Erskine stepped with misgivings through the door of Mike’s Tavern and moved forward through fumes of beer and clouds of blue smoke, searching for Mabel. There she was, sitting at a rear table surrounded by people...She was wearing a semi-evening dress and her face was sullen, heavy, her eyes slightly glazed.
“Mabel!” he called to her, unable to get any closer because of the crowd.
She looked about for him; when she saw him she let her mouth gape in a glad sign of welcome.
“Erskine, darling!” she crooned. “Come over here. Oh, darling, I thought you were angry with me and weren’t coming...Say, you folks, move over and let Erskine in. Let him pass, won’t you, Fred?”
“Sure thing,” Fred agreed affably, rising and moving aside.
Erskine stepped beside her; he felt out of place, embarrassed.
“Share my chair,, darling; won’t you?” Mabel asked. “There’s no other place to sit.”
He sat next to her on one half of her chair and he smelt the alcohol on her breath. God, she’s drunk...
“Erskine, meet Fred,” Mabel said, waving her hand airily. She presented the others. “There’s Will, Eva, Martin, Gloria, and Butch.”
Erskine nodded to each of them and forced a smile.
“What’ll you have to drink?” Fred asked Erskine.
“Just anything,” Erskine mumbled, afraid to say that he didn’t drink.
“Scotch and soda?” Fred asked.
“Sure,” Erskine said impulsively. He felt that had he refused, it would have made him conspicuous, and he yearned to pass unnoticed among them...
Mabel caught hold of his chin and, holding it between her two palms, turned his face to her.
“I’m bad, hunh?”
“You’re worried. Is that why you’re drinking?” he asked her in a whisper.
“I’m bad; I know it,” she said with exaggerated melancholy. “You left me alone and I didn’t know what to do. My friends called me and I came...”
“That’s all right,” Erskine lied; his face burned because she was demonstrating her intimacy too publicly by holding his cheeks like that. But he was determined not to lose his temper in the presence of her friends. He’d have it out with her later.
“You’re angry with me!” Mabel wailed and began a drunken kind of weeping. “Nobody likes me—”
“We do like you, Mabel,” Will said, winking at Erskine.
“She’s upset about something,” Martin told Gloria.
“What can we do for her?” Eva asked of the table in general.
“Now, now,” Erskine whispered chidingly to her. “Don’t cry like that.”
“I c-c-can’t h-help it,” Mabel sobbed.
“Give her another drink,” Gloria said.
“Yeah; I want another drink,” Mabel said, lifting her head suddenly and staring in front of her with tear-drenched eyes.
“Give Mabel another drink!” Gloria called to the waiter.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” Erskine asked her in a timid whisper.
“Now, don’t you scold me, Erskine,” Mabel said. “Be nice to me tonight, hunh? I need somebody to be nice to me...” She was mumbling sentimentally. “Erskine, you’re good...”
The waiter brought Erskine’s drink and Erskine took hold of the chilled glass, hoping that no one would notice that he did not know how to drink. With a quick gesture he lifted the glass to his lips and drained it in one swallow, struggling to keep a straight face against the sour sting of the alcohol.
“Do you want another one?” Fred asked Erskine, eyeing him curiously.
“Oh, no; thank you,” Erskine said. “I’ve had plenty.”
“And where’s my drink?” Mabel demanded, her head lolling.
“It’s on the way; it’s coming,” Eva told her, smiling.
“And give Erskine another drink,” Mabel said.
“I don’t want another, dear,” Erskine protested mildly.
“But you must have one for me, hunh, darling?” Mabel asked him in a begging tone.
“But, you know, I don’t drink—”
“I don’t mean drink,” Mabel said. “Just take one for me...Her face grew hard. “You’ve got to take one for me,” she insisted. She looked at him with a sudden, drunken belligerence. “Do you think I drink?”
Erskine pretended not to hear.
“You won’t answer? Tell me, Erskine,” she demanded. “Do you think I drink?” She blinked back her tears. “I know...Mrs. Westerman’s told you I drink...But I don’t. I came here tonight because I’m sad, alone, and nobody really gives a good goddamn about me. Maybe not even you...”
“You’re all right with us,” Gloria told her lightly.
Erskine wondered if they were all making fun of him; he looked at Gloria and she smiled and winked at him. It suddenly occurred to him that they didn’t really care how Mabel felt, that her state amused them more than anything else.
“You’re mad with me, aren’t you?” Mabel continued to hammer at him.
“No.”
“Yes; you are,” Mabel insisted. “I can feel it.” She hung her head. “I’m not good enough for you—”
“No; don’t say that.”
“I know it,” Mabel raged. She glared at him. “Say, what do you want with me, anyhow?”
“Aren’t you hungry?” Erskine tried to evade her.
“What do you want with me, I asked you?” Mabel asked, her eyes sleepy and swimming.
“Aren’t we having dinner together?” Erskine countered, seeking now to hurry the time of departure.
“Sure; sure...But we’ve got all night to eat in,” Mabel said.
The waiter brought her her drink.
“We’ll go after your drink, won’t we?” Erskine asked with a note of pleading.
“Yes; I know...You wanna go...” Mabel waved her hand aimlessly, floating it limply through the air. “Awright, go...Just leave me here, like that...” She snapped her fingers. “Go then; I’ll go to the dogs quietly...You don’t wanna run? Why? You’re free; go...No? Well, wait...wait, little man...If you don’t wanna wait, then go...”
“You’re drunk, Mabel,” Fred said, winking at Erskine.
“Did I say I wasn’t?” Mabel demanded. “And whose business is it if I’m drunk? I’m drunk because I’m blue—”
“All right,” Gloria said, “be blue, then—”
“I gotta right to be blue,” Mabel said proudly.
Erskine was tensely squeezing the fingers of his hands together, then he reached inside of his coat and touched the tips of the four pencils clipped to his pocket. Christ! His undershirt felt wet. The dense smoke was stinging his eyes and cutting his lungs. Disgust rolled through his veins. He longed to run from this, but could not. What puzzled him was that it was like a waking dream...A flash of intuition went through him; yes, this woman was objectifying some fantasy of his own mind, just as he had objectified a fantasy in the mind of poor little Tony...That was why Mabel held so powerful a hold over him. All right; all he had to do was rise and leave her and the dream would end. He blinked in confusion. But how could one act without knowing why one was acting? One simply couldn’t get up and walk away from a group of people without giving rational explanations. He was ambushed in a morass of emotions far too complicated for his mind to untangle; so he remained, feeling uneasy. Another drink was set before him; he stared at it, dismayed.
“Everybody runs over me,” Mabel was complaining.
“Why do you say that?” Erskine asked her.
“You too,” she maintained.
“Take it easy, honey,” Martin advised her.
Erskine suddenly lifted his glass and downed his drink. Mabel slapped him on the back and burst into a loud laugh.
“What’s the matter?” he asked her.
“How you drink!” she yelled. “You are funny! Really, you are!”
He wanted to slap her, but he joined uneasily in the laughter that went around the table. Mabel rested her head affect
ionately on his shoulder, then she jerked her body upright.
“All right. You wanna go, don’t you?” she asked.
“In a moment; finish your drink,” Erskine said.
“Naw. You wanna go. Awright...Let’s go.”
“Mabel,” Erskine remonstrated, “let me pay for our drinks!”
“The drinks are on me, old man,” Fred said.
“I shouldn’t let you do that,” Erskine said.
Erskine noticed that they all seemed fond of Mabel, but in a detached, impersonal sort of way. Before he came he had had the idea that he’d find some man hellbent for her body, but this loose, almost neutral atmosphere soothed him as much as it puzzled him.
Mabel stood, swaying drunkenly, her lips set in lines of sullen anger. Fred rose and Mabel squeezed past him and Erskine followed.
“Good night, everybody,” he called self-consciously.
They smiled, waved, and said good night. Mabel now came toward him, her eyes directly on his face, her body veering uncertainly. He caught her arm and led her toward the door. A spot on his back seemed to burn red hot as he imagined many eyes staring at him; he yearned to turn and look, but dared not. On the sidewalk, he searched for a taxi, feeling Mabel’s arm unsteady under the pressure of his hand.
“You didn’t like my friends,” she said.
He did not answer.
“Did you?” she insisted.
“I don’t know, Mabel,” he said. “How can I tell? I hardly know them—”
“You don’t like ‘em,” she said with flat, drunken obstinacy. “I could feel it.”
“I doubt if I’ve any feelings about them one way or the other,” he lied cautiously.
“So, you’re a snob, hunh?” she cut at him.
“Taxi!” he yelled.
“All right. You didn’t like ‘em...But they re damn good friends of mine, see?” she said.
“I understand,” he said.
“You don’t understand,” she contradicted him.
A taxi swerved to the curb and they stepped in.
“Chinatown, Mott Street,” Erskine told the driver.
“They don’t know Tony’s dead,” she said. “They don’t even know I’ve got a son...had a son...Poor Tony! He’s gone...”
Erskine was stunned.
“You never told them you had a son?”
“No”
“Why?”
“Why should I? It’s none of their damned business, is it?”
Erskine could not answer that. Somehow it pleased him; it meant that she was really kind of pure. She kept the sacred part of her free from the profane, he tried to tell himself.
“Then, they’re really not friends of yours, are they?”
“Sure they are,” she said stoutly. “They’d do anything for me.”
“But they don’t know anything about you and you don’t tell them anything—”
“I keep my life to myself,” she said. “They don’t tell me their personal lives.”
“Oh, then they’re just pals,” he said.
Again he felt that she belonged to him. But she should not drink so...
“Is a Chinese restaurant all right with you?” he asked her.
“I don’t care,” she said, closing her eyes and leaning back in the taxi, her wan face an image of bleakness. Then, suddenly, she leaned forward and opened her eyes, staring downward at her feet.
“I’m no good, Erskine,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“We won’t get along,” she said. Tears began to well in her eyes. “Let’s be honest. Of course, I want to marry, but I’m no fool. I’m not for you—”
“Why do you say that?”
“You won’t like me. You’re lonely. You’re retired. I just excite you; that’s all.” She sighed. “It’ll pass...”
“But don’t you want somebody to be excited about you?” he asked.
“Yes. But not in the way you are—”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“I don’t know.” She shot him a glance. “I didn’t say anything was wrong with you.”
“No; no,” he insisted in a sudden frenzy, “tell me, what’s wrong!”
She stared at him. He saw a wisdom in her eyes that frightened him.
“Do you really want me?” she asked him slowly.
He winced when she put it in words like that; it offended him, made him feel that she was weighing him and finding him wanting.
“Yes,” he said simply, but in the moment of his saying it, he felt that she had begun to recede from him again.
“Then why didn’t you take me?” she asked him directly.
He was aghast. His projected emotions drained suddenly from her and she was a strange woman, a hostile one. So, that was why she had had that Mona Lisa smile on her face when he had left her at her door this afternoon...
“Why didn’t you?” she kept after him.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. She was beginning to seem like an enemy. Hate for her was coming to the surface again.
“You don’t want me,” she said.
“That depends—”
“On what?”
“On the kind of a person you want to be”
“You mean, on the kind of person I am—”
“No; no! It’s what you want to be that counts.”
“And how do you want me to be?” she demanded harshly.
‘“You could try to make people around you happy—”
“I do.”
“Do you?”
“I try. Yes; I do; in my way.”
“And what’s your way?”
“I’m afraid that my way’s not your way, Erskine,” she said.
“And what’s your way?” he kept doggedly at her.
“I’m a down-to-earth person. That’s the way I am and I don’t give a damn—”
“Do you realize that I’ve told you that I love you, that I want to marry you?”
‘“Yes. That’s the strange part about it.” She frowned.
“What’s so strange about it? Tell me.”
“I don’t know. Oh, hell! Don’t bother me...!”
“Are you always like this?”
“I’m drunk. Now, I’m drunk. But I’m not always drunk.”
There rose in Erskine’s mind the scene of Tony’s fear on the sidewalk, Tony’s dropping his “fighting” planes, Tony’s running and sobbing...
“Did Tony ever see you drunk?” he asked her; his eyes were tense and hot.
For a split second she was sober; she turned and looked at him, then she burst into a loud and long laugh.
‘“What’s so funny?” he asked; his teeth were on edge.
“You! This afternoon...When you were angry with me...You reminded me so much of Tony...You and Tony...” She leaned toward him and touched his face. “You need a mother...” Then she was sad. She covered her face with her hands in a gesture of convulsive grief. “Tony...Tony...” She wept. “Tony...I want my baby...Oh, Tony...”
He put his arm about her and held her close. She wept all the way to Mott Street. Erskine did not know what to think or feel.
They picked and pecked at the Chinese dinner almost in silence, for neither of them was really hungry. To Erskine, Mabel was far off, almost objective, yet fatally linked to him. He felt cold, detached; and yet he could not tell or know how much of what he felt about her stemmed from his own feelings being projected out upon her or how much was being derived from her sheer womanness...
“I’m tired,” Mabel said.
“I’ll take you home,” he said.
In the taxi Mabel sulked. Erskine sat waiting for her to apologize for her behavior.
“What’re you thinking, Erskine?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he lied.
“I know. You’re angry with me.”
“No.”
“You are. You just don’t want to admit it. Hell, I shouldn’t have let you say what you did to me!”
“You regr
et it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We’re too different. I’m not for you. I’m nothing, nobody.”
It touched him; she was veering close to him again, demeaning herself, surrendering her independence and throwing herself upon his judgment. She was pliant, raw stuff of feminine material which he could mold and exalt as he pleased.
“Mabel, we must get to know each other more and—”
“No. The more you know of me, the less you’ll like me.
“Not necessarily.”
When they were in front of her apartment door, Mabel gave him her key and, just as he turned the key in the lock, Mabel’s phone rang. She rushed breathlessly forward and Erskine stood staring at her, again cut loose from her...Yes; some man was phoning her...
“Just a sec, dear,” Mabel called to him as she picked up the receiver.
Erskine watched Mabel’s face light up; her heavy manner changed to one of light-heartedness.
“...but I’ve been busy, Kent,” Mable was explaining.
“...”
“No; I can’t. Tomorrow afternoon I’m busy—”
“...”
“You did! What is it? A Buick?”
“...”
“Oh, I’d love it, Kent!”
“...”
“But not tonight.”
“...”
“Call me next week, hunh, Kent?”
“...”
“You’re silly, Kent!”
Mabel giggled. Erskine’s mind was made up. He’d not even wait to say good night or goodbye. The whole thing was ridiculous, degrading...Just as he went out of the door, he glanced back and saw Mabel waving her hand at him, indicating that she wanted him to remain, but he went resolutely out. This was the end. He knew exactly what to do to terminate this farce.
In his living room, he placed a sheet of his personal stationery on his desk, took out his fountain pen, and wrote in a clear, flowing hand:
Dear Mabel:
You must realize now, as surely as I do, that what has happened between us is a sad mistake. This entire thing is a foolish case of mistaken identity and, if we let it continue, it will only mean misery for the both of us. Upon myself I willingly take the full blame, and I only beg, with all my heart, your indulgence and forgiveness. I freely confess that I was wrong in my hot-headed scolding of you; I had no right to do it. It was indefensible on my part. But I ask you to understand under what stress of emotion I was when I did it. Mabel, it might just be that you see and know all of this much more clearly than I do. In fact, from what you said to me tonight, I think you do. So, please try to forget and forgive what I was impulsive enough to say to you this afternoon.
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