“Too small,” he said. To make sure I got that he said, “Fellow from Cornell, a painter, ran into his mother’s brother down in Vian’s men’s room.”
“My only uncle is in Melbourne, old man,” I said and leaned back so I could get a look at the street. Down on the corner the acrobats were gone. But across the street, on our level, a woman with bright yellow hair stood on the balcony, between two french doors, combing it. The street was so narrow that I could see her hair was dark at the roots. It made me think of Proctor’s room in Chicago, but in Paris it would not be necessary to rap a brush on the window or sit in a room with drawn blinds.
“What were you saying, old man?” he said.
“You remember Dickie?” I said. He did. “I had an awful piece of luck,” I said. “Ran right into him at the Dôme.”
“Well, whatayaknow.”
“Recognized him from the photograph,” I said. “Same leer on his puss.”
“Alone?” said Proctor.
“No,” I said, tapping my pipe on the floor. “He was there with two babes.”
“Hmmmmm.”
“Had this pair of skirts on his hands,” I said, “so he passed the Garbo number off on me. Bryn Mawr piece. You know how they are at Bryn Mawr.”
“They are persistent,” Proctor said.
“Upshot of it was,” I said, “he gave me the babe and key to his apartment. Said he had an extra bed, since Lawrence wasn’t in it—”
“Well, wasn’t that nice of him,” said Proctor and took the knife from the bread, cleaned his pipe bowl with it.
“What’s Lawrence up to—now?” I said.
“It is not good,” said Proctor.
“He got himself a little gored?”
“A cornada,” said Proctor. He placed his hand at his groin, rubbed the spot softly. “Very good for the bull, very bad for Lawrence.”
“He must be crazy as hell,” I said.
Proctor filled his pipe again. “He is not crazy.”
“If he isn’t,” I said, “you name it.”
“I am working on it now, old man.”
“He’s got everything to live for,” I said. “He’s got everything anybody could ask for, and what does he do? He runs around trying to get himself killed.”
“He was trying to kill the bull, old man,” said Proctor.
“It adds up to the same thing,” I said. “If what he wants to do is kill the bull, why the hell not get a gun and shoot it? Easier for him, easier on the bull.”
“Is it a touchdown, old man,” Proctor began, “if you take the football, say, around midnight, and go out on the empty field and put it between the goalposts?” I let it pass. “Is it a touchdown,” he went on, “or is it only a touchdown if you follow the rules? There are rules for football, and there are rules for killing the bull. Football is for children, killing the bull is for men.”
I could tell the way he said it that he had put it in his book, word for word.
“To quote an old friend of mine,” I said, “that’s bullshit.”
“Let us talk about something you understand,” he said and tossed me his, tobacco. He was very calm. I was not calm, so he said, “Did you have a nice passage?”
“How’s the bullsh—I mean, book, coming?” I said.
“Pretty good, old man,” he said and looked at the sheet of paper in his typewriter. “I got it all but the clincher. I can’t kill him off.”
“Why don’t you let the bull do that?”
Without turning to me he said, “Old man, I guess I’m superstitious.”
I didn’t kid him. I could see that he was. He looked at the sheet he had in the machine, tore it out with a zip, crumpled it in his hand.
“Okay,” I said, “he kills the goddam bull and lives happily ever after.”
“There’s a bull in this book, old man,” he said, “but he’s a nice bull. He don’t shit in the bullring.” I laughed at that, but he didn’t. “I can’t see him doing it, old man,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Living happily ever after anything, old man.”
I couldn’t either, once I thought about it. To live happily ever after you have to retire. Lawrence couldn’t retire.
“Just who the hell’s book is it?” I said.
“I don’t know, by God!” he said. “Maybe it’s his.” He thought that over, then he said, “If it’s his book, and I kill him off in it—”
“I see,” I said, although I didn’t.
“But my agent thinks that I ought to.”
“You’ve got an agent?”
“Not an agent strictly speaking, old man. But when he saw it, said I ought to have an agent, and when he volunteered his services—”
“Hmmmm,” I said.
“Was his idea,” Proctor went on, “bring it out in French first. Small, signed edition. Bring it out here first, then when the talk gets around, when the word gets around—”
“Who’s doing the translating?”
“Girl with stars in her eyes, old man. Highly admires my stuff.”
“She want you to kill him off or save him?”
“You know,” Proctor said, “can’t get her to say. Think she’s probably little squeamish about it.” He leaned forward, put his pipe on the table, and took a sheet of yellow paper from the pile on the floor. He rolled it into place and typed a number on the right-hand corner. “Three hundred and twenty-one,” he said. “Been there all week.”
“I better run along and let you get to work,” I said.
“Say you were writing the book, old man?” he said.
I thought it over. “How about just goring him so damn bad he can’t fight any more, but he can write a book about it?”
He sat there facing the window as if he hadn’t heard me. When I turned I saw the woman with the yellow hair pouring wine from the bottle in the wicker wrapping into the glass of a man who sat across from her, a red fez on his head. He was black, not a sooty black, but more like the color of oil smeared on water, or like the blackbirds I had seen under the college sprinklers, worming the grass.
“He’d never try anything so easy,” Proctor said, and for a moment I wondered if he meant the woman. If he meant Lawrence and any woman.
“Is the wedding still on schedule?” I said.
“It’s a toss-up, old man, whether I kill him off first or she gets him.”
“If she wants him,” I said, “I put my money on her.” He didn’t reply to that, so I got up to leave. “I got a chick from Chicago waiting for me at the Dôme,” I said.
“The place is going to hell, old man,” he said and stepped out in the hall so I could get out. The window on the stairs looked out on the Cimetière du Montparnasse. Three American girls, one in a dirty slicker, were bent over trying to read what it said on one of the stones.
“I’m thinking strongly of Majorca,” I said. “You hear anything from Majorca?”
“They’re in Majorca too, old man. They’re all over hell. They’re even in Russia.”
“You hear from Russia?” I said.
“I am in close touch, old man.”
When I looked at him he gave me that Lawrence smile.
“Well, vaya con dios,” I said and went down the stairs, made the turn at the street, and went off as if I were late for this chick at the Dôme. On the corner where the acrobats had been I stopped to light up a Caporal Jaune.
FOLEY: 11
Proctor stood facing them, the smoking gun in his hand, a look of bemused astonishment on his face, gazing at the finger-size hole in the ceiling of the room. From the hole, as from a cracked hourglass, a powdered dust sifted to the floor.
“Well, I’d say his aim has improved some,” Dickie said and made a soft clucking sound, like a chicken.
“You fool!” cried Lou Baker. “You awful fool!” and ran forward and buried her head in his shoulder. He let the Colt hang slack while he absently stroked the back of her neck.
Foley said nothing. His tongue and the roo
f of his mouth were dry. He gazed, as they all did, at the hole in the ceiling, then he lowered his eyes to a spot on the floor.
Someone below was tapping. Without raising her head, her arms tight around Proctor, Lou Baker rapped a loose mule heel on the floor. The tapping stopped.
“What’ll we tell the cops?” Dickie said matter-of-factly. “Cleaning old firearm for homecoming weekend?”
Lou Baker suddenly turned. “You brought it here. Suppose you tell them. You brought it here and you knew it was loaded!”
“I swear to God!” Dickie said, holding up his right hand.
“You swear to who?” Lou Baker said. “Who?” She looked around at them wildly. “I swear I’m going to lose my mind!”
“I swear,” said Dickie. “I just swear I didn’t know it. The thing looked full of holes.” He twirled his fingers to indicate the chamber. “I swear—” he said again, then stopped.
“Go on!” said Lou Baker. “Christ, I’m really curious. I’m just dying to know what the hell it is you’ll swear to!”
“Easy, baby,” Proctor said, “take it easy now, baby,” but when his hand touched her shoulder she spun around and hit him. Not hard, just slapped him with a wild fling of her arm; then, seeing what she had done, she threw her arms around him, sobbing.
“Why don’t you and I,” Mrs. Pierce said, tapping Foley on the arm, “go and do those dishes?”
Foley turned and followed her into the room at the back. Dickie came along, he tagged along, that is, so close on Foley’s heels that he stepped on the right one, said, “Excuse me!”—blurting it out like an overgrown kid. Then he hurried past them both into the kitchen, splashed water on his face. Something about that—nearly everything about it—the sounds he made blowing into the water, made it all seem like the foolish prank of some kid. A big, awkward kid caught fooling with a gun. Foley felt, as he hadn’t for years, just the slightest twinge of affection for Dickie, the middle-aged delinquent without a Bible to swear on.
“We can just thank the Lord,” Mrs. Pierce said, “that something terrible didn’t happen.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dickie said. He did not mean to be amusing. It was what he meant. Foley was thinking that the only time Dickie sounded phony was when he was serious, when it was perfectly clear that he was swearing on whatever it was he had.
“You can just give that to me!” Lou Baker said, but in the voice of a sensible, exasperated woman, faced, for the last time, by the small fry with the water gun. Then they heard her cross the room to the bathroom, slam the door.
“I’m going to make us all some fresh coffee,” said Mrs. Pierce and poured out what was left in the pot, making quite a racket in the sink as she flushed the strainer. Foley and Dickie carried dishes to the sink, folded up the card tables, and leaned them against the wall. Lou Baker’s record player, with what was left of the steamer labels and Bryn Mawr stickers, sat in the corner under a pile of old ten-inch disks. The label on the top record had all but worn off. Lou Baker had stuck on a piece of adhesive, a Band-Aid, which read, “ ‘Wang Wang Blues’—Paul Whiteman.”
“I’ll be goddamned,” Foley said and picked it up, checked to see if it was cracked.
“Don’t think I know that one,” Dickie said. “How’s it go?”
Foley raised the lid of the portable—if Lou Baker owned it, it was portable—and gave the crank four or five turns. Machine about the same vintage as the “Wang Wang Blues.” Turntable had a power hum like a deep-freeze. He clawed an old needle out of the cup, screwed it into the head, lowered it to the record.
“Used to hear this—” he began, then had to stop, lift his voice a notch to be heard above the scratching. “Used to hear Whiteman play this when he was out at the Edgewater Beach.”
“Sounds like that’s where he is now,” said Dickie. “That the breakers I hear on the pilings?”
Behind the hiss, the whir, and the rumble was the “Wang Wang Blues.” As it should be, Foley thought. Record in about the same condition they were, scratched and cracked on the surface, hiss of the “Wang Wang Blues” running underneath.
“Knew the horn in that band,” Proctor said, and there he was in the door, smiling at them. A curl of cigarette smoke disappeared up his unbuttoned sleeve.
“Was it Jordan?” said Foley.
“Tommy Gott,” replied Proctor.
“He’s got what it takes, all right,” said Dickie and raised his coonskin hat, arched his back, and high-stepped across the room like Ted Lewis coming on the stage.
“We’ve certainly improved some things,” said Mrs. Pierce, stepping into the room with the fresh pot of coffee. “Why, it makes you wonder how anybody ever listened to it.”
“See if ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’ is there,” Proctor said. Foley turned to see, then swung around to face the hall door. Someone knocking. Pounding, that is. They remained there, quiet, and the “Wang Wang Blues” scratched on.
From the bathroom Lou Baker called, “Will someone please see who that is?”
“That’s you, son,” Dickie said and stepped aside to make way for Foley. Proctor also stepped aside, and Foley crossed the room to the door. The empty holster and belt were thrown out on the bed, and as Foley walked by he flipped the spread over on it. He took a firm grip on the doorknob, opened it. A small, round-shouldered, doll-faced man wiped his face with his hanky, smiled, then said, “You people all right?” On the draft that stirred his hair came the faraway strains of “Wang Wang Blues.”
“I’m awfully sorry we disturbed you,” said Foley, “but we’re giving Miss Baker a sort of little party. Bunch of her old friends. First time we’re together in more than twenty years.”
“Free to do as you please,” he said, wagging his head, “but wife swore what she heard was an explosion. Thought I’d better step up and make sure everybody’s all right.”
“Well, there was an explosion,” Foley said, smiling. “Chateau Lafite, twenty-seven. Great loss to us all.”
“Oh, Christ!” he said. “Oh, Jesus! Now ain’t that a fright!”
“Forgot and left it on the stove,” Foley said. “Guess the heat was just too much for it. Regular damn cannon. Blew the cork right through the wall.”
“Well, I’ll be goddamned!” he said, and Foley could see that he half believed it. Something to tell his wife, tell the neighbors, tell his friends. Goddam boobs in the apartment upstairs left wine on their stove. “Well, have fun, kiddies!” he said, wiped the hanky around the back of his neck, and Foley watched him pad down to the floor below. In the room at the back “Stars Fell on Alabama,” with sharp, rhythmical clicks. Foley closed the front door, locked it, and on his way to the room at the back he saw Lou Baker, at the door to the bathroom, beckoning to him. She opened the door, took him by the sleeve, and drew him inside. She had wrapped a towel around her hair as if she had just washed it, and it gave her gaunt face a curiously medieval air.
“Peter,” she said hoarsely, “you’ve got to.”
“What now, Lou?”
“The gun—you’ve, got to take the gun.” She placed her hand on a folded bath towel, and he saw the gun was in it.
“I think that thing’s empty now, Lou—” he began.
She cupped both hands to her face, pressing the fingers to her eyeballs, then she parted her hands, the eyes still closed. “I’m asking you to do this for me, Peter.”
“All right,” he said, “all right, Lou—but just what the hell am I going to do with it?” He pointed at the towel. “Slip it into my vest pocket, I suppose?”
“I don’t care what you do with it,” she said. “Just take it. When you go, take it. Drop it into the river. Into the gutter. I don’t care.”
“All right,” he said, “okay, Lou.” He could see the beads of sweat on her forehead, at the pores of her nose, and he wondered if she might be sick. Shock. She was just a little slow coming out of it. Not the same old Baker. Not in that respect.
“I’ll see that it’s in a bag,” she said, and as she
had pulled him in, she pushed him out, patting the sleeve of his coat absently. He stood there a moment, listening to a tune he did not know. Le Jazz Hot. Someone strumming a guitar.
“Oh, Foley?” Proctor said.
“Coming,” he said, and as he passed the closet slipped out his trench coat, taking it along. “Thought I had some cigars in one of these pockets, but I guess I don’t.”
But they were not listening. Mrs. Pierce was waiting for the music to begin. Her arms were slightly raised, like the wings of a chicken that was winded and was trying to cool off, but her eyes were lidded and she swayed back and forth to the clucking of her tongue. Moving in, but not close, Dickie placed an arm one-quarter around her, the hand riding on her corset, and over her shoulder leered at Foley, crying, “Look, pa! We’re dancin’!”
“Foley,” said Proctor soberly, “you remember this one?”
It was not so scratchy. It also had more volume, filling the room. He let it go on cleaning out the groove till the words began to form, then he said, “ ‘Baby—baby, won’t you please come home?’ Beiderbecke,” said Proctor solemnly.
Foley wagged his head, but he couldn’t single the horn out of the noise. Not often. Just an accent here and there.
“What’s it make you think of, old man?” Proctor said and raised his hands from his sides, where they had been hanging, as if the sleeves had suddenly filled with air. His knees bent slightly, he looked as though he might just float away. Finlike, and ever so lightly, his hands paddled the air.
“Good old Chi,” Foley said, although that was not what it made him think of, but he knew that was what Proctor had in mind. Good old Chi. His hot, stinking room right near the park. The smell of food pouring out of the transoms, the cockroaches in the bathroom, and the strip-tease artist hammering her hairbrush on the glass. I’ve been a heel for so long, old man, I’m going to make something good out of it. I’m going to write the greatest book a shit-heel ever wrote.
The music stopped, and Mrs. Pierce said, “But I can’t say I find that so easy to dance to. Not any more!” she added and fanned her face with a potholder.
“Lady,” said Proctor, and when Foley turned he saw the long-suffering mask slantwise on his face, “lady,” he continued, recovering his role, “three white leopards, having eaten of my heart, my lungs, and my liver, have now turned to the hollow round of my skull.”
The Huge Season Page 21