"The Woman Aroused" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lacy Ed)
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The Woman Aroused
Ed Lacy
This page formatted 2007 Munsey's.
http://www.munseys.com
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Principal Characters
GEORGE JACKSON
Since splitting up with his wife, he had seen her occasionally but then he met Lee—and no other woman would do!
He came to George with $7,000. When he died George didn't know what to do with the money—or Henry's wife either!
Tall, voluptuous. Next to her Lady Godiva looked like the winner of a baby contest. But no man could unlock the secret she kept from the world!
George's retired neighbor. He played poker to win money and loved to look into his neighbor's windows. He gave his age as reason enough for both forms of indulgence.
Worked for same company as George. A middle-aged Romeo, he got quite a shock when his son came home from overseas and acted just like him!
Joe's son. His father had planned for him to
to college when he was discharged but the Army had taught Walt a lot, and he was changed now, changed into a wise guy—with angles!
George's estranged wife. She saw him every now and then and they tried to start over, but when Lee came into the picture, her chances sank to a new low!
Chapter 1
I'M GEORGE JACKSON.
And this began about the time when you could still remember getting on the subway for a nickel, people were just starting to worry about the water shortage, and the current expression making the rounds was, “How corny can you get?” “How great can one be?” and the like. I know it sounds insane
I knew it was a Sunday morning when Flo walked out on me, and it must have been near the first of the month, because we only got together when I gave her the rent from the house. Flo was (and is) my ex-wife, and we were as much in love with each other as we could be—but that wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough—we once split up arguing as to whether a certain brand of Haitian rum was dark brown or yellow. But don't think we weren't in love.
That Saturday night we started fighting over a cup of coffee and a couple of bucks. It was after midnight and we'd seen two crummy pictures at some 86th Street theatre, if one can call a neighborhood movie house a theatre. Flo and I were “trying it again”—for a few days we had been enjoying one of our periodic reunions, complete with much kissing, tears, and a good deal of genuine love.
It was early Spring, about March, and I remember it was cold and brisk as we walked down Lexington Avenue. I was trying to remember which newsstands were open late, so I could buy a Sunday paper. Flo was dressed in an ankle-length red coat with a high collar that almost went over her head. She was wearing gold ballerina slippers, and I think she was hiding her upper lip that night. Flo had nice full lips but she used lipstick as a disguise, shaping her lips the way she thought they
“We'll make coffee at home.”
“Too much bother,” she said, pointing to a coffee pot that didn't look too clean. “Let's duck in here.”
“You're certainly wearing the correct outfit for a greasy spoon.”
She gave me a mock bow. “Knew you'd finally appreciate this coat—took me two days of begging before I could even buy it. If you like, we can go back to one of the better places on 86th.”
We were at 80th Street and I was damned if I'd walk back in all that cold—not to mention the fact I only had about twenty dollars to last the week. I said, “I'm broke.”
“For a character making a hundred and twenty-five per, not to mention what you win on the horses, you're always broke. Very odd.”
I could have said something nasty about the scatter pins she was wearing, my “make-up gift,” being half a week's salary, but I walked on. When I looked back, Flo had gone into the dingy coffee pot. I went in, too.
There was the usual smell of many foods, and the short, swarthy counterman with tired eyes behind the cash register, reading a morning paper. At the other end of the counter a shabby old drunk was sipping coffee. There were no tables so we sat on stools, and Flo's shoes and horrible coat which she thought were the latest style (and probably were) looked so out of place, I felt irritated as hell. We ordered two light coffees and Flo took some cake. She took out cigarettes and gave me one. We sat there and smoked and she tried to make conversation by saying what a waste of time movies were these days, but I was too annoyed to chatter.
The cup looked clean but the coffee was crummy. The drunk suddenly put a nickel in the juke box—which surprised me as he didn't look as if he could afford a nickel—and played
I sipped the bad coffee and kept still. It was a good song, I often danced to it, pirouetting on that
When Flo finished her coffee I stood up and the counterman said, “Twenty cents.” I only had twelve cents in change, so I took out my wallet, gave him a bill as Flo said, “Georgie, play
“It's late,” I told her.
“But the number does things to me,” she said, taking a nickel from the change in my hand, walking over to the gaudy juke box, a coy sway to her slim hips.
The counterman gave me eighty cents in change as she came dancing back, holding out her arms, both of us watching her. “Want to dance?”
“Oh, stop it.”
She turned to the counterman, “Dance this one with me, handsome?”
He laughed and the drunk at the end of the counter turned his back on us. Flo began spinning about, her long coat billowing out to show her good legs, even the lace garters on her thighs. She was too much of an exhibitionist to dance well. She's always been like that, thinking more of showing off than the rhythm. When the record was over, she blew a kiss at the counterman—who had been taking in her legs—said, “Sweet dreams, honeyboy,” and made a grand exit onto Lexington Avenue.
Following her, I said, “Damn it, Flo, why don't you stop being cute, Bohemian, or whatever you think you are? Dancing around in the great tent you call a coat, showing your legs like a seventeen-year-old brat.” I was punching a bit low—Flo was hitting 34 and starting to get sensitive about her years.
“George, don't be such a stupid snob,” she said, reaching up and pinching my cheek. “The crack about my coat I'll skip, you have absolutely no sense of what's smart. But where's your romance?”
“Not in a coffee pot!” I said, as she thumbed her nose at me. I was so furious we walked straight home and all the newsstands we passed were closed. When we reached our house—that had been the garage at one time where we kept the Pierce-Arrow and which was now
I undressed, then stopped abruptly. I took out my wallet, went through my pockets. Flo asked, “What's wrong?” I kept going through my pockets and she said, “Stop screwing up your face. Now what?”
“Goddamn it, I gave that guy a ten dollar bill and he only gave me eighty cents in change. The bastard!”
She rested the magazine on her flat stomach. “You sure?”
“Of course I'm sure. All I had was two tens. Had a feeling in the back of my mind all the time something was wrong, but I was so upset about you making a damn fool of yourself....”
“No, you don't—
“He'll welcome me with open arms I I'd look like a sap. It's late, he must have plenty of tens in the till. Mark it down as nine bucks lost.”
“At least call him.”
“No,” I said, glad she was annoyed now.
“God, you're always yelling about money—call him!” Flo snapped.
“Call whom? You remember the name or store number? Let's forget it,” I said, putting on my pajamas.
“At least
“Go to sleep. If you hadn't acted the fool this never...”
She exploded, her voice shrill as she yelled, “Oh, now it's my fault you're a dummy! Why I!...
I saw the bust-up coming. I sat on the bed beside her, said gently, “Let's forget it, Flo. It was my fault.”
“Forget it? It's okay for you to call me a fool, shoot your refined mouth off. But me, if I open.... My God, we argue over everything, even a lousy cup of coffee. Why if we had had a baby, he'd be neurotic with your constant nagging and...”
“Don't start that baby routine. Wasn't my fault we never had a child.”
“I suppose it was mine!!! she said, her sharp face contorted as the tears came.
I put my arms around her. “Look, darling, forget it. We're trying to make a go of...”
She broke out of my arms, jumped off the bed, screamed, “Some chance of making a go of anything, if a lousy five-cent cup of coffee, if nine bucks, can start this!”
“Let me tell you something,” I said, my voice rising. “If you'd only stop being the big career woman, if we had a real home, regular meals, we wouldn't be drinking coffee in some dive. If you could forget trying to be the center of attraction for a few minutes, I could keep my mind on my change. Or if you hadn't showed your legs to the counterman he would...”
“I like that! Oh I really
“That's the wrong word, you mean blame.”
“You damn tightwad! If you weren't so cheap, we could have gone to...”
“Sure I'm tight with money,” I said coldly.
“You... you
I stood up but she moved away from me. I pulled her into my arms, held her while she struggled. “Flo, please, let's cut it, I'm sorry. Please Flo.... I've looked forward so much to having you again.”
She rested her head on my shoulder, began to bawl. “I didn't want to fight, Georgie, and yesterday was so very good. But we always battle over money—or something. Nine crummy dollars. My mother always said you...”
“Now wait, this is just between us. I don't care what your mother said or...”
Flo pushed me away. Her face was a wet mess.
I couldn't resist saying, “Sure, a plumber who made an honest living. Which is something nobody in your four-flushing family ever did. There isn't a one of them worth a damn except your brother Eddie and...”
“That's right, stick up for that... that... bum!” Flo sobbed. “You encourage him in his crazy ideas.”
“For God's sake stop talking about the kid like that, wounded and...'
She fell on the bed, sobbing hysterically. I stood there, waiting for her to quiet down. She stuffed the top of my blue satin sheet in her mouth, making pitiful muffled sounds—and smearing lipstick on the sheet. I said, “I'm sorry, Flo. I swear I'm sorry.” I don't think she even heard me. I always ended up saying I was sorry.
I stood there for a few minutes, looking down at her, sorry the way things were going, and even more sorry in a vague sort of way I was mixed up in somebody else's troubles and complexes. But when Flo got up and began to dress, I felt sick. She said in a normal voice, “Georgie, what's wrong with us? We always battle over something, something petty. Nine bucks... guess our marriage is only worth nine bucks, and no bargain at that.”
“Look, Flo honey, it's only been two days. Give us more time...”
“No use, we both know it. This time we're really through.”
“We've been
She shook her head sadly. “This time I mean it.”
She went to the bathroom, washed her face, repainted it, and within a few minutes she was gone and the place was full of a haunting empty silence.
It was exactly twenty after two a.m. and we had been “together” since Friday night. I poured myself a drink, tuned in one of the all-night disc jockeys, and sat down. It was the first few minutes after she left me that I always missed Flo most.
We had been married almost a dozen years before, when she was 22 and I 35. We spent six years together, then the divorce and our frequent reunions. We loved each other, as the saying goes, but I suppose it was a case of neither of us being built for marriage. In our own way we worked things out fairly well. Our reunions stopped me from getting a little frantic about sex and companionship, and I guess it worked that way for Flo too. The first years hadn't been bad, but Flo is the efficient type that must go in for smart conversation all the time, dress like something out of the latest fashion magazines. Unfortunately, the magazines are usually six months ahead of the latest styles, so seeing Flo was a constant shock. This may sound like a hell of a lot of small reasons why our marriage didn't last, but it was all pretty important to me. Somehow, her extreme styles kept me at a distance. Of course there were other things; like her dancing in the coffee pot in those gold shoes and the new-look coat to end all new looks. It may have been I was too old and set for Flo.
We hit it off well in bed, but when we decided to have a kid (and never did) she even spoiled that by a sort of efficient mechanical approach, asking me, “Darling, will this be it? Oh dearest be sure and do everything right. Make this the
Our days became a series of fights and we separated and she got a job as a bookkeeper for a smart dress house. It was the ideal job for Flo: it pleased her efficiency to handle a thousand and more details, and she was right in with the very newest styles. Her analyst thought it was the right job for her, and I suppose he really did her a world of good, although it was on his advice she got the divorce. In the settlement, she took the house, which only had one other tenant beside myself—the upstairs apartment that had once been the chauffeur's apartment (although we never had one; my father loved to drive the big car himself) was rented to a quiet old retired man named Francis F. Henderson. He'd been living there for years and paid eighty a month for his three rooms. I gave her the rent money, and took care of the house and paid the taxes for my rent.
For about a year after she finished her analysis I didn't see Flo—she was busy analyzing all her friends. Then we began having tearful and wonderfully tender reunions—and just as tearful partings. Our reunions always seemed to come when I was fed up with being lonely, began to think about girls too much, glance at the bra ads in the subway with more than admiration for the copy and layout. I had to see her every month anyway to give her the rent, so spending a few days together every other month seemed to do us both nicely.
When the disc jockey said it was three o'clock I decided I'd better call the coffee pot after all—I needed the nine dollars. I dialed the operator, told her I wanted a coffee pot—a restaurant—on the West side of Lexington Avenue, near 80th Street No, I had no idea of the name or street number. After a moment she gave me two phone numbers and the first one I dialed turned out to be the right one.
The counterman said, “One of my partners comes on now, so I was counting the cash. Soon as I saw I was nine bucks over, I says, 'I short-changed some guy.' Then I remember you because that redheaded ba—your wife—was dancing in the red coat and the drunk said...”
“What did the drunk say?” I asked.
“Never mind, he was drunk. You...”
“What did the drunk say? I'm curious.”
“Mister,” the counterman said, his voice soft over the phone, “I don't even know the drunk. He said something about her legs. Look, you call for the money in the afternoon, after three, that's when I come on.”
“Fine.”
“Don't worry, it's safe.”
“I know that. And thank you.” I hung up.
I took out my blending bowl and mixed some tobacco, lit my pipe. I felt badly: I wanted to wake up in the morning and have Flo next to me, hear her chatter as we read the Sunday papers, feel the good warmth of her body against mine. The damn house seemed too quiet.
I sat around, had another drink. Even my cat was out. Flo had her own place on 16th Street. Maybe by the time she reached there, she'd cool off, take a cab back. I could phone her but that would only start more talk. Besides, I wanted her to come back to me. (You're so right—I wasn't exactly a dilly to live with either.)
By four I went to bed but I couldn't sleep and by five I was too restless to even lie down—I could smell Flo's perfume on the bed. I got up, put on sweat pants and a red sweat shirt, wool socks and tap shoes, and went downstairs to dance.
The basement was a long room with a neat oil burner at one end. A mirror ran along one wall and the room was completely bare of any furniture except a phonograph with an automatic record changer.
When I was a kid we lived in Washington Heights in fairly comfortable circumstances. My father was a hard working plumber. He started manufacturing bathroom fixtures and the money rolled in. When he bought the big brownstone on 76th Street and this garage which went with the house, we weren't trying to move in society or put on the ritz. My folks liked the neighborhood and father considered the houses the same as money in the bank. I was about seventeen then and raised like a rich man's son. At Columbia I studied journalism because I had a vague desire to write and mainly because the title “writer” was a lazy catch-all that covered so many phases of life—most of them empty. By merely calling himself a “writer” a man could get by with doing nothing all his life, if he had an income. When I graduated college I worked on a Bronx paper for a while as a copy boy, then played at working in the old man's sales department. Pop was an intelligent man, told me to enjoy myself, that money was meant to be spent. We lived happily and well, had one motto: “Never touch the principal, live on the interest.”
The 1929 crash (it was actually two months before the crash) took my father's cash, his business, the big house, and even took his and mother's life shortly after. The garage was left only because nobody wanted to buy it. With his last few bucks, raised by borrowing on his insurance, we converted the garage into living quarters, and my folks brooded there till they died within a few weeks of each other. They were people who had risen from poverty and the loss of their security broke their hearts. I got in public relations, became a small-time “planter,”—a good-time Charley who made it his business to know reporters and columnists and big shots, so I could almost guarantee a story or a mention in a column in certain papers. But when I started working for the oil company and had a steady salary, I renovated the garage so I could rent out the upper floor and made the basement into my private dance studio.
You see when we were still living on Washington Heights, my mother decided I had to take dancing lessons because it was “the thing” for polite kids to do. She sent me to a beautiful woman who claimed to have been part of the original Diaghileff Ballet Russe company Otto Kahn brought to America just before or after the first world war. She was a nervous, stocky little woman with an amazingly strong and limber body. Most of the time she jabbered so fast and her accent was so intense, I couldn't make out what she was saying. But she claimed to know or have known Fokine, Nijinsky, Matisse, Ravel, and Picasso... although the names didn't mean a thing to me at fifteen. She talked of the old Paris, what a dictator, snob, and genius Diaghileff was, as she put me through the strict discipline of the classical ballet.
I was a tall, skinny kid, still scared some of my pals would find out I was taking dancing lessons—and ballet at that. I had absolutely no desire to study the dance, and even though my mother insisted, I would certainly have given it up if my teacher hadn't seduced me the third time I was in her studio. She thought nothing of it, would make love to me in French, her voice gay and light, but of course it was a great experience for me. I studied hard to be sure she would reward me with her favors. In time I was quite pleased with the hard mus-cularness my body began to take on.
The truth is I soon liked—and still like—dancing. By the time I was eighteen the novelty of “Madame's” middle-aged body had worn off, but I studied as hard as before. I soon realized that like opera, the classic ballet is static, incoherent to us, reflecting only the past, the dull glories of a dead era. It is bound by a bric-a-brac tradition completely outdated. But in the modern dance I found my interpretation of life, although even the modern dance is still hindered by many of the silly old ballet traditions. I went in for tap dancing, went crazy over Martha Graham, and even tried ballroom dancing. At one time I thought I was a second Ted Shawn and while at Columbia, the stage bug bit me badly. I couldn't be bothered with college musicals, and decided the best and fastest way to get a break would be to become a chorus boy, where my great dancing ability would surely stand out, stop the show.
One day I tried out for a Broadway show, certain it would only be a few days before I would be the
That was the end of my “career,” but I still dance, mainly for the exercise and self-enjoyment, and of course I attend all the various dance recitals.
I put ten records on the phonograph, a collection of classical, jazz, some Afro-Cuban, and even one be-bop. Then turned down the lights and began to dance—watching myself in the mirror. I did whatever I felt in the mood for; an odd mixture of ballet, tap, rumba, and a great deal of arm and body movements.
It took a half hour for the records to play and then I rested for a few minutes, put on another ten records and danced again. By this time I was wet with sweat and so tired I could hardly move. I put the records away, went upstairs. Outside, it was turning light and I drank a glass of milk, spilled some in Slob's saucer—he was my cat and on the town for the night—and threw myself across the bed. I intended to get up in a few minutes, take a shower and dry off under the sun lamp. The next thing I new, the shrill sound of the doorbell cut into my sleep, seemed to drill through my head. I sat up, saw it was nearly nine.
For a moment I sat there, listening to the bell, wondering who it was, my mind still full of sleep. Then I jumped out of bed, ran to the door. Of course it had to be Flo and I felt like a louse for not calling her. There was a great heavy wooden door, ceiling high, across the front of the living room. It had once been the garage doors, and in this a smaller door had been cut. I flung this open and stared pop-eyed at a plump man in an army uniform, gold major leafs on his shoulders, several bright ribbons on his chest. For a moment we stared at each other, he ran his eyes over my smelly sweat suit and then he suddenly laughed. He said, “Well by Christ I'm glad to see something that hasn't changed. Knew I could count on you, George, to be an institution.”
“Well for—Hank Conroy!” I said as if I didn't believe my own voice. “Where did you drop from?”
“From Frankfort. Landed at 4 a.m. Going to let me in?”
“Sorry,” I said as he walked by me and I closed the door. I'd last seen Hank in 1942 when he came in on a ten-day leave after graduating officer school. Now he stood in the center of my living room, looking about slowly, as if seeing it for the first time, and I thought he was going to cry.
He said, “Ah, George, you don't know how good it is to see you, this room. New York's frightened the pants off me, but you—this room—the house—you're all a wonderful reminder that some things in this world of confusion are still the same. George, you're the goddam backbone of something or other.”
“Hank, carrying a load?”
He took off his hat, opened his jacket and sat down. His hair was still thick and heavy. “Drinking doesn't do me any good anymore, George. Odd, I killed time at LaGuardia, then wandered around downtown, not wanting to wake you. And here you are, up and dancing. Same old George.”
“That's me, the pillar of 74th Street. Come in the bathroom while I take a shower.”
I showered and he sat on the clothes hamper and talked. He'd been in Africa, Italy, and France. Hank had returned to the States once in '45, then back to Italy and Germany. We'd been friends since high-school and I looked at his lined and worried face, his graying hair (and he was five years younger than I—and such important five years when you reach my age), and I wished to hell I hadn't been exempt. No matter what they beefed about, the raw deals they got, the guys in the service had been places, seen things—their life had been shaken... while I had been 41 years old at the start of the war and oh, so necessary to the war effort (whatever that was) because I was editing the house organ of an oil company, doing a job that meant nothing except buttering the conceit of my bosses and the stockholders.
As I dried myself, wondering what Italy and Africa was like, I asked, “Out of the army, Hank?”
“Will be in a few days.”
“Somebody forget to tell you the war was over four or five years ago?” I asked, powdering my toes.
He shrugged his plump shoulders. “No. Don't think I've been through combat, hell, and all that. I haven't, but somehow the war turned out to be the only real thing in my life, and I tried to hang onto it. Only I got sour on the idea of living like an English Sahib in Germany and...”
He was staring at me sadly and I stopped powdering myself, asked what was wrong. “George, you're wonderful! Still using one kind of powder for your toes, another to dust your crotch, and a third for under the arms. My God, you don't know how I'm trying to get a hold of something, of my old life.”
“Got a job in the hopper?” I asked, slipping on a silk bathrobe.
“Oh, I'll get back to selling, I suppose,” Hank said.
We went back to the living room and I stepped into the kitchen, put on the electric coffee percolator, was halving grapefruit, when he called me.
He was standing in the living room next to the heavy woodwork that had once been a door leading to the upstairs apartment, before I had the wall filled in. He pressed part of one of the wooden panels, which slid back, showing an empty space. We used to call it the “hideaway” when we were kids.
Hank said happily, “Imagine, this still being here—still working.”
“Bet I haven't opened that panel—or thought of it—in fifteen years,” I said.
“Remember when this was the garage and the big car was here? We'd sit in the front seat and imagine we were racing like hell along some dark road, every yegg in the world after us, and then we'd jump out and put all sorts of crazy documents in the panel? Had some great times then.” Hank pressed the top of the panel and it slid back into place again. “Like a movie,” he added.
There was something a little slobbering and queer about him and I said rather sharply, “The corn-flakes company will still send you secret rings for box tops.”
He lit a cigarette, sat on the couch. “George, why is it when we grow older instead of getting smarter, we get more stupid? Why do we lose the simplicity and happiness we once held in childhood?”
“What happened, Hank, the army make you a philosopher?”
“Don't laugh it off, as we grow older we become full of sour bitterness. Too bad humans don't age for the better, like wine. The wine of humanity is pretty thin and watery.” He blew out a fairly decent smoke ring, watched it dissolve in the air, asked, “Own the oil company yet?”
“Nope. Still editing the
“And you still wear conservative suits by Brooks Brothers, custom-made shirts with stiff tab collars, Bronzini ties, make a ritual of powdering your crotch, of blending your tobacco. You take in the dance recitals, and quietly read your
“And I still have my little bouts with Flo—might as well make a complete inventory. Want breakfast?”
Hank shook his head.
“Then take some coffee with me.”
“I'm full of coffee. George, do me a favor.”
“Certainly,” I said, wondering how much of a bite he was going to put on me. I didn't have any money in the bank but I could always borrow a couple of hundred.
He pulled a thick white envelope out of his pocket. “Hold this for me.”
I took the envelope. It was open and full of twenty dollar bills. “What's this, black-market loot?”
“No, saved it from my salary. There's $7,000 there. Keep it in your bank for me.”
“Why don't you open an account tomorrow? I mean I don't like to hold money—you know how the green slips through my hands. What's the gimmick?”
“I'm married to the world's greatest bitch,” Hank said softly. “That's why I came home—I'm going to get a divorce, soon. I don't want Lee—that's the 'little woman'—to know about this. She's... well, I know why she is what she is, but she's... well, greedy wouldn't start to describe her. She's money-crazy. In fact, she's downright crazy. You see she... oh, it's quite a mess. No sense involving you in it.”
“This is news. How long have you been married?”
“Let's not talk about it. Put it down as one of these war marriages you've probably read too much about. It's a mess I got into with both feet. I'll get straightened out, but I'll be damned if she'll get the money.”
I put the envelope on the table, carefully. “Hank, why don't you put it in a safe deposit vault or...”
“Can't, she'd get it. You don't know what a nose she has for money. You keep it, please.”
“But Hank I have a hard time making my salary last the week. You know me and money, why I...”
“Damn it, George, do me this favor!” he said loudly, getting up, walking around the room. “I'm in a mess that's my own making. I'm in a rough jam, and all I'm asking is that you hold this.”
I didn't want to take the money, I knew myself too well, yet I had that old guilty feeling when I looked at Hank's uniform. I still had a slacker-complex even though the war had become almost a joke by this time, and being a vet was a handicap. I said, “Okay. I'll give you a receipt and...”
“No receipt. She'd find that.”
“Look Hank, please don't give
“Stop talking like a kid.”
I took paper and a pen from my desk, wrote:
I owe Hank Conroy seven thousand dollars ($7,000), payable on demand, in payment for moneys loaned me, this date.
I signed my name and the date, held it out to him. “Hank, you have to take this. Suppose I get killed falling off a bar stool? You don't have a thing to go on, and I'd hate to see this end up going to my distant cousins in L.A.”
“Forget the receipt, be serious. I'll probably be divorced, straightened out in a very few months and...”
“But I'm being serious, Hank. Seven grand is quite a bundle, what if something did happen to me?”
“Nothing will. I'll take that chance.
I looked at the envelope full of folding money and felt mixed up. “Hank, you're crazy.”
He stopped pacing the room. “That's no lie, sometimes I'm damn sure I am off my rocker. Come on, I'll take that cup of Java.”
“I don't hold the money unless you take this receipt,” I said. “The strain might easily overpower me.”
He suddenly grabbed the receipt out of my hand, walked over and pressed the panel. He put the piece of paper inside, closed the panel, and turned to me with a smile. “Feel better? No one knows about the panel but the two of us, maybe Flo, and...”
“I forgot to ever tell Flo about it.”
“Good. If anything happens to you, I'm protected.”
“But suppose the house burns down? Or...?”
“For God's sake!” Hank pushed me toward the kitchen. I went back and got the envelope. The way he left money around made me jittery.
Over coffee he told me he was going to live with his sister for a few weeks. “Just till I get an apartment or a room. Lee and my sister, they'll kill each other, if they haven't already. She wrote me she thinks Lee has already swiped some of the silver, and you know my sister Marion.”
“You don't mean she's actually stolen the silverware?”
“Probably has—I had to send Lee over a week or so ahead of my plane and... George, try to understand this, I've married a devil. A backward girl who's gone through... Hell, don't get me started on Lee. She isn't guilty. I am. We all are.”
“What?”
“I don't want to talk about it, Georgie. Look, it's as bad as this: all the way over I was hoping my plane would have an accident and I'd be killed.”
“You're the cautious type Hank, how...?”
“Forget it, it's my party,” Hank said. He began asking about fellows we'd known in the old days—and whom I hadn't seen in years. When we first moved downtown, Hank had lived in the brownstone across the street; the only kid on the block I had as a friend. He was real social register stuff, not that he ever let that get him down, or hinder our friendship.
We talked for a while longer, then he said, “Have to go and see my ever-loving wife, wired her I was coming in this morning. Thanks for holding the money.”
“I'll call you at your sister's. I might be able to line up a job or...”
“No. Don't ever call me,” he said curtly. “I don't want Lee to even know about you. I'll get in touch with you at your office from time to time.”
“If that's the way you want,” I said, thinking it strange Hank didn't want me to see his wife, at least take them out.
“Has to be that way. Know this sounds odd as the devil, but I know what I'm doing. Soon as I get out of this mess, I'll explain things—or as much as I can. Bye George, you've been a bracer, a tonic.”
When he left I took out the money, thinking he had never even counted it. Counting seven grand made me so nervous I went to the portable bar, found only a heel of bourbon, and finished that.
I dressed to go out and buy a Sunday paper. Every now and then I touched the envelope in my inside pocket to be sure it was there. I heard a noise in the kitchen and nearly hit the ceiling. I ran into the kitchen to see Slob coming through the open window, his fine tiger's skin mussed and dirty. He brushed against my leg and purred, his big tomcat's head looking up at me with mild interest.
I laughed and brushed my pants where he'd touched them, pointed to his milk, asked, “Get much, whoring around?” I cooked some liver for him, made sure the money was securely in my pocket, and went out to buy the
People were going to the church across the street and I walked past them to Lexington Avenue and the stationery store near 73rd. As I was walking back, turning into my block, I saw a cab pull up in front of the house. Joe Collins stepped out, then helped a girl out. Joe rang the bell, then saw me and waved, nodding toward the girl.
It was going to be a big Sunday.
As I came up, Joe boomed, “Georgie boy, meet Stella. Doll, this is my boon buddy, George Jackson.”
Joe's florid face had a faint dark stubble of whiskers and his eyes were bloodshot—the only thing fresh about him, including his clothes, was the loud nude on his hand-painted tie. The week before, Joe had gone in for dogs on his ties, hunting scenes, and before that it was horses—now it was lush nudes. Joe was head of the Maintenance Department in Sky Oil, and not a bad sort, even if he was loud and vulgar. He was always good for heating oil for the house whenever I needed it.
On closer inspection Stella looked a bit bloated, somewhere in her late thirties: the heavy featured blonde that can be found in most bars looking for a little excitement of the week-end.
It was obvious they were winding up the night and both were hung-over. I said hello to Stella and as I unlocked the door, Joe said, “You're in for a treat, doll. Georgie is a writer. Damn good one. How's about that, Georgie boy?”
“My press agent,” I said politely, wondering if Joe had told heir we worked for Sky Oil, or what he had told her. Joe was never very careful with his pick-ups.
“My, this is an odd room,” Stella said, looking around. Joe helped her with her coat and she was a solid-built woman.
“Yeah. Used to be a garage when Georgie's family was in the chips, real blue-bloods. Now he's down to his last garage! That's a blip.” Joe began to laugh.
Stella glanced at me, said, “He always tries too hard,” and her voice had a nice throaty quality.
As we sat down, the cat came into the room and Stella said, “What a big pussy,” and of course Joe burst out laughing. “What's his name?” she asked, expertly rubbing the back of his ears.
“Slob",” Joe said before I could answer.
Stella said in that asinine baby-voice people use for animals and kids, “What a nasty old name to give such a nice pussy-cat.
“His real name is Vaslav—that was Nijinsky's first name,” I said. “Then I shortened it to Slav, and finally Slob.”
“I see,” she said, not knowing what I was talking about. Joe went to the bathroom and came out while the toilet was still flushing. He said, “Give and take. How about giving us a couple of snorters?”
“Sorry, killed the only bottle I had early this morning. Like some beer?” I asked, feeling a little nervous with all that money in my pocket, and more than a little angry—Joe had a hell of a nerve bringing this babe here. Suppose Flo was still with me? Not that it would have killed Flo to meet a Stella. I was doubly annoyed with myself for being such a snob.
“Want some beer, doll?” Joe asked, going over and running his big hand through her over-blonde hair.
“Sure, good to taper off on beer,” she said, giving Slob a real rubdown.
I went into the kitchen and I heard them kissing, then Joe told her, “I'd best go in and help Georgie boy.”
He came in and put a heavy arm around my shoulder, turned on the water in the sink so she couldn't hear, said, “Jeez, what a night. I tied a big one on. Hey what do you think of Stella? Some sex-boat.”
“Not bad,” I said, pouring the beer. I knew all about Stella—all the Stellas: with a husband someplace in the background, maybe a kid or two, a busted marriage, a routine job during the week, and the frantic week-ends with any guy who treated her “nicely,” as she tried to regain her illusions of bright romance and youth over some bar; a dozen drinks fogging reality. “Listen pal,” Joe said, hesitating a bit, “hate to ask you this, but I see Flo isn't around... didn't think she would be, and...”
“What made you think that?”
“Hell, don't kid your Uncle Joe. You two never last more than a few days. Look, the point is, you see Stella, what she wants. Could we use your place—for a little while?”
“What happened to your places—get dispossessed?” I asked, angry. I don't like anybody using my place, not even for parties—seemed to give the place a dirty atmosphere, and I mean dirty in every sense of the word. At the moment all I wanted was to listen to some good records, smoke my pipe, and read the Sunday paper.
“The kid's aunt and uncle came in from Harrisburg last night,” Joe said, running a comb through his thick, black-gray hair. “The yokels got their dates mixed, thought Walt was coming home this month, 'stead of next. Whole damn month off, but you see how it is, can't take doll there. Wouldn't even bother, only she's such a hot number. I know how you feel about... it... but you see her, ready to explode and...”
“All over my bed,” I said, shutting off the water, taking the beer bottles and glasses into the living room.
We sat around, making small talk over the beer, Joe waiting for me to make a move. Finally he said, “Beer—nothing to it. Georgie, you're a man of high influence, how about getting a bottle?”
“On Sunday morning?” I said. Then I got my hat and coat, decided I might as well let him have the place. I knew Joe and it would have been even more ridiculous for me to sit in the living room reading the
“What's Sunday morning? You're known at some of the bars around here, ought to get a bottle without much trouble,” Joe said quickly, winking at me.
“I'll try.”
“That's it. Take your time.”
I looked at my wrist watch. It was almost eleven. “I'll try—till noon.”
“Great,” Joe said.
I went out, wondering how I'd kill an hour. I had seven thousand in my pocket, had been maneuvered out of my own house, and although it was a mild sunny day, I was too tired and sleepy to walk. I knew I wouldn't sleep that night either—I have a complex about other people using my bed.
I stood in front of the house for a few minutes, trying to decide whether to drop down and see Flo, take a walk, or try the peace and quiet of the church across the street. I decided against all three. I was not only irritated at having been thrown oat of my house, but the money in my pocket gave me a restless sense of power—even though it wasn't mine. I walked to the corner of Park Avenue, then turned and went back to the house, rang Henderson's bell. When he buzzed the door open, I went upstairs. He was waiting inside his door, wearing a neat silk robe, and slippers.
He said hello as we shook hands.
“Thought I'd drop in for a few minutes,” I said.
“Fine, fine. Having breakfast. Join me?”
I shook my head, took off my coat and hat. Francis was a health bug. While I sat and watched him he ate a bowl of red jello in which I could see sardines, chopped celery, and string beans suspended. He was a little gray-haired man, eccentric as hell, but full of life for a person well over 70.
“Try some, you'll like this,” he said, pointing to the mess.
“I doubt if I would.”
“Utter nonsense. Consider the contradiction: You'd eat a sardine sandwich, a salad, and take jello for dessert—and think nothing of it. But mix them all together, as they will become inside your stomach, and you turn it down.”-
“I certainly do!”
He ate a few spoonfuls of the stuff, chewing it thoroughly. “Now isn't that stupid, afraid to look at what's in your belly? You're hiding your head in your intestines, to paraphrase the ostrich and the sand business.”
I didn't answer and he finished his 'meal' in silence. I glanced about the room. He had heavy, old-fashioned furniture, with a big bronze statute of Man o' War on the ugly old mahogany sideboard.
Henderson washed his food down with a glass of carrot juice, took the dishes into the kitchen. I picked up his
I said I guess so and went into the kitchen. He was pouring heavy sour cream and bits of chocolate-covered graham crackers into an electrical mixer.
“Any night you wish,” he said, starting the mixer, which didn't make much noise. “Be sure Joe is there. That Joe, drawing to straights and flushes—a slow living.”
Through the door I could see the statue of Man o' War. Francis F. Henderson was a quiet, reserved old man who lived off an income. He had no visitors or family, and played a capable, if cautious, game of poker, always quitting when he lost over eight dollars. He paid his rent promptly, saw all the Broadway plays, dressed plainly, and seemed to live pretty close to the cuff. I had an idea his income was about a hundred and fifty a month—he counted his pennies and played poker to win, not for the game.
Our relation was much more than a landlord-tenant affair, but we were never really friends. I thought there was always a certain reserve, almost a cunning aloofness, about him. I knew very little about him, he picked his words when he talked, except that he had worked for many years in a bank. Once when I asked about the statue of the horse that dominated the living room, he said, “The
And once when there was a story in the papers about some bank teller arrested for dipping in the till and losing the money on the horses, we had been making small talk about it when Henderson looked at me with a faint smile, asked, “Ever think of the number of tellers that—eh—borrow funds and aren't caught? Of course you'll never read 'bout them in the papers. In the movies and papers the teller always bets on the wrong horse. That's ridiculous—some of them must win. Same percentage for tellers as for anybody else....”
That was as much as I knew about him, but I had a fairly clear picture of a bank teller following Man o' War's career, perhaps from the very first time he raced, betting ten bucks, then a hundred, then a thousand... then retiring from the bank. If he had an income of $150 a month and was getting 5 percent on his money, that meant about $40,000 stacked away. I wondered why he had stopped at that, but when I once saw him throw in a full house because he was pretty sure I had four of a kind—which I had—I could easily picture him stopping with forty grand, careful not to push his luck too far. Which is the smart way to play anything.
I went back to the living room, not wanting to see what came out of the mixer. I picked up the sports section and, as I was reading it, he came in, sat down with a contented sigh, asked, “How you doing with the horses?”
“Still a little ahead, I guess.”
He shook his head. “Hunch player—craziest creature on God's earth. By the way, I'm glad your wife is back.”
“Ex-wife, and she's gone,” I said, annoyed. My affairs were really in the street.
“Too bad.” He put on his old gold-frame glasses, wet a pencil, and started working on the cross-word puzzle. I turned to the theatrical section. Jose Limon was dancing on Wednesday, and Pearl Primus was giving a recital the following Sunday at the 92nd Street Y. I made a note to see both, felt a little better. I reached over to put the paper back on the table and felt the stiff envelope in my inside pocket. I took up the sports page again. Big Esther, a favorite, was running on Monday. On form, she couldn't lose. Seven thousand on the nose would almost be a sure three or four thousand for me.
I quickly picked up the book section. It was a wild idea. Anyway, I didn't know where to place that kind of a bet. I usually bet a dollar or two; it gave me a reason to look forward to the end of the afternoon.
I glanced at my watch. It was only eleven-twenty.
The old man looked up. “What's the plural of a land measure in five letters?”
“Miles? Acres?” Cross-words bored me.
“No, second letter is an V—if 'to be mistaken' in five letters is 'wrong.' Joe still downstairs with the girl?”
“What do you do, live by that window?”
Henderson chuckled. “Why not? She has an interesting body—although I suppose any woman's body is interesting, in the proper background. When you get my age, one of your pastimes is trying to decide if you had been a fool to be faithful to one woman. All those years—and chances—gone forever. What do you think a man hopes to find in a new woman—we're always searching, even though we know it will never be any different? Or am I talking like an old fool?”
“Everybody is constantly searching for something different—in friends, women, food, books—anything.”
He nodded. “But when you reach my age, one can be so damn objective about it all. Sometimes I wish I were a writer like you and...”
“I'm some writer,” I said, remembering the different tone to the word when Flo said it.
“... and be able to put down some of my thoughts. But then I realize that's only an old man's vanity. Or maybe a form of sour grapes, or going senile. I was thinking today, when I saw that woman with Joe, that she looked passionate. Yet, consider the fetish we make over passion, which is really only an odd name for selfishness and extreme personal satisfaction. Tell you, George, the more I ponder humans, less I think of them.”
“You ought to talk to my brother-in-law, Eddie, or ex-brother-in-law. He has only contempt for us humans,” I said, thinking. That's wrong, the kid really has a great love for humanity.
“The thin one who was wounded in the war?”
I said yes.
“Wars, hunger, depression—man's greatest insult to humanity. Wonder if I'm so morbid today because I'll probably die soon. I dreamt I was dying last night.”
“What talk.”
“Average life span is about 67, I believe. I've been on velvet for a lot of years now.”
“Nonsense, you'll live to be a hundred and seventy—way you live, no strain or worries.”
He stared at me with big eyes, almost like a kid, said gently, “Let's stop this kind of talk. Give me the racing page.”
I handed him the sports section and he studied it for a while. “There's a good nag in the third, tomorrow, Salad Days. Hasn't won in the last three times out, but I have a feeling they're holding him for a killing.”
“Why don't you play it—with money, instead of on paper?”
“Money is only paper,” Henderson said, chuckling at his little joke. “I can't risk the money. Besides, I'd have to leave the house before noon, and you know how I love to sleep late. Now let's see what else is good tomorrow....”
We talked about horses for a while. He was like Joe: knew the horse's mother, father, color of the jockey's hair, and everything except the number of times the jockey went to the bathroom. Joe didn't know the Preamble to the Constitution (who does?), but he could recite various details about horses for hours. Of course the horses kept him broke.
The fancy clock near the china closet chimed once and Henderson said, “Eleven-thirty. And I was about to go to the toilet. Wonderful to be like clockwork, especially at my age. You see the silly things one can be proud of in his old age.”
I grinned, wondering if I would be like that in another twenty-five years. I stood up. “Think I'll move on. I'll talk to Joe about a poker game, let you know.”
In the hall I touched the envelope in my pocket, to be sure it was there, then walked down and over to the French tea room on 75th and Lexington and had some pastry and a cup of coffee.
When I returned home, Joe and Stella were reading my
“Sorry, I don't seem to be a man of distinction or influence.”
“Too bad, I was feeling ripe for a shot,” Joe said.
We sat around and I was waiting for them to leave, but Joe kept talking: small talk about some horribly clever things he'd heard in a bar, a couple of old dirty jokes, plus comments about a murder headline. Stella had Slob stretched across her lap, stroking his neck; both of them looking rather contented. After jabbering for what seemed like hours, Joe suddenly jumped to his feet in what I'm sure he thought was the “executive manner,” he actually practiced that sort of thing, said, “I'll get a bottle—afternoon is dying on us. I know a bartender... downtown... may take me an hour.” He turned to Stella. “You wait here, doll.”
“I haven't any place to go,” she said, yawning. She had quite a few gold fillings, and her teeth looked old.
“Okay, everybody stays pat till poppa returns,” Joe said, putting on his coat. When his back was to Stella, he winked at me.
When he left Stella said, “A big kid, lot of noise and wind.”
“One way of looking at him,” I said.
She was sprawled on a big leather chair Flo had bought in a second-hand store on 53rd Street for twenty dollars, and paid three hundred to have repaired and recovered. I had an idea it wouldn't take much coaxing to get Stella back in the bedroom, but I wasn't up to that. And with seven grand in my pocket I certainly wasn't fooling with any strays. She kept staring at me, an amused smile on her sensual lips. I asked if she wanted more beer and she said she did. When I bent over her to pick up her glass, she said, “George—you don't mind if I call you George?”
“Of course not.”
“You're handsome. Not really pretty but... well, distinctive. Yes, you're tall and lean and your face is long and thin, and
I laughed and brought two glasses of beer. This was a great day for writers, it seemed, and the afternoon wasn't going to be too dull after all.
“What do you write about? I mean, are you working on a book?” she asked after a sip of beer. “Big mouth said you're the editor of the magazine his company puts out.”
“That's about all I write,” I said, surprised at Joe's carelessness. I got out a few copies of the
She glanced through the magazines quickly. “They're beautiful. Ever sell anything to the movies? I work for Warners—merely a typist. Five days a week I pound a damn typewriter and go to sleep early. Some week-ends I go on a merry-go-round, let off steam.”
“I haven't published much, the magazine keeps me on my toes,” I lied. “Had a few stories in the pulps, a yarn in
“You must be good,” Stella said, impressed. The only time I ever actually struck Flo was when she reminded me during one of our spats that my published yarns had been ghosted. I never could decide if they were—the ideas and rough had been mine, but why bother with polishing when you could get a rewrite done for a few dollars? At the time I actually had been busy covering a convention, or at least that was my excuse.
Stella said, “Why don't you write a book, something with a young psychiatrist and a big-busted gal—sure sale to the movies. Big upstairs like me,” she added, without smiling.
I let that invitation pass. “I have been outlining a novel, working on it for several years. A fantasy—we awake one day to find all the alcohol in the world has turned to water.”
“You're ribbing me.”
“I'm serious. You can see the dramatic complications; first the effect on industry and medicine... that's the secondary theme. Real idea is to show how much we drug our lives with liquor, what happens when that disappears.”
She finished her beer. “You a Prohibitionist?”
“Me? I'm almost a lush. It's a big idea—I have a whole file full of notes.” And I really had. All my book ideas were big, so big I never started writing them.
She thought about it for a moment. “That would be something, a Lost Weekend in reverse. What happens?”
“I don't know, exactly. Some sort of mass suicide, world revolution, I suppose. Then after a few weeks with everybody taking a forced cure, the world settles down—and k's a much better world. Such a thing would be more effective than the atomic bomb.”—
“And all from a lousy shot of whiskey?”
“Alcohol is our number one escape valve, only once you get in the habit of escaping, it no longer becomes an escape, it becomes a chain,” I said, wondering why I was making all this polite talk.
She was silent for a while, stroking Slob. Every now and then when she bent over to scratch his head, I could see the rise of her heavy breasts, and from the way she had her legs, a good deal of long plump thigh was visible. Of course she knew all that. What she didn't know was I could see the brief line where her panties ended on her thigh through her dress, and
Stella said, “George, I like you. I don't know what you think of me, coming here like this with Joe, but I...”
“I'm most understanding... and a little hungry,” I cut in, not wanting to hear the story of her life. “Ham and eggs interest you?”
She nodded, held out her hand. I got up pulled her to her feet. Slob tumbled to the floor, landing on his back. For a cat his reflexes were lousy. He stretched and walked off with stiff dignity.
As we walked into the kitchen Stella squeezed my hand, said, “Thanks.”
I didn't quite get that, but I squeezed her hand back. As I opened the ice-box, she said, “Here, let me do that.”
She made ham and eggs and coffee, moving about the little kitchen with easy efficiency. We ate and smoked a few cigarettes without much talk, then she washed the dishes and I dried.
Back in the living room I sat on the couch and she stared at me oddly, and for a second I thought she was going to cry. “What's the matter?”
“Matter?” she repeated, her voice full of forced cheerfulness. “Nothing is the matter. Wonderful little domestic scene we just had.” She went over to the radio, opened it, said, “Oh God, a Capehart! How do you work this?”
“What do you want to hear—radio or records?” I asked, going over before she threw things out of whack.
“Records—jazz.”
I put on a few Ellingtons, and some Artie Shaw and Stan Kenton. Stella held out her arms. I hesitated for a split second, thinking of the money in my pocket, then we danced. At first she leaned her weight all over me, but when she forgot the rub-down, gave in to the rhythm, she wasn't too awkward or slow for a big woman.
When the record changed we stopped and she was puffing a little. “Say, I thought I was a good dancer, but you're something.”
“Used to make my living at it,” I said, pleased at the lie.
“Well now,” she said, looking at me with new respect. I still had my arms around her and I felt bad, acting the tease, but Stella had troubles and I spent my life avoiding other people's problems.
We finished the records and I kicked the rugs back into place. She fell into a chair, sighed, “I'm pooped.” There were dark blotches of sweat on her dress under her armpits, and I could feel the sweat running down my back, but I wasn't taking off my coat. Even then, at the very start, the money was beginning to be a liability... but nothing like it damn soon became.
Stella looked at me through half-closed eyes, said, “I feel tired and so wonderfully sleepy.”
“Why don't you lie down, get some sleep?” I said, aware of how comical and silly it all sounded.
She got up and walked to the bedroom door, turned and gave me a puzzled look, or maybe it was a hurt look, then stretched out on the bed. I wondered if she had removed her shoes.
It was nearly two and Joe wasn't back. I considered whether he was dumping Stella on me, and what I should do, although giving a girl to another guy, no matter what she looked like, was strictly not in keeping with Joe's conception of the SOP of “romance.”
I put on more records, tuned them down low. I could hear her snoring softly in the bedroom and I had to fight to keep dozing off myself. I wanted Joe to return and take Stella, let roe change the linen and get some sleep.
Joe would return.
Joe, the big
He was paid seventy-five per week, spent about a hundred, and was fairly amusing with his great lies and big talk, his absolute worship of his job and complete satisfaction with his own “success,” his tremendous energy and ego, his great vulgarity. But he also had certain loyal, earthy qualities I envied—in my snobbish way. He actually burst into tears—cold sober—when we wrote him up as the “executive of the month,” an apple-polishing job I did every month in the
And in my own way I was nearly as content with my job as was Joe. I had a good deal—I suppose “racket” might be a better word. I put out a neat, slick little mag every month—very dull of course—but it was the sort of thing stockholders could read with ease and not become disturbed, one way or the other. There were always a lot of pictures, an easy-on-the-eyes format, and we were constantly patting somebody on the back. Editing a house organ is horribly frustrating work if you take the job seriously, or kid yourself that it is keeping you from that “serious writing.” Happily, I had no need to fool myself... I knew I'd never get around to any real writing. My salary was peanuts for the type of company we had and the rag we published, but I played that smart—using our budget mostly to get good photographers and artists, to “pretty up” the book. With my oh-so-correct address and cool manner—as if I was doing Sky Oil a terrific favor by editing their magazine, plus a conscientious assistant editor named Harvey Harris who did most of the writing—we came out once a month and nobody worked very hard. Harvey and I had a perfect understanding. He was an eager beaver who only wanted to be left alone, do his work. We wrote speeches for the big shots now and then, carried fairly intelligent and educational articles on oil and selling, never forgot the stockholders, and in general were... “mild” would describe the
I listened to the radio for a while, gave Slob chopped kidneys for lunch, and it was a few minutes after three. I was bored and considering whether I should wake Stella and take her home, or lock the door, put the money in the panel, and go to bed with her. I kept thinking of Flo and how ludicrous my explanations would seem if she should return and find Stella in the bedroom. I decided to wait till four, then take Stella home. I sat around, reading some old copies of
“In the bedroom, sleeping.”
“Puts down some fine stuff, doesn't she?” he said, as I knew he would.
“Stop it. Where the hell have you been?”
“Tell you in a minute. Hey doll, come see what poppa's got!” Joe yelled. Stella came out of the bedroom looking bleary-eyed. Joe put an arm around her, slapped her loudly on the backside and she said sharply, “Damn it, cut
“Wait till you sec what I got,” he said, tearing open the package. He held up the biggest bottle of whiskey I ever saw. “This is a half a gallon.”
“Never saw that before,” Stella said, yawning. She started for the bathroom but Joe stopped her, said proudly, “Read this—name of the store.” He pointed to a little blue sticker on the back of the bottle.
She said, “Washington, D.C.... For Christsake!”
“That's me,” Joe said happily. “Took a cab out to the airport, grabbed a plane to Washington. Got the bottle from a barkeep I know down there. What the hell, all I have to do is show the airline my travel card—charge it to the company as an inspection trip.”
“Big shot,” Stella said, impressed. “Now let me go to the John, I'm too big to wet myself.”
Joe and I went to the kitchen for ice and ginger ale. I asked, “You actually fly to Washington and back?”
“Sure, had to get a bottle,” Joe said, a little too casually. He was so very pleased with himself. “Raining down there. Listen, well have a couple drinks, then I'll take Stella home—if she doesn't live in Brooklyn. Then we call for the kid's aunt and uncle, take them out to King of the Sea for a shell dinner...”
“Come along, I got to take them out, and the simple bastards drive me crazy. We'll ditch 'em right after we eat. Okay, pal?”
We sat around and Joe told a couple of jokes he claimed to have heard on the plane—every place he went he seemed to hear dirty jokes, old and stupid ones. Stella didn't say much, went to work on the bottle, she was trying to get tight again. She seemed a bit bored with us. But when Joe took her home, she gave me a big smile as we shook hands, squeezed my hand.
I could do much worse than Stella.
I straightened up the house a little, was changing my shirt, when I heard a cab stop. Joe came in, said, “That was luck, only lived on 83rd and Columbus. Not bad, may give her another tumble some day. Come on, the cab's waiting.”
Joe lived in a renovated railroad flat on 55th Street and Second Avenue. His sister and brother-in-laws, whose names I never did get straight, were a couple of fat hicks, with plain faces that looked pretty blank and suspicious. Joe gave me a big introduction as though I was the head of Sky Oil, and pointed to a framed copy of the article I had written about him. It hung on the wall beneath a heavy, gold-framed picture of his dead wife: a pert, pretty, young woman, with a pug nose and big, interesting eyes.
Joe went to the bathroom to run an electric razor over his face, and the aunt who had a sloppy bosom—even for a woman her age—said to me, “We must seem so stupid to you, Mr. Jackson—making a mistake of a whole month. My! So silly, but we were just sure Walt was coming home today.”
I didn't say anything as to whether she was or wasn't stupid, and after waiting, for me to make some remark, she added, “Walt is such a little fellow to be in the army.”
“Make a man of him,” the uncle chimed in. A few more veins in his thick nose and it would be mistaken for a surrealist painting.
Over the small noise of his razor Joe yelled, “Best thing in the world for the boy. Shame folks forget about the boys holding our first line of defense—now. No welcome parades or nothing for Walt, like they had after the war.” He put his razor down, stepped into the living room, as if to emphasize the point.
“No bonus from the states, either,” the uncle added.
“Yeah, but at least he'll go to college under the G.I. Bill,” Joe said. His voice softened and he looked up at the picture of his wife in the hideous frame. Joe said with sincere tenderness, “That's the thing Mady wanted most—see the kid through college.”
“My little baby sister,” the aunt said.
“Way prices are, it would have been an awful squeeze on my salary,” Joe went on softly. “There was Walt, 17, would of been drafted anyway. I had some inside dope from one of the big shots in the office who has his ear open in Washington, that they weren't going to extend the GI Bill. So I said, 'Walt, smart thing is to get in now. You'll come out still a kid, and you can go to the Wharton School of Finance, Harvard, any place you like for four years. World's your oyster.' Walt took my advice and I'm sure glad. And I bet... so is Mady.”
We all looked up at the picture for a moment as though we expected Mady to talk or smile. The uncle said, “Walt grown any? Always was so small, like his dear mother.”
“Well he looks heavier. Didn't I show you this picture?” He ran into the bedroom, came out with a snap of a sharp-faced kid, his hat at a rakish angle.
“Looks fine,” the aunt said. “Glad there was no real trouble over there, now he's coming home safe and sound.”
“Don't know why we got our boys all over the world,” the uncle said, handing the photo back to Joe. “What they doing in Germany but protecting a lot of Jew-bastards.”
His wife turned on him. “You stop that talk, and on Sunday too. Told you about swear words—like bastard.”
“Let me tell you, wasn't for kids like Walt, Joe Stalin would be in France by now. Walt is putting the fear of God in the Reds,” Joe said, going back to the bathroom.
I listened to the buzz of the razor, thought of Walt. Joe was funny with his son. He was strict with the kid, and although Joe would stay away from the house for days—with his women and bottle-emptying—long as the kid was home he never brought a bottle or a girl in the house. The boy called me Uncle George and once or twice I took him to the movies. He was a shy, moody kid, about five feet tall, and considering the way he was more or less dragged up, he'd turned out pretty well. At first I thought the army might make him more moody, but from the letters that Joe always read me, the kid seemed to take to army life. In one sense it was a break: Joe would never have put him through school.
We went out and had a lobster dinner and it was all very dull. Joe told them they could have the apartment for the night, we were going to sleep in a Turkish bath. But when we dropped them off, I gave the cabbie my address and Joe said, “What's the matter? Come on to the baths. I got to sweat out all the booze, be in shape for the morning.”
“I'll skip this one. I'm too tired.”
“First time I ever saw you turn down the baths.”
I wanted to go but where do you leave an envelope with seven grand in a Turkish bath?
Once in the house I put the money behind the panel, cleaned up the place, changed the sheets, fed the cat, and went into a sound sleep. The next thing I knew the alarm was ringing.
After dressing and shaving I bought the
“Sad Gal in the fourth,” I said, pushing change for the breakfast toward him, and two singles.
“On the nose?” he said, dead-pan.
“Of course,” I said, wondering if I ought to give Salad Days a play too. I went over to the bank and put the seven thousand into my checking account, which gave me a balance of $7,210—two hundred being the required minimum. I felt honestly relieved when the money was out of my hands, and the balance perked me up as much as if it was all really mine.
I was fairly busy most of the day, but in the afternoon I stepped into the office of Jake Webster, a retired cop who headed the company guards and therefore (just why I never really knew) had a radio in his office. Joe came in a few seconds later, and one or two other horse players. Sad Gal won but the track odds were only 2 to 1. Salad Days paid 5 to 1. As Joe was cursing about some nag that “Was absolutely due to win, sure as hell. Why I got this tip from...” I went down for my afternoon coffee—and six dollars. (I only had afternoon coffee when my horse came in.) I kept thinking of Salad Days and suddenly it occurred to me that it had been a hunch horse after all—I'd forgotten all about collecting my nine dollars in the coffee pot! As I made a note to get the money before stopping for my pre-supper cocktails, I thought how odd it was that Hank's money had made me so jumpy.
Seven thousand isn't small change, but neither was I the type to get excited about money—I'd spent many times seven thousand in my life; I once went through eleven thousand in a year—when I was younger. And here this money—which wasn't mine—had rooked me out of a hunch on Salad Days, by causing me to forget my money in the coffee pot. (This is how a hunch player's mind works.)
A few months later I was going to be bitterly cursing the money for turning my life inside out, making it a nightmare of unreality.
Chapter 2
NOTHING MUCH happened in the few months that followed... before Hank died, or was murdered.
I still had his seven grand in the bank and walked around like the cat who is on a diet of canaries. A few weeks after he'd given me the money, when I didn't hear from him, I called him via his sister's. Hank said he had a selling job with some sort of chemical company, that he had paid five hundred bucks under the well-known table for a top-floor apartment at 29th Street and 2nd Avenue. “Hated like the devil to hand out black-market dough, but I
Hank seemed in a good mood. But a month later when I called him at his office he snapped, “George, for Christsake leave me alone. Sorry, didn't mean to go up in the air like that, but... eh... I've got a lot on my mind. I don't want you hooked up to me, can't have anything happen to that money... might need it for a getaway and...”
“Getaway? I repeated. “Not really, Hank.”
“No but... look, Georgie, if you want to help me, leave me alone... until I can explain this mess. Okay?”
That was that. I went on in my usual (and oh so comfortable) rut, playing the horses, bulling at the office... taking care of all my personal wants and whims. I saw Paul Draper dance twice, went up to the Apollo on 125th Street to watch some excellent—if mechanical—tap dancers, and attended the dance recitals at the Needle Trades School and the 92nd Street Y—and of course danced whenever I felt in the mood. Flo and I went through two reunions. The first lasted a long time—almost a week—and ended when we began arguing over how hamburgers should be cooked, which led to some snide remarks on my part concerning her housekeeping, and we took off from there. I think I was the “victor.”
The second reunion was in July, when I had my two week vacation. Flo managed to get hers then too, and with much tender weeping we arranged for a cottage out at Southampton. The cottage turned out to be one of those plain, wooden affairs, furnished
Flo insisted we ought to go right over and visit him and maybe stay there for a week or so. She accused me of being a snob and ashamed of her when I refused—I hadn't seen that branch of the family for nearly 15 years, and hadn't cared for them the few times I did see them. And as it happened, at the moment I was very proud of Flo—she really looked fine in a cool, long, summer dress, and a large straw hat.
When I protested that I wasn't a snob, that I wanted to be alone with her in our little cottage, she walked out with this parting shot, “That's the coldest crap in town.”
This was so sudden, so absolutely vulgar, I was speechless, utterly defeated. From the way Flo enjoyed saying it, I knew this was some
I went over in my mind the few friends I had. Joe would be much too loud and tiresome for two weeks, even if he could get the time off. Mr. Henderson wouldn't be bad, but if he should dunk a hamburger covered with ketchup and mustard in his coffee, as I saw him do one evening after a poker game, I'd be unnerved. Beside, I didn't like to leave the house on 74th Street alone, and he was taking care of Slob.
I waited a day to see if Flo would return, then wired Joe to come down for the week-end, and Flo's brother, Eddie, to come after the balance of the two weeks.
Joe had recovered from the shock of his son, Walter, returning from Germany in May. For some unknown reason, at the last moment Joe decided I must be on hand to welcome the returning prodigal. I had a ticket that night for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo's
The kid was due in at eight and Joe and I had dinner together and a few drinks. Joe talked incessantly. “Crazy feeling, seeing Walt after all these years. Only three, but I mean... you know me, I say everything is in transit, flexible, so I didn't expect the boy to be the same, but...”
“Stop it. He'll be bigger, stronger, and after a while you'll find he's a kgt;t tougher—grown up,” I said.
“Hell, I'm not worrying,” Joe said. “But it's the small things. Like, how do I welcome him? He didn't say if he was coming by train or plane, so I'll meet him at the house, but this is a big deal for both of us, I want to make it a celebration. Do I take him out, or do we sit around the house and gab? If he was coming in earlier, like now, I'd take him out for a big feed, start from there. But eight o'clock... I don't even know if I should have a bottle around the house. You know Walt—always shy and reserved, and what the hell, he's still a kid and, well...”
“Take it easy. Bring in some beer and...”
“Beer? Great.” Joe boomed as if I'd really thought of something. “Sure, he certainly drinks beer. Beer and snacks, and we sit and shoot the breeze about Berlin, give the kid a chance to shoot his mouth off—they like that. Then you can leave—I'll be over the hurdle and don't ask me what hurdle. Think I ought to get the kid a job for the summer, or let him take it easy till school starts in September?”
“Why don't you ask him? And stop worrying.”
Joe grinned. “Want to know the truth—when Walt was little I used to hate his guts sometimes. I didn't blame him for Mady dying, but... he was a drag on me, especially not having a woman to look after him. But now, well by God, I'm the proudest father out. I haven't done bad with the company—think where I'd be if I'd of had a college education? Under the G.I. Bill, Walt can go to Harvard, Yale, any of them tony schools. Can you see the picture in a brace of years when I bring the kid down to the big boss. Walt will have one of them crew hair-cuts and be dressed casually—but expensive duds—and I tell the big boss, 'Sir, there's my son, Walter. Just graduated Amherst...' Hot damn!” Joe smacked his big hands together like a kid.
We bought several quarts of beer, pretzels and cold cuts. Joe wanted to buy cigars but said, “Kid probably doesn't smoke yet. He might smoke a rope to make me feel good and get himself sick.”
At Joe's apartment we spent a few minutes dusting the place. While I put the cold cuts and pretzels out, washed some glasses, Joe changed his tie and shirt, shaved. We sat around, listening to the radio and talking; Joe retelling stories about what a good kid Walt was... the time the teacher told Joe the kid must have a wonderful mother because the boy was so well mannered, and when Joe said he was a widower, she shook Joe's hand, said God bless him... and hot air like that.
At eight-thirty I was tired of Joe gassing about how lonely the apartment had been without the kid, not really a home... and when I thought of all the tramps Joe had had in the place...
By nine Joe was a nervous wreck, wondering why the kid didn't come, and rambling on and on, to keep himself from going to pieces. He was in the middle of a speech about train wrecks, maybe Walt was hurt on his way home... that's the way it always happens... when the bell rang.
We both jumped and ran for the door. Walt was standing there, his uniform neat and pressed, a high polish on his shoes. He was dragging a barracks bag that seemed almost as tall as the kid. He hadn't put on much weight or gained any height, but you only had to look at his sharp little face, the shrewd eyes, the cigarette carelessly pasted on his lip—to see he was a man, a tough little squirt. He and Joe hugged each other awkwardly, and as Joe shut the door, Walt straightened his shirt. Joe said, “Son, you remember Uncle George?”
“Sure. Howya, Jackson,” the kid said, brushing the corporal stripes on his sleeves as he shook hands with me. There was a strong odor of whiskey on his breath.
We sat down, Joe and I on one side of the room, the kid on the couch beneath the picture of his mother. He looked around, said, “Place looks the same.”
“You bet, haven't changed a thing. Wanted home to look exactly the way you remembered it,” Joe said. “Guess home looms pretty large to a soldier.”
“Yes and no,” Walt said. I was fascinated by the cigarette actually pasted to his lips, it went up and down when he spoke like a tail wagging. “Germany isn't rugged, at least not in Berlin.”
There was a moment of silence, then Joe suddenly bounced to his feet. “My God, I forgot the beer! You drink beer, Walt?”
“Yeah, I'll take an amber. Had a couple with some of the guys at the station, why I'm a little late.”
“Couple of what?” Joe asked, although he must have had a whiff of the kid's breath too.
“Whiskey. Bastards charge you fifty cents a shot here. Over in Berlin we get a goddamn glassful for a dime.”
Joe was staring at him bug-eyed, and I said brightly, “I'll get the beer.” I brought in three bottles and glasses. Joe poured and Walt held up his glass, said, “Here's to you, Pop. You, too, Jackson.”
We drank and Joe said, “Guess you must of had plenty of good German beer over there.”
Walt screwed up his thin face. “Kraut beer is a lot of crap. About the same as this, and the krauts are such hustlers, they'd water their own pee if they could grab a buck out of it. Hey Pop, still smoke a pipe?”
Joe nodded.
Walt reached over lazily, pulled the barracks bag to him. He dug out a box, threw it to Joe. “Jesus!” Joe said, opening it, his voice high with excitement. “George, look at this, a set of two meerschaum pipes! Genuine, meerschaum.”
I examined the white bowls and yellow stems, all set in a gaudy red plush box, carefully handed them back to Joe. “They'll color up nicely,” I said to make conversation.
“Walt, you didn't have to bring me nothing as expensive as this,” Joe said, so pleased I thought he'd burst with pride.
“Got lot more stuff,” Walt said, digging into the barracks bag again. He came up with a tan-leather camera case, handed it to Joe. “How's this? I got a couple of 'em.”
“Some camera,” Joe said, opening the case.
The kid laughed softly, said to me, “Get him—the square. Some camera. Pop that's a Leica,
“What girls?” Joe asked a little too quickly.
“Aw come on, you ain't that old,” Walt said grinning. He pointed to the cigarette hanging from his thin lips. “In Germany this still means a girl, if you ain't too particular. Couple candy bars or a pack of butts means all night. For a carton of butts you can get a blonde
“Thanks,” I said.
Joe hesitated, then said, “Well, guess you're a man now, know all about girls.”
“I had a clap two weeks after I hit Berlin.”
“Walt! You never wrote you were sick...?”
“Who was sick? Nothing to it now. Give you a couple of shots of penicillin and you leave the hospital the same day, ready to do more bedwork. Plenty of VD over there, but once you get a steady piece, you don't have to worry.” The kid sucked on his cigarette and it was out. He took out a lighter, lit the butt, blew out a heavy cloud of smoke through his nose. “Got a couple of Swiss lighters, too. Nothing little Walter skipped.”
I wanted to leave, I didn't like the look on Joe's big face: as if something was hurting him and he didn't understand what it could possibly be. He needed a skinful, but quick.
We didn't talk for a while and the kid lit another cigarette. The way his-cigarette hung from his lip if he had smoked king size he would have burned his tie. Walt asked if we were still the big wheels at Sky Oil, and a lot more small talk. Joe just sat there, staring at the kid and, for the first time since I had known him, speechless.
Walt stood up, stretched, walked over and turned on the radio. He went from station to station, listening to each for a split second, then shut the radio off. Taking a handful of pretzels he went back to the couch. “Radio's a piece of junk. Going to buy us a television set, one of these slick combination jobs—radio, phono, and television. Got a lot of buying to do. Need suits, shirts, shoes—the works.”
Joe smiled weakly, “Sure, have to buy you a suit. I... eh... was wondering about this summer. I mean, I can get you a job at the office before you start college in September. Of course if you want to rest this summer, that's okay with me. Say, hope you've been giving school a lot of thought, like I wrote you. Any idea what college you want to attend?”
“I have been giving it a lot of thinking,” Walt said slowly. “Fact is, I may not want to go to school. Thinking of opening me a package liquor store.”
“What?” Joe jumped as if about to strike the kid.
“Sure, as a vet I get a preference and it's a good business—stock can't spoil or get old. And if the depression comes, people only hit the bottle more, so...”
“By God, you'll go to college! What the hell you think I sent you into the army for?” Joe shouted.
“Relax Joe, he's just come home. You can talk this over later when...” I said.
Walt gave me a cool grin. “That's okay, Jackson, might as well get this straightened.” He turned to Joe. “Now look Pop, I ain't the little snot-nose kid that went out of here three years ago. I'm an operator, a slick one, a real smart little bastard, if I say so myself. I've learned to hustle—big-time hustling. College is okay, but I haven't time for that now. Maybe later I'll take something in business administration—polish up my hustling.”
“Later? What the hell you think...” Joe said.
“Know what I got in my pocket, six thousand bucks, all good American green stuff! And in the sole of my army shoes at the bottom of the barracks bag, I have another five grand in money orders—all made out to me.”
Looking stupid with astonishment Joe mumbled, “Six and five...”
“Eleven grand,” Walt said proudly. “Also got some jewelry—rings and stuff, but the stones may be phony.”
“Walt, how did you get that dough?” Joe asked, his voice taking on an almost stern, comical 'father's' tone.
“By using my head,” Walt said, his voice cocky. “The country yokels went crazy getting a girl for a couple of cigarettes. Right from the start I got smart—I let those dopes buck for the stripes, get stupid-happy over selling a jit candy bar for a buck. I sucked around, got in with the medicos, formed a partnership with the supply sergeant. We sold big stuff—medicine, cases of food and clothing. Even had a cracker with us that made a still and we refilled old whiskey bottles. Know what a bottle of whiskey, real whiskey, will bring in a German night club?”
Joe didn't (or couldn't) speak, and I said I had no idea.
“At least a hundred bucks. We sold them our bootleg stuff—and it wasn't bad whiskey either—for fifty. Hell, what I got is peanuts.. If I'd been a field officer, or if my partners hadn't been so damn yellow, we'd have cleaned up a hundred thousand, at least.”
The room was heavy with silence, broken only by Walt crunching pretzels. He stood up, stretched. “I'm kind of tired. Played crap all the way across, so I haven't had too much shut eye. Came out with a little over four hundred. Those jokers didn't have no real dough on them, and here they're coming back to the States. Well, tomorrow I'll look around, get orientated, as they say in the soldier's manual.”
He dragged his barracks bag into the bedroom. Joe still sat there, looking miserable and sick. I thought how odd it was that it took the army to bring out the Joe in Walt. Joe was always talking about a “sideline to make easy dough. Get us a mail-order racket, where you sit on your can and watch the dough roll in.” Before, Walt had been so reserved and quiet you wouldn't have thought he was Joe's son....
Walt came out of the bedroom, shirt off, khaki undershirt showing off his wiry shoulders and arms. He had another cigarette hanging on his lower lip. He stopped at the entrance to the bathroom, said, “Joe, we got to get a bigger apartment. Look around for that tomorrow, too.”
“Nothing wrong with this,” Joe said, looking up at the picture of his wife.
“It could be fixed up, but it's too small. I need a room for myself. You know, whenever I shack up. I want....”
“You want... Listen, this is
Walt stood there, the smile on his thin face mocking and cool. “Don't go off the handle, Pop. Maybe I'll get my own apartment—with a room for you. We'll see, I got a lot of plans to work out.” He made a motion toward me as if he was firing a pistol, walked into the bathroom and shut the door gently.
Joe stood up, looked around wildly, then picked up the box of pipes, was about to hurl them at the wall. I grabbed him. “Easy. He's young, been through something you and I will never know about. Give him time.” .
Joe nodded, tears in his eye. “Yeah. I'm okay, Georgie. It's... he was such a good kid and I looked forward to having him back. Now... now I feel like a damn stranger in my own house.”
I was glad to walk out of Joe's house that night, thankful I was free of his problems and those of all fathers. I suppose one reason Flo and I never stayed together was my desire to lead the simple life—duck other people's neuroses. I had enough to do worrying about my own complexes—or lack of them.
Joe soon snapped out of it. Later, when he was down at the cottage for a week-end, he was back to normal, full of admiration for Walt—the same admiration he'd have for anybody with eleven thousand.
When Joe left, Eddie—Flo's kid brother—came down. He was a handsome kid, tall and with a big skinny frame, and the only member of her family I liked.
We were on the beach early Monday morning and Eddie's serious, quiet, talk was a relief from two days of Joe's gabbing. We sunned ourselves, talked of going over to Sag Harbor and fishing for blows. Eddie said he'd called Mr. Henderson before he left, who said Slob was fine, coming up for his meals regularly. I wondered if the cat ate the old man's concoctions—cats are smart.
Eddie was getting red from the sun and I stared at the ugly scar that looked like twisted burnt skin on his left shoulder, and the small scar farther down his back—where the bullet had come out. The slug had done something to one lung—exactly what I never knew—but he wasn't able to do any heavy work, received a full pension from the government. He rolled over on his back, dug his toes into the sand and laughed. “This is the life, sun and the sea air and no sweaty clothes on. I feel as if no other world existed but this beach and the pretty girls in their brief suits. My headache is gone, too.”
“Something wrong?”
“My head's been throbbing... for the last few months.”
“Sounds like a cold, or one of these new X sicknesses. Been to a doctor?”
“Sure, he said it was mental, that I worry too much. George, has the world gone mad, or is it merely me? My God, I read the headlines, listen to the news over the radio, and my head becomes full of pain. And on rainy days when I can feel my wound and I hear this war talk... another war and my wound isn't properly healed yet. It doesn't make sense.”
“Far back as I can remember, there's always been some sort of war talk. Hell, we can't let Russia, or anybody else, walk over us.”
“Nuts,” Eddie said. “We ought to learn by this time that war never settles anything. But it seems nobody learns, all they do is forget. Look how the vets forget the things promised them. Mention the Four Freedoms now and it sounds like double talk. Ah, headache starting again.”
“Maybe the sun's too strong for you? Had your eyes examined recently?”
Eddie turned over so he faced me. “Funny, that's exactly what the doctor asked. He was a fellow from my old outfit. He gave me a thorough check-up. Said to forget the world and the headlines for a while.”
“That's good advice?”
“Good? It's impossible! We never worry about cars but we keep our eyes open when we cross the street. How can we shut our eyes when it seems the world is going out of its way to get knocked down by a tank.” He dug up a little mound of sand with his fingers, made a tunnel through it with a finger and the mound collapsed. “George, how do you plan, think of anything decent, when such blundering headlines leave you in a cold sweat?”
“You take it too seriously,” I told him. “Doc find anything wrong with you?”
“Said I was suffering from some sort of nervous tension, something like combat fatigue. Odd thing was, he didn't realize he's a victim too, for he said it with a straight face, as though one could and did live in a vacuum. That's what this war of nerves, this strain in the air, has done to him—a fellow who was calm and crafty on the battlefront, now he walks around with his eyes shut. I really blew my top when he told me, Eddie, what are
“Well he was right,” I said, feeling in the mood for an argument. “I don't pay much attention to the saber rattling because I'm over age. Now if I was younger—I'd worry plenty.”
He sat up. “You really mean that. This selfishness, this sickness, has infected you too.”
“Let me tell you the facts of life—we translate the law of self-preservation into... be selfish, take care of old number one. It's the way of our world, and don't shut your eyes to
“Sure, if the world ran smoothly, if everybody had enough food, security, I'd say leave me alone, I'd say being selfish works. But we live in the midst of needless misery and want, and that's wrong... unnecessary!”
I smiled. “Be careful, you're talking like a Communist. The sand is probably crawling with the FBI.'
“Another symptom of our sickness—name calling. I don't give a damn if I'm called Red, Blue, or Black—I've seen suffering, horrible stupid suffering, and I can't live with it. Couldn't live with myself if I did. Maybe you can. You've never seen it and you're... you're...”
“I'm smug and comfortable,” I added. “Another fact: your Commie friends say a man's thinking is determined by his pocketbook. Very true. I'm comfortable, my status quo is fine. And the corollary: Communism doesn't scare me, under it I'd probably live much the same as I do now. I have no capital to lose. For all I know, Communism may be the next logical step in our industrial development. Back in the feudal days, the industrialists were looked upon as the dangerous wide-eyed radicals. As Joe says, everything is transit. But I'm not going to get myself in an uproar over Communism, or capitalism. Why do you?”
“Why do I what?”
I shrugged. “Stop it, Eddie. Why are you set to change the world single-handed? Your pension is about thirty bucks a week, you need only another year to finish your accounting, and you can take it under the GI Bill for free. You and Flo are the only kids. When your folks die, you'll come into a few thousand, and from Flo you'll inherit the house, and whatever she has socked away—which must be plenty. That's the future—but in the present, once you've graduated college, you could work a few hours a day, and with your pension, live very comfortably. Sounds a little hardboiled, but then I consider myself a realist, and facts are hard.”
“You're merely salving your conscience, rationalizing.”
“Could be. Aren't you doing the same with your weeping for poor humanity?”
“George, I can't stand by. Here's a little war yarn I never told you. You remember me before the war, an eager beaver at school, had a lot of the push that drives Flo. I was like that up till April 20, 1945. We liberated Auschwitz that day. It was sickening work, but easy in a way—little chance of running into a bullet. And there were the sick and the dying, the bloated stomachs of the starving—all that you probably saw in the newsreels. Outside the camp—the Nazis were getting ready to ship them someplace I suppose, we came upon a flat car piled with bodies, all looking like horrible skeletons in their ragged stripped uniforms. Skull heads, arms and legs covered with tight skin, caved-in cheeks, staring eyes. They were lying out in the cold like a stack of neatly piled wood... all dead. And then one of these skeletons raised himself. Somehow he was still alive. He looked at me, this pale dead-man, and all he did was smile... and die. The bodies didn't mean much to me till then. Why I damn near went crazy at the thought that here was a fellow like myself, starved of everything, even the ordinary kindness we never think about... and he gave me all he had left, a smile. I see that smile sometimes in my nightmares—the pathetic smile, as if he was forgiving me for all the craziness we've made in the world. Or maybe he was greeting me as another human. You talk about selfish; all right, I'm selfish as I can be... I don't want that to ever happen to another human on the face of this world... because that human might be me!”
“They say they have camps like that in Russia,” I said, enjoying baiting him—it was an easy lazy way of passing the time.
He looked at me with sad eyes. “You're like a witch doctor with magic words. Today when something goes wrong, we say the magic word—Russia. They say, they say...
“Relax, Eddie, we're only batting the breeze. Flo tells me you live in a flea-bag room, spend all your time at meetings and picketing. Why don't you go back to school, reach a stage of personal comfort, then work for the good of others? Since we agree this is a selfish world.”
“George, you talk like a man from another world. How could I sit in a classroom, think of debits and credits, the hollow things, when I feel fascism in the air, see them getting set for more flatcars of humans shorn of everything, even a smile? Why I'd...” He set up, held his head in his hands. “Damn headache has returned again.”
I sat up. “My fault, I was egging you on. Let's forget talk. We'll take a swim to cool off, then go fishing. Blowfishes are the most amazing and stupidest creatures in the world. Even beat us humans.”
We didn't go in for any more heavy talk, fished and swam for the rest of the week, had a swell time. And then on the Friday before my week was up, I received a special delivery from Flo. There were two newspaper clippings in the envelope, nothing else. One was dated the same day, that Friday, and was merely a death notice, cold, impersonal, that read:
CONROY,—HENRY, beloved brother of Marion.
Services at Universal Chapel, 10 a.m.
Service private.
The other clipping bore a Wednesday dateline. It was a half column story about Hank falling out of a window of his fifth story apartment, as he was standing on a ladder, hanging some curtains. It said Hank must have lost his balance, crashed through the partly open window to his death. His wife, Lee Conroy, was using the basement washing machine at the time of the accident...
I put the clippings down and was full of strange thoughts. First (and quickly) a wild thought that I now had seven thousand dollars... if I wanted to keep the money. Then vague puzzled thoughts: What an odd way for poor Hank to the... he was always so careful. Why wasn't he being buried from a church? Why no mention of his wife in the obituary notice? And above all, why the rush to bury him?
These were tiny thoughts, the big one was the tempting idea that nobody knew I had Hank's money. It was a hideous thought, well mixed with my sincere sorrow over Hank's death... yet there wasn't any point in denying—especially to myself—that it was very much in my mind.
It was a fact.
Chapter 3
THERE WAS no reason why I should rush back to town—aside from the fact I think funerals are stupid anyway. I spent a curious week-end, full of secret elation that the money was mine, while my righteous self argued I must return the money. Nor did I overlook another point: I had no way of knowing whether Hank had told anybody else about the seven thousand. I was sure he hadn't, but I didn't really know.
On Monday, when I reached the office, I played Scoundrel in the second at Aqueduct, a four to one shot, and was both alarmed and pleased when he won. I wondered how much truth there was in my hunch. I decided I better quit stalling. I called Hank's sister and a maid told me, “Mrs. Keating has gone to the country for a week, on the advice of her doctor.” I gave her my name and felt better—it all fitted in nicely with my plans. First, I had a bit of work to catch up on at the office, a feature spread we were getting out on our Georgia dealers, and a speech to write for one of the vice-presidents—which we would later run as an article. Harvey couldn't write speeches, he always made the speaker sound too sharp and acid, not realizing that the purpose of an after-dinner speech is to say nothing in the mildest way possible. Secondly, I wanted more time to think things out about Hank's money, although I didn't know exactly what there was to think out.
Of course I could easily have gone directly to Hank's apartment, talked to his wife, but I had several phoney excuses for not doing that. He had said he didn't want her to get the money; that had started the entire mess. (Although he never said he wanted me to keep it as against giving it to his wife.) Then too, it was best I wait and see what was what. Suppose Hank had left a will, leaving the money to somebody besides his wife? If I gave her the seven grand I might be tied up in a law suit. They weren't good reasons, but they convinced me—which wasn't a difficult feat. So I waited—gave his sister another week to return from the country. The fact that lawyers hadn't called me made me feel happier—there probably wasn't a will.
Three weeks to the day after Hank was buried, I called his sister. I never cared much for Marion Keating. She was a short woman in her middle fifties, the type that spends her time hunting for better girdles, false breasts, hair dyes that are impossible, and a raft of make-up. She was sure she didn't look a day over thirty. (Although she would have happily settled for forty.) She had been on the edge of the society-social-blueblood swindle ever since she was 20 and married Edward F. Keating—Yale, badminton, sailing, and a comfortable amount of solid securities and stocks. The frantic keeping up with the Astors had left Marion looking worn and tired, and most boring. She moved and talked with jerky, nervous movements.
Mr. Keating was out—in fact I'd never seen him except when his picture appeared in the Sunday
Her loud make-up made her weary, tired facial muscles stand out in sharp contrast, accented her age, but at first Marion acted as coy as a deb. After pouring me a drink and telling me about her week in the country, who had entertained her, or maybe it was the other way around, and the usual small talk, I was able to get in a few words. I told her what a shock Hank's passing had been and she suddenly pressed my hand between her two small damp thin ones, said, “George Jackson, my dear, I'm very glad you have come. The war—all those years—broke Hank's ties with the boys he knew. And somebody has to do something!”
“Yes? Do what?”
“That bitch murdered him!” Marion shrilled.
My mouth fell open like a ham comedian's.
“Oh I know her. Stayed in my house, right here, for over three weeks, and I locked my bedroom door every night. I thank God that Edward was in California, on business, during those weeks. He would have horsewhipped that... slut. George, nobody knows her wickedness, the slyness, the horrible cunning! She did it, she...”
“Hold up Marion, talk sense,” I said. “After all... well...
“A likely story! You knew Hank. Was he a drunk, or a very conservative, careful man? Falling through the window—he was pushed! Oh I know what I'm talking about—he told me he was trying to get rid of her. God knows what ever possessed him to marry that awful creature. The girls I could have had for him... with position and money. But you knew Hank, his high-sounding ideals. And he had to marry this whore, and now she's killed him. She wasn't satisfied driving him crazy, she had to push him out the window!”
Marion's voice was on a high, hysterical level. I wondered if she was tight, or perhaps slightly crazy. Still, she should be well past the change of life period and she didn't have enough sense to be-neurotic. I said, “I'm sure if there was even the smallest idea of murder, the police...”
“The police!” Marion actually screamed. “Those stupid, stupid, fools! She
She turned on the tears and I wanted to leave but I had to find out about the will, if there was a will. “Marion, I don't know anything about all this. I've hardly seen Hank during the last eight years, only spoke to him on the phone once or twice when he returned. Surely the police wouldn't have believed this girl's story if they had any doubt of...?”
“The stupid police! They said there wasn't any motive.
It was like a bad movie coming alive. There was such an unreal, melodramatic air about her ravings, I felt very uneasy. I waited a moment while she struggled with a handkerchief, then asked gently, “Hank leave a will, I mean, I suppose this girl will get everything... I mean, could that have been a motive?” I floundered rather badly.
Marion's eyes brightened, the tears stopped. “That's where I have her. Oh I have her good! Poor Hank, he never saved anything, and then all those years in the army. There isn't any will, he hasn't an estate. Not a cent. Even his GI insurance is in my name—he never changed it. He had a piece of property the family owns downtown, but that's in my name too. Before he went overseas, he changed the title. She hasn't a cent, and she'll starve to death before I give her a dime. I wouldn't even bury her—the murderess!”
She pressed my hand again. “George Jackson, you know I have money, that I've always given to charity, devoted my life to helping those less fortunate. I'm not a hard person. I would have done anything for Hank's wife. I looked forward to the day he'd marry, planned to give him the house in Westport as a wedding gift. Now you can realize what a she-wolf this girl is, when I tell you I pray to God she starves to death!”
I said I was sorry for her, it sounded like quite a mess, and she probably knew what she was doing and of course she was the soul of sweetness and charity, etc. Marion babbled on: she had hired private detectives but they hadn't been able to dig up a thing, but she would spend the rest of her life avenging her brother, etc.
I finally managed to break away before Marion wet herself with tears again. The night was cool and I walked home, thinking very objectively—or trying to. I still hadn't decided to keep the money, that was still a thought hidden in the back of my mind. But it was obvious I could—safely. There was one thing I was sure of: there wasn't any point in giving seven thousand to Marion, adding to her wealth, when she was cheating Hank's wife on the property deal.
And since Hank hadn't wanted this Lee to get the money, she probably had money too. In which case temptation might simply overwhelm me—with ease.
I mixed myself a drink, listened to the radio, and played with Slob. He was feeling very kittenish, making a great fuss over a ping-pong ball he had, chasing it all over the room. And in a sense I was as restless as the cat, too restless to sleep. It wasn't simply the money—something else disturbed me, although I couldn't put my finger on it. I dressed in a sweat suit, went downstairs and danced through a dozen records, then stretched under my sun lamp till I stopped sweating, thinking of Flo, vaguely wishing I knew Stella's name and phone number. I cleaned up the house while cooling off, took a hot, pine-bubble bath. While I was sitting in the tub, listening to Slob running around the living room like a fool, and glancing over some promotion booklets Socony had issued, I suddenly knew what was troubling me—I felt damn sorry for Hank's wife. Marion was a bitch and the poor girl was getting the wrong end of the stick. I decided to call her the following evening, and I felt better.
For what it's worth, I'll frankly admit I had a deep premonition there and then that I ought to leave well enough alone—as the trite phrase goes.
Still, I did have seven thousand dollars that was rightly hers, and also a certain curiosity to see what she looked like. Since my last “reunion” with Flo had petered out before it started, it may have been I was a bit on the frantic side at the moment.
The following day was humid and sticky and I skipped my cocktail to go home and shower. Despite the heat, I felt very gay, in sort of a philanthropic mood. I was on my way to do my good deed by a starving widow—maybe. Besides, I'd played a wild hunch on a nag called Mysterious, which had paid fourteen dollars and change for place. And I had amazed Joe (and myself) by actually playing her to place because I was more than a little doubtful of Marion's wild nonsense.
The house was sandwiched between several dull and depressing tenements on 29th Street, and it looked as if it had been remodeled just before the war. Despite the new bright brisk front (up to the first story only), the brass antique lamps over the doorway and the windows with their uniform red blinds, the house still had a tenement look and air about it. It gave me a chilly feeling to think I was probably standing on the very square of sidewalk where Hank had squashed out his life. I found Conroy in the mailbox—printed in Hank's neat, trim, lettering. There were several pieces of mail in the box. I rang the bell and waited. There wasn't any answering buzz and I rang again—a long ring. I tried the hall door, found it locked.
While I was standing there, feeling greatly excited—and relieved—sure that this Lee must be out of town, a man in a sweaty egg-yellow polo shirt came in, opened the hall doorway with a key. On the spur of the moment I walked in after him.
The clean hallway stairs smelled of disinfectant and the musty odor of people. Their apartment, or rather hers, was on the top floor and as I walked up, I could picture poor Hank hurtling down all the space I was climbing. I was sweating a bit when I reached the fifth floor, and as I stopped to run a handkerchief over my face, I was aware of the peephole in her apartment door opening, somebody watching me. Through the little hole in the center of what looked like a tiny porthole in the door, I saw somebody's iris-blue, I thought—staring at me. I wondered why the owner of the iris hadn't answered my ring, but then the bell might have been out of order.
I walked over to the door, rang the bell, as though I didn't see the eye watching me. The bell sounded loud in the early evening stillness. The blue iris didn't move, so finally I said, “Will you please open this door.”
After a second, a woman's voice with a faint drawl asked, “Who you?”
“I'm George Jackson, a friend of Hank's. If you're his wife, Lee, I'd like to talk to you. Or perhaps you can tell me where I can find her,” I added, suddenly thinking that in these days the apartment might have been re-rented by this time.
The iris stared at me for a second longer, and seemed to become a deep dark blue, then disappeared from the peephole, leaving a friendly beam of light. The door opened. I didn't see anybody, but I stepped inside and as the door closed softly, I turned to see her leaning lazily against the door.
She said, “I'm Lee.”
We stared at each other and I was aware of many things—and yet my mind seemed a blank, my thoughts scattered. There was the sharp odor about her and the room—the smell of the unwashed, the unclean. It was all over the incredibly dirty room, but it was especially strong about her. And it excited me, aroused me in a way I hadn't known for twenty years.
And there was the odd blue tattoo of a heart and an American flag on her left forearm. And she was a tall, magnificently built girl. She had on a thin, worn, armless housedress and nothing under that. Sweat stained the armpits. The dress couldn't hide any of her charms, the wonderful wide, strong shoulders; jutting breasts, firm round hips, and the oddly muscular arms and powerful legs. Her long dark untidy hair fell straight down to her shoulders, although neatly bobbed across her forehead. She wasn't a pretty girl but there was a certain unusualness about her face that made her attractive: the large eyes that stared at me with amusement, the nose that seemed to have been stuck on her face as an afterthought, maybe a plastic job, and her mouth was small, sullen, and unpainted.
The most astounding feature, outside of the tattoo, was her hands—thick, large fingers and palms, like a laborer's.
I stood there, amazed, not knowing what to say, waiting for her to speak. When she didn't say a word, for no reason at all, I turned my back on her, glanced around the room. It was an awful mess. At one time it had been a living room but now it was a miniature garbage dump. Cigarettes and piles of butts and ashes were everywhere, shoes and stockings and other clothing on the floor and the chairs, a crumpled sheet on the couch, torn pillows on the dirty floor. The place had not only not been cleaned in weeks, but on a battered coffee table there was a little heap of leftover food, parts of moldy bread, and some open cans of beans.
Above all was this odor, the sharp penetrating smell of her—a lush, personal, animal smell.
I turned and looked at her again and she hadn't moved an eyelash. For want of something to do, I took out my cigarette case, offered her one. We both lit up and she seemed to get a great deal of satisfaction out of smoking, sending out strong clouds of smoke through her nose. The silence was becoming silly and I finally said, “I'm George Jackson; I was a close friend of Hank's. I would have dropped by sooner but I was out of town. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I am hungry,” she said in the slight drawl and I wondered on what forlorn tobacco road Hank had found her.
“Well, we can certainly remedy that. Surely you have some money. I mean...” I didn't know what I meant. I'd never heard anybody say, “I am hungry,” before—and believe it.
“I have no money. I have nothing,” she said, carefully pronouncing each syllable—like a school kid. “Did not Hank tell you about me? Tell you I am not very bright?”
“No he didn't,” I said, laughing politely at what I was sure was a gag of some sort.
She suddenly laughed and it was amazing how large her mouth became. When she laughed it was a most sensual mouth with heavy sultry lips, and strong white even teeth. She said, “I have not asked you to sit down. You will excuse. Please do.”
She walked over to a dirty chair, kicked off what seemed to be a crumpled towel, sat down. She moved with a springy grace, with the wonderful suppleness of a young ballerina. I went over to another chair, but it was too dirty to sit on. It was covered with heavy stains. I stood there, noticing for the first time she was barefooted. Her feet were large and wide and ugly. I never saw such big feet on a woman before—but neither had I ever seen a woman as big as Lee. And I didn't mean fat—she wasn't even plump—but
“Yes. I like Lee very much.”
“Lee, there's no point in our standing around. If you'll dress, I'll take you out to dinner, and we can talk about what must be done.”
She sat there, watching me, not saying a word. I asked, “Don't you want to eat?”
“Yes.”
“Then dress,” I said, feeling we were talking like idiots and not knowing what to do about it.
She stood up and walked out of the room and I pinched myself to be sure it was all real. Without her, the room looked revolting, a pig-sty with furniture. I went over to the coffee table. The food seemed days old and roaches scampered away as I watched. Large healthy roaches.
She came in from the bedroom. She had on shoes and a thin sweater that covered the tattoo on her arm. I opened the door and she walked out. We went down the stairs without saying a word.
There weren't many places to choose from, and if she was really hungry, no time to travel. (Not to mention her horrible clothes.) We went into a small coffee pot on the corner, sat at the counter. I ordered ice tea while I gave her the menu to read. When I asked what she wanted, she said simply, “Meat.”
The counterman looked at us as if we were drunk, and I ordered a steak and potatoes for her. Sitting beside her on those ridiculous stools, I realized how tall she was. Well over six feet, and no slim, delicate woman, but built like an athlete. We didn't talk and when the steak came she actually wolfed it down. I asked if she wanted another and she shocked me by saying, “Yes, thank you.”
I ordered another steak and she ate that with the same speed and zest she went at the first one. The counterman watched her, amazement and suspicion on his coarse face. Lee finished with two glasses of iced tea, which she almost filled with sugar, and some horrible-looking pie. She asked for a cigarette. We walked back to the house and people stared at us. She was sweating a little and her dress clung to her body. Her nipples were quite prominent. She walked up the five flights without breathing hard. When we were in her apartment and I had stopped puffing, I asked, “Haven't you any family, anyone you can get in touch with?”
“Family?” she repeated, as though she didn't understand me. She was sitting on one of the dirty chairs, slowly smoking a cigarette.
“No father, mother, sisters or brothers?” I asked, feeling silly.
“No. I have no one.”
“And no money? Doesn't seem like Hank to leave you...” I stopped. It was an asinine remark... Hank hadn't 'planned' to leave her.
“No money—nothing,” she said calmly.
“I'll try to find you a job. Can you type?”
“Type?”
“You know, work a typewriter.” I went through the motions of typing. I felt excited—a little rattled.
“I have seen such machines. I cannot work them. I am not bright. Hank, he did not tell you that?”
“I only saw Hank once since he came home,” I said, trying to figure the drawl and the broken English. “Mrs. Conroy—Lee .—I want to help you. Suppose for the next few months, till you get on your feet, I give you some money? Say... fifty a week.”
“Fifty doll-ars?” Lee said, showing some interest. “You are most kind, Herr...?”
“George.”
“George.” She put a lot on the 'G.' “So you will help me?”
“Of course. I'm sure something will work out—in a few weeks.”
“And you will give me money? Fifty dollars?”
I said, “Yes, I told you that.”
“And you will stay here?” Lee asked, staring at me blankly.
“Oh, no. You don't understand. I'll pay your rent, give you some money each week until you're settled and...”
“You promise fifty dollars.”
“Yes, fifty dollars,” I said, all mixed up.
She stood up slowly, making me aware of her supple body. She knocked the ash from her cigarette on the floor, came over to me. It was a novelty to be able to look into a girl's eyes—not have to look down at her. She drawled, “Honey, you have a place?”
I nodded and the heavy sweaty odor of her was like a sickeningly thick perfume.
“Then Lee go with you. Why you pay money here and for your own rooms?”
“No. Wait—don't get me wrong, I'm doing this as Hank's friend—and as your friend. You don't have to... I mean, my God this is all...”
“Honey, I want to go with you,” Lee said and put her face close to mine. She closed her eyes and pouted her lips to be kissed—all a childish mixture of the worst corny acting I'd ever seen.
She stood like that for a second, then I put my arms around her hard shoulders, kissed her fiercely, and the very physical bigness of her made me feel like a kid. It seemed as if I'd never wanted a woman as much as I wanted her.
We walked into the bedroom. (And I wouldn't have been too surprised if she had carried me in there.) The bed was a frightful mess: the sheets almost gray, shoe marks and crumbs all over the bed, and stains and other marks I didn't dare think about. I was about to tell her we could go to my apartment, but she stripped quickly and there wasn't any time for words.
Later, I insisted we go to my place—the dirty bed was beginning to worry me by then. Lee didn't say anything. She put on her dress and while I got into my clothes, she went through the rooms, picking up little packages and things from under a bureau scarf, out of drawers. She shoved these packages into a large leather pocketbook, stood by the door, waiting for me. I handed her a sweater—to cover the tattoo on her arm—and we went out. She never even locked the door.
In the cab I thought I heard the rattle of coins in her bag—a great many coins—but it didn't mean anything to me.
She glanced casually around my house, didn't make any comment. I took great delight in giving her a bath, took a shower myself, and we went to bed.
I'd never call Lee a passionate woman, but she certainly was extremely capable.
Chapter 4
I AWOKE AT nine the next morning and had to rush. Lee was sprawled across the bed, sleeping heavily, and she certainly was the largest and best-shaped woman I'd ever seen. I dressed and showered quickly, and the sight of this Amazon in my bed pleased me. Without thinking it out very much, I was impressed with my own cleverness—I was keeping Lee with her own money!
I left a note that I'd be home by six, told her where to shop, and put a five-dollar bill beside the note. I took a cab to the office, didn't have time to stop for my scratch sheet or even breakfast. I felt in top spirits.
Shortly before noon I called the house, but there wasn't any answer. I supposed Lee was out shopping for supper. Joe lunched with me, was full of chatter about the television set Walt had bought, and what a sharp character the kid was. “Believe me, Georgie, that kid has something on the ball. Army was the best thing in the world for him. Why he even hit the daily double Saturday—only paid thirty-four bucks, but that's some picking: He's looking the package-store deal over carefully. Seems not all these liquor stores are making dough. And he's going to school—one night a week—Columbia. Taking an extension course in the principles of merchandising, so he can run his store right. And you should see the dolls he has up to the house. Fact is, I'm spending most of my nights in the Turkish baths. Kid wants me to share his dolls, but I don't think that's right. Although some of them are real fine sex-boats. How about going to the baths with me tonight?”
“Sorry, I'm busy.”
Joe gave me a shrewd look. “Oh—Flo back again?”
I shook my head. “Another girl. Talk about sex-boats, this one's a whole fleet.” I called for the check.
Joe looked at me pop-eyed. “Tell poppa all about...”
“Some other time, perhaps,” I said, as the waiter came over.
During the afternoon I kept thinking about the way I'd left her sprawled across the bed. I was too restless to work, so I told Harvey I had a headache, took off. I called the house again and there wasn't any answer.
I took a cab to her place on 29th Street. She had left the door unlocked and I went in. The place was so dirty and smelled so badly, I nearly gave up. I wondered if Lee had been too grief-stricken to do any housework, although she hadn't been too deep in sorrow to sleep with me. As I looked around the apartment I was nearly overcome with a feeling of guilt: with poor Hank dead a month I already had his money and his wife. But it wasn't any of my doing—he had given me the money—to hold—and Lee had been the one to volunteer herself.
There wasn't much in the flat, the furniture scratched and stained. I went through her closet and drawers, gathered her clothes. (There were a few suits—Hank's no doubt—that gave me quite a start.) I took whatever clothes she had that weren't too dirty or torn. She didn't have much, there wasn't a decent pair of stockings, for instance, nor did I see any heavy or winter coats. I made a bundle of her stinking clothes and as I started out of the apartment, I almost walked into a little rat-faced man standing in the hallway. He had on work clothes and nodded at the stuff in my arms, asked, “What you doing here, mister?”
His voice was mild and squeaky, but when I tried to walk past him, he blocked the way, said, “I'm the super of the house. They—she—owes rent... last month.”
“I'm not sure Mrs. Conroy wants to keep the apartment any longer.”
He pushed back his battered felt hat, rubbed his thin hair.
“Have to talk to the agent about that. They—she—has a lease.”
I rested the clothes on the stairway railing, pulled a ten-dollar bill out of my pocket. “Look, if you don't hear from Mrs. Conroy within the next week, evict her. And forget you ever saw me.” I slipped him the ten.
He hesitated a moment, pocketed the bill. “You her brother?”
“No. I'm a friend of the Conroys. All this has been a severe shock to her, naturally, and Mrs. Conroy may leave the city. But forget you saw me.”
“It's okay with me, mister. But the agent will want last month's rent and you can't break a lease by...”
“Stop it. Clean and paint the place, fix up the furniture a little, and the agent will get a couple hundred under the table—again, like he did from the Conroys. But remember, wait a week, in case Mrs. Conroy changes her mind.”
As I went down the stairs I heard him mumble. “Okay with me, but them people sure caused us plenty trouble...”
I took a cab uptown and the sour smell of her things made me want her. I left the clothes in a dry-cleaning place on the corner, brushed myself off, and walked over to the house. Slob was sitting outside and I picked him up as I unlocked the door, said, “What's the matter, boy, bit shocked at my having a girl around?”
Inside, he jumped out of my hands, made for the kitchen. I called out, “Lee? Lee?” but there wasn't any answer. For a moment I had the uncomfortable feeling that she had left me. But the night before I had undressed her in the living room, and her dress was still across the couch, her sweater on the floor where she had dropped it, and in the bathroom doorway I could see her shoes. I called her name again, ran into the bedroom.
She was sprawled across the bed, and I swear that she hadn't moved an inch since I'd left her in the morning. She was staring up at the ceiling, as if in deep thought, didn't even look at me. My note was still on the night table, but the five dollar bill was gone.
I sat on the bed, stroked her hard thigh. “Hello, Lee honey. Haven't you been out?”
She didn't answer, still examined the ceiling.
“Anything wrong? I phoned twice but you must have been out...” I stopped. Remembering her clothes in the living room, I damn well knew she hadn't left the house.
She didn't pay the slightest attention to me and I sat like that for a moment, wondering what I'd done. Perhaps she felt guilty about spending the night with her dead husband's best friend. Perhaps... I said, “I was down to your place, put your clothes in the cleaners. You'll have to decide if you want to keep the apartment. The janitor was asking about it.” This didn't get a rise out of her, and for want of something more to say, I asked, “Would you like to eat?”
She sat up, stared at me. I noticed she'd been smoking in bed—there were ashes and a few crushed, blackened butts on the sheet beneath her. She said, “Ja, essen.”
“What? Look, are you hungry?”
“Yes. I am very hungry,” she said, like a kid in an elocution class.
She was looking at me, but in an odd manner, as though I wasn't there.
I stood up. “Why didn't you go out and shop?”
She didn't answer and I playfully reached down and shook her. With cat speed she moved away from me, to the other side of the bed, her eyes alert, watching me. When she moved I saw all her muscles and I'll swear she was actually muscle-bound.
I sat down on a chair, didn't talk for a minute. Then I asked, “Lee, is something the matter? Why didn't you get up? Why didn't you shop?”
She relaxed, stretched with sensuous ease on the bed, her big body inviting. She giggled.
“What's the joke?”
She said, “Where is the money?”
“What money?”
“You said fifty dollars. I find only this.” The drawl was back in her voice. She reached under a pillow, waved the five spot I'd left in the morning.
“I'll give you the money tomorrow. I have to go to the bank. And you'll need clothes, I'll buy a wardrobe,”
She looked puzzled, as if she didn't understand a word I said. I got up again. “Look, bathe and dress, I'll shop.” I reached over for the five dollars, but she coyly pulled away, put the bill under her. I was too hungry to play, so I said, “Get dressed,” and went out. In her dirty dress I didn't want to be seen with her in any restaurant. As I walked down the street, Henderson waved to me from his window.
I bought a lot of food and when I returned she was still in bed. I got angry, said, “For Christ sakes, get up and cook.”
“Cook?” she repeated, as if mocking me. She shook her head. “Lee not bright—no cook.”
“Oh, save the baby talk.” I took off my coat and tie, went into the kitchen. I gave Slob some milk and meat, made ham and eggs for supper. The smell of food aroused Lee. She stood in the doorway, watching me, still in the nude. She looked like a heavyweight champion with breasts.
I pointed to her clothes in the living room, then to the bathroom. “Wash and dress—if you want to eat.”
Like a child, she turned and did as I told her, although she didn't put on her shoes. At that moment I realized what I was up against. If I had been smart (or if I
We ate in silence and when she finished she picked up Slob, began to stroke him with her big hands. He switched his tail nervously, finally jumped out of her hands, and up and out of the kitchen window. I lit a cigarette for her, took out my pipe, and asked, “Will you wash the dishes?”
She sat there, elbows on the kitchen table, watching the smoke she was blowing out of her odd nose. Finally I got up, stacked the dishes in the sink, washed them. All she did was stare at the ceiling, knock her ashes on the floor. I swept up the living room, cleaned up the bedroom, changed the linen, washed the bathroom. All the time she sat in the kitchen. I went back there, pointed to the ashes on the floor, the butt she had crushed on the table. “Look, Lee, I don't know what this all means, but I won't live in a pig-sty. Pick that up.” I sounded exactly like a father scolding his little girl.
She picked up the ashes and butt, dropped them in the sink instead of the garbage pail. I gave up, went into the living room and turned on the radio. She came in, sat opposite me. She didn't have a thing on except her dress, and just looking at her, her huge bare feet, annoyed me. To get a rise from her, I said, “Damn it, stop lounging around like a big whore.”
The words had absolutely no effect on her and I wondered if she was deaf. But I could tell she was listening to the music on the radio. I went over and shook her. “Did you hear what I said?”
She looked up at me, her face blank. When I shook her again she smiled, put her strong arms around me, pulled me down to her. I was aware only of her breasts gently digging into my chest.
Whatever was wrong with her, she knew what I wanted most.
I looked at my watch and it was absurd being in bed at six o'clock. As usual, she was staring at nothing, at the ceiling. I got up, poured myself a good hooker, asked if she wanted one.
She said, “Yes,” and I told her to get out of bed and get it. She didn't move and I put the bottle away. I sat down and tried to think. Hank and Marion had called her crazy and I'd only thought it a figure of speech. There was no doubt she was backward, to put it mildly, and God knows where or why Hank had taken up with her.
I knew I should get rid of her, yet I couldn't. I had this silly idea I was in the driver's seat—I was keeping her with her own money. That struck me as such a hell of a clever idea, I was so pleased with it, I simply couldn't give it up. Then of course there was the added point of her wonderful body.
I gave her all sorts of crazy excuses: she was merely in a mood, maybe she was recovering from a long binge, maybe she was ashamed of living with me... maybe... maybe. I gave up. But I was seriously considering getting rid of her, at the moment, but what followed changed all that.
I put on my sweat suit, tap shoes, went downstairs to dance. I had to do something to relax. I'd danced through two Earl Hines' records, was in the midst of a corny soft shoe dance to
I asked if she wanted to dance and she said, “I know
I said, “Good God,” and burst out laughing. She smiled and I took her in my arms and started dancing. She was very awkward and after stumbling around for a moment, I left her and danced solo. The record changed to one of Charlie Barnet's loud and fast-numbers, and as I whirled around the room, the rhythm suddenly got her. She kicked off my slippers and started to dance.
Her movements were clumsy, and lacking in any grace or smoothness, yet there was something fierce and savage and original about them. Mostly she seemed to fling herself around the room, dancing with her arms and shoulders, and bumping a good deal—like an inept burlesque dancer. But there was no doubt she felt the movements, and there was a certain charm to their very simplicity. I danced around her, doing whatever I felt like.
On the slow record, a waltz, she merely walked around the room with slow, even strides, while I glided around and around her. On the fast, hot jazz numbers we both danced like mad—and I mean mad. Except for a break when I put on a new stack of records, we danced for nearly an hour, and I was the exhausted one. I was impressed with her stamina, and mad or not, it was delightful to dance with some one. I never had the nerve to show any girl—or male—my dancing. Not even Flo. I suppose this was partly modesty, plus the fact that I hate to make a spectacle of myself and my dancing was my own, meant to please only myself. And now I had a dance partner, a silent one, whose dance interpretations were also strictly her own. Lee danced with no special expression on her face, and I could never tell if she was enjoying it or considered it all a form of exercise. I suppose the fact that I danced before her was an acceptance on my part that she was backward—her opinions didn't matter. Whatever the reasoning, I was happy to have her dance with me.
When we went upstairs she headed directly for bed—wet with sweat. Like taking a kid's hand, I had to lead her to the bathroom, put her under the shower. When I turned on the sun-lamp, motioned for her to lie under it as we dried off, she shook her head violently, ran to the bedroom. I turned off the lamp and found her cowering under the sheets. “What's the matter?” I asked.
She merely turned her back to me, fear on her face.
When I got into bed, she turned so she was facing me. She lay there for a while, to see if I wanted her then, like an animal, turned over and fell sound asleep.
I was pleasantly tired and as I went into the luxurious state of contentment we call “dozing off,” I lazily wondered what Lee's mental age was, where in God's name Hank had found her, and why he had ever married her. I knew I was letting myself in for something, that I should get out from under now, fast... but I could only think how clever I was, getting Lee as a bed and dancing partner, and all on the cuff—her cuff.
I awoke at seven, feeling very rested. Lee had a sheet carelessly over her, was staring at the ceiling again. I showered and shaved. As I dressed I told her to clean up the house, that there was sufficient food in the refrigerator for supper and she might make an attempt at cooking... and while I was talking she closed her eyes and went to sleep!
As I walked to the newsstand for my paper, I met Mr. Henderson coming back with his papers. I asked him what he was doing up so early and he said, “Too muggy to sleep. George, you know I'm not a busybody, but this is really troubling me. Is there a woman in your place?”
“I don't see what business....”
He put a wrinkled hand on my arm. “Come George, you know I don't mean it that way. It's merely... well, like the man downstairs, in the old joke, who's waiting for the other shoe to drop... you know how I like watching the street from my window. I saw you come in with her, but I'll be damned if she's left.”
I laughed. “To ease your mind, she's still there. Keeps to the house, shy type.”
“A remarkable girl, strapping... eh... piece. This will be in the nature of a great surprise to Flo.”
“I imagine it will. Truth is I haven't thought much about Flo's reactions. Well, have to be on my way to the office.”
“Poker this Saturday? Haven't had a game in some time—I miss Joe's money.”
“Maybe. I'll see what Joe says,” I said, waving and walking on.
There was a horse in the seventh race called Hill Gal, and since I was convinced Lee was from some wide-spot in the road, I played the nag across the board. It was a wrong hunch—the horse ran out of the money. I skipped my pre-supper cocktail and when I came home at about six, I found Lee sitting in a chair—in the nude-r-staring at the rug as if in deep thought—or in a trance. The bed was unmade and judging from the kitchen, she had eaten some milk and cake during the day. Slob was back in the house, sitting on the rug not far from Lee, watching her.
At lunch-time I'd drawn some money from “her” account. I'd meant to take out only the fifty dollars I'd promised her, but took out a hundred. I decided then and there that I'd dip into the money whenever I felt like it. Of course I rationalized things by calling it “our” money. I gave her five tens and counted the money slowly, didn't say a word. I told her, “Why don't you get dressed? It doesn't look right... sitting around like this.”
She didn't answer me and I got her dress and threw it at her, then went into the kitchen and made a simple supper. When it was ready, I called her, and she came in, the dress on. She didn't have the money in her hands, and since the dress had no pockets and she hadn't moved from the chair, I wondered what she had done with the five tens, but I didn't ask her. We ate in silence, smoked several cigarettes, and the only interest she showed was when I got out my pipe and my blending bowl, mixed some tobacco. She ran her fingers through the tobacco in the open cans, said, “Plenty tabek.”
Cigarettes, tobacco, seemed to be a big deal in her life. Lighting my pipe, I washed the dishes, gave her a towel, and she dried. She moved very slowly, mechanically, and I took another towel and we finished the few dishes.
I turned on the radio and she sat on the couch, lost in thought or whatever strange world she was lost in. I read my
A quiet and peaceful evening in the new life of George Jackson.
I was becoming tired of my own cooking and the next afternoon I stopped at the cleaners, took out her dresses and things. When I came home she was in bed, but smiled when I hung up her clothes in my closet. I ran her bath, practically guided her into the tub, made her comb her hair. I actually rouged her lips, then picked out a dress and underthings, and watched as she dressed. I said, “You ought to go to a beauty parlor. There's one around the corner on Lexington Avenue. Shall I make an appointment for you?”
She didn't answer.
Dressed, she looked passable enough to get by in a restaurant. I went to the Campfire Inn on the corner, and we both had a heavy Hungarian meal... in silence. I ordered for both of us, and Lee seemed to enjoy the meal, although she enjoyed anything she could eat. We walked up Lexington Avenue and when we passed a beauty parlor I asked, “Would you like to go in and make an appointment for your hair and nails?”
She looked puzzled, so I pointed to her hair then to one of the horrible wax mannikins in the window. She still didn't understand, and we went inside. A woman was having her nails done and Lee seemed interested in that. Several other women were sitting under hair dryers, idly looking at us. Women seem to have an absolutely useless look when sitting under hair dryers, all trussed up like vain hens. The elderly blonde who managed the place came forward, said, “Yes?”
“My... wife would like to get her hair and nails done,” I said, realizing how odd it must seem that I did the talking.
“Tuesday afternoon is the first open date I have.”
“How about Tuesday evening, about this time?”
“Why, yes. I can take her at seven.”
“Will that be all right, Lee?” I asked, turning to find her gone. I looked around, saw her standing outside. I walked out and I could hear the women tittering.
“What's the matter?” I asked, angry.
“Machine on head, no. No! But I like red on nails.”
“The machine only dries your hair after they wash...”
There wasn't any point in talking, Lee had walked on. It was a mild night and we walked over to 5th Avenue and sat in the park. I put my arm around her and she leaned against me, and I suppose we looked like any other couple.
When we came home, I asked if she wanted to dance, but she merely undressed, letting her clothes stay where they fell, and went to bed. I went downstairs and danced through a few records, expecting Lee to come down as soon as she heard the music. But she didn't and I used the sun-lamp for a while, took a shower, and went to bed. She seemed to be sleeping but as soon as I touched her, she put her arms around me like a robot, pulled me to her.
On Friday I decided to take Lee shopping the next day. I made out a check for two hundred, changed it to five hundred—to really feel the power of money. (Or, that's what I told myself.) For the hell of it I played three horses across the board and one of them came in, making me only a dollar or two loser. Then before I went home I ordered two custom-made shirts, bought a pair of twenty-five dollar shoes, and a couple of Barzoni ties. As an afterthought I got her a bottle of blood red nail polish.
The next morning I cooked breakfast, made her bathe and dress in her best, I painted her nails—which seemed to please her very much—and left her practically propped up in a chair like a big doll, while I bathed and shaved. It was a hot, end-of-August day, and we took a cab down to Saks Fifth Avenue, the first store that came to my mind. I was a bit nervous, wondering how she would react in the store, but it came off quite well.
Lee was impressed by seeing so many things, and her eyes lit up, but she didn't say a word. I did all the talking and choosing, and if the sales girls thought it was odd, they didn't show it. One girl looked a little bug-eyed when Lee was trying on a blouse and her tattoo came to light. We bought two light suits, several dresses, underwear, stockings, blouses, and two skirts... all in the latest style. I was rather pleased with my knowledge of style—thanks to Flo. I insisted the clothes be sent by special messenger late in the afternoon. Aside from feeling the material now and then, Lee was the perfect clothes horse, waiting patiently as I picked her clothes. We took a cab down to Slater's for shoes, stopped for lunch, bought some perfume, and finally went to Barney's over on 8th Avenue (not the calling-all-men place) where I bought her ballet slippers and a couple of rehearsal outfits.
I'd spent all “my” cash, so I stopped at my bookie's and had him cash a $100 check—which he did nervously.
It was pathetic the way Lee followed me around like an obedient child, and since it was still early in the afternoon, I walked her down Broadway and into the Paramount. The stage show was the usual corn, but she enjoyed it, hunching forward in her seat, at least showing interest. The picture had a Paris background and I was astonished to see her mumbling in French.
When we were in a cab going home, I asked, “Do you speak French?”
“Oui.”
“You speak some German, too. Where did you learn languages, in school?”
She didn't answer. Jokingly, for I don't speak anything except American—and that not too well—I asked, “Fraulein, where did you learn?”
The words had a magic effect on her: she turned quickly, almost in fear, gave me a long look, and to my amazement broke into tears. I held her tightly, wondering what it was all about.
By the time we reached the house, her mood had changed, and she was a blank again. The packages began arriving and I hung the clothes away while she sat in a chair, playing with Slob, who didn't seem too happy to be within her powerful hands.
I undressed her, put on the blue rehearsal shorts, a white silk T-shirt that showed off her firm breasts, and ballet shoes. As she stood there dumbly, I walked around her and she looked so much like a dancer I was fit to burst with pride. I stripped and got into my sweat suit, said, “Come, darling, we'll dance,” and covered her face with kisses.
The kisses must have confused her, for she took my hand and led me to the bedroom. She looked so healthy and strangely beautiful that in my mind I was going to bed with a young ballerina, and we forgot about dancing.
After supper we listened to the radio, and at nine I told her I was going out for a while. She didn't react to this, one way or another, and I kissed her, told her not to wait up for me, and to turn the radio off when she went to bed. She mechanically stroked my head as I bent over to kiss her. I went upstairs and played stud poker wildly, staying every hand. I lost about fifty dollars to Joe, Henderson, and some loud-mouthed friends of Joe's. I returned to my place at two in the morning: the radio was on and Lee was sitting in the exact position I'd left her. We washed up and went to bed. In a sense it was a relief to have a girl who didn't talk or demand explanations.
On Sunday, after a leisurely breakfast, I dressed Lee in her new clothes, asked if she wanted to go to church. She said no, and we walked along 5th Avenue, and Lee looked like any of the other tall, smartly dressed women strolling along—showing off their clothes.
The new clothes made things work out smoothly. Every night I'd rush home, have Lee bathe and dress, and then we'd go out on the town. We went to the different restaurants about New York—the Jewish ones on the lower East Side, ate Italian food in little Italy, Spanish dishes in Lower Harlem, Swedish, East Indian, Russian, and French food. I bought her several evening gowns and long gloves—to cover the tattoo on her arm—and we made the rounds of the night clubs. Lee held her liquor well, even though I tried several times to get her drunk, and her dancing had improved to the point where I enjoyed dancing with her. Since money wasn't any object, we were a perfect couple: rarely talking, never arguing about price, and having a good time. At least I did.
The one odd experience was the time I took her to a German restaurant in Yorkville. She became very nervous as we entered, kept watching everybody in the place, and was so upset she refused to eat. Muttering something to herself in German, she rushed out of the place. I threw some money on the table, ran after her. Of course it was useless to ask her what was wrong, she sat in the cab in stony silence, ignoring me. Time and again I'd plead with her, tried to be tender and endearing, asked to be a part of her life, attempted to dig beneath her surface of absolute indifference to everything. I told her I loved her, begged her to talk, tell me about herself. All I ever got was either silence or her tiny odd smile as she said, “Lee is not bright.”
In my own way I tried playing detective. I took her to every foreign movie in town, and while she never talked, I knew she understood German, Italian, and French. For a time I thought she must have had more of an education than I imagined. Then one day I realized what a fool I'd been: Hank had taken her overseas with him, and of course that was where she had picked up the languages.
Aside from trying to get her real drunk, without success, I set all sorts of absurd traps for her: I put thread across the door, arranged my shoes around the bed—to see if she ever moved from her bed, or went out of the house while I was at the office. She never left the house and on most days never got out of bed it seemed—not even to go to the bathroom. Also, from Henderson's questions now and then, I knew he'd only seen her with me, for being such a busybody he would have rushed to tell me if she had any visitors.
She was an absolute slob, yet once I returned to find the place spotless, she had moved everything, cleaned, dusted, and waxed the floors. When I asked her why, she said, “Lee work.”
Another puzzling feature was the money. Every Tuesday I gave her a hundred dollars. (It had started out as fifty, but I doubled it once to see her face light up, and it had remained a hundred a week after that. I was extremely generous—with her money), but what she did with the money was a mystery. Once I gave her the money I never saw it again, although she never carried any money—even change—on her. The pocket-book she had taken from her 29th Street place was also hidden. Somewheres around the house she was hiding the money, like an animal storing up food.
September was a cool month and I found she loved heat. I kept the oil burner up, for she wanted the house warm enough to walk about in the nude. At night when I insisted on keeping the windows open, she piled blankets on the bed till it was uncomfortably warm, and I'd have to fold the blankets so they were only on her.
Living with Lee was dull, crazy, comfortable, and sometimes wildly ethereal. Sometimes I had a sense of esoteric power that bordered on the insane—it seemed to me Lee's sole purpose on earth was for my pleasure, a kind of sex machine I owned outright. I admit such thoughts frightened me—later—but they also gave me a queer sort of satisfaction.
On the first of September when Henderson paid his rent, I sent the money to Flo without a note. We hadn't seen each other since Southampton, and I suppose Flo was getting a bit frantic. The possibility of her coming to the house, using her key, slipped my mind—in fact I had hardly thought about her. One night as I was coming home from the office, thinking I'd take Lee to the Petitpas on 29th Street for a good French supper, Henderson called out from his window that I'd better come upstairs.
I thought Lee had either raised some kind of hell, or even blown her top, and I ran up the stairs, brushed past Henderson as he opened the door. Flo was sitting there, crying hysterically.
She had on a very colorful strapless summer dress that looked like an evening gown, and the contrast was something—for her nose was bloody and she had the damnedest black eyes I've ever seen. Both her eyes were actually swollen and turning blue and purple. Her lipstick was a red smudge against her pale face.
I didn't have to ask what had happened. I put my hand on her shoulder, said, “Flo—I'm sorry.”
“You!” she screamed, jumping to her feet. “You and your fine manners, the great gentleman—keeping a goddamn slut, a she-cat in
I backed away and she put a dainty handkerchief, now blood-stained, to her battered nose, yelled, “I'll divorce you! We're done—I'll never speak to you again. You... you... bastard!”
“Flo, we are divorced,” I said gently, knowing just what she meant. For some people a marriage certificate is merely a formality, a scrap of paper: they are married whether they have the paper or not. With us, our divorce paper was like that, a meaningless legal document. This was the first time Flo had ever seen me with another woman.
She fell into a chair, sobbing and cursing me. Henderson motioned for me to leave but I went over to Flo, put my arms around her—careful to stand behind her—pinning her to the chair. She struggled and screamed and I said, “Slow down, baby. Listen to me. Flo, we've had our ins and outs, if that's the correct phrase, or maybe it's a pun. But I think we've always loved each other, in our own odd way. Maybe we didn't know how to love enough, maybe we aren't capable of real love. What I'm trying to say is, I still love you. This girl downstairs... I'm mixed up with her... accidentally. It's a sort of mess, not that I couldn't have escaped it, but... Well, understand that.” I didn't know exactly what I wanted to say, and I certainly wasn't saying anything that made sense.
Flo's sobbing was quieter now, and as I let go of her she held her head in her hands. I bent over and kissed her neck. “I am sorry, Flo. And I still love you. This is, well,
I still wasn't making sense and Henderson kept motioning me to leave. I walked to the door, and the old man stepped out into the hallway with me, said, “Leave her alone. She'll get over it, time and all that. Quite a bad shock, and her nose may be broken. God knows what happened. I saw her go in—before I could call out to her—and then she came running out, all within a few seconds, her face bloody.
“Poor dear Flo,” I said, sincerely feeling sorry for her and at the same time realizing what a bastard I was, for I also had a tiny, smug feeling of elation. In all our petty battles, our small victories and defeats, I had at least finally scored
I went downstairs, unlocked my door. Lee was sitting in the big chair, nude as usual, and I could picture the nightmare Flo had walked into... seeing this naked giant who probably went at poor Flo without a word of warning.
Poor Flo, if her nose hadn't been hurt, I would have burst out laughing.
Lee had that small smile on her face instead of a blank look. I sat down beside her and she took my hand. I asked, “What happened?”
She didn't answer. I asked, “Tell me, did you have a fight?”
“Fight?” she repeated.
I knew it wasn't any use, and besides, she wasn't at fault. “Get dressed and we'll eat. Are you hungry?”
“Lee sure hungry as all stuff,” she drawled, grinning at me.
I witnessed three other demonstrations of Lee's fighting prowess. (The third time I was her opponent.) I don't know if she had a lot of man in her, or what, but she was a solid 180 pounds, packed a real punch.
One evening, about two weeks after she had kayoed Flo, we were walking in the park after supper. It was a warm night, and as we strolled along, I stopped to watch a squirrel scamper up a tree. Lee kept walking, was about 200 feet ahead of me, walking with long, strong, graceful steps.
A young fellow in a polo shirt was sitting on a bench and I suppose he thought she was walking by herself. He whistled at Lee, started to follow her. I ran up feeling quite alarmed—I never was much of a brawler, even though dancing has kept me in shape. The fellow came alongside Lee, made some joking remark. Lee suddenly turned and swung... actually swung her fist in an overhand punch. There wasn't anything feminine about the blow. It hit the young man flush on the face, staggered him. Before he could fall, Lee grabbed him and
Lee never said a word about it and I was too amazed to speak.
Harlem was the locale when Lee next swung into action.
Now and then I went up to the Apollo Theatre on 125th Street, where they still have vaudeville, and some of the best (and almost unknown) Negro dancers, especially tap dancers. One Friday night I took in the show and Lee was with me. With her drawl I was curious to see what her reaction would be to Negroes. She didn't show any reaction, being neither interested nor resentful at being with colored people—which was probably the only normal reaction she ever had. We ate in Frank's, a restaurant I like, near St. Nicholas Avenue and 125th Street, and then took in the show at the Apollo, which wasn't too good. The dance act consisted of three vigorous tap dancers who went through standard routines with a great deal of sweating and energy, and the band was much too loud and brassy. This was followed by a corny stage skit which would have been assailed (and rightfully so) as horribly chauvinistic if it had played in any downtown theatre. We left before the movie and I decided to walk across 125th Street to Madison Avenue, take the bus down.
It was about ten o'clock and the street was fairly deserted. Somewhere between Lenox and Fifth Avenues we passed one of the many bars that dot Harlem (and any other poor neighborhood) and a couple of colored men were hanging around in front of it. At the time I didn't notice them, but one of them—a slender, dark-skinned man in a worn sport jacket and slacks—stared at Lee as we passed. I didn't think anything of it, her height and size caused many men—and women—to glance at Lee. But this fellow broke away from the others, said to Lee, “Pardon but...” and then broke into some foreign language.
Lee kept walking but I stopped, and as she was holding my arm, she had to stop. She was staring at this man without showing any signs of recognition, and I was about to ask what he wanted, when he spoke again. He seemed to be friendly and I think he was speaking Italian. A strange look of intense anger flooded her big face and she yanked her arm out of mine and hit him across the face. The blow knocked him against the wall of a building and before he knew what was happening, Lee started punching and kicking him like a maniac.
For a split second his friends and I were taken by surprise, then we stared at each other for another split second—a suspicious look—only natural in a land where the colored man is a second-class citizen. I finally grabbed Lee, had trouble holding on to her arm. One of the Negro men grabbed her other arm and said, “Lee! Lee, stop it!”
The fellow was still against the wall, his face bleeding, looking bewildered and ready to pass out. The man holding her other arm said to me, “For God's sake, mister, get her out of here before the cops come and whip everybody's head!”
Lee had calmed down a little, had stopped struggling with me, but the way she stared at the beaten man gave me the shivers. I said, “Get me a cab while I hold her.”
Another man stopped a cab as a small crowd quickly gathered. Lee let me walk her to the cab and I told the driver to take us to 90th Street and Fifth Avenue. Lee sat back in the cab, refused to answer my questions except to say, “That bad man.”
“But who is he? What did he say?”
“All bad, bad,” she said fiercely, then shut up. At 90th Street I waited till the cab was out of sight, took another one down to the house. I don't know why I changed cabs; maybe I was conditioned by the movies I've seen.
Lee was upset. I wanted to dance when we got home but she refused, lay across the bed, paying no attention to me. Except for the strange language I would have thought it was her southern blood acting up, or maybe she'd seen the man in the South someplace. It was too big a puzzle for me.
She was still staring at the ceiling when I finished dancing, had my bath and dried off under the sun-lamp. I undressed her and when we went to bed, for the first time she didn't drop right off to sleep.
Fortunately the next day was Saturday and I didn't have to go to the office. About noon I left the house and took a cab to the bar on 125th Street. There were two bartenders, one of them white. I made a mistake: I went over to the white bar-keep, asked, “Where can I find the man who was involved in the fight with the lady last night?”
“Fight? Don't know what you're talking about, mac,” he said, obvious hostility in his voice. There was a small silence in the bar and I knew everybody knew what I was talking about.
“There was a scene outside here last night and...”
“I don't know nothing about what goes on outside,” he said. “125th Street is one of the busiest streets in...”
“Cut the chamber of commerce bunk,” I said, giving my voice a crisp executive edge, to see if he was impressed.
He looked me over for a moment, said softly, “I don't know what you're talking about, chief. We run a good place here, no fights, ain't looking for no trouble.”
One thing about real expensive clothes, their cost always stands out—in a quiet, conservative way. I knew he thought I was “class,” to use the trite word, he was impressed by the two-hundred-dollar suit, the thirty-dollar hat, and the Countess Mara tie I was wearing. He was running his eyes over my clothes. I said, “There isn't going to be any trouble. The man can help me, perhaps.”
He didn't say anything and the Saturday-afternoon drinkers were watching us with interest. The barkeep stood there, his face troubled. I snapped, “Look here, this man can do me a considerable favor, by merely talking to me. I'm rather anxious to find him. Of course if you won't help, I can go to some friends on the liquor board. That could be messy, possibly mean revoking your license or...”
“You just want to
“That's all. In fact, if it turns out he can help me, I'm willing to pay him for his time.”
The bartender called out to somebody at the other end of the bar, “Ed, go around 126th Street and find Ollie. Tell 'em I want to see him—now.” He turned to me as the man left the bar, said, “He'll be back in a couple minutes. Like a shot?”
I said no and lit a cigarette. He moved away to wait on a customer, then returned and put his big fat head next to mine, whispered, “You know how it is up here, got to be careful with
I didn't know how to answer him without getting angry, so I turned my back, glanced around the bar. It was fairly crowded and they were all watching me, without looking directly at me, of course. Although I'd been to Harlem many times, mostly to see the shows or night spots, this was the first time I felt like a
In about five minutes the man returned with Ollie, who was the fellow who had helped hold Lee last night. He came over to me, said in a surly voice, “What
I nodded toward a vacant table and we sat down. I asked, “Where can I find the man who was beaten up last night?”
“What you want with him? What you coming back to start a mess? Willie wasn't doing nothing and now...” He stopped, then muttered, “Ain't it enough he's beat up?”
“I'm sorry about the beating, and I'm not here to start anything. I want him to help me. He... eh... seemed to know the young lady. I'd like to find out what he knows about her.”
“You was with her, you ought to know about her.”
“Look, let's not argue about what I ought to know. I assure you I'm very sorry about the beating your friend Willie got last night. I don't know why it happened, but I'd like very much to find out. I won't cause him the slightest trouble. I only wish to speak to him.”
Ollie looked at me for a moment, then said, “Well... Okay, I'll take you to him. Maybe do some good. His wife is a little angry, you know, Willie coming home beat up and some big mouth telling her he was annoying a white chick. My God that gal sure hits.”
As we stood up, I said, “I'll make it worth your while, and Willie's.”
“You don't have to do that,” he said with a kind of weary dignity.
We walked down Lenox Avenue to 123rd Street, and west to a brownstone. Ollie rang the bell three times and soon a young, slender, coffee-colored girl opened the door, said, “It's you, huh.” She didn't think much of Ollie.
When she saw me her eyes became uneasy. Ollie said, “Come on, Daisy, let us in, this man wants to talk to Willie. He's the guy with the lady last night. He can tell you it wasn't nothing messy. How about that, mister?”
“That's right,” I said. “The young lady is a little... well... excitable at times, high strung. She turned on Mr.... Willie, for no apparent reason.”
“I'm Willie's wife,” the girl said, standing aside. When she moved she had a certain grace about her, and if she had the clothes, she would have been a very attractive kid.
I followed Willie inside the house. We went up two flights of stairs that were covered with a shabby green carpet, the girl following us. The inside of the rooming house seemed clean and neat, but it smelt of too much use, of too many people living there. As we turned into a room the girl said to me, “You'll have to excuse the way things look... with Willie sick I haven't been able to tidy up.”
The room was very small, with one window, and every bit of space being used. In a double bed that took up 90% of the room, Willie was lying, his face still bruised; and on the one chair, the narrow chest of drawers, and from a wire stretched across the room, clothes and towels were hanging. The room was smaller than my bathroom and I wondered how anybody could live in one room. (Of course I didn't know I was shortly to be living in rooms even worse than this one.)
Willie was astonished, and upset, on seeing me and as he sat up, he groaned, and his face filled with pain. Ollie said, “This man came over to the ginmill, said he wanted to see you, says you can help him. Says he ain't for making no trouble.”
“First he'd better explain to Daisy about...”
“He's already told me,” the girl said. “Although it don't make good sense, a woman beating up a man.” It made me sad to see she had bad teeth, when she spoke.
“She's an unusual woman,” I said. There wasn't any place to sit, so I stood. Willie, who was wearing torn underwear, pulled the sheets up to his chin, looked at me, wondering what I wanted. “About last night,” I went on. “I'd like to know what you said to the young lady that caused her to turn on you. I...”
“So you were speaking to this white chick!” Daisy said.
“Aw, take it easy, baby,” Willie told his wife. “I wasn't doing nothing out of the way.” He turned to me, “Look Mr....?”
“Lamont. Tony Lamont,” I said, giving him a phoney name for no reason.
“Look Mr. Lamont, I only asked if she was the girl we'd taken in over in Venice. That's all, and you saw what she did. She must be the same one, never mistake a girl so strong and tall as she is, built like a man—around the shoulders, that is. And no mistaking that face... I mean that nose that looks like it was just stuck on.”
I said, “I've been a friend of this young woman for some time. But she rarely speaks, acts rather strange. I thought if I could find out more about her, someone who knew her, why... I might be able to help her. Now assuming this is the same girl you think....”
“She got a tattoo on her left arm?” Willie asked.
I nodded eagerly—at last I was getting someplace.
Willie smiled. “Knew it was her.”
“Do you know her name?”
Willie shook his head. “No, we used to call her Liebchen, that's kraut for darling. See Mr. Lamont, back in '45 I was with an MP outfit in Italy. Bari, Foggia, Rome, Venice... I lived in all the big cities there. Lived fine. It was real great.”
He paused, looked around the shabby room for a moment as if I suddenly wondering why he had ever returned to Harlem.
“Well, when they captured Venice they made it a rest camp, sent us up there to guard some of the hotels. The Limeys were in charge of the town and as waitresses for the hotels, they brought down a load of gals who had been slave labor for the krauts in Austria and Yugoslavia. She was one of them. That's where I first saw her.”
“Yeah, that's what we called her, too, Lee—short for Liebchen,” Willie said.
“Lee was a slave laborer in Germany?” I said, beginning to understand a lot of things, too many to think about.
“Sure. She was about 17 then, and the krauts had taken her when she was a kid. All that hard work had made her big and strong, like a man. She's slimmer now, but then she had arms and legs as strong as any man's. She was like wild—wearing only an old torn dress, an old pair of army shoes on her big feet, and her hands were calloused. And Lord but she was hungry! We felt sorry for her, guess we gave her the first decent treatment she ever had. We got her some clothes, found a guy in Venice to tattoo an American flag over the number the krauts had put on her arm. We gave her plenty of candy, all the food she could eat, saw she didn't work too hard.” Willie glanced at Daisy. “I didn't fool around with her. Maybe some of the others tried, too, you see how she's built. Anyway, I don't know if any of the boys got anyplace with her, but nobody forced her. The krauts had also used her for that, too. She was with us about a month and seemed to be getting along fine, you know, laughing a lot... acting her age, like a kid.
“One day one of the white officers saw her hanging around our quarters and snapped his cap. He was a peck, you understand. A bunch of white soldiers came up for the rest camp deal, but the hotels were all full of other GIs, so AMGOT takes over a small house on the Lido—that's an island where all the swank hotels were—for these boys. They was all pecks too, whole outfit of crackers. They slept in the house and ate in one of the hotels. This officer sent Lee and another gal, an Italian babe, over to the house to make up the beds, clean up. Now all I'm telling you from here on is what I heard, I never saw any of it. But I know when Lee left us she was pretty well tamed down, talked about the 'kind Americans,' and how much she loved us. Called Americans the 'Liberators,' and all that. Well, we heard these crackers lined her up, for the whole three weeks they were up there... we heard they tied her to a bed. Maybe that's one of them tall stories you always heard in the army, but all I know is when we saw her again, she seemed even wilder than when she first came from krautland. That's all I know about her. I'm glad she made it to America, anyway.”
“You have no idea of her real name?”
“Nope. I never handled any records, or did the paper work. We just called her Honey, or Lee. Never could understand those southern boys—no call to treat any girl like that, and they could of had all the chippies they wanted for cigarettes and candy bars. No sense acting like that. They treated the Italian gal rough too, but she was skinny, not very good looking. She's the one that complained, raised a big stink. There was a white captain there, Conroy his name was. We heard he blew his top and wanted to raise all kinds of hell, court martial them pecks. But the whole thing was hushed up. They were combat men, they said, and anyway I guess AMGOT didn't want to start nothing that would get the Eyeties aroused. They said these pecks were suffering from combat fatigue, drunk, and all that. This Capt. Conroy even took Lee to Milan and Rome to press charges, but I never did hear what happened. Sure a bang to see her walking on 125th Street, and dressed sharp, too.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You've told me a great deal. If you've had any doctor bills, or lost a day's work to-day—as a result of what happened last night, I'd like to repay you.”
Willie looked at his wife quickly, at Ollie, then said without looking at me, “That's okay. I didn't go to a doctor, and I'm not working—so didn't lose no time.”
Daisy, his wife, looked unhappy, as though she wanted to say something, ask for money. But she didn't. There was a moment of awkward silence, then I took out my wallet, handed Willie three tens. “Take this for the... eh... damage she did.”
“Like I said, you don't have....”
“Take it. In a way it's her money,” I said. “And thank you.”
I went out, down the stairs to the street and Lenox Avenue, where I hailed a cab.
I felt so depressed I wanted to cry. Poor, poor Lee and her smattering of German, French, and Italian, her horrible tattoo covering up a concentration camp number; for how many years of her life had she been branded and worked like a beast? What could such inhuman treatment produce but a distorted, hurt mind? And poor Hank. I understand now—only too well—how he had got into all this, what he had meant when he said, 'What
Added to everything I had given her a sweet, refined rooking!
I'd make it up to her. Going through Hank's papers, army records, I would find her real name, her home. Perhaps she had a father or mother someplace in this shattered world, maybe sisters and brothers (or were they merely ashes, their skin a tortured lampshade, the chemicals and fat of their body now clumsy cakes of soap?) I'd have to investigate, try to return her to her family, if they were still alive.
I'd begin at once, cancel my poker date at Joe's that night. When I reached the house, Lee was still in bed, holding Slob with one big hand. He was meowing, trying to get loose. I noticed he never fought or scratched her. I sat on the edge of the bed, gently stroking her face, wondering how many men had sat on the edge of her beds, or had they thrown her on the rough ground, backed her against some wall-? Good God, if she'd been 17 back in 1945, she was still a kid of 21 or 22 now! I gently kissed her face, said, “Hello, darling.”
“Hello,” she said blankly, hugging me in her impersonal manner. She pulled me towards her and I pushed out of her arms: touching her suddenly became a monstrous, obscene thing.
I ran my hand through her soft long hair, over her odd nose. (Had a rifle-butt broken that?) “If I'd only known. I want to make you happy. I never really meant to hurt you, and now I want to make up for everything.”
Lee said, “Hello, George,” and giggled.
The word had a, (black) magic effect on her, she sat up quickly, staring past me as if she was alone. Then she burst into the most nerve-racking crying I've ever heard. Hoarse sobs that shook her great body. I was so upset I began bawling myself and when I went to hug her, she pushed me away with such force I was sent sprawling on the floor. For a moment she watched me with unseeing eyes, her face wet with tears. Then she giggled, asked, “George, we eat?”
I realized the comic figure I must have presented, smiled, and got up. “Yes, we'll eat in a moment.” I went to the phone and dialed Joe, told him I couldn't make the game that night.
“You're a blip. And Walt is going to play with us, too. That doll keeping you
“For Christsakes, shut up!” I slammed the receiver into its cradle. A few seconds later Joe called back, asked in a hurt, kid's voice, “What did you do that for, Georgie? I didn't mean nothing.”
“I... eh... didn't sleep much last night, my nerves are on edge. Take it easy to-night and don't try to draw to straights and flushes,” I said, hanging up again.
I didn't want to eat out, I wanted to talk to her and I was afraid she'd make a scene in a restaurant. I told her I was going to get some food, took a cab up to 86th Street and 3rd Avenue, where I bought a cheap pocket German-English dictionary, some groceries, then cabbed back to the house. While I cooked supper I had her sit in the kitchen—I gave her Slob to play with; and as she stroked the big tomcat head, I said, “Look Lee, I know a little of what you've gone through. And I want to help you. Maybe we can find your family, locate your relations. Do you remember where you were born?”
She was watching Slob and I had to ask her again. “I am not bright, I do not remember such things.” She had her drawl back now.”
“You must. Where were you born? Think hard—Berlin? Frankfurt? Vienna? Hamburg? Warsaw?” The names had little effect on her, except her eyes seemed to become more alert. I tried a few more, for size. “Rome? Venice? Munich? Prague?” Nothing changed on her face.
I put the chopped meat in the oven to broil, after I had soaked it in wine, took out my dictionary. “Lee, you must help me. Do you understand what I am saying? What is your name, your whole name?”
“Lee is my name.”
“No, that's short for Liebchen. What is your last name?” When she didn't answer, I thumbed through the dictionary, said slowly, hoping I was pronouncing the words correctly, “Wie heissen Sie?”
She shook her head dumbly, let Slob jump out of her lap.
The silly dictionary had all sorts of stupid phrases like, “Shall we take a taxi?” “What are they playing at the Opera House?” but nothing as simple as, “What is your mother's name?” I stumbled on with, “Welch... euer... famile... nennen?” This was supposed to be, “What is your family name?” but if she didn't understand my German I couldn't blame her.
She stared at me, her eyes hard and troubled, then they flooded with tears. I went over and hugged her. “Lee baby, I'm not trying to hurt you. I know it's hard to recall these things, but you must tell me. Where were you born? What's your father's name? Wo... euch... geboren? Welch... euer... Vater... nennen?”
She had her face pressed against my chest as I leafed through the dictionary, and now she began to cry. It was sort of a horrible moaning, as though she was under physical torture. It was such a dreadful sound, she scared me stupid and I realized what tortures I must be subjecting the poor kid to.
I threw the dictionary on the table, pulled her to her feet. Holding her tight, kissing her, whispered I would always look after her, she would never have to worry. I got a chill when it suddenly struck me that poor Hank must have whispered the exact same words to her at some time or other. When she stopped bawling, I said, “Lee, you must understand I only want to help you. Nobody will ever harm you again. But you have to help me...”
Once or twice she surprised me by showing signs of shrewdness: now she quickly smiled, wiped the tears from her face on my shoulder, “George, I want to dance... very much dance... right now, please.”
It was a neat way of changing the subject. “Well the meat is on and...”
“We will make it... it wait.” She reached over and turned off the gas in the oven, under the pots. I didn't know she knew how to work a gas-range and I watched her like a proud poppa seeing junior show off.
She ran into the bedroom and I followed her, as Slob yelled indignantly for his supper. Lee was getting into her rehearsal trunks. I undressed, put on my sweat suit and shoes. She was waiting for-me downstairs, and I put on a stack of records, starting off with the only “German” music I had, Wagner's
Maybe it was the music, or the German words I'd been asking her, my pecking (or trying to) at her mind... for she suddenly danced a wild solo, moving with magnificent, savage, heavy steps that expressed all the drudgery, the torture and fright, she had experienced. I'd never seen any dancing like it and I tried to write down the steps and movements, but it was too much for me. A skilled choreographer was needed. I suppose I couldn't fully understand what she was trying to express. The other records were jazz pieces, and she went back to her usual awkward movements, as I danced around her, in an effort to make her fed she wasn't alone.
We danced through one set of records, then took a shower, and she still refused to lie tinder the sun-lamp with me, and I wondered what electric and heat tortures she had been subjected to. She put on a robe and we ate, and then she lit a cigarette, went into the living room, stretched out on the couch, patting her stomach with contentment. I realized the animal they-... we... the world... had made out of this child; all she understood was a full gut, a soft place to rest on, and a roof overhead.
I didn't ask her to help with the dishes and when I finished, she was still on the couch—some ashes had fallen between her breasts and she had thoughtlessly crushed the cigarette butt out on the carpet. She had a faint, blank smile on her face, a faraway look in her eyes. It was only a little after seven. I told her I'd be back soon and I don't think she even heard me.
I stood outside the house a moment to light my pipe and Henderson called down to ask when I was going over to Joe's: he'd share a cab with me. I told him I couldn't make it, was about to ask if he spoke German, but didn't. It wasn't that I was afraid of his finding out about the money; but rather I didn't want him—or anybody else—to know I was living with this backward child.—
I walked to Lexington Avenue, went into a drugstore and ordered a quart of ice cream—to please her. While the soda clerk (who am I to call
“Why George Jackson! Why haven't you called me? The gay, phony coyness in her voice threw me for a moment. After the usual insane, small talk, I asked, “Marion, when Hank came back with his wife, did he have any papers with him? I mean, do you know his wife's maiden name?” I damn near said, “Lee's maiden name.”
There was the flustered pause, then the suspicious, “Why do you ask?”
“Well,” I began, trying to carefully choose my words,” a friend of mine told me he struck up a bar acquaintance with... eh... some refugee girl. She said her husband was an American officer and he had died here, in an accident, and... I wondered if she might be Hank's wife?”
“I haven't heard from her since that... that... awful day. And believe me, I'm just as happy. That evil bitch! When I think of my poor dear brother and...”
“Marion, you once said you wanted me to find out... eh... more about what happened to Hank. Don't you see, if this fellow—one of the men in the office—can gain the confidence of this girl, assuming she's Hank's wife, then we might get someplace,” I said, wondering how high she would go if I told her the truth, that I was living with Lee. The phone would probably explode in my ear.
“I suppose it might do some good, although I've almost forgotten about her. I'm happy you want to help, George. Her name was Lee.”
“That's not enough, I must know her full name, also what town in Germany she came from. We can't make any mistakes about this, waste time on the wrong girl. Didn't Hank leave any private papers, like a marriage certificate? Or did the girl have any official papers when she came over?”
“I suppose Hank had some papers, but I never saw them. God knows what she has done with them,” Marion said.
“Do you have any papers?”
“No.”
“Do you know her full name?”
“Let me think... Lee Unbekant... I believe. Of course Hank...” She began to sob. “My poor brother, when I think of all that unhappy boy went through. Such a fine upstanding...”
“Marion, this is important: how do you spell the last name?”
“U-n-b-e-k-a-n-t,” Marion said, her voice still trembling. “I remember because I planned a reception—before I saw her at the plane. I was going to have invitations printed, so I remember how the name was spelt. You know, she
“How about her home town?”
“Hamburg, I think. Or, might be Augsburg, or Nurnberg... some sort of burg.”
“Do you know if she has—or had—any relations?” I asked.
“No. I had some sort of paper when I went to meet her. I destroyed that because when I saw her... George you simply have no idea what that bitch put me through. I tried my best to....”
I finally hung up, two nickels later, with some small information to go on. Then I got a real inspiration—I didn't have a picture of Lee, surely that would be the best identification of all to go on. We used several top-flight photographers on the
“No, I still can't make it. Look, I want to take some pictures. Have you still got that camera Walt brought back from Germany?”
“You bet. Damn thing is so complicated you have to be an engineer to take pictures with it. You can take them indoors, it's so sensitive.”
“That's what I thought. Do me a favor and bring it down to the office Monday. I'd like to borrow it for a night. Ask Walt to set the darn thing for indoor pictures, and tell you how to work it, so you can explain it to me in basic English.”
“That kid knows everything about cameras. Boy is real smart, like his mother. I ever tell you when I was courting Mady she was working in a dry cleaning place? When we stepped out she'd wear some of the ritzy gowns the rich dolls had sent in to be cleaned. Great idea because if she got any spots on 'em, why the next day she could have it cleaned and... Georgie! You old son of a gun!”
“What's the matter?”
“You got that doll you're keeping to pose for pictures in your place—you know....”
The childish excitement in his voice was ridiculous. “You goon, I want to take pictures of Slob.”
“Oh. Well I'll bring the camera down Monday. Sure you can't make it to-night?”
“Positive. I'm unwell to-night, dearie,” I said, hanging up, knowing that corn would panic Joe. I walked back to the house with the ice cream, and I was full of a righteous goodness, which felt almost as fine as the self-cleverness I had felt once about keeping Lee with her own money. Now, I told myself (with a straight face, too, I was actually trying to help the poor girl.
I came in on quite a scene. Lee had Slob sitting on her stomach, holding him gently with one big hand. His tail was moving uneasily, and they seemed to be staring each other down. When I came in, the cat glanced at me over her nipples. I dished out the ice cream and Lee clapped her hands like a kid and I felt so damn good I wanted to cry. I left some ice cream in the box for Slob, and we all ate happily.
The pare feeling lasted nearly two weeks and paid off—I picked a winning horse every day, placing my two bucks on such hunches as Angel-On-Hoofs, Winsome, Pure Gal, and the like.
Chapter 5
I DID TRY TO help Lee, find out if she had any family, only all my efforts ran into a series of stone walls. On Monday I asked Jake Webster, the company dick, who was also a big military and National Guard character, if he knew anybody “high up” in the army. Years before, when I had been a minor “planter,” I knew people who had an “army in”—sometimes the soldiers or the navy could be used for a publicity stunt; but by now I had lost most of my connections. After a lot of gassing Jake gave me the name of a captain—“a boon buddy of mine”—who worked down at Church Street, and who was in charge of personnel for the local military district, or so Jake said.
I dropped down to see him. As I suspected, he didn't remember Jake at all, but he was quite cordial And he was just what I was looking for. I told him about Hank dying and that I wanted to get, or see, a copy of whatever papers Hank had used to bring Lee over. The captain was a middle-aged man with an affected, clipped manner of speaking. He said, “It will be a lot of red tape but I imagine I may be able to secure the records, especially if the widow, Mrs. Conroy, needed them. Are you acting for her?”
“Well, not exactly,” I said. I couldn't tell him the truth: he would call Lee to the office, and once he saw and talked with her... “You see, as I explained, she's alone in the country, and I'm trying to help her find whatever relatives she may still have in Germany. Therefore I need to know her home town and...”
He stared at me suspiciously and I knew I had talked too much. “Surely the girl knows her own home town?”
“Of course,” I said quickly, “but she thought that... well, there might be something more in the records, for instance, information the army might have picked up from official Nazi records. Might possibly state that her father and mother were known to be dead, etc.”
“Major Conroy would have told her those facts,” the captain said.
“From what she says, he didn't,” I said, clipping my words as sharply as he did. “Another thing, her knowledge of English is rather slight, and she's a bit hazy on official papers. After all, she spent a number of years in a concentration camp.”
The captain drummed on the table with his polished nails for a moment. “All this is most irregular, and I don't know what help I can be. But if Mrs. Conroy will come here, speak to the general and secure his permission, I'll see what can be worked.”
“You're very kind, and thank you for your trouble,” I said, standing up. “At the moment Mrs. Conroy is visiting friends in California, but will probably return within a few months. I'll ask her to come down then.”
“Fine,” the captain said, shaking hands with me.
I went out and had a quick drink. I was far from being a clever liar, and my better sense told me to stop this before I became involved. If anybody ever talked to Lee, how could I explain why I was living with this backward kid?
I made one more attempt. With Lee's picture I went to one of the refugee agencies, told a tired-looking, efficient young woman, “I'd like to locate the relations, if any, of this girl, Lee Unbekant, said to be born in Hamburg. I have reason to believe she isn't Jewish, and that's all I know, except she spent some time in a concentration camp, as a slave laborer, was branded with a number. I don't know the number or the name of the camp.”
The woman lit a cigarette, added a butt to an ash tray filled with cigarettes she had chain-smoked, looked at the picture. “An interesting face, odd nose. Why do you want to find this girl, her parents?”
“For sentimental reasons. A... eh... brother of mine, a soldier, knew them in Venice. That is, he knew the girl. Later he was killed. He seemed to like them very much, that is the girl. I'd like to find them, help them, perhaps visit them.” I had thought this lie out carefully.
“My dear sir, we have a long list of people who are waiting for our help to locate their sons, husbands, daughters, parents, wives, and hardly for sentimental reasons. I'll place your case on the bottom of the list, but we go by the need involved in each case, so I can give you little hope. We're overworked and understaffed, you understand.”
“Then can you tell me how I'd go about finding out this information?”
“It's worse than hunting for the proverbial needle in the haystack. We play a great jigsaw puzzle game here every day, with human lives, and happiness as the missing piece,” the young lady said, enjoying her own dramatics. “You have very little information to go on, besides the picture. Hamburg was badly bombed, there are very few records to be found there now. You say her last name is Unbekant. Are you sure it isn't
“It might be the soldier—my brother—misspelled the name in his letters.”
She smiled. “My dear man, in that case the girl may have been... how shall I say... stringing the soldier along. Look at the picture, this girl is well fed, she was a long time removed from any DP camp, if she ever was in one, when this photo was taken. Also, Unbekannt means
I had a sinking feeling she was right, I was getting no place: Unbekannt might have been the first German word that came to Hank's mind, and if it meant unknown...? I said, “How would you suggest I go about finding out the information, then?”
“Bravo, you don't give up easily,” she said.
“What?”
“Have you any money?” Her eyes swept over my clothes.
“A little. How much would you want?”
She grinned, showing nice teeth. “My dear sir, I do not want any money. If you can spend about a thousand dollars, I'd suggest you have copies of the picture made, place an ad in various German papers—abroad and here—offer a reward of about one hundred dollars. I'll warn you in advance, it will be difficult to do that from this end, I mean it will be better if you have somebody you can trust place the ads in Germany, the money exchange and the general unsettled conditions, you understand. And once the ads are placed you will receive many false answers, some from outright charlatans. It will require much correspondence and patience on your part, possibly even a trip to Germany. And after all that trouble, you may never find the people, or you could be very lucky and find the girl after the first ad. Also, you can never tell in what part of the world you'll find her.”
“Ill think it over. Where can I find a list of the various papers?” I asked.
“Advertising agencies in Yorkville will be glad to handle it for you, only pick one you can trust. I'd, use one that has started since the war. And demand to see copies of all the ads.”
I said thank you and as I was leaving she called after me, with a wise smile, “You soldiers are all alike. If you liked the girl that much, why didn't you bring her back with you instead of waiting all these years?”
“That's right,” I said, although it took me several minutes to figure out what she meant. Outside, I looked at myself in a store-window mirror, pleased she thought me young enough to have been a soldier.
You see I tried—maybe not as hard as I should have, but I tried to help Lee. My relations with her had changed—on my part. I no longer felt at all clever in having her around, although I told myself I hadn't done anything to hurt her. And of course in bed I could hardly touch her: I could picture all the soldiers, Nazi and American, who had made her so mechanically capable—and sexless.
Lee didn't change. She ate when I told her to, danced now and then, and sat around with that blank look on her face. It was the beginning of October and a little cool, so at least she didn't sit around in the nude much. I still dressed her smartly, took her out to dinner, to the night clubs and movies, and of course I still gave her the hundred every week, which she hid.
Now and then I went back to questioning her about her family, which usually ended up in my not getting any new information and Lee becoming hysterical. Mostly we walked and ate in silence. I had plenty of time to myself, did a lot of reading, and started dunking about doing some writing. I fooled around with the alcohol-has-turned-to-water idea, without getting anywhere. But I did a short story about a dancer who loses his legs in the war and his effort to get back to normal by learning to dance on his artificial legs. To my surprise I sold the yarn for a hundred bucks. I looked around for another subject to write about... and saw Lee. I started her story and it came slowly, but it came along.
For some strange reason, I wanted to see Flo. I suppose I wanted to tell somebody—anybody—about the mess I was in. (Not that I would have ever told Flo.) I tried calling her once or twice, but she hung up on me. When I sent her Henderson's October rent, I sent an orchid with the check, but I didn't hear from her.
However, I heard quite suddenly from her brother—Eddie. He called me one afternoon at the office, asked, “George, I need a hell of a favor. Can you bring me thirty dollars?”
“Sure. I'll send you a check....”
“I need it now, immediately. I'm in a doctor's office. I've been... stabbed,” he whispered quickly. He gave me the name of the doctor, and a Madison Avenue address. I cashed a check, took a cab up there.
The address turned out to be East Harlem, the doctor an elderly Porto Rican. Eddie was stripped to the waist, and the doctor was helping him dress. The kid's shirt was bloody. One shoulder was covered with neat bandages and there was white tape over one side of his jaw. Eddie looked very pale.
I paid the doctor who assured me Eddie was okay, the cuts had been cleanly stitched. He said that after a few days rest, Eddie would be as “good as new.”
We took a cab from his office and when I asked Eddie what had happened, he nodded toward the driver and didn't say a word. We changed cabs and it suddenly dawned on me Eddie had given the driver my address. I said, “We can't go there. I have a girl there. How about your place?”
“Sure,” he said, and gave the driver his address.
He lived in a tiny room on the West Side, with a chest of drawers, a narrow bed, and one chair. There was a pile of books in one corner and a tiny radio perched on top of them. I propped him up in bed, said, “Soon as you rest, I'll take you to another doctor, be on the safe....”
“Why? Because this doc's skin is dark? No, I'm all right, just a little weak. And another doctor might report knife wounds to the police. I don't know what the law is on that. This one understands.”
“Understands what? What the devil happened?”
“What happened is that we're making our country an impossible place to live in. This atmosphere of suspicion and fear... we're all casualties of the cold war.”
“Eddie, without speeches, what happened to you?”
He stared at me, said softly, “That's a new way of dismissing things—everything is a speech. George, are you really cynical, or merely ignorant—if you'll excuse the word? I'll tell you what happened: I was wounded once fighting fascism in Europe, now I've been wounded fighting fascism again, here, right in New York.”
“Kid, stop soap-boxing me. We don't have fascism in New York, or in America. You've been reading the
“George, were you as naive as this before you started working for the oil company?”
“I suppose so. Let's both stop this. What happened to you?”
Eddie said, “I was canvassing for the ALP congressman up there, and some paid hoodlum stabbed me. Simple as that—the pattern of violence is always the simple one.”
“Look, Eddie, I never considered myself overbright, but neither am I an outright moron. What in God's name were you doing canvassing over in East Harlem? If you needed the money...”
“George, nobody was paying me. I knew that the candidate was one of the few men in Congress aware of the menace of fascism. That's why the papers have been attacking him so vehemently. For the last few weeks I've been working over there, as a volunteer, along with hundreds of other people from offices and unions.”
“But why get mixed up...?” I began.
“I've told you why over and over—I never want to see another concentration camp again. George, you sound as though I was doing something shady. Know what I was doing? Merely visiting voters, urging them to be sure to register, so they would be able to vote next month. Why even the Democrats and Republicans want a large registration. I was in a house on 107th Street when this fellow came up and attacked me, stabbed me twice before I knew what hit me.”
“By God, we'll get the police after the bastard!”
Eddie smiled at me. “Good old George, sometimes you act as simple as a country girl hitting Broadway. The police are probably looking for
“You? Why?”
“I think I killed him,” Eddie said calmly. “If not dead, he's badly hurt, and there will be a trumped-up assault charge against me—if they find me. You can picture the headline holiday, stuff about, 'Red Vote-Getter Assaults Porto Rican...' And what can I tell them; that I'm only a poor slob looking for peace and decency in the world? They'd laugh in my face! Peace is a dirty word, a crazy word, these days.”
“Wait, stop all this jabbering and tell me what happened,
Eddie lit a cigarette, offered me one, as he said, “I knew he was following me, I'd seen him when canvassing another house, but didn't think anything about it. And I'd heard rumors that the old political machine, the tough ward-heelers, were supposed to have thugs out after us, but I really didn't believe that. Well, this tenement was a small one, about four stores, with one family to a floor. It was the middle of the afternoon, and all the doors I'd knocked on remained closed, the people were probably out working. He came up the stairs, passed me, as though going up the next floor, then turned and had his knife out—all in one movement. I saw the flash of the blade and turned sideways—that's why I got it in the shoulder instead of the back. We grappled and he cut my jaw and I kneed him, then slammed him against the wall; face forward, threw him down the stairs, ran down past him and out.”
“How do you know he's dead?”
“I don't, but I know he's badly hurt—real badly. George, when you've been in a lot of combat, seen many men laying around, you get a kind of special sight—you can look at a man and know he's dead or ready to die. I had that feeling about him.”
“Still, you're not certain, maybe he got up and walked away.”
“He never walked away, George.”
I asked, “Anybody see you leave?”
“I don't know. I held a handkerchief over the cut on my jaw, and the blood didn't come through my coat from the shoulder cut. I walked over to Lexington Avenue and there was a bus at the corner. I rode that a few blocks. I was getting weak and dizzy. I got off and called the cops from a candy-store phone booth, told them where the guy was. I was afraid he would die for sure if he laid there till the tenants came home—maybe hours later. Then I went to the doctor.”
“This doc, who is he?” I asked, feeling sorry for the kid. Nothing seemed to go right for him, and I couldn't even understand what was troubling him.
“I took a chance. I'd canvassed him a few days before. We had quite a long talk—seemed like a right-thinking guy. I simply told him I had been in a fight and I think he understood. He didn't ask questions, just sewed me up. Then I told him I was going to call my brother and called you. It was stupid involving you, but I had to have money to pay him. He told me I could return later, but I can't return. Anyway, he didn't see me dial and there's little chance of the number ever being traced to Sky Oil. Maybe I made a big mistake, maybe I should have gone back to election headquarters. I don't know, I didn't want to involve them. George, I have to get out of town.”
“Take it easy, kid. Way I see it, even if they find you, you have a perfect case of self-defense. I'd go to the cops and...”
“Talk sense,” Eddie said, his voice suddenly hard. “Justice has nothing to do with this. I'd be smeared and convicted by the papers before the case ever started. I'd be railroaded. That's what the papers and the ward-heelers want—a smoke-screen of scare headlines from now till election day. No, I have to run. I want to run; to be jailed for this would drive me nuts.”
“You talk some sense. Running is a sure sign of guilt. If what you say is true, wouldn't a chase be up their alley? The big hunt?” I asked, thinking how Eddie had messed up his life. A smart kid, with his pension money and a chance to finish college under the G.I. Bill, live a normal, easy life, yet here he was, possibly involved in murder.
“No, George, the whole thing boils down to this: the headlines and all that, can't be written unless they find me. I don't think anybody saw us, unless they find me, they can't prove it wasn't merely another fight. I believe they're counting on me to make charges, through the ALP, and then when they know who I am, that I was there,
“A little, although I can't understand why you persist in ruining your life with this fanatical...”
Eddie said wearily, “George, don't start that.”
“I won't. Now what happens?”
“I think it's best I leave town. Happily, I didn't give my real name when I signed up as a volunteer worker. Sign of the fear of our time—we're afraid to give our right name for anything political. Sounds fantastic, but never tell when they'll have one of their so-called 'loyalty checks' for wounded vets and...”
“That's ridiculous,” I cut in. “Good Lord, there's nothing wrong about electioneering.”
Eddie smiled at me and lit another cigarette. “Let's not argue the point. If they want to press the frame-up they'll have to find the goat—me. I've been seen around the neighborhood for the last few weeks, but I'm certainly not well known. However, to be on the safe side I'd like to leave town. I was thinking of southern California—the cold weather bothers my wound a little. I could have my pension sent there, live on that. Might take a little time, the delay, but perhaps Flo would lend me enough to get by on till then.” He paused, added in a whisper, “Know what I'd like to do? Go to Italy.”
“Why Italy?”
“America, my homeland, frightens me, makes me restless... I can't seem to settle down here.”
“And you could in Italy, of all places?” I asked.
Eddie looked at me, his thin face thoughtful. “George, I'm going to tell you a secret, something that sounds wonderful and horrible at the same time. There's a little village below Naples, a smelly, backward, little place. When my outfit was there, back on a lonely country farm there was a... young girl... and... Oh, hell, I went with her for a couple bars of candy. I know you can't understand how I could do that, or the hunger that made her do it. Anyway, it started on that basis. She was young, about fifteen, probably can't even read or write. I spent several nights with her, and it turned into something beautiful, very pure—for both of us. I guess in the years since, it has been magnified in my mind. I'm not sure. But I look back on that as the only serenity, true happiness, I've ever known.”
“Forget it, you're chasing a dream,” I said, thinking of Lee, wondering with a great deal of envy about the experiences men like Eddie and Hank had gone through that tied them with Europe, with the women... even the backward ones.
“I can't forget her,” Eddie said. “I even send her food and CARE packages now and then. Of course she promised to wait for me and all that, but...”
“She's probably whoring now.”
“So what!” he said fiercely. “If she is, I'm responsible for that. She's still young, that can be changed too. But I don't think she is, not out on that lonely farm. No, but she may be married. You know it was only after Germany, since I've been home, that I realized how much I care for her, what those nights meant. Life moves slowly there, like stepping backward into time. But Italy is on the move, I could be a part of that too, help.”
“That farm life would bore hell out of you.”
“Would it? George, what's happening to us here. Nobody can live without rooking the next person. Take this Porto Rican, a poor man—you've never seen the slums of Spanish Harlem—but think what we've done to this man. His ancestors lived in a tropical island paradise, but to make a fast buck, we made that a hell-hole, a slum so bad they flee to the slums of Harlem. And this man, he's become so perverted that for a miserable few bucks he's ready to kill, sell out something that would help his people—all people. Sell out such basic things as decent houses and wages, schools for his kids. The fast buck perverts us all, makes us animals stepping on each other's back, as if we lived in a jungle.”
“It's not that bad, kid. Don't forget, most of us lead rather decent, normal lives,” I said, trying to think: it was so important Eddie find himself—but quickly.
He shook his head. “No, it's only that some of the perversion is smoothed over with a veneer of high living. We merely shut our eyes. Those concentration camps I saw—certainly the height of human perversion—yet there were many Germans living what you call the 'decent' life of good living, of comfortable apartments, books, and shows. I can't say this as clearly as I feel it, George, put it in the right words.”
“Eddie, you've been through a lot and...”
“And I'm still not 'readjusted' to civilian life?” he asked harshly. “Crap!”
“Listen to me, Eddie. You said before I was naive. Suppose it turns out you're the naive one? Wait—I understand a little of what you're trying to say. I don't agree with it all, but then I haven't been through the things you have. But I agree you ought to leave here, perhaps after thinking things over, you'll settle down, see things differently. After all, nothing is perfect. The point is, can you live in Italy, receive your pension there?”
“Yes. I could live very well on the money. But the expense of getting there, waiting till my checks come through, that makes it out of the question.”
“Suppose you find this girl has changed or married? I mean could you stand the shock, the disillusionment, if there should be any?” I asked.
“Let's not talk fairy tales,” Eddie said. “I'd need about six hundred dollars. Flo, or my folks, wouldn't lend me that in a million years.”
“How long would it take you to leave?”
“Passport should take a few weeks. But why talk about it? Why if I could have done it, I would have gone back a long....”
As I've said, I really liked Eddie and now I couldn't help but make the grand gesture. While he talked I wrote a check for one thousand dollars. True, I was giving away Lee's money, but in some way I didn't try to figure out, it was all the same thing. Eddie, Lee, even the money for that matter, were in a sense all the result of the war.
He stared at the check, looked up at me with astonishment—all of which I enjoyed to the hilt. “George... this...?”
“Call it a loan and don't worry about ever paying me back,” I said.
“But a thousand....”
I stood up. “You want to get out of town, you want to see this girl, well, do it in style and that check is your magic carpet. Rest up and tomorrow start working on your passport and passage. Trip will do you good, even if you come back within a few months. And if your shoulder bothers you, see a doctor tomorrow, and no excuses.”
He went through the routine of thanking me from the bottom of his heart and all that.
Seventeen days later on a cold windy afternoon, Eddie sailed—with only Flo and myself to see him off. I'd watched the papers carefully but didn't see any report of a murder on East 107th Street. But at the boat, as Flo was making a point of ignoring me and Eddie was trying to smooth things over, he whispered in my ear, “I heard the fellow died.”
“How did you hear?”
“Never mind how, it wasn't directly. Could be gossip, grossly distorted, but that's what I heard.”
“Well, don't let it upset you,” I said, quite upset myself.
“I won't. I wasn't upset when I killed Nazi soldiers, either,” Eddie whispered.
Flo, who was sitting on his bunk in a stunning outfit and drinking the champagne I'd brought for the occasion, said, “Stop whispering like a couple of ham movie characters. What are you two, conspirators?”
“Yes!” I said, although she couldn't know how clever I thought my answer was.
When the ship sailed I said I'd take Flo home in a cab and she said she'd get her own. I stepped into her cab before she could push out. There had been some sort of farewell party at her folks' house, but Eddie had insisted that only Flo go down to the boat with him. I don't know if he did this in an effort to get us together, or it was all an accident. His family didn't like the idea of Eddie going off to Italy.
Now I looked at Flo sitting as far from me as possible on the wide cab seat. She looked very clean, cool, sleek, and yes—chic. Or maybe it was all in contrast to Lee's sloppy languor. For several minutes we didn't talk, then she asked, “Is Eddie in any trouble? I don't believe that corny story he was hurt falling down a flight of steps.”
“Not that I know of,” I lied. “This fling will be good for him. Living abroad for a while will help him settle down, which is also pretty corny. But leave the kid straighten himself out.”
“But this sudden rush to Italy. I don't know where he got the money from,” Flo said.
“Probably saved it, you know how simply he lives. Besides, over there his pension will go farther.”
There was another pause, then looking out of the window she asked, “Is that... that creature still living with you?”
“Yes.”
“You goddamned bastard!” Flo said and began to cry. I moved over and took her in my arms. There was a small struggle. I kissed her and she kissed me back with such vigor my lips hurt. We hadn't kissed like that since before we were married. She kissed me again and again, her thin body trembling. She began talking in my ear, rapidly, almost hysterically. “George! Oh, George, I need you! I want you. I've been so miserable... nervous. Why did you do this to me? Why! Oh George, hold me tighter... I'm so ashamed... for the first time in my life I feel brazen... like a slut. Oh, you don't know what I've been through. I tried going out with other men but... somehow... I don't know... I just couldn't bring myself to... George, you're the only man I ever had. I suppose we've both been to blame, I know I haven't been as understanding... I even went to a doctor, I couldn't sleep. He was so frank, told me point blank I needed a man... George!”
I kissed her, held her tightly, tried to tell her it was all one of these things, that I really wasn't happy with Lee, and stuff like that. Of course I couldn't tell her too much about Lee.
“Why don't you get rid of her?” Flo asked.
“I wish I could.”
Flo pulled out of my embrace. She had stopped crying by the time the cab reached her place. Outside the cab, I said I'd see her to her door and said that wasn't necessary, and outside her door I asked her to ask me in. She said no, started to cry again, and I whispered, “Don't make a scene in the hallway.” I took her keys and unlocked the door and once inside I held her in my arms and she kept sobbing, “I'm so ashamed... ashamed...”
“Of what?” I asked, running my hands over her body as if we were a couple of kids. I wanted her as I hadn't wanted her in years.
I fooled with her dress and she whispered, “The zipper is on the other side.”
We lay in bed and she jabbered as in the old days, telling me all the petty things that had happened in her office, the gossip of her friends... and it was good to be with a girl who could jabber, make small talk, who was alive and full of nerves and tension.
As I was leaving, Flo was her old caustic self, and she said, “You know this was all an accident, doesn't change anything between us. I still hate you. Now run home to that overgrown bag.”
“Darling,” I told her, “we have our little heights, but the rest of our life seems to run on a low level. If we made a graph of...”
“Stop it. She can't be giving you any paradise, I never saw you so...”
“Sweetheart, I never denied loving you... in my own way, to be trite,” I said. “In fact we both love each other madly—in our own little ways. I enjoyed this afternoon... and I think you did too.”
We were standing by the door and she drew her robe around her tighter, said, “I feel like a... whore.”
“You're a lovely whore.”
“Don't get any ideas—this doesn't mean you can come here anytime you like and...”
I pinched her cheek, opened her robe and fondled her breast, said, “I know dear,” and as I unlocked the door, added, “I'll only come when the good doctor prescribes me.”
I walked out in fine spirits—the battling Jacksons sparring again. But as I took a cab uptown I felt very tired, tired of people. I longed for the pleasures of living alone, not worrying about anybody's troubles but my own. I wanted to go when and where I felt like, do whatever I was in the mood for. I wanted to read my
By the time I reached my place I was very sorry for poor Lee, and even more sorry for poor me.
Chapter 6
THE DESIRE to get rid of Lee grew on me. It wasn't anything she did, she was still around the house like a stick of furniture, demanding only that I feed her and give her the weekly hundred dollars, which she hid. As a matter of fact, if I had been as clever as I thought I was, I would have been content to let her stay, for she didn't restrict my life too much: she was a stick of furniture you could dress up and take to night clubs and dance recitals... and also sleep with, if I wished. Still I longed to return to my old single routine, longed to the extent a pregnant woman suddenly gets a mad desire for some silly thing, like a certain type of candy, or unusual food.
I was pretty busy at the office and never did get around to advertising in the German papers for her family—if any. And that would be a long-range solution, anyway. The truth is, I let matters slide. I tried staying away from the house, except to come home to feed Lee. I began having my pre-supper cocktail again at the little bars in East midtown, then I'd go home and either make supper, or take Lee out to a neighborhood restaurant: the Hungarian place on the corner, or one of the French restaurants on Lexington Avenue. Then I would leave, make the rounds with Joe, maybe spend the night in the Turkish baths.
Lee didn't mind.
I was bored to tears with Lee and her personal untidiness annoyed the hell out of me. I had almost two thousand of her money left, and I thought about getting her room and board, in the country, sending her a few bucks every week. But that would still tie her to me and I wanted a clean break, and there wasn't any way of doing that except to throw her out—in which case she would probably end up in an institution. I couldn't stomach that; aside from all the humane reasons, she would certainly tell them about me and the very thought of scandal made me ill. Which was odd, for I didn't have any relations in town, or friends who would know or care, outside of the people in the office. Yet this great fear we have of that mysterious and all powerful common-denominator—
It was funny how things balanced: before, I had been on top of the world (or so I thought—sincerely) and felt sorry for poor Joe; now Joe was riding high. He was pretty secretive about it all, but Walt was in some sort of racket with a numbers banker. What Joe did beside let them use his apartment during the day, I didn't know, but he had extra money—fifty this week, a hundred the next, and was quite pleased with himself. As he said, “My kid is smart as a whip. When he was younger I thought he was a bit dopey, reading all the time, and so quiet. But he's no blip, no telling how high he'll go and old Joe is going to tag along. What the hell, got to look after my boy.”
Except for supper with Lee, and coming home most nights to spend the night with her, I was about back to my old routine, and I suppose things would have stayed at that level for a long time, if Lee hadn't brought our relationship to a climax one night.
It was about a month after Eddie had sailed, and the day I received a second letter from him—a very enthusiastic note about living with his girl in Naples, although he didn't say anything about being married. But he sounded very happy. I left the office at five, took a cab to a cocktail room near Beekman Place, where I had a few as I glanced over the morning paper, reread Eddie's letter carefully. There was more news than usual in the paper, and it was nearly eight when I reached the house.
It was cold out and Lee had a heavy robe on. She said, “George, I am very hungry.”
“Sorry I was late,” I said, taking off my coat, going to the kitchen. Slob was wailing and I said, “Okay, you're hungry too. Hold up a minute and you'll both get something to eat.”
I'd brought in liver and frozen vegetables and beer, and as I cooked, Lee stood in the doorway, smoking a cigarette, watching me. Then she went to get an opener for the beer. I was annoyed that I was late, and damn tired of being her persona! maid. I said, “Leave the beer alone. And get dressed. Comb your hair and wash your face. I don't like you sitting at the table unwashed.”
She left the kitchen and when I had the food on the table I went into the living room to call her. She was sitting in the big leather chair—ashes all over it. The robe had fallen from her , legs, exposing her strong thighs. I looked at the other piles of ashes and cigarette butts around, said, “Thought I told you to get dressed? Look at yourself. My God, haven't you taken a bath lately?”
She stood up, smiled—her little mouth becoming so big—said, “Eat first. I am hungry.” She started for the kitchen and I caught her at the doorway, held her arm.
“No. First you wash your face, brush your teeth, comb your hair.”
She was staring at me with a faint tolerant smile, as though I was an idiot she had to humor. She pointed to the food on the table. “Food... cold.”
“Then let it get cold! I told you a half hour ago to dress. Now do it.” I walked over and sat down and started to eat. She didn't move, merely stood there, staring at me. I ate some more, then got up and went over to her, said as if talking to a child, “Do as I told you or you won't....”
She suddenly said something in German that sounded like a curse, brushed past me and made for the table. As I turned I saw Slob up on the table, eating from her dish. The poor cat had never done that before, but I had forgotten all about feeding him.
Lee made a savage swipe at him with her big hand, sending him crashing against the opposite wall. He hit with a really sickening thud, dropped to the floor on his back, blood streaming from his mouth.
I cursed her as I bent over the cat. He was moaning with a weak, pitiful sound. I lifted him as tenderly as I could, ran out and hailed a cab. He was dead before I reached the vet's, and I left him there.
I was chilled to the bone and in a furious mood when I returned. Lee wasn't in the kitchen, although the light was still on. She had eaten her supper and most of mine, and several crushed butts were on the dirty dishes. I ran into the bedroom. She was propped up on the bed. “You bitch, you killed Slob!”
“Eat my food,” Lee said casually.
“Goddamn you, that was my cat!” I tried to control my voice.
“In Europe no katzen—people eat katzen,” she said. Her robe was open, showing her big breasts and she seemed the most obscene creature I'd ever laid eyes on. I said coldly, clearly, “Lee I want you to get out. To-night, you understand? This is my house and I want you out!”
She shook her head. “No.”
“No? Get up and start packing or I'll throw you out!” I screamed.
She opened her robe farther, smiled up at me.
I cursed her, words I hadn't used since I was a kid. I grabbed her hand, yelled, “You're getting out, bag and baggage and...!”
She suddenly pulled me down on the bed, on top of her, and I struck her across the face, a loud hard slap. For a moment we wrestled and her eyes seemed very bright. Then her hands were at my throat as I frantically punched and clawed at her.
There was no mistaking the look in her eyes, she was going to strangle me with her powerful hands!
I twisted and pulled at those hands, but she was too strong and big for me. My throat seemed on fire and the room started to become hazy as I battled her. I must have worked my way to the side of the bed, for suddenly I fell off the bed. The sudden jerk of my body broke her hold on my throat. As I gulped air, I rolled away from her clutching hands, scrambled to my feet. She jumped off the bed, a crazy sneer on her face.
I ran for the door and the street but moving with startling speed, she cut me off. I crossed the living room, made the kitchen. I knew I'd never have time to open the back door, and I grabbed a large bread knife, turned to face her. The sight of the knife slowed her up, but didn't stop her. She advanced toward me slowly and I knew I'd have to kill her or she would certainly kill me. I was sick with fear, and without knowing I was saying it, I suddenly shouted,
She stopped stock still, her big face turned pale, the anger left her eyes and the usual blank look returned. All I needed was the Nazi double-cross on my arm. I felt relieved, and ashamed, it was pretty low, even to save my life. I think the words meant, danger, or attention. I remember seeing them in war pictures of mined fields.
Lee reached over and took a cigarette from the pack on the table, lit it, thumbed the match at me, then turned and walked leisurely out of the kitchen. She sat down on the couch in the living room, blew out a cloud of smoke. I looked down at the knife in my hand and nearly fainted. If it was a shock to think I had been ready to kill, if it was more of a shock to think of the Nazi role I had taken, the greatest shock of all was the thought deep in my mind, bursting to the surface: Lee
My hand was trembling so I couldn't hold the knife. I rested it on the kitchen table for a moment, then picked it up, went into the living room. I sat facing her—and near the door. For a long moment we stared at each other, this semi-nude giant of a woman and I, and the big bread knife gave the scene melodramatic, almost comic overtones. The past few minutes seemed a fantastic nightmare that had never happened—yet they had.
She smiled, “George, everything okay. We forget, hey boy?” She had that damn drawl back in her voice.
I said, “I'm giving you ten minutes to pack and get out, or I'll call the police. You understand... police... cops... p-o-l-i-c-e!”
She shook her head. “I stay here.”
“The hell you will! I know damn well you killed Hank. You were supposed to be in the basement using a washing machine! Why they'd have to beat you to make you use a washing machine!” I sounded like Marion. “I'll have something to tell the police—if you don't get out.”
She kept staring at me in that odd, puzzled way she had, as though trying to understand what I was saying. Then she said, “No, I stay here. Police tell Lee have no reason to kill Hank. Police say Lee finish with that. I stay here, like it here. Maybe you have reason to kill Hank.”
“Me!”
She nodded. “Lee not very bright. Hank say so, you say too. Lee have no reason push Hank from window. Lee downstairs. Maybe you push Hank? Possible, it is... moglichkeit.”
“What the devil are you talking about? Look, you're wasting time.” I glanced at my wrist watch. The crystal had been broken during our fight and the watch had stopped, but I told her, “You have just seven minutes to pack and leave, or I call the police.”
She shrugged her heavy shoulders. “Lee stay, maybe George go. Maybe Lee ask for police. Police be... how you say... want to know why you kill Hank. But you say I no
I didn't know what to say. It didn't make sense, nor had I ever heard her talk so much before. And all this stupid talk about my killing poor Hank... I suddenly wondered if Lee had gone completely off the beam. And there was something about her eyes... something... they seemed far from blank, seemed to take a certain shrewdness.
We stared at each other for a few minutes, then I glanced at my broken watch again. “Only three minutes left, Lee. Start packing.”
She knocked the ash from her cigarette on the floor, got up and went into the bedroom. I sighed with relief as she opened a drawer, pulled out one of her old pocketbooks. It was all over, I was rid of her. First thing I'd have to do, as soon as she was packed, would be to call a hotel, arrange for a room for a week or till I figured out where she could go.
I put the kitchen knife under the chair, wondered if she would be better off in a small hotel or a big one, would her odd behavior be more conspicuous in a....
She walked back into the room, sat down again. She was completely nude. She held up her left hand.
For a moment I didn't get it, then I saw she wasn't completely nude—she had her wedding ring on. “I thought you were packing?” I said coldly.
“Oh, no! You like, you go. No Lee go. Police... police maybe no like George taking Hank's wife. Me, Lee, no bright... George very bright, George do everything. This look very bad. Also... maybe... this and other reason... why you push Hank.”
“Goddamn it, get out of here! I'm tired of talking—get out! And stop all this crazy nonsense about my having a motive for killing Hank. Certainly living with you isn't any. You were starving. I was only helping you. I warn you, if I'm forced to call in the police, you'll get the worst of this, you'll...”
She glanced casually at the wall... and then it all came to me. Oh brother did it come to me! I thought I had been outsmarting her and all the time... I was the spider who instead of asking a fly into my parlor had merely asked a bigger spider in! I was some spider.
I ran over to the wall panel, fumbled with the damn thing till it slid open. It was empty... of course! She had the note I'd written for Hank's seven thousand.
I turned and stared at her and now I was the one sporting the stupid look.
She said—almost gently, “Police say no reason to kill Hank. Now... you take Hank's wife and Hank's money... What police say?”
“Where's that note, you bitch?” I shouted. “You know damn well you killed Hank. Give me that note!”
As I walked toward her she threw her cigarette on the coffee table, burning it, got to her feet. I stopped. I didn't have the slightest doubt in my mind that she could (and would) not only beat me, but kill me.
I turned and went to the closet, took my hat and coat. She walked over to the door, asked, “Where you go?”
“You can stay here, I'm leaving.” I said, full of fear as I walked by her, expecting those big hands on me as I opened the door. A draft of cold air hit her naked body.
“George!”
I was safely outside. I turned and asked what she wanted, or maybe I merely opened my mouth and tried to talk: I was so upset my mouth was cotton dry.
“On Montag... Monday... you bring Lee money like before? Yes? No?”
I wanted to scream, tell her to go straight to hell, but she had me over a barrel. I nodded and walked away from my own house.
I walked down Park Avenue, trying desperately to think. I was in a rough spot. Would the police suspect me of murdering Hank? I didn't have an alibi, or even the faintest idea where I was on the night Hank was murdered. In fact I didn't know the exact date. I was probably out at Southampton, but that wasn't an alibi. Would the police really suspect me? For all I knew the note for the money, my living with this backward girl, might be enough to convict me, hold me for trial. Actually, I wasn't worrying about a murder rap so much, I was worrying like hell about the mess it would stir up, the juicy newspaper stories... as if I had been found robbing and sleeping with a ten-year-old girl. That note made it much more than merely an affair.
If this ever hit the papers, got out... what could I do? Run away? Kill myself? I could see the whole world staring at me; “they” would be pointing a million fingers of shame and scorn at me. (Actually, if I had been able to reason it out I would have realized that the worst the scandal could do to me would be the loss of my job, my few friends. As for the murder angle, it would never stand up in any court, but the very thought of a trial made me hysterical.) My comfortable velvet rut was being smashed to tiny pieces.
As I walked I thought of a hundred outs: call a mental institution, tell them there was a lunatic living in my house; get in touch with Ellis Island, Lee was certainly an undesirable alien; I even considered something as “basic” as getting her out of the house by a money ruse, then changing the locks and let her raise hell. And all the time I knew I couldn't do anything as long as she held that damn receipt. Without that piece of paper it might not be too bad, her word against mine. Living with a backward girl wasn't a crime, but with that note, my great “cleverness” exposed, that meant I was a heel of the first water... they might even call it some sort of forced prostitution, with the girl getting paid with her own money—which, as the old joke says, makes it rape. I wondered just how “backward” Lee was, when she had found the note, how long it took her to understand its power?
I had a headache by the time I reached 42nd Street and it suddenly occurred to me I was homeless, had to find a place to sleep. I was also hungry. I had a sandwich and coffee, walked west till I reached the Turkish bath. I took a room for the night and didn't even bother with the baths.
But I couldn't sleep and in the middle of the night I went downstairs, sat in the pine steam room and brooded. I was really in hell.
In the morning I realized I didn't have a clean shirt and I bought one and a pair of socks, changed in the men's room of a hotel, throwing my old clothes away. After breakfast and a shave, I stopped at the bank and cashed a two hundred dollar check. It was another shock to find I had a little under $1500 left of the seven thousand. I had given Eddie a grand, spent another on her clothes, we had spent over a thousand—plus my salary—eating out, doing the town, and giving her a hundred a week accounted for another thousand.
I'd slept a few hours at the baths and now I spent the morning trying to think of an out. Harvey was away on a story, so I had the office to myself. I fixed the approximate date of Hank's death, sent my secretary out to buy old copies of the
I dropped into Jake Webster's office. He said, “Early, Mr. Jackson, first race ain't started yet.”
I told him I was going to do a feature on him for the
“You came to the right party, Mr. Jackson. If I had the right people behind me, no telling how high I would have gone in the department. What do you want to know?”
“Well, in this story I'm making up,” I said, picking my words carefully, “the girl was once suspected of killing her husband. He was a lush and died as a result of a fall....”
“He was a no-good,” Jake said, nodding.
“Well... yes. Anyway, he fell or was pushed down a steep flight of... eh... stairs, and died. The police made a routine investigation, called it an accident. But the hero of my yarn is suspicious of the girl. Now it's several months since the 'accident' happened. At the time, the gal's alibi was that she was down in the basement using the washing machine. Nobody saw her, the police took her at her word. As I said, months have gone by, the case is forgotten. Supposing the hero tried playing detective, wanted to get the cops interested in the killing again, what would he do?”
“You mean the hero wants to turn in the wife of this no-good?” Jake asked, as if it was impossible.
“Yes.”
“But Mr. Jackson, in most stories it would be the cops trying to pin a bum rap on the gal and the hero saving her, especially if she's a pretty babe and...?”
“This one is absolutely ravishing, but she's bad. It's a new twist,” I added, almost smiling. “How would my hero go about it?”
“Tell you, Mr. Jackson, you ain't giving the hero much to go on. Like whether she was or wasn't at the washing machine. Your dick could go back to the house, question the other people there, and get no place. You got to count on the fact the cops did that too, at the time of the killing. Why don't you dream up some eh...
“Yes. Looks like I'm stuck with my story.”
“Well, change it. To get the cops interested, you'd have to come up with new evidence. Have her do something else, like buying something where you can use the date on the salescheck to prove what you want.”
“Suppose the hero merely called the police, an anonymous call?” I said, knowing damn well I couldn't do that, the way things stood I didn't want the police in on it, I would only be involved.
“No good, they get crank calls all the time. Unless the guy gives them some new evidence over the phone. I'd like to see the story when it's done, always get a bang out of a detective yarn. Say, when you going to start the... eh... article on me? Jesus, my wife will go crazy when she hears this. Know what, I won't tell her, show it to her when it comes out. She'll be fit to be tied.”
“I'll have Harvey stop in when he returns, get the data and all that. Might be a while before I can schedule it.” I started for the door.
Jake called out, “See you later. Got anything good running?”
“Didn't put a bet down to-day. I haven't anything good—running or otherwise.”
Back in my office I found I hadn't blended any tobacco lately, had to smoke a name brand, which annoyed me. I smoked my pipe and thought about my troubles. Any idea of proving Lee had murdered Hank was out. As Jake said, I didn't have a damn thing to go on. And if I ever went back and started questioning the janitor of her apartment, the fellow might get suspicious, call the police. He'd surely remember me taking her clothes some months ago. No, I had to stay clear of the law, or be involved, and that would mean, at the very least, headlines and scandal. There was also another bright thought hidden in my mind which made me break out into a cold sweat—fantastic as it seemed, it wasn't impossible that I might be held
The net result of all my thinking was a headache. All I could do now, I decided, was to sit tight till Monday when I'd give Lee her hundred dollars. Just what would happen then, I didn't know, but there wasn't a thing to do till then—except find a room and clothes.
I took off early in the afternoon, took a room and bath at the Hotel Taft, bought a suit, shirts and underclothes, and a pair of shoes. That night I looked around my room, felt so low I went out and got slightly drunk. I'd never felt homeless before, and it was an awful sensation. I suppose what I missed most was my basement studio. Dancing always had more of a relaxing effect on me than drink.
The next morning I bet on a horse called Frame-up and won, and felt a lot better. Also a drunken sleep had convinced me I wasn't in any real danger of being accused of murder, pr even a scandal. All I had to do was buy the note from Lee, wait a few weeks, then inform Flo I was no longer living on 74A Street, have Flo throw Lee out. It all seemed as simple as that.
I had dinner that night with Joe and it was a relief to listen to his corny chatter. I didn't tell him about being thrown out of my place, but when I had supper with him the following evening he asked, “You and your doll have a fight? You got lot of time on your mitts.”
“Something like that.
Joe sighed. “Interesting looking dish—what a pair of shakers.
“Where did you ever see her?” My voice was sharp.
Joe grinned. “Slow down, George, I ain't beating your time. I saw you out with her once, going into some swank restaurant on East 53rd Street. I love them tall, big, dolls—something to grab.”
“Well don't ever think of grabbing this one—she'd break your arms,” I said.
He slapped me on the back. “I don't play in nobody's backyard, at least nobody that's a buddy of mine. First time I ever saw you chasing, but I can see why—she must put down some powerful stuff between the sheets.” He laughed and gave me another stupid slap on the back.
I laughed politely and thought I'd better change my address in the office files. Now and then they called me if a big shot flew into town suddenly. I certainly didn't want Joe, or anybody else, barging in on Lee.
Saturday night I went up to Henderson's for some poker. The house looked the same and I thought how amazing it was that a house with an oil burner practically ran itself. Joe and two friends of his were already there, watching Henderson dunk pretzels and cheese in his beer. We played till three in the morning. As we were leaving, Henderson counted the sixteen dollars he'd won, said to me, “Stick around, George, want to talk to you.”
I said good-night to Joe and the others, poured myself a beer. Henderson said, “Beer and food cost me nearly five dollars, so I made a net of eleven dollars. Not bad for an old man. You know the other day I was in the subway and some young snip of a girl stood up to give me her seat. I ignored her and then she had the gall to say, 'Sit down, pop,' I said to her, 'Young lady, it's true I am older than you, but that isn't any reason to offer me your seat. Why did you do it?' She said, 'Well, you're less able to stand than I am.' I shut her up with, 'And since when in our society do the weak and the aged, the less able, get any special consideration?' And as if to prove my point, while we were arguing, a husky young boy slipped into the seat. Nerve of that girl!” Henderson chuckled.
I waited. He hadn't asked me to stay for the sake of small talk. He said, “When are you coming back, George?”
“I don't know. Anything happening downstairs?”
“Quiet as usual. Are you done with her, or what? It isn't any of my business, but it has spoiled my window watching some... the waiting for your return.”
“We had a fight and I left, walked out. Does she ever leave the house?” I said before I realized it was a stupid question—she had to go out for food.
“Oh, yes, leaves the house every third day, for about twenty minutes. Buys groceries. There's no other man coming around, if that's what you want to know.”
I grinned—God how I wished there was another man!
“How does she look?”
“Same as usual.”
“I have to see her Monday. By the way, if you want me for anything, something goes wrong with the house, call me at the office. Meantime, I'd better have the oil tank filled.”
On Monday I arranged with Joe to send one of his men around with some oil. Since this was piped in through an opening in the sidewalk, it wouldn't disturb Lee. That night, after supper, I took a cab up to the house, rang the bell. There wasn't any answer. I rang again and called her name. There were a few seconds of silence, then she opened the door.
Lee was wearing a simple print I remembered buying her a long time ago, and both she and the house had a slightly hot, bad odor. The place was a mess, ashes and cigarette butts all over, and I could see unwashed dishes on the kitchen table and in the sink.
She said rather abruptly, George, you have my money?
I gave her twenty five-dollar bills, which she immediately crumpled and shoved down between her breasts. I asked, “Lee, would you like a whole lot of money?” I went through the motions of piling up a lot of bills.
She didn't answer and I said, “Much money for Lee. You give me the note, the paper, and I will give you lots of money. Okay?”
“Papers?” she repeated.
“You know what paper,” I said, motioning toward the wall panel.
She looked at me blankly and I wondered how much of that blankness was a poker face. I dug a dollar bill out of my pocket, went through the pantomime of making a big pile of ones. “All this money for the paper. Understand? Everything be fine.”
She didn't say anything and I said, “Give me the note and I'll give you a lot of money. Okay?”
“Yes.”
I held out my hand. “Now give me the paper.”
“Nein.”
I thought she smiled as she said it. I put the dollar down as I picked up my hat and turned to leave. She quickly snatched up the buck, deposited it in her bosom savings bank, said, “You like, you stay.”
I said no and for one frightful moment I thought she was going to come over and make me. But she merely shrugged and I went out, saying I'd see her the following Monday.
For the next month or so, I saw her each Monday night, to give her the money, and nothing much happened. Once she had cleaned up the place thoroughly, in one of her rare bursts of energy. Sometimes she was fairly talkative, and once she blocked the doorway, so I handed her the money and left without stepping inside my own house. I tried several times to bribe her to give me the note, but she refused. She understood
I didn't care for living in a hotel room and I missed my dancing terribly, but all in all, there wasn't much of a change from my old manner of living—before I “outsmarted” Lee. Things went along on an even level, but even that came to an end: I ran out of money, or rather I should say I ran out of Lee's money.
It certainly was more than a rude shock to realize that if I went on giving her a hundred a week—and I didn't see any way of getting out of it at the time—I'd have exactly twenty-five dollars of my salary to live on per week.
The first thing I did was to move out of the hotel. After much tramping of the streets and reading want ads, I learned it was impossible to get even a crummy room for less than ten a week, and of course a private bath was out. Most of the rooms smelled of insecticide and I expected bedbugs to open the door for me—although I never did see a bug in any of the rooms I had. And I moved around quite a bit, going to a cheaper room each time, borrowing a few bucks from Joe on and off, and once, for the first time in my life, I hocked a suit. (All I received was ten dollars for it.) I finally found a small room on 31st Street, east of 3rd Avenue. The house, an old brownstone, looked like hell from the outside but my room was neat, if tiny, and if the bathroom wasn't any place to linger and read, at least it was clean, or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
I spent much of my time alone. I was not only upset, but I couldn't afford dollar lunches and five-dollar suppers and cocktails with Joe, nor poker games with Mr. Henderson. I only bet on the horses once.
I knew I'd have to have some money damn soon, and thinking back upon it, my luck with the horses had been excellent the past six months—playing my daily two-buck hunch bets. The night I hocked my suit I noticed a horse called Outsmarted running the next day, at 10 to 1. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a
The following morning I stopped in for my orange juice, which had become my entire breakfast—along with a hooker of cheap whiskey. When the counterman asked, “Anything else, Mr. Jackson? You haven't been ordering much these days,” I put the money under the menu on the counter before me, said, “A hundred to win on Outsmarted.”
“That's a big order, Mr. Jackson,” he said, his face deadpan. “Tell me true, Mr. Jackson, you know something?”
“You know me—a hunch player. Merely a hunch.”
“Sure I know you, but that's a lot of folding money to pay off, Mr. Jackson. I'm a small joker in this racket. I can't take the bet, but I can place it for you. Only if this is a sure thing, don't give it to me.”
“Only a hunch.”
“Yeah?” He hesitated for a moment, staring at me with sad eyes. Then he went over to one of the phone booths. He talked to somebody for a few seconds, then came back and took my money, said, “Okay. That's to win. Correct?”
“Right. You'll pay off at track odds?”
He nodded.
I was so nervous during the day I kept going into Joe's office to nip at a bottle he kept in his desk, till he asked, “What you got the shakes about?”
“Nothing. I... eh... didn't sleep much last night.”
I had coffee and a sandwich for lunch at an orangeade stand, and at three I went into Jake Webster's office to learn if I had a thousand dollars.
The radio said Outsmarted had closed at 12 to 1. The horse didn't win, but showed, and if I had played the nag across the board I would have won about two hundred dollars. Now I was flat-busted and that was that. When I needed my luck it wasn't there, or maybe I had outsmarted myself again.
Jake asked, “Lose a big one, Mr. Jackson? Look sick.”
“I was playing a long shot.”
He grinned. “You got no kick, been booting them home for a long time. Got to expect a loss now and then. I remember once....”
I went back to my office and I felt lousy. There were about half a dozen ways I could raise money. I could easily borrow a thousand from any bank, only what would happen when that was gone and I had to pay off the bank
Flo would lend me money, but somehow I couldn't ask her. She'd start prying, and even though it wasn't important at the moment, it would be the final defeat in our marital tiffs. I'd be in debt to her or, I suppose, beholden to her is the better phrase, for the rest of my life. And I didn't want to cast off Flo, I wanted her back. I wanted (and so badly) everything I had in my old life, even my monthly fights with Flo.
Joe would be good for a few hundred, he and Walt seemed to be prospering in their racket. But I already owed Joe nearly a hundred, borrowing a dollar or two, here and there. Besides, I'd have to explain too much to him, too.
Marion Keating might lend me money, but that would be embarrassing—I never had been
Then there was Mr. Henderson, but I kept dismissing what I was thinking about him. It was an ugly thought.
(And the strange part was, that of all the ways I had of raising money, and I
Not being able to dance left me restless as the devil and I suddenly wondered why I didn't try dancing for money? The idea excited me. I was sure my mixed dance routine was some-thing never seen before, something really different. In tails, with a band playing bebop, rumba, corn, and a dash of classical music, I would wow 'em with my combination tap, ballet, and ballroom dancing. I was tall and thin, looked sophisticated—on the style of Clifton Webb. With the right lighting, I had the sort of routine that would go over big in a smart night club. The first thing was to interest an agent. I went through my files. Before the war we'd held a big sales convention in New York and had booked a band and several acts through a Danny Alberts. I called him and he said of course he remembered me. (What he remembered was Sky Oil, Inc.) I told him, “This is a sort of personal favor. Friend of mine has a dance act, a high class single, and he's looking for an agent.”
“Be glad to give him a try-out, Mr. Jackson,” Alberts said, his voice friendly over the phone.
“I... eh... thought you might recommend somebody who books dancers exclusively. This is a serious type of dance, suitable only for a certain type of night spot.” I couldn't use Alberts, he might remember me.
“Gotcha, Mr. Jackson, only don't think I don't handle high class acts. I....”
“I'm sure you do, Mr. Alberts, but this fellow needs a dance specialist.”
“Know what you mean, perfectly. Tell you, there's a Dennis Coles up on 50th Street. He handles lots of long-haired stuff. I'll make an appointment. What's this guy's name?”
“Lee Henderson,” I said promptly.
“Swell. Call you back in a few minutes. You fellows having another convention here soon?”
“Nothing on the fire at the moment, but when we do, I'll know who to call,” I said.
He called me back within ten minutes and then I—or Lee Henderson—called Dennis Coles. I had heard of Coles and was pleased he was to handle me. I arranged to rent a studio and show him my dance that afternoon in Steinway Hall.
Borrowing ten bucks from Joe, I took a cab up to the house to get my dancing shoes and sweat suit. I rang and rang and didn't get any answer. Finally I let myself in, Lee wasn't home and the house was a mess, it actually stunk. My blue sheets were a dirty gray. It took me a moment to get my things and pick up a dozen records. I knew Lee must be out shopping and I wanted to be gone before she returned.
But that gave me another idea—one I should have had from the start.
I hailed a cab and had him wait across Park Avenue. I sat in the cab, watching the house and my watch. Exactly twelve minutes later Lee came swinging up the street, a bag of groceries in her arms. I grinned—to myself—and told the cabbie to drive to Steinway Hall.
I ran into trouble there—they didn't have an automatic phonograph. The slinky-looking blonde in the renting office was listening to a small portable radio, and for a few bucks I rented that.
Coles was a short slender man, with a homely, pointed, sensitive face, and an absolutely bald head. I explained that I usually danced to records but I'd have to use a disc jockey due to the lack of a phonograph. I explained how I'd dance in tails, with the proper lighting, the type of audience I was aiming for, and all that.
He listened patiently, and we talked about dancing for a while and I dropped a few names to tell him I knew my dancing. Then he lit a cigarette and sat down. I tuned in a couple of records shows and they were all playing corn. When I heard one of Duke's numbers I nodded to Coles and started dancing, and God it felt wonderful to be dancing again. I had expected to be a bit rusty, but I found myself dancing at my best, moving smoothly, my taps clean and clear. When the disc jockey read a commercial I did a soft shoe routine, and then I was in luck—they played an Afro-Cuban number I knew and I really went to town. I kept praying they wouldn't play any hill-billy numbers. The next record was a fast jazz number which I did as a modern dance, using my hands a lot. I was doing some tricky tap steps when I glanced at Coles. There was a faint smile on his face.
I stopped dancing and he merely shook his head. I turned off the radio, took it back to the blonde. When I returned, Coles was gone. I dressed quickly. That smile told me everything—I was a middle-aged man making a pitiful fool of himself.
I guess it was a bad blow, not only to my plans, but to my vanity. But I didn't take it hard, I was too full of my other plan, my new one, to be depressed. That night, after I had washed my socks and underwear, hung them on the line I'd rigged across my room, I took a pencil and paper and sat on the bed.
The two things I should have done from the start I had stupidly neglected. I certainly should have advertised in the German papers while I had the money to do it. Relations—if Lee had any—would take her off my hands. But more important, if I had played it smart, I would have searched the house—while she was out—till I found the note.
There wasn't anything I could do about hunting for her relations now, but I did make a sketch of the house, listed all the possible places where she might hide the note. I kept thinking of the layout of the rooms so hard, seeing them in my mind, that my head hurt. But before I went to sleep, I had a list of 22 likely places where Lee might have hidden the note. I'd have to be fast and careful; if Lee ever found me hunting for the note she'd certainly kill me. The very thought of her finding me made me shake. I considered the possibility of borrowing one of Jake Webster's guns, but ruled that out. He wouldn't lend it to me without a long explanation, and suppose I had to use the gun? Killing or wounding her would only mean bringing everything out in the open, give more credence to her story that I killed Hank. If I wanted to chance all that I could tell her to go to hell now.
But I had to get that receipt.
During my lunch hour the next day I went up to the house, walked in on Henderson, The old man was fixing lunch—some lettuce, cream cheese, and black bread swimming in a bowl of light coffee. He asked me to join him, and although I was actually hungry, I couldn't go that mess. I took a cup of coffee, asked, “Francis, does she go out of the house every day? I mean, shopping? I want to get some things, and not have to argue with her.
“She goes out every third day. Always at one, stays out about a half hour, maybe a little less,” he said. “You were in the house yesterday.”
“I had to get some personal belongings—that's when I remembered she has to leave the house. About a half hour?”
Henderson nodded. For a while he ate his mess quietly, then asked, “George, what's going on downstairs?”
“Why? I mean, is there something going on?”
“Nothing I can put my finger on, but the house gives me an uneasy... a... well, downright queasy feeling. And you, there's something different about you, and I don't mean only this junior detective role you're playing. It's—don't know exactly what it is but... look, your suit isn't freshly pressed, you're wearing the same shirt for the second day. George, you're not the old George anymore. What's going on between you two? And where's Slob. Haven't seen him for weeks.”
“Didn't I tell you, a hair ball almost strangled him, the vet had to put him out of the way.”
“Too bad, an intelligent animal,” Henderson said. “One of the contradictions of our society, we can perform a mercy death on an animal, but humans must go on suffering. And how about you—you swallow a hair ball, too?”
“Nothing is the matter,” I lied casually. “Hell, might as well tell you, we're having a spat and I'm having a little trouble getting rid of her. You know how those things run.” I stood up, ran my hand over the copper statue of Man O' War. “Francis, I'm learning a great bit of wisdom I should have known years ago—never bring your women to your own house.”
“That's all it is, sacking your woman?” he asked, not believing me.
“That's all. Take me a little time to straighten out.”
“All right,” the old man said, “only tell her to keep a cleaner house. Been seeing roaches lately.”
“I'll try to do what I can. How're the horses coming?” I asked, changing the subject.
We talked for a while, banal talk mostly, then I took the bus back to the office. Lee had shopped yesterday, that meant I had to wait one more day before she went out again. Tomorrow I'd go up and start searching. The whole idea left me jumpy, I was so damn scared of her. The idea of a gun came back when I passed a drugstore next to Radio City Music Hall. They had children's cap pistols in the window that looked like real .45s, or at least what I thought a .45 looked like. I only had three dollars for food to last the rest of the week, but I spent a dollar for one of those guns. The only thing that made it look phony was the silver finish of the handle. I purchased a small tin of black enamel and went to my room to have supper on a bottle of beer and two bits worth of cheese and crackers, which was filling if not nourishing. I carefully painted the pistol black and hung it up to dry. I was as intent as a kid with a new toy, and by midnight it had dried and the damn thing actually looked like a gun. Just handling it gave me an air of assurance, even though I knew it was all downright silly.
The following day I was hanging around the corner of 74th and Park at fifteen to one. I was sure Lee would turn toward Lexington to shop. Promptly at one I saw her leave the house, a heavy short sweater over an ankle-length evening dress she had. When she was out of sight, like the villain in a bad movie I held the “gun” in my pocket, walked down the block, let myself in.
The house wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, she had cleaned the day before. I quickly started on my list of possible hiding places. The panel was empty, but behind a row of books I found nearly three hundred bucks carefully wrapped in a dirty handkerchief. I didn't touch that, but kept looking—one eye on my wrist watch. Under a carpet I found another wad of money, and in one of the closets a shoe box heavy with pennies, dimes, and a few quarters. It was a terrific temptation not to take some of the money, but I left it alone—I wasn't after money this time, couldn't risk spoiling my chances of getting the note.
By one-fifteen I'd covered everything except the kitchen, bathroom, and my dance studio downstairs. I looked the place over carefully, to be sure I hadn't left any drawers open, or any evidence of my search, then left. I walked back to the corner and waited. A few minutes later Lee turned the corner at Lexington, went into the house, munching on something from the bag in her arm.
Three days later, on a Sunday, I was back on my corner, thinking that Sundays couldn't alter her schedule—she had to eat. The street was fairly crowded, people going to the church across from the house. I wondered where she would shop, although some of the delicatessens on Lexington were probably open. At one, Lee came out, dressed rather smartly in a heavy cloth coat I'd bought for her and a simple tarn. It was a raw afternoon but I was sweating and hot—with fright.
Slipping my “gun” into my outside overcoat pocket, I walked quickly to the house, unlocked the door. If most of the stores were closed on Sundays, that meant Lee might have to take more time shopping—or less time. The apartment smelled of stale air and old food. I went down to the dance floor, started searching. I had a stroke of luck—on the spur of the moment I went through the various record albums. She had hidden it cleverly, no money or anything, merely the little piece of paper that was the note tucked in with a record. I jammed it in my pocket ran up the steps and into the living room. I still had ten minutes to spare and I went to the two piles of money I'd discovered the other day, took a few tens from each pile. I locked the door, and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, sweating furiously but feeling wonderful. I saw Lee turn the corner, a small paper bag in her hand. There was no doubt about it being her, she was so big. I could go up and see Henderson, but if he didn't answer the door at once, Lee would find me. I dashed across the street, joined the people going to church. I was pretty sure Lee hadn't seen me.
I sat in the rear of the church about ten minutes, listening to some choir-singing that was very restful, then I walked out, hailed a cab at Lexington Avenue. I wanted to drink but the bars weren't open yet, so I gave the cabbie Joe's address. I counted the money I had taken (or stolen) from Lee. I had seventy dollars. That meant I'd be paying her with her own money—once more—but that for the next week anyway, I could live and eat decently again.
Joe and his kid were sleeping off a hangover. Joe came to the door in his underwear, half asleep, looking bloated and sloppy. I had a few fast drinks with him, went to the bathroom and burned the note, flushing it down the toilet.
I stared at the rushing water and almost cried, I was so relieved; there wasn't any possible link, fantastic, circumstantial, or otherwise, that could connect me in any way with Hank's death.
Joe wanted me to hang around, he was expecting some girls over later in the day but I was feeling too good to listen to his chatter all day. At the door, I was kidding him about being so fat and he punched me on the arm and we sparred and wrestled like kids. I suppose I was so gay Joe was surprised—he looked at me rather oddly as I left.
I wanted to see Flo, but she was out. I went to the Turkish bath, sat in the steam-room for a long time, had a rubdown, and came out feeling very clean and refreshed. I had a big steak and lobster dinner, went to a favorite little bar on East 46th for cocktails, and took a room in the Hotel New Yorker for the night.
I was jittery all day Monday, but knew I could duck seeing Lee that night. As I rang her bell, I dug my hand in my left pocket, held the toy gun firmly. She'd certainly be in a vicious mood if she'd discovered the money and the note were gone.
But she seemed as calm and blank as ever, counted the hundred I gave her, asked if I wanted to come in. I said no and she said, “You return next Monday with money?” It wasn't exactly a question, more of a statement.
I said I would and walked away. At the next corner I tossed my would-be gun into a garbage can.
I felt very good... I even had a few bucks to spend that week.
Chapter 7
I HAD DESTROYED the note, there never was any note. In a way I now had nothing to fear, nothing real. I could have stopped giving Lee money, I could have thrown her out. Or, if I wanted to risk my life, I could return to the house and steal a hundred each week, pay her off with her own money... again.
I could have told Lee to take off, or anything I wanted to, and it would have been all right; nothing would have happened to me. Sure, she might raise a rumpus, but who would listen to her, know about it, care? Maybe Marion Henderson, Joe, Flo. Flo I could handle and even if I lost my job—who has a guaranteed job these days? Not even civil service workers.
I could have done any of a number of things and been free of Lee, but we are so conditioned to fear scandal (and what does the word really mean?), so deathly frightened of what
I had almost become accustomed to even that, but Christmas wrecked me, threw me way off. Or maybe Christmas had nothing to do with it and I was merely fed up with my crummy room, my worn clothes, lack of good food, no dancing—not even a bathtub to soak in.
When Henderson gave me the December rent it was a severe effort not to go on a bender with it. It was extremely difficult to forward it to Flo. I had a strong desire to see Flo, and I certainly wanted to give her a Christmas present.
I needed quick money.
I dropped in on Jake Webster one morning, asked, “Jake, without arousing any suspicions or fuss, can you find out in what bank a Francis F. Henderson worked? I'm fairly sure it was a Manhattan bank, and he worked as a tailor about fifteen years ago.”
“Can do, Mr. Jackson, I know people who work for the bonding companies. The guy dip into the till?”
“No, nothing like that. He's a friend of mine and I was thinking of playing a practical joke on him. You know, clown stuff. Of course, if it's too much trouble or inconvenience for you, why....” And at the moment I was honestly praying Jake would say he couldn't do it.
“Naw, just a matter of a couple phone calls,” Jake said.
Later in the afternoon he told me Henderson had worked for the New York National Bank in their 23rd Street branch.
I went up to see Henderson that night and on the way up I lost my nerve—it was such a despicable thing to do. I decided I'd merely borrow a hundred from him, and if I needed more dough—steal it from Lee.
The old man was listening to the radio, rolling some cigarettes full of Turkish tobacco with a little machine he had. There was a bottle of Irish whiskey and we had a few long drinks, then I asked, “Francis, I'm rather badly strapped for cash. Can you lend me a hundred?”
“Well,” he said, hesitating, “for how long?”
“Oh, couple weeks, a month or two,” I said a little angry. After all he was warm with money and a hundred wasn't a big bite to him.
“I suppose so, only don't make it more than a month.”
I got steamed, or maybe it was the whiskey talking, for I suddenly said, “Don't be so cheap, Henderson. Suppose I make it several thousand and you make it a gift!”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice low.
I nodded toward the statue of Man O' War. “It's like this: there's a bank on 23rd Street which might be interested in one of its former tellers, by name of Francis Henderson, who likes horses and who suddenly retired. And who once told me not all bank tellers who bet on the ponies—with the bank's dough—are caught.” As soon as I said it I knew it hadn't come off right.
Henderson's eyes went large as he said like a soft sigh, “George—Jesus!” There was an uneasy, flat, silence for a moment, then he yelled,
“Now wait,” I began, trying to make my voice sound strong. “You're in no....”
“I'm going to tell you something, you louse, then I'm going to kick your tail out of here, or die trying,” Henderson said, his old wrinkled face sickly and pale.
“No point in flying off the handle, we can work this...”
“Shut your filthy mouth! Oh, you've caught me, but only in a lie. Sure I worked as a teller, was a real mousey type, too. As for stealing, I wouldn't even take an extra Christmas calendar without asking first. But you're right—I am a gambler. I had a sister who ran away from home, married a real gambler. She died almost twenty years ago, left me everything she had: her furniture—including this statue of the horse, and a fair amount of money. I always wanted to gamble and never had the nerve, but I took the biggest gamble of my life—I retired. I've been living on three thousand a year, on the assumption that I'll die before the money runs out. It's a race, and I'm betting on my bank book outlasting my life span. I'm down to less than six thousand now, which means I have to die in two years or I'll be in a bad way. Why do you think I play such a tight game of poker? The money I win means days and hours to me. And now you... you....”
“I'm sorry, Mr. Henderson, but I'm in a jam and I thought you had all kinds of coin. Not that that's any excuse for the way I acted,” I said weakly.
He stared at me for a moment and his face seemed to relax.
He shook his head. “I'm sorry for you, George, and I can't understand you. Why you and I are—were—alike. I thought we knew how to live, to look at the world, we're sophisticated in the true sense of the word. But stooping to this, my God! You'd better leave. I'm pretty worked up about this, please leave before I say things that will hurt both of us, place me on your level.”
I took my coat, opened the door, said, “Francis, forgive me. I don't know what came over me.”
He said, “There's no point in anger. Perhaps in a few months we can even be friends again. But until I ask you, I'd rather you don't come up here again. I'll send my rent directly to Flo.”
There wasn't anything I could say, so I went out. It was a cold raw night, looked like snow and I didn't have enough money to get a decent drunk on at any bar. I bought a quart of wine and went to my room.
I was in rough shape the next morning, and by borrowing a couple of bucks from Harvey, Joe, and Jake Webster, I managed to stay drunk till Christmas. The Christmas party at the office made me quite a character—I got stupid drunk and passed out on the first bottle. Joe put me to sleep in the men's lounge and when I awoke, feeling like my head had been pulled inside out, via my stomach, the party was going full force. I ate a few sandwiches and ate too fast or something, for I got sick—all over myself.
As I stumbled out to get some snow and air, I vaguely remembered Harvey telling me Flo was on the phone, asking me to come to a party, but much as I wanted to see her, I was in no shape to do anything but go to my room and sleep it off. Of course the reason I passed out was I hadn't had anything to eat for three days, unless you're the scientific type that considers alcohol as food.
I awoke to find somebody banging on my head. My brain seemed to be a jumble of small pieces, and as I gathered them together, tried to think, I knew I was in my room, but it was dark, and I was across my bed, fully dressed—even to my shoes.
The banging was somebody knocking on my door and it sounded so loud... as if I was in the middle of an echo chamber.
The banging grew louder and I called out, “Flo? Flo? Who is it?” But my mouth was two layers of horrible smelling cotton and no words came out. I stood up stiffly, waited for the room to settle down, and started for the door. It was fortunate the room was tiny, I couldn't take more than a few steps and even that little effort made me faint. I managed to open the door.
Joe was standing there. A Joe looking cheerful, drunk, and sleepy. He's been up all night, or all week, judging by his eyes. He stepped in and I shut the door, the sound of it nearly slicing my head in half. Joe opened his coat, pushed his hat back, and looked at me as I sat on the bed. He made a face, opened the window and the cold air was a life-saver. For a while he stood there, without speaking, then he sat on the one chair, pulled out a pack of butts, lit one for me. The smoke was smooth as velvet and felt wonderful in my throat and nose.
Finally I asked, “What's the visit for?”
Joe blew out a cloud of smoke, glanced around the room, said, “What a trap.”
“How did you find me?” I asked, the question sounding absolutely stupid.
“Looked in the office files. You been worrying me, boy.”
“So I been worrying you. Glad you didn't go up to the house.”
“I was up there a few days ago. She said you didn't live there no more. A foreign doll, and what a sex-boat. Came to the door with just a slip on and is she....”
“Stay away from there, Joe, stay away from her!”
“What's the matter, she turn out to be too powerful for you? Georgie boy, what's wrong? Haven't been yourself for weeks.”
“And when I was myself, what was I? Joe, I was the guy wanted to go through life playing it safe, I wouldn't play unless I had a pair, backed up. Only you can't live like that, you got to go for the inside straights sometime, it seems.”
“Buck up. What's the matter?”
“Matter? Nothing! I'm just dandy, simply ginger-dandy!”
Joe shook his head. “Boy you look like hell. And something is sure wrong. George, you're a guy with class, a fashion-plate, and look at you now... living in this flea-bag, clothes wrinkled to hell and dirty. And you smell like a sewer—an old one. And there's something awful wrong when a guy making over a hundred a week starts borrowing a buck here and there. Not that I mind, you understand, but it's a sign something is screwy. Then you had some kind of a fuss with old man Henderson, Jake says you been asking some odd questions, and finally, a couple of weeks ago when you were up to my place, you were packing a gun.”
“I was not.”
“Stop it, I felt it when we horsed around at the door.”
“It was a toy gun, a gag.”
Joe moved his chair closer. “Georgie, we been pals for a long time. Christ, you're the best friend I have in the world. I want to help you. If it's dough, I ain't no mint, but Walt and me been making a bit of folding dough. If a couple of hundred, maybe a grand....”
“Thanks, Joe, but it wouldn't solve anything. I'm in a first class mess. I'm the fox who was outfoxed... hopelessly.”
“Don't be a blip,” Joe said loudly. “Hell, as an executive you know there's, no such thing as a problem that can't be licked—everything's in transit, what you can't lick today, you will tomorrow. Now, what's with you and this doll?”
I started telling him about Lee, and as I talked I sobered up, began to think straight—very straight. I told him everything, except about the note and the seven grand. My story was I felt sorry for Lee, wanted to help her, couldn't resist keeping her, so I started giving her a hundred a week and now was afraid to stop. I talked through four cigarettes, and when I finished, Joe said, “What's the great problem? I'll go talk to her, knock some sense in her head.”
“Joe stay away from her... stay away. You cant talk to her she's like a... a moron. All she's good for is a tumble in the hay.”
Joe looked wide awake as he said, “Think of having a babe like that, a doll that's strictly a sex machine. And is she built for it! Georgie, was she really something?”
“She's evil. May not be her fault, but she's evil. Forget her, somehow I'll solve things. She's too much for any man. In bed she's very very good, terrific, but she's also expensive and...”
Joe stood up, took out his wallet. “I knew she was all sex the first time I saw her. Georgie, you're in rough shape. Here's fifty bucks, go to the baths, steam out the booze, eat a couple good meals. And don't worry, let me handle this doll. Never saw a babe with big shakers I couldn't talk into anything I wanted.”
I jumped to my feet, said as fiercely as I could, “Joe, as your friend, I'm asking you,
“Relax, Georgie, let me handle this...”
“Damn it, Joe, don't go near her! Don't...
Joe pushed me, gently, and I fell back on the bed. He held me down with a fat hand, said with great enjoyment in his patronizing voice, “Take it easy, Georgie, ain't no doll too big or hot for me. Get some sleep, take in the baths, then cut into a steak. Take Flo out to supper, or something. And Merry Christmas. See you at the office.”
I called to him at the door, “Look, Joe, I'm telling you to stay away not because I ever intend to go back to her again, but I'm thinking of you.”
Joe chuckled.
“Look, if you really want to help me, just mind your business. And leave your cigarettes, that's the only real help you can give me.”
He tossed the pack at me, winked, and was gone.
I lit a cigarette, propped a pillow under my head, and felt very tired and happy. I'd finally pulled out from under.
Joe was like a child, like me, I suppose. Giving him the sex bait, telling him
Okay, I couldn't take any more, and in a sense I
* * *
And that's the way it turned out. It's been over three months since that Christmas day and I've stopped giving Lee money, in fact I never go near the house. Joe seems cheerful around the office, winks at me a lot—whatever that means—and is a little tight with money. I lend him a few bucks now and then.
I'm back at the Hotel Taft, my pre-supper cocktails, and I rent a dance studio whenever I'm in the mood. Soon I'll tell Joe to move Lee to his apartment, and then things will be as before. Flo and I are sparring, have been through two “grand reunions” already. As a salve to my conscience, I've started a series of ads in German papers, to find Lee's folks, if she has any, which will be the only solution for her and not much of a one at that.
Of course things, for me, will never quite be in the same rut they were before. I carry on quite a correspondence with Eddie, who seems to be comfortable and healthy in Rome. And I realize now how right he was—I was the naive one. In this day and age you can't live without rooking your neighbor.
Here's Lee, terribly wronged by an entire nation and part of our army, and Eddie, wounded here and abroad by fascism, and even that poor Porto Rican he killed—what made him attack Eddie for a few lousy bucks? This is the era of fear and the fast buck, and look what it did to me; money made me rook poor Lee, slip her to a good-natured dope like Joe, made me try to blackmail a sweet old man like Henderson. And the fast buck turned Walt from a shy schoolboy to a tin-horn racketeer. It seems to me that as long as the fast buck makes this a dog-eat-dog world—if you'll pardon the trite expression (and you will, won't you?)—we have to follow petty lives. Like Flo and myself... our silly life of little spats and petty victories. Flo and her inane sublimation to style: when she dies they'll put a clothes hanger on her grave instead of a tombstone. And myself—what's my out, my escape valve? I'm trying to con my way through life, duck responsibilities—and in a way I can't be blamed; the dizzy pursuit of the fast buck makes for some cockeyed responsibilities these days.
But you see what it all adds up to: we're not really living. We straitjacket our lives with misery and stupidity, then spend our free time looking for an escape. We think we're living, yet in reality we're merely killing time. As I said, I wanted to go through life with a sure pair backed up... and all the time I've been dealing myself out of the game.
The End
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