“That’s what made it so unearthly. The lights were so bright the hoses made rainbows with the water. Then it just turned on its side and sank.” Her voice trailed off.
They didn’t talk much the rest of the way. There were no references to their previous conversation. He saw her pale hand on the seat between them. He put his hand over it, closed his fingers around hers. She made no attempt to move away, just kept looking out the window. The silence made Bennie nervous. He damn near ran the car off the road while trying to keep track of the backseat in the mirror.
There was a dinky little police roadblock on the way to the roadhouse. One cop car, two overage officers huddled inside out of the wind whipping off the water. Bennie waved a piece of paper at the one who got out and came over to have a look. He was wearing a yellow slicker. Sand pelted in through the window Bennie opened. Then he walked up ahead in the headlamps and moved the sawhorses blocking the lonely road.
“All these roads are closed off now,” Terry said.
“Why?” she asked.
“German saboteurs. They’re landing them from U-boats all along the coast. Miami Beach, Cape Hatteras, all the way up to Nova Scotia. I sure as hell pity any of ’em run across these two hardcases.” He laughed sarcastically, nodding at the guy holding the sawhorse, waving them through.
They turned off the road onto a sand-blown path leading up to a jutting promontory which hung over the beach like the prow of a derelict sailing ship. The wind blew cold and salty and the sand rattled against the side panels. There was a dim red bulb over the once brightly lit entrance. The windows were hung with blackout curtains. The Chrysler was the only car in the lot.
Terry got out, pulling his hat brim down against the wind. He held the door for Cindy Squires and Cassidy slid across with his cane and got out behind her.
“Must be tough staying in business,” Cassidy said, surveying the emptiness.
Terry said, “He’s got a very special, very loyal clientele. Max, a few other businessmen.” He winked at Cassidy. Cindy had gone on past them, taken Bennie’s arm, and was leaning into the wind, heading for the doorway. A man was standing there, wiping his hands on a voluminous white apron. “They use this place for special meetings. Like a club, you might say.”
“But not like the Elks and the Rotary,” Cassidy said.
Terry’s laughter blew away on the wind. The surf was pounding on the beach below like the planet’s slow, steady heartbeat. There was a constant tremor underfoot. Cassidy half expected to look up and see the Giants bearing down on him. Terry threw his arm around Cassidy’s shoulder.
“Watch out for my cane. What are we doing here, anyway, Terry? What fireworks?”
“We’re getting sand in our shoes, that’s what.” He coughed, a staccato little sound, like a muffled gunshot. “Showtime later. First we eat.” He coughed again. “Damn lung.” He winced. “Back’s acting up, too.” He grabbed Cassidy’s arm and they soldiered onward.
At first it was quiet, like showing up for a party on the wrong night.
Even the jukebox playing “O Sole Mio” was quiet, making the place seem even emptier. The fat man in the apron gave Bennie a two-handed shake, said to Cassidy that he was Giuseppe, his voice so thick with an Italian accent he could barely make it out. Giuseppe waddled about greeting everyone, then showed them to a large round table by a side window facing seaward. The window was covered by a heavy black drape. He told them they were the first to arrive but he’d had a call from the others who’d be along later. There must have been thirty tables, each with a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth and a candle in a wax-drenched Chianti bottle. The room was the repository of half the world’s known reserves of candle wax. It was spooky as hell, just the four of them at the big table set for eight. All those flickering candles, the rest darkness, the windows shrouded, like an empty church, the funeral of an unloved man.
Giuseppe insisted that they begin their dinner without waiting for the rest of their party. Fried calamari, clams Casino, fettuccine in a red sauce, veal Marsala, on and on the plates kept coming. It was the goddamnedest dinner Cassidy had ever seen, all that food, all the Italian music sobbing away, all that shadowy emptiness, Giuseppe trotting back and forth from the kitchen working up a sweat. And nobody having much to say.
Then, over the wind whining at the windows, Cassidy heard the sounds of another car arriving, doors slamming, men shouting to each other. Bennie stood up quickly, his tweed jacket falling open, the butt of the forty-five automatic showing above the holster strapped across his shoulder. The door burst open and four men squeezed through, brushing sand from their trench coats. “Bennie! Brute, you old son of a gun!” The biggest man came across the room and grabbed Bennie in a mighty hug. Bennie looked embarrassed, smiled self-consciously, said, “Leonard, the same as ever.” He backed away and Leonard pumped his hand, turned to the three men fanned out behind him. Their faces were shaded by their hat brims. “Bennie, you remember Artie and Marvin and Chicago Willie—”
“Sure, I remember,” Bennie said. “How are you, boys? You’ve had a long drive. You must be hungry.” He looked like a teacher addressing a bunch of delinquents. “Take off your coats, make yourselves comfortable.” The smallest man, Marvin, put a large attaché case on a table and slipped out of his trench coat. He was wearing a brown suit nipped in at the waist.
“Havana, last time I seen you, Brute,” Chicago Willie said, his voice a hoarse whisper, as if he didn’t have quite all of his throat. “You’re still one helluva big guy, Brute.”
They all laughed and Artie said, “Still a helluva big guy,” his face an unmoving, thin, hollow-cheeked mask.
Leonard beamed. “Man ain’t been made can take Brute in a fair fight.”
Marvin said, “Last time I saw a fair fight was in Pocatello, Idaho, 1919.”
“Pocatello, Idaho, 1919,” Artie said.
They came to the table and Bennie introduced them. Artie had a moustache like Terry’s, thin and carefully tended. All four of them were deeply tanned, darker than Terry’s sunlamp job at its best. Leonard said, “Cassidy? Lew Cassidy? Well, I’ll be damned! You won me some money last fall, Lew. That touchdown spree of yours, I kept puttin’ money down, sayin’ you’d keep it up and sure as shootin’ you did! Damn good to see you … sorry about that leg, Lew.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Cassidy said. “I had a good run. Lotta guys get hurt before they get to the good times.”
Artie looked at him across the candles. “Lotta guys get hurt before they get to the good times. Lew’s a regular philosopher, Lennie.”
“Comes in handy,” Cassidy said. “You oughtta try it.”
They all sat down and Giuseppe began doing his number all over again. Cassidy sat quietly listening to the byplay, watching the four tanned faces, wondering what was the occasion. Terry seemed to know them slightly and joined in the general conversation which concerned itself mainly with sports. Cindy Squires leaned back in her chair, looked into the coffee. Lennie said they were going on to Montreal in the morning with a shipment. Tonight they were going to stay at the roadhouse. “Giuseppe’s got rooms for us upstairs,” Lennie said, “that is, if we don’t stay up all night lying about the old days, hey, Brute?” Lennie liked talking about Havana in the old days. It was like his needle had stuck there, in his favorite passage.
“So how’s Johnny these days?” Terry lit a cigar and watched the smoke drift across the table into Artie’s face. “I hear he likes hunting for U-boats—”
“Johnny,” Lennie said. “He wants to know how Johnny is! He’s great, he’s Johnny!” All the food and wine had given his face a shine.
“He’s in the pink,” Marvin said.
“Yeah,” Chicago Willie whispered through a mouthful of veal, “Johnny’s in the pink.”
“I thought he was coming with you this trip.”
“Well, he came as far as Philly,” Lennie said, “then he had to go into New York to see a man. Do some business. He’s sorry he missed you
, Brute, he told me personally to pass that on.”
Bennie nodded and Terry said, “No great tragedy, not since Max couldn’t be here either. Funny, both of them changing their plans like that.” He grinned.
Artie said, “Funny. Two ships that pass in the night.”
After the zabaglione and the coffee Terry looked around the table. “Whattaya say we hit those slot machines? Bennie? Why not, Artie? You feel lucky tonight, Willie?”
“Sure,” Chicago Willie whispered. He was a thin man of indeterminate age with thick reddish hair parted in the middle. He looked like a hick. “I feel lucky.” None of Johnny Rocco’s boys were hicks, however they looked.
Cassidy shook his head. Cindy Squires yawned. Bennie said something to her, she nodded, and everyone else got up and headed back through an archway toward a back room. Somebody turned on the lights and Cassidy saw the slot machines. They began to whir and ring their little bells, the fruit spinning. Marvin had taken his attaché case with him. They sounded like rowdy kids.
“Have you figured this out yet?” Cindy Squires looked at Cassidy, something like fear, or maybe dread, in her eyes. She turned nervously to the blackout curtains, began tugging at the corner to peek out.
“I’m not sure there’s any point to it.”
“You don’t seriously think this is just a casual get-together, do you? You weren’t born yesterday, were you, Lew?” She gnawed momentarily at her thumbnail. “Max has some kind of business deal with these guys but then at the last minute he and Rocco don’t show up.”
“He can’t help it if he gets pleurisy.”
“Is that what he said? He doesn’t have pleurisy.” She sighed. “It’s as if he wanted us all out of town for the night.”
“What kind of business has he got with these guys?” Cassidy figured the hell with it, he’d ask. “Does he talk to you about that stuff?”
She gave him a long look, then ignored the question. “I worry about him, isn’t that the limit? He’s got guns all over the house, big guns, little guns. And he’s been so blue ever since he found out about Irvie …” She worried at the thumbnail some more, chipping the paint. “I’m afraid he might … you know.” She pointed her forefinger to her temple like a pistol. “Listen to me—why should I worry? It would solve everything …”
“Cindy, you wanted to talk to me, you wanted to see me alone—”
She rushed on, shaking her head. “He’s so blue and he thinks he’s getting old. He says he sees signs, he’s not as young as he used to be … I tell him he’s crazy, what he’s so worried about, it can happen to anyone, including young guys. I wish you’d tell me to shut up, Cassidy. I shouldn’t be telling you this.” She had that flat, solemn way of speaking that caught you off-guard, robbed you of your own sense of humor because she seemed to have so little herself.
“Are you talking about his depression or his sexual capabilities?”
“What’s the difference? When a man’s so sad and blue it’s not surprising he can’t get his penis to stand up. Oh, what do I know about men? Pay no attention, I’m raving …” She smiled hopelessly.
“He’s got Bennie. And he’s got you. Bennie’s loyal to the last drop. You’re so beautiful … Well, what more could a man want?”
“A wife he’s loved all his life, a son he had all his hopes in, a daughter near enough to visit and show him his grandchildren … he could want all those things.” She stared into her empty coffee cup. Her expression, her voice, he had the feeling they wouldn’t have changed if she’d just come in to announce Judgment Day. Maybe she was, in some weird way. Max’s Judgment Day. “What do you mean, he’s got me?”
“You can answer that better than I. You’re the one who’s so familiar with his penis.”
She looked at him and he thought she might slap him. Her face didn’t show anything but there was something in her eyes.
“Fair comment,” she said at last, “and I brought it on myself. I brought his penis up.” A hint of a smile teased at the corner of her mouth. “Or didn’t, which is more to the point. Have I just made a joke?”
Cassidy nodded. “A small one.”
She laughed, covered her perfect white teeth with her hand. “Now you’ve made one. Oh, poor Max. Poor Cindy.” She sighed. “You held my hand in the car. Why?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you want me?”
“Yes, I want you.”
“I knew you did,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to know if you were trustworthy. If we made a bargain, could I trust you.”
“What kind of bargain?”
“You could do whatever you wanted with me but you’d have to help me in return … but it only works if you’re brave and trustworthy.”
“I don’t think I want it so easy, not that way—and I doubt if you really do, either.”
“I know exactly what I want. And if you think it would be easy, you’d better think again. You’re right, Max has got me, I’m his. So nothing at all about me would be easy. I guess it all comes down to how much you want me—”
“I hadn’t contemplated such a businesslike arrangement—”
“It’s all I can offer.” She bit her lip and looked away.
“I suppose there might be problems. Like Bennie. Every time I look at you Bennie practically goes for his gat. I’d hate having Bennie unhappy with me—”
“Well, maybe you’re better off forgetting me. You can get out in time, write off the deal, your virtue intact. Anyway, you’re a married man—”
“That’s unnecessarily cruel.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It was a rotten thing to say. I’m an expert at saying hurtful things, even when I don’t mean to. And I really don’t mean to hurt you.” She looked up, caught his eye. “Really, truly, I don’t want to hurt you, but I will. I always do. I’ve hurt Max, I’m going to hurt him some more before it’s over. I know that. I’m Max’s steady whore, do you understand that? He gave me a job I wanted because he wanted me. It was all very straightforward at the beginning. He listened to me sing, then took me into his office, told me the job was mine if … if … He told me to undress right there. He told me he was having a little trouble and he felt sure I could cure him if I really tried. He wasn’t brutal, I don’t want it to sound that way … he was nice, sort of sad. When I was naked he asked me to do certain things while he watched me and then I knelt in front of him and worked on him for an hour and at the end of the hour I knew I had the job and Max … Max and I had each other, we were bonded in a way, but now, no matter how I try, I can’t help him anymore, but he says I have to try, he needs me, he says without me he has no hope … so I do … but I hate it now, I hate what he makes me do, I hate myself for doing it, and I hate myself for failing, and I hate him … but he won’t let me go. It’s his need I can’t break away from. Do you understand? God, I’m trusting you too much already. He won’t let me go. Oh, Cassidy, I am a whore, I really, truly am. And that’s the only kind of bargain I can make, all I have to offer …”
She sat quietly for a while, her hands clasped in her lap. The guys playing the slot machines were still making a lot of noise. “Sometimes,” she said eventually, as if she’d been mulling it over in her mind, “I think it’s just my nature. Maybe I should be the one who dies, uses one of those guns of his. Maybe I’d be better off. I don’t know.”
“Cindy …” It was as if she were in the confessional and he, a worldly priest, heard her reciting her sins and couldn’t help her or himself, wanted her more the more he heard, wanted her in all her calculation and despair.
“That’s what it is. I need to be a whore.” She shivered. “You mustn’t think I talk like this—I’ve never said these things to anyone before.”
“Why me?”
“You’re just lucky, I guess.” She smiled tentatively, wondering if he still wanted anything to do with her.
“This will all pass, you’ll see.”
“You’re an optimist, Cassidy. You don’t want to
see me for what I am. The fact is, there’s something cold in me that rather enjoys being a whore. It takes all the risk out of things. I was one, I think, the very first time. I was seventeen. He was the choirmaster at the little church … I wanted to see if I could break through his propriety. It was so easy. Oh, my goodness,” she said, pointing at the wine bottle. “In vino Veritas.”
The slot machines whirred and jangled. Occasionally someone would shout gleefully.
“Let’s get a breath of sea air,” Cassidy said. “I wish I knew why the hell we’re here—”
“Fireworks.”
“Yeah, fireworks. Well, you’ve done your part. I don’t get it. If Max isn’t sick, why did he send us out here alone?”
She was slipping into her coat and putting on the beret. “Max always has his reasons.”
“Did you know ahead of time he wasn’t coming?”
She shook her head. “It was news to me.”
They stood on the balcony off the dining room, at the top of a long flight of stairs leading down to the sand. The wind whipped off the ocean like it had a personal grudge. Stray arrows of rain and bits of sand nipped at them. She pulled the collar up around her face, turned to shelter against him. He felt the damp wool of her beret on his cheek. Dogs were howling and yapping somewhere down below where the surf furled and rolled in the darkness. A couple of low-intensity red flares were stuck in the sand like sparklers on the Fourth of July. From time to time the shadow of a man with a large dog at his heels would pass across the faint red gloom. Volunteer coast guards on their nightly rounds.
Her compact weight pressed against him. “War is bloody,” she said, sounding English, using bloody for rotten. “I can’t believe they don’t just stop it … Irvie Bauman, blackout curtains, saboteurs landing by dark of night, people getting marched off to war. It’s all so utterly ridiculous, if you want my opinion.” She burrowed her fists against the front of his trench coat. “War is bloody damn nonsense.”
She was trembling and he put his arm around her, holding her tight. The gale whistled in the eaves of the roof’s overhang. Awnings flapped like they were trying to lift Giuseppe’s off the runway. Out of nowhere a Jeep snarled through the cocoon of darkness below and sped past the flares, was gone again.
Kiss Me Once Page 13