Reckless Hearts (Short Story): A Story of Slim Hawks and Ernest Hemingway

by Melanie Benjamin

  But Papa started to behave—strangely. I don’t know, there’s something about him these days that wasn’t there before. Christ, I remember the first time I laid eyes on the man! Back before the war, in Key West. Even among men like Clark Gable, Papa stood out.

  (“But have I ever told you about my little fling with Clark?” Slim asked Betty slyly.)

  (Betty’s eyes widened and her grin threatened to devour her face.)

  (“It was back in ’forty-nine, before I married Leland. Not a bad lay, but the dumbest man I’ve ever met,” Slim continued. “I mean, after, all we could talk about was the weather. Or the box office of his latest movie.”)

  (“I always heard he was a lousy kisser,” Betty mused.)

  (“Well, kissing is really the least of it, isn’t it?” Slim asked rhetorically.)

  Back to Papa. Maybe I couldn’t desire him, like a Clark Gable, but Christ, his intelligence! That’s what always does it for me, really. His steady common sense, and his probing thoughts, the way he’ll cast a bright light on some dark corner of your mind that you didn’t even know existed, but suddenly he’s found it, and you feel somehow bigger, more important—more special. That was it, back then.

  Now, however, there’s something else. Didn’t you notice it tonight, how over the top he was? It’s like everything’s a performance. As if he has to convince himself, every minute, of the man he used to be. And he’s erratic, he’s not rock-steady, someone you can count on. I don’t think he’ll publish anything like The Old Man and the Sea again, to tell the truth.

  I’ve always known, from that first meeting in Key West, that he was attracted to me. He never made a secret of it; he would groan and roll his eyes whenever he saw me—he almost pawed the ground and snorted, he was that obvious. And, of course, I was flattered; flattered enough to encourage it. Once, I came out of my bath—we were all sharing a cabin in Sun Valley, hunting—and I dried my hair in front of the fireplace, and he brushed it and brushed it, and when it was dry, he dropped the hairbrush and said, “You have no idea what you’re doing to me.” But I did. I may have been young, I may have been married, but of course I did know.

  Maybe it’s wrong, maybe it’s a weakness, but ever since then, I’ve always run to Papa when I need affirmation that I’m a woman, that I’m attractive, that I’m desired. Don’t we always need someone like that in our lives—one man we know will always tell us that? Whose eyes will always reflect back to us the woman we need to, want to, be?

  (“Bogie,” Betty murmured, and there was a catch in her voice. “Bogie was that man for me.”)

  (“Well, you’re lucky,” Slim replied. “You’re lucky it was your husband who was that man. I don’t know that it is, for most of us.”)

  (There was a long pause, while Betty, hands trembling, reached for a cigarette and lit it.)

  On my previous visits to the Finca, after he married Mary, there was tension, sure. If I didn’t encourage his attention, neither did I protest. She’d glare at me, they’d have huge fights when I went to the guesthouse at night, but she never said anything directly to me. Not even when Papa would say things like, “Mary, why can’t you look after yourself like Slim does?” “Mary, why can’t you dress like Miss Slimsky?” “Look at how Miss Slimsky does her hair—you should ask her how.” And the thing is, she doesn’t look too bad—she’s kind of made herself into a feminized version of him, in a way. And that white-blond hair she has, to match his silver head—I think it’s a dye job, but I never asked.

  (“Of course it’s a dye job,” Betty said with a snort. “I’ve never met a woman yet who has her natural hair color! I sure as hell don’t!”)

  Anyway, back to this last visit, with the script. Papa began to treat Peter badly. Not that he hadn’t already done that! Papa hates other writers, you know. It’s not jealousy—he knows he has nothing to worry about in that way. It’s like he detests that he’s a writer himself, that it’s not manly enough, and so he belittles it in other male writers, too. His hatred for Fitzgerald—I always thought it was because he saw in Scott how weak, how ineffectual, the artist can be, and he’s terrified he has that strain in himself.

  Now, I have to say that Peter and I behaved excruciatingly well, after our weekend. It was just a one-time thing; we both knew it, even if we never said so out loud. After that weekend in bed, truly, we behaved completely aboveboard. No furtive glances, no stolen looks. I swear, I would look at him and it was as if I’d never seen him naked at all!

  (“I don’t believe you,” Betty broke in heatedly. “I can’t believe you. When a man and a woman make love, there’s no way they behave the same with each other as they did before. There’s a vulnerability—it’s like you’re both wearing the same shirt, you have one sleeve, he the other, and you button it up over where you come together. The air hums with it—even if your eyes don’t give you away, your flesh does. It’s bruised, it’s alive, it knows everything, it hungers for more—reaching out toward the other, because it’s familiar now. You can’t undo touch. Your hands, your arms, your breasts and thighs—they know. They remember.”)

  (“Christ, Betty!” Slim laughed, a little uncomfortable; she was not used to talking so intimately with other women. “Listen to you! Since when did you get to be an expert on matters of the flesh? Weren’t you a virgin when you slept with Bogie?”)

  (“I’m no saint,” Betty said, narrowing her cat’s eyes.)

  (“I guess not,” Slim said, narrowing hers.)

  Despite what you say, I swear—Papa had no reason to think anything more was going on. He knows me, he knows I’ve had flings before, and he’s never said anything, never acted untoward.

  (“But you didn’t have them right under his nose,” Betty pointed out smugly. Slim let it slide.)

  Things heated up. He’d say nasty things to Peter, nasty things to me. Mary looked on gleefully. And maybe this emboldened her. Maybe seeing Papa turn on me gave her the courage to walk right into the guesthouse one day, when I’d just come out of the bath and was wearing only a towel, and tell me, “If you ever sleep with my man, I will kill you, Slim. One bullet, remember? That’s all it takes. And I’m a good shot. Taught by the very best.”

  And then she stalked out of the room.

  What unnerved me was that she was so serious. Usually when it was only the two of us, we gossiped or talked about the weather—I guess it was a lot like Gable and me, really! Two people with nothing in common except desire, in this case, desire for the same man. Mine was an intellectual desire, but I don’t think Mary can understand that. She’s not intelligent enough herself. So I was trembling when she left. Ready to pack my bags and get the hell out of Dodge. But there was still the matter of the script. I was supposed to bring back whatever was finished, and I didn’t have anything yet.

  A day or so after this little encounter, I was in the living room of the Finca with Papa and Peter. Now, Papa has always had this strange little habit around me—maybe around all the women, I don’t know. But you know how he is, physically—that rounded belly now, the flabby muscles. Not exactly an Adonis. Yet he’ll do this thing—he always wears these enormous shorts, several sizes too big for him, as if to make himself look slender again. He uses what he calls his Kraut belt—he took it off a German soldier during the war—tied around his waist. So he’ll sometimes stand up straight, suck in his belly—he hardly ever wears a shirt these days—and so his belly, for a moment, will go flat and his pants will suddenly sag down around his hips.

  It’s like he’s marking his territory, reminding me that he is still a man, a desirable man. A man in heat.

  I never know how to respond. Would you? I can’t laugh, because it will hurt his feelings terribly. I can’t make any kind of lewd comment, because it will egg him on further. Usually, I just take it all in, draw on my cigarette, and change the subject.

  But this time—

  (Slim broke off, shook her head.)

  (“What?” Betty sat up straight, her eyes snapping. “What, Slim
?”)

  This time, he sucked in his belly until his pants fell down to the floor. And he stood, stark naked, tumescent, staring down at his proud trophy, for minutes. What seemed like hours. He stood there, and then he looked right at me, unapologetic. Triumphant, even.

  My very first instinct was to duck, because all I could imagine was Mary running around the corner with her shotgun cocked, aiming right at me. One bullet—that’s what I was saying to myself, over and over, while I stared at Papa in all his naked glory.

  Then I looked at him, really looked at him, taking it all in. And I felt sick, and sorry. There was nothing about him that stirred in me any kind of want or desire. He’s flabby, he’s old, he’s white-haired. He’s just a man, ordinary for his age—and that was heartbreaking to me. Even if I’d never wanted him before, I wanted my image of him to be attractive, in some way. But this—Papa in the flesh, finally, after all these years—he’s nearly sixty now, you know. It was just shattering.

  I don’t know what Peter was doing during all this. I’d forgotten about him, really, until I heard a strangled laugh. “Christ, Papa, we get it. We get the picture. Now put that thing away.”

  Papa didn’t even bother to look at Peter. But he did, finally, pull up his pants, and the moment was over. He sat back down in his chair, and Mary came in, and I don’t know if she noticed anything amiss, but I sure as hell was beet red! My face was burning, the room was a blur. I couldn’t look at Papa then, nor for the rest of the evening, as we all piled into the old station wagon to go to the Floridita, just like usual. Peter and I sat as far apart as possible, and I couldn’t look at him, either.

  I called Leland the next day and told him I was coming home. “With the script?” he asked, and I mumbled something about part of it. And we did have something for him, the first twenty-five pages or so—a treatment, anyway.

  But when Peter handed me the pages the next day, to take with me, Papa blew his top. “What did you give her? What is this? Are you going behind my back? I know what’s up, I know it’s a conspiracy! You’re taking this away from me, too, aren’t you?”

  I was truly terrified. I’d never seen Papa act this way—his eyes darting to and fro, his brow beady with sweat; he kept making odd, jerky motions with his hands, as if he had no control over them. There are guns all over the place at his house, of course, and I was sweating myself, picturing him running over and grabbing one and blasting a hole in first Peter, then me.

  Peter was even more terrified, and I knew it was up to me to calm Papa down. “Now, look, Papa, look here,” I said in the most soothing voice ever. I put my hand on his arm and began to stroke it, pet it, like you do to a frightened animal. “Let’s compare these pages with the ones you have. Let’s make sure.”

  He allowed me to move him over to a sofa, and I began to go through both copies of the script, showing him how they were exactly the same, reading him a few lines here and there, just so he could hear my voice speaking his words—I knew that was what would calm him down, finally. And it worked. He settled down, his eyes cleared, and everything was back to normal. For the time being.

  But that was when I noticed that Mary wasn’t around. And that she hadn’t been around all morning. It was almost time for us to leave; we were going to go to the Floridita for one last drink, and then they’d take me to the airport.

  Papa and I were still seated, my hand on his arm, when he touched my bracelet. It was a bracelet I wore a lot, a gold chain hanging with little pinecones. It wasn’t anything special or pretty, just something I liked to wear.

  “You know, Mary likes that bracelet,” Papa said in a wheedling tone.

  “She does?”

  “She does. She always talks about it.”

  “Well, I’m flattered.”

  “Do you know what you could do, Miss Slimsky? Something very special, that would mean a lot. To both Mary and me.”

  “I’d like to do something special for you two,” I said. But my heart began to pound. The way this week had gone, I had no idea what he meant. He could have been asking for Peter’s head on a platter, for all I knew.

  “Let me buy this bracelet from you, so I can give it to Miss Mary as a present,” Papa replied. And I was so relieved, I nearly burst into tears.

  “Oh, no, I’ll give it to you. I won’t take any money. It’s my gift to the both of you.” And I unclasped it and handed it to him. I would have given him the clothes off my back, just to get out of there.

  “Thank you,” Papa said as he put the bracelet in the pocket of his shirt. He kissed me on the cheek, a kiss so chaste, so tentative, that it had absolutely nothing to do with the man who had dropped his pants in front of me. I had no idea where this kiss came from, from what part of this man who I realized I would never understand completely. But I accepted it gratefully, and gave him a kiss just as chaste.

  “Where is Mary?” I asked as we started for the station wagon. Peter was sitting in the front, with the driver, so it was only Papa and me in the back.

  “She had to go to the beauty parlor,” Papa replied. “A last-minute emergency.”

  “A beauty-parlor emergency?” I was dubious. “She looks wonderful. Will I see her before I leave?”

  “I hope so” was all Papa said, and then we spent the rocky ride to the hotel talking about the script. Papa reminded me, again, of how important it was that they use real fish in the movie.

  (“Christ,” muttered Betty. “As if the fish were the most important part of the story!”)

  We got to the Floridita; it was half empty at that time of day, the bartender standing behind the bar, lazily reading a newspaper. But for Papa, of course, he snapped to attention and began to make daiquiris like his life depended on it.

  (“What are they like?” Betty asked, glancing at the now-empty wine bottle. “I’ve heard so much about them.”)

  (“Rum, ice, lime juice, grapefruit juice, maraschino—I don’t remember all the ingredients,” Slim replied. “I only know that you don’t taste the alcohol at all, and that you never want to stop drinking them, once you start. And then—bang. You’re flat on your ass and you have no idea how you got there.”)

  We worked our way through a couple daiquiris each, and I kept looking at my watch. “Papa, I have to leave,” I said over and over. “I don’t want to miss my plane!” What I really didn’t want was to stay one more night down there in this so-called paradise. I wanted Manhattan again, grimy streets, elevators, car horns honking, taxi drivers yelling. I wanted the cacophony of sanity, instead of the tropical drumbeat of craziness.

  “No, no, you have to say good-bye to Miss Mary. We’ll make it. You have plenty of time,” Papa kept repeating.

  At last—AT LAST!—the door opened to the bar. Peter turned and I heard him catch his breath; Papa looked, too. Everyone looked. And finally, so did I.

  Standing in the doorway was Mary. With her bright white hair dyed exactly my hair color, this honey brown. Wearing a tailored pair of khaki pants and a crisp white blouse, like I was wearing. With makeup on—apparently applied by a monkey with a brush, because it was smeared and smudged, but still, you got the idea. Someone had tried to contour her face, narrow her nose, give her eyebrows like mine.

  Well, I was stunned. Frozen as the daiquiri in my hand. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, didn’t know what to think, even.

  Papa slid off his stool and lumbered over to her. She was still standing in the doorway, blinking, looking rather like a new fawn—she was miserable, you could see it in every tense muscle, the grimace of her lipsticked mouth. As he approached her, Papa reached into his pocket and removed the bracelet I’d just given him.

  “There,” he said, putting it around her wrist, somehow working the fragile clasp with his big fumbling fingers. “There. Now it’s complete. Slim, come say good-bye to Miss Mary, and we’ll get you to the airport.”

  I glanced at Peter, who flashed me a sympathetic look but only shook his head. Somehow I gathered my things and walked toward Mary
, still standing, trembling, next to Papa; his arms were about her fiercely, as if to say, “This. This is mine. This is what I own. This is what I’ve created. You think you’re so special, Miss Slimsky? I can re-create you whenever I want. You’re only paper, paper I can draw all over. A story only I get to tell, not you.”

  “You look pretty,” I said, my voice too loud, too bright. Papa beamed, gave Mary a peck on the cheek, then walked out to the car.

  I was about to follow, but I stopped. I turned around and whispered in Mary’s ear.

  “What are you going to do now, honey? You said one bullet, remember? One bullet if I slept with your man. Look in the mirror, and tell me. Are you going to commit suicide?”

  Then I followed Papa into the car, got on the plane, and drank all the booze that was offered.

  I haven’t been to the Finca since. I haven’t seen either of them, until tonight.

  —

  “Jesus,” Betty said as she reached for another cigarette. The ashtrays were filled with lipstick-stained stubs. “I feel sorry for her. Really. Despite the fact that she’d happily put a bullet in either of our backs. Do you think Mary carries around that bullet in her pocket all the time? Just in case?”

  “Probably.” Slim avoided Betty’s eyes as she ground out her cigarette.

  “Well.” Betty glanced at her wristwatch. “It’s getting late, and I need to be on set tomorrow.”

  “How’s the movie going?’

  Betty shrugged. “North West Frontier. My first all-British production. We break for tea every afternoon, and I feel like a slob surrounded by all those posh accents. It’s one of those big-screen epics—which means my nose will look about five feet wide on the screen. But it’ll do great at the box office. We’re just filming some exteriors here, then we go back to London for the interiors.” Betty rose to go into her room, but then she hesitated. “What are you going to do, Slim?” she asked, her voice very careful.