by Max Shulman
Ira’s eyes, though glazed with panic, observed that he had arrived at Boo’s beach house. He pulled the car into the driveway. For fully five minutes he sat perfectly still behind the wheel, breathing deeply. It would be inaccurate to say that tranquillity had returned to him when he finally got out of the car and entered the house, but at least he was not trembling noticeably.
Boo was standing before the roaring driftwood fire as he walked in. “Good evening,” he said and remembered to kiss her.
In his state he failed to see that Boo’s color was abnormally high, her breathing rapid and shallow, her eyes overbright. Conversely, in her state, Boo did not note that Ira’s stillness was of the kind that teeters on the very brink of hysteria.
“Hello, darling,” she said. “Would you like a drink?”
“That would be nice,” he said.
“What can I get you?”
“Whatever you’re drinking.”
“I’m drinking bourbon. You don’t care much for bourbon.”
“Bourbon is fine.”
“Soda or water?”
“Any way you’re having it.”
“I’m just having ice.”
“Excellent.”
“Sure?”
“Positive.”
She gave him a bourbon-on-the-rocks. “Won’t you sit down, Ira?”
“Thank you.”
“No, not on the couch. On that chair over there. I can see you better.”
“All right.”
He sat where she had instructed. She sat on the couch. For a moment they sipped silently.
“Your drink all right?” she asked.
“Fine. Yours?”
“Fine.… How long have you been drinking bourbon?”
“Oh, for about twelve years,” he answered. “Actually, though, this is only the second time I’ve had it.”
“Please, Ira,” she implored, starting to rise. “Let me get you something you like.”
“No, no, no,” he said. “This is fine. Just fine. Fine.”
She sat again, spent a minute of silence assembling her courage, and then spoke: “Ira, I wish I knew a more pleasant way to tell you what I have to tell you tonight.”
“So do I,” confessed Ira. “‘Frankly, I’m not having too great a time.”
“You do seem a bit peaky, now that I take a good look.”
“I’ve seen you a whole lot prettier yourself,” said Ira. “No offense.”
“No offense,” she said without umbrage. “After all, a situation like this is hardly festive, is it?”
“I guess not.… A situation like what?”
“Perhaps I better start at the beginning.”
“Good place.”
She hesitated. “Ira, it appears to me that you have something to say too. Would you care to speak first?”
“Oh, no!” he cried. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no! You go ahead. Please.”
“Very well.” She paused again, then with visible determination, she began: “Ira, we fell in love during the war. After you left Owens Mill, though a whole continent separated us, we never stopped loving. And since you’ve returned, we’ve learned our love is stronger, deeper, and more compelling than ever. We know, both of us, that we would be ecstatically happy together, but we are kept apart for one reason. It is the same reason that has always kept us apart: we cannot bear to hurt Polly.”
Ira bounded from his chair as though goosed. “That’s it!” he hollered.
Boo, too, leaped to her feet, clutching her bosom in fright. “What’s what?”
“Polly! My wife’s name! Polly! Of course! Polly!”
She looked at him in alarm. “I don’t understand, Ira. Certainly Polly is your wife’s name.”
“That’s right—Polly!” His face was split by a grin of triumphant relief. “Polly Shapian. Yeah!”
“Are you all right, Ira? I do not ask the question idly.”
“Fine, thank you. Just fine. Please continue.” He sat down.
Boo looked at him nervously, but he seemed composed. “I was saying,” she resumed, “that we have stayed apart because we cannot bear to hurt Polly—good, decent, brave Polly.”
Now a brand-new form of madness fell upon Ira. All of a sudden, for the first time since Gabriel had played the tape recording for him, Ira was hearing voices in his head. He was, in fact, hearing the tape, every lurid word, loud and clear. Round and round Ira’s skull the reel of tape spun, and the voices of Polly and Virgil blared forth.
Ira was on his feet again. “Brave Polly!” he shouted. “That’s what you said, and you’re right. She is brave! Her legs are brave. They dare! They venture! Even her ass is brave!”
Boo looked at him with mounting alarm. “Ira, what are you saying?”
But he was saying nothing. He was back in the chair, thinking silently, furiously, of Polly’s brave buttocks. Damn it, he didn’t need that double-crossing bastard Virgil Tatum to tell him about Polly’s brave behind! He, Ira, knew! He knew with his eyes, with his mind, with his hands! How many times had he cupped those valiant cheeks in his palms? Well, maybe not too often in recent years, but how many times in the early days? How often, how joyously, had he felt the surge of Polly’s butt, tight with passion, powerful with abandon, unafraid, unashamed, churning and lifting and giving?
“Ira,” cried Boo with growing concern. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. He did not want to talk. He wanted only to listen to the spool of tape whirling endlessly in his brain.
“May I go on?” asked Boo.
Ira waved vaguely.
“When you phoned today, I was on the verge of calling you,” Boo continued. “Because all at once a great truth had been revealed to me. After eighteen years, I finally saw the tragic mistake we have been making. How can we hurt Polly? Is she weak? Is she vulnerable? Of course not. Polly is strong, vital, mature.”
“Breasts,” whispered Ira.
“What?” asked Boo, blinking. “Breasts? Is that what you said—breasts?”
He did not answer, for his whole mind was now focused on the tape. “I can still see your breasts when you came out of the water—the thrust of them, the round perfection of them,” Virgil was saying. And then he was saying, “I saw your nipples, how the cold water had made them rise like two happy, eager things, ready for fun and play.”
Then Polly was speaking: “Twenty years have passed, Virgil.”
She’s got a point, thought Ira judiciously. Twenty years are bound to play hell with any pair of knockers, even a set as good as Polly’s.
And yet, thought Ira, Virgil’s answer covered the case nicely. “The years have been kind,” Virgil was saying. “I look now at your breasts and I see the same vitality. I see more. I see tenderness, womanliness, passion come to full maturity.”
True, admitted Ira. True and damned astute. Polly’s balcony might not be something to inflame the pimple-faced readers of Playboy, but it had exactly what a grown man wanted: serenity without sag, comfort without pocky tissue, a snug harbor still totally serviceable.
Then, abruptly, a flood of rage washed over Ira. That sonofabitch Virgil! How dare he meddle with the breasts of Mrs. Ira Shapian? The gall of that lecherous, treacherous rat fink! College president, indeed! Prurient fraud, that’s what he was! Depraved, corrupt, iniquitous, noxious wife-thief!
Ira’s anger receded as quickly as it had arrived. He was mistaken to blame Virgil. Polly, that tiger, was not one who could be conned, beguiled, bamboozled, or even raped. The only person on earth able to put Polly Shapian in Virgil’s bed was Polly Shapian.
But why? Why would she do such a thing to Ira? Okay, he had been less than ardent in recent months.… All right, make that recent years. But even so, was that any reason to put horns on a man? Didn’t it ever occur to Polly that he spent long, hard, miserable days at the studio and when he came home he was just plain too tired for acrobatics in the bedroom?
A new spook came zooming in on Ira: Was Virgil the first lover Polly
had taken? How about those long hours in Hollywood, those frequent nights when he didn’t even get home at all? Who else had fondled those responsive breasts, those exciting legs, that nonpareil butt?
And if there had been others in Polly’s embrace, could Ira blame them? The tape had now stopped spinning in his head; replacing it was a reel of motion picture film—pictures in three dimensions and living color, pictures of Polly’s thighs and bosom and buttocks. What sane, healthy man would refuse them? Nobody! Nobody, that is, except a stupid, bemused, certifiable type like Ira Shapian.
“Why aren’t you listening, Ira?” said Boo.
“Huh?” said Ira.
“Please sit down and listen,” she said plaintively. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say in my life.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Really I am. Where were we?”
“Maybe I better start over.”
“Good idea. And I’ll try to pay attention, I promise.”
“Well, briefly, I was saying that in spite of distance and time and separation our love is lovelier today than it ever was. And, my darling, it is in our power now to make each other truly, permanently happy. Why, then, do we hesitate? I’ll tell you why: the same old reason: we can’t stand to hurt a woman like Polly.”
Ira, to give him credit, made an honest effort to concentrate on Boo’s words. But it was hopeless. The movies in his head started running again, this time in Cinerama. Polly’s naked body filled his mind—filled the world! And all over Polly’s body he saw an invasion of clutching, male hands—strangers’ hands, ugly hairy hands gleefully pinching and plucking the flesh that belonged to him—to Ira Shapian!
A savage, roaring rage possessed him. Jealousy and hate descended like a cloudburst. He rose—no, sprang—from his chair. “You’re right, Boo!” he cried. “You’re absolutely right. You’re a fine, decent woman and I should have listened to you from the beginning. You’re right. We can’t do this to Polly.”
“But you miss my point!”
“A great woman is what you are. Great!” He gave her hand one fervent shake and hustled toward the door. “Goodbye, Boo. You’re right. Good-bye. Good-bye.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it, for Ira was gone. From the window she watched his car spraying gravel as it hurtled out of the driveway. She allowed herself one small sigh, returned to her seat, and picked up her bourbon-on-the-rocks.
Boo, said Boo to Boo, you are a goddam fool and you deserve whatever you get. You are so idiotically enchanted with words that you had to make a pretty speech, when all you needed was to open your purse and produce the evidence. But that’s not your style, is it? Flowery talk and purple poetry—there’s your style. And you’ll never learn to resist, will you, you big, retarded ninny?
Boo got up and made herself another drink. Her purse was on the bar, lying open. With a melancholy smile she reached into the purse and took out the evidence—the clincher, the hoop with which she could have grappled Ira forever to her bosom if only she had not chosen to deliver a long, rolling preface.
An envelope was in Boo’s hand, a letter, postmarked Nashville, which she had received that very morning. It was a report from a physician, an old and discreet friend of Boo’s, and it contained the results of a rabbit test proving that Ira had once again made her pregnant.
If Boo were not Boo, she would simply have handed the letter to Ira when he arrived. But Boo was Boo. Roughness, naked and abrupt, was entirely outside her nature. She was flatly incapable of giving Ira such a letter without first cushioning the jolt. She had, therefore, prepared an eloquent speech, brimming with solace, to precede the announcement of her new pregnancy. She did, of course, want Ira to marry her this time; the youth and energy which had bolstered her gallantry eighteen years ago were far too eroded to serve her again. But she wanted Ira to want to marry her, not to feel snared. She wanted him to believe in his heart that it was not a calamity but a blessing.
Toward this end she had carefully constructed an oration in which, with tenderness and truth, she would make the following points:
First, that Polly was a strong, proud, resourceful woman who would not die of heartbreak if Ira left her.
Second, that Ira loved Boo hotly and lyrically; whereas his feeling for Polly had long since cooled to dead, gray ashes.
Third, Boo’s love for Ira was impervious to any hazard, including the greatest of all hazards: Ira himself.
Fourth, Boo was a very rich woman and could rescue Ira from his miserable entrapment in commercial television, whereas Polly could not.
These were the four points of Boo’s sweet polemic. With such a quartet of arguments, arguments glistening with love and glowing with reason, she had reckoned to render Ira so happily amenable that the letter from Memphis would be almost an anticlimax.
Boo crumpled up the letter and threw it into the driftwood fire. She had no use for it now. Yes, she knew the letter still had great value. It could, if she chose, be the bludgeon that would force Ira to the altar. But the bludgeon was not Boo’s weapon; in fact, seldom has any woman had so little ordnance.
“Well, flapjaw, what now?” Boo asked herself, sitting again. Abortion? No; not even thinkable. What then? Take a crazy gamble as she had with Gabriel eighteen years earlier? But how far can one woman’s luck be stretched? How many bastards could she legitimatize in a single lifetime? Where, these days, could she find a bribable judge who would stay bribed?
A line of Scott Fitzgerald’s came to Boo as she gazed into her drink. “Nobody feels sorry for a girl on a yacht,” Fitzgerald once wrote.
Well, thought Boo, I am most definitely a girl on a yacht, and nobody is going to feel sorry for me—including me. I see nothing ahead but reefs, shoals, rocks, sea serpents, and hurricanes, but, nonetheless, I am a girl on a yacht.
Sail on, old salt, sail on.
Chapter 21
As Ira entered the suite, Polly was looking in a full-length mirror and merrily humming some popular airs of her girlhood, the kind of touching, heartfelt songs they seem not to write any more, like “Mairzy Doats,” “Der Fuehrer’s Face,” and “Three Ittie Fitties in an Ittie Bittie Poo.”
“You whore,” said Ira by way of hello.
“I beg your pardon?” said Polly.
“Whore,” he repeated at the top of his voice. “Don’t give me that innocent bit. I know you were boffing Virgil Tatum this afternoon. Slut!”
“Ira,” said Polly patiently, “I saw your telecast from Acanthus tonight, and I’ve been waiting for you to come home so I can tell you some lovely things. But if you’d rather fight instead, buster, I’m ready!”
“I’d rather fight!” roared Ira, advancing on Polly fiercely. “What’s the idea of humping Virgil?”
“Well, look who’s talking!” said Polly, placing hands on hips and standing her ground firmly. “How about you and Boo? Did you or did you not diddle her during the war? Are you or are you not still diddling her?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’ll change your face, you whimpering, sniveling breast-beater!”
“Yeah, breasts!” cried Ira. “You and Virgil had some very picturesque things to say about breasts this afternoon, didn’t you?”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” she said aloofly.
“Like hell!”
“Excuse me, Ira. I believe I will go to the movies.”
“You will stay right here! You will stay exactly where you are and answer one question: how could you? How could you do such a terrible thing to me? I’ve been faithful to you for eighteen years. Do you have any idea how much tail I turned down in that time—young, gorgeous, palpitating tail? But I stayed faithful, and I didn’t even like you!”
“Gee, thanks for turning down all that tail. How come you couldn’t say no to Boo? Was it because her tail didn’t palpitate?”
“Never mind Boo. We’re talking about you and Virgil.”
“You are talking about me and Vi
rgil,” she corrected. “I am talking about Boo—and a few collateral items. Your illegitimate son Gabriel, for example. And the picture of Boo you keep hidden in your wallet.”
Ira blanched with fury. “When did you go through my wallet?”
“Today. Also your suits, your bureau, and your sandy shoes.”
“You despicable sneak!”
“You philandering schmuck!”
Ira started to yell, then thought better of it. “Polly,” he said evenly, “I do not like the tone this conversation is taking.”
“You’re absolutely right,” she agreed. “We began on such a high plane: you came in and called me a whore. After that—I can’t think why—it’s been running steadily downhill.”
He took refuge in dignity. “If you choose to treat this matter lightly, it is, of course, your privilege. You’ll forgive me, however, if I do not find the subject amusing.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said without heat. “I can stand you shrieking with hysteria, I can stand you wallowing in self-pity, I can stand you blubbering with shame, but what I can’t stand is you stuffy. So make up your mind: do you want to sit on your high horse or do you want to talk?”
“I want to talk.”
“Good. So do I.”
“May I talk first?” asked Ira.
“You always do.”
“Tell me why you went to bed with Virgil this afternoon?”
“No.”
“Do you deny that you did?”
“No.”
“You admit it then?”
“No.”
“Would you like to know how I found out?”
“No.”
“It’s a pretty interesting story. Don’t you have any curiosity?”
“No.”
“I see.… Well, then, to sum up, you won’t confirm and you won’t deny and you won’t give me any information whatsoever?”
“Correct.”
Ira shrugged. “Well, it doesn’t really matter. I have all the proof I need about you and Virgil, so what’s the point in pursuing it further.”
“None.”
“But let me ask you this: was there anybody before Virgil? And if so, how many?”
