The Huge Season

by Wright Morris

  FOLEY: 3

  A scene in hell, a cloud of sulphurous smoke dense and powdery as a pill dissolving, shot through with orange flames, burning like flares, and the dark suspended shell of the Pulaski Skyway. Along the train bank through the marsh grass a fringe of vomit-green froth, a signboard advertising clothes for fat boys, and a gray film of sewage on the surface of a river of pitted lead. The coach lights came on, the windows darkened; in the glass, as in a mirror, Foley saw His reflection—the Devil’s horned profile and his leering smile of good fellowship. As the pressure built up in Foley’s ears he closed his eyes, swallowed hard, and said, “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate”—then let the cool, dank air at the bottom of the tube blow into his face. As the train began to climb he stood up in the aisle, slipped into his coat.

  On the track level at Penn Station he went along the platform to the escalator, rose one level, then blocked the stream of traffic till he sighted an empty phone booth, headed for it. Inside the booth, facing the eye-level sign that always left him confused, if he troubled to read it, he waited for the wobbly needle of his compass to settle, straighten him out. Then he closed the door, and in the dim light he examined the list of Lou Baker’s phone numbers, decided on the last one, and dropped his nickel into the slot. Heard it clink through the machine like a loose part, and then nothing. Took time now to read the sign and read all calls were ten cents. He found another nickel, tried that.

  While waiting for her voice Foley usually reflected that there was a book, of some sort, in Lou Baker, perhaps a better book than the one she had written herself. For more than twenty years, to a wide range of people who had never heard or set eyes on one another, Lou Baker was a legend as well as a link in a curious chain. Twenty years ago, for the time being—every move Lou Baker made was for the time being—she had accepted a position, for the summer only, of tutoring the child of a big theater man. That was the beginning, the opening chord, of a sort of tone poem that had no climax but endless variations on the same haunting, plucked-string theme. A tutor, a governess, a traveling companion, the anonymous author of well-read memoirs, and the companion of ladies, characters, and assorted, as well as unsorted, gentlemen. Always for the time being. Always a makeshift in the interests of her work. It happened to be, as Foley finally observed, the well-wrought urn of her own special gifts, the mobile salon of culture in the machine age, the free-lance Mme. de Sévigné, who held her séance wherever she happened to be working or boarding, opened and closed a romance in a five-day crossing, and somehow kept intact, however labeled and battered, the girl who had been the first one Foley had kissed. Over the years, and now there were many, hundreds of devotees had been exposed to the performance, most of whom fancied they saw through it, and all of them—except Foley and Proctor—had been glad to ring the curtain down, finis, and wonder who the hell it was that Lou Baker was currently stringing along. And all the time there was this book, a suitcase full of it, opened up and re-examined in dozens of apartments, spread over card tables and chairs in a score of attics, arranged and rearranged, long, fermenting evenings, in the drafty summer houses left vacant for the winter, turned over to Lou Baker and the gemlike flame of her art. It seemed impossible that so much concerted effort would not produce a book. That it would not, like other such labors, come to honor all the strangers who appeared in the foreword, up to that moment unaware of one another, but without whose money, whose attic or summer cottage, without whose wife and, on occasion, her husband, this book would not have been, as the foreword would say, as good as it was. For what was good, thank her friends; for what was not good, blame Lou Baker, the humble author. That was Montana Lou, the girl with short, cropped hair and the profile of a consumptive English poet, husky tobacco voice, radiant smile, and an air of the breed so obvious and rewarding that publishers took her to lunch, or chipped in further advances, not because they still believed that a book was forthcoming but because Lou Baker had the ring of gold in an age of brass.

  And when that phase had passed, when it was more or less clear that no book of any kind was really forthcoming, there were several hundred people, maybe thousands, who would settle for the real thing. The raw material, as Lou Baker described herself. There were always a few, but not too many, Lou Bakers, and the market for the real product was enormous. Only the best agencies paid the highest fees for her wares. She had sat on Swiss balconies, like Hans Castorp, listening to people with real and imaginary troubles; and she had sailed around the world, been involved and uninvolved, but if involved it usually left her so exhausted she would have to take a trip and a rest cure somewhere, herself. At such a time, right out of the blue, Foley might receive a card from Taxco or Juan les Pins, informing him that she was suffering from scar tissue around the heart. Their little game, their little code, and Foley would sit down and rush off a letter, all in all the finest things he had ever written, summing up all of the world’s known cures for scar tissue. She had never answered one of these letters, not by a line, but he knew that she kept them. He had run into people who had heard passages. The next word, for such it would be, would come around Christmas, or New Year’s, the operator asking him to please hold the wire, that Santa Fe, Monterey, or Bermuda was calling, and then the voice of Lou Baker, husky, coughy, and a little bit tight.

  “This Foley?” she would say, and then, “This Lou Baker, Foley’s chick.”

  But now she said, “Yes?” and he heard something I fall as she turned on the bed.

  “This Foley,” he said. “This Foley’s chick?”

  “Oh, God!” she said. She meant it, she had actually gasped it, and he said nothing. She said, “Is this Friday?” Friday was the day Foley usually called her.

  “Monday, Lou,” he said, wetting his lips, and when she did not reply he said, “You see the paper?”

  She coughed, creaking the bed. Somehow he knew that she had.

  “Who’s the faded blond accomplice you suppose?” he said, to cheer her up. Faded blondes always cheered her.

  “Who you think?” she said.

  “No idea,” he said. “I’m not a member of the Party,” then forced a laugh to indicate how he meant that.

  “That’s too bad, Foley,” she said. “We need members, and I’m the kid’s faded blond accomplice.”

  He opened the door of the booth; a little fresh air might help. In the glass panel of the door he saw the shine of sweat on his face. “How is he, Lou?” he said. “How’s Proctor?”

  “He’s here in bed. You want me to ask him?”

  Foley did not breathe. He kicked the door with his foot to get more air. He wanted time to run out on the call, and the coin to clink—but nothing happened. He heard the smothered twanging of the springs.

  “Who in Christ’s name is it?” the voice said. Hoarse from talking.

  “Him,” she said, as if they had been waiting. As if they had gone to bed with his name on their tongues and knew that he would call. He heard the padded phone base drop on the floor, then the drag of the cord across the bedclothes.

  “That you, Proctor?” said Foley.

  “Good morning,” said the voice, falsetto and sunny, “Goldberg’s Spa and Breast Developer on the Boardwalk.”

  “How are you?” said Foley.

  “Shit to the eyelids.”

  So he was all right then. Same old Proctor. “That’s fine,” said Foley. “I mean, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  “I have several,” Proctor said. “Which one you like me to use?” Foley did not reply. Proctor cleared his throat and in another voice said, “What brings you to Elsinore, old man?”

  Foley tried to think, thought of something, and said, “You know what day it is, Proctor?”

  “Hmmmmm,” Proctor said, “Mother’s Day perhaps?”

  “Anniversary,” said Foley, standing by. “What anniversary it is?”

  “This woman here in bed your wife maybe?” said Proctor.

  The phone clicked, the operator signaled that his time was
up.

  “Look, old man,” said Proctor, “why don’t you come over? Why don’t you get a bottle and come on over?”

  “You still—I mean, she’s still—”

  “Same old stand,” said Proctor. “Same apples. Say you let us get some shut-eye, then come on over.”

  The operator cut him off. He stood there in the booth listening to the buzz. He was free, he realized, to let the matter drop or to show up later. He was not committed. A state of mind that came to him naturally. He sat there in the booth, the door open, listening to the man in the adjoining booth drum his fingers on the glass panel of the door. Voice of party on the line like that of Lou Baker, Montana 1907, Sorbonne ’29, free-lance pagan-Christian and girl about town, paranoid, Anglo-Irish, troubled in mind, Freudian before cocktails, Jungian when tight, sometimes drawn toward Schweitzer, then Eva Perón, rude to waitresses, salesgirls, and artists with beards, but great promoter of old and new masses, attracted to male Jews, hairy young men with good legal training, preferably Harvard, physical type prone to peanuts and growing bald early, something of Helen, more of Cassandra, strong sense of guilt and opportunities wasted, fond of Leslie Howard, Joel McCrea, tin-roof sundaes, Peter Foley, but at the moment in bed with J. Lasky Proctor, very old friend and importer of Jews.

  “All right, go to hell then,” the male voice said, kicked the booth door open, and stepped out to smile at Foley. Short, square man, corseted waist, double-breasted suit with kerchief sewn to the pocket, topcoat hanging open so he could hook four fingers into pockets of coat. Effect of broad shoulders, trim waist. Habitat—usually seen around phone booths in Sun Ray Drug departments and United Cigar stores. “The two-timing little bitch,” he said, pocketing the paper matches Foley had passed him, and walked off smartly on not quite invisible Adler Elevators. So he could be taller than she was—but perhaps he was not. Seeing man approach vacant booth, Foley snapped his door closed, sealed himself off.

  Why hadn’t Lou Baker married?

  Not thought to be the marrying type. Why hadn’t Foley married her?

  When he had the impulse there hadn’t been the time, and when there had been the time he lacked the impulse. Besides—besides, she wouldn’t have married him. She didn’t like to wake up with a man who still had things on his mind.

  Why hadn’t she married Dickie? Might be that she had never been asked. Back at that time, and place, marriage like long underwear on a chorus girl. Old-fashioned protection for troubles she was paid to suffer from. Through the glass in the door, the panel smudged by a child who had licked it while waiting, ogle-eyed, for his mother, Foley could see the Métro station at Raspail and Montparnasse. Where he had first seen Lou Baker and Richard Dickie Livingston.

  That had been his first night in Paris, just eight or nine hours before Lou Baker bit him, and he was standing there smoking his first Caporal Jaune. He heard them, talking English, come up the Métro stairs. Through the railing he saw the smart fellow with a girl on each arm. The girl on his left wore her hair in braids, like the tails of well-bred horses, and the girl on his right had her hair in a pompadour, like a man. She wore an oversize, dirty camel’s-hair coat and a pair of soiled Mexican huaraches on her bare, dirty feet. The coat was too long, too wide in the shoulders, and she wore the collar turned up high on her neck. Something new, Foley recognized, in the way of class. They crossed the street to a table at the Dôme, back under the awning, and Foley found a seat with a front-on view of the girl with the braids. She had a fine skin, small, close-set ears, a way of showing the tip of her tongue when she talked, but Foley found it hard to picture a man roughing her up. He caught her eye, just once.

  She turned to the young man and said, “Honey, you like to take the rap for me?”

  “Love it, chick,” he said, sizing up the situation. He stalked up to Foley. “Livingston speaking. Would it be Stanley?”

  “No, it would be Foley,” Foley replied.

  Livingston screwed his neck around to leer at the girls, then suddenly stopped as if he had cracked it.

  “How is Lawrence, Livingston?” Foley went on, following up his advantage, but Livingston let him wait till what advantage he had had passed.

  Screwing his neck around slowly, Livingston said, “I got an extra chick on my hands, old boy. Montana born aus Bryn Mawr chick,” and led Foley over to the table and introduced him to the girls. The braided number was Pamela Crowley, Lawrence’s fiancée, and the chick aus Bryn Mawr was Lou Baker, Montana for short.

  “Foley knows Lawrence, you chicks,” Dickie said.

  “Does he know that he’s crazy?” Pamela asked.

  They looked at Foley, and he said, “I lived with Lawrence for two years.”

  “You’re in,” said Dickie and took a pair of castanets from his pocket, clacked them. He ordered an amer picon for Foley and a second mandarin curaçao for himself.

  Everything would have been fine if Foley had just kept his mouth shut. It should not have been hard. He had nothing to say. But that was his first night in Paris, his first apéritif out on the sidewalk, and being in—he wanted to show how far in he was. So he casually said that he hoped Lawrence’s car wasn’t ruined.

  “Why should it be?” Lou Baker had said.

  “According to Proctor,” Foley said, “he was hurt in his Novillada—”

  “Oh, my God!” Pamela said and pulled off one of her gloves. While she twirled the rings on her fingers nobody said anything. Then she put the glove back on, and Dickie said, “A novillada is a sort of bullfight, old sport.”

  “Oh,” Foley said and looked at the sweat on the palms of his hands.

  “If you want to be a bullfighter, old man,” said Dickie, “what you do is arrange for a novillada. If you have money you can arrange it.”

  “What the hell is so wrong?” Lou Baker said. “Why the hell should he know about a novillada?”

  “He might want to own one,” Dickie said. “A twelve-cylinder Novillada.”

  Pamela laughed. “Excuse me,” she said.

  “So he was hurt by a bull?” Foley said.

  “He was punctured,” said Dickie. “A very lovely cornada.”

  “A cornada is a horn wound,” said Lou Baker.

  “A horn wound in the groin, dear,” said Dickie.

  “I’m awfully goddam sick of these distinctions,” Lou Baker said.

  “Was he hurt badly?” Foley put in.

  “Truly, he was not hurt goodly,” Lou Baker replied. “For him it was bad, but for the bull it was good. The bull loves to gore good.”

  “Very amusing,” Dickie said.

  “Dickie does not like my talk, Mr. Foley,” she said. “It is not good. It reflects his latest reading. It is bad to be so influenced by one’s reading. It is good to be influenced by one’s environment only.”

  Pamela said, “Ha!” then covered her mouth as if she had been warned about that. “If I’m rude,” she said, “it’s because I’m faint with hunger.” She took a compact from her purse, looked at her face, and smoothed out the lines that formed when she smirked.

  Someone kicked Foley under the table, and when he looked up he saw it was Dickie.

  “Like to wash up a bit, old boy?” Dickie said, and Foley followed him back between the tables, around the bar, and down the stairs to the men’s room. As the door swung behind them Dickie took out his billfold, checked over the notes, and made an equal division. He passed them to Foley. “Take her to Voisin’s, old man. Take her to Duval’s. Take her anywhere she likes.”

  “Take who?” Foley said.

  “Take your pick.”

  “Look—”

  “I got to feed these chicks, old boy, but they won’t slobber out of the same trough. Lou Baker doesn’t seem to like the upperclass type of bitch.”

  “I’m not much for that type myself,” Foley said.

  “She’s yours!” Dickie spat on the palm of his hand, then took Foley’s hand and shook it.

  “Who?”

  “Lou Baker.”r />
  “Look—”

  “Don’t let the Bryn Mawr slouch fool you, old boy. Awfully nice kid.”

  “I’m not thinking of the slouch,” Foley said.

  “We’ll go over it later.” Dickie felt around in his pocket and took out a key. He gave it to Foley. “Make yourself at home.”

  “I’m at the Pension Lussaud,” Foley said.

  “What for?” Dickie said, and he was gone. He pushed through the doors and left Foley standing there, the money in his hand. So Foley had washed his hands, combed his hair, and allowed time for Dickie to make the division; then he went back upstairs, hoping to God they would all be gone. But Lou Baker was seated on a stool at the bar. She had a tall glass in her hand and a tired smile on her face.

  When Foley stepped up to her she said, “I was wondering if you’d make it,” and gave him the package of Caporal Jaunes he had left behind.

  “Make what?” he said and tried to look surprised.

  “Up your mind,” Lou Baker said and blew a cloud of smoke into his face. Then she slipped from the stool and hooked her arm through the one he offered her.

  “Nobody goes to the Café d’Harcourt any more,” she said. “We’re nobody. Suppose we go there?”

  So that was where they had gone. And that was where, and when, it all began.

  In the phone booth Foley noticed the air was bad. He opened the door, stepped outside, and let the momentum of the crowd carry him forward—or was it backward?—to where he stood with others in a line. With the others he rose, on the escalator, toward the opening looming like a cave’s mouth, toward the morning stars singing together in the galaxy of neon signs.