Please Write for Details

by John D. MacDonald

  When they came to a screeching stop Torrigan opened his eyes and saw they were on a dark street, with the front bumper inches from the closed door of a small public garage. The garage door opened inward and a young Mexican came out and greeted Gloria. She got out of the car, gave the boy instructions in staccato Spanish and turned and started diagonally across the narrow street toward the high curb on the far side, her heels making a busy clack-clock sound in the stillness. She turned before she stepped up onto the curb and said, “Well?”

  Torrigan pulled himself out of the car. His knees supported him. His shirt was pasted clammily to his ribs. He crossed over to her and walked beside her a short distance to the small tiled lobby of a hotel called Las Rosas. She went up the staircase on the right. He followed her, several stairs behind her, and down a corridor. She stopped in front of a door, got her key out and opened the door.

  “Gloria,” he said, “I …”

  She turned on him, her eyes feral in the faint light in the hallway. He got the impression that she was half crouching, and that she could extend and retract her fingernails like a cat.

  “Men!” she said. “My God, how I despise every one of you!”

  “But, Gloria, I …”

  “Men! I’ve heard you telling your tiresome little jokes and making your stupid brags. I’ve heard that weary saying you men have about the way you’d like to die. This, brother, is your chance.”

  “But I don’t under—”

  “I’d like to wipe the whole filthy tribe of you right off the face of the earth. And I’ll start with you, Torrigan. If, indeed, there is any possibility at all of killing one of you in the way I have in mind, then say your prayers, because I am going to give it the old school try, boy.”

  And she edged around him and backed him through the door and slammed it behind her when they were inside. Even after pursuit had stopped, Torrigan kept backing, his hands half raised. He moistened his lips and swallowed hard and there was a strange look in his eyes. It was something of the look of a glutton who, after years of classifying himself as a gourmet, is horribly confronted with a monstrous platter of broiled Eskimo.

  Torrigan returned to El Hutchinson in a taxi on Monday, fifteen minutes after his class was scheduled to begin. Class met in the garden patio. Torrigan went to his room and appeared before the class ten minutes later. His class on the seventeenth day of July consisted of Barbara, Klauss, John Kemp, Monica, Harvey, Hildabeth and the Wahls. They had their easels set up and paint-boxes open, and were busily at work when Torrigan joined them. Nearly all of them hunched their shoulders slightly in instinctive preparation for his usual display of noise and energy, bounding from easel to easel, braying comment and criticism, chiding the timid, jeering at the confused. Every one of them knew he had been gone since before dinner on Friday evening. And they had heard reports on the odd circumstances of his leaving.

  He stood there like a very old man, blinking placidly in the sunlight, dreaming the long memories of half-forgotten wars. The brave bristling of the big black beard had dwindled to a look of wilt. And the bold red brigand nose and the red lips nestling in the beard’s blackness had paled to a pink tinged with gray. His once arrogant and demanding eyes, pale and with that Mongol tilt, had all the vitality of glazed glass marbles in the bottom of a fish bowl. John Kemp, barely able to conceal the amusement arising from his shrewd guess as to the cause as well as the nature of Torrigan’s undoing, was nonetheless able to feel a twinge of very real sympathy for the man.

  Hildabeth cackled loudly in the silence. “Mr. Teacher,” she said, “you put me in mind of a fella my daddy used to tell me about when I was a little tyke. This fella fell off his horse into a wallow and a whole herd of buffalo stampeded right over him and didn’t harm a hair of his head. But Daddy said he went around the rest of his life looking sort of far away, as if he lost something and couldn’t remember what it was or what he done with it.”

  Torrigan looked at her blankly. “Eh? I … I guess I’m late. Please keep working.” His voice was soft and hoarse. They kept working. He shuffled slowly around and looked at their work and made mild and almost inaudible comments which made little sense. Every few moments he would yawn so hugely, opening a tired red cavern in the middle of the beard, that Barbara was reminded of poor Saltamontes. Torrigan lasted about forty minutes. And during the last ten minutes he was tottering rather than shuffling. He excused himself and floated blindly away.

  Barbara flashed John Kemp a quick and knowing and rather feline look of great amusement. On Saturday, after walking the streets of Taxco, they had climbed up to the terrace of the Hotel Victoria and sat near the railing and had a chilled beer as they looked out over the town. While they were there, realizing that now he knew her well enough and she might be amused, he told her of his clumsy escape from the overeager grasp of Mrs. Garvey, and how her visit to the hotel tied in with the abduction of Torrigan. She was amused, as he had guessed she would be, and she was also touched by what he could recall of Gloria’s grim self-analysis.

  He enjoyed the day with her enormously. She was one of those rare people who use their eyes, who have a talent for pointing out special beauty and ludicrousness and ugliness and charm. She had been subdued when they left, and quiet again during the drive back to the hotel, but during the hours of the afternoon and evening she was very alive and a delightful companion. She had been shy with a slight and touching awkwardness born of self-consciousness when, at Vista Hermosa, she had walked from the bathhouse in her blue-and-white swim-suit around the side of the huge pool to where he sat on the apron waiting for her. Her legs were long and slim and deft, smooth and pale, but lightly ivoried by the memory of the tans of other summers. In the lines of her body there was no trace of bloat or spread or softness. She swam well, with the smooth muscles of her arms and back moving sleekly under her skin.

  He looked at her by candle light at dinner at Vista Hermosa. She was telling him about the art courses she had taken in college. He listened for a time, and then lost the meaning of the words as he watched her lips and her eyes. This was, he thought, a paragon. But paragons do not exist. We are all human. She is flawed, somehow, but I cannot detect it. I could bring her back here on a honeymoon.

  And suddenly she had frowned prettily at him and said, “Pay attention, sir.”

  “I’ve heard every word you said, honestly.”

  “You were a million miles away!”

  When they were back at the hotel she turned to him and held out her hand and said, “This was one of the better days, John. Actually. I’m grateful to you.”

  “We’re tourist types. There’ll be more trips if I can chisel a car again. All right?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “How about tomorrow?”

  “No thanks. Not tomorrow. Things to wash out. Letters to write.”

  “How about a trip down to the center of town for the Sunday night band concert at least? Walk around and around with the rest of the people.”

  “Until the rain comes down in sheets. All right.”

  He walked slowly toward his room, wearing a half smile of content. It was nearly midnight. Park and the girls from Texas would be the only ones still out probably.

  As he approached the door to Paul Klauss’s room he heard an odd scratching sound and saw a movement in the shadows. When he was close he saw that it was the maid, Margarita, and apparently she had been scratching at Paul’s door.

  “Buenos noches, Margarita,” he said in a low voice as he passed her, heard her murmured reply. She had moved slightly and he caught a glimpse of her face in a patch of light, her usually merry expression completely gone. She looked sullen and angry, and he received the obscure impression that she was also afraid. He had sensed, as had a few of the others, that there was something between Klauss and this young girl in whose brazen mannerisms there was an odd flavor of innocence. Like Klauss, he thought, to take complete advantage of any passing opportunity. Seduction with such a man would be like a reflex
. And he would drop her quickly in order to stalk more attractive game, such as Barbara. So Margarita could be left outside his door, scratching furtively, looking sullen and afraid.

  He turned back and approached her again. “¿Qué quiere, Margarita? ¿Qué cosa?”

  “Nada,” she said flatly.

  “Why do you make this sound on the door of the Señor Klauss in the middle of the night?”

  “No es nada.”

  “Come with me, please,” he said, “where we can talk without making noise to disturb those who sleep.”

  She came with him sullenly but obediently, out through one of the stone arches on the opposite side of the corridor, out into the patio. At his request, she sat on the stone bench, her hands in her lap, her face quite still, not looking at him. He put one foot up on the stone bench wondering if his skimpy Spanish was equivalent to the situation.

  “Did you wish to speak to the Señor Klauss?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he in the room?”

  “I am sure he is there. But he will not open the door.”

  “Why won’t he open the door?”

  “I do not know.”

  “What is it that you wish to say to him?”

  She suddenly erupted in a torrent of Spanish that he had no hope of following. He managed to stop her and tell her to speak slowly and carefully, as he did not have much Spanish.

  And, as the story began to unfold, as he stopped her from time to time to make certain that he understood, he began to feel the crazy laughter deep inside him which he wondered if he could hold. He kept his face sober and concerned.

  It seemed that the Señor Ball was very shy. He had no Spanish. She had no English. On the first day he had looked at her in that way. But when she started to take off her dress in his room, he became frightened. It was very sad he was so frightened. He had cold blood. She told about the advice of Felipe, and the key that would open the door of the room of the Señor Ball. He was such a very pretty man. But also a small rabbit. A most timid one. She told what Felipe had taught her to say to Señor Ball, and she wished the Señor Kemp to know that she was not a whore, not at all. It was a good thing she was doing for him, to turn him from a timid rabbit into a man. And it was clear that it had been a very important thing to him, to have Margarita, because even though he fought her as though he were the woman, a woman of virtue, and she a drunken soldier, afterward he would cry. It had happened three times. It was good for him, as anyone could see. But now he was making it impossible for it to happen again. The last time she had surprised him by hiding in the closet until after he was in bed. She had love for Señor Ball. A great warm love for him. But she had not been given enough of a chance. Now he would not smile or speak. And he had purchased a small bright light to carry in his pocket, and each time he returned to the room at night, he would search for her and if she was hiding there he would run away and he would not come back. And when he was inside the room alone, he would fasten the chain to the inside of the door, a chain he had bought in the market, so that her key was no good. Felipe was very angry with her. He had beaten her several times because she could bring him no more money from Señor Ball. He would beat her again, and harder. Señor Ball knew it was his Margarita who scratched upon the door, but he was still afraid of love. His blood had not yet been made warm. And so he lay there in the darkness, trembling. Poor Señor Ball. She began to weep.

  It was with a mighty effort that John managed to control himself. And he suddenly had a monstrous idea. Klauss, with all his neat and fastidious little habits and mannerisms had doubtless been appalled, affronted and undone by the earthy directness of this sleazy and vital little moron. And for the almost professional lady’s man, the necessity to pay Margarita must well have been the final blow at the heart. And his tears had been of helpless frustration.

  “I can tell you how to get in,” he said.

  Her tears stopped at once and the broad smile glistened. “¿Ay! Por favor!”

  “You must knock on the door. Do not scratch. Knock like this. Quickly, but not too loudly.”

  “Yes?”

  “He will think it is someone else. He will come to the door. He will say something. You will not understand what he says. And then you must whisper, quite loudly, what I will teach you to whisper. When he hears that, he will open the door.”

  It took at least fifty repetitions before he was satisfied with the way she said it. The most difficult part was to get her to whisper “It’s” instead of “Eet’s.”

  He stood silently in the shadows ten feet from Klauss’s door. She hesitated and then knocked briskly, as he had taught her. She waited and then knocked again. And then he heard Klauss say warily, “Who is it?”

  She whispered loudly. An accent is much more readily disguised by whispering.

  “It’s me. Barbara.”

  He heard the sudden frantic jangling of the chain and thought how fevered was the energy Klauss was using to get his door open. The door swung wide. Margarita went swarming into the greater darkness, and her sudden clarion giggle was like a shower of silver needles in the night air. In counterpoint to her giggle, and just before the door slammed shut behind them, John heard a hoarse, full cry of despair. There was a sound of scuffling, and a thump, and, muffled by the closed door, a clear, sweet cry of laughter from Margarita.

  After John Kemp was in bed he could not stop chuckling. He felt thoroughly ashamed of himself. And just as he was sliding into sleep he heard, floating in between the bars of his window, a high, clear voice full of great joy, saying, “Geef me ten dollar!”

  “Pay the girl, Señor Ball,” he mumbled, and grinned and turned over into sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  During the first few weeks of the Cuernavaca Summer Workshop, Parker Barnum had begun to feel as though all the little tips and abrasions on the underside of his soul were knitting and mending. He had begun to lose that odd sensation that, at any moment, he was capable of committing an act so luridly insane that the whole world would pause and stare at him with mouth agape.

  And it had become increasingly easy for him to restrict Suzie to one fenced area in the side yard of his mind. During his waking hours her escapes were less frequent. But at night she roamed free, taunting, accusing, wearing—one by one—all the things he had best liked to see her in.

  Remembering the advices of Dr. Gottrell, Park sensed that he was in the delicate process of rebuilding his identity. Though he had the sophisticate’s approach to mental illness and analysis, it still seemed shameful to him that he could have cracked wide open. You went to a head shrinker to let him unravel the knots in your psyche placed there as a result of childhood emotional trauma. And then, at cocktail parties, you could speak somberly and intimately with those others who were couchbound, or had completed the course. It was like a big club composed of the more sensitive types. With high dues to keep out the rabble. It seemed unfair and against the rules to suddenly have all your inner walls come tumbling down, leaving you quivering, naked as an egg.

  He could sense the factors which were contributing to the new feeling of identity, the new shiny layers, like a tender new barnacle building its home, complete with lid. First there was the painting. He was aware that he was a one-eyed king in the realm of the blind, but nonetheless it was good to see the hand and brush create the desired stroke, good to sense the interest and envy of the other students. He and John and Barbara were the students with training and talent. And, to a lesser extent, the Wahls. But he felt that perhaps the Wahls would merit a higher rating were they not the obsessed victims of other interests at the moment.

  Another reassuring factor was the smug knowledge that Sessions and March thought well enough of his abilities to keep him on substantial pay during his rather indefinite leave of absence. This comfort was enhanced by the awareness that, for the first time in his working life, he was saving money. With the house and Suzie and the twins, he had often felt as if he was clawing his way along the wall of a b
ottomless canyon. But now, as he told himself, he was a young and talented man with a new car, clothes, manners, conversation and money in the bank. As he kept telling himself.

  Also, Bitsy was important to his self-esteem. It had truly shocked him when he had learned not only what her allowance from the trust fund was at present, but what it would jump to when she reached twenty-one, a date a year and a month away. It made you feel that somebody had put the decimal point in the wrong place. It awed him. So here was a rich and handsome young gal who seemed perfectly content to be with him, casually accepting their status as a twosome within the little Workshop world. She listened so well when he talked that he showed off for her, finding that special glibness and pyrotechnic turn of phrase which had also come easily with Suzie so long ago. And, as with Suzie, it was easy to be amusing. He enjoyed making her laugh. When they walked together, she had a sort of obedient puppy trick of slipping her hand in his. In the young contours of her body, in the way she handled herself, she often reminded him of Suzie.

  In his relationship with her, Park had cast himself in the role of man of the world, with slight avuncular overtones. And Bitsy was the young and impressionable girl. The progress of the script seemed inevitable. He had been saddened and broken by the loss of a great love. She had recently shucked a meaningless young romance. And so, during this summer, they would have a bittersweet affair, intense and, knowing they must part, lingeringly tragic. Her young warmth would mend his broken heart. And from him she would learn something of Life, something she would need to know on her way toward becoming a Woman.

  But Bitsy would not stay put in her role. She was an enigma. Across her considerable areas of naïveté were streaks of a sophisticated practicality that infuriated him. When he tried to edge, conversationally, toward that special rapport which would enhance their need for each other, she would be off and away, into Texas anecdote or local gossip, or even, for God’s sake, sports cars or popular music. It made him feel like a stubborn and overly optimistic old hound who has never ceased believing he can get a partridge all by himself, who after the quivering stalk and the shambling pounce, runs with fierce energy and comes to a panting tongue-lolling halt as he sees the bird fly over the crest of the hill.