by Steve Amick
Mort stayed on the street to smoke his pipe while she looked for the gloves, unsure if they were still in her apartment somewhere or down in the overstuffed prop trunk that had blossomed in the studio area on the first floor.
She heard a man calling Hello? and footsteps and knew it was Wink, back from shooting some bridal party portraits. He knocked on her open bedroom door. “Sal? You okay? Why's the front door unlocked and our lawyer's standing out front? Were the cops here? Something happen?”
“No, no,” she managed to say.
He tried a smile, but she could see he was confused, anxious. “Doerbom guarding the place or something? We don't have him on that kind of a retainer, I hope.”
She pictured the carnation in Mort's lapel. And in an instant, it seemed as if Wink pictured it, too, or put it all together as he took her in, glancing down at her dress for the first time.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry. My mistake.” Nodding, red faced, he pulled the door closed behind him, stopping when it was just ajar to say, “You look nice, by the way. Real nice.”
She heard him walking slowly down the hall and entering his own apartment, and the radio coming on. She had the gloves now and put them on, then took them off, then tugged them back on, and, thinking of Reenie, took them off once more to dial the phone.
While she waited, she hurried to the window and rapped her ring against the glass to get Mort's attention. When he glanced up, she held up one finger: a minute.
When her friend picked up, she told her what had just happened and asked her to come over and keep Wink company.
“Can't,” Reenie said. “Got a date myself. With the pirate, if you can feature that …”
“Who?”
“The troublemaker with the hook. Keeney. The marine?”
“But—”
“I'm doing you both a large, is the way I see it,” Reenie said. “You want another favor on top of—”
“But no one asked you to—”
“Guy appears to be sweet on me, so I figure I let him buy me a nice dinner, listen to his war stories, his hand story, he's less likely to come pounding on your door again—maybe sometime when we're both indisposed, if you catch my meaning. I mean, what—we're doing a shoot and he just barges in again? Maybe he sues Wink? Besides, Sal, so what that Wink knows you've got a date? What's his beef? He's got no say-so in this. You two have some sort of … thing you're not—?”
Sal told her she was just concerned he might be a little thrown by it—by any kind of change. And maybe a little hurt that she hadn't confided in him. As a friend.
“Bilge,” Reenie said. “If things change around there, I'm sure he'll find another place to live. He's a big boy. People adapt. That's life.”
Sal didn't bring up the widespread housing problem these days. Reenie was certainly aware of that. Besides, she was pretty sure her friend wasn't just talking about him having a place to sleep and get his mail. She was talking about learning to look out for herself, putting herself first. But she knew, too, that as much as Reenie had been a part of everything that had happened since Wink came to town more than two years ago, she could never be as in on the little everyday things, the way they interacted throughout the day with certain glances and certain hmms and grunts and smart-mouthed inside jokes, that made it so comfortable to think of him remaining down there at the end of the hall until they were both very old. Because even now they felt like an old couple—one that had never actually been a couple, of course, one that had never made love.
“You owe it to yourself to try,” Reenie said. “Go. Get out of there.”
71
Wink could tell. She had him in there, alone in her apartment. He lay there listening to muted conversation, lingering murmurs, for more than an hour, afraid to move for fear of rustling too loud and missing something, though he couldn't make any of it out, anyway. They were getting along—that's all he could tell.
He turned off his reading lamp at twelve-thirty, but was still wide awake at one when there was some kind of an outburst coming from Sal's end of the hall, followed by a general state of ruckus, enough to bring him out into the hallway in time to see Mort leaving, heading down the stairs. It wasn't anger on his face, but something else. And then Sal was right there and they were rushing past too fast for Wink to put it together. “Everything all right?” he asked, but she waved him off, following her new lawyer boyfriend down. She had her hand over her mouth, and at first he thought the guy had gotten rough with her— in which case, he was begging for a soaking, no matter how much she waved him off. Wink hesitated at the top of the stairs, thinking only now to dart back in and grab his bathrobe, which he did, though he imagined after more than two years it couldn't be the first time she'd caught a glimpse of his boxers.
She didn't follow Mort far. Wink heard the jangle of the shop bell as the guy exited into the street, and she started back up the stairs, looking distraught and yet smiling, kind of, shaking her head like she was trying to laugh off a bad piece of news or something.
She was gesturing in the air—a thing she only did when she was pretty worked up. She'd told him once her mother had done that—”got all Italian” with her hands.
“I thought I was ready!” she announced, and Wink shuffled in after her, into her apartment. “I really did. I mean, it's been so long and he really is a dear man, but I guess maybe it's too soon or maybe it's been too long, too much time has passed, because I …” She stopped for a second, as if uncertain she should continue with the details. Wink flopped down on her love seat and waited, bathrobe folded genteelly, crossing his legs like he had all night to hear this. “I started giggling, okay? And I just couldn't stop.”
She flopped down next to him dejectedly, and he threw his arm around her, giving her a squeeze that made him feel a little like a gym coach about to launch into a pep talk. “Giggling's okay, Sal. Really. Guys like a girl who's … you know, having a good time and enjoying herself and … It's cute.”
She shook her head. “The giggling didn't really start till he got out his thing. I tried not to—I bit my lip, actually—but it only got worse and I don't think it was okay with him.”
Extricating himself, he got up and mixed them both an old-fashioned, assuring her it would happen when it happened. Maybe not with Mort Doerbom, but rushing it wasn't a good idea at all. And even if it had been a while, which maybe it had— Chesty had been dead a year but gone much longer than that— the giggling might be a hint to herself that she was too nervous and needed even more time.
She seemed to be deliberating before announcing, “It was smaller than I remembered. That's why I started giggling.”
“Than you remembered?” He was confused. “But I thought you and Mort just—”
“Than I remembered … you know, the only other one I've ever seen, is what I meant.” She punched him in the arm, maybe thinking he'd been trying to make a crack. The punch felt awfully like something a sister would do. He hadn't meant to make a crack; he'd just been confused about her sex life and if she already, prior to tonight, had one up and running. He'd been operating under the assumption all along that she hadn't made that step yet, which, apparently, was still true.
Sal took a big swig of her drink, then said, “But maybe my memory's playing tricks on me. Who knows?”
“Maybe …”
She elbowed him now, and he turned to see she was waggling her eyebrows, Groucho style, grinning, and nodded at his lap as if …
But no. She had to be kidding. He just knew she had to. So he played along, leaping from the love seat as if outraged. “Listen here, ma'am! If you're expecting me to whip it out and give you something to compare it to, you can forget it right now, sister!”
She laughed, clearly drunk. He decided she must have had more than a few before he'd mixed the old-fashioneds.
“Seriously. Mine is not to be used for some sort of Gallup Poll. It's special.”
She howled, shoving him. “You said pole!”
“Unintenti
onal.” He took a step toward the door. “Good night, Sal.”
“Hey!” She shoved him back down onto the love seat, thumping him on the chest. “Just so we're clear, bub. I didn't want to see your pole, either! I'm still in mourning!”
Mort stood in the half-open doorway. They froze. Wink could feel Sal's hand still lingering on his chest as if stuck there, caught in something sticky.
Mort was studying the floor. “I … got to thinking: I let myself out but I can't lock it and I … I wanted to make sure you locked it behind me, and you didn't, so …”
When Sal spoke, it was all Wink could manage to make it out. He wondered how the hell Mort was supposed to hear it all the way across the room. “Thank you, Mort,” she said. “That was very considerate of you. I'll be sure to do that.”
Mort nodded, still staring down at the floor. The poor guy looked stunned.
“You're very kind, Mort,” Sal said, and he nodded twice and shrank back into the hall, pulling the door only halfway closed behind him, as if unsure of even what was expected of him in this. They listened, neither one breathing, to his footsteps clumping dejectedly down the stairs and then the distant jangle of the shop bell as he let himself out again.
They both swiveled to the window, craning to see just his hat as he hurried back down the street. It looked cold and dead out there, windy with garbage, the streetlights trembling, and then Sal burst out laughing, breathing at last. It was an uncontrollable laugh that bordered on hysterics, he thought—not entirely sure she wouldn't slip into sobbing. But no, she was laughing.
“I hope you're laughing at the situation,” he said. “The awkwardness and all …”
She couldn't respond other than nodding.
“ … and not mocking the Sad Sack.”
This made her shriek now, and she added a wavy gesture as if objecting to something she couldn't currently voice, what with all the shrieking and silliness.
“Brother,” Wink said.
But she just kept laughing.
“Man alive,” he said finally, getting up to take his leave as well now. “You're cold, lady. Very cold. You shall never, ever take the measure of my Gallup pole. That settles it.” But he knew he was smiling when he said it.
Just not cackling and guffawing, as Sal continued to do, long after he was back in his own apartment, down the hall.
But going back to bed and going back to sleep were two different things. He found himself wondering if she had really been kidding or not about wanting to compare his pecker. And maybe even horsing around about it was in some way her way of leveling the playing field. After all, he'd seen her naked plenty.
Maybe the decent, gentlemanly thing would have been to just show her what he looked like. Maybe he should have done that way back, when they were first shooting the girlies. Just to put her at ease, make it more fair.
Christ on a cracker, he thought. It's almost three in the morning, pal, and you are not thinking straight….
He told himself he really ought to get up again and lock the door. He didn't really think she would carry the horseplay any further, sneaking into his apartment or anything ridiculous, but he might need to wax the dolphin, just to keep himself as noble and resolute as he wanted to be. He was pretty sure she wasn't ready—for any man—and no amount of kidding around or booze, no matter how outrageous and desperate she was acting, would make her honestly any more ready.
72
Manners told her she should be calling Mort Doerbom and smoothing over her behavior with him, but she found herself, late the next morning, her head still pounding from last night's cocktails, more concerned with smoothing over things with Wink. Her behavior was coming back to her in snatches, and it made her wince, thinking how she'd carried on, teasing Wink about having him whip it out.
She imagined him already packed and gone, scared off by the crazy widow, just as she felt she'd almost done the night she sort of kissed him.
There was no answer when she knocked. His door was unlocked as she pushed it ajar to call his name and heard the shower running. Thinking she'd check for a packed satchel or other signs he was leaving, she opened the door wider.
There was stuff laid out, all right, all over his mattress and chair, which was pulled closer to the bed.
Stepping in, she saw they were magazines—girlie magazines— splayed open and arranged around the bed, with only a small area left to sit back against the dented pillow and the headrest. A jar of Vaseline sat open on the bedside table.
She was about to hightail it out of there when she noticed it was her. Every page had photos of her—some in different colored wigs, one also with Reenie in some kind of a catfight pose, but mainly, it was her.
Turning to leave, she saw him standing there in his bathrobe, dripping wet, looking crushed, she thought, maybe even heartbroken.
“It's none of my business,” she said, “but I'm just curious why—”
“Obviously,” he said, plain as a radio weather report, “I was waxing the dolphin.”
73
In a flurry of picking up and covering up, attending to the bed and the magazines, pulling the covers over the mayhem, putting away the Vaseline, eyes only on the business at hand, he explained the whole deal, how he'd stuck by his self-imposed policy for two years of only looking at the photos that actually ran in the magazines. That looking at any pictures of her just lying around the darkroom felt disrespectful, that this way he at least was no different from the average Joe, and—“By looking, you mean … What did you just call it? Waxing the … ?”
He stopped and faced her. No amount of housekeeping was going to make this better. She'd retreated to the doorway and had her back half turned to him, her own eyes cast down to the worn runner in the hallway.
“Waxing the dolphin,” he said. “I figured it was less creepy if I stuck to only what every other guy can get hold of, only—”
He stopped, wondering if he should just say, unapologetically, that every guy waxed the dolphin, tell her to knock next time, and be done with it. But she wasn't bolting; she was sticking it out. So he decided to tell her.
He told her how he'd decided, over time, that he wasn't the average Joe because the average Joe looking at her in the girlies didn't see what he got to see—a smart, gorgeous woman with an inquisitive mind and a scrappy soul who made him laugh and believe in himself and want to get up every morning. “The rack,” he said, “is swell, too.”
She looked him in the eye now, turning, stepping back into this room and slipping slowly into his arms. He held her there against him, her hand pinned against his chest, and they stood there for the longest time.
She sounded so small when she said, finally, “I think my not being ready, with Mort, I think that was just—I always thought you sort of pitied me, or—”
“Pitied you?” Where the Jesus did she get that?
“I never imagined you felt so—I mean, when I said I wasn't ready last night—”
“I know I'm not ready,” he said, trying to make a joke because he really wasn't ready, in a lot of ways. “I just got through waxing the dolphin. I couldn't be ready for another half hour at least.”
She socked him lightly in the breadbasket, but kept hugging him.
“Also, I refuse to whip it out for your scrutiny until you're sure you're over your giggle fits. So that's another roadblock.”
But seriously, there was something else standing in their way, and he wasn't sure it could ever be fixed by time. He told her she could be ready to open her heart to a man anywhere from today to years from today, but to Wink, whenever it was, she would still be Chesty's widow.
“Always?” She actually sounded hurt. “Even after more than two straight years of being my best friend?”
He'd never thought of himself as that before. He hated the way she sounded almost offended—rejected or something—and he had to wonder now if she might have a point.
“I guess I'll have to think about this some more,” he said. “A lot more.”
“You do that,” she said. “In the meantime, feel free to look at any pictures your heart—or your dolphin—desires.”
She gave him a final squeeze, hands around his waist, and a kiss on the cheek, and then she let herself out, pressing the button lock first before pulling it closed behind her.
Christ on a crutch, he thought. Like I'll be able to think about anything else …
74
She woke to the realization that someone was in her bedroom. By the sound of his breath and his smell alone, she knew it was Wink, even before the hushed repetition of her name. He was standing at the end of her bed, wiggling her foot gently, trying to quietly wake her.
It was too dark to read the clock, but it had to be at least midnight. “Let me guess …,” she managed to mutter, “you need to borrow more Vaseline.”
“No, smart mouth.” He kept up the whispering, though she thought she'd made it clear he'd already woken her. “Knock it off and listen.” Even with his voice low, he sounded urgent and worked up about something, straining to get it out. “Here's why it's okay: I never heard of Breakey, Nebraska.”
“Excuse me?”
“Before we buried Chesty there, I mean. Before the trip out west. I never even heard of Breakey Nebraska.”
With a groan, she rolled over and worked herself up to a seated position. “Fascinating, but what does it mean?”
“It means,” he said, almost sounding annoyed now, “maybe we'll do it with the lights off and air-raid curtains pulled tight or something, just so you don't bust a gut laughing at the equipment like you did with the last poor sap you let in here—but I am not in the wrong here, that's what that means. Chesty was a good guy, a great guy, a pal as far as that goes, but we weren't pals-to-the-bitter-end kind of pals, clearly. I didn't even know the guy was from Nebraska, for the love of Jesus! That whole story of being shipped off to Chicago to live with his aunt and uncle, leaving his mom back there, his dad parking on the train tracks— none of that! He never told me a bit of it! And I never told him about taking ill as a kid and my mom leaving and … I'd say that that puts me squarely in the ‘friendly professional acquaintance' category, not the ‘best buddies' category.”