by James Jones
In fact all of it, when he thought about it, seemed to have a great deal of the fairy tale about it. That same thinness and unreality of great gentleness and leisurely beauty that he could believe as long as he was still reading the story but that when he put the book down afterwards, reluctantly, he no longer could believe, to his unassuageable disgust. It was, he felt, a very fitting place for The Princess to live; Alma thought so too; and he wondered if all rich men’s lives were always as beautiful as this.
The house had a little roofless side porch on the very lip of the drop that fell straight down at least a hundred feet where you could stand and look far down into the streets of Palolo Valley as if you were God, and further west the buildings of St Louis College off by themselves and still further west, a little hazy across the valley, and still below you, St Louis Heights, elev. 483 ft. It was a beautiful little porch and behind it were two solid plate glass doors you could look out of from the big sunken living room three steps down, if you were not inclined to go outside. It was on this porch in the late afternoon of a Saturday, when the sun was just beginning to light everything a crimson gold preparatory to dropping in the sea, the first time that he was ever up there, that Alma Schmidt first told him she was in love with him. He made his first mistake immediately.
Remembering the little permanent-party post under the ancient elms and maples, and fatuously attempting in his mind to favorably compare that way of life with this, he told Alma he was in love with her too and asked her to marry him.
It was his first mistake in judgment since the inauguration of the $60 planned economy. If he had brought a musette bag full of live grenades he could maybe have done as good a job of blowing up his own investment, but he doubted it.
It might have been the sunset, sunsets always stupefied him. Or it might have been the nearness of her body, the head of which just topped his shoulder. He had noted in the past that the nearness of women’s bodies had a tendency to upset his mental processes, and he could not control it, sometimes they even stupefied him more than sunsets, a reaction which he had found over a period of years was usually not reciprocal, giving them a certain initial advantage over men. Or, it might have been just the overwhelming newness of all this that he had not had time to get adjusted to. Even so, whatever it was, there was no excuse for such dangerous stupidity.
For a while there it was touch-and-go, and he could see the reflections of decisive action passing and repassing across her face, whether to kick him out now or to make it a slow gradual withdrawal of interest. It was only this doubt as to which way to get rid of him that saved him. It gave him time to salvage what he could by looking slyly at her and laughing out loud, and then lighting a cigaret to show her that his hands were not shaking. The lighting of the cigaret was unadulterated brilliance. But even so, he knew it was only luck he thought of it, the catching at straws of a man paralyzed by his own chuckleheadedness.
She watched his hand not shaking, and finally began to look relieved. Then she even joined in the laughter. She led him back inside and mixed them both Martinis, before she put the New England boiled dinner that she had had ready, on the stove. Then while it cooked and filled the place with the homey smell of the cooking she mixed them both more Martinis. They were good Martinis. One of the things he had found out when the planned economy first began to work was that Alma did like to drink some after all, it was just that she did not like to drink when she was working. She would even drink straight whiskey, now and then, if the occasion were propitious. Drinking made Alma much more likeable. It loosened her up. Or maybe it was just that drinking made him more prone to like Alma. Whichever it was, he still had sufficient presence of mind in his paralysis to utilize it now and suggest still more Martinis. The New England boiled dinner was as good as the Martinis, and after they had eaten they went very marriedly to bed, as if nothing untoward had happened.
But he did not let himself forget that it had still been a very near thing. He could not understand what in hell had ever possessed him to say such a dim-witted thing. He could not afford to be making mistakes like that often. The $60 planned economy had barely lasted long enough to get him up here. If it had required the expenditure of $5 more he would not have made it, and he could not go around like that making serious mistakes in judgment and trusting to chance that they would be overlooked.
He was very careful after that. There were plenty of chances to make mistakes in judgment. Once they drove Alma’s roommate’s Chrysler convertible out to Kaneohe Valley to go swimming; Alma did not have a convertible because she was saving her money. That time was an excellent time for a mistake in judgment, with the precipitous eastern slopes of the Koolau Range rising horse-shoe-shaped behind the beach with the sugarloaf of the Pali in the foreground and the black cliffs of Makapuu Point where the lighthouse was, peeking over Rabbit Island, but he was wise now and he took great care. After handling that time so well, he got his confidence back, and it all went along smooth as the imported rum that Alma’s roommate from the Service Rooms bought by the case and was very liberal with.
Because he was broke, Alma kept him supplied with car fare money to get down from Schofield. She gave him a key and after that he took to coming down regular every weekend. If he did not have duty, he would take off Saturday morning right after inspection and cut noon chow and make a beeline for there.
It was a long trip. He got to know it well. He would always be pushing hard to get there, and he would always be pooped out when he did get there. Then, he would let himself in with his key and suddenly it would all drop away and leave him and there wasnt any Army. The enormous living room that was floored with square red tiles was three steps down from the door, the two bedroom doors three steps up on the left wall as you came in, and the glass doors and the porch three steps up on the right. In the far corner near the porch doors three steps up to the kitchen on the south and its tiny glassed-in dinette. Next to it east, three steps up to a bathroom and shower. There was another bath and shower connecting between the bedrooms. The whole place paneled from floor to ceiling in a plywood stained a honey color, except the kitchen which was very Americanly efficient and had cupboards for walls.
If she had had to work and was not there, which was usually the case on Saturday, he would get icecubes from the refrigerator in the kitchen and mix himself a stiff drink from the radio-bar in the living room, maybe some of Georgette’s the girl friend’s rum, maybe gin and gingerale, maybe scotch or maybe bourbon with soda, anything he wanted, and get into his trunks in the bedroom and get a book out of the open bookcase on the living room wall between the bedroom doors and go out on the porch. He liked to lie around barefooted in his trunks on the chaise longue on the porch and drink. He would not read much. He liked to look out at that view and get slowly savoringly mellow drunk. He would get up in his bare feet and walk across the heavy Japanese matting that covered the porch floor and felt good on his feet, and go inside to the bar and mix himself another drink and then go back out on the porch. All the things he had taken all week in the Company would finally go clear away so that by the time Alma got home from work around two o’clock he would be all right again.
Maybe once in a while she would be there waiting for him when he came in on Saturday. But he liked it better when she was gone and he came in alone, used his own key, and moved familiarly through the silence of nobody there. Doing that made the place belong to him. It was his. Nothing could take it away from him, as long as he could do that. He had never had a key before. Just having the key in his pocket all week long was worth not mentioning getting married. Even half of what all of this was would have been more than worth the not mentioning getting married.
There were never any soldiers up in around here. It was almost supernatural, how as soon as you got above Waialae Avenue and onto the Rise in the bus there were no soldiers. There were always hordes of them downtown weekends. There were always lots of them in Kaimuki, on Waialae in the business section, mostly men from Ruger. But a
bove Waialae it was like another country. The rich (he could not get over calling the upper middle class of Wilhelmina Rise and Maunalani Hts the rich, no matter how often Alma explained it to him) the rich did not take to soldiers well up here. That was one of the reasons he liked it so well up here.
It never failed to surprise him, how Alma could have gotten in up here at all. Of course nobody knew where she worked. One of their near neighbors was Clare Inter, the famous Hilo Hattie. The three of them, Alma, Georgette, and himself (Georgette, if she had boyfriends, never brought them home) would sit around and laugh relishingly over it often, over being up here, in this house, up here.
It must have cost the two girls plenty, in rent. Alma never told him just how much, but he knew it would be high. Alma admitted it was high, but it was the one luxury she was not going to let her savings deprive her of. Well, Alma could afford it. Alma had gotten onto the place through Mrs Kipfer. Mrs Kipfer had friends, she had connections in Honolulu. Nobody knew just who or what they were, but Mrs Kipfer had them. And Alma, Lorene that is, was her favorite. Alma could get a day or two off from her any time, just for the asking, because Mrs Kipfer did not want her premier danseuse coming to work looking worn out and run down. Whenever Alma got a night off like that she would call him up at the Company, and he would catch a cab down town and then take a metered cab clear out to the house. If he did not have the money, he would go in the house like any married commuter and bring it back out to the guy. And she would always wake him up early, in plenty of time to make Reveille, and cook his breakfast for him. She liked to get up like that and cook his breakfast for him, before he went back. Sometimes even Georgette would get up and eat with them, bitching good-naturedly at being waked so early, but all of it as if it were in the family. He had told them about the boxing squad and Dynamite and about The Treatment. It was almost religious, the way Alma would always set the alarm, no matter how drunk any of them were. It was almost wifely, the way she would not let him overtalk at breakfast and miss the early bus.
But he still liked the Saturdays best, when he came in alone and used his key and made himself at home. He would usually be asleep in the big double bed in her room, on Saturdays, when she got home from work. And she would pummel him until he was awake, and make him come out to the living room and she would mix drinks for them both, before they went to bed. Or maybe she would just crawl in beside him and wake him up to have a party as she always called it. It was those times she would tell him how much she loved him, how much she needed him, how dreadfully she needed him, he didnt know.
Well, he needed her too, and she didnt know.
Yes, but the need was not as great with him. It was easy for him, take it or leave it. He didn’t really need her, not like she needed him, after that place.
Ha, that was just what she thought. His need for her was greater than hers would ever be. Without this sanctuary they would have cracked him with The Treatment long ago.
Yes, but if he only knew.
Well, if she only knew.
It did not develop into an argument often, but sometimes it did. Apparently neither one of them would ever know, and all this time he would be having to be very careful about making a mistake in judgment. There were plenty of other opportunities for it too. Almost every day he spent there, there were at least two opportunities to make a mistake in judgment. He did not mind though, and none of the opportunities quite hooked him, until the first time they went out together in public.
He did not care if they ever went out anyplace. He had developed a great domesticity. It was her idea to go out. She wanted to show him off, she said. Before they left the house she handed him two twenties and they went to Lau Yee Chai’s. He had never been to Lau Yee Chai’s. It took the whole forty dollars. It was worth it though. They had a fine time. She was an excellent dancer, too good for him. She said she would teach him at home.
It was not until on the way home in the cab, after spending her forty dollars, that he realized with a small shock that he was now a kept man, and had been for some time. He might even be called a pimp, by using the term elastically, although he did not solicit business. At first he felt degraded with a sinking in his stomach, but when he analyzed it he realized that he did not feel any different, that he was still the same man. So this is what being a kept man is like? he asked himself. It scared him a little and shamed him, because he did not feel any different. He felt he should have felt different.
It was not until after they got home and went out on the porch in the freshness of the night air, still in their party clothes (his that she had taken his measurements for and picked and bought for him), and stood looking down at the strings of white lights in Palolo Valley and across on St Louis Heights more strings of white lights and way off to the left the searchlights on the Royal and the red and blue and green and yellow neon flowers among the white strings that indicated Waikiki, where they had just come from; it was not until then that he asked her again to marry him. Maybe he felt it would make him not quite so kept.
It seemed it was always on the porch that he asked her. The porch and the view from it seemed to affect him that way. As he asked her, he was aware of a great delicious feeling of throwing all consequences to the winds and to hell with it; at the same time at the back of his mind a small voice told him he could get by with it without risking anything since he had been coming here so long now, if he did not do it too often.
This time he explained to her all about the little permanent-party post and the community of married noncoms, it seemed great to him as he explained it; he even included the year of waiting before he could ship Stateside and how that fitted with her plans, too. They could use some of her money to live well until he worked up into the first three graders bracket which would not be long, if he really felt like trying, and he did not give a damn about being supported by her or that the money was earned in whoring. He was, he pointed out with eloquence, doing all that right now anyway. As he talked, he was very proud of his broad mindedness.
She listened to it all intently, not once looking at him. She did not say anything for quite a while.
“You say you love me,” he summed up for the defense, “and how much you need me. Okay. I believe you. And I love you and need you just as much. Then its the only logical thing for us to do, isnt it?” he said logically.
“You’re just feeling lonely because you’re taking such a beating in the Company,” Alma said. “Lets go in and have a drink.”
“No,” he said. “Answer me.”
“You need me now,” Alma said. “But will you need me a year from now? after you’ve gotten out of this bad situation and are back in the States?”
“Of course I will. If I love you.”
“But people dont love somebody unless they need them badly. If you didnt fill a definite need in my life now, I wouldnt love you.”
“I’ll always love you,” he said. He said it because it was the logical answer to fulfill his argument, before he thought.
Alma looked at him in the dim light and smiled. He had not realized how ridiculous it would sound, or that it would be so patently obvious a lie, when he had said it. He had only said it because the trend of the conversation seemed to require it.
“You trapped me,” he said.
“You trapped yourself,” she said.
“Well, I love you now too,” she said. “And why? Because you fill a definite need in the pattern that my life is now. I like to be able to come home to you, after there. But that doesnt mean I’ll still love you a year from now, when the pattern of my life changes. How could anybody promise that and keep it?”
“You could, if you wanted to.”
“Of course. But suppose that after the need was gone we neither one of us wanted to?”
He did not say anything.
“You see? Of course, I could always kid myself. Just like you could kid yourself—when you told yourself you didnt really care if your wife was a whore; or when you told yourself you didn
’t really doubt your wife; or when you told yourself you were not really afraid to let your wife out of your sight; or when you told yourself you wouldnt really be ashamed if other people found out your wife was a whore; or when——”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, okay.” It sounded as if she were going to go on into infinity with an unlimited number of Or when you told yourself you didnt reallys, and he found he was wanting to shake his head like a fish that has got a hook it cannot comprehend stuck through its jaw, simply because it bit at an ordinary fly like any other fly.
She stopped and there was a large silence.
“But that aint the real reason,” he said, feeling he had to say something. “Whats the real reason you wont marry me?”
“Maybe I just dont want to be the wife of a noncommissioned officer in the US Army.”
“All right. But I could become an officer, if I wanted, under the new advancement program that came in with the draft. If I worked for that.”
“Maybe I dont want to be the wife of a commissioned officer of the US Army either.”
“All right, all right,” he said. “Thats the top that I could ever do for you.”
“You want to know the real reason?” Alma said. “I’ll tell you the real reason,” she smiled, “why I cant marry you. Income has nothing to do with it. I cant marry you simply because you’re not respectable enough.
“Now lets go have that drink,” she said.
“Okay,” he said. “A drink would be fine.”