All These Condemned

by John D. MacDonald

  Well, it finally happened and it wasn’t at all the way I thought it was going to happen. It was scary and kind of messy. She told me on the phone she would be in. I went to the apartment and went up and Gil opened the door and he told me she was gone for the rest of the afternoon. He told me after I got inside. I hadn’t liked him. Except when I had danced with him a few times, he had always looked on me like I was dirt or something. But I guess he looks at everybody that way. He’s a famous painter, Wilma says. He started kissing me, and I guess, without thinking, I started acting provincial. Then he stopped and I had time to remember what Wilma had told me and then I told him Wilma wouldn’t like this and he said if I thought she wouldn’t like it or would even give a damn, then I didn’t know Wilma very well. He took me back to a bedroom and I got provincial again and he acted bored with me. I couldn’t imagine anybody getting bored with Wilma. So I tried to be Continental again, and then it happened. But it wasn’t like love. It wasn’t like people loving each other. It was just people doing something as if they were sort of cross with each other.

  I told myself I was getting some experience of the world. He was certainly awful strong. He hurt me. Then I got dressed and he yawned and he told me to go home, he was going to take a nap. He shut his eyes. I stood there and looked at him and then I went home. Wilma told me the next morning I could come over. I had to tell her about it. She was rubbing some kind of a new cream into her face. She just kept rubbing away and half-smiling. I told her I was sorry.

  She told me not to fret about it because Gilman Hayes was sort of like one of those toys you wind up and put down on the rug. It just goes and that’s all. She said he would go after anything in a skirt and she used some pretty rough language talking about him. She said she was getting tired of him anyway and she was about to get rid of him. She rubbed the cream off her face and told me that there was nothing to forgive. She stood up and kissed me to prove it. She kissed me in a funny way. It made me feel all flushed and silly. Then she told me to run along.

  I went like she said, even though I’d wanted to ask her about something. About why, on my way home the day before, after being with Gil, I’d started to cry on the street like a ninny. But I guess I knew what her answer would be, anyway. That provincial thing again. The next time I saw Gil he looked at me as if he didn’t know me. And I guess maybe he didn’t. I didn’t feel as if he did.

  But going home that time I didn’t cry the way I’ve been crying now. After a while Paul came in. It started me off again. He stood over the bed and just said in a disgusted voice, “Oh, for God’s sake.” Then he went and got a different jacket and went out again. Like he was a big wheel. Like he hadn’t got so filthy drunk that same day that Judy Jonah had to practically carry him to bed. None of them knew Wilma. They didn’t like her. Maybe Randy is the only one who did, but that isn’t like liking her. Not the way he felt about her.

  Now she’s dead and I can’t face thinking of how boring my life is going to be.

  I sat up then and stopped crying because I thought of what I would do. It was what Wilma would have done. If I stayed with Paul, I’d be trapped. I couldn’t stay with him. Not any more. Wilma would want me to leave him. Since she changed me, an awful lot more men have been interested in me. And Paul makes good money. So he can darn well afford the divorce and some decent support for me. I’ll go where people are alive. Someplace like Miami or Las Vegas or Paris. There won’t be a single darn provincial thing about me. Not any more. I came off that crumby street out of that crumby neighborhood and I knew right from the beginning that my life was going to be wonderful. I guess I will look back and be grateful to Paul for being the one who got me in touch with Wilma. But that’s all I’m grateful for.

  He never looked the least damn bit like Randolph Scott.

  I don’t think I want to marry again. They want to put you in a box and turn the lock. They want you always doing things. Where did you put this? Hey, find that for me. Hey, clean up the place. Hey, come to bed. Like a slave. If you’re a provincial type, that’s all right. Maybe you can even get to like that sort of thing. But I’m not going to get trapped again. Look at how Noel is trapped. In a different kind of a way, she’s a sort of pretty little thing. But I’d say she was pretty shallow. I bet there’s never anything going on in her head the way things are always going on in mine. She just sits and sort of watches the world going by. She probably doesn’t even know that Randy had more than one way of earning the salary Wilma paid him. She’s that stupid, I bet. But what Wilma ever saw in Randy, I’ll never know. He’s so jumpy and skinny and nervous and kind of sloppy. The only man here with any dignity is that nice Wallace Dorn. He speaks so nice. He wouldn’t be cruel and snotty like Gilman Hayes. But I liked dancing with Gil. While they played their silly games.

  No, sir, Paul Dockerty, last night was the last time you’re ever going to touch me. That was the end, even if you don’t know it yet. It’s silly, when you think of it, a little piece of paper giving a man the right to do that to you until you’re such an old hag he doesn’t want to any more.

  I got dressed and I stopped by the door and thought about her real hard. I thought about her until I started crying again. And then I went out. It was pretty dark in the living room. Noel was there talking to a big trooper. They didn’t see me. I turned around and went out through the back. I was sort of looking for Wallace Dorn. Then I saw the cigarette light in our car so I went over. Paul was sitting in there alone. He jumped when he saw me. I guess I startled him. He said, “I want to talk to you.”

  I was going to say that, but he said it first, so I just gave him a look and turned around and walked away. There wasn’t anything he could say to me. Nothing. I was going around the house when I stepped on something that rolled under my foot so I nearly sat down. I felt around and picked it up and took it over to a light coming from a window to see what it was. It felt like some kind of a smooth stick. It was the striped stick from one end of the croquet game, the stick you have to make the ball hit after you roll it down through the hoops. But the end you stick in the ground was gone, broken right off. I guess somebody fell over it in the dark and broke it off and got mad and threw it. I threw it back over onto the court.

  I was restless. I went to my room again and then I wandered around some more and then there was yelling and people running toward the lake and I heard somebody say something that sounded like “Got her.”

  I didn’t want to go down there, but I had to. I’m always doing things like that. I have to see things. Once on Madison Avenue there was a crowd of people looking at something and dumb me, I had to push my way through so I could see too, and what it was was a fat female person who had fallen out of a window. I nearly lost my lunch.

  I had to go down and see, but I walked slow. I wasn’t going to run like the rest of them. Even so, I was in plenty of time. They had her in a boat all covered over with a dirty canvas. They lifted her out and they dropped her. I was crying again. I hated to see them drop her. I wished there was some way I could make her come alive again. Some magic words to say, like in the stories.

  I thought if I could make her come alive again, I would devote my whole life to her. There would be just the two of us. We would go away somewhere and there would be just the two of us forever and ever. And there wouldn’t be any men around us.

  Then I stopped and wondered why on earth I had thought a dumb thing like that. Well, if all the men were like Gil, I certainly wouldn’t want any around. Afterward it was sort of by accident that I saw Steve pull Noel Hess into his room and shut the door and I heard the lock go click. Still waters certainly run deep, I thought. I had her all figured out for being provincial. It just goes to show you. Never judge a book by its cover. I wanted to listen by the door but I was afraid somebody would catch me.

  Then they called us all into the living room again after they had a chance to look the body over or something. We had to sit there while a man named Fish made a speech. Everybody looked solemn. I was cryi
ng sort of to myself and I wasn’t even listening very much. Then he said a dreadful thing about her being stuck in the back of the head with something. Killed! Somebody had murdered my Wilma. Just thinking of it made me feel like a tiger or something. I would gouge their eyes right out. I’d jump up and down on them. And we all had to wait around for big shots to come. I kept trying to remember where we’d all been in the water. But that wasn’t any good because we’d been moving around a lot and I didn’t know exactly when it had happened to her. Noel left the room, saying she had a headache. I bet! I waited for Steve to follow her, but he was busy trying to talk them into something about reporters that would be coming.

  I just sat there. I stopped crying. I kept thinking about who had murdered her. Judy Jonah was talking to a trooper. She glanced at me and then she sort of frowned at me. Not really at me.…

  I wonder what the trouble is. She looks sort of funny. Somebody is behind my chair. There is a hand. Nobody should touch anybody like that, put his darn hand on my breast reaching around from behind me, right out with people looking. If this is Paul’s idea of a joke.…

  Eight

  (GILMAN HAYES—BEFORE)

  EVIS HAD PHONED from the gallery. He wanted to know when he could have more work. He said he could sell it. People were waiting for more to come in. I told him I wouldn’t work for a time, maybe a month, maybe two. He said it might be smart to get some work in before his customers cooled off. I told him I didn’t like the implication. I didn’t like the hint that I was some sort of a fad. He apologized to me. But there was a practiced smoothness about the apology that I didn’t care for. I hung up on him.

  The world is full of drab inconsequential people like Evis. Living half lives. Afraid to grasp. The world gives to the ones who take boldly. People like Evis are there to be kicked.

  But his manner had bothered me. Even though I knew I shouldn’t let it. I went to see Wilma. It was midafternoon. She let me in and then went back to the phone. She was talking in Spanish. Finally she hung up. “I was talking to José,” she said. “Telling him how many were invited.”

  “To what?”

  “Did you forget, dear? This coming week end at the lake.”

  “I guess I forgot.”

  She sat beside me and took my hand. “What’s the matter?”

  “Evis asked for more work. I didn’t like the way he asked me.”

  She shook her head, almost sadly. “When will you learn what you really are, Gil? How long is it going to take you? Grimy little people like Evis don’t matter. He’s a parasite, feeding off your strength. Humility doesn’t become you, darling.”

  I could feel the strength coming back into me. She is the only one who can do that. Sometimes I feel as though she created me. But that is wrong, of course. She merely brought out what was already there, hidden behind all the weaknesses and uncertainties I used to have.

  I had wasted so much time before I met her.

  I want to laugh when I think of the pathetic thing I was. She saw what was there.

  I’ve never made friends. You do or you don’t. It seems that easy. I never knew why. She told me why. The less gifted always sense the difference. That’s easy to understand, isn’t it? She talks about mutations. The inevitable change in humanity. To become bigger, stronger, quicker, more ruthless. A survival thing, she has told me.

  And I used to crawl and beg. Oh, not obviously. But thankful for the little jobs. Lifeguard, counter boy, usher, dance instructor, model. Little people throwing scraps to me, and hating me because they could sense that I was better. Women were easy. They have always been easy. Wilma says that is a clue. I should have been able to read it. They are easy and meaningless. Except Wilma. Because of what she has done.

  It was always a dream. From the time, I guess, that Sister Elizabeth, in the Home, said I could draw. She put that picture on the cork board in the big hall. Of trees. I drew every leaf. She told me what I had to do. Study, work, study, work. She should have known better. Where is there time for that? They let you go when you are old enough. When I was little they thought I would be adopted. I was out three times. But I was sent back. They wanted kissings. I could not do it. I stood and looked at them. Unresponsive, they said. They let me go when I was old enough and they found me the job and the place to live. How can you study and work to be an artist? The books were too hard. I learned the words so I could say them. And lessons are expensive. I would take some and then I would quit because they would not let me do what I wanted to do. Sit here, they said. Draw this pot. Draw that apple. You could go on for years drawing the dull things they put in front of you. That is not being an artist. I took them the things I did myself. All the colors swirled together. They always laughed and pursed up their mouths and tilted their heads on the side and used the words I had learned. Little people, refusing to see what was better. Hating me.

  So I did very little of it. And I didn’t show it to anyone any more. But on Sundays I would put on my good clothes and walk where there were the best-dressed people and walk among them and pretend all the time that I was an artist, a very good one. And on those Sundays I would usually find a girl. That was never very hard. As Wilma says, that should have been a clue.

  I am ashamed of the way she found me. It was a job for Gherke. Sometimes he would use me. Not often and not for much money. I would have to lean, sweating, over some meatless girl, trying to look charmed and devoted to her, while Gherke fussed with hot lights and camera angles, always complaining about my wooden expression. The ad she saw was for Ferris perfume. She asked at the agency and the agency sent her to Gherke and Gherke told her where to find me. She sat at a stool. I had to wear that monkey hat behind that counter. Ridiculous. She knew my name. She waited until I was off. I thought it was just more of the same. I did not care. She was older, but not too old, I thought.

  That night was what made everything different. It was not what I thought. It was at first, but not later. Not with those lights low and with her asking me the questions about myself. She knew when I was lying. I have always lied. Usually I say things like coming from a rich family and my people killed in a plane or something. But she kept asking and after a little bit I found I was telling her everything. Sister Elizabeth, drawing every leaf, how it was easy with girls, everything, and after a while I was crying. I couldn’t remember crying before. She told me later it was like psychoanalysis. Releasing tension. It all took a long time, because I could not express myself well. It was dawn when it was over and I felt as if I had run as fast as I could all night long.

  Then she told me what I was. I had never known it before. She told me how the world always tries to suppress the best.

  That was the beginning. After that came the clothes, and how to treat people, and getting the studio apartment for me, and her there all the time while I painted, doing pictures very quickly, and Wilma telling me all the time to be bold about what I was doing. Not to try to paint something, but to paint a feeling. With big sweeps of color and spatters of paint.

  She introduced me to Steve, and it didn’t matter to me that he didn’t like me. She said he had his job to do and he would do it. We went to good places and were seen there and after a while I was in the columns and then that man did the article on my work and then the gallery took me, and then there were all those arguments in the art sections of the papers and people began to buy the paintings and talk about me.

  But she had taught me how to act. To always remember that I am better. That they are all slobs. Treat them as such. They like it, she said. They come back for more. It is really very easy to do. I had always acted sort of that way, but it was an unnatural shyness. I mean it just looked like arrogance.

  Wilma made everything come true, but I know now that even without her it would have happened anyway. It might have taken longer. That is all.

  There is still a weakness in me. Like when Evis acted that way. I had to go to her again because she could make me feel strong and whole again. But I am going to get o
ver that. So nothing can disturb me. I am, as she has explained, a mutation. What the race of men will one day become. She is a little bit that way, but not so much. The ones who are that way, they are big and strong and quick. I have always been bigger and stronger and quicker than the others. I can walk down any street and look at men and know I can knock them down. And look at women and know I can have them. That is the way I look at them. So that they know it. They have always hated me anyway. They have always rejected me. So it makes no difference if I give them more cause, does it?

  At first Wilma bullied her friends into buying my work. She knew it was good. And then strangers started buying it. At first I would read something. It would say, “Weak, amateurish, exhibitionistic. A monstrous joke. A triumph of press agentry.” It would make me uncertain.

  But she would have another clipping. It would say, “Gilman Hayes exhibits a truly startling growth in his latest work. His dynamic approach to space relationships, his iconoclastic attitude toward traditional concepts of design, his daring use of color have burst open new frontiers in subjective art. We predict that …”

  I keep the good ones in a scrapbook.

  I go to be with Wilma, and in that she is very demanding, but for me it is not like the others. It is like a comforting. Like being protected from outside things that want to hurt you with sharp edges. A warmth around you. Sometimes we laugh together at Hess. He is such a ridiculous man. So helpless. So futile. I think of how insignificant he is and how strong I am and I want to put my fist through his skull. I know I could do it. It would be like tearing brittle paper. As if he were not really there. As if he were not really alive. The way I am. The way Wilma is. I am strong enough to put my fist through the world. It would tear like paper, too. As easily subdued as that Mavis was, walking around trying to be Wilma. And can never be.