by James Jones
“Who the hell do they think they’re bullshitting?” Harry said the instant the door closed. He was grinning. We went back into the smoke-fouled living room.
For a moment Harry stood and looked at it. “Jesus!” he said suddenly. He slapped himself on both thighs. Then he went up on his toes, stretching himself to his full height in the dark narrow-cut suit, and spread his arms above his head. Momentarily he looked like some kind of witch’s demon. There was in it such force, such a power of long-sat-upon, painfully contained energy and exuberance, that I half expected to see sparks crackle in streams from his spatulate fingers.
“Jesus!” he said again, and threw himself down in an overstuffed armchair like a sack of old arms and legs. “I’ve been waiting for a shot like that for over a year. Ever since those Italians hit the market with their product.”
He wriggled in the chair. “I’ve been waiting longer! Five years at least. To make that kind of a Western. But nobody in America had the guts to go against the taboos and try it.” He gathered himself and got to his feet.
“Come on. Let’s go upstairs. Up to my office. We need to cool out, you and me. Over a bottle of Scotch. I feel like I’ve just gone fifteen rounds.”
He led us out. On the dimly lit exterior stairs of the building he turned back, grinning with his hatchet-face in the faint light, and said, “You have to play poker with them. It’s almost a ritual. That’s just the way it is in this business.”
He climbed on, and his voice continued, coming back over his shoulder in the pale, just barely sufficient light of the minuterie. “If you ever let them know that you want it, they’ll kill you. If they even get any idea at all that you’re in fact aching to do it, they’ll shit all over you all down the line. They’ll stick a knife as big as Jim Bowie’s up your ass and make you dance the hoe-down.”
The keys jingled in his jacket pocket as he withdrew them. He reached inside and snapped on the overhead light and led us in. By the time I was inside and had shut the door, he was already sitting tilted back in the big black leather swivel chair behind his antique wooden desk. “You just can’t level with them,” he said. “Anyway, I’m not sure I want to go down to Spain to work that long really. I’m not sure I want to be away from Louisa that long.”
The desk and the Louis Treize table set at right angles to it were covered with manuscript and stacks of research materials. Beside the chair stood his IBM electric on a rollered typing table. Beside that stood a tiered paper, carbon and notebook holder on rollers. I sat down on one of the two middle-height Louis Treize armchairs across from the desk.
“I’m not at all sure I want to be away from Louisa that long,” Harry said. He got up and moved toward the bar for whisky, Perrier, glasses and ice. I looked around. Again.
“Anyway, it’s already been done now, in Italy,” he said from behind the bar. “It’s not the same as if I would be doing it for the first time.” I didn’t answer.
Harry’s studio was such a massive projection of Harry’s personality that it was almost a caricature, or something made up by a screenwriter of one of Harry’s own American he-man love-story films. On one wall hung a Watney-Mann “Red Barrel” dartboard in its Watney-Mann cabinet identical to the one in any London pub; and on the floor under it stretched the authentic Watney-Mann rubber mat with its eight-foot and nine-foot marks. On another hung Harry’s collection of Western arms and cartridges, Bowie knives, Indian lances, bows and tomahawks. In a corner leaned six or seven modern shotguns, and three modern fiberglass bows, unstrung.
Harry had taken over three maids’ rooms on the top floor of the building up under the roof, back when he leased the apartment, and by knocking out portions of the walls between had made them into one studio. So he had more than four walls under his slanting ceiling; he had about seven. It had its own complete kitchenette, and its own ample bathroom. Half of one of the small rooms had been covered with a sort of raised dais a foot-and-a-half high covered in some kind of a heavy blue felt material, and on this for a bed was a made-up double mattress with a reading lamp over it, leaving plenty of space on the dais for books, ashtrays, a tray of drinks, and a chess board. A small fireplace had been built to serve both the dais area and Harry’s black chair behind the desk. It had an extremely cozy air, with its slanting ceilings and small windows, and made me think of nothing so much as a secret pied-à-terre place of assignation to bring a girl. Harry had the only set of keys in the household, which once in a while he would give to the one maid he allowed in to clean it. Nobody else was allowed in it. And in all the years I had known him, I had only been invited up there three or four times.
One entire long wall had been completely covered in bookshelves, about a quarter of which had locked glass windows in front of them and housed Harry’s famous pornography collection. Another shorter one had cabinets built against it, which stored all Harry’s charts and carried on its top under its special lamp all his navigational tools and his Mixter and Bowditch. Though Harry had never owned a yacht that I know of. A third wall was hung with the plaques and framed certificates and citations of his life, and other memorabilia. Harry called this his Shit Wall. There were things like his Life Memberships in the National Rifle Association and National Skeet Association, his citations from the Screen Writers Guild for Academy Award Nominations. There were his framed Silver Star and Bronze Star citations from the war, a certificate making him an admiral in the Great Navy of the State of Nebraska some fan had sent him, some newspaper clippings, a menu signed by himself, Irwin Shaw and William Styron from the South of France, several poker hands, a framed tie from a club he had become a member of, a framed key from the Chief Purser of the old Liberté which would let him into First Class, framed covers of Newsweek or Time with the portraits of friends who had made it, and a framed photo of some anonymous girl’s bare behind all bent over cunningly so that nothing shocking really showed except her pubic hair peeking through under. Harry would never say who she was except that she was a famous movie star he had known.
In the other corners around not counting the shotgun corner were scattered a couple of scope-mounted hunting rifles; his skis, his poles, and his boots in their carrying rack; his Aqualung tanks and regulators; several pairs of different types of crutches and some canes; and near the bar was a folding table-like thing called an Adams Trainer Exerciser. About the only thing missing was a Ping-Pong table. But there wasn’t room for one.
“No, I’m not at all sure I want to be away from Louisa that long,” he said, coming back from the bar with a tray, and sat back down in the tall-backed black leather swivel chair.
“You could take her with you,” I said.
He looked at me with surprise. “I could, couldn’t I?”
“Install her in Madrid.”
“Except there’s nothing to do in Madrid. She’d be bored. I’d be out at the studio all the time, or out on location.”
“Shopping.”
“There’s nothing to shop for in Madrid. Maybe some of those knitted Spanish rugs is about all.”
“Museums. She’s never seen the Prado. Has she?”
“That’s true,” he said thoughtfully. He rocked himself in the black chair several times. “That’s true.”
“She’d love it,” I said.
“Maybe,” Harry mused, “maybe. Well, I sure don’t feel like going without her,” he said. Then he grinned, to make sure I knew what he meant. I think he was still feeling particularly high after his session with the two producers.
I took a drink, then left my nose in my glass and studied the ice in there. Harry and I had never really talked openly about sex—except for what was implied when he nudged me and smiled or nodded imperceptibly over some especially well-endowed girl at a party, or who would pass by us in the street. I did not particularly want it to begin now. And I certainly did not want it to start with something about Louisa.
At the desk Harry swung himself around toward the Watney-Mann dartboard and looked at it a moment. Then he
swung back, and placed the soles of his black short-boots on the desk’s edge, jackknifing his long body. His eyes had become brilliant, and curiously shallow, like jewels. The leathery soles of his shoes stared me in the face, framing his head. This was grinning at me in a super-diffident way, which at the same time was oddly conceited and quite proud. I realized I was on the brink of some revelation.
Harry said from between his feet, “You see, I haven’t slept with another woman except Louisa for six years. Not since McKenna was born. Not since she was conceived, in fact.” He peered at me between his boots as if I were expected to react to this in some way.
I on the other hand did not know what to say to this statement, so I said nothing.
Harry shifted his position to stretch out his long legs, and crossed his ankles on a corner of the desk while he lit a cigar. He poured more straight whisky into his glass. “You may not know it, but I used to be quite a rounder. I was quite a womanizer at one time. Before McKenna. For quite a long time. All my life, in fact. You probably never guessed that.” He paused.
I still did not know what to say, so I coughed—but politely—to show my continuing interest. I had a hunch he would continue anyhow, whatever I did. I somehow knew somewhere inside myself that at this point nothing was going to stop him. I also knew, to give Harry his due, that in fact in that six years since McKenna Harry had spent several quite long periods away from home, working in Rome or in London.
With his jewelly eyes, Harry said, “I don’t think I’m inordinately attractive to women. I mean, no more than some other. So I don’t take credit. But I’ve had more cunt in my time than most fellas ever get. Twice more, probably. I’ve just about done them all. I’ve fucked the great and the near-great.” He paused and grinned diffidently at me. “You never even imagined that about me, I suppose.”
It was not quite a question, but it almost was. And I felt I was expected to answer. Since I couldn’t, I leaned forward suddenly and held out my glass, to dissipate his attention; and he poured for me, straight whisky, from the bottle on the tray among the manuscripts. I put in the Perrier myself.
Harry said, “I’ve found, in general, that most girls will put it out, and think nothing very much about giving a little bit of it away, if it’s to their interest. After all, there’s always more of it left. And girls learn that, fast. And they do like writers, especially script-writers. So I don’t take credit.”
I cleared my throat, cautiously. I felt we were fast reaching the point where I must answer with something. “I think that’s pretty damned magnanimous of you to say so, Harry,” I said; and peered again down at my ice, which was shrinking.
He waved his hand, as if shooing an irksome fly. “Anyway, Louisa came to me about it. About my other women. Well, I was flabbergasted. I had no idea that that meant anything to Louisa. Hell, I didn’t even know she was upset about it. But she was. Upset, and mad. Shi-it, was she mad! She wanted to divorce me. She was going to leave me. She wanted to take Hill and go back to America. To her family.
“Some sense of her own inadequacy, you see. She felt she had failed as a wife. She felt she alone wasn’t enough for me. She couldn’t satisfy me enough to keep me at home. She felt I didn’t love her. Or no longer loved her. Or, had never loved her. All that stuff, you know.
“—All of which, of course, was absolutely untrue.
“I don’t mind at all telling somebody close like you, Jack, that Louisa has always been more than adequate in the bed with me. She’s basically a real woman, which means she’s basically a masochist-type. She likes to have things done to her, instead of taking the initiative herself. Which is what a woman ought to be. Sexually, she’s always been adequate, more than adequate, for me. We’re well-matched like that.”
“That’s nice,” I murmured, then felt it wasn’t adequate. “Nice to hear, I mean.” It’s strange how things which have terrified you so in your imagination, when they actually come to pass, are digested so easily, and with such dispatch.
He only made a kind of gesture with his cigar. “How do you explain to a woman that you can love her and adore her and still want to fuck around a little on the side?—especially when it’s all right there waiting for you, practically, so to speak? All ready to fall back down on its back and open it up wide for you?
“Well, I didn’t try to tell her that it just was different with men. That it’s a kind of adventure. What was the point? You couldn’t talk to her. So I made her a solemn promise instead. That night. And, that night, as you may have guessed by now, was the night McKenna was conceived. She wasn’t anticipated or planned for. But I know that happens with lots of people. It’s happened with lots of my friends. I call them Reconciliation Babies. Some deep emotional spark down deep inside them somewhere makes contact and catches hold and sticks.
“And I haven’t laid a glove on another broad since.” He moved in the chair.
“But wasn’t that miraculous? That she should come to me like that? I mean, she didn’t have to. She could just have taken Hill and left, and left me a letter. Or not even left me any note at all! And where would I have been then? No, I think that part was marvelous.”
“Yes,” I said from deep within the open mouth of my glass. “That part was certainly marvelous. But then, she’s a marvelous woman, Louisa.”
“She sure is, and I don’t mind telling you that I’ve had several pretty long hard dry spells because of that solemn promise, since then,” Harry said. “That’s why I’m not so very hot on going down to Madrid for this job without her.”
Such self-centeredness as that demands a certain respect. He reached for the bottle. I quickly held out my glass. It had been a brand-new bottle when he got it from the bar. But I felt I needed a drink. I felt dishonest. But I did not quite see how I could tell him now, six years after, about my share in his reconciliation with his wife—and by extension, in the conception of his daughter. It was too personal. It was too—intimate. The very idea embarrassed me. And yet some devilish part of me was enjoying having my secret with Louisa, even if she wouldn’t acknowledge it. At that moment, I hated the whole evening.
Harry poured himself more than half a tumblerful of straight Scotch, and poured almost as much for me, before I stopped him. He took very little Perrier. I took more. I never was able to drink and keep up with Harry drink-for-drink, though I’m a serious drinker. The studio kitchen had its own refrigerator and ice, and Harry knocked some loose. Then when he sat back down in the big black leather chair and put his feet back up on the desk corner, I realized he wasn’t finished.
I was pretty well worn-out emotionally, and I didn’t want to hear any more. The thing I was most terrified of hearing—his revelations about his sexual life with Louisa—had come and gone rather placidly, without causing any earthquakes or seismographic oscillations, and I thought that was enough. Of course, he had not been very graphic. But I still thought it was enough. But I apparently did not have any way of communicating this to Harry; or if I did, it was not getting through to him. For whatever reasons of his own, Harry had gone beyond receiving any signals from me.
I’m convinced that the emotional tensions of the evening with the two producers were the initial cause of it. Add to that all the brandy and then all that Scotch, and those ungodly strong cigars. Top it off with the morbid speculations about having to go to Madrid for a long period without Louisa which the conversation had called forth, and you had a Harry Gallagher in a nervous fit of irresponsible soul-searching, with me as the captive audience.
Other people’s intimate sexual disclosures have always made me nervous. Several times in my life I have been trapped and made the victim for such soul-searching declarations by men I knew, and every time it has resulted in the loss of a friendship. The next time they see you the eyebrows go up and the eyes get flat and funny, and an impenetrable wall of plastic descends. Harry remains the sole exception to this rule, but I didn’t know that then. And I was made more unhappy by having been forced to be dishonest
with him.
“Of course, there’s more to the whole story than that, naturally,” was the way he began. O, foreboding sentence of a miserable night in store! How many times have I heard you? And how many times have you portended spiritual bad digestion to come?
He always was a very highly sexed individual, Harry proceeded to tell me. Even back in his earliest young youth, and as far back as he could remember. He didn’t know why exactly. It was just there. He had an abiding love for the female body, both in toto and altogether in its form (he said) and in all its details, down to its tiniest parts. And it didn’t matter much who inhabited it. He liked female bodies. He liked to look at them and touch them and smell them, and study them inside and out, in the same way that other people like to find out what is between the covers of a book. He collected women—in the same way other people collect books. And he had to admit to me he saw absolutely nothing wrong with this in any way. That was why he honestly, truly could not see what had upset Louisa so.
Of course, now he understood that it was some tremendous, baby-girllike insecurity of her own (she had, incidentally, always been a great adorer of her father: for example). And, of course, now all that was over for him now.
But it was a phenomenon he had noted (over the years; talking) in a great many American men. They were all of them—or a great, great many; a very high percentage—absolutely cunt-struck. They were almost all, like himself, completely cunt-oriented.
I sat nursing my drink and nodding, without looking up too often, and watched the level of my glass descend too fast, despite the Perrier I kept adding to it. I was sure that my ears were burning fiery red.