by James Jones
Frank puffed on his cigar and sipped his drink and looked, but he would not have recognized a movie star if it was one. “I really think it is,” Geneve whispered. It tickled him. They planned to go on to the Chez Paree after dinner.
But it was during dinner that Geneve brought Agnes up again, and that he consequently got drunk again. He did not remember going to the Chez Paree, but Geneve told him later that they had gone.
Perhaps it was because she felt more secure there in the Pump Room, or perhaps it was because she had had several martinis, but she had suddenly brought Agnes up again and insisted on talking about it, this time more forcefully.
“I don’t know what you’re going to do about it,” she said. “But you’re going to have to stop her. If you want to keep on having a love affair with me.” It was, openly and plainly, an ultimatum.
“I’ll try,” he said uneasily. “But I don’t know what I can do. After all, she is my wife you know, and that makes it a problem.”
“Well, she certainly doesn’t act like it,” Geneve said. “She sounds more like she thought she was your mistress.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Frank said, and signaled the waiter that he wanted another martini, a double. He wanted to shake his ears, as if that would stop the unceasing racket that was going into them.
“I want to tell you something,” Geneve said. “I’ve spent a long time on Dotty Callter. She’s made a lot of money on that shop, and she’s wants to retire soon and go to Florida and have some fun. And she wants me to manage the store for her. Not only that, she’s childless you know. If anything should ever happen to her, who do you think stands to inherit the store and the money?”
“You,” Frank said. He finished his double martini and ordered another.
“That’s right,” Geneve said. “Do you think I’m going to jeopardize that? For you or anybody? I won’t jeopardize that. I can’t.”
“You better get her to put it in writin.”
“Do you think I’m a fool?” Geneve said. “She changed her will last year. Dotty’s a smart businessman. She knows what would happen; her relatives have hated her ever since she got her divorce. It’s an ironbound will.”
“That’s all right then,” Frank said. “You got nothin to worry about.”
“Oh yes, I have,” Geneve disagreed. “Dotty and I see things a lot alike. Dotty’s no prude. I’ve been on more than one party with Dotty in New York, and Cincinnati, and Chicago.”
“Were there any women in on any of those parties?” Frank asked suddenly.
Geneve looked at him a long moment. “That’s none of your business,” she said, but her eyes lit up warmly at him. They were bright from drinking.
“I just wondered,” he said, fingering his glass and wondering why he had asked. The thought excited him.
Geneve smiled. “The point I’m making is, Dotty wouldn’t hesitate a second to fire me, and to cut me off in her will, if there was any scandal. And I wouldn’t blame her. Scandals just aren’t good for business. It’s sad, but it’s true.”
“Don’t I know,” Frank said, thinking of the Old Man, and of Dave. He looked at his food and decided to order another double martini instead. He could see the end. He would be meeting her someday at the Country Club dances, and they’d smile and be friends. Perhaps there would even be a certain pleasure in their secrecy as they looked at each other. Of course, he could always fire Al. But that would only make enemies of both of them. And to the town, which already knew it all anyway, it would only be an open gesture of malice. Besides, he had gotten to be very fond of Al. Of course, Al was no match for his wife—but then, he thought bitterly, few men are. The last thing he remembered was paying the check and giving the waiter a very generous tip.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on one of the beds in her room, his head over the side, retching into a bath towel which Geneve in her dressing gown was anxiously holding for him.
He continued to retch, abstractedly, as if he were standing off somewhere watching himself, while his mind swam around trying to find out where it was. He noted that there was next to nothing on the towel, only a few gobby gray strings of mucus. He also noted that it was daylight outside.
“Is it morning?” he mumbled through the thick desire to vomit, and fell to retching again, uncontrollably, into the towel she held for him although nothing came up but spittle. Over the loud rasping of his own throat in his ears, he could hear her answer, her voice anxious:
“Morning! It’s afternoon. And you’ve been this way since five o’clock this morning.”
The retching continued for what seemed an endless time, his stomach muscles convulsed and aching, then finally it ceased and he rolled over and lay back exhausted, feeling stupefied. Under the stupefaction, he felt scared.
“What’s the matter with me?”
“I don’t know,” Geneve said. “You’re sick. You keep trying to vomit, but nothing comes up now except this mucus.” She laid the towel down on the floor. “Your face is as red as fire.”
Fright spread through him as full awareness gradually returned. “I’ve heard of fellows havin the dry heaves,” he said. “But I’ve never had them. I guess that’s what I’ve got.”
“I’ve never seen a man so drunk in his life and still stay on his feet,” Geneve said. “I’ve been trying to get you to talk for hours. But all you’d do was lay there and throw up. Or try to. And just mumble. I was afraid you were going to die in my room,” she said nervously.
Frank lay still, breathing heavily. His stomach muscles ached as if they had been beaten.
“Do you feel all right now?” she said.
“How the hell do I know?” he said, anger rising over the stupefaction. “No, I don’t feel all right. I feel sick.” He could feel it coming on him again, and tried to hold it back down.
Geneve began suddenly to talk, almost babblingly. It had started at the Chez Paree. He was terribly drunk, and still drinking. When they closed the joint, she had got him outside and into the cab, where he had started vomiting, almost all the way back to the hotel.
“I didn’t know a stomach could hold so much,” Geneve laughed nervously.
“Why didn’t you take me to my room?” Frank said through the rising desire to retch.
“I was afraid you’d die. Every time you’d try to bring up, your face would get full of blood and red as fire. So I brought you here.” And there, she said, they had remained—all night and until now, the next afternoon.
In the midst of her rush of talk, he could no longer control his throat and he rolled over and began to retch again into the towel, which she held for him, and heard no more.
“Do you want me to call the hotel doctor?” Geneve said anxiously, after he lay back exhausted.
“No,” he said thickly. “No, no. Not while I’m in your room. I’ll be all right.”
“I know you want to be secret,” she said, “but it may be something dangerous. You might die. The hotel people won’t say anything. Besides, they won’t know who we are.”
“I said I’ll be all right,” Frank said. “Really,” he insisted, wondering how long it would last, and if he would die.
It lasted two more days. He did not die. Several times he almost wished he could, though. The first day, Geneve did not even leave the room. He felt a warm affection for her, when he was capable of feeling anything, even though he knew she was thinking more about her own reputation than she was about his health. The next day, she went out to do the rest of her buying for Dotty’s stock.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said when she came back. “I’ve already stayed longer than I was supposed to.”
“Christ,” he said, “I can’t go home lookin like this.” He had lost around ten pounds. And he was very weak. His hands shook noticeably. Even his mouth trembled. His eyes were bloodshot from so much retching.
“You go on home by yourself,” Frank said. “I’ll stay on another day and eat and rest up, and then drive on home.”
“It’s okay,” he said, wishing only that she would shut up, and leave him alone. “I’m better, and you’ve got to get back home.”
“I’ll leave tomorrow then,” she said, looking perhaps a little relieved.
That night she went out for dinner alone. It was very late when she got in, and she was three fourths tight, and her party dress was rumpled and her lipstick smeared. She giggled as she asked him how he was and slipped into the other bed. Frank lay awake and watched her after she had gone to sleep, feeling very melancholy. He could already see those Country Club dances clearly in his mind that someday he would meet her at. In the morning she left, and he moved back into his own room.
“When will I see you?” Geneve said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll call you at the store, after I get home.”
“All right,” she said although it was contrary to their policy, “you do that. And the first chance I get to go out of town, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay,” he said.
The drive home was terrible. He was still weak and pretty shaky, and the nearer he got to Parkman, the higher the panic in him rose, like water poured slowly into a beaker. Agnes would spout green apple butter, when she saw him. He made a mental note to ask Doc Cost what the hell it was had happened. But after he got home, he got so involved with Dave and getting the taxi service running that he did not get around to doing it, and besides he was ashamed. When he did get around to asking Doc, it was a week later, and he did it in a roundabout way, pretending that it was some third person he was asking about. It’s acute gastritis, Doc diagnosed, an acute inflammation of the stomach walls, usually from too much alcohol over a period of time, you better tell your friend to lay off the liquor—at least as much as he can, Doc who drank a lot himself amended, it could kill a man, though it doesn’t very often.
But that was a week later.
When he got home that day, and saw that Agnes’s car was there, the panic beaker was finally full and even sloshing a little bit over the sides. He sat in the car a long minute and got hold of himself, and shakily opened the door and went inside.
Agnes was in the utility room.
“Great God!” she said, coming into the kitchen. “What on earth has happened to you?”
“Oh, nothing,” Frank said, getting a drink of water from the kitchen tap. “A bunch of the boys got a little drunk last night, and I’m a little hung over, that’s all.”
Agnes looked at him a long moment and then went back into the utility room. “You oughtn’t to drink so much, Frank,” she said angrily.
“I know it,” he said. “I’m seriously thinkin of quittin altogether.”
He thought he had handled that pretty well.
Chapter 19
AS A MATTER OF FACT, Frank had not handled anything. He had done no better and no worse than he usually did, which was to be reasonably adequate, under the circumstances.
The truth was, Agnes had let him off the hook. She had had him red-handed, tied and basted, and ready to put on the spit, and she had let him off the hook. She had felt sorry for him.
Agnes Marie Hirsh (Herschmidt), née Towns, had had only to look at her husband to know that she had won. She had enough proof on him to burn him down to the ground or hang him with his own rope, but she did not use it. There were times when you could push a man only so far, and this was one of them. So instead, she filed it away with the rest for use at some future date when it would be more good to her than now. Now she did not need it. She did not want to confront him and leave him, she wanted only to keep him.
Looking at him standing there, she could tell he had been pretty sick. She could also tell by the smug look on his face just exactly what he was thinking: that he had handled it; and this made her angry. But when he repeated that he was pretty hung over, and then said he thought he would lay down for a while, she let him go. It was easy to see he had not had just an ordinary hangover, but she did not say anything. He obviously did not want her to know. And anyway it was good enough for him. She had been sick herself while he was gone.
She really did feel sorry for him. He was so transparent, when he thought he was being so smart. And he didn’t know the first thing about women. He apparently had no idea that Geneve Lowe was merely using him for what she could get out of him for herself and her husband. He was probably quite convinced she was madly in love with him, the poor simp. Until today, Agnes had never been sure that she would win; but it was easy to see something had happened in Chicago. Agnes thought she knew what it was. And it had nothing to do with her proof she had collected: That was another plan.
This proof that she had collected was her ace in the hole so to speak. Whether it would have stood up in a court of law, Agnes didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. It was evidence that would stand up with Frank Hirsh, and that was all she cared about. She knew him well enough—she ought to! after all these years of it—to know that once she proved to him with incontrovertible evidence, material evidence, that he was having a love affair, and backed him into a corner where he could not worm out but had to admit it to her, then he would drop the love affair like he was holding a hot potato. And lick his burned fingers and look guilty. So she had done it, had fixed it all up; and as soon as she had completed it, she had gotten sick as she always did.
That was one of the reasons she always kept putting off doing it for so long. It always made her sick. And sometimes he got over them—the minor ones—by himself, without her having to step in. But this time, no.
The day after Frank left, she had driven to Terre Haute on a shopping expedition. While she was there, she had suddenly decided to go into Miller’s Jewelry to look at some imported glass she had been meaning to look at. Jeff Miller had waited on her himself. She was shocked. Obviously, Jeff could not be in Hammond if he was in Terre Haute waiting on her. She had said nothing, and bought several pieces of the glass and paid cash. When she got home, she did not unwrap it but put it away in her closet. The dated carbon of the sales slip was inside. It gave her a strange sense of comfort to know it was all there on the shelf. It had all been the strangest coincidence; God must have been looking after her.
Then, the next day, she had gone down to Dotty Callter’s Mode Shop because there was a lingerie sale on. She had gone at a time when Geneve Lowe would be there because Geneve always waited on her, Frank being Al’s boss. Geneve, however, was not there. Dotty herself waited on her. Dotty did not mention Geneve was on a buying trip to Chicago. Dotty did not mention Geneve at all. She had bought some sale lingerie, and two of their very best slips and did not say anything, and had it charged. It would come in on the first of the month, to Frank, with the dated sales slip, when the account was rendered.
And when it did, she would have the glass. If she decided to wait that long. She did not expect to. She intended to break it open as soon as he got home. It was a shame it had to be like that. It was a shame she had to do it. But there it was.
So she had gone ahead and done it, she thought, knowing she would get sick, and then had gone ahead and gotten sick because thusly she would have two strings to her bow, would have another plan, the infallible one, if the first plan should have failed—
But the moment she had seen him come into the kitchen, she had known the first plan, which was the gossip she had started among her friends, had not failed, had only been slow in starting.
She would not need the other plan—the infallible one—now, but she did not begrudge the energy spent on it. She anticipated ahead like any good field commander, that before it was all over, before the last shot was fired, she would probably need to bring in her reserves. This was the first time since it had started that she had known for sure she had won. The mopping up might take a while yet, but she had won. She had never been sure before.
Contrary to what Geneve Lowe had said to Frank, Agnes was not without pride.
She had thought a long time before deciding to embark upon a planned campaign of gossip among her friends. She did not relish at all the idea of weeping on her friends’ shoulders and confiding to them that her husband was having an affair with Geneve Lowe and what had she ought to do? But she also knew that it was the best way—if not the only way—to get at Geneve Lowe: In her still vulnerable position with Dotty Callter, she could simply not afford talk like that. It had hurt her pride terribly, to make those weeping visits—carefully spaced over a period of eight weeks: ten friends; eight weeks. Not only did it hurt her pride, it made her feel as though she had no integrity.
She did not know why it always made her sick. She supposed it must be because it was so embarrassing, and because in a way it was like admitting that the only way she could keep her husband from sleeping with other women was by force. She didn’t care if he never slept with her again, sex had always been a vastly overrated pastime, she thought, her face burning with indignation, but she would be goddamned to hell if he was going to go around sleeping with other women.
Again, Agnes felt her face burning with indignation: She did not care if she got sick, and stayed sick—from now until Doomsday—as long as she was married to him. Frank Hirsh was not going to step out on her with other women, not for very long anyway. After all, as a wife, she had some rights.
She should have more rights than most. She wasn’t so much a wife as a partner. When her father died unexpectedly, leaving her as his only heir, she had signed the store over to Frank, lock, stock, and barrel. Had he left anything to Frank, who worked for him? He had not! She had not asked for any recompense, had not expected any; and she had not gotten any. That entitled her to something. Of course, it had only been a cheap notion store then, in danger of being run out of business by Woolworth’s, and everything that had been done with it had been done by Frank. She was willing to admit that. It had been his idea to convert to a jewelry store. Practically everything had been his idea. Nevertheless, he could not have done it without her and her store because he could have worked all his life and never made enough money to buy one. He owed her something. If not love, then at the very least, loyalty. And she intended to have it—whether collecting it made her sick or not.