"So I spend around an hour tryin’ to put two-in-two together, like. So I knew where I’m at, at least. And so finly I look in the mailbox and I see a letter from Bunny. She tells me her and this Ford guy are goin’ away somewheres together. What a screwball!" He shook his head.
Corinne took a cigarette from the box on the table beside her and lighted it. She then cleared her throat, as though to make sure her voice still functioned.
"Thursday. This is Sunday. It took you a long time to get here."
Howie Croft finished what he was doing—he was blowing a smoke ring at the ceiling— then he answered. "Look, I don’t live on Park Avenue or somewheres. I work for a living. I go where the firm sends me."
Corinne took her time. "You mean you’re here on business?"
"Certainly I’m here on business!" Howie Croft said indignantly.
"You let her come to New York? You knew she was coming here?" Corinne asked dizzily.
"Certainly I knew she was comin’ here. You don’t think I’d let her come all the ways to New York without knowin’ what’s what, do ya?"
It took him a moment to smooth out his feathers.
"She told me she wanted to meet this Ford guy—this Ford chap—your husband. So I figure: Let her get it out of her system. She’s drivin’ me nuts; he’s drivin’ me nuts—" He interrupted himself. "Your husband makes a lot of dough writin’ books, don’t he?"
"He’s only written two books of poems, Mr. Croft."
"I don’t know about that, but . . . he makes a lot of dough on what he writes, don’t he?"
"No."
"No?"—incredulousy.
"There is no money in poetry, Mr. Croft."
Howie Croft looked suspiciously around him.
"Who pays the rent here?" he demanded.
"I do,"—shortly. "Mr. Croft, must we—"
"I don’t get it." He turned to Corinne, a real appeal in his rather sizeless eyes. "He’s a big shot, isn’t he?"
"He’s probably the finest poet in America."
But her shook his head. "If I’d known this I wouldn’ta let her come," he said bitterly. He looked at Corinne accusingly, as though she were personally responsible for his private dilemma. "I thought your husband could kinda show her the ropes."
"What ropes?"
"The ropes, the ropes!" Howie Croft said impatiently. "She keeps writin’ these books. . . You know how many books she’s wrote since we been married? Twelve. I read ‘em all. The last one she wrote for Gary Cooper. For a picture with Gary Cooper in it. She sent it out to the movies, and they didn’t even send it back. She’s had some tough breaks."
"What?" Corinne asked sharply.
"I said she’s had some tough breaks."
Corinne felt her cigarette burning hotly close to her finger. She unloosened the cigarette over an ashtray.
"Mr. Croft. How did your wife hear of my husband?"
"From Miss Durant," was the brief answer. Howie Croft was deep in thought.
"Who," Corinne said, "is Miss Durant?"
"Her drinkin’ buddy. Teaches at the high school. Durant and Bunny talk about all that kinda stuff."
"Would you like a drink?" Corinne asked abruptly.
Howie Croft looked up. "You’re not kiddin’," he said. "Say. What’s your first name anyways?"
Corinne stood up and rang for Rita. By the time she sat down, his question had sufficiently cleared the room.
With a drink in his hand, Howie Croft suddenly asked a question. "What’d she do here in New York, anyways?"
Corinne drank part of her drink. Then she told him what she knew—or what she was able to bring herself to relate. He listened to her in a way that, at first, she thought was disconcertingly alert. Then, abruptly, it occurred to her that he was examining her legs. She crossed her legs and tried to bring her account to a rapid close, but he interrupted her.
"Who’s this ‘Aunt Cornelia’ you’re talking about?"
Corinne stared at him. Her hands began to tremble, and she wonder-ed if it might not be best to sit on them.
She managed to ask the obvious question.
Howie Croft concentrated briefly, but shook his head.
"She’s got an Aunt Agnes," he suggested constructively. "Got a lotta dough, too. Runs the movie house over at Cross Point."
As though there were some manual way to stop the horrible ceremony beginning to take place inside her head, Corinne put her hand to her forehead. But it was too late. Already a gallant single file of people was approaching the precipice of her brain. One by one—she couldn’t stop them—they dived off. First came lovable but eccentric, faintly mustached Aunt Cornelia. Then came Harry, the sweet old kite-building butler. Then came dear old kleptomaniacal Ernestine. Then came the funny medical student and the funny drama-tics student. Then came to Poughkeepsie friend of Aunt Cornelia’s who was being fed through tubes. Then at last The Waldorf-Astoria itself was moved into position, given a competent push and sent hurtling after the others . . . "I think I’m going to faint again," she informed Howie Croft. "Would you hand me that glass of Brandy?"
Howie Croft rushed forward, semi-alarmed again, and Corinne drank what was left in the pony of brandy.
When things looked all right, Howie Croft backed off toward the couch and re-ensconced himself. He gulped down the last of his high-ball. Then, with an ice cube clicking in the side of his mouth, inquired, "Wuss you firs’ ‘ame, anyways?"
Corinne lighted another cigarette without answering. Her guest watched her, unaffronted.
"Mr. Croft, had your wife ever gone off like this before?"
"Hoddaya mean?" he asked, beginning to chew the ice cube in his mouth.
"I mean," Corinne said with control, "has she ever gone on trips with men?"
"Lis-sen. Wuddaya think I am—a fool?"
"Of course not," Corinne said quickly, politely.
"I let her go on trips once in a while. Just to break up the monotony, like. But if you’re inferring-like that I let her chase around—"
"I didn’t really mean that," Corinne hastily lied, in spite of herself.
Howie Croft started to work on the other ice cud in his glass.
"Mr. Croft, what do you intend to do about all this?"
"About all what?"—sociably.
Corinne took a deep breath. "About your wife and my husband going away together." Howie Croft held up his reply until he had finished crunching his second ice cube into liquid. When he finished he looked at Corinne, oozing with confidential confidence. "Well, I tellya—what’s your first name anyways?"
"Corinne," Corinne said dully.
"Corinne. Well, I tellya, Corinne. Strickly between you and I and the lamppost, I and Bunny haven’t been getting’ along so good. We haven’t been getting along so good in the last coupla years. Know what I mean? . . . I don’t know. Maybe she’s had a little too much dough to spend. I’m makin’ one-ten a week now—plus expenses, plus a darn good bonus every Christmas. It’s maybe gone to her head, kinda. Know what I mean?"
Corinne nodded intelligently.
"And that year she went to college didn’t do her no good—any good," Howie Croft pointed out. "Her Aunt Agnes never shoulda let her go. It warped her mind, like."
Then something strange happened. Howie Croft suddenly took off the fullback’s shoulder pads he was wearing under his sports jacket. Without them he looked like a different man and required fresh observation.
"Somethin’ else, too," the new man said, uneasily. "She kinda drove me nuts."
"What?" said Corinne with respect.
"She kinda drove me nuts," he repeated. "Know what I mean?"
Corinne shook her head and said, "No."
"Say ‘Howie’."
"Howie," Corinne said.
"Atta girl. Yeah. She kinda drove me nuts sometimes." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "It wasn’t too bad when we first got married. But—I don’t know. She got funny pretty quick. Mean. Mean with me. Mean with the kid, even. I don’t know."
He suddenly blushed. "Once she—" But he broke off. He shook his head.
"Once she what?" Corinne demanded.
"I don’t know. It don’t matter anymore, anyways. I’ve forgot about it already. She just changed a lot. I mean she just changed a lot. Boy! I can remember how she used to come to all the games when I was playin’. Football. Basketball. Baseball. She never missed a one." His mouth tightened; he was almost finished. "I don’t know. She just changed a lot."
He was finished. He could look over at Corinne easily now. Some trusty interior whistle had blown just in time. The molly-coddle, for some reason, had been taken off the scrimmage line and Good old Hammerhead Dukes was back in his old position. "This is darn good bourbon ya got, Corinne," he said brandishing his empty glass.
But Corinne stood up. She said something about a previous appointment. She thanked him for dropping by.
Howie Croft looked disappointed by the abrupt termination of his visit. But he obediently stood up and allowed Corinne to lead him to the front door. On the way he turned to address her.
"I’m gonna be in town a coupla days. Okay if I give ya a ring? How ‘bout us doin’ the town?"
"I’m sorry. I’m afraid not."
He shrugged, undeflated. He put on a light gray hat in front of the hall mirror and creased it tenderly.
"Maybe you could tell me a coupla shows I oughta see while I’m in town. Stage shows. This Hiya, Broadway, Hiya! any good?"
"Yes."
Howie Croft, his hat finally set satisfactorily on his head, turned in the doorway. He grinned at Corinne. "Don’t look so worried-like," he recommended. "You’re better off. You’re better off, in the long run. If your husband’s as nuts as my wife is."
At that point Corinne let go of the doorknob—and everything else. She informed Howie Croft at the top of her voice that she wanted her husband back.
Howie Croft fled into the elevator when it arrived, and Corinne went inside her apartment and closed the door. Her legs then dissolved and she slipped to the floor, sobbing. Later, she went to her bedroom and at once took some sedative capsules.
When she awoke—at one of timeless hours people awake from strong sedatives—she felt something crushed damply in her hand. She pressed the object into shape, then turned on her bed lamp. Howie Croft’s personal card was in her hand. She stared at it. Then she lay still for several minutes, looking at her dim reflection in her dressing-table mirror across the room. Suddenly she asked herself aloud: " are you, Bud?" The question struck her as very funny and she laughed for a quarter of an hour.
Corinne never stopped trying to find out where Ford had run off to. Neither did Ford’s publishers stop trying. Neither did Columbia.
Often they all thought they had a lead, but invariably it faded way over a long-distance telephone call, or died between the simple declarative sentences of some hotel manager’s letter.
At one time Corinne even considered hiring a private detective. She even had one report to her apartment for instructions. But she sent him back to his office unused. She was afraid he would give her a lot of dirt and no husband . . . Corinne’s search for Ford was an intense one, but a curiously legitimate one.
We know now that the itinerary of Ford and Bunny Croft, once they had left New York together, was rather like that of two quarter-blooded gypsies. We know that they turned back North when they reached Charleston, West Virginia, and back East when they reached Chicago, and that after only ten weeks of wandering they settled down in a Middle Western city. A city that obscured their liaison under a natural screen of smoke and grit.
It was Robert Waner who found out where they were living. It took him about eighteen months to find out. When he did he phoned Corinne’s apartment, and by the way he began, "Corinne? . . . Now Listen. Don’t get excited—" Corinne knew what was coming.
Waner knew that Corinne would want to go to see Ford. It was his intention to go along with her. But it didn’t work out that way. She lifted the facts from him over the phone, then packed a bag and an hour later boarded a train alone.
Her train got into the city Waner had named at six in the morning. It was November, as as she walked down the gray empty platform toward the taxi stand she felt sleet on her face and down her neck. Monday sleet, at that.
She checked into a hotel, took a hot bath, dressed herself again, and proceeded to sit in her room for the next seventeen hours. She looked at five magazines. She counted bricks in the office building across the street; vertical patterns, horizontal and diagonal patterns. When it got dark outside she put three coats of polish on her nails.
While she was waiting for her third coat of polish to dry she suddenly stood up from her chair, walked over to the telephone, and placed a hand on it. But there was an electric shock on the same table with the phone. She saw almost with delight that it was eleven o’clock at night. She felt saved. It was much too late to do any phoning. It was much too late to tell her husband all she had learned about Bunny from Howie Croft. It was much too late to find out if her husband needed any money. It was exactly the right time to take another hot bath.
She did so. But with the bath towel still wrapped around her she suddenly walked straight to the telephone and asked the operator for the number she knew by heart.
This is the extraordinary conversation that followed:
"Hello." Bunny’s voice.
"Hello. I know it’s late. This is Corinne Ford."
"Who?"
"Corinne For—"
"Corinne! Well, golly! I can’t believe it!" A voice full of rich, creamy delight. "Are you in town?"
"Yes. I’m in town," Corinne said. Her own voice didn’t sound like her voice; it sounded like a man’s—as though all her glands were through with her.
"Well, golly, Corinne! I don’t know what to say! This is wonderful. We’ve been meaning to get in touch with you for ages and ages. This is wonderful." Then, a little shyly, a little ashamedly: "Corinne, I feel just awful about what’s happened and stuff."
"Yes." Corinne said.
It was any apology. A rather wonderful one, in a way. It wasn’t delivered like any apology at all that a woman of thirty-three might essay while standing up to her ears in richly assorted, connubial garbage. It was the apology of a very young salesgirl who has buttonheadedly sent the blue curtains instead of the red.
"Yes," Corinne said.
"Golly, where are you anyway, Corinne?"
"I’m at the Hotel King Cole."
"Well, look, now." Warm, chocolate plans on the way. "It’s not at all late. You’ve got to come over here this minute. You’re not in bed or anything."
"No."
"Good. Ray’s in the other room, working. But listen. You hop in a cab—you know our address, Corinne?"
"Yes."
"Swell . . . Well, we’re dying to see you. You hurry up, now."
For a few seconds Corinne didn’t talk at all.
"Corinne? You there?"
"Yes."
"Well, you hurry up, now. We’ll be waiting. G’by!"
Corinne replaced the phone on its hook.
She then went into the bathroom and got back into the tub for a few minutes to get warm. But all the hot water in the hotels in the world couldn’t have warmed her. She got out of the tub and dried and dressed herself.
She put on her hat and coat and looked around the room to see whether she had left several cigarettes burning. Then she left her room and rang the elevator bell. She could feel her pulse beating close to her ear, the way it does when the face is pressed against the pillow in a certain way.
The sleet had turned to snow during the seventeen hours she had spent in her room, probably since darkness, and part of an inch of slush covered the walk outside the hotel. A neon sign across the un-New York-looking street cast its ugly blue reflection on the black wet street. The hotel doorman who got her a cab needed to use his handkerchief.
Corinne rode for nearly fifteen minutes; then the cab stopped and she asked animatedly, "I
s this the place?" and got out and paid her fare.
She found herself standing on an empty, dark, slushy street of rebuilt tenements.
But she walked up the stone steps and went through the first double door. She searched in her handbag, found her cigarette lighter, and flicked it on. A panel of names and buttons were before her. She found the name FORD, written in green ink, and she pushed the correspond-ing button casually, like a salesman or a friend.
A buzzing sound followed, and the inner door opened. Almost at once Corinne heard her own name, with a gay question mark trailing from it, ring down a dark spiral staircase. And Bunny Croft scampered down to meet her.
Bunny slipped her arm through Corinne’s and said things to her and continued to say things to her as they climbed the stairs together. Corinne heard nothing. Suddenly Corinne’s coat was being taken from her and she was being seated in a room and she was being asked by Bunny Croft which she’d rather have: rye or bourbon. But Corinne just looked down at her own legs. She saw that her stockings didn’t match. This seemed a very strange and highly provocative fact to her, and she resisted a strong temptation to lift her legs hip-high, knees together, and remark to anyone within hearing distance, "Look. My stockings don’t match." But she only said, "What?"
"I said, you look cold, Corinne. Brrr! I’m going to make you a drink whether you want it or not. No arguments. Go in and see Ray while I’m doing stuff. He’s working, but he won’t care. Right through that door." Bunny disappeared on the run, through a kitchen push door.
Corinne stood up and walked over to and through the door that Bunny pointed to.
Ford was sitting at a small bridge table, with his back to the door. He was in his short sleeves. An undressed watty little bulb burned over his head. Corinne neither touched him nor even walked directly toward him, but she said his name. Without perceptibly staring, Ford turned around in the wooden restaurant chair he was sitting on an looked at his visitor. He looked confused.
22 Out-of-print J. D. Salinger Stories Page 24
