Damnation of Adam Blessing

by Packer, Vin

  15

  Dear Billy and Chary,

  How is everything? I hope you are enjoying your stay in Roma as I am. After I left Billy last night at the Mediterraneo, I went across the street and had some drinks. I made the acquaintance of a very nice chap from Civitavecchia — a real Italian! We went on the town together, and believe me, it was great fun! We hope to do it again very soon.

  I left your wedding presents with the desk clerk. You don’t have to thank me. I realize they are long overdue, but then we sort of lost track of one another, didn’t we? Bygones be bygones — here we are in The Eternal City! How about having dinner with me one night this week? There’s a fascinating trattoría on Portico di Ottavia, where I would like you to be my guests. Please call me here at the hotel any day between noon and two. I’ll wait for your call.

  Believe me I hope your marriage is a great success!

  Billy mentioned Dorothy Schackleford the other night, saying she had a job here. I would like her address, if it is not any trouble. How on earth did you get together with her, not that I have anything against her — just curious.

  If I seemed slightly nervous the other night, please understand that I was under some strain. I have been traveling incessantly this past year. I kept thinking I’d run into you, but no such luck. Anyway, as I said, here we are reunited. Let’s make the most of it. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.

  Always,

  Adam.

  Adam had written the note to Billy and Charity three days ago, the morning he returned from his night with Ernesto. Before he had parted from his new friend, he had loaned him a little less than twenty-five dollars. Ernesto explained that the blond had helped herself to his wallet, that after he got some sleep he would go back to the house and demand the return of his money.

  “You have to watch their kind,” said Ernesto, “and to think they would try it with me, a good customer!”

  “I have a funny feeling, Ernesto, that I talked to the girl I was with, told her some things I don’t want anyone to know.”

  Ernesto had laughed, “She speaks no English, Adam! Forget it!”

  “It may have been a dream anyway.”

  “A dream, of course. You were fast asleep when I pounded on your door. She must have been good.”

  The conversation had taken place at dawn on the Via Monte Cenci. They shook hands, Ernesto explaining that he stayed within walking distance, that Adam would find a taxi-stand three blocks over. Ernesto said he would come to Adam’s hotel the next night, when he got his money back. He would repay Adam then.

  “I wish you would just keep it, Ernesto, a gift from me.”

  “Nah! Nah!” And with a wave of his hand, “Tomorrow, Adam,” he was gone.

  • • •

  Now he sat opposite Adam, in Adam’s small room at the Delle Nazioni. He smoked a cigar and wore the same brown-and-black checkered sport coat, and blue slacks. His shirt was different, a gaudy yellow one with Aloha written across it countless times in blue, and white flowers splashed in between. Adam would have liked to give him one of his shirts, but he was familiar with Ernesto’s stubborn pride.

  “So you thought I would not show up, ah?” Ernesto laughed.

  “I’m glad you’re here. Not for the money.” When Ernesto had entered the room, the first thing he had done was to slap the fifteen thousand lire onto the bureau top.

  “What have you done since Wednesday, Adam?”

  “Nothing, really.”

  “You have no business?”

  “Oh, I have investments, you see, Ernesto.”

  “Good! I like to have my friends free from care!” Ernesto walked around Adam’s room puffing on his cigar, admiring a tie of Adam’s (“You can have it", said Adam — Ernesto would not hear of it) and Adam’s military brushes, and his cowhide luggage. Adam watched him, wishing he could have the courage to unburden himself to Ernesto. Adam could still not get it out of his mind that he had told the brunette — everything. Still it was all mixed up with a dream of meeting the Cenci family, and running naked down the length of the Corso, while Billy laughed and threw poodle-shaped cuff links with ruby eyes, at his body.

  Over a bottle of Maccarese Adam sent for, they talked. Ernesto told Adam of his father’s illness, which he had heard of just two days ago. “Serious,” said Ernesto, “and perhaps it will mean I will take a job for a while here in Rome.” He explained that his sisters could help his mother run their place in Civitavecchia; that it would be better if he found something to pay well. Guide work, he thought; he had once worked as a guide at the Colosseum, another time as one in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence.

  “But Ernesto,” Adam interrupted, “let me help you. Let me lend you money for your father.”

  Ernesto looked embarrassed. He changed the subject immediately. Did Adam like the brunette the other night?

  “I’m sorry,” he said, not waiting for Adam’s answer; “she was probably a pig. I hear she takes everything off. Even among whores that is thought indecent. A good whore, Adam, always keeps her stockings on. There is an expression we have here. We say that a whore who takes her stockings off is not in business. You see? She enjoys taking her clothes off. A whore is not supposed to enjoy her work. Only a pig-whore.” He bit the end off another cigar, which he took from his shirt pocket. “The occupation spoiled her, Adam. She knew all the soldiers, always joking and laughing with the Germans. Then with the Americans.”

  Adam’s heart missed a beat. “But she doesn’t know English?”

  “Who knows what a pig knows, Adam?” “But you said she didn’t.” “She probably doesn’t.”

  “Ernesto,” said Adam, “The other night she said something in English to me. I remember. She said it very plainly: ‘I’ll take care of you.’ I believe that was it.”

  Ernesto grunted: “You should have shoved her face in the wall, the pig. I hope you told her you would take care of things, not her! They do anything to save their backs, their kind.”

  Adam was perspiring, his heart hammering. “You don’t understand, Ernesto. I think I told her something. I don’t know if I dreamed it, or if I told her — but she could get me in trouble, Ernesto, if I did say it — if she speaks English!”

  “You, Adam? You’re making a joke on me. What could you have done so bad! Forget it!”

  “Ernesto, I’m telling you, it could get me in trouble.”

  Ernesto took his cigar out of his mouth, leaned forward in the leather chair and said, “My friend, you are serious, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. It’s — well, a long story. It’s — but I don’t like to tell it.” Adam was thinking that it was not that he did not trust Ernesto; it was that he was afraid Ernesto would dislike him. “Crime is crime,” Ernesto had said the other night.

  Ernesto stopped Adam from continuing. “You are in trouble?”

  “Not yet. It’s not really bad.” He was remembering that the other night when he told Ernesto how the Schneider boy had been returned without a scratch, Ernesto seemed unsympathetic. Crime is crime … Adam said, “It just might look bad. I wouldn’t want someone like that girl to know it.”

  “Are you sure she does?”

  “No, no! That’s just it. I’m in the dark! Ernesto, I’ll tell you about it. You see — ”

  But Ernesto held his large hand up. “Stop, Adam! Don’t trust anyone! I don’t want to know, do you see? If you are guilty of something, I don’t want to know. Then you would never think I gave you away.”

  “I’d never think that,” said Adam.

  “Good! But don’t tell me. Trust no one, Adam, particularly not someone you know less than a week.”

  Adam smiled. “You are wonderful, Ernesto.”

  “Nah! Listen, my friend, I’ll go and visit that place tonight. I’ll find out if you said anything or not. Believe me, I’ll not listen to whatever it is, if you did say it. I’ll stop her from repeating it, but I’ll find out…. If you said something, well — that can be fixed. A pair of stockings, a pretty d
ress — those pigs don’t know enough to be vicious. Besides, you probably exaggerate your wrong. I know you.”

  Adam said, “I don’t exaggerate it…. I could tell you this much — ”

  “Basta!” Ernesto stopped him. “I don’t want to hear.”

  • • •

  They finished the bottle of Maccarese. Ernesto said he must hunt a job. Adam was able to convince him to borrow at least a hundred dollars, half to buy clothes he would need for a job (he had brought only a few shirts for his holiday in Rome) and half to send immediately to his father.

  Adam planned to spend the afternoon searching for another gift for Luther Schneider. He changed his clothes and took a shower, then headed for the Via dei Coronari, where there were antique shops specializing in silver. At the Via Veneto, he could not resist stopping for a cold beer. Over the drink he lost interest in his afternoon’s plan. Why should he buy Schneider any more gifts? Schneider had really not had faith in him; he had simply feared for Timmy’s life. The money Schneider had paid Adam was nothing to a man that rich, no more than the sixty thousand lire Adam had handed to Ernesto. Why had Adam not seen that before? It would be ridiculous to buy another gift for Schneider. Adam chuckled to himself. Ernesto had been right last night when he had called Adam a softie. Look at the way Billy and Chary were treating him, and after Adam had taken such pains to pick out presents they would enjoy. Adam wished he had told Ernesto about that! Ernesto would have had something to say about that sort of shabby treatment. Adam smiled as he finished his beer. He could see Ernesto’s dark eyes flashing with anger, see him grabbing Billy by the fancy narrow shawl lapels of his dinner jacket, hear Ernesto shouting, “Adam is my friend, do you understand! Apologize to my friend!” … Adam ordered a Martini when he finished his beer. “What do you mean making a friend of mine wait around day after day for your phone call!” Ernesto would demand … “and don’t call him Addie any more!” said Ernesto over Adam’s third Martini, and gently, Adam put his hand on Ernesto’s arm to restrain him. A look of gratitude came in Billy’s eyes. “Thank you, Adam. Thanks a lot.” …

  • • •

  It was anger that made Billy’s eyes so hard. “How the hell much longer are you going to keep this up!”

  Instinct, impulse — whatever it was that had led Adam toward the vicinity of the Via Nazionale, onto the Via Cavour, to the Mediterraneo, it was opportunely timed. Adam stepped over Billy’s luggage, walking right past Billy as he stood holding open the door to his room. “Where are you going?” Adam said. “Were you going without telling me, Billy?”

  “You know, Addie, you’re sick! I mean, you’re very sick!” Billy let the door swing shut, and he crossed to one of the twin beds and an open suitcase into which he was putting shirts and balls of socks. “Why don’t you go see a doctor, Addie?”

  “You’re not wearing your present,” Adam said. Billy was wearing a green robe with a faint charcoal gray stripe in it, some sort of cotton fabric, with a shirt under it, and light gray pants.

  “Okay, Addie, let’s stop talking about the presents. They’re right where you left them, at the downstairs desk. I’d pick them up on my way out, if I were you, exchange them. And incidentally, Addie,” he said, turning and facing Adam with the same hard look to his eyes, “When I was in New York this spring, I found out you were going around saying you were me. I got my cuff links back too. What’s with you, Addie? Do you need a headshrinker or something?”

  Adam said, “Why do you live in the past so, Billy? Here we are in Rome together. Can’t we be friendly?”

  “You’ve been drinking, too,” said Billy. “You never could drink, could you?” He slipped his robe off then, and began folding it. “Why don’t you lay off the stuff? See your friend Dorothy Schackleford. I tell you she’s with some group who helps people.”

  “Ever since we were children you’ve wanted to insult me and hurt my feelings, haven’t you, Billy?”

  “Rubbish!” Billy dropped the folded robe on the shirts in his suitcase. “Here, I’ll write down her address. I’ve got it somewhere here in my book.” He was fumbling through the pages of a small, green leather address book, with fleurs-de-lys stamped on it. From Florence, Adam thought; Adam had bought a cigarette case, the stamping identical … so they had been to Florence, too, and he had missed them there as well. Or had they been running from him? Were they running from him now, again? And where was Chary? Why hadn’t he seen Chary yet?

  “Here it is,” said Billy. “I’ll jot it down for you…. You know, Adam, you have a tendency to exaggerate almost everything. For example this crap about our being childhood friends. Now you know damn well who I hung around with — Dick Nolan and Pete MacGuire … Now hell, Addie, why aren’t you just more realistic? We only saw each other two or three times a month when we were kids! Here — ” he handed Adam a card with an address scribbled on it. “We ran into Dorothy one afternoon on the Via Veneto. She asked about you.”

  Billy closed the lid of the suitcase, and snapped the silver locks. “That does it,” he said. “Well, Addie — ” holding out his hand, “This is it.”

  “And Chary? Where’s Chary?”

  “She’s not here, obviously!”

  “Then there is trouble!” Adam smiled. He sat down on the bed. “I knew it wouldn’t be long before it all came out.”

  “There isn’t any trouble Addie, and you have to get out now.”

  “Without seeing Chary?” Adam’s eyes began to fill.

  “And cut out the Chary, Addie! Since when do you call her Chary!”

  “It’s too bad you’re leaving before you meet my new business partner,” said Adam. “His name is Ernesto. We’re opening a beach club in Civitavecchia.” As he said it, Adam decided it was a very good idea. He and Ernesto could expand his family’s pensione.

  Billy was running around checking drawers and closets for anything he might have forgotten. Adam said, “We’re opening a very interesting club, the club — ” he searched for some name, thought of Ernesto’s shirt with Aloha splashed across it, and after a few more bullet associations, said: “The State Fifty, is what we’re calling it. We’re sort of using a Hawaiian theme. We might even call it The Fiftieth Star. We don’t have it all figured out yet,” said Adam, following Billy around back and forth as he talked. “We have long discussions about it. What do you think we ought to call it, Billy?”

  Billy slammed the door of the bathroom cabinet, colliding with Adam in the entranceway. “Get the hell out of here, will you, Addie, or do I have to call the manager!”

  Adam was stunned. He had felt that everything had been going all right, and now Billy had suddenly turned on him, without any explanation.

  “Billy,” said Adam, “it’s a wonder you have any friends.”

  Billy looked as though he were actually going to punch Adam in the nose then, but as he took a step forward, a key turned in the lock, and into the room came Charity.

  “Chary!” Adam said. There was a small spray of babies’-breath pinned to her light gray suit, and her black hair was piled on top of her head, and held by silver combs; and at her ears, silver loop earrings, like gypsys’, but she was not smiling, merely looking at Adam as though he were a bellhop or some other casual intruder. And again, Adam exclaimed, “Chary!” and began walking toward her.

  All at once, she began to giggle, and the giggle grew into laughter, and Adam stood before her bewildered as she tossed her head back the way a man might, and laughed that very hard, wild, uncontrollable way there is of laughing.

  “Oh my, migod,” she managed, before another fit of the same type laughter, while Adam stood very embarrassed, yet distracted from his embarrassment slightly by the thought that something was different about Chary.

  “You’ve changed,” he said.

  “I have, oh, Addie, my, migod!” and there seemed to be no end to her laughter.

  Billy, who had come around to stand beside her, was even smiling, and for the barest few seconds Adam thought that her
e it was as he had always planned it, the three of them together, joking, old friends, and Adam grinned broadly, stroked his beard, his eyes twinkling at his friends. Ah, this is the way it should always have been, and would have been too had I ever caught up with you last fall … he said to them, “You know I’ve looked forward to this moment for eons!” And it dawned on him then why Chary looked different. She too had taken on some weight.

  “Your added weight becomes you,” said Adam.

  She had turned to Billy and was telling him something about train times. Adam tried to hear, but she spoke too low.

  “But wait a minute,” Adam said, “We’re not going to leave it at this, are we? Aren’t we at least all going to have dinner tonight?”

  “Out!” Billy said suddenly. He was pointing at the door with his finger, watching Adam carefully, waiting for Adam to go, of all things.

  It must be a joke, and Adam laughed. “Down, boy!” he said, making his own joke. He smiled at Chary. “You really look good with that added weight. You ought to stay that way.”

  She put her hand to her mouth, palm in, as though she were going to catch something — a pit of some sort, or as though she might cough or sneeze, and Adam was slightly surprised to see she was simply laughing again — trying hard not to, but there you are — it was laughter, choked back. He wondered if she were herself.

  “Why is Chary so silly? Is she doped up or something?”

  Adam thought of the way Timmy used to giggle just as the sleeping pills took; the way Timmy would chuckle in his sleep.

  “Come on, Addie!” and now Billy was actually pulling Adam along by the arm.

  “Make him stop, Char!” Adam said.

  “That’s right, Adam. Ask a pregnant woman for help!” said Billy.

  Pregnant. Chary was pregnant — that was the difference.

  “It’s still not too late, Chary,” Adam said. “If you’re not happy, it’s my fault, and I’ll still — ” but he could not finish. He felt dizzy suddenly, very strange, and tired too. Gin always made him tired. “Let go, let go,” his own voice sounded far away to him, but Billy took his hands off Adam. He said, “Go on now, Addie. We try to be nice, but it’s way out of hand now.”