The Loving Couple

by Patrick Dennis

  He stood there leaning on the wash basin staring at The Other Man in the mirror. Then The Other Man also looked into the mirror and flashed him a brilliant, beautiful smile. That undid him. His hands slipped on the porcelain and his forehead came into into sharp contact with the mirror.

  In a fever of activity, he ran both hot and cold water into the basin and began scrubbing his hands furiously. The Other Man shrugged slightly and strode over to one of the urinals.

  He saw that The Other Man ignored the bawdy engravings hanging above the urinals. It indicated to him that The Other Man was an old hand at Chandelier. The word "Playboy" rose to his lips. Seething, he scrubbed his hands harder and harder.

  Now The Other Man zipped up his trousers and headed straight for him. He cast his eyes away in a hot flush of embarrassment. The next thing he knew, The Other Man was at his side, running water into the neighboring wash basin.

  The Other Man filled the bowl, removed a small gold signet ring from the little finger of his left hand and placed it on the glass shelf with a little clink. He watched him hoist up the sleeves of his jacket—a very good jacket, he noticed; not in its first youth, perhaps, but very good all the same—revealing the cuffs of an excellent broadcloth shirt and large gold cuff links monogrammed R. C. L. The term "Fop" came to mind, but he dismissed it as both inaccurate and subjective. While the cuff links were large, they were tasteful and not ostentatious. Had she given them to him, he wondered. The signet ring, he could see, had a look of heirloom to it. The cuffs of the shirt, he noticed, were just the least bit frayed. The genteel but casual type, eh?

  So she's gone and got herself a real gentleman of the old school, he thought. Then he wondered with mounting anger, mystification and hurt what crass, boorish things he had done to drive her to The Other Man. Had he picked his teeth at the table, broken wind loudly in his sleep, humiliated and disgusted her unknowingly in some way so repellent that she hadn't been able to stand him for another day?

  As The Other Man bent down to give full attention to his splendid hands, he looked anxiously into the mirror, hoping to see signs of thinning hair. No such luck. The reddish hair grew thick and glossy—brilliantine?—with just the slightest tendency to curl. He'd heard legends of the potency of redheaded men and now he was almost inclined to believe them.

  He was still staring into the mirror when The Other Man's face appeared, right next to his. The Other Man smiled charmingly.

  "Could I please trouble you for the nail brush?" he said with an ingratiating grin.

  John was so startled that he jumped. "Oh! Oh, why, certainly,”' he said, trying to regain his composure. With a trembling, soapy hand he grasped the wet brush. He was shaking so badly that he had to cling to the brush as though it were a life line. But he clung too hard. The brush shot out of his hand, rose into the air and fell with a wet plop into The Other Man's basin, bringing forth a resultant splash that inundated The Other Man's tie with sudsy water.

  "I—I'm so sorry!" he stammered, reaching for a towel just as the attendant came charging over with a handful of them.

  "That's perfectly all right," The Other Man said genially, unbuttoning his jacket to survey the full devastation. "It's an old tie, anyway—University of Virginia."

  "Gee, I'm awfully . . ." The speech faded away as he thought how incredible all this was. Here he and The Other Man were passing soap and towels back and forth making polite civilized conversation when what he actually should have done was to drown The Other Man headfirst in the toilet and then flush it.

  "You see," The Other Man said, tossing the towel into a basket of soiled linen, "it doesn't show at all. No harm done." There was another dazzling smile and then The Other Man was busy putting on his ring while the attendant swept away at his shoulders with the whisk broom. "Please don't bother," The Other Man said to the attendant in his elegant English-Southern accent.

  A sudden crafty burst of inspiration struck him. "I'm awfully sorry about ruining your tie," he said with a forced smile. "If you'd let me have your name and address, I'd be glad to buy another one just like it and have it sent to you."

  But if he was being cagey, The Other Man was being cagier.

  "That's mighty nice of you, but I wouldn't dream of putting you out. It's an old tie I was about to throw away. Goodnight." Another winning smile and he was gone.

  "Cheap bastard," the attendant grumbled. The Other Man had neglected to tip him.

  John took the towel the attendant proffered and not-quite dried his trembling hands. His head swam and he was just barely aware of the attendant scraping away at his shoulders with the whisk broom.

  "Here," he said, thrusting a crumpled dollar bill into the old pirate's hand, "it's for both of us."

  He was just about to dash out of the Men's Room when the door swung open and there stood his neighbor, Jack Hennessey, with the black Irishman who had been with him this morning.

  "Hi there, neighbor!" Jack roared. "Long time no see. You an' the missus tripping the light fantastic tonight?"

  The sight of Jack Hennessey was always unsettling. Tonight it was even more so. Mr. Hennessey was wearing a black silk dinner jacket, a red-polka-dot ruffled shirt, red glass—or possibly even ruby—studs, a red moire cummerbund with matching bow tie and black suede loafers, the fruit of another of his wife's pillages into haberdashery.

  The only people who ever dressed at Chandelier were those who didn't know any better or an occasional couple who had broken from a dull dinner party in time to catch Chandelier's even duller floor show. Adele Hennessey, however, loved to "go faw-mul!” and she always dressed her husband to match. Tonight he looked like a river-boat gambler.

  "Oh, hello there," John said nervously. "Nice to see you. As a matter of fact, I was just leaving."

  "Goin' awready? It's the shank of the evening. The night is young. Yuh better stay an' get a load of that French singer. You know what they say about those French dames." Jack gave him a playful nudge. "Here, I wantcha ta meet my friend Dan Slattery. Dan, here, is in auta-motive parts. He and his missus are bein' transferred here from Detroit."

  Mr. Slattery, dressed in a perfectly plain dinner jacket, stretched out a hairy black hand. "Pleasure's all mine," he said, quite accurately. "We looked in at your home this aft. That's some place! Peg—that's my little woman—was nuts about it. That's some little community, Riveredge. Beats Grosse Point all hollow. Course I don't presume you'd ever wanta sell a lovely home like that—a real showplace, really—to Peg an' I, but if you should ever . . ."

  "Well, Dan," Jack Hennessey said largely, "I'd have no trouble gettin' you inta Riveredge if only there was a place ta buy. But I don't think the loving couple here—that's what they call he and his missus out around Riveredge—would ever . . ."

  "Well, well I'm glad you liked it," John said, withdrawing his hand from Mr. Slattery's death grip. "I've got to be getting out of here. See you soon, Jack."

  He darted out of the door just as Hennessey was saying, "Come over here an' take a look at these French 'art studies,' Dan."

  "Sssssay," Mr. Slattery was saying, "that is clever." The Men's Room door swung closed and John bounded up the stairs, two at a time, desperate to escape this place.

  Seven

  Besame returned from the powder room and sat alone at their empty table. She was grateful that the table was empty, that he was still downstairs powdering his nose or doing whatever men were supposed to do when they excused themselves. Besame was grateful, too, for the intense gloom of Chandelier and, feeling confident that no one could see her plainly, she allowed the perfect mask of her face to relax—even to slump—from its habitual expression of bemused serenity into something not quite so lovely.

  In repose her face felt a lot better than it looked. With her perfect circumflex brows lowered temporarily from their usual half-mast position of elegant questioning, Besame's lids became heavier—almost pudgy—and her glorious dark eyes had just the slightest tendency to droop. As her eyes drooped, so did her c
heeks, the corners of her mouth and, lastly, her chin. Fat—to be overweight like her mother—had always put the fear of God into Besame and all her life she had fought it; fought fat with citrus juices and Scandinavian crackers, fought it with starvation and strenuous exercise, with massage and modern dancing, with pills and potions and proteins and poultices. But just now her face looked heavy and unhappy and much, much older than it should have.

  And Besame didn't even care. Alone at this moment, Besame welcomed the opportunity to let her face fall, to be without an audience and—if only for just a little while—to stop acting.

  Besame Bessamer was an actress and a good actress. All of her life she had had to be. As a rich Milwaukee brewer's adored only child—a tangle of ebony curls and eyes like sloes gazing liquidly through incredible lashes—Besame had been told that she was a fairy princess. She saw no reason to doubt this bit of information and played the role to perfection from the time she was house-broken until the day when she was led off to a private kindergarten—run, it seemed, exclusively for the daughters of rich brewers—dressed in a profusion of tucks and frills. Too many tucks and frills, the other Milwaukee mothers said.

  The kindergarten had been Besame's first unsettling experience and marked the first occasion she had ever heard the word Vulgar. "My mother says that your mother is very vul-gar," one of her classmates had said with the endearing candor of a five-year-old. The word meant nothing to Besame, but she lost little time in learning its definition. It came as a nasty shock.

  So did the fact that little Besame Bessamer was not invited to the birthday parties of her school friends and the fact that, while they were invited to her parties—always big elaborate affairs; vulgar affairs you might almost say—their mothers always sent polite but firm refusals. At least the nice ones stayed away.

  Besame's father had committed the unpardonable sin among Milwaukee brewers. He had divorced his first wife—a thin, shy, barren woman to be true, but a Schulz with von Seidlitz, Niemeyer and Frumke connections—to marry Besame's mother. Had Mr. Bessamer forsaken his first wife for a Schlitz, a Pabst, a Blatz, even for a non-Milwaukee brand like Ballantine, Feigenspan or Ruppert, the sudsy society in which he moved would have been sadly understanding. Incompatibility is, after all, incompatibility.

  But to leave a Schulz with von Seidlitz, Niemeyer and Frumke quarters for a common slut like Lillian was beyond the pale. The beer baronesses came to call on Lillian once, but that was all. The sight of her dyed hair, her chaise longue, her movie magazines, her liqueur chocolates had confirmed their every suspicion. The second Mrs. Bessamer was simply not the sort to be included in the kaffee klatsches, the Junior League, the matinee excursions to Chicago, the ponderous dinner parties in the Rhenish mansions built by fathers-in-law and grandfathers-in-law.

  Besame's mother was, to be sure, de classée in Milwaukee and the arrival of a fairy princess daughter, just eight months after her nuptials were solemnized, did nothing to further Lillian's social position.

  So Besame had grown up a lonely, only child, with her mother's dogs, two pekes named Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu for playmates and with her mother and the servants to keep reminding her that she was a fairy princess. The legend grew. Preening in silks and satins, the most opulent that her father's fat fortune and her mother's tiny taste could buy, the child Besame lived in a world of storybook fantasy. It was almost too easy. The little ermine coat, the chinchilla hat and muff, the blue velvet with real sable collar and cuffs—were these not the trappings of a true princess? And how perfect the setting—the Bessamer's Frankenstein Castle of a house with its stained glass, its antlers, its grotesque carvings, the fake Louis IV furniture which her mother had installed here and there among the established General Grant, Art Nouveau and Mission pieces of the Bessamer family—for a little princess.

  Thus the first five years of Besame's life were spent toeing daintily among the monstrosities of the Milwaukee schloss, dressed in incredible clothes and being alternately imperious and cuddlesome with the servants, her mother and her father, all of whom assured her every half hour that she was the most beautiful, most intelligent, most gifted, most adorable little fairy princess in the whole, wide world.

  Nor did rejection at kindergarten do anything immediately to shatter the grand illusion. Even at five, Besame had been too tactful, too regal, to take the subject up with her mother. But she had mentioned it to her nurse, who mentioned it to the cook, who confided in the parlor maid, who whispered to the tweeny, who could never keep anything from the chauffeur, who was the gardener's cousin and they all came up with the same verdict: "Those girls are just jealous of Baby Besame because she's a real fairy princess.” That had seemed enough for the time being, and even though Besame had been hurt and mystified that her classmates had not immediately become her courtiers, she was satisfied to believe that envy was all that kept them away.

  Meanwhile she worked hard at being the prettiest, brightest, most talented pupil in the class and her teacher thought that little Besame was enchanting, in spite of that unfortunate mother to whom she penned a carefully worded note suggesting that serviceable serge might be better adapted to the sandbox and the finger paints than pleated taffeta.

  Besame's mother was not a bad mother; neither was she a good one. Being as lazy as she was sentimental, she was as neglectful of her child as she was overindulgent, but in fits and starts. She bore no rancor toward the frosty brewers' wives who had refused to accept her into their dismal milieu. They had bored Lillian after two minutes and she was delighted not to be one of them. Lillian had achieved what she had set out to achieve—a rich husband and an heir to cinch the will.

  She was perfectly happy to loll on her gilded chaise longue and have lengthy telephone conversations with Ruby and Belle and Tootsie—all friends from humbler days. And once or twice a week, she was even happier to dress herself to the teeth and be driven to the wrong side of town to exhibit to her old pals the spoils of matrimony—the limousine, the mink coat, the new jewelry and Besame. A good time was had by all.

  But when Lillian first sensed that her child was not being asked to nice birthday parties, and that no nice children were coming to Besame's parties, she laid aside the Photoplay and the True Romances long enough to do what any mother ought to do—to establish her ewe lamb socially.

  This was the final disaster.

  Besame, an oversweet confection in tulle and ribbons and rosebuds, was packed off with the nurse and the chauffeur to pass long and squalid afternoons with the uncouth offspring of Ruby and Belle and Tootsie in their sordid flats and bungalows. The twain did not meet. The children of Ruby and Belle and Tootsie were either awed speechless by the splendor of little Besame or violently resentful. The servants, being servants, were horrified that their fairy princess should be forced to profane so much as a patent-leather slipper on the domestic Oriental rugs of Lillian's friends and they took no trouble to disguise their indignation from Besame; first the nurse, then the cook, then the parlor maid, then the tweeny, then the chauffeur, then the gardener. Thus the child found no niche other than the one in fairyland and she set about portraying her role even more ardently.

  But Besame was nobody's fool, and although she went on acting the fairy princess part for herself and her contemporaries, she began to get the impression that while she was divine, her mother had feet of clay right up to the waist. Little snatches of conversation overheard at the dentist's, at dancing school, at the riding academy, at the class play in which Besame had starred, naturally, as the fairy princess made everything fairly clear. "Such an enchanting-looking child! If only her mother weren't so common!" "Of course her father is a Bessamer, but the mother!” "A darling little girl, but with that mother I really wouldn't want Gretchen to play with her.” And from casual eavesdropping upon the grumblings and mutterings of the Bessamer servants—the tone of which was what-can-you-expect-from-a-woman-of-that-class—Besame got the breezes.

  If Besame was hurt or shocked—and, in fact, s
he was—the hurt and the shock were only in terms of herself and neither lasted long. As a fairy princess, Besame found it irritating to be morganatic, but in no way her own fault, Lillian, she decided, was just one of the cares that wait upon a crown. And since Besame loved no one, it was quite easy for her to look at her mother objectively and to profit from her mother's myriad mistakes.

  From that day forward, Besame went systematically about being as different from her mother as possible. To be as brunette as Lillian was blonde, to be as willowy as Lillian was plump, to be as dulcet as Lillian was shrill, to be as conservative as Lillian was flamboyant, these were the goals of the fairy princess. Besame even hated beer; not because it was the bread and butter of the Bessamer family, but because her mother's bathroom was piped for hot, cold and lager, and Lillian turned on the lager more often than the water.

  And so until she was ten, Besame lived her solitary royal fantasy, hating her mother for being what she was; hating her father for having married her mother; and hating the rest of rich Milwaukee for hating her. It was only Uncle Norbert who proved to Besame that life was more than beer and idyls.

  Mr. Norbert Bessamer was Besame's father's older brother and the crown prince of the brewery. But Uncle Norbert had abdicated in favor of his younger brother years before. Uncle Norbert did not like Milwaukee, nor did Milwaukee care for Uncle Norbert. Uncle Norbert referred to himself as esthetic, Milwaukee called him la-di-da. Milwaukee thought of itself as vigorous, Uncle Norbert spoke of it as barbarous. Their final separation, hastened by Uncle Norbert's ill-advised seduction of a bellhop in the Schrader Hotel, came to everyone's mutual satisfaction.

  Uncle Norbert was far happier in places like New York and Paris and Capri, where he toyed with his collections of Faberge, Bach and boys, with all the benefits and none of the worries of owning a large brewery. Only a matter of the most pressing importance could lure him back to Milwaukee and Besame had reached the age of ten before such a matter had called Uncle Norbert back to a full-dress Bessamer board meeting.