Desperate Asylum

by Fletcher Flora

  The next day when she came to work he told her. “Are you sure?” she said.

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you. I thought about you all night, and it hurt, and I kept wanting you.”

  “Still? Even after—?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “Was it the same with you?”

  “It’s the same with everyone when they’re in love.”

  “I can’t understand how it happened to you. With a guy like me. You could get almost anyone if you tried.”

  “Well, silly, I don’t want almost anyone. I want you.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t want to pick it apart. Maybe because you’re a shrewd guy who will have a nice restaurant and bar downtown that people will go to and talk about and go back to. Maybe because you’ve got a funny, ugly face that makes me feel excited. I wish I were smarter. I wish I had gone to high school and even college. Then people would say what a brilliant wife Emerson Page has. Everyone would say what a lucky fellow Emerson Page is to have a wife like that.”

  “That’s what they’ll say anyhow. They see what you look like, they won’t care if you’ve ever been through high school, or any school at all.”

  “No, really. I want to know things. I think everyone has a kind of obligation to read books and develop his intelligence and all that, don’t you?”

  He hadn’t thought about it at all, but he said he agreed with her. He thought she was very cute when she talked like that. Now that he had made up his mind, he wanted to get married right away.

  “Let’s close the diner and go down to the City Hall and get a license,” he said.

  “Do you really want to? Don’t you want to think about it? It would be all right if you changed your mind.”

  “No, I don’t want to think about it anymore. I want to get married.”

  “We’ll have to wait three days. It’s the law.”

  “The hell it is! Why?”

  “We’ll have to take blood tests and things. You got anything catching, honey?”

  “Not that I know of. You never can tell, of course, with a wild guy like me.”

  “Oh, sure. You’re wild, all right. You couldn’t even tell about me.”

  “Well, I thought you were decent. You know how some girls can fool a guy. How the hell was I supposed to know you were promiscuous?”

  “Listen. You sound like someone who’s changing his mind. Maybe we’d better hurry down to City Hall and get that license before you talk yourself out of it.”

  “I’m not going to talk myself out of anything.”

  “All right, then. Let’s go.”

  They did. They locked the diner and went down to the City Hall and got a license and waited three days and got married. After that they found a large room with a bath above a clothing store for forty dollars a month and moved into it, and everything was remarkably wonderful, and neither of them regretted what they had done or wished for a minute that they hadn’t done it. From the bed in the room, they could read the neon identification of a shabby funeral parlor across the street, and they sometimes lay there quietly and talked about dying, and how it would be to be dead, and how neither of them would want to live without the other now that they knew what having each other was like. Beyond the funeral parlor in the sky, they could see the brighter wash of light from the better downtown area, and they talked about the restaurant and bar they would have there, the place of integrity, and he began to understand after a while that her mind was much more daring and decisive than his.

  “How much money do you have?” she said.

  “A couple thousand,” he answered.

  “All right. Take the two thousand. You’ve never used your loan rights under the GI Bill. Add that. We could mortgage the house my mother’s living in. It belongs to her, of course, but she’d borrow on it if I asked her. Add that. It would come to something, honey. A lot of money. What I mean is, why wait? We could have the place right now. Right now, Em!”

  Her voice in talking about it acquired a desperate urgency, as if they might die tomorrow and lose all of their chances forever, and it frightened him a little.

  “I don’t know, Ed. Maybe it’s too soon.”

  “It’s not too soon! It’s not, it’s not!”

  “We’d need a lot of luck.”

  “Sure, we would. And we’d get it. Our kind of luck, Em. Good luck.”

  She was irresistible, so they finally did it, and they had the luck. They found the building in the place they wanted, and they sank over ten grand in it right away, and people came to it and came back, and every year they sank more and made it better, and it made money for them and made them happy, and at last they had it securely, and, best of all, they had each other and would go right on having each other until it was time to find out how it was to be dead.

  * * * *

  And now, at this time in the place of integrity, he stood at the window and watched the snow falling, and remembered all these things that had happened, and saw Avery Lawes get out of his black Caddy at the curb and cross the sidewalk to the door.

  SECTION 2

  Letting the drapes fall together across his view of the street, he turned and watched Avery come through the door and shake the snow from his hat. He had known Avery for as long as he could remember, as one boy is likely to know another in a town of thirty thousand. Avery was the last of the Laweses, the first family of Corinth since the beginning of Time—which was, in the minds of those who cared, the beginning of Corinth—and he lived now, as the family had always lived, in a big house of red brick on High Street above the river. In spite of social position, however, Avery had always been a pretty good kid by the standards of kids. He had gone to public school like the others, had always been rather shy and withdrawn, displaying sometimes an appealing eagerness to be liked and accepted. A handsome boy, he was now a handsome man, slender and graceful, as if he’d been specially tutored in the proper way to hold himself and to walk and to gesture restrainedly with his hands. He talked slowly and precisely and softly because of an impediment in his speech which showed up to embarrass him if he got careless.

  People in Corinth wondered when Avery would get married. Ambitious mothers with eligible daughters were especially concerned, and most of the daughters themselves would have been happy to sign a contract to share his four-poster. He had, they felt, a moral obligation to procreate that was beyond the ordinary. Alone now, the only surviving Lawes, he held the family name in toto on the dark brink of extinction. And he wasn’t getting any younger. He was Emerson’s age, thirty; not that Avery seemed to be worried about it, or even conscious of it in any way of special significance. He was seldom in the company of women, or any company at all, and though he had acquired, since the death of his father in late summer, the habit of coming in Emerson’s place two or three times a week for dinner and at odd times for drinks at the bar, he was invariably alone.

  Watching him hang his coat and hat on the rack by the door and move toward the bar, Emerson had a faint, fleeting impression of something read or heard, something almost remembered but not quite. A word, a phrase, a voice in his brain like a whisper. He stood quietly by the window and tried to bring it back, and slowly it came, or they came, the time and the place and the voice and its words. The old diner in the old days, and Roscoe reading Robinson behind the counter. Reading aloud the brief and beautiful fragment in rhyme that told how a man had gone home one night and shot himself. A man named Richard Cory. A man imperially slim. That was the phrase. Imperially slim. Those were the words heard from then to now because of Avery Lawes. Seeing Avery move and take a stool and speak to Roscoe, he thought that they fitted well.

  Roscoe put ice in a glass and poured Scotch over the ice.
Avery lifted the glass and drank. Emerson left the window and walked over to Avery and sat down on the stool beside him.

  “Good evening, Mr. Lawes.”

  Avery turned his head and smiled. “Hello, Em. What’s with the mister?”

  “Just standard propriety.”

  “Nuts. Have a drink?”

  “Thanks. They’re on the house, though. Bourbon, Roscoe.”

  Roscoe supplied the bourbon and went away. The good whiskey, undiluted, was mellow on the tongue, the warmth of it creeping centrifugally from the stomach. The first drink is always the best, Emerson thought, and with the thought was the awareness that it was not, with Avery, the first. Nor, probably, the second or third. His voice and movement had the carefully contained quality that is evidence of deliberate control, and there was a laxness in his mouth, a thin fog in his eyes. Lifting his glass again, he drained it and sat looking down at the uncovered cubes.

  “You’ve got a nice place, Em,” he said. “You’re a lucky guy.”

  “Me? Well, I guess so. I guess I’ve had my share of luck. Compared to a lot who have had less, that is. Not compared to you, though. I shouldn’t think you’d be impressed.”

  “Why not? You’ve done something, at least. I’ve never done anything. Maybe it’s because I’ve never felt the necessity of doing anything.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Oh, I know.” Avery laughed and beckoned Roscoe. “I sound like a God-damn soap opera or something. Poor little rich boy and all that crap. Well, it’s not the money. Money’s a pretty damn handy thing to have, and It’ll admit it. Another drink? On me this time.”

  “I haven’t finished this one yet.”

  “Well, finish it and have another. Two of the same, Roscoe.”

  Roscoe glanced at Emerson and received a nod. He filled the order and went away again. All but two of the stools at the bar were now occupied, and a girl had come in from the dining room to handle the tables and booths. The couple who had been drinking Manhattans were still drinking them. The woman had lined up cherry stems in a little row on the table to keep account of the number, and now she counted the stems and laughed, touching each stem with a fingertip and looking up and across at her escort slyly through her lashes. Watching her reflection in the mirror behind the bar, Emerson could see that she was quite drunk and would be more so but would probably not be offensive about it. The man, he thought, was probably in for an interesting evening.

  He finished his first bourbon and worked a little on his second. The rocks, he noticed, were already out of the Scotch. Avery was looking at them as if he were wondering what had caused them to emerge so quickly. Emerson considered suggesting that Avery take it easy and decided that it was not his business. You could never tell how someone, even a gentleman like Avery, would react to something like that. Men were often sensitive about their capacity. But perhaps it would be possible to make the suggestion indirectly, in a way that would not be obvious.

  “Snowing pretty hard,” he said. “Supposed to get about four inches, I understand. That much in the streets will make driving pretty tough.”

  “Maybe. Forecasters are wrong half the time. You can’t rely on them.”

  “That’s true, all right. At least it seems like it. I guess you just remember the times they were wrong, though, and forget about all the times they were right.”

  “Wrong half the time. Absolutely can’t rely on them.”

  “Well, it looks now as if this might be one of the times they’ll hit it. I was looking out the window when you came in, and it was coming down pretty good then.”

  “Yes. I hate snow. Hate the cold. Hate the cold, dark winter. I’m just like a God-damn something or other. Don’t know just what I mean. Something that becomes like whatever’s around it. The environment. The weather and everything. Too damn sensitive. Day’s cold and dark, so am I. Inside, I mean. Come to think of it, however, I’m pretty damn cold and dark inside even if the day isn’t.”

  “Oh, come off it. You’re just feeling lousy about something.”

  “Indigestion, maybe? Something I ate? Well, you’re wrong. It couldn’t be that because I haven’t eaten anything. Just been drinking. Off and on, sort of. I got up this morning, and the thought came into my head. This would be a good day to drink, I thought. So I have been. Scotch. Never mix it. Just Scotch.”

  “You don’t look like you’d been drinking all day.”

  “Not like a tramp? That’s the Lawes in me. A Lawes always keeps up appearances. Part of the creed. Drilled into us from the cradle. You remember when I was a kid? When we were in school together? Tell me. What did you think of me then? Straight. Really what you thought.”

  “Well, I thought you were a pretty good kid. Not snotty like a rich kid might be. Well, just a pretty good kid, I mean, just like the rest of us.”

  “Wrong again. I wasn’t a pretty good kid at all. Not like the rest of you. Not like any good kid that ever lived. Truth is, I was a nasty little bastard. All screwed up. Deceptive as hell. Appearances. The God-damn Lawes in me. You believe that?”

  “All I can say is, you certainly didn’t seem that way to me.

  “Of course not. I told you. Never seem like you really are. It’s the creed. I was a nasty kid, I tell you. A perfectly foul kid. Still am, of course. Not a kid, but perfectly foul. All screwed up. You don’t grow out of a thing like that. It just grows with you. Gets bigger to fit. You like another bourbon?”

  “No, thanks. I think I’ll just work on this one awhile.”

  “Think I’ll have another. Scotch. Soon as Roscoe gets time. Busy tonight. Cold, dark night. Snowing. Everyone drinking to keep out the cold. Roscoe won’t look, damn it. Too busy.”

  “Never mind. I’ll get it for you.”

  Emerson went around behind the bar and put ice cubes in a clean glass and poured Scotch over them and pushed the glass across the bar. He wished Avery would quit talking the way he was. Ordinarily Avery was a very reticent guy, but the Scotch had let his inhibitions down, and if he remembered later the things he’d said, he’d be embarrassed as hell and would feel uneasy the next time he and Emerson met, and maybe he’d just quit coming into the restaurant and bar at all. Emerson wouldn’t like that Not just because of the loss of patronage, the profit. He liked Avery, really, and he wanted him to keep on coming in and enjoying himself. That was the biggest satisfaction in running a place like this. It sounded phony, but it was true.

  He went back around to his stool and got on.

  “You ever been to Miami?” Avery said.

  “No. Up till recently, I never had the money. Now I’ve got the money, I don’t have the time.”

  “It’s warm in Miami. Sun shining on the beach. Not cold and dark. Not snowing. You ever lie on the beach in the sun and feel like something was boiling out of you? All the poison inside seeping out your pores. Like creosote out of a railroad tie in the summer. Remember that from when I was a kid. Nasty little bastard. You had the feeling?”

  “The only feeling I ever had on any beach was fear. In the war. Except for those times, I’ve never been on a beach. We’ll have to take time for Miami one of these days; Ed and I.”

  “You ought to do it. Come with me if you want to. But I don’t suppose you would. Of course not. Why should you?”

  “You going to Miami?”

  “Tomorrow. Driving down in the Caddy. Going tomorrow.”

  “Some guys have all the luck, lying around on a sunny beach while the rest of us are wading through snow.”

  “Got to go. Got to get myself cleaned out. Now or never. Realize it now.”

  “Well, it ought to be fun.”

  “Not going for fun. For therapy. What they call it. Nasty damn word.”

  “How long you going to stay?”

  “In Miami? Don’t know. G
oing on someplace from there, I think. Thinking of Havana. Never been there. Probably Mexico City, though. Store the Caddy and fly. You ever been to Mexico City?”

  “No.”

  “I was there once. Long time ago. Went with my mother and father. Just a little kid. All I can remember is Chapultepec Park. Odd about that. Can’t remember anything else, but I can remember all sorts of things about Chapultepec Park. Vendors. Hundreds of them. Selling all sorts of things. Balloons and colored bottles. Stuff to eat. Fruit, cheese, all kinds of nuts. Coconuts all over the place. Thin cakes you ate with some kind of hot seasoning. Pepper sauce, I guess. Hot as fire. Big lake there. Lots of cypress trees. And a castle. Chapultepec Castle. Man who would draw your picture in charcoal for a few cents. Artist. Probably lots of them around, but I only remember this one. He did a picture of me. Squat, dark man with a long mustache that stuck straight out to the sides. Must have been ten inches from tip to tip. Pocked skin. Ugly devil, to be truthful about it. I’ve still got the picture at home. The one he drew. Not very good, really.”

  “You remember a hell of a lot, if you ask me.”

  “Just about Chapultepec Park. Nothing else. We didn’t stay long. My mother went to bed with a Mexican musician, and my father brought us home. I didn’t know about the musician until later. Much later. Wondered at the time why the old man brought us home in such a hell of a hurry.”

  Emerson was startled. He remembered Avery’s mother, a tall woman with golden hair who had died young. It had been long ago that she died, and his remembrance of her had lasted only because of her great beauty. She had seemed to him proud and arrogant. He couldn’t imagine her going to bed with a Mexican musician or with anyone else for pleasure. He wondered if Avery could be making it up. Maybe too much Scotch made a liar of him. It was hard to believe of Avery, but you had to admit that too much to drink sometimes did odd things to unlikely people.