54
We spent three weeks in Atlantic City. We moved to the Towers Hotel and took a suite of three rooms on the thirteenth floor, with a terrace overlooking the ocean. We had our meals sent up to us by room service; Marianne had an aversion to hotel restaurants, or so she said. It cost her plenty; I don’t know how much because she paid each bill promptly in cash from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of money she carried around with her.
I bought her a little sterling-silver novelty bracelet at one of the souvenir shops that lined the boardwalk. It cost eleven dollars, and I had it inscribed: “To Marianne, with love, Frank.” I gave it to her one morning about three o’clock. We were on the terrace, getting the cool breeze from the ocean. She was wearing a light, flimsy negligee, and I had on a pair of shorts and was smoking a cigarette. I had just remembered my gift and had been looking for an opportunity to give it to her. So I had gone inside and brought it out.
I felt rather funny as I gave it to her. I hadn’t given very many gifts before, and I didn’t know just what to say as I handed it to her. “This is for you, Marianne,” I said awkwardly, holding it out toward her.
She seemed surprised and took it with a little gleeful sound. “Frank, it’s lovely,” she said, reading the inscription aloud, “To Marianne, with love, Frank.” She looked up at me and smiled. “It’s sweet—and an original saying too.”
I thought I could detect a faint note of sarcasm in her voice and I felt a little hurt. I spoke quietly. “It is original. I’ve never said and meant anything like that before.”
She reacted quickly to the sound in my voice. “Oh, darling, I didn’t mean it that way. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry. I do love it and I’ll wear it always. Please put it on.” She held out her arm.
I took the bracelet and fastened it on her wrist. She had a ring on her small finger; it had a diamond offset with two small rubies. It sparkled in the moonlight, and I felt funny as I fastened it awkwardly on her wrist. It looked so cheap in comparison with the daintily simple expensiveness of the ring. I cursed myself for buying it. It only accentuated the difference between us. When I got back to town, I promised myself, I would make some real dough and get her something that wouldn’t suffer by comparison with what she already had.
We went back to New York September 20th. I moved into her apartment, and after settling down for a few days, decided to go out and look for a job. Jobs were still hard to get, and I didn’t have very much luck the first few days.
She, meanwhile, was very busy. She had several jobs to do, and was in a constant state of energy and work and effervescence. When she was working she was an entirely different person. She would give me some money and chase me out of the house, telling me to go to a movie or someplace and not to come back until later. At first it was all new to me. The queen could do no wrong. I loved to watch her paint; she had such a curious air of concentration about her. Her head and eyes and body would appear tense and pointed toward her work. If I spoke to her she would answer in monosyllables or not at all, and very often would go about the studio as if I weren’t there. When she actually was painting, she would dab furiously at the painting and mutter curses under her breath if some effect was particularly difficult to get, and blotches of paint would appear on her face and forehead from her hands as she lifted them to brush away her hair from her eyes.
But if a day went well and she was satisfied with her painting, she would appear at night sweet and loving with a sort of childish gaiety. She would joke, and we would drink champagne and I would make her some nice things to eat. I did most of the cooking, for she said she was a horrible cook and never could eat anything she herself prepared. And occasionally some of her friends would come in to visit—artists like herself, writers, men and women of a varying intellectual capacity that seemed to live in a world of their own. When I was introduced to them, they would look at me politely and inquire what I did. When they found out I was not one of them, so to speak, they would politely turn from me and ignore me and exclude me from their small talk, unless they wanted another drink, and then they would call me as if I were a servant.
But I was hopelessly, madly, crazily in love. The queen could do no wrong. The queen took me out shopping with her and spent about three hundred dollars on me for new clothes. I had suits and coats and shirts made to order. I wore underwear of an unaccustomed luxury and had silk pajamas. At first, I tried to get a job, and when there was a chance of getting one and I had come home all excited and told Marianne about it, she frowned and asked: “How much does it pay?”
“Nineteen a week,” I told her confidently.
“Only nineteen dollars!” she cried out, flinging her hands into the air dramatically. “What on earth would you do with that kind of money? It wouldn’t even be enough to keep you in cigarettes.”
“It’s a job,” I said stubbornly. “It’s better than nothing.”
“It’s worse than nothing,” she retorted emphatically. “It’s an insult to your intelligence, to your brains, to your ability to do things. You’re worth much more than that. Besides, darling, why work for that kind of money when you don’t have to? I can give you twice that each week if you want it.”
I began to lose my temper. “But I can’t go on like this all the time. It just isn’t right that’s all. And besides I feel funny asking you for money all the time,” I ended up rather weakly.
“You don’t have to feel funny about it, darling.” She came over and kissed me. “If you had the money and I didn’t, I wouldn’t feel funny about taking it from you.”
“But that’s different,” I protested.
“No, it isn’t,” she said. “We’re in love, and everything we have is to share between us.”
There was no arguing with her about it when she made up her mind to be sweet. And that was the way it went for a while. It was easy living, and I liked easy living. I had had too much of the other kind, and besides I felt that sooner or later I would get a break and get a decent job. So I let it ride.
About a month later as I came over to the small table where I kept my cigarettes to smoke—it was the table where Gerro’s picture had stood—I looked down and saw that Gerro’s portrait had gone. It was replaced with one of me. I looked at it. It was all right, I guess. I didn’t know very much about those things. Somehow in looking at it, I felt it didn’t seem as if it were me. I was too relaxed, too casual, too at ease. I had a vague feeling it was wrong.
“Like it, darling?” I heard Marianne’s voice behind me.
I turned to her. “It’s very nice,” I said politely.
“It’s for you—a present; for being what you are: wonderful, and making me happy.” She came over and kissed me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t thank me,” she answered. “I wanted to do it. The hard job was getting it done so you wouldn’t know I was doing it. I had to paint you at the oddest moments.”
“I guess so,” I said.
“You don’t sound happy?” she asked, concern in her voice. “What’s wrong?”
“Where’s Gerro’s picture?” I asked.
“Oh that!” she said, turning and sitting down in a chair. “The agent saw it and said he could get a good price for it, so I gave it to him to sell.”
“Get it back,” I told her. “I want it.”
She looked at me, her eyes widening. “What on earth for?”
“I just want it,” I said. “Get it back.” I didn’t know myself why I wanted it.
She was beginning to get angry. “Give me one good reason and I’ll do it,” she said heatedly. “But why the devil you should want it is more than I can see!”
I turned to my portrait and picked it up, “This is a very nice portrait. But that’s all it is—a very nice flattering portrait. It tells you nothing. It’s my exterior, my outside. Maybe there isn’t anything to me inside to put on canvas, but there was in Gerro. You caught it in him. And if you couldn’t face what you caught in that painting, and trie
d to replace it with this soporific thing of me, you’re mistaken. You just don’t bury things like that. And if you don’t want it, I do.”
She stood up suddenly, violently. Her chest was heaving. I could tell from the way she acted that, as little as I knew about painting, I had hit the nail on the head. “I won’t get it back.” Her voice was loud, and she shouted: “Who do you think you’re telling what to do? You’re in no position to be giving orders.”
I took the small frame of my painting. Slowly I began to tear it into small strips. “Stop shouting like a fishwife,” I said to her quietly, though I was boiling inside.
She came to me when she saw I had torn the painting; her hands were small fists, striking and scratching at my face, she was screaming, shouting, crying all at once. “You ignorant fool! Because I cater to you and play up to you, you think you own me. Why I’ve a mind to throw you back in the gutter where I found you!”
Suddenly something exploded inside me. I hit her across the side of the face with my hand. She fell back across the couch and looked up at me.
I towered over her, my voice was as cold as ice. “You get that portrait of Gerro back, or I’ll beat you within an inch of your life!”
Suddenly the expression on her face changed; it became soft and her eyes grew smoky in color. “You’d do it too!” she said, her voice familiarly husky. “I believe you really mean it.”
“I mean it,” I said easily. “I want that portrait.”
She put her arms around me and drew me down beside her. “My lover, my strong, wicked, simple darling, of course you shall have it back. I’ll give you anything you want.”
She kissed me, and her lips were burning flames that turned the world all upside down for me. But the next morning Gerro’s picture was back on the table.
55
It was while I was sitting in the big easy chair in the corner of the room, smoking the pipe Marianne had given me, that I made up my mind. I took the pipe from my mouth and looked at it distastefully. Some of the bitter soup from its bowl had come back into my mouth. I don’t know why I smoked the damned thing anyway. I didn’t like it. I would never like it. But Marianne had said: “Darling, why don’t you smoke a pipe?”
And I had answered: “I don’t know. I never tried one.”
“There’s something about a pipe that’s so manly,” she smiled. “It has a definitely masculine touch to it. It’s one thing no woman would smoke. Would you like one?”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think so. I’ll stick to Camels.”
But the next day she went out and bought me not one but a set of four matched pipes and a humidor and rack. She also bought some specially blended aromatic tobacco to go with it, and made quite a ceremony over giving it to me. She couldn’t wait until I had filled it with tobacco and put it in my mouth.
“Let me light it for you,” she said, standing over my chair, her head tilted charmingly to one side, a packet of matches in her hand.
She held the match to the pipe while I sucked and drew the tobacco to a flame, and then she backed off and looked at me. The pipe was bitter. I knew I had to break it in before it would taste good, and shuddered at the enthusiasm that had given me four pipes to break in. I drew a deep breath of smoke and blew it out.
Suddenly she sat down on the floor and looked up at me. “You look marvelous,” she said, staring up at me with an adoring look on her face like a little child. “You were meant for a pipe.”
After all that, there was nothing I could do but smoke it. I didn’t want her to know I didn’t care for it, that it made me sick. So I continued to use it, but as time went by I cared for it less and less; many were the times I put it down and would light a cigarette to take the taste of the pipe out of my mouth.
As I looked at the pipe in my hand, it became a symbol to me—a symbol of all the things I had become. Here was I, young, strong, healthy and filled with the desire to do something and not doing it. It wasn’t that I cared particularly for work—I liked that no more than the next man—but suddenly I felt my uselessness. I was content to let things drift along just as they were; content to live, to be close to Marianne, to make love to her and let her make love to me; content to give in and let things drift because I was too lazy to do anything about it.
Unconsciously my gaze drifted to the portrait of Gerro on the table. The lamp was tilted so that the light fell upon it and left the rest of the table in the gloom. His strong, vital look exerted a queer pull upon me. I half shut my eyes, and once again I could hear his voice saying: “I have a job to do. And all the things I want will never be possible for me unless I do this thing first. The world is willing to give you, not what you tear from it, but what you put into it.”
I remembered him saying: “What are you looking for, Frank? What are you on guard against? What do you want? What are you doing to get it?”
I remembered him saying: “You are big enough to do with a little less, to help—Thank you, it was more than anyone else gave—Strange you should have gray in your hair—Only by working together can we earn the things we all desire—To live in the world as men, among men and with men—”
I came out of my reverie when Marianne spoke. “What are you thinking about, Frank?”
I half smiled, still looking at Gerro’s portrait. “Him.”
She followed my glance to the painting. “I thought so,” she said. “You had an expression on your face as if he were talking to you.”
“Maybe he was,” I said. “Maybe he was giving me some good advice.”
I put the pipe down and lit a cigarette. As it burned down I came to a decision. I would never smoke the pipe again. And once I thought that, another thought came to my mind. “Marianne.”
She got out of her chair, came over to me, sat down on the floor at my feet, placed her arms around my legs, and pressed herself against me. “Yes, darling,” she said.
“I’m going to get a job.”
She looked at me closely. “Is that what you were thinking about?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“But, darling,” she protested, “why waste yourself on little, piddling things when you don’t have to. Aren’t you happy? Don’t you have everything you want?”
“Yes,” I replied, “but—I feel useless, so out of things, out of touch with what goes on around me. I never felt like this before.”
“What do you care what goes on around you? It’s not pleasant anyway,” she argued. “It’s so much nicer here: just the two of us in our own little world, no one to bother us, to inflict us with their troubles, their petty little problems. Don’t you love me?”
I looked down at her. Her head was resting, her chin on my knees looking up at me. “Of course I love you,” I said, “but that has nothing to do with it. I love you, I adore you, I’m very happy with you; but that isn’t all there is to it.” I cast around in my mind for something that would make her understand what I was trying to say. “Look,” I said. “Supposing you didn’t have your painting to occupy your mind, then how would you feel?”
“That’s different,” she said. “That’s art. It’s a feeling, an absorption. It’s something beyond you, something you can’t help. It’s not just work.”
“But it’s work nevertheless,” I said, “and you would feel quite empty if you didn’t have it. What I want to do may not be art, as you call it, but it brings to me the same sort of satisfaction your work does to you.”
She got to her feet and looked down at me. Her voice had taken on a little edge that I had learned to recognize. She didn’t like to be differed with. “I’m beginning to believe he was really talking to you.”
I was curious about that remark. “What do you mean by that?” I asked. “Did he ever say that to you?”
She didn’t answer right away. She was thinking. “Yes,” she finally answered, “many times. I begged him to do as I asked, begged him not to throw away our chance for happiness, but that was just what he did. And it was so silly, so terribly futile�
��after all, we had all we could ask for. And yet he wasn’t satisfied. And look what he got as repayment for his ideals. And now you want to do the same thing—destroy our happiness.” She sat down in her chair and began to weep.
I went over to her and put my arms about her. “Don’t cry, sugar. I’m not trying to destroy us. I just want to make myself whole again. Now I’m only a shell with no inside. I feel so wasted when I walk down the street and see men going and coming from work. I feel so empty when I spend my afternoons in the movies, watching pictures on the screen go through the motions of living. I just want something to do, something to keep myself busy.”
She stopped crying. “Then why not do something here at home?” she suggested. “Why not do as Gerro did? Try to write. You are expressive, you can say what you want; why not try to write?”
I couldn’t keep from laughing at that. It was so absurd. Me—write! “No,” I said with a laugh, “I don’t think I will. It’s sweet of you to think that I can, but I know better. No dice! I’m going out and get me a job.”
But jobs were no easier to get at that time than they had been before. It was getting colder now, and I would come back from looking for work, chilled and angry with myself for my failures.
And she would stop her painting, or whatever work she happened to be doing at the moment, and come to me. “Any luck?” she would ask.
And I would shake my head. “None.”
“Why don’t you stop torturing yourself and put an end to all this wasted effort on your part?” she would tell me. “Sit back, take it easy. We have enough of everything.”
I would look at her and not answer. But, bit-by-bit, hope faded from me, and in a month I stopped looking for work and began to stay home again.
Marianne was happy about that, but I was bitter. It galled me to think that I couldn’t land even a lousy two-bit job. I would sit in the big chair and stare at Gerro’s picture, and it would stare back at me. I would sit there for hours on end looking at it and going over my failures in my mind.
Harold Robbins Organized Crime Double Page 32