He got off the stool and put a hand for a second on Avery’s arm.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I think I’d better float awhile.”
“Of course. Business first. See you later, Em.”
“Sure.”
“That trip to Miami. You and Ed riding along, I mean. Really meant it, you know.”
“Thanks, Avery. We couldn’t possibly make it, though.”
“No. Thought not. Well, better go float, Em. Duty of proprietor.”
“That’s right. And thanks just the same about Miami.” He walked up to the front window and looked out into the street again. It was still snowing, and a wind had come up. The flakes no longer drifted through the light lazily, but were driven through on a tangent, and the snow already lying on the pavement was whipped up by the wind in thin, swirling clouds. A car passed slowly with flapping wipers. Avery’s black Caddy at the curb, facing into the wind, had acquired a drift against the windshield. It looked like they would get their four inches at least. Maybe more.
* * * *
Emerson turned and walked into the dining room and through the dining room into the kitchen. They were almost finished serving in the dining room, and in the kitchen they were cleaning and polishing and getting ready to wrap it up for the night. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was a few minutes after ten. He wondered if Ed would come down for the drink. He hadn’t suggested it when he’d left her, and now he wished that he had. He wanted her to come very badly, and his need for her seemed to have something to do with Avery’s quiet drunkenness, but he couldn’t understand why that should be. He didn’t want to go on thinking about Avery, but he couldn’t help it. The truth seemed to be that Avery was very lonely and very unhappy about something. It was even more than unhappiness, really. A kind of despair. Sometimes a guy really gave himself away when whiskey let his inhibitions down. Sometimes you found out things that surprised the hell out of you. The truth was, it was a little disturbing. It made you wonder how much you really knew about anyone, even people you saw all the time, day in and day out, and you got the crazy idea that everyone was actually a God-damn stranger or something. Take that crack about his mother and the Mexican musician. That was a hell of a thing for a guy like Avery to come out with. Sober, he’d have cut his tongue out first.
Where was Ed? He was willing to bet, thinking about it, that she’d gone to sleep over her book. She did that lots of times. Lots of times he went up and found her curled up under the reading lamp in the big chair with the book open in her lap or sometimes on the floor where it had fallen. She was cute as all hell when she went to sleep that way. He always kissed her awake, and that usually got something bigger started. He had a notice to go up and get something started right now but decided that first he’d probably better make another tour of the bar, just to be sure everything was going along all right. Come to think of it, he’d just have Roscoe mix up a shaker of martinis to carry upstairs with him.
In the bar, trade was brisk and would stay brisk until midnight, when they would have to close because of the Sunday closing law. The man and woman drinking Manhattans were still at it, but Emerson could see by the cherry stems that they had reduced their rate of consumption. The row of stems was not much longer than it had been the last time he looked. The woman was fuzzy in the eyes and her lipstick was a little smeared but her gestures were controlled and she seemed to be talking coherently to the man across from her. No potential disturbance there. She could hold what she took, no question about that.
Moving his eyes right, he saw Avery Lawes lift his glass and drain it and stand up abruptly. Turning, Avery walked carefully toward the rack where he’d left his coat and hat. His slim body was erect and graceful in its motion. If there had been a chalk line on the carpet, he would have been on it every step. When he was abreast, Emerson stepped forward and intercepted him.
“Leaving, Avery?”
“Yes. Going home. Red brick house on High Street. View of the river and everything. Money street. Class street. Home of the Laweses, the God-damn Laweses.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Perfectly. Perfectly sober. A Lawes never gets drunk. In public, that is. It’s against the creed.”
“I don’t know. The streets are getting bad. Looks like the forecasters hit this one.”
“Really? Unusual. Never would have believed it. Fellows are usually unreliable.”
“Maybe I ought to call a taxi for you. I’d be glad to run the Caddy out to your home in the morning.”
“Thanks, Em. Damn gracious for you to be concerned. Won’t do, though. Leaving for Miami in the morning. Early. Remember I told you?” He stopped and looked at Emerson as if he were trying to make a decision about something. “Wouldn’t want to smash up the Caddy tonight, though. Spoil everything. Delay my leaving. Wonder if you’d mind running me out now. Damn gutty of me to ask. Appreciate it, however. Consider it a great favor. Get a cab out there to get you back.”
Emerson didn’t want to do it. He had Ed on his mind, and he wanted to get up to her right away, but he didn’t know how to refuse Avery. He had a feeling, moreover, that Avery had no real doubt about his own ability to handle the Caddy in the snow. His request was based more on an urgent desire to prolong companionship, on a deep dread, perhaps, of returning alone in the cold, dark night to the old house on High Street above the river.
“All right,” he said reluctantly. “But first I think I’d better tell Ed where I’m going. Besides, I’ll have to get a hat and overcoat. Tell you what. You wait for me here, and I’ll be as quick as I can. Okay?”
“Sure. I’ll just have another Scotch while I’m waiting.” Exercising the control which the Scotch made consciously deliberate but did not destroy, he walked back to the stool at the bar and got on. Emerson followed and went around behind. Roscoe was busy at the far end, so Emerson poured Avery’s Scotch and mixed the shaker of martinis to carry up to Ed. With him gone, she would not want to come downstairs, and she would probably like to have the martinis while she was waiting for him to return. Cursing his bad luck and regretting his role of Samaritan, he carried the frosty shaker out through the dining room into the kitchen and upstairs from the kitchen to the second floor. Opening the door to the living room of the apartment, he saw that he had been right. Ed was asleep in her chair.
He closed the door quietly behind him and put the shaker on a coffee table and stood watching her, his heart swelling and aching, and he wondered how it was that a man could love someone so long and so hard without becoming worn out from it. She hadn’t changed much since the day she’d come to work for him in the direr beside the bowling alley, except that she was a litle sleeker, a little more finished and polished by the things that money brought, and now her dark hair was not long, as it had been then, but very short in the Italian style. In the chair under the light, her knees were drawn up against her breasts, the red velvet stretched tight as second skin over the flank of the leg on his side, and her head had fallen forward until her forehead lacked only a little of touching her knees. Her lips were slightly parted and quivered with the passage of her breath. Her book was on the floor. It was, he noticed, The Magic Mountain.
Walking over to her silently, he leaned down and pit his right hand on her hip and kissed her as near the mouth as he could reach. She sighed and turned her face up in her sleep, and he kissed her again, now directly on the mouth, and kept kissing her until her eyes opened and her arms came up to lock around his neck.
“Em,” she whispered, arching up against him. “Darling, I’ve been wishing you’d come.”
He laughed. “Like hell you have. You’ve been asleep.”
“Before that. Before I went to sleep I was wishing.”
“I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve been thinking about you and wanting to come back ever since I left.”
“Really
? Isn’t it wonderful how we always wish that at the same time? Do you suppose it’s like that with all the others?”
“Not like with us. We’re altogether unique. We never happened before and won’t ever again.”
“You’re a seducer, that’s what you are. You always know just what to say to make a wife fall apart. Especially a dissolute wife like me who seduces easily. Darling, I’m sorry I went off to sleep. I was coming down to have a drink with you.”
“I thought you might come. It doesn’t matter, though, I brought up a shaker of martinis.”
“Oh, you’re perfect. Let me up, darling. I’ll get glasses.”
“No. Wait, Ed. Listen to me. I’ve got something else I have to do first.”
“Something else? What?”
“Well, Avery Lawes is downstairs in the bar, and he’s pretty drunk.”
“Drunk! Avery? I don’t believe it.”
“He is, though. You’d never know it just to see him, and I don’t suppose anyone’s even aware of it, except Roscoe and me, but the streets are pretty bad with the snow and all, and, well, Avery asked me to drive him home, and I didn’t know how to say no.”
“Really, Em! And your lovely wife simply panting!”
“Damn it, Ed, don’t rub it in. I hate it enough already. Say the word, I’ll go tell him to get home any damn way he can.”
“No. Of course not. It’s not much to do for a man, I guess. But it does seem a little odd. His asking, that is. I didn’t know you and Avery were such friends.”
“We’re not. I’ve known him from when we were kids, that’s all. Tonight, like I said, he’s pretty drunk, and he just got talking. You know how it is sometimes when a guy’s had too much. Funny thing about him, Ed. He’s a very lonely guy.”
“Sure. It’s the penalty he pays for having all that money.”
“It’s true, Ed. He’s very lonely.”
“All right. So he’s very lonely. Go drive him home and let your wife be lonely.”
“Damn it, I won’t go. I’ll stay right here.”
“Don’t be a dope, darling. I was only joking. I’ll wait here and think about you until you get back.”
“You sure it’s all right?”
“Yes. Hurry, though.”
“You can certainly count on that.”
“I’ll wait in bed,” she said, “and drink martinis.”
SECTION 3
On the ascent to High Street, the rear wheels spun and whined in the wet snow. The big Caddy crept up at a fraction of the speed registered on the panel, lurching as it gained the crest, rear end skidding in the turn left. Down the street a half block, Emerson nursed it into the circular drive to Avery’s house and stopped it under a portico.
“Well,” he said, “here we are.”
Avery was sitting slumped in the seat beside him, his chin on his chest and his eyes closed. At the sound of Emerson’s voice, he opened his eyes and sat up straight and closed his eyes again and knuckled them like a child waking in the morning.
“Already?” he said. “Must’ve napped. Can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. Come on in. Call a cab for you. Have a drink while we’re waiting.”
He got out on his side of the Caddy and went up onto the front porch from the portico. At the door he dug in a pocket for a key and used it efficiently, Emerson noticed, in spite of the load of Scotch he was carrying. They went into a hall and down the hall and into a room on the right that was obviously a library. A floor lamp had been left burning at one end of the room, and there was a fire in a fireplace at the other end that created a shirting pattern of light and shadows on the floor in front of it. Avery walked down to the fireplace and dropped his hat and overcoat onto a chair and stood with his hands extended toward the fire.
“Take off your things,” he said. “Fix you a drink.”
“I think I’d better get the cab and get on back,” Emerson said. “Thanks just the same.”
“Sure. Call it for you immediately. Nasty night, however. Take the cab a while to get here. You’ll have time for a drink.”
Reluctantly, Emerson took off his coat and advanced to the fire. Avery went out of the room and was back in two minutes.
“Called the cab. Be here in twenty minutes. Rough estimate. Now for the drink. Still bourbon?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Scotch for me. Been drinking Scotch all day. Woke up this morning and thought it would be a damn good day for it.” At a liquor cabinet he got out bottles and glasses and then turned. “No ice. Forgot about ice. I’ll go out to the kitchen for some.”
“Never mind. Not for me, I mean. I’d just as soon take it without.”
“Really? Not just being considerate?”
“No, really.”
“Good. Have mine the same.”
He poured the bourbon and the Scotch and brought the bourbon to Emerson. “Here you are. Bourbon for you. Scotch for me. Bourbon for the road. Scotch for bed.”
Emerson thought that he had something a hell of a lot better for bed than Scotch, if he could only get home to it, and he thought of it waiting for him and was very bitter. He drank some of the bourbon and hoped that the damn cab would arrive under the estimate.
“Cold house,” Avery said. “Empty house, cold house. You know what it needs, Em? This house?”
Emerson had a decided opinion on that question. He thought he knew damn well what the house needed and what Avery needed, and it was the same thing he himself needed and ought to be having and intended to have just as soon as a lousy, creeping cab could get him to it in the cursed snow.
“A woman,” he said. “You ought to get married, Avery.”
Avery laughed softly and took Scotch. “Yes. Woman. Wife. Thought you’d say that. Just asked to hear you say it. What everyone’s thinking. What everyone’s saying. Why doesn’t Avery get married? Propagate. Have kids. Last of the Laweses. Avery has no kids, no more Laweses. Wouldn’t that be a God-damn crying shame?”
Emerson didn’t know what to say, and so he said nothing and drank some more bourbon. Avery was looking at him with a queer intentness, and it made him uncomfortable. He wished to hell that Avery would quit.
“You know why I’m not married?” Avery said.
Emerson said he didn’t. He wanted to say also that he didn’t care. His indifference was not prompted by callousness, but by the thought of waiting and his urgent desire to change that condition. He could see quite plainly that Avery was a lonely guy who wanted to talk, and he was sorry for him and all that, but where in hell was the God-damn cab?
“No,” Avery said. “Of course you don’t know. Guy like you couldn’t possibly know. Probably wouldn’t believe it if you did. No insult intended. Compliment, rather. Thinks straight, feels straight. Guy like you does. Would you believe it if I told you? Why I’m not married?”
“Why not? If you said it, I’d believe it.”
“I wonder. Curious about it. Want me to tell you?”
“Well, that’s up to you, Avery.”
“Sure. So it is. Think I will. Probably because of the Scotch. Probably regret it tomorrow. Think I’ll tell you, anyhow. Just to see if you believe it. Reason is, I can’t stand women. Revolted by them. All women. Every damn woman on earth. As women, I mean. Women all right as people. That’s different. Women as women have special function. You know. Requires a man. Thought of it makes me sick. You believe that?”
Emerson believed it, all right, because there was no reason not to believe it if Avery said it was so, but he couldn’t understand it by a long shot. With a wife like Ed, whose happy lechery was a perfect complement to his own, how could he understand something like this? It seemed to him a sickness. Now he was beginning to see Avery as not only a lonely man but a sick man, and it disturbed him and embarrassed
him, and he wished fervently, not for the first time that night, that it hadn’t seemed to Avery like a good day for drinking Scotch.
“I guess it would be possible to feel like that,” he said.
Avery lifted his glass and tipped it and seemed surprised to discover that there was nothing in it. He looked from the glass to the bottle on the cabinet and back to the glass and then apparently forgot all about both of them.
“Woman in this house once,” he said. “Long time ago. Beautiful woman. Most beautiful woman on earth. Loved her. Worshiped her. Greatest happiness just to look at her, listen to her voice, have her touch me. Then it all went to hell. All to hell. Reasons I won’t bore you with. Anyhow, complete reversal. Disgusted me. Absolute revulsion. Couldn’t bear to have her touch me any more, hardly to come near me. Thought of her flesh made me ill. Sickness in me, of course, kind of disease. Realize that but can’t help it. Same feeling about all women. No wife. No propagation. Last of the Laweses.”
He was surely talking about his mother, and what made it so bad, Emerson thought, was that it was really the Scotch talking. And it was saying things that would later be remembered and despised, and where, where, where was the lousy, creeping cab? Take that business about the Mexican musician and the hurried return from the Mexican holiday, for instance, and now all this stuff about love and hate and everything—it was the kind of stuff a guy didn’t want to hear, especially a guy with someone like Ed waiting, and all he could do was keep his mouth shut and sweat it out.
And then, at last, the cab was there in the drive, its horn blasting.
With a vast sense of relief, almost of precarious escape, Emerson went for his hat and coat. He really was sorry for Avery, and he felt a little guilty about running out on a guy who was lonely and was obviously dreading an empty house, but it was impossible to stay, would have been impossible even without the consideration of Ed, because of the things Avery was saying, and you knew damn well how it would be later about his remembering and regretting. Besides, to be truthful, it was pretty damn depressing.
Desperate Asylum Page 3