Park Avenue Tramp

by Flora, Fletcher

  She wondered what time it was. She looked around the room for a clock, but she couldn’t see one, and then she thought of Joe’s watch, which he was wearing, but she couldn’t read the dial from her position. Very slowly and carefully so as not to rock the bed or make the springs creak, she got up onto her knees and leaned down in what looked like an exaggerated salaam, her eyes about three inches from the watch on his wrist, and then she could see that it was almost one o’clock of what must be an afternoon.

  Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God.

  By the simple reading of the time, she was shocked into a realistic consideration of her position, and the despair which she had not felt so far this time came suddenly to claim her. Even in her despair, however, she was able to plan what she would say and do to explain where she had been all night and why she had not come home. It would be necessary not only to tell her husband a lie, but also to get someone reliable to support her in it if necessary. She had told her husband so many lies that she had become expert at it and did not consider it a great problem, and what she usually told him was that she had spent the night with a friend, but the precarious part was to find a friend that you could trust with the knowledge that you had been doing something that needed lying about.

  There were a number of friends who were willing to do this once, or even now and then, but no one wanted to do it frequently, and she knelt on the bed, sitting back on her heels, and tried to think of someone she had not used before or not for a long time. She thought first of Samantha Cox, at whose apartment this particular experience had begun, but she was not sure that Samantha would help her, and she was not sure that she wanted to trust Samantha with her confidence, for Samantha was the kind who might use the knowledge against her out of pure spite. She continued to consider various prospects, and finally she decided on a friend named Bernardine DeWitt, who had helped her once before long enough ago that she might be willing to do it again. Besides, now that she thought about it, Bernardine had been in the group that she, Charity, had been in before going off with Milton Crawford, and Bernardine was probably already pretty sure, anyhow, that Charity had done something that would require deception.

  • • •

  Having decided on Bernardine, she lay back and lifted her legs and swung them around and off the bed. Slowly and quietly, avoiding squeaks and bumps, she stood up in anguish and a brief engulfing darkness. Her head was bursting, simply bursting. She stood rigidly in anguish until darkness passed, and then she became aware of the obtrusion of another part of her body, an urgent need to relieve herself, and she wondered if the room had a private bathroom or if it was one of these places where you had to go down the hall to one that was shared. Looking around the four walls of the room, she saw three doors, one of which would be the door to the hall. This, she was sure, was the one that stood alone in the wall directly across from the bed, and one of the other two, standing as a pair in another wall, might be, with luck, a bathroom, and in the bathroom, with more luck, she might even find some aspirin.

  Moving carefully to the closer door, she opened it and found a closet behind. On a rod running across the closet were hanging three suits and a topcoat and a raincoat, and on the floor were three pairs of shoes. In spite of her urgency, she took time to stand for a moment and look at the articles of clothing, which seemed inadequate and filled with pathos as compared with the quantity and quality of clothing that you would find in one of the closets of someone like Milton Crawford, for instance. She felt for Joe Doyle’s clothes the same passionate tenderness that she had felt for his thorax.

  Closing this door, she moved over a few steps and opened the other. Behind this one was actually a bathroom, and she went in and closed the door after her and relieved herself, and then she looked in a little medicine cabinet above the lavatory and found some aspirin and swallowed two. She would have liked to take a shower, but the running water would have made far too much noise, and so she only turned on the tap a little bit and rinsed her face with cold water that she gathered in her cupped bands. Returning to the other room, she saw her $25 panties and $750 gown lying neatly on a chair, which surprised her, for she never put anything neatly anywhere, not even at home, and she definitely remembered dropping them on the floor last night when she took them off.

  Joe Doyle bad picked them up and put them neatly where they were, probably when he’d got up afterward, and this seemed to her extremely thoughtful and considerate.

  Filled with gratitude, she walked silently to the bed and looked down at him, feeling with the gratitude a slowly rising sense of excitement. He stirred a little and took a breath that broke the rhythm of his normal breathing and was like a gasp of pain in his throat, and she took three steps backward quickly. She hoped he wouldn’t waken and see her the way she was, without anything on, for that would probably get something started that would go on for quite a long time, and she absolutely had to get home as quickly as possible. Acutely conscious now of the need to hurry, she dressed in a matter off seconds and walked to the hall door. She hesitated there, starting to turn to look once more at Joe Doyle lying on the bed, but then she decided that it would be much better and easier if she didn’t look at him again, and so she went out of the room and down three flights of stairs to the street.

  She didn’t know immediately where she was and which way she ought to start walking, but then she was able to relate herself to Washington Square and started walking in that direction. She felt very conspicuous, dressed as she was, and the shoes that were practically nothing but high heels were hard to walk in, and her ankles kept turning. It was essential to find a taxi to take her home, and the thought of the taxi reminded her of the need for money, and she had a moment’s sinking feeling before she realized that she was clutching unconsciously the small jeweled purse that she had somehow kept and carried from place to place through everything that had happened. She continued to walk and watch for a taxi, and after a while she saw one and flagged it and got in with an enormous but short-lived sense of relief and security.

  She began to think about her husband. About Oliver Alton Farnese. She didn’t like to think about him and didn’t do it any oftener than was necessary, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped, and one of the times it couldn’t be helped was when she had to deceive him about something. What she had to decide now was whether to go to Bernardine’s and arrange the lie and then home, or to go home directly. She needed Bernardine and wanted to make use of her, but she didn’t feel up to seeing her or talking with her face to face. She preferred to go home, and told the taxi driver to take her there. She was certain that Oliver would not be there at this time of day.

  Oliver was a creature of routine. It seemed essential to his survival to do things over and over in the same way at the same time. It was simply pathological the way he did it, and she knew from experience that he would not break his pattern just because his wife had not come home one night, which he was rather used to. Perhaps he would break it if she stayed missing too long or turned up dead somewhere, something like that, but even if she turned up dead he would break it only long enough to bury her and settle the affairs that would arise as a result of her dying. Oliver was peculiar. Sometimes she was afraid of him, and after the two men she had been with several times had been beaten, she had wondered if perhaps Oliver had had something to do with it, but this was an explanation she refused even to consider simply because it was far too frightening.

  Thinking, she lost contact with the city and her position in it, not even knowing when they came onto Park Avenue, and the next contact she established was when the taxi stopped in front of her apartment building. She got out of the taxi and paid her fare and went in through the lobby to the elevator. The operator said good afternoon with functional courtesy and did not show the least interest in her appearance, which was not right for the time of day. Riding up in the elevator, in the silent steel car with the world closed out, she again had briefly a deep sense of having achieved security and even peace, but it di
dn’t last, of course, as it never lasted, and she was faced on her floor with the necessity of walking all the way down to the entrance to her apartment and probably having to cope with Edith, the maid, whom she hated. She might be able to avoid Edith if she had brought or had not lost her key to the door, but there was no such luck. The key was not in her purse, and she was compelled to ring.

  Edith opened the door and said, “Good afternoon, Madam,” and Charity answered civilly with an effort and went past Edith and through the foyer and into the living room. Edith always addressed her as Madam, and Charity didn’t like it. It made her feel like the manager of a whore house, and the way Edith said it, in that snotty voice, it was probably exactly what she was meant to feel, or at least like one of the whores.

  “I spent the night with a friend,” she said.

  She was immediately ashamed and angry that she had felt it necessary to explain anything to a bitch of a maid. It was not that she felt snobbish about servants, for she didn’t, but it was just that Edith was so Goddamned supercilious, an absolute bitch, and she was, besides, a dirty spy who carried stories to Oliver Alton Farnese. That was why Oliver wouldn’t get rid of her, or let Charity get rid of her, saying always when Charity brought up the matter that Edith was a perfectly good servant and would be kept as long as she remained one.

  “Yes, Madam,” Edith said.

  Charity stopped and turned and looked at her. “What do you mean by saying that in that way?” she said.

  “Nothing, Madam. I only meant that I understand that you spent the night with a friend.”

  “The hell you did! You meant something else entirely. Perhaps you were thinking that a friend might include almost anyone of either sex. Is that it?”

  “No, Madam.”

  “Why are you staring at me that way?”

  “I’m sorry, Madam. I didn’t intend to stare.”

  “Of course you intended to stare. It’s ridiculous to say that you can stand there staring without intending to. I consider you a dirty, spying bitch, Edith, and I’d fire you instantly if only my husband would permit it. Is that perfectly clear?”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  “All right. Because you’re such a bitch and would like to think the worst possible things about me, I’ll tell you that I spent the night with my friend Bernardine DeWitt. Do you understand that, Edith? Do you understand that clearly?” “Yes, Madam. With Mrs. DeWitt.”

  Turning, Charity went on through the apartment to her own room. She took off all her clothes, and lay down on her back across the bed and closed her eyes and pressed the eyeballs with the tips of her fingers until the pain became intense. She felt shaken and sickened by the scene with Edith, and every time one occurred, which was frequently, she swore that one would never happen again, but one always did, and the worst of it was that the mistress always seemed to come out of it in the wrong position, Charity the bitch, instead of Edith. Well, this time she had made what might turn out to be a bad mistake, which was what came of losing your temper and saying things without thinking. She had said that she spent the night with Bernardine, had committed herself to the lie before it was secured, and now Bernardine would simply have to help her or she would be in more trouble than she could handle. She would have to call Bernardine without delay, this instant, and secure the lie.

  Sitting up on the edge of the bed, she picked up her telephone, which was a private line, not an extension, and held it in her hands and tried to think of Bernardine’s private number, the one to the phone in her bedroom, not the one to the apartment that a servant would answer. After an effort, she remembered the number and dialed it, and fortunately Bernardine was there and answered.

  “Hello, Bernie,” Charity said. “This is Charity.”

  “Charity!” Bernardine’s voice, which had sounded sleepy when she answered the telephone, became suddenly lively. “My God, darling, whatever in the world became of you?”

  “Well, that’s why I called. I want to talk to you about it. I seemed to remember that you were in the group last night that I went several places with, but I wasn’t absolutely sure.”

  “I was there all right, darling, but where the hell were you? After a while, I mean. We looked and looked for you, but you had simply disappeared.”

  “I met Milton Crawford in that place where we were, the last place, and he wanted me to go away with him to another place, and I did.”

  She hesitated, wondering how much she ought to tell Bernardine, but she knew that she might as well tell it all, only leaving out names, for Bernardine was no fool, and a lie that she would know was a lie might just annoy her sufficiently to make her refuse to help. You could tell from the very quality of the silence on the wire that Bernardine was waiting for Charity to ask whatever favor she’d called to ask and was prepared to be contrary about it if there was the least bit of nonsense.

  “Well,” Charity said, “I went on to this other place with Milton, and he got to be a bore by patting my leg constantly and urging me to go to his apartment with him, and finally I left by myself and blacked out and ended up in this place where there was a beautiful piano player who tried to help me find Milton, but we couldn’t. That’s about all there is to it, Bernie, except I didn’t come home, and Oliver will want to know where I was.”

  “So do I, darling. Where were you?”

  “I told you, Bernie. I was with this piano player.”

  “Imagine! With a piano player! Darling, how was he?”

  “Look, Bernie, I know it’s very amusing and all that, but I’m feeling pretty desperate about it, and what I need is help. You being divorced and all, not having a husband to say anything different to Oliver, I thought maybe you’d be willing to let me tell him I spent the night with you.”

  “And to lie for you, of course, if he asks me about it.”

  “Obviously it wouldn’t do any good for me to say I had if you said I hadn’t.”

  “Obviously. Darling, I don’t want to make a big issue out of a little lie, but I remember doing this for you once before, and I wouldn’t want it to become a habit.”

  “I’ll never ask you again, Bernie. Honestly, I won’t.”

  “All right, darling. I’ll lie to Oliver for you if it becomes necessary. Sometime you must tell me how it is with a piano player.”

  Bernardine laughed as if it were the greatest of jokes, and Charity said thanks and good-by. After replacing the telephone in its cradle, she lay back across the bed and pressed again on her closed eyes with the tips of her fingers. She was pretty sure she could trust Bernardine, so she could quit worrying about that part of it now. What she needed to do was take a hot shower and get into bed properly for a couple of hours, but she was suddenly too exhausted to move.

  She wondered if Joe Doyle were still asleep in the room in the house not far from Washington Square, or if he had awakened by now and found her gone.

  CHAPTER 5

  He was awake. He had wakened, as a matter of fact, before she left. Waking instantly, he did not instantly open his eyes. When he did open them, he thought for a moment that he was not awake after all, but had only drifted on the verge of waking into a dream, for the first thing he saw was a naked girl who seemed to be performing the second duty of Islam. He closed his eyes and opened them again, and the girl was still there, but now she was erect on her knees, her buttocks resting on her heels, and she was apparently thinking intently about something important.

  He was not having hallucinations. Neither had he died in the night and gone to an unlikely paradise with blonde houris. He was Joe Doyle, relatively sane, alive in his own bed, and he was, though not crazy, a fool. In the tag hours, in the recurring span of a man’s greatest vulnerability, he had acquired a fancy dame on a dipso prowl, and he had brought her home, and here she was. Charity. Charity Farnese. Here she was in his bed with the taste in her mouth of the night before, and she was probably wondering for the umpteenth desperate time why she had done what she’d done, and how in God’s name she would a
ccount for it to her friends or husband or confessor or whomever she might, in her need for catharsis or shriving, make her accounting to. Watching her through eyes so narrowly open that her body was blurred by his lashes, he felt, as she had in watching him, a stirring of excitement, but he did not move speak, and the reason he didn’t was essentially the same reason she had decided to slip away. Even when it was felt in the heart, there was no percentage in going farther with what had already gone too far because it couldn’t go far enough.

  In a little while, she eased back and lifted her legs and swung them off the bed, and she did this carefully and quietly with the obvious purpose of not disturbing him. He couldn’t see her for several minutes after that, but he heard her open the closet door, and then the door to the bathroom. She want into the bathroom, and everything was completely quiet for the time that she was there, and as a matter of fact he did not hear her come out or know that she was near until she was suddenly standing beside the bed looking down at him. He had not opened his eyes any wider than the slit, and so she didn’t know he was awake and had been watching her when she was in sight and listening to her movements when she was not, but now, seeing again so suddenly her slim and nearly perfect body blurred by his lashes, he almost betrayed himself by the minor violence of a reaction that caused his own body to jerk involuntarily and his breath to break off in his throat. Startled, she stepped back and began at once to dress, which was quickly accomplished, and then she walked to the door and hesitated and went out.