The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  Margaret and I became separated in the crowd. Hy’s wife Marcia came up and linked her arm through mine and handed me a drink. She turned her face close to mine and showed me all her teeth; an unmistakable redolence of gin, Schweppes and Rose’s lime juice emanated from her. “I’ve got him,” she said. “I’m the hostess and I’ve got him and I’m going to show him my house.” With that she drew me away from the others, led me up more marbled steps and through sliding glass doors into the house. She had to show me every room, all twelve of them. None of it interested me; the furniture was a blend of Empire reproductions and classic moderne pieces of the latest wrinkle, selected for her probably by some popular interior decorator who had been instructed to create ten thousand dollars’ worth of opulent but innocuous flash. Bathmats and toilet-seat covers of pinto pony skin. A dead tree growing—or, rather, dying—up through a hole in the bedroom floor. Mirror-lined shower stalls. Book ends of Rodin’s “Thinker.” Pink satin harem pillows. A round master bed. A Hammond organ. “Nice,” I offered non-committally. “Lovely place.”

  Her arm still entwined with mine as we drifted along a corridor, she said, “I hope you weren’t disturbed at the way we behaved in the Deadline Club the other day. But you see, we had just received word that Hy’s aunt, his favorite Aunt Astrid Norden, had…had passed away, and we were both terribly upset at the time. I hope you’ll forgive our rudeness.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said, giving her wrist a consoling squeeze.

  She squeezed me back and said, “I want you to have a good time tonight. A very good time.”

  “I will,” I said. I’m sure I will.”

  A tall fellow unknown to me—I had missed his name during the introductions—approached, threw an arm around Marcia’s shoulders, nuzzled her neck with a quick kiss, and said, “Don’t hide from us, honey. Come on out and play.” Thei he said to me, “You’ll have to watch out for this gal, Stone. Old Marsh’ll snatch you off to bed quicker’n a streak of greased lightning. I’m tellin you.”

  “For your information, Rex, we’ve already been there,” she said to him and winked at me. “Now let’s join the others.”

  Once outside again, she took up with pesky Rex, relinquishing me to a girl named Teddy Terrell whom I vaguely remembered as one of the high school cheerleaders. Teddy, I soon discovered, was a divorcée and was bored with life, but not sufficiently bored to prevent her from being completely captivated by the slightest bit of chitchat that might fall out of my mouth. I had some fun, during a ten-minute parley with her, observing her breathlessly affected responses to my charmless remarks about the weather and other utterly banal topics. She was an easy mark, every flick of her lashes suggesting an open expectance of a seduction, but before she had time to pursue the matter Cinny Anderson came and took me away from her, and then Marilyn McComb took me away from Cinny, and Chuchu Heffington took me away from Marilyn, and so on—a gallant gallivanting shuttlecock I was, tossed around from one doll to another. Through it all, I kept on the qui vive, kept my ears to the ground and my nose to the wind and my eyes peeled, and managed to assemble a good picture of what was what—the naked facts, the inside wire on the private amours, likes, dislikes, infidelities, assignations, peeves and short shrifts of this cabal of restless, dissolute plutocrats. It was not a pretty picture, I must say. They were the cream of Society, perhaps, but apparently it is possible for cream, left idle, to become scum. There was not much post-mortem talk about Slater’s play; these people had gone to it to be seen, not to see the play. I cast my eye about for Naps, and finally saw him, over on the other side of the ashlar wall, talking to one of the Negro waiters. I strolled over to ask him if I seemed to be sufficiently Somebody now, and he said I was doing just fine. I told him I was tired and hoped that we might go soon.

  I found Margaret, standing alone near the table set up with liquor. She had a highball in her hand. Several males were gathered near her, watching her, but none of them had approached her yet. “Having fun?” I asked her. She nodded and smiled. “Let’s dance,” I suggested.

  She shook her head. I can’t,” she said.

  “Oh, come on,” I said, taking her hand. The orchestra was playing a rather leisurely variation on “Stardust.”

  “I can’t, really,” she said. “I never have.”

  “Well, let’s just get into a clinch and sway back and forth and nobody will know the difference,” I suggested, and she gave in and let me lead her out among the other dancing couples. I put my arm around her and held up her hand with my other hand. We swayed back and forth. “See?” I said. “Nothing to it.” Cheek to cheek, we held each other and rocked gently, our feet stepping slightly without moving. I nuzzled her earlobe with my mouth and whispered, “Going to stay with me tonight?” I felt her cheek nodding up and down against my cheek. I gave her a squeeze, feeling her breasts flatten against me. We swayed and rocked onward, tightly clenched. I whispered, “Tell me more about Slater.”

  There was a tap on my shoulder. I ignored it, but it tapped again. I let go of Margaret and turned. It was Hy. I glowered at him. “Yes?” I said.

  “My turn,” he said with a nasty pucker of his peachy mallow mouth.

  “She can’t dance,” I blurted.

  His eyebrows went up. “With me,” he said, “anybody can dance,” and he took her and waltzed her away.

  I stood aside and watched. Margaret was hanging on for dear life, but not doing such a bad job of it. Teddy Terrell came up and leaned on me and said, “A penny for your thoughts, darling. Why so glum?” I told her I was bored. “Me, too!” she said excitedly, as if it were a great thrill to be bored. The orchestra was changing its tune, and Teddy grabbed my hand and said, “Hey, come on, let’s hully-gully!”

  “Let’s what?” I asked.

  She demonstrated. It was some kind of obscenely suggestive variation on the twist, but I joined her in it, having learned the basic fundamentals of the dance the other evening with Tatrice. I had a couple of drinks in me already and my inhibitions were not what they might have been.

  “Now,” said Teddy, wild-eyed and excited after the orchestra had stopped and then begun a new number, “let’s frag!”

  “I beg your pardon?” I said to her.

  “Frag!” she said. “Haven’t you ever fragged before?”

  She took my hand and turned around with her back to me. “Here?” I said. But it was only another variation, even more obscenely suggestive but pervertedly so this time, on the twist. After that we did the dog, the mashed potatoes, the hitchhiker, and several others which she demonstrated for me. I caught the spirit of the things, and even began to enjoy myself. I turned to see if Margaret was watching me, but I couldn’t spot her. I was almost certain she would have to sit out such contortionist antics.

  I observed that several couples were, from time to time, sneaking off toward the house or out toward the woods, and they weren’t married couples—I mean, the couples weren’t married to each other but to somebody else. One of them was Marcia Norden and her friend Rex. Teddy, I noticed, was steering me off into the darkness. When we reached the edge of the marbled patio she took my arm and suggested that we go somewhere and rest for a while. “Rest?” I said. She pointed, over there toward the woods. I was tempted, but I had a date. Where was Margaret? Had Hy taken her off to see the house or something?

  Thunder boomed and a sudden heavy shower saved me from Teddy. Some of the guests made it to the house, but most of us took shelter in a small summerhouse behind the patio. The rain came down in torrents. There were fifteen or twenty of us packed into the summerhouse, and it was hot and stuffy. Something bit me. A mosquito. Teddy was in there too, and she came up and bit me on the earlobe and pressed herself against me and wiggled, and kissed me. A mosquito bit her. “Dammit,” she said and slapped her arm. Another mosquito bit me. Other people were getting bitten too. “Ouch,” several people said. “Open a window, Hy!” somebody said, and I heard Hy’s voice explaining that the windows were unopenable. One
fellow couldn’t stand it, and made a mad dash out and through the rain, and was badly drenched. The rest of us endured. I had been bitten several times now. I wondered if Margaret were inside the summerhouse too. It was dark and I couldn’t see any faces. “Margaret,” I called softly, but there was no answer. “Who?” Teddy said and pressed herself up against me, and I could feel the shape of her groin against my swollen appendage. These awful mosquitoes,” she moaned. “Got it,” came Hy’s voice out of the darkness, and he said, “Folks, just keep calm. I found a can of bug spray and I’ll kill these little pests in no time.” I heard the sound of the button depressed: hisssss, hisssss. I saw the silhouette of Hy’s arm passing the aerosol can back and forth through the air. He kept his finger on the button a long time and exhausted the contents of the can. Now the air was not only hot and stuffy but also choked with the pungent fumes of the bug spray. Where was Margaret? Had she made it to the house? Another mosquito bit me, and several other people were bitten too. One of them complained, “Hy, that bug spray of yours is no damn good.” “Let’s get out of here,” somebody said. “I’d rather get wet than eaten up alive,” said one girl. “Turn on the lights,” said another girl. “No!” said a fellow. “Aren’t there any lights in here,” the girl said. “I think so,” said Hy and groped along a wall, feeling for a light switch. Teddy continued to squash my groin with hers, as if that alone could palliate the pain of the mosquito bites. Where, where was Margaret?

  Somebody found a light switch and the lights went on at last. Gently I pushed Teddy away from me. Several other couples disengaged themselves quickly, and one guy complained, “Hey! Douse the lights!” But the lights stayed on, and I reeled with dizziness as I discovered that I was in a room full of ghostly apparitions, shimmery phantoms glowing silvery. These ghosts saw each other, and the female ghosts began to scream, and the male ghosts began to rub themselves. “Oh my God!” Hy screamed. “It isn’t bug spray! This isn’t bug spray!” He hurled the can from him, breaking a window. “Oh my God!” he wailed. “What have I done?”

  What had he done? He had covered all of his guests with a nice thin but adequate coat of aluminum paint. I looked down at myself. Fortunately Teddy had been pressed against me during the event, and thus the front of my (or Naps’s) violet dinner jacket was not coated, although I had a little of the stuff on one of my sleeves. The back of Teddy’s pink dress was heavily coated with it and she was craning her neck to inspect the damage. “Norden, you nitwit,” said an outraged guest in white (formerly) tuxedo, “I oughta bust you in the nose.” And he began to, but Norden ran out through the rain toward his house.

  The rain abated, and most of the guests dashed to their cars, and sped homeward in search of cleaning fluid. Teddy crossed the patio huffily and went into the house. I went off to look for Margaret. I looked all around the house, and then I went into the house. Hy approached me with some rags and cleaning fluid. “God, man, I’m sorry,” he said. “I ought to be shot. But here, let’s see if we can’t get some of that off.” He dabbed at my sleeve, and fortunately most of the paint came off at once, and then he cleaned some of it off my face and hair. Finished, he said that if that wasn’t suitable, just to let him know and he would buy me a new jacket, but please not to instigate a lawsuit or anything. “God, I feel awful about this,” he said again, and went off in search of another painted guest.

  Margaret was not in the house. I went out to the parking lot to ask Naps if he had seen her, but Naps was not in the parking lot. The Lincoln was gone. My watch said it was after midnight. The Lincoln had changed back into a pumpkin, and Cinderella’s beautiful dress had changed back into rags. But she had not even left a glass slipper behind her.

  Chapter thirty-one

  Sitting down on the rock retaining wall at the edge of Norden’s precipitous property, I gazed down at the river, and out across the dark hills upstream. I did not know what to do. Had Naps stolen Margaret? Had Slater arrived to steal her, and Naps given chase? Had Naps become disgusted at the sight of all those dissolute plutocrats at the party, and gone on home? Had Margaret wandered off into the woods with some seductive male? Had I only dreamed the whole thing from the beginning?

  When I got my wits back I would just get up and enter the woods and keep going, walking all night until I found a lost dale up in the mountains and there I would build that log castle and eat those berries and mushrooms and grasshoppers and think those thoughts and live that rustic life. The voyageur, a worthless voyeur, would become an ermite.

  The guests were all gone, the last lights of Norden’s house were blinking out, the night was utterly soundless, and I began to whistle to myself simply to make a little bit of noise and keep myself company. I didn’t know what I was whistling, some old Victor Herbert love song or something. About this time of night, years ago, two crack trains used to pass through Little Rock: one was the Missouri Pacific’s Sunshine Special going southwest from New York to Mexico City; the other was the Rock Island’s streamlined Rocket, going west out of Memphis. You could hear both of them passing through, the one rattling swiftly under all the viaducts out behind the high school, the other far eastward near the airport then sweeping around the south end of town, with every clack of its wheels clearly audible in the still distance. I always wanted to ride one of them, but I never did, and now they don’t run any more, all you ever hear is the switch engines out in the Biddle yards. But what I mean is, you could really hear them, this time of night, after midnight. They blew their whistles several times, and otherwise made a lot of far-off noises. So maybe the reason I had to whistle was to fill in all that long silence. Soon I would think of something to do. Phee wheu fii bee, I puckered and blew, fii bee wheu phee…

  How long I sat there whistling and meditating and scratching my mosquito bites I don’t know; I know only a few of the questions which bumped around in my mind, questions dancing with each other in a frug or a hully-gully. Was Margaret really Wanda in a way? Is that why Slater had picked her for the role, because he saw that she was the perfect model of the idealistic dreamer who closes herself into a shell and can never turn her thoughts away from herself? But if that were true, why had Slater, who reputedly was both misogynist and misanthropist, sought her out and romanced her? Or had he? And to what extent? My fragile nerves would not bear up under the strain much longer.

  “Nyhiss nyhit, aint hit?” said an old country boy’s voice behind me, and I turned to see a tall silhouette approaching. He came up and sat down on the wall beside me. “Been lookin high and low for you,” he said. “Heard somebody whistlin over here, figgered it couldn’t be nobody else but a nut like Nub Stone. What’re you doin, anyway, callin your dogs?”

  I told him I was waiting to be rescued, and I was glad that he had come to rescue me.

  “You ain’t the one needs rescuin,” he said. “Come on.” He led me back across Norden’s patio and out to the street. A jeep station wagon was parked there. I asked him if he had got himself a new car. He said no, the jeep belonged to Slater. He was just borrowing it. We got in, and he turned townward. That nigger sidekick of yours done went and got hisself into trouble,” he said. “Peepin Tom. Breakin and enterin. Whole buncha junk.” He turned into Cantrell Road and mashed the accelerator to the floor. Over the noise of the speeding engine he said, “Don’t know if I can get him out or not, but well see.”

  “Suppose you tell me what this is all about,” I said.

  “Suppose you tell me how come you let Margaret get out of your sight.”

  “Well, we were at the party, and it started raining, and I ran into a summerhouse, and—”

  “All right,” he said. “If I know you, you were probably foolin around with some other girl at the time. Anyway, Margaret’s mother come and got her. While you wasn’t lookin. Or while you was foolin around with some other girl.” I asked him how Margaret’s mother had known that she was at the party. He coughed and hemmed and hawed, and then he said, “I told her. Couldn’t help it. Me and Slater was playin c
ards out at his place when she come up and rung the doorbell. Must of taken her an hour to find the place. Boy, I’m tellin you, she was mad. Thing is, she didn’t even act mad at Slater, not at first anyway, but boy she really bellered at me, like it was all my fault. Guess it was, come to think of it. ‘You!’ she says in that voice of hers like the whole world was deef and dumb. ‘You did it!’ She says, ‘You came and took my daughter away from me in Hot Springs and you took her back to Little Rock and you let her be in that awful play, and now here you are out here with this…this awful man who sins with her!’ Slater turns to me and he says, ‘Is this her?’ And I says, ‘That’s her.’ And he says to her, ‘Madam, I have always wanted to meet you, I’ve heard so much about you, but I thought I would just have to see you, because otherwise I wouldn’t have believed it. Now I know.’ And she says, ‘Know what?’ And he says, ‘Know how it could have happened that a lovely girl like Margaret was virtually a recluse for twenty-seven years.’ Then she got awful mad at him, and she says, ‘Mr. Slater, you are a disgrace to…to your profession, whatever it is, and I’m going to tell your wife on you!’ And he says, real prissy-like, ‘Tell what, may I ask?’ And she says, ‘Tell her how you have been living in sin with my daughter!’ Then Slater sort of looked at me and then he looked back at her and he says, ‘Now where did you ever get that idea?’ his voice just like hers, mockin her, and that got her madder than ever, and she says, ‘Never mind! Just tell me where you’re hiding her and then don’t you ever even look at her again!’ And Slater says, ‘Madam, you have my permission to turn the place upside down, but I don’t think you’ll find her on the premises.’ And she says, ‘Well, what did you do with her?’ And Slater says, ‘In all truth, madam, I have not seen her since the curtain went down on the play.’ And she studied him and studied him and then she turns back to me and says, ‘You, then! Dall, you are a disgrace to the Little Rock police and I’m going to report you to the mayor or the city manager or whoever and get him to fire you. Now you tell me where my daughter is, right this minute, or I’ll do it!’