He lunged forward, got up, plunged about, and repeated this development some twenty times, walking round and about, standing in front of them, with them laughing at him, he laughing somewhat, but only with joy, communion. He kept on telling the story, salting it with, “What do you think of it? Give me your frank opinion, what do you think of it? You’re laughing at me! Edda always laughs at me. Don’t take me seriously! That’s a weakness in you, you’re not old enough to know it yet.”
David Flack cried, rolling out of the lounge and laughing, “No, no—no, no, Robbie, we don’t laugh at you, we respect you terrifically, we know you’re a genius. We don’t underrate you, make no mistake.”
Edda was ashamed, “No, no, no, no. I know you’ve got plenty of originality, only you don’t know this business. I know it’s a business. I know a man like you thinks he can conquer any business—because he’s original, because he can sell.”
He listened carefully to all she said. His face became serious, then he smiled, he turned to Flack, “She knows me, she knows me! One of these days she’ll see the sort of man I am, a constructive view. I haven’t always done good, but I haven’t done any evil either. I swear it!” He solemnly raised his hand and rolled his beautiful blue eyes.
They continued to make protestations of friendship and understanding for several minutes, and Grant busied himself with the drinks. Then, off again, he shouted, “Let me give you a perspective on my story,” and he went through the whole thing again, explaining and crying, it must be positive, true romance, true love. “That’s what the average man believes in and I’m an average man, I just want to find a woman. All I Want Is a Woman. It would make me. If I’d met the right woman to begin with—who can tell?”
“I don’t believe a woman makes a man,” said the girl.
“I knew many beautiful ’ooman. Knew as friends, not always stayed at the friendship stage. I don’t say I always loved and I know they didn’t always love me. Don’t know why. You can’t always hit the mark. Now I know that everyone is looking for his romance. Even the worst. It is their one good point: one good spot in the heart.”
“Like the curate’s egg,” said David Flack, laughing and rolling, his spectacles shining at a dozen different angles in five minutes.
Grant frowned, “Not egg—this Solomon Greenstein, now, he married a lame woman, said he wanted to look after her. Is that a good egg or a bad egg? You see! You see? Don’t judge a book by its cover. Be a builder, not a grave-digger for civilization, eh? Love is mysterious: you can’t explain it. It might be anybody, why not me? That’s what I say to myself—why not me? Am I bandy-legged, am I deaf and dumb?”
He sat down and was silent for a few minutes. David Flack, dragging himself out of the pleasant listening daze into which he had fallen while the shouting was going on, had begun to speak when Edda unexpectedly said, “I have got an impression! I can see good settings for it—”
The merchant sprang to life again and started shouting, “What do you think of it? Give me your frank opinion—” David Flack remonstrated with him. He sat on a chair, simmered, muttered, but let Edda continue for a minute or two, when he suddenly shouted, “I shelve the blonde, you see, disgusted; attraction, but no character; and this woman—”
“What blonde?”
He mumbled for a while something about a woman in Canada, a woman in Rome, a woman in Warsaw, some of these women were blonde, some not, they could not make out which.
He said with less assurance, “You see, you got to give the man some constructive traits, he’s a no-good, a jerk, Kincaid, you can buy him for five cents in some respects, but in other respects, he has a streak of gold. You can have the woman make him over if you like. You’re the artist. And the girl’s got to have character. I say to the blondine, ‘You’re beautiful, but I don’t love you, you can’t hold me: you gave me too much pain, and it’s character that counts.’ And the other is famous, but she is real Egyptian sakel and she prefers to come home and make breakfast for me. I have character too—a renunciation scene, very good—‘No, no, no,’ I say—‘no for you, and no for me—I mightn’t love you if you weren’t famous.’ ‘No, no,’ she says, ‘fame means nothing to me, I want to come home, make breakfast for you, I prefer that as a career. Besides, I owe it to you. You paid for me at the start. Now I love you. That’s your profit.’ ‘All right,’ I say, ‘then we’ll both do something glorious, we’ll go back and rebuild Europe, Poland, Italy, somewhere, I’ll show them how to grow or distribute cotton. I’ll show them cotton machinery. Even the Soviet Union would do—’ I go and find out about the saboteurs—and you sing, or dance, or act—you are famous, you take your fame with you.”
“Let me think, don’t talk any more, Robbie, let me think.”
“Another drink,” he said, rushing toward her, but wobbling, for he was already tipsy and so was her father, laughing and bobbing, squirming and repeating, “A movie magnate, a Hollywood success.”
As she sipped the drink, he said, “Not thin hair, it’s unnecessary. Sign of ill health, perhaps. You can be loved if you’re eighty-two, but people want something simple; no need to have thin hair, it’s uncalled-for. They don’t understand—why put in big nose, wart on the cheek, harelip, cauliflower ear, no legs—?” he started to shout and laugh—“bald head, thin hair, wall-eye, why? Why? People think this writer has no character. What do you think of it?”
Edda burst out crying, “Like a drum, your one crazy idea. Like a bad headache. I’m getting out of here. I don’t want success. I want to die young.”
He was thunderstruck, and said softly, “I’m sorry, pardon me, I withdraw it, I’m sorry—no idea, excuse me, my girl—got carried away—”
She finished her drink in silence. The man went on apologizing and David Flack suddenly sprang to the fore, “Edda has a hundred ideas a day. We’ve got shelves there, covered with drawings. She sits in the subway and does drawings of dozens of characters. Each drawing is an idea. She has thousands of ideas, a capital of ideas, like Edda Incorporated, capital one million ideas. Do you understand, Robbie? And you only have one, one miserable idea. You’re like a man with one cotton plant in his back yard, talking about cotton to Robert Grant who’s been buying and selling cotton and thinking about boll weevil and living on the work of sweating black peasants all his life. He sprays his one bit of cotton with a watering can and you buy or sell thousands of futures in Beaver Street.”
Grant’s face lighted up. He sprang forward. “You’re right, I see it. Excuse me! I see it. I leave it to you. You’re the artist! But just give my plot a little thought. I say to her—‘No for you and no for me—’”
Edda said, “I’ll write a book about you, Robbie.” Her face had begun to glow. She smiled at him.
Grant shouted, “Why not? I’m a man! But not central me; central Europe too. Look, we’ll write about the new world, a new world, that is. The U.S.A. has new values, doesn’t know how to use them. The old world needs new values U.S.A. has—that will be our theme, not me, see. Of course, you got to have human values too. Look, in Europe they all compounded a felony. They put up with Hitler. The whirligig of values, see. In old times a king threw his serving man out the window, no one would talk to him, they wrote him down in books, called him Pedro the Cruel or something; now, not. Everyone talks to Hitler after Munich, you get pretty women saying he’s handsome, and statesmen saying he’s brilliant, and young boys saying he represents their ideal. You see? We’ll have that in too, no one can say I want to write only about myself. We’ll have everything that keeps people going. Inside Poland. But no, your title, All I Want Is a Woman, that’s better. All I want is a ’ooman,” and as he left them at their door, he called to them from ten yards, “All I Want Is a Woman!”
7
He threshed home, much excited by the project. It was early. He put in a call for Mrs. Kent’s hotel, was told that she had gone the day before, without leaving a forwarding address. Grant telephoned Paula Russell, who was sharp with him. Barb had
taken their quarrel to heart, thought he was getting ready to throw her out, so she took the first step, she went. She had other choices; Barb was not the one to leave herself unhedged.
“I had no intention, no intention at all of doing the ’ooman harm, not my way,” he grumbled. They had a few minutes’ talk in the course of which Paula arranged to see him the following week, if she were still in town, “But I may join Barb.”
She would not say where Barb was.
He was dismayed. He spent hours worrying his suspicions, not to feel the emptiness. He loved the woman.
“I often asked myself if I loved her; now I know I do. This is love to feel my heart bruised this way. To worry this way about a tramp is love.”
He tormented all his friends with it, called up Hugo March and Peter Hoag, “What should I do? Get after her with a detective? I’m used to her, I want her; she’s no good, but neither am I.”
The next week Barbara telephoned him at the office at ten in the morning, apologized for the trouble she had given him, and asked him if he was attending to the bills sent on to him from the Grand Hotel. “Don’t take it to heart so, Robbie, don’t go telling your troubles to the whole town, like a whipped dog. It was only a little tiff, the course of true love never did run smooth.”
She was speaking fast, and as always, her voice which began low had risen to a pinging note, a note which irritated and piqued his nerves. When she used this tone, she had something at heart. He scolded, “You shouldn’t have done this to me, very inconsiderate. I don’t know if I can forgive it so easily; put me in a funny position, you can understand.”
She said it would blow over, he would forgive her. She would forgive him too, would see him soon, but not just yet, for she was now Mrs. Adams, had married that Burton Burstall Adams he had met several times. Adams was a dissipated Army man of their acquaintance. Grant had long shut his eyes to an affair between them, thinking that as Adams was always drunk their rendezvous must be unsatisfactory. He felt this victory of Adams like a blow.
“You don’t love him, Barb, I know; you must leave that sponge. Come back to me. You don’t drink at all.”
“He married me.”
Grant blew up. He had spoken of marrying her too; but she had played with his affections. He had told her she only had to win him and he was hers. He must see her at once, “All a mistake.”
“I can’t see you yet, Robbie. I have to get my alimony and I want to get enough to live on, so I’ll be careful till I do.”
“What harm is there in my seeing you with Paulie?”
“Mother will be here on Tuesday and I must spend some time with her after our separation.”
Grant had forgotten the mother, although he had some time before arranged for her passage through some business friends. He said, “You want to get your mother a nice little apartment.”
“Yes, I think you should find some place, make some arrangements for her.”
“I’m very busy, my sweet. I don’t know what you do all day.”
“Surely this wouldn’t take too much time or trouble.”
“I want to see you, sweets. I can see you at your mother’s?”
She had a biting voice. He shivered. He said suddenly, “A hideout for you and me? All right I’ll get mother a room, but promise to ring me tomorrow, sweets. I’ll let you know where I got the room.”
“Mother will be very disappointed. I told her you would take better care of us.”
“But she knows you’re married to Adams, good heavens.”
“I can’t very well saddle Adams with my mother at this critical time. He can always say I overload the expense sheet.”
The next day she telephoned him, found out where the room was, but would not meet him there. They must never meet at her mother’s room, until she had sure grounds for divorce.
In order to meet her regularly, therefore, he promised at once to open accounts for Paula and Barbara at two uptown restaurants, where he had relations with the maîtres d’hôtel. The girls would eat at these restaurants every day; and eventually would both go to take tea at his apartment. In this way and through the corruption of the girls he felt that he played tricks on Adams. This idea made them very gay at times.
By the middle of November, the blonde was tired of waiting for a New York divorce and had so managed Grant that he had agreed to pay the expenses of her mother and herself to Reno. When she returned he was to go to Reno himself, divorce his wife, and come back to marry Mrs. Adams. He said all this several times to the mother of the blonde, whose apartment he visited regularly in the hope of seeing Barbara alone. The old woman, refined, white-haired, with a disagreeable voice, but good taste in dress, was full of poses—she hated the Jews, the radicals, and business men. Grant could not understand a sensitive woman like Barbara. She supposed Grant had to marry Barbara, but she had always wished Barbara to have a position in society and she was disappointed. Barbara was taken in by everyone, had no sense of character. Grant groveled before this false refinement and the old woman pursued her advantage, “You have done nothing for us!” She would add, “The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as you Scots say, Mr. Grant.”
In the end Grant bought Barbara some clothes, some jewels, set the mother up with a fur cape, and arranged for Miss Paula Russell to travel with them as a companion. Before November came to an end, the three women had gone off, at his expense, and although he telegraphed flowers and daily inquiries to their hotel in Reno, he heard nothing for a while. At last Miss Paula Russell wrote to him that they had all been very blue and nervous and the expenses of the town were very high. They had been quite miserable to find themselves in a town like that with funds so low. Grant again telegraphed and sent an express letter, “I feel like flying out there now.”
The mother immediately replied,
I fear there would be little room for you. But as soon as the divorce is through I am taking Barb to the Coast, where she can have the proper medical attention. All this has been most trying to a nervous system like hers. I say nothing of myself. With me it is merely old age; old age cannot be remedied. It is a good thing. One resigns oneself and suffers less than the young. People of our age, Mr. Grant, are better off than Barb. In Los Angeles Barb hopes to meet old friends, always the best rest-cure. Of course, the poor girl is quite run down and quite psychotic. (I would say, afraid of men; but that will not last long, I trust.) Many thanks for the telegrams. I passed the envelope on to Barb, as you requested.
Grant showed this letter to the Goodwins at his next cocktail hour. He swore the old woman was a perfect lady, she wrote in such a cold tone. Betty Goodwin cried, “Oh, Robbie, they’re a pair of bloodsuckers!” Grant laughed weakly, “The old lady I don’t know. Paulie I don’t know. But the blonde is different: she was brought up a one-way girl. She doesn’t see things our way. My wife’s a parasite too. But she didn’t rape me! I swallow my medicine. I can’t marry a Grade-A woman and expect her to walk in a procession on May Day. Can’t have your cake and eat it. Her mother likes the Germans, thinks they’re gentlemanly. Just shows how innocent she is. Once she was in a pension in Germany as a girl! She’s still a girl. I send her gloves and I tell her Hitler is no good. My propaganda. The Reds are all fools. You can’t convert people with words. Got to be gloves! Ha-ha—The French convert people with gloves and perfume; when they’re Reds the whole world will be converted. Ha-ha. With the workers they say, ‘You’ll get better living conditions.’ With Barb what do they offer? She’d be worse off under Communism: have to work as a shopgirl. She knows it by instinct. A weakness of Red propaganda. Now I would write a pamphlet, saying, ‘Look here, girlie, all the women have fur coats, lipstick, and get a dowry from the State.’ Eh?”
Betty told him Mussolini promised this. He shouted fretfully, “And Mussolini isn’t entirely wrong: he knows human nature, otherwise how could he hold them down all these years? Of course, Italy’s a backward country.”
For over a month he received nothing from the wande
ring women but hotel bills, which he paid promptly, asking only with each one for a note of thanks from Barb. At the last, Barb wrote him a short note,
The weather here has been wretched and we have had no company. We went to the movies two or three times but no good shows. I am not well and shall be glad to leave here. It is a dull town and not the kind of company one is used to. There are few people one can meet; but I am not in a state to meet anyone. My nerves have been very bad and I have had to think mostly of myself, which is what I wanted to avoid. I go out occasionally for fresh air but I am not one for solitude and soon return. Yours very sincerely, Barbara Adams.
With this she enclosed a photograph showing herself in sweater and ski-pants, hair blowing loose, on a mountain side with a strong, squat, handsome young man, and a dog. She wrote on the back: Barb and friends. She looked young, simple, and beautiful, which Grant immediately wrote to her. He enclosed an envelope with the word Barb on it; inside, a check.
This was their last interchange for months. He waited and waited, and as the time lengthened, ran to all her friends saying, “Explain to me why I am faithful to her. She has taken my money, the alimony and disappeared into the blue beyond.”
Paula, a dangerous woman, had put her up to it. Perhaps she had got a nervous disease and was shut up, or dead. Who would tell him? Paula was the kind of girl to grab everything and disappear. Perhaps Barb had got into the papers under one of her married names and he had never seen it. He did not show the photograph nor tell what his worst fear was.
A Little Tea, a Little Chat Page 7