Please Write for Details

by John D. MacDonald

  “How perfectly terrible for all three of you, John! And especially for Mary. She must be a fine person. You can’t just turn love off and on like a switch.”

  “So there it is. Any ideas?”

  “I really don’t know. Could you sell it to outside people and just … split what you get?”

  “It would mean a big loss. The relationship with clients is personal. Our contacts and our personal professional reputations are solid assets of the firm. If neither of us is left, there isn’t a hell of a lot left to sell. If he buys, he has to locate a good design man and bring him in. I would have to locate somebody as good as Kurt is on structure. We’ve got fine kids working for us, but nobody who can be boosted that fast in either department.”

  “I can tell you what you should do and why, John.”

  “So positively?”

  “Don’t make fun. You are whole. It’s hurt you, but not the way they’ve been hurt. Kurt is a fractured man. I imagine it’s a very drab thing for him now. Where is his motivation? I guess that running any business is creative in a way. And particularly with that sort of business. And he’s right there where everything will keep reminding him of … how his world blew up all of a sudden. You say he is very good on the real technical side. I suppose that is stresses and all that sort of thing.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he could get a job at any time, couldn’t he?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Then you owe it to him to take over, John. Maybe it seems a little tasteless to you now, but nowhere near as tasteless as it must be to him. You are a whole man and you can make it run, and you can take pride and pleasure in it. If you sell out to him, I don’t think it will last very long. I just don’t think an … unmotivated man can run anything very well. A heart-broken man.”

  He thought it over for long minutes. “You are completely right, Barbara. Absolutely right. I was too damn close to it. Just a few careless decisions on big jobs and he would be done.”

  “You’d save him from drowning, wouldn’t you?”

  “Of course. That’s an odd thing to say.”

  “Is it? John, I think I’m going to make you very angry at me. But I don’t care. I suppose it was really quite flattering to the male ego to have such a woman fall in love with you. Dramatic pathos. And you thought how terribly difficult it was for you. So you’ve been down here, sucking your pipe, considering yourself sad and mysterious or something, while that poor partner of yours is up there trying to keep the store when he has no special reason to give a damn about it. If anybody should have gone away, he should have. So I guess it’s time you stopped being a romantic figure and went back where you belong.”

  “Good Lord!” he said softly.

  “Do you think that at this point he can get very concerned about protecting his own interests, much less yours?”

  “All right, all right.”

  “You could have …”

  “Barbara, will you please give me a little time to get adjusted to this unfortunately accurate picture of myself as a pretentious ass? Just a few minutes, that’s all.”

  He got up and walked slowly back and forth, his heels tocking in the silence. He stopped in front of her and smiled down at her. “Mary was utterly honest. So was Kurt. So I had to play a part written for Charles Boyer. I have done them a disservice.”

  “You’re not angry?”

  “At you? No. A little bit at myself for being dense.” He sat beside her again. “In all conscience, damn it, the only thing I can do is go back right away. But I don’t want to leave you.”

  “I … I don’t know what the response to that should be.”

  “I wanted all the time I could have with you. And more, when this part of it is over. Not pushing you, Barbara. Not rushing you. Just watching you come alive, a little at a time.”

  “You sound like …”

  “Let me finish. You are it. What I want. For keeps. And you’re not emotionally ready to listen to that kind of a pitch yet. So don’t try to make any answers or objections or anything else. I love you.”

  “You love me, and you will go back there right away because you can see, from what I’ve said, that it’s the right thing to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “I keep wondering what I would feel like right now, what I’d feel toward you if you’d said you couldn’t go back now because you love me. I have the strangest feeling about that, John. I don’t love you.”

  “I know.”

  “But … because you’re doing it this way, I think I can love you someday. I don’t know when. Some day.”

  “It’s more than I thought you could say.”

  “More than I thought I’d ever say. Would you kiss me, please?”

  He turned toward her and put his arm around her, tilted her chin up and pressed his mouth against those level lips, felt there the tender stirring of her life, felt her finger tips so light against his cheek. She pulled away slightly and he looked down into eyes that seemed enormous, that reflected in their dampness the highlights from the distant street light.

  “I can’t afford to be hurt,” she whispered, her breath warm on his mouth. “I have no reserve against hurt. None.”

  “You won’t be,” he said. He kissed her again, and it was a little longer, a little more meaningful.

  “That was a goodbye,” she said.

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We can write?”

  “Of course.”

  “Will you stay here?”

  “Maybe not until the end. For a little while, I think. It was a present, you know. It was supposed to do me good.”

  “And it has.”

  “Yes, it has. Oh, yes, it has, John.”

  “If Mary Jane will lend Park’s wagon, could you find your way back alone from Mexico City if you ride with me to the airport? I ought to be able to get a flight out tomorrow.”

  “I can manage that.”

  “And drive carefully. That’s an order.”

  They walked back to the car and drove back to the hotel. There was a false dawn in the east, and nearby roosters crowed. She tilted her mouth for a good-night kiss, and smiled, and closed the door without another word. He went to his room, filled with great joy that threatened to burst his heart.

  Monica Killdeering and Harvey Ardos did not sleep that night. They had talked before, but never in this way. After her shy but unmistakable kiss, he had read all of the bright miracle in her eyes. There was no need for another drink, no desire for more dancing. They had gone out into the night. No structure on earth was huge enough to contain this miracle. And even the sky seemed low. They had kissed as soon as they reached the first patch of shadow, kissed with all the damp-eyed hunger and intensity of all the lonely people of the world. They kissed and used the first broken words that tried to tell of this miracle. And the words became more assured with each retelling. They talked and walked and stopped to kiss until they’d bruised their mouths and dizzied themselves, until they staggered in close embrace and caught their balance and laughed with each other and walked on, finding new ways to say it, finding better ways to explain it all to each other. They stopped to look at each other searchingly in the starlight. She was breath-takingly beautiful and he was handsome.

  His, he knew, was the greater miracle. He was the humble soldier who had gone to do homage to his queen, only to have her take his hand and bid him rise, and take him in her arms. The implausibly remote had, in a wondrous moment, come within his reach. And, as a bonus to miracle, there was her response. This was no austere queen, with prim and chilly lips, shrinking from boldness, drawing back in sterile alarm. This was woman, round and firm, meeting him foursquare, matching the gallop of his heart, duplicating the husky race of breath, hungry of mouth, creaking his ribs in her strength and need, turning her hip against him, crushing her breasts against his thumping chest. He walked forty feet tall, and could have howled until the stars heard him, and thumped fists agains
t his chest until great stones tumbled down the flanks of distant mountains.

  They talked dreams and nonsense, sobrieties and purposes, and were little aware of where they wandered. They were both aware of their yearning for complete possession. But they were equally aware of its inevitability. There were a thousand smaller things to be savored first on this magical memorable night and during the days and nights to follow. They had that curious patience which can only come from instinctive and utter trust. The greater need was merely to be together. They had spent their lives with the dreary awareness that nobody in all the world really deeply cared whether they lived or died. Nobody really on their side. And suddenly, for each of them, here was another individual who clearly and unmistakably cared for you more than you cared for yourself, who would gladly and willingly die for you, and think of it as a small favor.

  When they wandered back to the hotel many hours later just in time to help John Kemp and Barbara with Gam and the musicians, they both felt that they had both been marked in some obvious and indelible way. But John and Barbara did not act as though they could see any change.

  When they had cleared away the empty bottles and picked up the glasses they could find, they wandered out into the night again, and they picked their way down the barranca path and over to the far side to a grassy place where there was a crumbling length of gray stone wall to lean against.

  He leaned his back against the wall, and she lay on her back, the nape of her neck fitting his thigh with significant perfection.

  They were both slightly hoarse from all the words that had had to be said.

  “Who should worry about three years?” he said. “Nothing. When I’m eighty-six, you’ll be eighty-nine. More important is the education, Monica. I’m a stupe.”

  “You’re brilliant! I won’t permit anyone to talk about Harvey Ardos that way.”

  “There’s so damn much I don’t know.”

  “There’s a lot I don’t know. We’ll learn together.”

  “I don’t even talk right.”

  “You’ve said beautiful things to me, darling. I’ll remember them my whole life long. I’ll remember them forever.” She caught his hand and pressed it to her lips.

  “There’s one thing. This Kilo. What’s it like?”

  “It’s just an ordinary little place, Harvey. Good people and bad people.”

  “There’s no sweat about making a living. I mean I can get along any place. I’ve done every kind of low-type labor. Pick and shovel. Dishwashing. Stock clerk. Truck driving. Pin setting. Sweeper. You name it—I’ve done it. But I’ve been in those little places, and I never like them much. People look at you like you were a bug. In a big city nobody cares. Drop dead and they step over you. But those little places, they got to know all about you. Makes me itchy.”

  “But I’ve explained, darling. I’ve got a good position. And we can find a place to live. You could paint all the time.”

  “None of that jazz, Monica. Painting is my real work, but I pay my freight on the other stuff. If anybody starts to buy the paintings, that’s something else. But I’m not going to be that little nogoodnik Monica Killdeering brought home and married and supports, see? I’m a man. I got pride.”

  “All right, darling. I’m sorry. I just thought …”

  “How the hell am I going to get used to you calling me darling? Something goes boing every time. I want to look around behind me and see who you’re talking to.”

  “Only you. My darling. I knew I was going to find you down here. I knew it on the plane. Such a feeling of expectation and tension and excitement. I knew, somehow, you’d be here.”

  “You think this Kilo will work out?”

  “We’ll make it work. We’ll be happy there.”

  “Okay. I’ll give it a good whirl. You know, I can’t get it through my thick head this is happening.”

  “Has happened, honey.”

  “Who would fall for me? Somebody like you? Crazy, man.”

  “But I did.”

  “You’ve got lousy taste. I got all the taste in this family. I’m getting the big break. You’re getting a dog.”

  She rolled her head slightly, turning her face away. In a small and humble voice she said, “I wish you were getting … just a little bit better break, darling. I wish it with all my heart. If I could only have been sure you were going to happen to me. If I’d had any faith. But when it happens, Harvey, you won’t be … the first. I didn’t want it to happen with somebody else but …”

  “Shut up!” he said harshly. “Stop the moaning. So it isn’t the first for me. Should I expect an egg in my beer? A wonderful girl like you. Who blames you? Look at me a minute. Get this straight. We don’t run any confession hour. I don’t want any details. You don’t get any details. Then nobody has anything to brood about. You know. Factual stuff that kind of sticks in your mind.”

  “All right, dear,” she said meekly.

  “Just one thing. Does this joker live in Kilo?”

  “No. And it didn’t happen there.”

  “Okay. That’s all I got to know. Now we change the subject. Pick a new subject.”

  “Russia? Bird watching? Tennis? Love?”

  “Let’s kick that love deal around. I hear it’s going around this year. Lots of people catching it.”

  They talked a long time, until Monica said, “Don’t look now, but isn’t everything getting that pearly-gray dawn look?”

  “It sure is. Old sun on the way.”

  She smiled up at him in the gray light. “I can see you better.”

  “I got more to look at.”

  “I want you to like what you look at,” she said, and she took his hand and cupped it on her breast and held it there firmly. He shivered slightly. Looking questioningly up at him, she said, “Do you mind my acting … this way? I mean … brazen. Darling, I love you so.”

  He said thickly, “No. No, I like you to act this way. It’s … just fine. But we made a kind of deal, didn’t we? Not to go jump into bed the first minute? I like this just fine. Things are crawling up and down my spine. But, honey, if you keep doing this kind of thing I’m … just not going to last, believe me. Something is going to give.”

  She took his hand away. “Better?”

  “That isn’t the word I’d pick. Easier. Hell, it would be a lot easier, Monica, if you were one of those little, old, withered-up-type schoolteachers. I’ve seen a lot of calendars. I’ve never seen anything like you yet. Any place. It makes a hell of a pressure.”

  “And it’s all for you, Harvey. All yours.”

  “Cut it out!” he said in an anguished voice. She sprang up lithely and took his hand and yanked him to his feet. They walked to the road and up the slope and watched the sun come up. And then they went slowly, hand in hand, back to the hotel.

  BOOK THREE

  In which the Grisly Effects of varied forms of Overindulgence are inflicted upon the more Reckless Members of the Group; for various Instances of Aftermath; a Plan for the Future is explained.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On Wednesday morning, the twenty-sixth of July, the morning following the prolonged and spontaneous marriage fiesta, Esperanza Clueca arose at dawn. She inspected her reddened eyes in a fragment of mirror, dressed carefully, and walked three miles to church. She had gone without sleep most of the night, fingering the beads of her rosary, kissing the little gilt cross. She hoped to arrange a special confession as she did not care to contemplate living with her great burden of guilt any longer than absolutely necessary.

  Ai, what a strumpet she had become. It could not all have been the fault of the tequila. No, there was an evil inside her, a depth of blackness and sin that she had heretofore been unaware of. She remembered the abandon with which she had danced. Most unsuitable in one who hoped to teach the young. And then she had permitted that oafish Fidelio to entice her out into the whirling night, her head full of giddiness and her mouth full of laughter. He had taken her into a corner of darkness, and there she
had strained upward to meet the hard male pressure of his heavy young mouth on hers. And writhed and whined at the strokings of his hands. And rubbed against him in lechery and wanton invitation. It was only when he had forced her down and she realized that his heavy knee was forcing her legs apart, that fright came to her. And then she had fought desperately in the darkness like an animal, thwarting him, tearing away from his grasp, running, running through the night, hearing his angry shout behind her.

  She had coldly condemned all the bawdy girls only to learn that in her heart she was no different than Margarita, she of the two bastard children and the red slut dress. As she walked to church she cringed inside herself to think of how she must have looked and sounded there in the dark corner with that lazy, loutish driver. This could not be any portion of the true Esperanza Clueca. But it had happened. She lengthened her steps, hastening toward the church and the candles, the images and the priest.

  Dotsy Winkler was up early. She worked alone in the kitchen. There was no sign of Rosalinda, Pepe, Felipe, Alberto, Fidelio or the two maids. Dotsy made a great quantity of strong coffee. Monica and Harvey were up. She had seen them out in the patio, holding hands and talking. Soon the colonel and Hildabeth put in an appearance. Contrary to their habits, neither Agnes nor Miles appeared.

  The colonel finished breakfast, caught Saltamontes and saddled her without help, and clopped out of the hotel grounds, heading north. John Kemp appeared with Barbara and they smiled good morning and sat with Monica and Harvey. Monica and Barbara voluntarily took over the serving duties of Esperanza and Margarita. There was general talk about the festivities.