“It’s true.”
“I know it’s true; so what? Don’t make me out immoral, Charley. I want to be one of the good guys.”
“No, you don’t. That’s what I like about you: you’re an honest lecher.”
“The basis of our entire relationship, Charley, is that we look down on each other. You’ve got a great marriage, and I don’t, so you feel sorry for me, but actually all the time I’m feeling sorry for you. Let me tell you my philosophy.”
“Don’t tell me. Write it down. No kidding, Archie. You write it and I’ll edit it and it’ll be the biggest children’s book since Horton Hatches the Egg.”
Archie laughed. “Score one for you.”
The intercom sounded. “Yes, Miss Devers,” Charley said.
“Ready for that dictation now.”
“Fine,” Charley said.
Archie started for the door. “What’s all this ‘Miss Devers’ crap? She’s your secretary.”
“If you think I’m about to call her ‘Jenny’ with a suspicious mind like yours around, you’re crazy.”
Archie shook his head. “I do not consider you a suspect, I promise you.” Jenny knocked and entered. Archie looked at her. “How do you do, Miss Devers.”
“How do you do, Mr. Wesker.”
“She hates me,” Archie whispered, and he closed the door.
“He’s right,” Jenny whispered when it was safe.
“You shouldn’t.”
“I don’t, not really. I just wish you didn’t like him.”
“I guess I wish I didn’t too, but I do. What’s the dictation?”
“You haven’t asked me where I’ve been?”
“All right; where have you been?”
“The lounge. Beautifying myself. Combing my hair. But more important, taking off my lipstick.”
“Jenny, this is a busy office and it’s three o’clock in the afternoon—”
“Put a piece of paper on your desk. Do as I say.”
Charley put a piece of paper on his desk.
“Now point to it.”
Charley pointed.
“Now I can’t tell what the paper says from here, don’t you see, so I’ll have to walk around the desk until I’m right next to you.” When she was next to him she said, “Then I’ll bend down to see better and—”
Charley kissed her. He rose out of the chair and his arms went around her and he shoved his body tight against her.
Jenny broke free.
Charley stood very still.
She moved around the desk away from him and sat down uncertainly.
“Now will you please keep away from me? While we’re here? Please?”
“I’m sorry. But I didn’t intend for quite that. Your lips were just supposed to graze mine—that’s how they tell it in novels. ‘His lips grazed hers.’ ”
“Just stay away from me. We could have been caught then. Archie might—”
“That’s part of the fun of an affair,” Jenny said. “I’ve been reading about them this past week and it seems a great part of the fun is in almost getting caught. At least in the beginning it is.”
“Don’t call it an affair. It’s barely a week—”
“You’re right, but I don’t know what else to call it.”
“We’re confused about each other. How’s that?”
“Wonderful. And we’re having a confusion.”
“A confusion.” Charley nodded. “Fine with me. Now what’s this dictation?”
“You have that important letter to write, remember? To that nice Devers girl. About dinner. I’ll read you what I thought might be a nice opening: ‘Dear Miss Devers, let me begin by saying that our conference of last evening has lingered in my mind. You have a mighty brain and touching it gives me more pleasure than you will ever know. Consequently, I thought we might pick up this evening where we left off. I thought we might even go to that same restaurant—the one that seems like a tiny apartment over on the West Side. The food and the decor aren’t much but you couldn’t ask for greater seclusion.’ I thought you might take it from there, Mr. Fiske.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Miss Devers will understand.”
“Miss Devers thought you were joining her for dinner. She may not understand at all.”
“ ‘My darling Miss Devers: I must send my regrets for this evening. A certain lady of my acquaintance—’ ”
“You said you thought you could get home late again.”
“ ‘I do not feel it wise to arouse the least curiosity in this certain lady, and therefore I feel our conference had best be put off till later in the week.’ ”
“You said you thought you could get home late again. You said that, Charley.”
“I know. I changed my mind.”
Jenny stood up.
“You look very pretty, Jenny.”
“Thank you.” She started for the door, stopped, started talking, her back to him. “I’m sorry, I’m not ordinarily like this—possessive—I’m sorry. You’ve got to realize something, though.”
“What?”
“I care for you, Charley.” She turned and gave a little smile. “But then, I guess I have to.”
“I have seen happier smiles.”
“The thing is, Charley, when everything goes right, that’s fine; but when everything doesn’t, then I have to ask myself what I’m doing. I don’t much like asking myself what I’m doing.”
“I banished that question from my vocabulary recently. I suggest you do the same.”
“Will there be anything else?”
“Thank you, no.”
Jenny opened the office door.
Charley started to call her name, then stopped. She closed the door and he nodded. There had been altogether too much last-minute calling of names lately. It was a device he had always disliked, especially in movies, when the heroine turns and goes to the door and at the last possible second the hero calls out “Jessica” and she stops, back still turned, shoulders tense, and says “Yes?” and then you’re into another whole lousy scene. Well, thank God he hadn’t called out “Jenny.” Because he had been late getting home last night and it just wouldn’t do, making a habit of it. Charley sat back in his chair and pondered the phrase, “late getting home.” He had never been fond of euphemisms, but they were, like splinters, a necessary evil, and taking that into account, “late getting home” wasn’t bad. True, it was vague. But at least it wasn’t a lie. I’m not going to lie to Betty Jane, Charley thought. I will not lie. And Jenny’s just going to have to understand that. For a moment he thought of Jenny, and then he thought of grabbing her the way he had, and then he reached for the phone and called his wife. When she answered he said, “This is Maxwell Perkins.”
“Hello there, old Maxwell,” Betty Jane said.
“I have nothing to report,” Charley told her. “Nothing is new.”
“Same. Oh—Robby ate all his lunch.”
“Huzzah.”
“I wish he weren’t so skinny,” Betty Jane said.
“Perhaps a new leaf is turning.”
“Yes,” Betty Jane said. Then: “Why are you calling?”
“No reason. To hear thy sweet voice. Really, no reason. No reason at all.”
“Oh, Charley, are you going to be late again?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I know that tone in your voice and it just makes me so mad sometimes. I swear, without you that firm would fall down and die.”
“They pay me.”
“That’s not the point. Whose work are you doing tonight? Boardman’s? Or that awful Archie Wesker’s? Or is it cocktails with some writer we’re wooing away from Random House?”
“Now easy—”
“I don’t much feel like being easy. Everybody’s always taking advantage of you because you’re so big. They know you won’t hit them. I mean it. You work too hard.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. I mean it. Someday I’m com
ing down there and I’m going to give them all you know what.”
“Hell?”
“Yes.”
“You’re very sweet.”
“You bet I am.”
“I’ll be talking to you.”
“I’ll be up; get home when you can.”
“Bye.”
“Charley?”
“Yes?”
“I love you, Charley.”
Charley put the phone back in its cradle. Well, he thought after a while, at least I didn’t lie.
XV
WALT SAT CROSS-LEGGED ON the living-room floor building a house of cards.
It was a month since Blake misbehaved at the St. Louis Country Club, half that since their divorce, half that since he had heard from her. (She had buzzed him collect from New York’s Idlewild to report that she was off on an extended tour of the Continent and to wish him luck. The call hadn’t bothered him. Not really. Or not really as much as he thought it was going to when he picked up the receiver and heard her voice, and although he cursed aloud after hanging up for not making her pay for the call, cursed again when a couple of beautiful “I should have saids” crossed his mind, he quickly forgot the whole thing.)
Now, wearing a tee shirt and khaki pants and dirty white tennis shoes and no socks, he concentrated on the house of cards, hard work, so he stopped every little while to grab a sip from his Budweiser can. Across the room the TV set was tuned up full on a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and alongside it the Capehart clicked Pal Joey back into position and once again, at the top of his lungs, Harold Lang began to sing, “I have the worst apprehension that you don’t crave my attention ...” Walt nodded his head in time to the music, took another sip of beer. Then he went back to his house of cards, carefully fitting a third tier onto a none too sturdy second. When he had the third tier finished, Walt drained the last drops of Budweiser, stood, crossed the room and said, “Flynn, somebody’s got to knock out that Japanese pillbox.” In his best Errol Flynn voice Walt said, “My pleasure, General,” and he crawled across the living-room rug to the shelter of an easy chair. Pulling the pin from his Budweiser can, he jumped up, shouted “Geronimo!” and lobbed the beer can toward the house of cards. As the can was in midair, Walt groaned, clutched his stomach and, eyes closed, dropped to his knees. “Flynn, Flynn, you’ll get the Congressional; knocking out that pillbox won the war.” Eyes still closed, Errol Flynn said, “Always been lucky, General,” and then toppled over and died. Walt lay still a moment before getting up and looking around.
The house of cards still stood.
“Nuts,” Walt said. How can you miss from six feet? The beer can lay on the edge of the rug in a little puddle of foam. Walt retrieved the can, mashed his foot into the puddle, spreading it good, then went and stood over the house of cards. “Bombs the hell away,” he said, dropping the can, except it stuck to his fingertips and, when it did fall, it veered off, missing the house again.
Walt kicked the house of cards down, hurried to the telephone, flipped the phone book open, found a number and dialed. “Hello?” a lady said.
“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I’m working for the Kirkaby stores. We’re taking a survey and I wondered, is your refrigerator running?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Well, I’ll catch it if it comes my way,” Walt said, hanging up fast, falling onto the sofa, laughing and kicking his feet. Done, he lay very still and wondered if he was hungry. Eventually he decided he was, so he got up and padded to the kitchen and opened another can of Budweiser. The kitchen clock said five on the button. Walt rubbed his eyes. Morning or evening? he wondered. He continued to rub his red eyes, thinking that he really ought to be able to figure out a question like that. Morning or evening? He could always pull the drapes or look through the blinds or open a door and peek outside, which wouldn’t have told him much if it was winter, since five in the winter looks the same either time, but this was summer now, definitely summer, or at least it had been the last time he’d checked, and I don’t want to peek outside, Walt thought; I want to figure it out for myself. Logically. Morning or evening? Morning or ...You ass,” Walt said out loud. “Dumkopf.”
It was evening. It had to be. They didn’t show Bugs Bunny at five in the morning. Hell, who’d be up to see it? Nobody but milkmen and insomniacs and you couldn’t get a decent rating with just them, so that was that; the time was five o’clock in the evening, but what was he doing in the kitchen?
I probably came for the time, Walt thought, and he made his way out of the kitchen, dancing like Fred with Ginger in his arms, swirling and dipping until he came to the living room, where he stopped very short because his father was there.
“Walt,” P.T. said, nodding. He was a big erect man, gray-haired, tanned and handsome.
Walt nodded back. “P.T.” Then he hurried to the television and the Capehart and turned them both off.
“Everything going O.K.?”
Walt nodded again. “O.K.”
“Needing anything?”
“Nothing, thanks.” Walt shook his head.
“Sure, now?”
Walt repeated the shake. “Sure.”
“Like you to do me a little favor,” P.T. said then.
Walt waited.
“Well, will ya?”
“If I can.”
“I got Dr. Baughman outside in the car and I’d like you to see him.”
“Who’s that?”
“A very nice guy. A friend of mine.”
Walt couldn’t help smiling.
“What’s so funny?”
Very softly Walt said, “I do not need, now or in the future, and I honestly wish you’d get this through your head, any goddam psychiatrist.”
“Hold the phone, mister; he’s a medical doctor.”
Walt pushed his glasses up snug against the bridge of his nose with his left thumb. “Well, I won’t see him, not under any conditions. I’m fine.”
Very softly P.T. said, “I’m worried about you. You’re acting funny.”
“Say what you mean, why don’t you? You think I’m cracking up. You stand there with your thirteenth-century mind and you think I’m going bughouse. Will you just please remember that I was, until recently, married three years and in the language we have a word called ‘adjusting’ which is what I’m doing now.”
“Hiding, you mean.”
“Oh, Father, I’m not hiding.” He took a long drink of Budweiser.
“Walt! You stay inside the house! You pull down the shades! You draw the damn blinds! You never go out. What the hell do you call it?”
“I told you: I’m adjusting to the past and figuring out the future.”
“Will ya please hurry?” He reached a big hand toward Walt’s face. Walt took a step backward. P.T. jammed the hand into his pants pocket.
“Dammit, dammit, I wasn’t gonna hit you. I’m worried. Don’t run away from me like that. Nuts.” P.T. spun around and hurried to the foyer. “Why do we fight? I ask you to see a doctor, we end up squabbling.” P.T. opened the front door. “And you shouldn’t have said that about me having a thirteenth-century mind.” Then he was outside and gone.
Walt ran to the door and opened it and thought about saying “I’m sorry.” It was a difficult decision, but as P.T. and the other man drove away, Walt made up his mind to do it and he shouted “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” to the disappearing car.
The telephone rang.
Walt sagged.
As he started slowly toward the telephone Walt said, “Hey, Walt, how about dropping over for a little chow? Gee, I’d love to but I can’t. Why the hell can’t you? Listen, tell you what, you stay right there and I’ll hop on over and get you. Gee, I’d love to, but I just can’t tonight. I’m busy tonight. I’ve got these plans tonight but thanks, I mean it, thanks, thanks just one helluva lot, thanks.” Walt picked up the phone, closed his eyes tight, managed “Hello?”
“Hey, Walt, it’s me—Marty. Listen, Sally bought about eighty times too much pot
roast, so how about dropping over to bail her out?”
“God, Marty, thanks, I just can’t tonight.”
“Sure you can. Course you can. C’mon.”
“Aw, Marty, God, wouldn’t I love to. But I’ve got this unbreakable engagement. No kidding. I do. But thanks. Really thanks. No kidding, thanks one helluva lot, and my love to Sally, huh?”
They made the usual goodbyes and then Walt, eyes still closed, groped with his free hand, found the cradle, dropped the receiver into it. Well, Marty was taken care of. That left probably Irv and Wils and maybe Donny and that would take care of his St. Louis cronies for the night. Tomorrow night Marty, being the most persistent, would call again, Irv too most likely, and Sandy and probably Muggsy—no, Muggsy was in Europe, had been for nearly two months. “Thank God for small favors,” Walt said out loud. And then, very much louder: “Leave people the hell alone!”
No. That was wrong. You had no right to get mad at them. They were your friends, and they were worried about you and they were just trying to help, so they called you and asked you to dinner or a flick or poker or maybe a box seat at the Cardinal game. You couldn’t ever get mad at a friend who was trying to help you, but still it was a shame there were so many helpers, a shame he and Blake had been such a social couple, so rotten popular. Friends were great, but sometimes they didn’t understand that what you were doing was thinking. For maybe the first time in your life, really honest-to-God thinking.
Walt sat down on the sofa and thought about thinking.
“Nuts,” he said, getting up. What the hell business did P.T. have coming in and accusing him of hiding? Hell, he wasn’t hiding. Just because he hadn’t been out of the house for a while didn’t mean he was hiding. Walt ran his hands across his chin. How long since he’d shaved? He tested the stubble again. A while probably. I’ll shave, Walt thought, because that’s probably why P.T. thinks I’m hiding, because he probably thinks hermits grow beards, and since it looks like I’m maybe growing a beard, I’m automatically a hermit, for God’s sakes.
Walt finished his Budweiser, then bent into his imitation of Laughton doing Quasimodo and, his tongue sticking practically through his cheek, said, “Why wasn’t I made of stone like you?” and loped to his bathroom. Spinning on the hot-water spigot, he pulled off his tee shirt and khakis, flexed his right biceps, tested the result with the fingers of his left hand.
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