A waiter placed a menu before her, but she had no interest in it. She pushed it away with the tips of her fingers as if it were something contagious. Oliver watched her, smiling. He traced and retraced lightly the line of his scar.
“Will you order now, my dear?” he said.
“I don’t believe I care to order,” she said. “I’m only interested in having a very dry Martini immediately.” “Would you like me to order for both of us?” “If you wish.”
It was apparent that dinner was part of the established order in which she was involved and impotent, and it would be quite futile to say that she did not want it or to resist it in any way. While Oliver ordered from the menu, she thought of her Martini, which she wanted desperately, and looked around the room, which she did not like. She never came here voluntarily and would have been depressed, even if everything else were all right, at being brought here under compulsion. It was not that there was anything wrong with the place itself. It was only that she and the place were not compatible. It was always filled with people who were supposed to be important or interesting or both, and they always seemed to be working very hard at being whatever they were supposed to be, and she always had, watching them, a very strong feeling that there was actually no such thing as importance and that anyone who assumed it or pretended to it was a kind of imposter. It was her experience, moreover, that the most interesting people were usually found in places where no one expected to find them, and that these interesting people, when they were found, hadn’t the faintest idea that they were interesting. This experience had been supported by her study of bartenders in odd places, as well as by other contacts in other places she had gone to accidentally or on purpose, and it was her impression now that by far the most interesting person in this incompatible room was the attractive Negress who was singing sultry songs in a tigerish manner. Charity was sure that the singer was someone she ought to know, for anyone who sang songs in the Empire Room was bound to be someone that everyone ought to know, but she couldn’t think of the singer’s name, although she was positive it was a name she would recognize if someone mentioned it.
Her Martini was served and she nursed it with a kind of greediness because she knew that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get another before dinner. Oliver did not have a cocktail. She had never seen him have a cocktail or a drink of any kind in all the time she had known him and been married to him, which was about the same amount of time in either case.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” he said.
“Yes,” she lied. “It’s very pleasant.”
“You don’t seem to be. You look bored.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t particularly care for this place. It depresses me.” “Really? You just said it was pleasant.”
“I was only being agreeable. I would never come here if I had my choice.”
“I should have consulted you I suppose, but I wanted it to be a surprise. We’ve gone out together so seldom that I don’t know the places you like to go.”
“Well, you probably wouldn’t like the places I like, so it would make no difference anyhow.”
“Perhaps you could convert me.” He reached out and touched her right hand, which was lying palm down on the table, and his eyes glistened for the first time with overt malice. “As I said before, I’m feeling quite guilty for having neglected you. It might be amusing for both of us to become more familiar with each other’s habits.”
“I don’t wish to interfere with your life. It isn’t necessary for you to make concessions that you don’t really want to make.”
“You’re too generous. It only makes me more determined to emulate you.” He touched her hand again and laughed, and the malice in his eyes was in the laugh also. “However, here is our dinner, and I hope you are pleased with what I ordered. Afterward, we’ll dance. It has been a long time since I’ve danced with you, hasn’t it? I’m sure I’ll be awkward in the beginning, but you must be patient until I improve. The music is by Nat Brandywynne, I believe. Are you familiar with his orchestra? Do you like it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve beard it.”
“Well, no matter. To tell the truth, we are only killing time as pleasantly as possible until we can go to the special event I’ve arranged for you. However bored you may be by all this, I promise that you’ll not be bored by that. I promise that you’ll find it most interesting.”
• • •
He looked across the table at her, waiting for her to ask again what the special event was to be, but she did not ask because she was afraid to know, because she knew by feeling already that it was going to be, whatever developed specifically, the bad end of this bad night in which waiting and waiting and waiting was to be one of the worst of all bad things. Dinner was served, and the remains of dinner were taken away. Afterward they danced, and their dancing was a kind of cold and acceptable social sodomy. She refused after the first time to dance again, and so they sat and sat and did not even talk, and eventually it became eleven-thirty and time to leave.
In the Imperial, she shrank against the door and closed her eyes as a frightened child closes his eyes in the night, trading one darkness for another, the living and breathing outer darkness of a thousand threats for the sealed and solacing inner darkness secured by the thin membranes of the lids. She was conscious of moving, of riding for a long time on different streets, but she had no sense of direction, and when the car stopped and she opened her eyes at last, she had no idea of where she was, except that it was an incredibly dark and narrow and filthy street that turned out not to be a street at all, but an alley.
“Where have you brought me?” she said. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Do to you?” He took her face between thumb and fingers and turned it up and around and looked down into it smiling. “What a fantastic idea. I only brought you here to see something amusing. I told you that.”
Releasing her, he got out of the car and came around to her side and opened the door, and she got out beside him. A bulky shadow separated itself from the deeper shadow of a recession in a crumbling brick wall. The shadow moved toward them and became an obese man, and she had the most peculiar feeling that it was a man she had seen somewhere before, but this was probably only a contingent of terror and not so.
“You didn’t say you were bringing anyone,” the obese man said.
“Was I obligated to inform you?” Oliver’s voice was a soft expression of utter animosity, and Charity was aware that between these two men, in whatever strange relationship they had established, there was deep and abiding hatred. “Are you suggesting that I have no right to bring my wife as a guest if I please?”
“It’s not smart,” the man said. “It may be dangerous.”
“I think not. And if you’re worried about its compromising your usefulness in the future, you needn’t worry any more. I had already decided that your usefulness has been exhausted.” Oliver turned his head slightly toward Charity. “My dear, this is Mr. Sweeney. You’ll hardly believe it, I know, but you and he are old friends after a fashion. Isn’t that so, Sweeney?”
The man called Sweeney didn’t answer. Turning, he moved back to the dark recession and disappeared. Guided by Oliver’s hand on her arm, Charity followed and saw that there was in the recession a metal door which was now standing open, and she went through the doorway onto the concrete floor of a long dark building, a single enormous room, that was or had been almost certainly a garage. High, small windows at the far end were like blind eyes reflecting the feeble light from a lamp on the street outside. A single dim bulb burned in a conical tin shade at the end of a cord descending from shadows at the ceiling and cast upon the stained concrete a dirty yellow perimeter of defense against the darkness.
Sweeney brushed by, opened a door to a small enclosure that was mostly glass above a low wall of rough boards fixed vertically. The enclosure projected from one side of the room and was or had been the improvised office of what was or had been
the garage.
“In here, please,” Sweeney said. “It will probably be a while yet, so you had better sit down and take it easy.”
“Yes, my dear,” Oliver said. “Here is a chair with a cushion beside the desk. I’m sure you will be quite comfortable in it.”
She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. It was hot in the small and dark enclosure, but she felt icy cold. Quietly she waited for the bad end of the bad night. Regret she felt, and fear and despair, and the greatest of these was despair.
CHAPTER 15
The drum and the piano were tired. In the shag end of the night, in the rise and drift of sound from a litter of people at a litter of tables, the die-hards, the last dogs, the ones who never wanted to go home, their voices lagged and faltered and fell silent. The drum, in the end, had the final word. The piano, too tired to care, declined to answer. The litter heard no silence that was not its own.
In a tiny room off the short hall to the alley, Chester Lewis put a hat over his wiry hair, lit a cigarette, looked with his expression of chronic surprise at the miracle of thin blue smoke that issued from his lungs.
“It wasn’t good tonight,” he said. “I wasn’t with it.”
“You were all right,” Joe said. “You were fine.”
“No. It wouldn’t come. Not the good stuff. What came was gibberish.” “You’re tired, that’s all. We’re both tired.”
“That’s right, Joe. We’re both tired. We’re a pair of tired guys, Joe.” “Everyone gets tired.” “Everyone doesn’t stay tired.”
“All right, Chester. You better get some sleep and forget it.”
“Sure, Joe. You better, too.”
“I’ll get along in a little.”
“You going to play again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll skip it.”
“How about a sandwich and a glass of milk somewhere?”
“I don’t think so, Chester. Thanks anyhow.”
Chester drew on his cigarette, examined with astonishment the miracle, of smoke.
“We’ve been good partners, Joe. You think so?” “I think so, Chester.”
“I needed you. You came along just right.” “We needed each other, Chester. It was right for both of us.” “Yeah. I guess so. We’ve never said much to each other, though. There are lots of things we could have said that we never did.” “Just with the drum and the piano.”
“That’s right. The drum and the piano. You hear what the drum was saying tonight, Joe? Tonight and last night?” “I heard it,”
“The piano didn’t answer, Joe. It didn’t say a word back. Just changed the subject.”
“There wasn’t anything to say”
“Yeah. I guess not. Nothing to say.” Chester dropped his cigarette on the bare floor and stepped on it, reducing his little miracle to a dead butt. “Maybe we’re more than partners, Joe. Maybe we’re friends.”
“We’re friends, Chester,”
“Funny how it begins and goes on, isn’t it? What makes and keeps two guys friends, Joe?” “I don’t know. It’s hard to say.”
“Probably it helps if each of them pretty much minds his own business.” “Probably.”
“Sure. That’s what I’ve been thinking. Well, be careful. Be real careful. I think I’ll be going along now, Joe. Goodnight.” “Goodnight, Chester.”
Chester went out and back to the alley, and Joe went out after him and up to the bar where Yancy was. “How’s everything, Yancy?” he said. “No complaints,” Yancy said. “I’ll have rye and water.” “You sure? No Martini?” “You heard me. Rye and water.”
“I had a notion you’d switched to Martinis. Funny how I got such a notion.”
“Very funny, Yancy. I’ll laugh later.”
“You needn’t bother. Truth is, I don’t think it was funny myself.” Yancy poured rye and added water and set it out. “I got a message. I’m supposed to tell you something.”
“All right. Tell me.”
“She can’t come. Something happened. I’d have told you sooner, but you were late getting in and I didn’t have the chance.” “What was it happened?”
“I don’t know. Something to prevent her coming. She said she was sorry, and she sounded like she really was. She said to tell you she’d come as soon as she could. Tomorrow, maybe.”
“She telephoned?”
“That’s right. Between six and seven. Nearer six, I think. She sounded all right, just like she was sorry.” “Thanks, Yancy.”
He drank some of the good strong rye and water and sat looking into what was left. Behind him was the sound of the last dogs in the litter of the night. Between now and daylight were five long hours. In five hours a man could count perhaps twenty-two thousand heart beats.
• • •
All right, he thought, all right. There was a night and a part of a night in the room, and there was most of a day and a night on Long island, and there was a night and a day and a night and a day in Connecticut, and now there’s the finish, the end, nothing more. Whatever there was and however long it lasted, it was more and longer than you thought it would be or had any reason to expect it to be, and so you had now better have your rye and water and go home and to bed, and if you can forget it in the little time that’s left for forgetting, that’s something else you had better do, and if you can’t forget it, you can at least remember it and her with kindness and pleasure and pity, for she will probably need kindness and pity and the remembrance of pleasure far more in the end than you will ever need them.
In the depths of the golden rye and water, she raised her face and looked up at him sadly from under her hair on the heavy side, and he lifted the glass and emptied it of the rye and water and her.
“You still here?” Yancy said.
“I may be here for quite a while. What’s the matter, Yancy? You need the space?”
“I didn’t mean that. I meant you looked gone. Like part of you had walked off and left the rest of you.” “I was thinking.”
“Well, that’s a bad habit to get into. A guy gets along pretty well until he starts thinking too much about things, and then he’s in for trouble. Trouble with himself, I mean, which can sometimes be the worst kind of trouble there is. I read a poem about that once. According to this poem a guy can survive pretty well on a diet of liquor, love and fights and stuff like that, but the minute he starts thinking he’s a sick bastard.”
“Is that the way the poem went?”
“Well, not exactly. That’s just the general idea.”
“I didn’t know you read poetry, Yancy.”
“Of course you didn’t. You didn’t even know I could read. You thought I was just an ignorant, illiterate slob.”
“Not me, Yancy. I’ve always had the greatest respect for you. I value your friendship and solicit your counsel.”
“Oh, sure, sure. Funny boy. What if I told you to go to hell?”
“You won’t.”
“That’s right. I won’t. Where I’ll tell you to go is home, but you won’t be in any more hurry to go there than the other place. You got no brains to speak of, that’s the thing about you.”
“Sometimes, Yancy, one place is much like another.”
“Yeah. I know that myself. You want another rye?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you would. I was only doing my duty to my lousy conscience. You going to play requests tonight?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t feel like it.”
“I know you don’t feel like it. You didn’t feel like it earlier with Chester, far as that goes. You were working.”
“It’s uncanny how you know things, Yancy. You must have some kind of special power or something. It makes a guy feel uneasy.”
“Well, I know when something’s fun and when it’s work, and playing the piano used to be fun for Joe Doyle, at least part of the time, but now it’s all work and when anything gets that way, all work, it’s no good any longer and ought to be stopped. Why don’t you quit, J
oe?”
“Maybe I ought to quit eating and paying rent, too.”
“There are other ways to eat and pay rent. There are other places to go than a lousy club every night, and there are other things to do than play piano for a lot of God-damn tramps and lushes with nothing better to do than get maudlin over some cheap little tune that stirs up some cheap little memory.”
“I admire you when you’re eloquent, Yancy. You’re real impressive.”
“Okay. I ought to know better than to try. Maybe you’ll think about it, though. Maybe you’ll think about all the other things there are to do.”
“I know there are other things to do, if you know how. I don’t know how. All I know is how to play the piano, and I don’t know that a tenth as well as I wanted to and tried to.”
“Forget I said anything. I tell you I ought to know better, and then I try again before I can even get my mouth shut, and what I learn from the effort is that I ought to know better. It’s your business. If you want the last thing you see to be a bloodshot eye and the last breath you breathe to be a lungful of second-hand cigarette smoke, it’s your business.”
“Thanks, Yancy What you say brings us to an interesting question, and it happens to be a question, believe it or not, that I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about at one time or another. The question is, Yancy, what do you do with what’s left of a life when only a little’s left. When I was a kid in high school I took a course in public speaking. We got up and talked about things. One of the things we talked about was this particular question of what we would do if we only had so long to live. Only a little while. I remember some of the things that were said, including what I said, and it was all foolishness. Everyone was running around in his little talk doing the little thing he liked the very best, and that just isn’t the way it is, when the time comes. No, Yancy, they’re doing pretty much what they were doing yesterday and the day before and the day before. They’re doing what they’ve always done and know how to do. They’re playing the piano, Yancy, the same as me.”
Park Avenue Tramp Page 14