The Irrepressible Peccadillo

by Fletcher Flora

  “How convenient for you. You see how things work out, darling? It’s a law of compensation or something.”

  “Is that what it is?”

  Was it? Going was still going, but gone had come back, and I thought it might have been the law of diminishing returns. I could hear the cicadas as plain as plain, all up and down the streets of town in a thousand tremulous trees.

  “Darling,” she said, “my gimlet is all gone.”

  “They’re very small and go quickly,” I said. “Perhaps you’d like another.”

  “I’ll have another if you’ll have another with me. Please do.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’ve had three, which is one more than I intended, and if I have another it may lead to my doing what I said I wouldn’t.”

  “Getting drunk on them with me? What a charming prospect! As I recall, we frequently used to do things together impulsively that we hadn’t really intended to do.”

  “Yes, we did, didn’t we? As I also recall.”

  “Please do have another with me. Don’t you want to?”

  “Yes, I do, and I will. Damned if I won’t.”

  I went to the bar and got them and brought them back. I handed her a glass with a small bow, and our fingers touched. I sat down, and our knees touched.

  “Why have you come back?” I said.

  “Didn’t I tell you? To meet old friends.”

  “I know. Old friends in general and some old friends in particular. Am I general or particular?”

  “How could you ask? Have you forgotten all our fervid moments?”

  “I haven’t forgotten. I just wasn’t sure whether they were part of your general or particular treatment.”

  “You mustn’t be unkind, darling, even though I may deserve it. It would spoil all our beautiful memories and might even make me sorry that I came back and saw you and had these good gimlets with you. Don’t you agree that our memories are beautiful?”

  “I’m not so sure. Especially about the one of your rather impulsive marriage to Wilson Thatcher. Believing as I did, with some justification, that I was going to marry you myself, I was naturally puzzled and disappointed.”

  “Did I ever say I would marry you? I can’t recall that I did.”

  “You’re right. You didn’t. There was no specific commitment. As I said, however, there was some justification for my belief. Including a couple of rehearsals of the feature attraction, and I don’t mean the ceremony.”

  “I said I loved you, which was true, and I only tried to show it. I admit that it might have been natural under the circumstances to assume too much.”

  “My error. My only excuse is that I was young and credulous at the time.”

  “Surely you can understand why it was necessary for me to marry Wilson.”

  “Oh, surely. All that money.”

  “That’s correct. It was the money that made me. Several millions of dollars is a serious temptation, you know. A girl can scarcely be blamed for yielding to it.”

  “I don’t blame you. I concede that your decision was sensible, if not essentially pure by romantic standards.”

  “It really wasn’t much of a decision. It was just something that sort of happened. We were out dancing at this place on the highway, Wilson and I, and he got pretty well loaded and wanted to make love, and I said I was saving it for the man I married, which was almost true, if not entirely, and he said, well, let’s get married, then, and it simply seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.”

  “Thank you for the information. There’s nothing like a primary source in the study of ancient history. The rest, however, is a matter of record. So you got married by a justice of the peace, and so you went to California a week later, and Wilson became manager of the California branch of the Thatcher factory. Shirts and jeans for the general market. Uniforms made to order. I hope you were very happy.”

  “Actually it wasn’t so bad for a while, but it didn’t last too long, as you know.”

  “Three years, wasn’t it?”

  “Almost four. Wilson was unreasonable and demanding as a husband, but in the end he was quite agreeable.”

  “So I heard. No nasty lawyers. No public hangings of the wash. Just a quiet settlement between the two of you, after which you went to Mexico for a divorce. I trust that the settlement was substantial.”

  “Oh, it seemed like a great deal of money at the time, especially when Wilson might have been able to avoid giving me anything at all, but now it doesn’t seem like so much as it did then, because it’s almost all gone.”

  “So soon? What the hell have you been doing, honey? Playing the market or something?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. You know how it is when you are going different places and enjoying yourself. You become sort of careless about expenses and things.”

  “What different places?”

  “Places like Miami and Rio and Acapulco.”

  “No, I don’t know. I’ve never gone to those different places. Sometimes I go to Kansas City.”

  “They’re very expensive if you live well.”

  “It’s better to have lived and lost than never to have lived at all.”

  It came out of me just like that, just a little differently from the way it had come out of Tennyson, and I thought it was clever, because of the gimlets mostly, and I waited for some sign of appreciation, but I didn’t see any. I tried to remember what particular piece of Tennyson the line was from, and pretty soon I remembered that it was from In Memoriam, and I thought that it was appropriate, considering everything else, that it happened to be. In memoriam of Gideon Jones. In memoriam of Beth Webb. Beth Webb Thatcher. In memoriam of going and gone and never, never.

  “You’ll find things cheaper here,” I said.

  “I don’t plan to stay, darling. Only a day or two. The truth is, I really came to see Wilson. I learned that he had moved back here to take charge of the main factory, and I thought he might be willing to give me some more money. He has plenty, of course, and wouldn’t miss a little more.”

  “Have you also learned that he’s married again?”

  “Yes. Marriage is the perfect estate for Wilson. It gives him someone to bully.”

  “Don’t you think it’s possible that his wife may object to his giving money to an ex-wife with no legal claim to it?”

  “So far as that goes, Wilson himself may object a little.” She laid an index finger alongside her nose and looked at me with a sly and intimate expression. “In connection with his wife, it will be necessary to practice a certain amount of deception.”

  She drank the last of her second gimlet, and I drank the last of my fourth, and it occurred to me that there were probably quite a few people in the lounge who knew me, and some who would remember Beth, and of these there would certainly be a percentage who would recall the brief bit of pre-Thatcher history in which we were involved together. This, I knew, could be the stuff of gossip, if not of scandal, a meaty conversation piece for social gatherings, and I began to get a notion that I’d better get the hell out of there, but I didn’t want to go. What I wanted to do was stay. I had recovered a bit of gone in an hour of going, and I wanted to keep it until the last gimlet. Not that I was filled with derring-do, a rash readiness to sacrifice all for gin and old love. I was only sad. I was merely filled with aches and pains and cicada sounds. I wanted a kiss for auld lang syne and a last good-by to what would never be.

  I thought of my position in the community, and it made no difference. I thought of my duty as a husband, and I thought to hell with it. Then I thought of her to whom the duty was owed, sweet Sid in short shorts probably this instant broiling rock lobster tails or sirloin strips on the charcoal grill on the back terrace at home, a sad husband’s haven deep among the singing trees of Hoolihan’s Addition, fine homes on easy terms with practically nothing down, and this tho
ught made a difference not lightly dismissed, or not dismissed at all, for the call to Sid was not merely the call to duty, odious word, but the call to pleasure and later love.

  One clear clarion call, I thought.

  Tennyson again, for God’s sake, I thought.

  “I’ve got to get the hell home,” I said.

  “Do you, darling? How too bad. I was hoping we could have another gimlet. Why can’t we?”

  “Because, in my case, another gimlet is a myth. There couldn’t possibly be such a thing as another gimlet. There could only be gimlet upon gimlet, ad infinitum in an eternal night. Then, contradictory though it may seem, there would be tomorrow. It is the prospect of that gray tomorrow which compels me to excuse myself tonight.”

  “Perhaps tonight would be worth it. Perhaps, after tonight, all your tomorrows wouldn’t matter.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “Yes, darling.”

  “RSVP?”

  “Yes, darling. In English.”

  I stood up and looked down at her, and there she was, looking up, in her black sheath with her little black hat on her pale hair and one sheer nylon knee on top of the other. It was a time of trial, I mean, and I was a long way from feeling full of beans and certitude and holy resolution. What kept me clean for the moment, I think, was only a curious lassitude. Smiling, she lifted her glass to her lips, but the glass was empty. The gimlet was gone, all gone, and I was going.

  “Mr. Gideon Jones begs to be excused,” I said. “Thank you so much.”

  She smiled and shrugged and set down the empty glass. “No matter, darling. Tell me good-by and run along home.”

  “I’ve already told you good-by. Seven years ago.”

  This was the gimlets talking again, but I thought it was a perfect exit line, spoken with restraint and salvaged dignity, and so I turned and walked away before I could say something else to spoil it, and there by herself at a table near the door was one of the ones who did indeed know me and Beth and our brief bit of pre-Thatcher history. Her name was Sara Pike, thirty and thin and slightly sour, and she was watching me with that carefully composed expression which can somehow be more of an indictment than a salvo by a Savonarola or even a Billy Graham. There were several packages on the table in front of her, surrounding something with a cherry floating in it, and she had obviously stopped in for a drink after shopping before going home. She smiled at me, but she didn’t mean it. She nodded and said hello, and I said hello right back with a composure that was, I hoped, equal to hers.

  “Isn’t that Beth Thatcher you were talking with?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s Beth.”

  “How nice to see her after all this time. She looks hardly a day older, does she?”

  “That’s because she’s been living well in different places like Miami and Rio and Acapulco.”

  “Really? I must go over and speak to her.”

  “You do that. I’m sure she’d be delighted.”

  I considered that I’d handled that minor incident with admirable deftness too, and there was an element of pride in my sadness and sense of loss as I hit the street and headed home. In fair weather, for the sake of exercise, I make a habit of walking. This morning I had walked to town from home, and now I walked home from town. It was quite a way and took quite a while. It was pretty late when I got there.

  CHAPTER 3

  I went in the front door and through the house and out the back door, and there on the little flagstone terrace was Sid. The sun was down, but there was still plenty of light left to last another hour, and Sid was standing there in this late, soft light in her short shorts with her back to me. She was intently watching the cherry-hearted bits of charcoal in the grill, and on the round rack above the coals, pushed back to the perimeter off the rising heat, were four small lobster tails with skewers stuck through them lengthwise to keep them from curling up. There was also a little pan full of drawn butter, in which the tails were to be dipped when eaten.

  In short shorts, approached from behind, Sid is delectable, to say the least, and my normal reaction to her, when I am the one approaching, is organic and emphatic, but in this instance the reaction was somewhat qualified by a kind of subtle pathos that may have been more a subjective matter of me and gin than any impression she actually gave. Anyhow, she looked deserted with her broiled tails and drawn butter, as if she had waited and waited for someone to come, which was true, and was now waiting on and on in the knowledge that no one ever would, which was not. The cicadas were raising hell in an oak, and I felt like a son of a bitch.

  Crossing the terrace to where she was, I exercised a husband’s prerogative and took a mild liberty with the near half of her compact bottom. She turned her head and looked up at me without speaking, and I kissed her, and we decided to hold the kiss for a while. Then she sighed and leaned against me, and I could hear her sniff. “Where the hell have you been?” she said.

  “I stopped in the Kiowa Room and had a couple of drinks.”

  “They must have been big ones, the time they took.”

  “Not so big. As a matter of fact, I had four.”

  “The thing I like best about you, sugar, excepting a talent or two that I’m too proper to mention, is that you tell the truth under only the slightest duress. You smell like a gin mill.”

  “I drank gimlets. Gimlets are made of gin.”

  “I know, sugar. And lime juice and a slice of cucumber. You taste like gin too. I love gin lasses. Will you give me another?”

  I gave it to her, and we held it again between us, and she raised herself on her toes to get closer to it.

  “I was wishing you were dead,” she said, “but I take it back.”

  “That’s all right. It would be a nice evening for dying if you didn’t have to stay dead tomorrow.”

  “I always wish you were dead when you make me feel like a wife. Sometimes I curse you a little as well.”

  “Don’t you like being a wife?”

  “I don’t mind being one. I just don’t like feeling like one.”

  “What do you like to feel like?”

  “Like just now, for one thing. When you were kissing me and petting my fanny.”

  “You’re in luck. The two conditions you have mentioned are likely to recur frequently.”

  “Well, I’m pleased to acknowledge that they have in the past, and so I’m naturally hopeful that they will continue to do so in the future.”

  “Would you like me to kiss you again this very moment?”

  “I’d like for you to, but I don’t think you’d better. The last time made me pretty excited, and we might never get around to having dinner if you did it again.”

  “I could modify it a little, if you like, by not petting your fanny.”

  “No. I’d rather have no kiss at all than a modified one. Modified kisses are what make one feel more like a wife than anything else.”

  “I’ll make a note of that. Not that a note will be necessary, of course. I see that you’ve been broiling rock lobster tails.”

  “Yes. When you came, I was just wondering what the hell to do with them. They’ve been done for ages and are surely too tough to eat.”

  “Let’s try. It’ll be a challenge.”

  “There’s a salad and a bottle of white Burgundy in the refrigerator, but I don’t suppose it would be a good idea for you to drink the Burgundy on top of all that gin.”

  “Now that you’ve mentioned it, I insist upon the Burgundy. What’s so unthinkable, I’d like to know, about drinking gin and wine? Aren’t you aware that Martinis, surely among the most commonly consumed of all cocktails, are a mixture of gin and wine?”

  “That’s true, isn’t it? Vermouth is wine, and you mix it with gin to make a Martini. Isn’t it odd that I’d never thought of that?”

  “A very little bit, however. T
he vermouth in a Martini, properly proportioned, is just barely there.”

  “Well, this is just a little bottle of white Burgundy, and so I guess it will be all right for you to drink half of it after all. We can eat out here, if you want to. There’s still enough light, and the table’s all set.”

  “I want to. I’ll take up the tails while you’re getting the salad and the white Burgundy.”

  She went across the terrace and into the kitchen, and I went over to the glass and wrought iron terrace table, with two places set, and got the two plates and carried them back to the charcoal grill. I put a pair of tails on each plate and returned with them to the table. Then I went back again to the grill and put on a padded glove and got the pan of drawn butter. I was pouring the butter with a careful eye to equality into two little pots, one by each plate, when Sid came out with the salad and the wine. We sat down together at the table, and she began to transfer the salad with a big wooden spoon and fork from a large bowl to two smaller bowls, while I began to pour the wine. The wine was a good domestic brand from a vineyard in California. It was chilled just right. The rock lobster tails were slightly tough from overcooking, thanks to me, but they were good, nevertheless, because, after all, how tough can a lobster tail get?

  “Did you see anyone we know at the Kiowa Room?” she said.

  “I saw Sara Pike,” I said.

  “Was she the only one?”

  “Yes.”

  This was true, strictly speaking, for Sid had never seen Beth and didn’t know her, and she had used first person plural, not second singular, which gave me an out. That is, it gave me a chance to be evasive, a God-damn sneak, and so, after feeling for a few seconds like a God-damn sneak, I took a swallow of good domestic white Burgundy from California and came clean.

  “I saw someone I used to know,” I said. “Before you and I met. Beth Thatcher. Used to be Beth Webb. She was a girl around town.”

  Sid dipped a bite of tail into her little butter pot and popped it into her mouth. Chewing, she stared past me across the backyard into the gathering darkness beneath the oak, and she seemed suddenly to be listening intently to all the sounds around us.