And Margarita would come in then, beaming wildly, and stand hipshot in her shapeless red dress, and say in her carnival voice, “Ah, señor, the rápido in the bathroom C, it is wounded. Felipe says it is the Señor Torrigan who fell while drunk. The flue is now on the floor in two pieces and Alberto cannot fix it.”
“Go away and in a little while I look at it.”
After she was gone he would feel like putting his head in his arms and weeping. He wanted his little house back. Strangers were using his dishes and reading his books. He did not know how long he could stand this. And he sensed that somehow, when it was all over, if indeed it ever ended, in some mysterious way the total expenditures would equal total income. To the final implacable centavo.
Mary Jane Elmore was not as quick to establish her own pattern. She felt at loose ends, restless and slightly irritable. Bitsy and that Parker Barnum were becoming constantly more inseparable, and so there were not as many laughs with Bitsy. She wondered if Bitsy might be going to have an affair with Park Barnum, with an older man. She did not think that was a smart thing to do, to get involved in … in such a cold-blooded way, sort of. If you didn’t give a damn, it certainly would be no trick to get involved around this Weirdsville Hotel. Take that oily little Paul Klauss item, just for example. Just a harmless little stroll to look at the lightning in the mountains. He said sweet cute little things, and all of a sudden he had eight or ten hands, and you really had a time breaking it up. And somehow he’d managed to get you all bothered in a kind of sleazy way. But it wouldn’t do to let him know that. Maybe he knew it anyway, without being told. Anyway, it would be terribly smart to be very sure you never had a little too much to drink before letting him cut you out of the string and take you off to his little old corral. Anyway, really, the easiest thing was to think of how that Paul Klauss would stack up against Chuck or Booker or B. J. Why if you were ever seen anywhere around home with that Paul Klauss they’d say you must have tossed the fish back in and kept the bait.
Torrigan had the usual ideas, all right, but he was a lot easier to handle. Hinting you could be a real hell of a painter if he’d let you learn all about Life from him. Always trying to load your drinks. And that tired game that goes I’ve-just-got-my-arm-around-you-because-I’m-just-a-big-friendly-guy. No trick handling him. If Bitsy gets all mixed up with this Park Barnum, and it gets intense like, it doesn’t leave much left over for ole Mary Jane. Now if that John Kemp could get notions, it might be different. It might be a whole lot different. But if he had any ideas at all, he was having them about Barbara Kilmer. And certainly getting no further than was Paul Klauss who also seemed aimed in that mournful direction.
And so, on the second Saturday, in the afternoon, she went into town alone. And sat alone at a table on the sidewalk in front of the Marik. And she was picked up by three crazy-wonderful boys from the University of New Mexico who were in Mexico on some sort of summer field trip in archaeology or something like that, and they had a four wheel drive jeep and curly beards. The three of them took her to Las Manñanitas for dinner and, the next day, when the one named Scotty was too hung-over to lift his head, she and Bitsy drove to Mexico City in the Mercedes with the other two, Hal and Jaimie, and went to the bullfights and didn’t come back over the mountains until it was nearly dawn.
After that she had her pattern. She hadn’t realized Mexico would be so full of wonderful kids on vacation. All you had to do was go look for them. Sometimes Bits would come along, and then it was the most fun. So the project was to pry Bits loose from Park all the time, not just some of the time. And go to a class once in a while.
For students and staff alike, with the possible exception of Barbara Kilmer, one aspect of all personal patterns was the same. They all had an intense interest in the mail table. And, on Tuesday, the eleventh day of July, there was more mail than could fit in the post-office box. No one was neglected. Miles brought it back at quarter of twelve just as Agnes was dismissing her class. Some took the letters to their rooms. Others sat in the lobby.
Jeanie Wahl was made to feel guilty by one portion of the long newsy letter from her mother. “We do understand, dear, that you are on your honeymoon, and you are a married woman, but you can let yourself be just as thoughtless and inconsiderate as you were when you were a little girl, if you let yourself. I haven’t talked this over with your father, but I can tell from the way he acts that he’s worried about you. And so am I, dear. We have no way of knowing whether you actually got to that school. All I know is that since you and Gil left during the reception, we have had two post cards from you. Just two, mind you. And just a few words on each one. That isn’t like you, dear. You sent one from New Orleans and one from Mexico City. At least two is all we have received. I certainly don’t want to scold you at this time, but you must realize that your father and I put a great deal of time and thought and money into your marriage. You are in a foreign country and it seems to me, at least, that the very least you can do is sit down and write us a long letter about the school and how you are living and so on. You may be married but we are still your parents, remember, and we expect you to be thoughtful and considerate.”
Right after lunch Jeanie started a long letter to her parents. She apologized and said the school kept them busy every single minute. She said she had never known anyone could be so happy. At that point Gil started reading over her shoulder. He said that any girl would be happy to be with him. She sprang up to do battle, and did not get back to her letter until late afternoon. She finished it at dinner time, and awakened Gil and read it to him. He said it was sure a long letter.
Harvey Ardos, who had expected no mail at all, received a letter signed, “Jimmy Waskawitz and all the gang in the third-floor stockroom.” It told him who’d been drunk and who’d been fired, and who was on vacation where, and when and where the others were going. And at the end it said, “Harvey, old buddy, it doesn’t seem like real that the guy who worked beside me is in Old Mexico in a fancy painting school. It’s guys like you that save your money and do stuff that get someplace, and bums like me that is always broke by payday and get noplace. I wish you all the luck there is, old pal, and I hope you’ll be famous sometime and I can say we worked in the same crummy place together. That Janie and I was talking about you just last week. I run into her by the time clock on the way out. I don’t know her last name, but you know the one I mean she’s got blond hair and she’s got a real good built and the only thing wrong with her is the way one of her eyes looks off the wrong way. She’s the one that was in pocketbooks and now she’s in kitchen wear the same one Morillo tried to take back into rug storage that time and about kicked him loose of his teeth but didn’t report it. Anyhow when you come back I think if you asked she’d give you a date because she was interested about Mexico and you could shoot some bull, but I can’t be sure I’m right. Send me a present. Send me by airmail one of those cute little spic girls. Ha Ha Ha. Good luck.”
That evening Harvey wrote Jimmy Waskawitz a long letter, thinking to write about Mexico, but when he read it over he saw that most of it was about Monica Killdeering. And so he tore it up. He knew Jimmy would show it around, and he knew what they’d say, all of them. Morillo and the rest of those wise guys. They wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t get the right idea at all.
Parker Barnum had a chatty and amusing letter from an account executive named Trevor Helding. It related all the latest office dirt and confusions. He was grateful to Trev for taking the trouble, and was surprised that he should have. They had never gotten along too well.
He understood when he came to the knife. “By the way, both John and Herbie seem terribly set up about the way our Becky is gnawing on the bit. As an A.D., I think she makes a fine figger of a woman, and that’s about all. She has come up with a few of those zany and startling ideas that impress hell out of everybody until somebody realizes that the stock isn’t moving off the shelves. Anyhow, it doesn’t look as if any of the stuff will be farmed out while our Becky is
in high favor. I understand she has been given a raise. But, as old hands like you and I know, it can’t last.”
He balled the letter and threw it into a corner. A little later he got it and smoothed it open and read it again. There was a damp shifting in his middle, a visceral turning like the slow wringing of a wet warm towel. And he realized he had shut his jaws so tightly his teeth were hurting.
It took five drafts before he was really satisfied with his casual Dear Herbie letter. He had to achieve an unmistakable ring of honesty, optimism and complete mental health. He drew some quick and clever little Mexican cartoons in the margin. He added a postscript that said, “In my spare time I’ve been blocking out some new concepts in advertising art that seem valid and exciting to me. Most anxious to check your reaction when I get back. I know how skeptical you are of anything too glib and flashy and startling.”
He stretched out on the bed and waited for his headache to go away. That Goddamn Trev! Hell of a job trying to protect yourself at long range. Have to write some more. Schedule them out. One to John Sessions soon. One to Becky. Another to Herbie. Damn!
Agnes Partridge Keeley received a long business letter from her accountant. Much of it was concerned with tax matters. At the very end he became, she decided, impertinent.
“I strongly advise you to reconsider your decision on granting permission for your tenants at 55 Shore Terrace to sublet. Mr. Galt has been told by his doctors that he must get away from sea level. Your attorneys agree with me on this matter.”
She wrote back immediately. She called his attention to the terms of the lease. She said that she was an artist, but she was also a businesswoman. She doubted that Galt was that sick. She said she would entertain an offer of half the remaining rental due under the lease, and an immediate transfer of property to her so it could be rented again. And she asked him to employ at a sum not to exceed two hundred dollars, some investigative agency which could put together a complete report on the past history of one Gambel Torrigan. She wanted it as soon as possible. She gave him the facts the agency would need.
Colonel Hildebrandt received a letter from Brigadier General Thornton R. Pope, U. S. A. (Ret.) in Falls Church, commenting at length on the career and death of a long-term mutual friend and officer, and advising the colonel that the books he wanted should be airmailed within the week.
Miss Monica Killdeering received a long newsy letter from Eleanor Hipper in Kilo, catching her up to date on everything that had happened in the town since she had left. By a not very striking coincidence, Monica had a long letter to Eleanor partially completed. In it she said, “There is a very intense young man here from Philadelphia named Harvey Ardos. The quality of his mind is excellent, but he has practically no educational background. We have had very long talks about everything under the sun, and he is constantly amazed to learn that the greats of history have written down the thoughts he has arrived at independently. He is an independent thinker. I guess that we are the hardest workers in Mr. Gambel Torrigan’s class. Mr. Torrigan assigns problems to us and we must come up with solutions. Mr. Torrigan never seems to like Harvey’s solutions and it makes him furious.”
Barbara Kilmer had a letter from her father, and she guessed that it had been typed by him on the office machine. “Your letters have been appreciated, my dear. You have a nice gift of expression, and it is almost as good as being there. I have noticed, however, that you make no reference at all to any social activity. I hesitate to write you in this way, but your mother and I have been alarmed to see how completely you retreated to yourself after Rob’s death. I know what a sickening tragedy it was, but I also know that you are a young woman and your life is not by any means over. I debated a long time before taking the step of giving you the present of this summer course. I hoped that it would rekindle your interest in your art, and also make you more aware of the people around you. I thought this might happen if you were in some place where you had never been before, some place out of the country where there would be a minimum of things to remind you of your husband.
“But there is a flatness about your letters that indicates to me, though I have not discussed this with your mother, that you are still remote, standing to one side, a little apart from life. My dear, I can understand how you have a feeling of futility, of purposelessness. Perhaps you should realize that such feelings are not unique with you. I am 51 years of age and I have spent my productive years this far puttering around inside the mouths of friends and strangers. Perhaps I have relieved some pain. Possibly I have made some people happier by making them handsomer. And in many instances I have saved or prolonged lives by detecting the evidence of disease of which the dental patient was unaware. But, too often I suppose, I reflect that this was my one life given to me to live, and I seem to have spent it in a sort of haze, far removed from high adventure, great accomplishment or any particular degree of memorability. I have a comfortable home and a good marriage and a saddened daughter. Perhaps what I am trying to say is that for any introspective person there is an inescapable aroma of futility about life itself, regardless of how it is spent. Enough of this morbid nonsense, dear. I want you to live and laugh and love and be happy. I’d like to see all the stars back in your eyes.”
The letter was in her mind all day. That night there was a sallow moon, and a wet and gusty wind. She walked beyond the wall and leaned against it and felt the sun-heat locked in the stones. There was something chained loosely to the floor of her heart, some small creature that tugged at the rusty staples and fumbled with corroded locks. And when it gave sudden tugs to free itself, she could feel the reverberations in her whole being, rippling along her flanks and trembling upon her lips.
Bitsy Babcock received three letters from three young men, and all of them were so curiously similar, that she had to keep glancing ahead to the signature to keep clear in her mind who had written each one. Mary Jane had received one very like Bitsy’s and one that was deliciously naughty. At least when they sat in the room trading letters, on first reading it seemed to Bitsy to be cleverly daring. But when she read it over again it seemed to her to be rather nasty and pointless. And all the rest of the letters were shallow and meaningless and boring. She knew she would answer her letters, and the three she would write would be almost identical.
Paul Klauss received a letter and financial report for June from his store manager. Business was slow. They were starting to tear the street up again. Some woman was driving him crazy phoning all the time, refusing to take his word that Mr. Klauss was in Mexico on vacation. She wouldn’t give her name.
Hildabeth and Dotsy both had letters from friends in Elmira and from their married children. And the letters made them homesick.
Chapter Ten
In the uplands of Mexico in the summer, during the hours of sunshine, the butterflies are busy among the flowers. There are an incredible number of blooms, most of them in the hot colors—reds and oranges and yellows. The butterflies are as vivid and seem as numerous as the petals. Here and there, on green slopes, are the bright little villages the beekeepers have constructed for their charges, cubical houses set aslant and in random pattern, each painted a different color, all pleasantly faded by the sun. There are great wild bees that come after the flowers too, angry, metallic, careless brutes that fly head-on into the garden walls, gorged with nectar and irritable with the frequent dizzying impact of stubborn iridescent head against stone. The large hummingbirds poise with precise hypodermic, and the throbbing of their wings is less sound than sensation. Grazing cattle move up off the barranca slopes, blandly furtive, to munch the gay blooms off garden walls until chased away into a lumbering, indignant trot.
But, in the dusk, when the bees and butterflies and hummingbirds and cattle are gone, there is the time of half light when the moths come to the blooms, gray and brown, soft and hungry, curiously sinister, coming with the first bawdy scent of jasmine on the evening air.
John Kemp sat at dusk on the stone bench in the enclosed patio, hi
s pipe drawing well. It was a Friday evening, the fourteenth day of July. The thunder had mumbled and then moved off into the southwest. No rain had fallen at El Hutchinson, but the faint shift of breeze had the washed smell of rain. Though he did not consider himself to be a particularly thoughtful or introspective man, John knew that these quiet times were necessary to him. And enjoyable.
Classes were now limited to five days a week. The weekend was ahead of him, and he looked forward to it with anticipation in which was mingled a nice little tingling edge of excitement. From the moment he had seen her at the lunch counter in New Orleans his awareness of Barbara Kilmer had increased steadily, inevitably. He had been intrigued by the reason for her reserve, her air of grave remoteness, until he learned that she had been widowed less than a year ago.
She seemed always to be on the edge of his thoughts, so that there was a continual flavor of her about him, like music just beyond the edge of audibility. She had seemed determined to keep him at arm’s length along with the others. But he had noticed that she was having difficulty with Paul Klauss. The pretty man was uncommonly persistent, never faltering in his attempts to ingratiate himself with her, apparently oblivious of the reasonably obvious fact of her distaste for him. John judged that something had happened between them very early in the session, that very probably Klauss had stepped out of line.
Though he felt slightly guilty when he realized that in his own way he was stalking her as determinedly as Klauss, and such conduct was perhaps equally reprehensible, he found in the matter of Klauss’s pursuit, an opportunity to interpose himself. Though there was no word spoken about it, he knew that she quickly became aware of the way he would lengthen his stride in order to take the last remaining seat at a table where she was sitting so that Klauss would stand, obviously angry, and then turn away. And, at class, he would sit where Klauss obviously planned to sit. And once he had kept them apart on the red bus by arriving at the entrance door at the same time as Klauss and contriving to step on his foot before apologizing profusely and preceding him into the bus.
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