Short Fiction Complete
Page 85
“You have two real children, who need their mother with them right now, not away somewhere in one of those places that Family Planning runs, or hiding out here.”
“You say they play all day in that b-blockhouse park. I didn’t have time to look around there much. Is it safe? Ann’s very nice but sometimes she doesn’t watch her children closely enough.” By now she had gotten back into the bikini, and stood looking into the little mirror on the dresser, trying to pull and tug the bottom to a better fit.
“Very safe.” By now Art too was dressed. “Come on, Rita, you’re not killing any part of me by getting rid of a fetus. I’ll still be here.”
“But not inside me. That part of you won’t grow anymore, or go on living.”
“Bah. How do you know it’s even mine?”
She did not answer, or look away from the mirror, but something in her face closed off.
He said: “If I had a diseased appendix you’d want it cut out and done away with.”
“What’s growing in me is not diseased—”
“How do you know, have you had any defect tests made?”
“—and even if it were, I’d love it.”
If this kept on he was going to grab her and shake her. “If you loved it—I mean, if you loved the potential child it might become— you know what I mean—you’d want to save it from a lifetime of being unwanted by the world.”
“I want him. His mother wants him.” Now Rita was getting angry too. “We should kill him now because he’s going to have a very tough time someday? Then I suppose we’d better not take any chances, we’d better knock Timmy’s and Paula’s heads in because someday they’re likely to have a tough time too.”
Sublimation! He knew that he was right, but where was the argument to use? Not what the neighbors might someday say; that wouldn’t work with Rita. It came down really to their duty to the overcrowded world, of course, sacrificing a personal wish for mankind in the abstract. For the good of mankind, everyone’s reproductive urges, weak or strong, just had to bow aside. But those were not phrases with which to belabor one’s suffering wife. How to make the truth sound less self-righteous, speechy and hlghflown?
There came a knocking at the door. On his way to answer, Art said over his shoulder: “You’re coming back to Ann’s with me now to get the children, and then you’re coming home.”
“No, I’m not.” Stubborn as a mule, just like her sister-in-law. You might have thought the blood relationship was there.
This time the knock was loud. Art reached the door and flung it open. The man who stood there, the same graying escort, looked at Art’s face and hesitated. Then, in a more respectful tone than he had used before, he asked: “You about ready to leave? Don’t worry, she’ll be outta here in a couple days.”
“My wife is leaving with me. Now.”
“I’m not going, Art. Don’t ask me—oh, I wish you hadn’t come.”
A PAIR of young women were coming along the hallway, talking and giggling about something. They eyed Art strangely, and as they passed the doorway they glanced through it into Rita’s room, curiosity showing through the pale makeup that masked their faces. They were made up worse than the B-girls in the tavern had been, and dressed worse too, for those two wore loose shrouding robes, totally obscene draperies of brown and gray that no woman would wear except . . . except . . .
“What kind of a place—?” barked Art, glaring wildly at the man who faced him in the hall. The man took a step backward, startled.
Art turned quickly and confronted Rita. Lightning flared, twice, very bright through the window just behind her. In the repeated violence of light Art could see the main front of the building he was in, Rita’s room being evidently in a projecting wing. DIANA ARMS APARTMENTS, said a cheap new sign above the main entrance at ground level. Above, molded into the old concrete that arched above the entrance, were other words, not conspicuous but picked out now by perfect light and some trick of the speed-reading brain.
CHICAGO MATERNITY HOSPITAL
NURSES’ QUARTERS
“What kind of place is this?” He grabbed at her, while thunder detonated. “Answer me, what kind of place?” He saw his hands shaking her, shaking Rita, with a violence that no one should dare to offer her.
Rita slapped him in the face. Never before. Art backed away from her slowly, as she began to cry. He backed up three steps and bumped into the man who had come to take him away and who now took a grip on Art’s arm. When Art tried to pull free, the man said something and only tightened his hold. Art turned in instant rage and struck out with his fist. The blow was clumsy but by chance he got most of his weight behind it and it took his enemy by surprise. Art felt human tissue yield with a crunch beneath his knuckles and then he was no longer being held.
Now once more he had Rita in his grip. She was struggling with him, trying to break free. She screamed: “Do you think I like it, being here in a whorehouse? Do you know what I feel about anything? Let go!”
Even in his rising madness he had no intention of hurting Rita. His only thought was to save her, get her out of here. After he had gotten her, screaming, out of the little room, there were frightened faces in his way, and doors, and scrambling bodies. All these were obstacles that must be pushed or knocked aside. Strong hands came from somewhere and fastened—on him, but he struck out blindly and kept trying to pull Rita free. Her being here was not to be endured.
An.expert foot tripped him, and down he went on a dirty floor. His arm was clamped and bent until he must let go of Rita’s wrist. Massive weights sat on him, crushing out what little of his wind was left.
“Stop it!” a rough male voice demanded. “Stop. You gonna stop?” It had been barking the same words at him for some time, and finally he had to listen.
“Uh.”
A hand turned Art’s face up from the floor. “In th’ name o’ pure chastity, you gonna behave?”
“Yuh.”
“All right, let ‘im up. Sublimation, we get ‘em all in here, every kind of nut there is.”
The powerful hands that held Art down reversed themselves and hoisted, and without even trying he was on his feet. He was dizzy, the world was gray with his faintness. Unused to such exertions. Sweat and dirt were in his eyes, all mixed with helpless tears. His chest heaved in wind-broken spasms. There was a pain inside his shoulder, where something seemed to have been torn.
Rita’s voice was somewhere nearby, demanding: “Where is he? Let me see. Oh, the fool. If you’ve hurt him, I’m going to—to—”
“Oh, lady, please, he’s all right, see? Just his wind knocked out. He was out to tear the place apart. Look at my chaste eye, excuse th’ language, where he slugged me.”
Good.
Rita was visible as a blur before him now, and they were speaking to her with respect. Of course she was a boarder here, only a fugitive, not a—no, no, of course she was not that. He felt her cool hands, moving on his hands and his face.
“Don’t start him up again, now, lady, please. Let us get him the purity outta here. We’ll see he gets home safe.”
“Art? Oh, Art, forgive me. Are you all right?”
“Come home with me.”
“No.”
He nodded. Then he was being led away. He no longer tried to resist.
A man’s voice muttered: “Where’s the Holy Joe, why don’t he look after these celibatin’ people of his? I’m sick of the whole celibatin’ mess.” Then the voice lowered itself to ask a whispered question.
“No! Take ‘im back where ya picked ‘im up, and just leave him there, nice and safe. Is somebody usin’ the car now?” There was a fresh uproar in the middle distance, men’s voices raised in some angry quarrel. “What’s that?”
“Sounds like the homos again. I tell ya, we get every kind of nut there is. Lemme put this guy in here for a minute.”
The grip that had remained on Art’s arm guided him into another room. He was released and the door was closed behind him. He groped along
the wall in darkness and found a switchplate, which in response to human fingers on its surface turned on a lamp.
THE light was dim and his eyes were still befogged with tears and sweat, but he made out that the small room possessed a cot. He stumbled over and sank down on it, still wheezing for breath. He had to regain his wind, and more importantly his self-control. His strong point was supposed to be intelligence, and so he had to think.
Forget that Rita was staying in this whorehouse. Forget that the arrogant nameless obstetrician (Holy Joe, the bouncer had said—a cultist, then? One of Ann’s priestly friends?) was using this former nurses’ quarters of a doubtless abandoned hospital as his maternity ward.
Remember this, seen in the fortuitous lightning flash: DIANA ARMS APARTMENTS. Let them use all the blindfolds they liked, now he could locate this place again. To what end? Should he tell all to Family Planning? Should he tell George in what sort of place his sister was holed up? George coming here to drag her out would likely kill somebody in the process, or they would kill him. Anyway, it was likely that her brother would let her stay here since she wanted it that way.
The door of the room opened quietly, and a nude girl stepped in, carrying under one arm a bundle of cloth rolled up as Fred’s karate outfit had been. Art blinked his eyes and found that he could focus clearly now. She was young and blond, flat-bellied and full-breasted, and her face was made up into a pale, cold mask.
The girl closed the door behind her and then froze, motionless, staring at him haughtily. In a cold voice she asked: “Is this the right room? I don’t think it can be mine. What are you doing here? I don’t want men in my room.”
Art shifted his weight on the cot, started to get up, and then when his body made its great reluctance known he let himself stay sitting there. He knew, he understood perfectly well, that he should speak up without delay and tell the prostitute that for once she was indeed mistaken. This one time she had actually, really, walked into the wrong room. He understood it perfectly well yet he said nothing. Was it that he had not yet regained wind enough to speak? Was something wrong now with his throat?
The girl now was moving away from the door, edging along the wall opposite where Art sat on the cot. Already she was gradually unrolling the thick, opaque robe that she had brought in under her arm, and now she was beginning to cover her body with it. As she passed the switchplate on the wall she turned the room’s light to a cooler, softer glow. In her movement she gave the impression of trying to keep as far as possible from Art. She turned her painted face away from him, fixed in a mask of bitterness and contempt, while her motions, graceful as a dancer’s, expressed distaste and even fear.
By now the robe was half unrolled, and now it covered half her flesh. This girl was good, she knew her trade. “Don’t make a move toward me,” she said in a low voice, tense with raw repression. “I don’t want to be pawed by a man. I don’t want you even to stare at me.”
In his adolescence Art had gone twice to brothels. Both times guilt feelings had hampered his performance, and the results had been unsatisfactory. He was still very nearly a virgin as far as sublimation was concerned. Since his marriage he had come to think of himself as grown above all that kind of thing, and he had never, since marriage, been seriously tempted toward it. If Rita had ever wanted to do anything like this, he hadn’t been aware of it. Did he know what she felt about anything?—those were her words. He would have done it with her, if she had ever asked. What went on between husband and wife was nobody else’s business.
The girl had nearly reached the window now. “Maybe you don’t want to touch me, though,” she said, turning her eyes on Art as if with dawning hope. Oh, yes, this girl was good. “Maybe you’re a pure chaste man. Maybe you’re a person who knows what a human being really likes.”
She had reached the window, and now she turned her pale mask of a face to look up and out through the upper panes, left unshaded for this very purpose while the lower were fitted with plastic shields in imitation of stained glass. By now her body from the neck down was completely hidden in the long robe, and now her simulated fear and tension were fading out, were being put aside by something else.
By an exaltation that, once he let it grip him, might be impossible to deny.
“The stars,” she said, her voice now more distant and far softer than before. “The stars are very beautiful tonight.”
Of course tonight’s sky was all clouds and rain, and the stars were only a part of her routine. But that hardly mattered. In his mind the perfect blue-white points of light were there. Her voice and her face and the attitude of her body beneath the long concealing robe made it all true..
Again he realized dully that he must move and speak, he must explain his presence here and make her stop. But for the moment he could not. His breathing, already slowed to normal, became still slower while his eyes rested on the girl. Her hair reminded him of Rita’s, and in other ways they looked something alike. This girl was physically quite attractive, as were all the most successful whores. The more lust there was to sublimate, the more the act could mean. Of course nothing to do with sex was ever reducible to such a simple formula as that; but it seemed to Art that with this girl the meaning of the act of sublimation was likely to be very great indeed. To throw down the weight of sex and stand beside her, for the moment straighter, taller, freer, than that encumbrance would ever let you stand. To stand on top of sex, and use it for a footstool, and look with this girl at her imaginary stars and take their light into his being. Tonight he yearned very powerfully to do just that.
He knew it was a wrong and perverse yearning that he struggled with, and once he had thought that such urges were over for him, all safely outgrown. But now in his weakness and defeat they came to trouble him once more. Well, since an act of sublimation promised all the comfort of which he stood in need, why not? Why not, just this once?
No! He was not going to be so spineless, so weak-willed. Art resisted. He called up images of Eros, lust-knotted bodies sweating, writhing, roaring, raging to attain a pinnacle of lust yet higher than the one they slipped and labored on. He fastened his mind upon the remembered image of the girl’s bare body as he had seen it when she first entered the room. He pictured Rita’s body, spread out invitingly before him. But all the fleshly stirrings that he now managed to arouse in himself would only go as fuel for sublimation if he faltered. And he was faltering. The consciousness of sex-as-God that never should entirely leave an adult’s mind was flickering now and fading dangerously in his.
“The stars are beautiful,” the girl said again, and now her voice sounded like winter bells. “So beautiful, so far away.”
The rain drummed on the window steadily, but had no power to make her words ridiculous. Art feebly tried to cling to images of female nakedness, but all were still and flat and lifeless now, remote and meaningless as old photographs.
Just as he might have gotten up and gone to join the girl at the window, the thought presented itself that the men would soon be coming back for him, and they would have quite a laugh if they came in and found him stargazing. The banal fear was enough to tip the balance on the other side.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and stood up with a grunt. His hands and knees were quivering still and his wrenched shoulder hurt. He fumbled in his pockets for some money with which to tip the girl; probably she would make a fuss if he tried to walk out without tipping her. At least she seemed to recall that things had been that way in the brothels of his youth. “I’m not a customer.”
She had turned from the window and was regarding him with great surprise. He handed her money and explained: “There’s really been a mistake.” Mechanically a gentleman, he squeezed the girl’s breast through he? robe.
“Mistake? I’ll say!” The wintry voice had broken suddenly to nasty shrillness. “This is only five dollars you gimme!”
“It’s all you’ll get,” said Art, now dangerously calm in his exhaustion. “I told you I’m not a customer.”
He rode under the blanket again in the silent car, and smiled grimly to himself. Diana Arms Apartments. He was let out of the car at the busy intersection where he had been picked up. After all he had just been through, a late trip home by slidewalk seemed nothing at all to be concerned about, and he did not even look around when once there came to him the sound of distant screams.
When he got back to the Parrs, who seemed to have been waiting anxiously, Art did not have a great deal to say. Yes, he had seen her and yes, she still wanted to go through with it. She seemed to be all right, and she said they were treating her well enough.
“What kind of place is she staying in?” Ann wanted to know. “And what’s wrong with your arm?”
“I, ah, twisted my shoulder somehow, opening the car door.”
Ann, evidently assuming from Art’s defeated attitude that he was now going to let his wife do as she chastely well pleased, became very comforting and motherly. Art let her rub his shoulder with some kind of medicine that George used for his occupational aches and pains, He also let her go thinking what she liked.
George appeared noticeably relieved by Art’s safe return. “I should have gone,” he muttered several times.
No, you shouldn’t, thought Art. At last Ann released him and he dragged himself upstairs and fell into the guest room bed.
In the morning, he decided painfully, he would go to Family Planning, and have a talk with Mr. Hall. There was really nothing else that he could do.
Sleep was a long time coming.
VIII
“MR. BARNABY of the Homosexual League is here asking to see you, sir.”