Please Write for Details

by John D. MacDonald

  Barbara Kilmer wrote another letter, a letter to Rob’s people, after dinner. When it was finished it was just late enough to go to bed, but she felt restless. She put on a sweater and went out onto the loggia, closing her room door behind her. The rain had stopped and the wind had stopped with the rain. A half-moon rode high and there was a gentle and elusive fragrance of the rain-wet flowers of the night.

  She walked out into the patio and sat on a concrete bench and looked at the moon, but felt conspicuous there in the moonlight. After a time she went over and sat on the low wall of the loggia, under one of the stone arches, leaning her shoulder against a stone column.

  The night is made for sharing, and a lovely night is especially made for sharing. Once in a while she could hear distant laughter. And the trucks droning and whining down the grades of the autopisto. And the night bray of a burro starting with cynic laugh and ending on a fading note of despair. And, far away, the skirl and thud of a jukebox in a cantina far down on the other side of the barranca. She was conscious of a growing scission with her, an increasing concern with present and future which she resented as being an evidence of disloyalty to the precious past. The feeling was not yet strong, but its very existence troubled her. She did not want any change to take place. Just live the long days and, at night, go to sleep by going over every tender detail of one of the days with Rob. And, if very fortunate, meet him again in those dreams where he was alive and smiling.

  But there, too, there were changes. The dreams did not come as often. And when they did, there was a random and disorganized quality about them. In the dreams Rob would be far off and acted strangely and he kept turning into other people.

  And memory too. The vivid memories of the good days were becoming subtly blurred. Like paintings by an artist who has used materials which do not last. Colors fade and the bold lines become indefinite.

  Yet, worst of all, the sour, nagging little suspicions that perhaps she had dwelt too long and too dramatically on her own grief and loss. It was a feeling that popped up into her conscious mind all too frequently, grinning and smirking at her. She had been able to suppress it very easily at first, and lately with more difficulty, by telling herself that it had been the best of all possible marriages, that it had been a love such as few people are so lucky to attain. But lately, before she could hammer it back down out of sight, it would stand there and say, “But, Barbie, are you quite certain you haven’t come to really enjoy this role of tragedy and mystery? Aren’t you really charmed with this chance to act such a touching part?”

  She heard slow steps on the stone of the loggia. She turned and recognized Paul Klauss when he moved into the pale area of moonlight behind her.

  “Hello there,” he said quietly.

  “Hello, Mr. Klauss.”

  “Make it Paul, please. And I’d like to call you Barbara if I may.”

  “Yes, you may, Paul.”

  “The party seems to be going strong in Barnum’s room.”

  “Very.”

  “Mind if I help you watch the moon, Barbara?”

  “Not at all, Paul.”

  He put one foot up on the low wall and stood half behind her in silence for rather a long time.

  “Barbara, I don’t want to sound rude or forward. I certainly don’t want to be offensive. But I’ve had this … terribly strong feeling that we have more in common than the other people in this thing.”

  “You do?”

  “I said that clumsily, I know. That’s why you sound so cool and withdrawn now. This isn’t a pass. I’m not a schoolboy, or a Park Barnum either. It’s just this. I sense in you an area of … sadness and loneliness that strike a very responsive chord in me. You are saddened and lonely, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said in a barely audible whisper. Klauss began to feel more assurance. He congratulated himself on having the foresight to get access to the file of application blanks in Drummond’s office by using a suitable excuse. And found the key word. Widow.

  “I don’t like to go telling my troubles,” he said. “Usually I don’t. I don’t want to cry on anyone’s shoulder. But sometimes the burden of … just carrying the load by yourself is so great that you have this great urge to find someone to share it with. At a time like this. At night. When no one can look at your face. Would you listen to a very dreary and very personal story, Barbara.”

  “Of course.”

  “I was engaged to be married,” he said. “She was lovely. She was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me. Her name was Ruth.” He spoke slowly, feelingly. He made the story up as he went along. He added little vividnesses of detail, making it so real that he could almost believe it himself. When he came to the part where it was necessary to kill her off, he made it an automobile accident. He had been driving. He regained consciousness in the hospital two days later. They told him she was on another floor. By the time he was well enough to be told the truth, she had been buried for three days. By the time he came to that part, he did not have to try very hard to make his voice husky. He mourned for Ruth. In the silence, after he had finished, she groped for his hand in the darkness and found it and squeezed it hard. Her fingers were cold.

  He waited with all the patience of an owl on a limb above a starlit meadow.

  “I … I’m glad you told me, Paul. I hope it makes you feel better to tell someone. I’ve never really talked about … Rob. To anyone. Oh, I’ve said the normal things, but that isn’t what I mean. Can … can I tell you … about him?”

  She had released his hand. He moved a little closer to her, not quite touching her. “I knew I was right, Barbara. I knew my instinct was right. I’m sorry it was right. You were made for happiness.”

  “I had happiness. A lot of it. I don’t know what to do without it. Let me tell you about Rob, the kind of man he was, the kind of person my husband was.”

  And it was a very long story. So long that Klauss began to feel irritable. But he listened carefully, remembering those parts that could conceivably be of use to him in this venture. At times she spoke in a broken, halting way. At other times there was a forlorn and husky eloquence about her. It was the lost heart speaking, on a night of moonlight.

  When she was quite through, Klauss let the silence grow around them for a time, and then he said, “It isn’t given to us to understand how such things can be, how such things can be permitted to happen. It’s so damnably cruel. I know how I feel. All the rest of my life stretches out ahead of me like a desert. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all the time. I feel as if, for my own good. I ought to try to find some new emotional involvement. But I just … haven’t been able to.”

  “I know. I miss him so.”

  He put his hand firmly on her sweatered shoulder and said, “What are we going to do with our lives, Barbara?”

  “I don’t know, Paul,” she said. “Oh, I don’t know,” and he realized she had begun to cry, almost silently.

  He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her gently. “Let me hold you for just a moment Barbara. Just to make things seem a little less lonely for both of us.”

  She swung her legs over the wall and stood up into his arms, her temple against his cheek, her face in his shoulder, her body trembling with her grief. He held her very carefully, almost formally, and when he judged it time, he tilted her face up and kissed the salt wet patches under her eyes and whispered tenderly, “There, Barbara. There, Barbara, darling.”

  And in a little while he kissed her lips lightly and they had a taste of salt. And then kissed them with almost careful measure of insistence. His hands moved on her back, changing slowly from a gesture of comfort to the first muted measures of erotic play, with the anatomical precision of a master surgeon. He was quiveringly alert for the first subtle indications of physical response, and when they came he once again placed his mouth upon hers, adjusting his boldnesses to the increasing tempo of response, to her altered breathing and her arms suddenly around him, and the ripening and loosening
of her mouth, feeling a great confidence as he knew he had taken her very gently and carefully beyond that point where she would respond as an individual, into the area where her responses were that of woman, primal, consecutive, instinctual and vulnerable.

  Barbara, as a person, was dimly aware of the traitor responses of her body. She was kissing and being kissed, and holding this stranger close to her, dreamily aware of the pleasure of his hands. But there was a flutter of wrongness. This male she held was too slight, too small, without the bulk and weight of Rob. And his hands were too silky and sly and expert, his mouth too sensuously dainty. He was adept and … rather nasty.

  Klauss stumbled back away from the very sturdy push against his chest. “Barbara, darling!” he said.

  “Just exactly what the hell were you trying to do?”

  “Barbara, don’t be angry. Please. I wanted to hold you in my arms for just a moment because you were crying, and then I guess we both … I guess it turned into something else for both of us.”

  “Maybe for you. Not for me.”

  “But you were …”

  “I was nothing, Mr. Klauss. I was fooled for a couple of moments by a very slick trick, and I have no intention of being fooled again.”

  “Please don’t be angry. I felt so close to you. I felt you were a kindred spirit.”

  She sat on the wall, facing him. She sighed. “All right, Paul. I won’t jump to conclusions. You got carried away or something. And I did too. We’ll be friends. And kindred spirits, if you want. But please understand this, my friend. We are not going to comfort each other that way. We are not going to merge our broken hearts and have a big fat affair just because we both happen to be lonely. I’d feel cheap for the rest of my life. It’s bad enough to feel the way I do without feeling cheap too. Good night, Paul.” She walked by him.

  “Goodnight, Barbara,” he said thickly. He watched her down the loggia, moving alternately from moonlight to deep shadow and moonlight again, moving trimly, graceful and slim, and he could feel the sinuosities of her back against his palms with a taunting clarity.

  Seldom had any venture gone so quickly and utterly wrong just at the moment when he had been most confident of a kill. He calmed himself. Other ventures had gone wrong. And had been ultimately made right again. Had he been less confident at the moment, he could have salvaged this one more quickly. When he felt the first stiffening of her body, the first indication of restraint, he should have stepped back quickly, and gone at once into the My-God-what-are-we-doing gambit, with references to the memory of Ruth and the memory of Rob before she could say the first angry word. Then she would have been disarmed and taken off the offensive so completely that the next step would have been made more easy, rather than more difficult. Certainly it was more difficult now, but certainly not impossible. And, after inevitable success, it would make a most interesting episode in the journal. At this rate, a rather lengthy one. He decided that when he wrote it up, he would not spare himself, but rather would call explicit attention to the error in procedure and judgment he had just committed.

  It did seem rather strange though that her rejection should be so violent. As he walked toward his own room he thought back over many in the journal category of widow. As a class they had provided little more than token opposition. His feeling of depression faded entirely away. He squared his shoulders. This was a temporary setback in what would be a most entertaining venture. She rated a full ten on the Klauss Scale. The more difficult she made it, the more lengthy and interesting the journal entry. Even if the hunt should take up so much of the two months that no time would be left for other episodes, the summer could be counted a success. And there would be no problems of competition. Kemp had been quite obviously gobbled up by the stupendous Garvey wench. Barnum would choose between the two young Texans.

  He unlocked his door, shut it behind him and reached for the pull chain, certain that he had left the room light on when he left. He pulled the chain and it did not work.

  He wondered if all the electricity had gone out again, and suddenly he remembered the details of the previous time when this had happened. He whirled and looked toward the shadowy wall where the bed was. He could see nothing, but his distended nostrils picked up the telltale effluvium of public-market perfume, with a counterpoint of chili. And he heard a dreadful clarion giggle.

  He had the door partially open when she was upon him, the impetus of her charge banging the door shut again. As he tried to fend her off he learned that she was naked, as well as wiry, giggling and remarkably strong. She had gotten behind him and she had him around the waist and was laughing as she tried to tug him toward the bed. He grasped the doorknob and held onto it with all his strength.

  “No!” he said, as loudly as he dared. “No! No!”

  “Conejito mío,” she crooned, panting with effort. “Mi rubio! Ándale, querido. ¿Pobre hombrecito tiene miedo, no?”

  Hands, sweaty with alarm, slipped from the round brass knob of the door and he stumbled backward and they fell together. Klauss turned as they fell. He landed on his shoulder and his head smacked the tiles with such a hearty thud that the room and the night dipped and spun, and his efforts at fighting her off became slow, ineffectual and dreamy. Many sad hours of his childhood had been spent with both larger and smaller boys beating him enthusiastically about the head on the red-brick playgrounds of Philadelphia. His mother would weep when he would come wailing home in his pretty, ruined clothing. The solid blow of his head against the tile floor took much of the spirit out of him. Margarita, talking constantly and soothingly, straddled his waist and unbuttoned his shirt. When he pushed her off and came blindly to his feet, she peeled the shirt back and down, imprisoning his arms, and propelled him onto the bed with a hearty push. And he thumped his head again on the wall beside the bed.

  When he returned from half-consciousness, she had finished undressing him and, with yankings and tuggings and large hearty kissings, was working him down into the bed under the threadbare blankets. As before, in spite of all austere resolve, in spite of his outrage and his offended pride and his revulsion, in spite of the indignation he felt, he kept saying “No, no, no” until many moments after it had become humiliatingly obvious that her practiced and enthusiastic ministrations had been no less effective than before.

  And, as before, her high, sweet, clear cry of “Geef me ten dollar” stirred him out of a stunned little half-death to find his trousers, fumble in the wallet and give her the money.

  She dressed and he heard her go clump-clop to the door. “Adiós, mi corazón,” she said as though shouting to him across the barranca, and closed the door behind her and went clump-clop-clump-clop down the corridor.

  Paul Klauss lay and bit his lip until it hurt. His eyes filled, and one tear went down the side of his face. His head hurt. He remembered how, when he had come home from school, she would put witch hazel on the places that hurt. And kiss them to make them well again. And bring his supper to bed, and sit and sing to him until he fell asleep to the sound of her voice. And he remembered his father, a great, hairy, vicious, unpredictable brute.

  He thought of the smell of witch hazel and the exact way the get-well kisses felt, and he thought of his mother and her funeral and how dreadfully he missed her, and in a little while he was crying in earnest, sobbing into the bunched pillow that still held the stale fragrance of Margarita’s hair, a smell of ripe flowers and kitchen greases.

  BOOK TWO

  In which the Disparate Personalities assembled establish Certain routines, and make Practical Adjustments to Each Other and to the Group; a certain number of Anticipated Difficulties arise; two member of the group disappear for a Short Time; the circumstances of their return provide cause for an Impromptu Fiesta at which the Just and the Unjust are Rewarded and Punished by the Fates without regard to Justice or Merit.

  Chapter Nine

  By the late afternoon of Thursday, the sixth day of July and the fifth full day of instruction, certain patterns of beha
vior had started to become apparent, and it was reasonable to expect that as the Cuernavaca Summer Workshop continued, these patterns would become more evident and inescapable.

  It is a most fundamental part of the nature of the human animal that he responds to a new environment by establishing for himself those little routines which, however meaningless they may be in essence, serve the far greater purpose of giving him comfort and a sense of place and purpose whenever he conforms to them.

  Place five men adrift in an open boat and in an astoundingly brief time they will establish a pecking order, will each have settled into some small area of the boat which he will think of as his place, will have established a schedule fordoing things—and the more intricate the schedule the more satisfying, and, having cozied up their environment to the greatest extent possible, will await either rescue or death with that accretion of composure which can only come through the establishment of a complete social order, no matter how evanescent it may be.

  With the possible exceptions of jail, school and military organizations, where one of the more important uses of authority is to prevent the group from composing its own group mores and structure, the weight of group desire is always more potent than the wishes of any self-constituted authority.

  The communal dining table, which Miles Drummond felt was both pleasant and necessary, was the first social device to yield to group pressure. At dinner, on the first Monday, Gam Torrigan overheard Agnes Partridge Keeley say, in a voice that was meant to carry, “No one of taste or perception would ever hang in their home one of those horrid meaningless things that look like a dish of liver and spaghetti. The place for such paintings is in those shabby little pinko galleries in New York.”