“When you danced with him,” he said to Ruth Bogart, “was there anything in his coat?”
“I think so,” she said.
It would have been the hypodermic, but this would not have been bulky. The piling of the carpet was scuffed and trampled near the door—not markedly so, but still the evidence was there once you guessed the story.
“They don’t know about us yet,” he said, “or they wouldn’t have pulled it this way, do you think?”
“I think you’re right,” she said. “You’re pretty smart sometimes, Jack.”
“Okay,” he said. “We’d better get out of here, and brace yourself. There’s one thing more that’s going to be tough tonight.”
“How do you mean? What else?” she asked, and for the first time since they had entered Chrysanthemum Rest he saw that her nerves were shaken.
“We’ve got to keep in the clear,” he said. “We’ve got to go and meet that bastard in the bar.”
“Oh, no,” she said, “not that.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Just that, and we’d better be in the mood for it, too, because he’s a smart Joe, dear. Muss yourself up a little. Kiss me. Put some lipstick on my cheek. He’s got to know we’ve been out in the garden making love.”
No matter what happened in the business you had to go on with the show. When they got theirs, you let them go, and the show had to go on, if only because you knew you had to get yours sometime in some sordid corner or some cellar or some prison, and you would try to take it without a prayer for mercy, if you were in the business. You learned how to dish it out and to take it, too, if you were in the business. The scene which had taken place in Chrysanthemum Rest was still in Jack Rhyce’s mind when they left the small detached building. His arm was around her, and they stopped and kissed shamelessly directly underneath a light on the path to the hotel. After all, the hour—which was just past eleven now—was growing late enough so that inhibitions should be breaking if boys were to be boys and girls girls. But even then he realized that their abandon had a quality that was partially genuine.
“Darling,” he said loudly, “you’re adorable.” She giggled. She was very good at that girlish giggle which must have been a vestige of the outside.
“Darling,” she said, “not again. Not here. Everyone will see us.”
She said it exactly as though they were not intending that any even remotely interested parties should see them. At some points there were lighter moments in the business. But their words and actions were only a shadow on his deeper thoughts. He did not have ice water in his veins any more than she, and he had not recovered from the impact of that pseudo-quiet death in Chrysanthemum Rest. His creative projections into Big Ben’s character all added to the acuteness of his upset. In his imagination he could hear Big Ben’s voice behind his own and hers, and the gentle drawl had a nauseating quality in his memory. He could hear Big Ben speaking as he pinned Bill Gibson down, gasping and helpless. The voice would be kind, since in the end personal animosity ought never to obtrude itself in the business, and if your emotions got the better of you it was time to resign and be a salesman of fancy motor cars. Jack Rhyce knew that the scene in Chrysanthemum Rest was playing on his emotions, which was not right. He could hear Big Ben’s voice in his imagination.
“You’re goin’ out in a minute, friend,” he could hear Big Ben saying. “You might as well go out easy and not fight, mightn’t you, since you’re goin’ out anyway, friend? Easy’s better than hard, isn’t it? And I’ve got no hard feelings. I’ll help you if you go out easy, and I’ll be right with you, friend. Now swallow these pills. They won’t hurt nobody. Just get them down or I have to make you. Swallow them, and then there’ll be the needle, and you and I know that it won’t hurt at all. Don’t make me be rough, Mac, because it won’t gain you anything. I know that poison kit you folks carry. In case you’re curious, it’s what you call Shot Number Two.”
The soft imaginary voice of Big Ben mingled with the music from the ballroom, and Jack Rhyce knew it was time to pull himself together.
“I’m against alcohol as a crutch on general principles,” he said, “but I think you and I could do with two good doubles in that bar right now, don’t you?”
“I agree with you for once, darling,” she said. He felt her shiver, and he shook her in a rough playful way.
“For God’s sake pull yourself together,” he said. “The show’s on the road.”
“All right,” she said. “So it’s on the road, and stop being a space cadet.”
He straightened his blue coat and felt his belt. He might not be carrying a weapon but, given the showdown, a properly fixed belt was a good substitute. His was fixed. He wished that he could slash his belt across Big Ben’s face just once. Twice would be better—twice and Big Ben’s closest relative wouldn’t know him.
14
THE ATMOSPHERE in the Main Bar had changed since he and Ruth Bogart had been there last, for the better as far as hotel receipts were concerned. There was no doubt any longer, if there ever had been previously, that the patrons—aside from their Japanese girl friends, who were trying to enter into the fun as vigorously as Madame Butterfly had in another generation—realized that they were far away from home. Their loneliness plus the dancing and the drinks had begun drawing them together, so that an alcoholic affection, plus an undercurrent of companionship in misery formed the motif for the now crowded bar. The flyers, the officers of the ground forces, the Navy personnel, the American civilians in and out of government jobs, and even a few Europeanized Japanese had begun to realize that they were all members of the Legion of the Lost Ones. No one had as yet started to sing “Gentlemen Rankers” or “The Road to Mandalay,” but several men by the bar were already drunk, and an American girl was doing a dramatic recitation in a corner to which no one in her party listened. A sea of smoke and spilled drinks and voices washed like a wave over Jack Rhyce and Ruth Bogart.
“All right, honey,” he said, “we’re tight and full of fun, and we’ve got to check in here, honey, in a big way, and this is our night off. Why, lookit—there’s Big Ben, just where he said he’d be.” He leaned down until her hair brushed his cheek. “Just remember, he doesn’t know who we are,” he whispered. “Just hold that thought, sweet, and give me another kiss. It’s better that I’m all lipsticked up tonight.”
It was common sense aside from anything else. There could never be anything sinister about a man if he was smeared with lipstick, and what was it Bill Gibson had said? There was safety in sex. Perhaps if Bill had practiced that maxim himself he would not have been a corpse in Chrysanthemum Rest.
“Oh, Jack,” Ruth Bogart said, and her voice had the shrill note that fitted with that happy evening, “look at Ben. He’s got a man with a squeeze box with him. Aren’t you glad we haven’t gone to bed yet, darling?”
It gave him an unpleasant twinge to observe the number of amused faces that turned toward them after Ruth Bogart had asked her last question. Naturally she did not need to tell him to look at Big Ben. Big Ben stood in the middle of a noisy group near the center of the room, and sure enough, a man with an accordion was with him. He had learned the tricks of holding attention that could only have been derived from the theater. In fact, at the moment Big Ben might have been master of ceremonies in a night club, and perhaps he had held such a position once.
“Jack,” she whispered, “he’s changed his shirt.”
She did not have to tell him. He had been wearing a white shirt when he had cut in on them on the dance floor, but now his shirt was blue.
“That’s right,” Jack said. “He’s been having a busy evening, sweet. Wave to him. He’s seen us now.”
“Hi, Ben,” she called.
“Why, sweetness,” Big Ben called, and he shook his finger at her. “Say, whatever have you been doing to Oberlin? Honest, I couldn’t guess.”
Ruth glanced at Jack’s face. She gave a stifled scream.
“Oh, Jack,” she said, “I’m sorry.
They told me in the States that it wouldn’t come off, darling.”
Jack Rhyce grinned self-consciously at Big Ben and the boys and girls around him, then he pulled out a pocket handkerchief, wiped his cheeks and lips, and shook his head.
“I guess the trouble is, dear, this isn’t the States. Maybe nothing’s kiss-proof in Japan.”
It was a pretty good line, considering, and the laugh that greeted it confirmed this impression. A man with lipstick on him couldn’t help but be a nice guy, especially in a bar.
The effort he was making made Jack Rhyce afraid that he might be overdoing things, until he saw there was no sharpness in Big Ben’s glance.
“Say, boy,” Big Ben said, “come on over here. Let’s do a song number for the crowd. This fellow can really sing, folks.”
“Oh, now,” Jack said. “I might break my larynx.”
Now that they knew he had a comic streak everything he said was funny. Ruth Bogart gave him a playful push.
“Oh, go ahead, Jack,” she said. “You can sing just as well as he can.”
There is nothing harder in the world than to give a convincing imitation of being drunk. Jack Rhyce was wise enough not to try.
“Well, let me have a double Scotch first,” he said, “so I can halfway catch up with things.”
Big Ben gave a hearty whoop of laughter. Jack Rhyce tossed off the drink when it was handed to him in three quick swallows. He did not need to ask for another because someone immediately thrust a second into his hand, but those two quick slugs had surprisingly little effect. They only served to make everything more hideously grotesque, at the same time bringing the faces around him into clearer definition. Big Ben was holding a half-empty highball glass in exactly the expert way that an abstemious person handles a drink at a cocktail party. You could always pick a drinker from a nondrinker from the way he held his glass. Big Ben, in spite of all his noise, was cold sober, but his sobriety had been hard to detect because his spirits and elation were not normal. Elation was exactly the word, the sort that came after emergence from danger. The truth was that Big Ben was happy, and also he must have felt completely safe. Like Jack Rhyce, he must have examined the hotel guests and must have concluded that there was not a cough in a carload.
“Well, I do feel better now,” Jack said.
Big Ben patted his shoulder affectionately; in return Jack Rhyce gave him an affectionate punch on the chest—just two big boys roughhousing. There was no softness in Big Ben’s midsection, as he had observed already at Wake. He was more of a wrestler than a boxer, but these were not the right thoughts for the moment, when even a thought could be detected if it influenced attitude.
“Say,” Big Ben said, and his voice had a wheedling note in it, “now you’ve got yourself lubricated up, how about a little harmonizing? Ted here can play almost anything on a squeeze box. How about a piece from The Red Mill? How about Every Day Is Ladies’ Day with me? Huh, Jack?”
“Oh, say,” Jack Rhyce said, “why that old chestnut?”
“Aw, come on,” Big Ben said. “It’s got real melody. It’s a swell song.”
“Why is it you have this yen for The Red Mill,” Jack Rhyce asked, “when it was written before you and I were born, Ben?”
Big Ben drew his hand across his eyes.
“I know,” he said. “It don’t sound reasonable, does it. Yet it’s a kind of a theme song with me. Will you sing it with me if I tell you why?”
His invitation, which included the group around them again, had a professional tone. He was a born master of ceremonies, and in the relief he must have been feeling, he might have dropped his guard.
“Why, sure,” Jack said, “If it’s a good yarn.”
“Aw, shucks,” Big Ben said, “it isn’t much of a one—just kid stuff. You know how it is when you’re a kid, how things kind of happen so you don’t forget.” His voice was eager and appealing. “It was senior year in this Baptist college down South. . . . It’s a kind of corny yarn, now I think of it. . . . There was this banker in town—the local rich guy, and he had this pretty daughter with golden hair. Well, my folks were poor, in the missionary business actually, and I was sort of shy back then. For two years I used to walk past her house most every night, without daring to knock on the door, and then comes Senior year. That autumn when I’d sort of built up my ego by playing football, why I walked up the front stoop and rang the bell, and there she was all alone, and she asked me to come inside. Well, I was shy, but she asked me if I liked hearing music on the phonograph. It was one of those kind you wind with a crank, and there were lots of records belonging to the old man that went a long ways back. Well, we played them for a while, and then she put on this Red Mill record, and held my hand, and then—well, we kinda got to loving each other with that old Red Mill playing, then her old man came in, and he kicked me the hell out, and I never saw her again, but that’s how I remember The Red Mill.” Big Ben’s voice grew softer. “And I haven’t forgot that old aristocratic bastard, either.”
He had completely held his audience, and there were sympathetic murmurs applauding his tale of young frustration. The pride and sensitiveness that had run all through the incident had revealed themselves only in the last sentence. Something had happened then, something more than was told, of course, but The Red Mill was its monument to a new beginning, and the music of early youth was always the best music.
Big Ben shrugged his shoulders. “Then after that, before the war, I was with a sort of musical caravan, and what should happen—there was The Red Mill. Anyway, it kind of stays with me.”
“That’s quite a story, Ben,” Jack Rhyce said, and he meant it. He had learned a lot from the story.
“Well,” Big Ben said, “let’s make a quick switch. Stand up here, fella. Let’s show ’em. Strike up the band. ‘Every Day Is Ladies’ Day with Me.’”
Bill Gibson was dead at Chrysanthemum Rest. Their arms were draped over each other’s shoulders as they sang, and Jack knew the words better than Big Ben.
And my pleasure it is double if they come to me in trouble,
For I always find a way to make them smile, the little darlings!
Applause came from all over the bar when they had finished. Show business was written all over Big Ben when he took in the applause.
“Say, Jack,” he said, “if we only had straw hats and canes, we could soft-shoe it, couldn’t we?”
If you played the game you had to play it through.
“We don’t need hats and canes,” Jack Rhyce said.
“Why, we don’t sure enough,” Big Ben said. “Come on. Strike up the band.”
It wasn’t a bad show either. Jack Rhyce had to admit that they both had an unusual gift of comic interpolation. In fact there was one moment when he was almost tempted to join in the laughter of the crowd as he watched Big Ben slip deliberately and recover himself. Actually his impulse to laugh died when he saw Ruth Bogart’s expression as she watched them. Then an instant later he picked out the face of Mr. Moto. Mr. Moto was standing near the street entrance of the bar. Jack Rhyce remembered being ashamed of Mr. Moto’s seeing him making a deliberate fool of himself, but then there was no reason why Mr. Moto should not have been there since he had been given the evening off. After all, enough was enough. Jack Rhyce was never surer of the truth of that aphorism than when the dance was over. He looked once toward the spot where Mr. Moto had been standing, but the Japanese was gone and Jack Rhyce could hardly blame him.
“Well, folks,” Jack Rhyce said, “it’s been nice seeing you. Come on, Ruth. Let’s say good night.”
They had done what was necessary. They had showed up in the bar and the clock showed it was ten minutes to twelve. He could tell from the tight grip of her hand when they walked toward the Cozy Nook ell that her nervous resistance was wearing thin.
“Jack,” she said, as they closed the door of their room. They had not spent much time there, but the edges of unfamiliarity had been rounded off already, and they were both through wit
h cover for the moment.
“Just a minute before you say anything,” he told her, removing his coat and tie. “Just let me wash the touch of that goon off me first. I’m sorry, Ruth.”
“You needn’t be sorry,” she said. “Nobody could have done better than you did, Jack.”
She was standing just where he had left her when he came back rubbing his face and shoulders with a bath towel.
“Darling,” she said, “you’ve washed the lipstick off and now you won’t have anything to remember me by. Please unzip the back of my dress. I don’t know why people always sell unzippable dresses.”
“Maybe they do it to get girls into trouble,” he said.
“Jack,” she said, “don’t you think it would look better if we turned out the lights?”
“How do you mean,” she asked, “look better?”
“More conventional,” she said, “more what’s expected of us. We don’t know who’s watching or listening.”
“Just get it into your head,” he said, “no one’s watching or listening. We’re out of this as of now.”
“But it won’t be long,” she said. “And it would be better if you did turn out the lights. I must look like hell.”
“Oh, no, you don’t at all,” he said.
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