite right,” she said. “It is certainly time to go home.”
Without saying good-night, she turned and walked through the archway into the dining room and back to the small room at the entrance where they had left their wraps, and she waited there for Avery to come, understanding that he was being polite to the Pages and saying the good-night that she had failed to say, or had deliberately refused to say through perversity, and she thought that Emerson Page, the nice guy, was someone she would probably hate more than she had ever hated anyone before.
Avery came and got their wraps, and they went outside and got into the black Caddy. She sat beside him in the front seat and leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Truly I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For being a perverse, nasty, unnatural bitch.”
“All of that? Just because you drank too many martinis? Don’t be silly, Lisa. I’ve been known to drink too much in Em’s bar myself. It was the night before I left for Miami last November. Did I tell you about that?” It was apparent that he was going to pass it off lightly, as of no consequence, and this was probably out of kindness, which was the last thing she wanted at the moment, to be treated with kindness, and she would have preferred to have him strike her in the face.
“No,” she said. “You didn’t tell me.”
She kept her head back and her eyes closed, and he began to tell her about it, and she sat there feeling the destructive thing that had started, and thinking that the prognosis of all this with Avery was now hopeless if it had ever been anything else and that she had better run away at once, tomorrow if not tonight, and knowing in spite of this that she would not run.
SECTION 3
Ed came out of the bathroom in nothing.
“What was the matter with her?” she said.
Emerson, in red-and-white-striped pajamas, was sitting up in bed with his back against the headboard. He looked at Ed and kept on looking at her.
“With whom?”
“You know whom. Lisa Lawes.”
“She drank too many martinis.”
“I know that. But why?”
“Lots of people drink too many martinis. Especially Roscoe’s martinis. Roscoe’s martinis, I understand, are considered exceptionally tempting.”
“Don’t try to high-brow talk me, you low-brow. It won’t work.”
“I’m not a low-brow. I’m a middle-brow. Most of the time, anyhow. The only time I’m a low-brow is when you corrupt me.”
“Personally, I find you much more acceptable as a low-brow. However, that’s neither here nor there when it comes to Lisa Lawes and the martinis. You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
“Certainly. Some people drink to be sociable, and some people drink for pleasure, and some people drink for other reasons of their own which are personal and usually not pleasant. That’s the way it was with her. With Lisa.”
“And you accused me of high-brow talking you. Honey, you’re positively intellectual.”
“You needn’t be sarcastic, Em.”
“Who’s being sarcastic? I’m honestly impressed. Well, go ahead. Diagnose her for me. Tell me why Lisa drank too many martinis.”
“To escape, naturally.”
“Escape what?”
“How the hell would I know? Whatever she has inside her that needs escaping from. You saw how she went about it, Em. You can always tell that kind of drinker. There’s a sort of deadly purpose in them.”
“Is that really you saying all those things? You sound like a psychiatrist or something. Which gives me a good idea of how we could get rich fast. You could open an office and conduct all your sessions just the way you are now. For men only, of course. You’d be sensationally successful. No other psychiatrist in the world could touch you when it came to establishing rapport with the patient. Did you hear that? Rapport, I said. Don’t get the idea you’re the only one who knows any words.”
“You’re making fun of me. You aren’t taking me seriously at all.”
“On the contrary, I’m taking you very seriously, and I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s just that I don’t consider the diagnosis of Lisa Lawes particularly interesting.”
“Don’t you?”
Ed walked over and sat down on the edge of the bed and looked pensive. Besides looking other ways. Emerson’s attention was given mostly to the other ways.
“Not as interesting as you, anyhow,” he said. “Not nearly as interesting.”
“That’s because you’re not sensitive to subtleties. You respond only to the most obvious stimuli. As for me, I find her extremely interesting. Do you know why? Because she’s vulnerable, and vulnerable people are always interesting. You keep wondering what their particular vulnerability is.”
“Vulnerable? Vulnerable, for God’s sake?”
“Yes, vulnerable. And don’t sound so damned outraged about it, because it’s true. You heard the thing; she said. Bitter little remarks that were intended to hurt, and she said them as if she had to say them, as if she couldn’t help saying them in spite of not really wanting to. People who hurt others like that for no apparent reason are people who are afraid of being hurt themselves, and they are afraid of being hurt because they are somehow vulnerable. They anticipate the hurt to themselves and try to get in a few cracks first. What it amounts to is a kind of premature reprisal.”
“Honey, you’ve been reading books again. Which one did you get that from?”
“I didn’t get it from any books, damn it. You just don’t give me credit for having any brains of my own.”
“Of course I do. I not only give you credit for having brains but also for much other superior property, absolutely all of which is now on display.”
“Never mind that, now. Just stay where you are. What did she say at the bar before I got there?”
“Nothing much. I asked her if she had a good time in Mexico City, and she said no, she had a perfectly horrible time.”
“You call that nothing much? A brand new wife saying something like that? I consider it very significant.”
“So do I, to tell the truth. I also consider it none of my damn business.”
“Don’t be stuffy, Em. We’re not harming anyone just by discussing it between ourselves. What was it you said Avery told you that night? You remember. About not liking women.”
“Oh, oh. I thought you’d get around to that.”
“You did, did you? Which means we’ve both been thinking the same thing. Do you suppose that’s why it’s gone sour already?”
“You’ve lost me, honey. What’s gone sour?”
“Damn it, Em, don’t be deliberately obtuse. You know perfectly well what I mean. Their marriage, of course.”
“Has it gone sour?”
“You’re probably the most irritating man I’ve ever been married to. You were there at the bar tonight, weren’t you?”
“Sure, I was there. I was there and heard too many martinis talking. You ever listened to too many martinis? They say the most peculiar things.”
“Oh, to hell with you, Em Page. Be as evasive as you like. Furthermore, since you obviously want to be left alone, I think I’ll just go out and sleep on the sofa.”
“All right, all right. Wait a minute, woman. So I’ve got the same idea you’ve got. So the guy’s impotent or something. So he got down there in Miami and met this gal and began to think he could beat it. So he found out he couldn’t. After it was too late. So the gal’s hungry. So she’s starving, and she’s about to start prowling if she hasn’t already. So I’ve come clean with everything in my dark little mind. Satisfied?”
“Your mind’s not dark. It’s only little. What happens if she starts prowling around Emerson Page?”
“Worried, honey?”
“Not much. I think I can still take care of my o
wn, which I may shortly demonstrate, just possibly. Why do I dislike her so much, Em? I thought I was a reasonably warm-hearted and generous person. It isn’t like me to dislike anyone so intensely in so little time, even someone so deliberately unpleasant.”
“Every married woman dislikes a woman she thinks is on the prowl, or about to go on the prowl.”
“Hear the sage of Corinth. Wisdom in a capsule. Seriously, though, I guess it isn’t exactly that I dislike her. It’s more than that, really. She makes me crawl.”
“Crawl! For God’s sake, how many martinis did you have?”
“Just two, and I can carry four with difficulty. Not all of me, of course. Crawls, I mean. Just my flesh. On my bones, sort of. You know how it is when you see something that’s repugnant to you. And I can’t understand because I can’t see any reason for it. She’s very attractive, really, in a pale sort of way. It disturbs me.”
Desperate Asylum Page 14
