I couldn’t help laughing at his logic. “Oh, Crazy Dancer, I don’t think so.”
“My backward examples work. After all, I cracked us up and yet here you are having a malted with me. How do you explain that?”
“It must be your strong medicine.”
He laughed, delighted. “Now you are sounding like Oh-Be-Joyful’s Daughter.”
When we drove into the hospital parking area there were several people about. They sent curious glances our way, taking in Crazy Dancer and his machine. I didn’t care what they thought. I’d had a good time. I was happy. In fact I was joyful.
“It will be better next Sunday,” Crazy Dancer said.
“Next Sunday?”
“Yes, when you come with me again.”
“Crazy Dancer, you forgot to ask me. You can’t just assume things, you have to ask.”
“I did ask,” he said. “Do I always have to use words?”
“Yes, you always have to.”
He looked with a very sweet expression, I thought, into my eyes. “Will you come with me Sunday, in the Moon When the Pony Sheds?”
“Yes, I will.”
Five
HE CREPT INTO my mind at odd hours during the week. I had a suspicion that he seemed as unconventional to his own people as he did to me. But I liked the unexpectedness of him, the honesty. And I was touched by the fact that he hadn’t tried even a kiss. He was feeling his way with me.
He lived by inner laws that perhaps I would never understand. The thrust of everything he did was to bring out the harmony in things. That made him a religious person. And I was reminded of my father, Jonathan Forquet. But Crazy Dancer’s God was in everything, in motion, in doing, in being.
A clown, he said, made you think in new ways.
I hunted up Sister Egg to see what she thought.
“That God is in everything? St. Eckhardt in the sixth century wrote extensively on this very point. But scholarship isn’t necessary. You just open your eyes and look.”
“I’m so glad we think alike. Would you go so far as to say His spirit is in dancing and even soccer?”
“Dancing and soccer? And lacrosse, I suppose? Well, now let me see. God enjoins us to be happy. And since we are happy when we do these things, I would say yes. Definitely yes.”
I could have hugged her, I was so pleased.
THE LAST FEW days Mandy was, as Mama Kathy would have put it, a bit off her feed. In anyone else it wouldn’t have been noticeable, but I lived with her, and Mandy, usually open about everything, now was abstracted and jumped when I spoke to her unexpectedly.
I didn’t pay much attention at first. I told myself she’d had a quarrel with Robert and they’d make it up.
That didn’t happen. She continued withdrawn and uncommunicative.
Finally, I blurted out, “Mandy, what is it? What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re not yourself. Something’s happened. Can’t you tell me?”
“It’s nothing. Really. Just a problem Robert and I have to work out.”
It was a polite way of brushing me off, but I persisted. “Is Robert pressuring you to, you know . . . go all the way?”
That made her laugh and for a moment I thought things would be all right. “Oh, Kathy, you are funny, so full of good old-fashioned homespun morality. Robert and I have been sleeping together almost from the beginning. Oh, I know good girls don’t. But the war’s changed all that. It showed us we have to live in the present.”
There was a pause, which I didn’t know how to fill, so I put my arms around her. I felt her sag. With a complete change from boisterous confidence, she crumpled.
“You don’t think less of me, Kathy, do you?”
“Of course not. It’s just that it didn’t make you joyful.”
“I was happy. For a while it was wonderful. It still is, only . . .” She stopped herself and when she continued it was more carefully. “Robert’s sensitive, you know. You wouldn’t think it, a big, strapping guy like that. But he is. I keep telling him a doctor can’t take everything to heart the way he does. He empathizes too much with his patients.”
Whatever was bothering Mandy, it was not Robert Whitaker’s concern for his patients. I wasn’t any closer to knowing what was going on than I had been before.
Sunday came. I dressed with care and scrutinized myself in the mirror. I wanted Crazy Dancer to be proud of me, to think I was pretty. I was in the parking lot at exactly one.
He must have been going on Indian time. He was late.
I watched various vehicles pull up, and leave again. A half hour dragged by in this way before it occurred to me that perhaps he wasn’t going to show up. There was a sick spot in my stomach that expanded as minutes passed and it became increasingly obvious that he wasn’t coming.
With a last look around I turned on my heel and went to my room.
Who did he think he was to treat me like this? He couldn’t have forgotten. He had deliberately stood me up. In some recess of my being I still expected I would hear from him. He’d have some excuse, some story. And I didn’t intend to listen, no matter what.
Monday there was no word. Nothing.
When Mandy invited me to go with her and Robert to Harry Sharp’s, the casino that everyone talked about but that wasn’t supposed to exist, I decided I’d go.
Mandy rarely asked me to join them, and I felt this might mean she was ready to take me into her confidence. Besides, in the mood I was in, I rather looked forward to investigating the darker side of Montreal. And Harry Sharp’s casino was as close to Mama’s sin city as I was liable to get.
For the occasion Mandy lent me a dress. It was a floaty chiffon in pale yellow. I wished Crazy Dancer could see me in it. I repressed that thought with annoyance.
“You look ravishing, Kathy.” The prospect of a nefarious evening brought color back to her cheeks and the old animation. “Have you any money?”
“Not much. Will I be needing any?”
“Well, there’s no use going to a gambling casino if you don’t gamble.”
“You’re right,” I said. Where and how could I come by money? There was the money I saved during the week for movies, and I might borrow a similar amount from Sister Egg. I shut out of my mind Mama Kathy’s reaction to such a scheme.
I knocked on the door of Egg’s room. “It’s for an emergency,” I explained.
The casino was on Cote Street, which everybody called Luck Road. All the swank places in Montreal were subterranean, and this cavern exploded in light and sound. Rapid French struck us from all sides and seemed to accelerate the more plodding English. Other languages intruded. People joked in Russian, laughed in French, and whispered in Armenian. One man wept bitterly in what sounded like Bulgarian or some other Slavic tongue, and seemed on the point of suicide, but allowed friends to restrain him. It was Dante’s inferno mixed up with carnival.
The decor was elegant but far from tasteful. There was a crystal chandelier, a gaudy jukebox in conflict with it. Boxed palm trees were scattered about, and, in their shade, spittoons. The floor was marble, disfigured by black heel marks. At one end of the bar an enormous fresco beamed down on us of a woman in extremely high heels, garters, and a feathered boa that covered some essentials, but not all. The room was ringed by rows of slot machines, and people congregated around them. Gaming tables, however, were the focal point from which all other activities radiated like spokes of a wheel.
The crowd around the tables was as eccentric as the room. A conglomeration of expatriates from a dozen countries waved their money, collected chips, and placed their bets. I had a strong feeling they were not what they seemed, that nothing here was. The well-dressed gentleman with goatee, who resembled a French banker, I was sure I had seen driving a cab. It was carny time, and people dressed themselves in their wishes, their dreams.
I was one of them in my borrowed finery.
There were floor-length gowns and women in slack
s. Among the men, zoot-suiters in the drape shape with the reet pleat and the stuff cuff mingled with starched ruffled shirtfronts and cummerbunds.
The closeness of the room intensified the sensations my nose picked up—brilliantine, that was a definite smell. It came from a head in front of me that glistened with it. The man turned a hawklike face in my direction. He wasn’t looking at me, but at Mandy. It was an insolent look, bold and—He noticed I was observing him and ducked into the maze of people.
Expensive French perfumes were at variance with those picked up in the dime store. The atmosphere was invaded by stogies and cigarettes. Belinda Fancytails from Havana were advertised. They sold everything here.
Sharp’s casino imitated both the discreet establishments of Nice and the flamboyance of Las Vegas. Mandy held onto me. We had somehow gotten separated from Robert and were scrutinizing the crowd for him. I followed a strobe light picking out face after face. There in an alcove was the man with the brilliantined hair and hawk face, talking to . . . I thought it was Robert, but the light moved on. When it completed its circuit and swung back, there was the hawk still in the alcove, but alone, nursing a drink. Someone called, “Frankie, c’est va?” and he answered with a smile and a wave of the hand. The smile was unpleasant. One front tooth lay on top of the other, giving him the appearance of a wolverine.
“Here’s Robert,” Mandy called.
Robert had found us and put an arm around each. He was perfectly at ease. Indeed he was at home in this frenetic strobe-light jungle that pierced you with drums and syncopated music intoned by a beautiful black singer.
“How do you like it? Exciting, huh?” I nodded numbly as he pointed. “Over here they’re shooting craps. The dice have to bounce off the rail for the throw to count. If they don’t, look out, some thug is apt to chop off your hand.” One player was talking to his dice, beseeching them. A woman was kissing hers. Everything was extravagant, exaggerated.
“And over here, Montreal’s own game, barbotte. You’ll find it played in any alley for penny stakes—and here for enough money to buy all the buildings on the Place d’Armes.”
He herded us over for a better look. “It’s the stupidest dice game ever invented: five winning combinations, five losing, nothing else counts. A strictly even chance, minus the cut of up to five percent the house skims off on each roll. Played with tiny ‘peewee’ dice, easy to shave. No skill, no strategy, no technique whatsoever—just plain dumb luck.”
Crowded around the table were a raucous and ill-assorted bunch of frenzied gamblers, some dressed to the nines, one who looked as though he’d slept in the bus station. This man, unshaven and reeking of cabbage, was rolling the dice, a mad gleam in his eyes.
“That’s Marcel. They call him Magister Ludi, King of the Games. He has more luck than any living person, of both kinds, good and bad. You should have been here last week when he came in without an overcoat. He pawned it for six bucks, lost that stake in two rolls, scraped his pockets for all the change he had on him, lost that, and finally panhandled nickels and dimes from the spectators to make a last two-dollar bet. He won. And won again. Walked away at closing time with more than seven thousand dollars. He bought a new wardrobe, paid a year’s room and board in advance at some fleabag inn, and he’s back tonight losing the rest.”
Making room for the vultures who wanted to savor Magister Ludi’s bankruptcy, Robert finally brought us to a table where he was welcomed by players and croupiers alike.
“This is my game,” he announced. “Roulette. Le rouge et le noir.”
Through the din I heard the croupier calling numbers and colors, the French words an invocation.
“So, little ladies,” Robert adapted his manner to the place, “what is your pleasure? What will it be? Red or black? Even or odd? Columns? Rows? Or thirty-five to one on your lucky number?”
“You go ahead, Robert,” Mandy urged. “Kathy and I will just watch until we get the hang of it.”
“No,” I declared. When the pony sheds! Where did he get off, standing me up? “Place your bet, Robert. And I will too.”
“Kathy!” Mandy was as amazed by this new side of me as I was. “Are you really going to?”
I laughed and repeated her words back to her, “No use going to a gambling casino if you don’t gamble.”
“A woman after my own heart,” Robert encouraged.
“In that case . . .” Mandy followed reluctantly.
Robert stepped up to the roulette table and placed his chips on Black. The croupier barked his warning call, the gigantic wheel spun, sending out sparks of light, and the money was raked away. Bettors lost and bettors won, their winnings added to the piles in front of them.
I picked a person with a mountain of chips before him, a gentleman with a malacca cane adorned in mother-of-pearl. The handle unscrewed, and out came a small flask from which he refreshed himself in moments of stress. He seemed to be the luckiest one there, and when he put his chips on Red, I emptied my purse and placed the first and last bet of my life.
My last, because after it was explained to me in French that the house accepted only chips, not cash, and the croupier with a resigned expression exchanged my money for a small, very small pile from a store he kept for ignorant females—to the relief of impatient gamblers and a crowd of kibbitzers the lighted wheel could be spun again, the winning number proclaimed, and the long arm of the rake descend to capture three weekends of movies and Sister Egg’s ten dollars.
It was gone in under thirty seconds, including the conference with the croupier. The gentleman with the malacca cane barely paused to resupply his hoard. I couldn’t do this. Mine was gone. Forever.
I realized a rather dull evening stretched before me. I should have patronized the slot machines, where I could have drawn out the excitement. I realized I was wrong about Mandy too. She didn’t seem ready to confide anything to me. Perhaps I’d been mistaken, and there was nothing to confide.
So I amused myself watching as the strobe lights traversed the room, spotlighting one client after another. An elderly woman with a figure like a girl’s, who wore both slacks and jewels, a large bald man, who squinted at the light and waved it angrily away—then the light found Mandy. She was watching Robert a few feet away at the roulette wheel. There was an odd expression on her face. When Robert was picked out, I was struck once more by his relaxed, self-confident manner. Was he too much at home here? That might put Mandy’s expression into context—it was worry. Or was it fear?
I laughed at myself and inhaled the disgusting smell of brilliantine. With his back to me and shielding himself from the strobes in a row of slot machines was the one called Frankie. He was also watching.
He was watching Mandy.
I DROPPED BY to see Sister Egg with the first of my repayments, and she gave me two letters. I tore open Crazy Dancer’s first. A letter from a sister can wait.
Dear Oh-Be-Joyful’s Daughter,
I was transferred, they’d only black it out if I said where. But I’m in Canada, at least for now. I found an engine and a couple of carburetors in pretty bad shape here too.
I’m writing so you won’t forget me. I do not forget you. Let me know if you miss me, and how much. I miss you a lot.
Sincerely yours,
Crazy Dancer
There was a P.S., an army post office number where I could write him. On this he abbrevated his name to just Crazy.
I glanced away smiling. He hadn’t stood me up. He thought of me, just as I thought of him. He missed me—a lot.
“Good news, Kathy?” Sister Egg regarded me contemplatively.
“Oh yes. From someone I didn’t expect to hear from.” I had to look away from her gaze to hide the fact that I was out-of-all-proportion joyful.
And she was rewarded for being her good egg self with wonderful news. The Reverend Mother had quietly quashed the bingo scheme. But at the last minute when Ruth was about to be separated from the service and dispatched, not to Arizona but to some inferior insti
tution, one of the radiology technicians admitted she had accidentally splashed some drops of hypo on the film. At the time she hadn’t realized what had happened, and only later associated the accident with the diagnosis of lung lesions that had showed up on Ruth’s X ray.
I don’t think Ruth herself could have been more elated than Sister Egg. “A girl with an appetite like that I knew couldn’t have tuberculosis.”
I had opened the letters in inverse proportion to their importance. Connie’s was the most thrilling.
... Have I mentioned Jeff before? We’ve been going out quite a bit. Of course I’ve been going out with other people too. In fact, Mama Kathy made a boyfriend list to tease me. When I saw his name on it, I immediately took it off. I told Mama that he was simply a friend. I think now what I meant was—he was in a different category than the others. You’ve guessed what I’m trying to say, haven’t you?
We’re engaged, Kathy. Engaged to be married. I can hardly believe it myself. I’m so in love. Someday you’ll know the feeling. . . .
I stopped reading and hugged the letter. What if “someday” was now? What if I too—?
I carried the letters back to my room and waved them at Mandy. “What do you know—my sister, Connie, is in love.”
At this announcement of mine, her eyes filled with tears.
I looked away, pretending not to see them. Whatever it was, she kept it to herself.
I wrote Connie immediately, trying not to let any of the uneasiness I felt about Mandy come through. While I was enthusing to Connie, saying how happy I was for her, I kept remembering how happy Mandy had been. Love, I thought, must be difficult.
More about the romance came the next day from Mama Kathy. Jeff, according to her, was perfect for Connie. And she put in details that Connie didn’t bother with. He was a stress analyst who worked in the same plant as Connie. His job was on some sort of experimental aircraft. It was very important work. In fact, it struck me that everything about Jeff began with a superlative. He was very handsome, very talented, very important. I wondered how Georges would feel about this very very person who wanted to marry his twin.
The Search for Joyful Page 8
