by Peter Rabe
It lasted just so long, and Benny didn’t come. It lasted just so long and then the fever caught her up again, and that saved her.
Benny was walking toward her. He was too late.
“Chauffeur,” she called. “Help me up from the floor.”
Benny did.
“Chauffeur, take your hands off my arm.”
He let go and watched her rub herself where his hand had been. He figured she was higher than he’d ever seen her before. The flitting hands showed it, her poor face jumping through changes that had no transition at all.
“What do you want, Tapkow” Her voice showed it. “You’re peeping at me.” She put her hands over her breasts.
“I don’t think I want anything any more,” he said.
She misunderstood. The sharp crease down her forehead was like an evil mark and she almost spat. “I was waiting to hear it, you filth. I was waiting to hear the ugly sound of it and now it’s out. You had enough, you had me and now you’re through. You don’t tickle any more when I’m there. I’ve thrown it at you much too easy.”
“Christ-”
“Shut up, Saint Benny, and let me tell you. Let me-let me-” She shook her head. The frown on her face showed her confusion. She had forgotten the rest of what she meant to say.
The dope, he thought. It’ll soon blow over. He saw her skip across the room, pick up the lamp on the table, and twirl with it as if dancing. The next time she came around the lamp flew out and caught him on the shoulder. What hurt worse was the laughter. “And next he’ll do like he did it to Daddy. Here comes the runt!” she yelled. “Here comes Saint Benny-O to walk on his Patty-O. No, you don’t.” She stood against the wall where the bookcase was.
“I’m not moving, Pat.”
“No?” She reached for a book end, a little elephant whose trunk was raised. “So I’ll move.”
He watched her come close but didn’t stir. When she swung at him with the book end he stepped aside easily, but right then her foot caught his groin. He doubled over.
It’s the dope, he kept telling himself, it’s the dope. “You can leave now, Tapkow.” She bent to look at his face. “You can leave now.” She spat at him, wet and full.
He held on to the table, wiped his face. “That’s enough,” he said through the pain.
“Far from it.” She spat again. “I’ve done this to all of them who’ve run out.”
“Enough, Pat.”
“I used to shack with the butler, he got it. The-”
“Pat-” His voice shook with effort.
“Now the chauffeur,” and her arm flung out The book end was still in her hand. The sharp pain on the side of his head was the shock that finally did it. His hand whipped out and knocked the thing from her grasp so that she staggered. When she yelled, “Chauffeur!” again, his hand kept on going, smacking her hard across the mouth. In the moment of silence that followed she opened her lips and said, “You’re enjoying it, Tapkow.”
He struck her again, the right of the face and the left of the face, to wipe away the hate and to clear his head of the pain.
She sat against the wall and just breathed. Benny straightened, then he sat down. But it didn’t help. The pain he felt was not the kind that could be comforted, and it wasn’t his body that ached. He would just sit a while and wait. He would try nothing for a while.
Her breathing was the only sound. He heard it get stronger, then hard, until he realized that she was sobbing. He turned and saw no tears, just the hard sobbing and her face with an agony on it.
“Pat.” She didn’t fight now when he touched her. “I’m here now, Pat.” He held her like that for a while. His hand was under her right breast and he felt her heart.
“Yes, Benny,” she said, and they got up. “Yes, Benny. Yes.”
He carried her out of the room, to the other one where it was dark, and there was nobody else around, so the door stayed open.
When Benny came back, when he stood in the lighted room by the window, he might well have been a different man.
He waited for her and looked at the darkness through the door. The light snapped on then.
“Coming out, Patty?”
“I’m making up.”
He lit a cigarette and waited. “You needn’t,” he called out.
He heard her laugh. He thought that she had a thousand different laughs and he hadn’t heard this one before.
Then she came into the room. She looked calm, she walked quietly, and she sat down on the couch with a soft movement.
She raised her face and laughed. She laughed at the way he was staring, but her face hardly moved.
“Pat, cut it out!”
She had used her lipstick, but only the upper lip was painted.
“Yes, Tapkow?”
“My God, what is it now?” He went to sit down next to her.
She moved away just a little and her hand went up to pull at her ear lobe. She looked him straight in the face, her smile fixed as before.
“Tapkow, to me you are dead.”
And so it snapped. He didn’t answer, he hardly seemed to react, but when he got up and went to the window, he walked but he was not there any more. And then he found his hardness again, as if it had never left him, the old Benny Tapkow, standing the way he had stood all the other times he had been alone.
It even came through to Pat. The dope was wearing off fast, dropping off like a shell, leaving the inside naked. It came through to her like the fright of a child in the dark.
“God, Benny!” she screamed. “Benny-” but when she grabbed his arms and he turned, she saw a face that couldn’t possibly care.
“Benny, Benny!” Her fists pounding his chest and all he did was lean back on the window sill to keep clear of her.
When her fists became stronger he still didn’t care, leaning a little, and he only said, “No.” Then the pounding became a painful push, catching him the way he was, not caring, and he said, “No.” It was the last thing Pat could hear, because she was crying after him, watching him toss down into the dark; she cried so hard the sound from below was lost.
The two men from out West found him that night on the terrace. It had been raining in Chicago, and the two men were still wearing their raincoats.
“Dead,” said one of them. He started to feel Benny’s pockets. He almost cut his fingers on the glass, but he got the needle out and what was left of the rest.
“Beat this,” he said. “A hophead.”
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