Cancel All Our Vows

by John D. MacDonald

  “Just an additional two hundred thousand for the first quarter?” he asked sharply.

  “We can decide where to overlap it. If it bunches up on us, we can take it up to three by the end of the second month, and up to four or five by the time the quarter is over. Then the repayment will knock it back down to two fifty. By that time we ought to be getting in the returns on the subcontract, and have the warehouse emptying.”

  “It keeps us close to the line. It is predicated on almost no difficulties in production.”

  “But on a pessimistic guess as to when we can ship the stored units to dealers. It ought to even up.”

  Ellis handed him back the sheet and, smiling, suddenly took on his customary air of overjovial insincerity. “I guess it is all just educated guessing.”

  “Not much more than that. But Stanley likes to have a plan, even if we do change it to make it fit better as the problem develops.”

  “Well … we’ll see you tomorrow then, Fletch.”

  “Sure thing.”

  At the door Ellis turned, winked a shade too broadly at Fletcher. “Good thing, boss, I’m not the jealous type.”

  “What do you mean?” Fletcher asked too sharply.

  “Laura spent the breakfast hour telling me what a great guy you are.”

  Fletcher relaxed inwardly. “She’s trying to make you glad to work for me, Ellis. Tell her I keep my hoof on the back of your neck.”

  Ellis went whistling up the hall. The office was very silent. Fletcher put the finishing touches on his notes, rechecked his figures, then looked at his watch. Twelve thirty. He phoned his house and once again the phone was not answered.

  Outside the heat of the day was almost overpowering. His shirt was stuck to him by the time he reached his car. He drove home doggedly and unlocked the silent house. The note was in front of the door, held down by an ash tray. His head throbbed a little as he picked it up.

  Dear—We decided to go to the lake with Martha. You can call us there when you get home, or just drive on out. And bring your suit if you come.

  It was signed with a sprawling J that ran off the edge of the paper. He knew that she had been intensely annoyed with him when she wrote it. “Bring your suit if you come.” And be damned if you don’t. The more casual her notes sounded, the angrier she was when she wrote them.

  He went into the bedroom, the note still in his hand. He crumpled it and threw it in the wastebasket, stripped to the waist and sat on the bed, wondering what he ought to do. It would be a little too childish to neither call nor drive up there.

  He waited for a few minutes, and then phoned. Hank Dimbrough answered on the third ring. “Hank, this is Fletch. Jane handy?”

  “Hi there, boy. What are you doing down in that stink hole? Get your ass up here and put it in the lake. A buck says it’ll steam.”

  “No bet. Can I speak to Jane?”

  “Here’s the way it is. They loaded the boat with kids and everything, and the whole gang has gone over across the lake to the restaurant to eat. I’m sitting here alone drinking my lunch, because I’m expecting a long distance call. Come up and help me drink my lunch.”

  Fletcher thought for a moment. So she was too mad to stay anywhere near the phone. Okay, there can be a limit to that, my girl. Have a happy time for yourself.

  “Hank, I’m sorry as hell, but I can’t make it. That’s what I wanted to tell Jane. Please tell her a couple of things have come up, and I’ll try to get home as soon after dinner tonight as I can.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I got nobody to talk to around here. Women and college boys, by God. Look, as long as you can’t get home until after dinner, I’m going to keep your woman and your kids here for some special steaks I’ve got in the deep freeze. Say, we’ll save you a steak out, and you come up if you can make it. Tomorrow’s Sunday and your kids can sleep on the way home. Moonlight tonight, old man, and maybe you can paddle around in the water. Bring your suit.”

  “I’ll do that if I can make it, Hank.”

  “Well, phone me if you can’t, hey, and I’ll eat that steak myself. Triple A. Had them flown air express from K.C. They cut like butter.”

  After he hung up, Fletcher had the feeling that he was the kid who hadn’t been invited to the party. He realized wryly that it was his own fault. If he weren’t being so stuffy, he could be on his way up there right now.

  Hell, let her sweat it out. Just because I popped off too much at breakfast doesn’t mean I’ve got to come around on my damn knees. I’ll go up there when I get damn good and ready to go up there.

  As he showered, he wondered what he’d do for the rest of the day. Maybe a late lunch at the Downtown Club and there might be somebody around for some handball. The courts were air-conditioned this year. Some fast games for the waistline and then a swim in the pool. Some lazy drinks and then drive out to the lake for a steak and a reconciliation.

  The Downtown Club had once been a vast private residence, a Georgian structure with wide lawns. But the widened city streets had swallowed the lawns and now the entrance steps were flush with the sidewalk. The white columns were soot-stained. It was primarily a man’s club, with not more than three functions a year when women were admitted. In Minidoka the social lines were drawn firmly, but since the war more and more exceptions had been made. In the old days, if a man belonged to the Randalora Club, he definitely did not belong to the Downtown Club. If he was a member of the Downtown Club, his country club was the ancient, slightly ratty, socially impeccable Christopher Golf and Tennis Club on the hills east of the city. But, since the war, a few of the younger businessmen, professional men and executives who were members of Randalora were asked, discreetly, if they would care to join the Downtown Club. It had created a rather odd attitude on the part of such young men. It gave them a slightly condescending attitude toward the Randalora Club, and it also made their wives look hopefully across the horizon toward the weathered roofs of the Christopher Club. And, as the Randalora-Downtown contingent grew larger in the Downtown Club, they, feeling, and rightly, that the Christopher-Downtown contingent formed a rather impassive clique within the Downtown Club, formed a clique of their own. Yet any one of them would have left it willingly should they be put up for membership in the Christopher Club.

  Thus, whenever Fletcher went up the wide steps and into the dim, high-ceilinged interior of the Downtown Club, he had the feeling of being a slightly second-class citizen. And he knew that their membership in the Randalora Club and his membership, particularly, in the Downtown Club, was due primarily to Jane’s inherited social standing. Her father had been an almost notoriously unsuccessful and unlucky doctor. Yet, he had been a doctor, and in the tribal hierarchy of Minidoka, that counted. Dr. Tibault had been dead for many years, but that pretty Jane Wyant was still old Dr. Tibault’s younger daughter. Mrs. Tibault, a regal and forbidding woman, who had never forgiven Dr. Tibault for dying poor, lived in southern California with Jane’s older sister, who was a nervous, childless, arrogant, pathetic woman married to an industrial designer.

  Fletcher’s father had been, until his death in 1947, a successful merchant who had made a better than average living from his large hardware store. And Fletcher knew that, had he married the daughter of another merchant, he might very possibly, because of his position with Forman, have belonged to the Randalora Club, but the world had not yet changed sufficiently to assure him of membership in the Downtown Club. He knew, also, that Jane wanted, with all her heart, to belong to the Christopher Club. She had only mentioned it once, and that was several years ago. Aside from that one slip, she had maintained an air of pure and perfect indifference to the Christopher Club, and on several occasions had begged out of appearing in inter-club tennis matches there. And Fletcher knew that Jane’s attitude of indifference was, perhaps, the only effective weapon at her disposal, the only attitude which might conceivably result in an invitation to join at some future date.

  The desk man gave Fletcher a servile superior smile as he
walked in. Fletcher looked into the dining room and saw that with the exception of a few very elderly gentlemen, it was deserted. And no one was eating in the bar. So he took a new magazine and went into the dining room and took one of the tables for two beside the wall. The sound of city traffic outside was muted. From time to time a horn blared faintly. The catfooted waiter took his order for cold cuts and presented the check for his signature.

  Fletcher ate slowly as he read the magazine. There was a nervous irritable edge somewhere within his mind, fraying the thoughts that rubbed against it. When his coffee was brought it was not hot enough, and he sent it back with a bit more irritability than the situation demanded. Christ, this club was dead in the summer! A pasture for aged bankers.

  He replaced the magazine on the lounge table and looked in the bar again. Still empty. He wandered down past the bowling alleys in the cellar to the small gym and the handball courts beyond. It was as silent as a tomb. He looked at the pool. The water lay like green glass, with every tile on the bottom showing. He quickly repressed an astonishing impulse to spit into it.

  When he went upstairs the bar was still empty. He held his thumb on the buzzer until a white-coated man with an aggrieved expression came through the door behind the bar and said, “Yes sore?”

  “A double Scotch and plain water on the side, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

  “No trouble, sore.”

  Slightly ashamed at the snap in his voice, Fletcher said, “Nice and cool in here.”

  “Yes sore. Is Pinch all right, sore?”

  “Fine.”

  “If there’s anything else, would you ring the buzzer, sore.” The man drifted away and the door swung shut behind him, rocked once and was still.

  Fletcher tossed the drink down, eased the throat burn with the water. He banged the glass down and walked out, down the lobby, out the big doors without glancing at the man behind the desk. Liquor heat spread out from his belly, meeting the burning heat of the sidewalk. He turned away from his car and walked down the street with a rapid stride, as though he were going someplace. He turned down by the theater district and slowed and read the ads. He went into a nearby bar and got another double Scotch. The bar was too frigidly air-conditioned. A ratty-looking young girl in a soiled dress gave him a tentative, yellow-toothed smile. He looked away before the smile reached full flower. The girl went to the juke box with an exaggerated sway of her pulpy hips and put a nickle in a ripe flatulent baritone who sang of what we did last night. There was a faint pink lipstick smear on the rim of his chaser glass.

  He went out and walked directly into the first movie. He took a seat near the back, on the side. His long legs were cramped. It was an old movie, a biblical spectacle. The dark heroine emoted with her breasts. The two heavy shots of liquor dulled him. He sat there, and let the music and the meaningless words and the rich colors of the picture drift across the surface of his consciousness. He felt far away, and lost from everything of meaning. He looked woodenly at the silken flanks of the actress, ten times life size on the screen. She wiggled, and the pimpled public whistled in shrill awe.

  He sat and stewed in sourness and nameless regret and dark purposeless gloom and when he looked for the raw flanks again he found that the pictures were no longer colored and that, without his noticing, the picture had changed to a western. Pistols banged flatly in the stale movie air and he put his chin on his chest and fell asleep, his knees aching where they pressed against the back of the seat in front of him.

  Chapter Eight

  They came back across the lake at two o’clock, the big fast boat loaded with adults and screaming children. Jane lay on her stomach on the bow deck with Martha beside her. The children were shrilly demanding their proper turns steering the boat. Sam, Steve, Dick and all the children were crowded in the seat behind the wheel. Dolly and Deena were in the stern. Once Jane looked around and met Sam’s glance. There was an odd impact as their glances locked. She turned back, retaining the memory of limpid brown eyes. Setter puppy eyes.

  They had no chance to talk, and Jane had resolutely blocked every attempt he had made to get her aside from the others. She lay there knowing his eyes were on her, knowing that he was staring at her, and knowing, also, that she was taking pleasure in that knowledge.

  A child. A kid somewhere around twenty. Child’s mind, in a body of heroic proportions.

  “Gloomy, or just silent?” Martha asked, putting her lips close to Jane’s ear.

  “Both. I’m wondering if Fletch has gotten here yet. And, if so, how many drinks Hank has poured down him.”

  “Gee, I wish Hud could get off Saturdays.”

  “Fletch had a little work to do this morning. He probably got home around noon and got my note and got up here just in time to miss us.” She had a twinge of guilt as she remembered her note. It had been pretty chilly. She put her lips closer to Martha’s ear. “Pal, if anybody should ask you, coming up here was your idea.”

  Martha gave her a quick, wise look. “Sure. Any time. Sometimes I can use favors like that myself.”

  Jane rested her forehead on her crooked forearm. Every dip and movement of the boat made her conscious of her body, conscious of flux and flow and that raw little edge of wanting which, once aroused, would stubbornly not recede until sated. Yes, Fletch would be there, waiting. He’d be irritated, and they’d do a little genteel snapping at each other, without letting the others know—because that united front you presented to the world was very precious and very necessary. And then you would find a chance to get away from the others for a few moments and then you would kiss and make up, and the instant he kisses you, he’ll know just how you stand because he always seems to sense that, always. And it will be a game to get away from the others, and it will be like that time last summer. Sun shining down through the leaves, and oh, those miserable deer flies, but good anyway, as this will be good.

  When the motor slowed she lifted her head and saw the dock close by. She got up and balanced and picked up the bow line and jumped to the dock, turned and fended the boat off with her bare foot, then sat on her heels and made the line fast to the dock. It seemed silent and hot after the roar and wind of the boat

  Judge said, “Mother, Johnny Dimbrough says there’s a very easy mountain right over there with a trail and everything and we can’t go swimming for an hour anyway, so all the kids are going and can we?”

  “Of course, dear. Be careful. Watch out for Dink.”

  They ran off whooping. Dolly grabbed her little one and carted it, objecting, off to the midday nap. Hank came out on the dock with a drink in his hand just as Jane stood up and turned toward the house.

  “Is Fletch inside?” she asked, a funny feeling of catastrophe pinching her heart.

  “He phoned, darlin’. He left a message. A couple of things have come up, he said. He said he’d try to be home as soon after dinner as possible, so I told him to come up here for a steak tonight and he said he’d call if he couldn’t make it.”

  Jane frowned at him. “That’s funny. He never works Saturday afternoon.”

  Hank beamed. “Tell you what. We’ll set spies on him and get her address. Then we’ll raid the joint.”

  She turned to Martha. “Gosh, I think maybe I better go back to town.”

  “Why don’t you phone him?”

  “I don’t think I can get him at the office.”

  “Go try, dear. It’s a lot easier than rounding up the kids and dragging them back into the heat.”

  “Go use the phone, dear,” Dolly said.

  Jane phoned the house, and then the office. After six rings a man answered hesitantly. “Yes?”

  “Is this Forman Furnace? Who is speaking, please?”

  “Glover, M’am. I’m a watchman.”

  “This is Mrs. Fletcher Wyant. Do you happen to know if my husband is in his office?”

  “He was, Missus Wyant, but not any more. He left here I’d say about twelve thirty. Around there. Drove off and he hasn’t come back. No
body’s here. The air conditioning is all turned off and everything. I don’t expect nobody back on an afternoon like this.”

  “Well … if he should come back, will you tell him to please phone the Dimbrough’s camp? Can you do that?”

  “Glad to. Dimbrough you said? I’ll tell him, but like I said, I don’t expect nobody will come back today.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Glover.”

  “You’re certainly welcome, Ma’am.”

  She sat by the phone for a few moments, snapping her thumbnail against her front teeth. She took a cigarette and flicked it angrily against the back of her hand, lit it with a hard sweep of the match against the striking surface. She broke the wooden match between her fingers. He’d started it, hadn’t he? Waking up in a bestial temper. Abusing the children. Growling at me. Taking the car without a word or an offer. Nobody would blame me for getting the children out of that heat. Heat like that can make them sick. And me too. He’d never think of that. He goes to an air-conditioned office every day, while I slog around that house with sweat dripping off me, trying to keep it decent for him and the children. Oh, Fletch, why are we doing this to each other just when I … when I need you near me.…

  The sharp yell of the phone made her jump. She picked it up. “Is this Lake Vernon aye-yut seven nye-yun?”

  “Yes, it is.” And bless you, my darling, for calling me.

  “I have a call from Washington, D.C., for Mr. Henry Dimbrough. Is he there? Hello! Is he there?”

  “Yes,” Jane said dully. “Just a moment, please.”

  She went out and called Henry in off the dock. He was jubilant at getting his call. He patted Jane on the fanny, a familiarity that she despised, and said, “You just earned yourself an orchid, baby.” He snatched up the phone. “Hello? Hello? Johnny? You bastard! Jane honey, shut that door there, will you please?”

  Jane went back to the dock. Martha was sitting up, oiling her legs. “Still want a ride back? I was thinking, I could leave all the kids here and drive you in and drive back out myself. I could do it, with luck, in less than an hour.”