The Irrepressible Peccadillo

by Fletcher Flora

  “I’ve heard about her,” she said.

  “To tell the truth, we went together for a while.”

  “That’s one of the things I heard.”

  “She married Wilson Thatcher and went out to California with him. Later they were divorced, and he came back without her when he took over the local factory. Now she’s in town for a day or two, and I had a couple of drinks with her.”

  “Are you back to a couple again? I thought it was four.”

  “I had two before she came in.”

  “Oh, well, that’s all right, then. Two drinks with an old girl friend are permissible, even if it means keeping me waiting and waiting while the God-damn lobster tails get tougher and tougher, but four would be too many and not permissible at all.”

  “She asked me to buy her a drink, so what the hell could I do? I had to be courteous, at least.”

  “Of course you did, sugar, and I admire you tremendously for it. If you keep practicing, you may even become courteous enough to make a reasonable effort to come to dinner on time and things like that.”

  “Oh, hell. I can see that I made a mistake in telling you about it.”

  “Do you think so? Why? Do you think I’m being unreasonable or something? I simply can’t understand you.”

  “All I can say is, if you don’t want to be treated like a wife, you’d better try not to act like one.”

  “Now, why in hell would you make a remark like that? Have I said a single thing to justify your calling me a dirty name? All I did, in connection with the number of gimlets you had with your old girl friend, was to point out calmly that enough is enough and too much is too God-damn much. That’s all.”

  “Oh, cut it out, Sid. Please do. I’m sorry I was late, and I’m sorry I had the damn drinks with Beth.”

  “Well, now that you’re properly contrite, I may as well admit that I may have been a little unreasonable about it. I think it was mostly because you came directly home afterward and covered me with gin kisses. I got the impression that you were trifling with my affections.”

  “It wasn’t your affections I was trifling with. You wait a while until it’s a little darker, and I’ll show you some trifling you’ll remember.”

  “That would be nice, sugar, and I’m all over prickly just thinking about it, but I can’t possibly stay for it.”

  “Can’t stay? Why not?”

  “Because I have to go over to Rose Pogue’s for a conference. She and I are conducting the next session of our discussion group, you know, and tonight is absolutely the last chance we’ll have to get together and plan things. What we’re discussing now is the great religions of the world, and Rose and I are having Zoroaster.”

  “Why do you have to have a conference? Couldn’t you each just take a part and plan it by yourselves?”

  “No, no, sugar. Not possibly. We need to talk things over.”

  “Well, if you must have a conference, why must it be so late? Don’t you realize that it’s already eight-thirty?”

  “Honest to God?” Sid jumped up and tugged at the bottoms of her short shorts, which were still, after the tugging, short short. “Sugar, I simply must take a shower and dress and run. Would you mind too much clearing away the things? There are only a few, and you can simply put them in the sink and leave them.”

  “You’ve eaten only one of your tails.”

  “You may eat the other, if you wish. They’re such little tails, I’m sure you can eat three easily. You may also drink all the rest of the wine.”

  “All right. I’ll come up in a few minutes and watch you dress.”

  “You’re welcome to come up and watch, sugar, but you mustn’t touch me or make any suggestions. You know how susceptible I am, and I simply haven’t the time.”

  She went inside, and I sat there and finished the white Burgundy, but not the fourth tail. It was pretty dark now, and the moon and a mess of stars were getting bright in the sky. A mosquito began buzzing around my head. I made a couple of passes at it, but it wouldn’t go away, and after a minute or two I got up and cleared the table and carried the things into the kitchen. I left the things in the sink, as Sid had suggested, and went upstairs.

  Sid was out of the shower but not yet out of the bathroom. I sat down on the edge of the bed in our room and waited for her to come out. Pretty soon she did, as brown and lustrous as a polished acorn, and walked over to the closet and took down a sleeveless dress, pale yellow cotton, that she was going to wear.

  “Sugar,” she said, “I said that you mustn’t make suggestions.”

  “Who’s made any? I haven’t said a word.”

  “It isn’t necessary to say anything. It’s your expression.”

  “Lascivious and lustful?”

  “At least.”

  “I guess I’ll have to practice a poker face.”

  “Well, I don’t think I’d want you to do that. I rather like the expression, to tell the truth. It makes me feel wanted.”

  “It’s nice to feel wanted. I wish I did.”

  “Sugar, I want you. You know that. It’s just that I don’t have time.”

  “Stay here, Sid. Please do.”

  “Sugar, I can’t possibly. Rose is waiting for me, and it’s the last time we’ll have to get ready for Zoroaster.”

  “To hell with Rose and Zoroaster.”

  “You musn’t talk like that, sugar. Zoroaster was a god once, even though no one believes in him any more, and it’s sacrilegious to curse him.”

  She stepped into a pair of white panties and slipped the pale yellow dress over her head. I watched with regret as the nut-brown body disappeared, and I wished there was time to bring it back, but there wasn’t, because of Rose and Zoroaster and the discussion group, and I felt bitter about this, somehow deprived, and I was getting lonely again.

  “Sugar,” she said, “please zip me up in back.”

  “Do you think you can trust me?”

  “I’m sure you can restrain yourself if you’ll only try.”

  “It will be necessary, you understand, for me to touch you.”

  “A slight touching probably won’t lead to anything. I don’t believe the danger will be great.”

  She backed up to me, and I zipped her up, and she walked over to her dressing table and began to brush her short brown hair with quick strokes.

  “Did you clear the table?” she said.

  “Yes. I put the things in the sink.”

  “Did you finish the wine and the tails?”

  “I finished the wine, but not the tails. One was left.”

  “You had better put it in the refrigerator, then.” She put the brush on the dressing table and shoved her feet into white flats and came over and sat down on my lap. “Sugar, I’m sorry to run. Really I am. What will you do while I’m gone?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe read. Maybe listen to music.”

  “You can think about when I get home. We’ll have an interesting time if you like.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “It’s hard to tell. Quite a while, I imagine. You know how Rose is about things. She insists upon considering every little detail that might or might not be important.”

  “Try to be back soon,” I said.

  She kissed me then, still perched on my lap, and I began to hope as the kiss went on that I might have my own way after all, but she finally pulled away just short of disintegration, and stood up, and smoothed her pale yellow skirt over her nut-brown hips.

  “You keep thinking about later,” she said, “and so will I.”

  “All right,” I said. “Have fun with Zoroaster.”

  She went out, and I watched her. Slim brown legs below the yellow skirt. Bare brown arms and slender brown neck bearing erectly her proud brown head. I could hear her going down the stairs. I heard the screen doo
r slam.

  CHAPTER 4

  Well, she was gone.

  She had deserted me without appreciable concern just when I was full of vague apprehensions and sorrows, to say nothing of gin and white Burgundy and lobster tails, and was peculiarly susceptible as a consequence to all sorts of idiocies.

  What I thought was, if a man can’t compete with Rose Pogue and Zoroaster, what a hell of a man he is. That’s what I thought.

  I had wanted her to stay, and she had refused, in spite of leers and suggestions and gin kisses, and even if I had ordered her to stay, no foolishness about it, she would certainly have refused and gone anyhow.

  If you are looking for someone with a little authority, I thought, I have as little as anyone.

  That wasn’t original. I had read it on one of these little signs that men buy for their desks. These little signs are supposed to be funny and make you laugh, but I wasn’t amused. I was sad and lonely and at odds ends.

  I got up from the bed, where I was still sitting after being kissed and deserted. Sid’s short shorts were a bright little pile of cotton on the floor where they had dropped after slipping over her nut-brown hips and down, down, down her nut-brown legs. I picked them up and put them on the bed and went downstairs and washed and dried all the things I had left in the sink. I put the things away in proper places and went out onto the back terrace and looked up at the moon and the mess of stars. They were bright and near now, but not so near as the cherry hearts of charcoal glowing through ash in the grill. I sat down in a canvas sling chair and smoked three cigarettes, which helped to keep the mosquitoes away, and then I went back inside and found a bottle of gin and made a batch of gimlets with Rose’s lime juice, leaving out the cucumber slices, which are only decoration anyhow, and on into the living room, carrying a gimlet in a glass, and turned on a light. I thought I might as well listen to some music, and so I went over to the record cabinet and began looking through the collection of records to see what I could find that would seem appropriate to the kind of night it was and the land of mood I was in. I am ordinarily a Haydn man, and will choose something by Haydn seven times out of ten, but tonight old Papa struck me as being a little too God-damn cheerful, and so I looked through the records until I came to Death and Transfiguration, by Richard Strauss, who was a good composer too, and I knew at once that this was exactly it.

  I put the record on the player and sat down to listen and drink the gimlet. I remember reading in the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini about how old Benvenuto went down from Florence to Naples with this certain character he knew, and afterward he said he’d never go anywhere with him again, because he was the kind of character who constantly keeps your guts in a saucepan. At least this was how it came out in translation, and I thought that it was a fine expression for a particular feeling, and this is the feeling you get when you really listen to Death and Transfiguration by Richard Strauss, especially on a night like this in a mood like mine. I drank two gimlets while listening, and then I started the record again and poured another gimlet, and I was drinking the third gimlet and listening to the largo, the very first part of the piece, when the phone began to ring in the hall.

  I went out into the hall and answered it, and a voice said, “Is that you, Gid?” and it was a voice you would instantly know if you had ever heard it before, which I had, and the last time I’d heard it, after seven years, was that very afternoon in the Kiowa Room. I had been trying not to think of Beth, and I had been doing pretty well at it, all in all, especially when Sid had been around as a distraction, but now Sid was gone, lost temporarily to Rose Pogue and Zoroaster, and Beth’s unforgettable voice had just spoken softly into my ear over a long wire, and for a moment it was just like back there before the lean years, and I had the same sharp, poignant feeling that I used to have then.

  What had Beth said? Hadn’t she asked if it was me? “Yes,” I said, “it is.”

  “I’m so glad you’re home, darling. What are you doing?”

  “I’m drinking gimlets and listening to Death and Transfiguration.”

  “Still drinking gimlets?”

  “Not still. Again. I took time out to drink a bottle of white Burgundy.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of becoming drunk?”

  “Not at all. It’s possible and even probable that drunk is what I’ll become, but I’m not in the least afraid of it. In fact, I’m cultivating it.”

  “What did you say you were listening to?”

  “Death and Transfiguration.”

  “Is that the name of a song?”

  “A tone poem. By Richard Strauss.”

  “Is that what I hear in the background?”

  “Quite likely.”

  “It sounds very gloomy, I must say.”

  “If it didn’t sound gloomy, I wouldn’t be playing it.”

  “Darling, are you unhappy?”

  “I am. I’m full of gin and sorrow.”

  “That’s too bad. I’m sorry.”

  “Be sorry about the sorrow, if you please, but not about the gin.”

  “I believe you are already drunk.”

  “That’s a shrewd diagnosis, honey. You may be right.”

  “Is Sid there?”

  “No, Sid is not here. Sid’s gone. Sid is off discussing Zoroaster with Rose Pogue.”

  “Really? A thing like that can go on forever with Rose.”

  “True. Rose is an exceptionally gregarious intellectual type. Windy is what she is.”

  “Are you all alone?”

  “Yes. All alone by the telephone. That’s from a song by Irving Berlin, who is a composer somewhat inferior to Strauss.”

  “I’m all alone too, darling. Couldn’t we get together?”

  “We could, indeed, but I don’t think it would be wise.”

  “We could be very discreet about it.”

  “Discretion is fine in theory, but in this town difficult in practice. Surely you remember that.”

  “Oh, come on, darling. Don’t be such a coward. Don’t you want to see me again?”

  “Yes, I do, and I’ll not deny it. I might even want to kiss you a few times and tell you the proper good-by that I’ve never had the chance to tell you.”

  “Darling, I wish you would. I must go away again tomorrow, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since you left me this afternoon, and I simply can’t bear to think any more about going without seeing you again first. Please come.”

  “Come where?”

  “Well, I’m staying at the hotel, of course, but I don’t think you’d better come here. Do you remember Dreamer’s Park?”

  “Certainly. How can you ask? We stopped there now and again in the past to do a little necking in the old bandstand.”

  “That’s exactly the place, darling. Wouldn’t it be exciting to meet in the old bandstand again? Like old times. I’ll meet you there if you’ll come. Will you?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “In half an hour?”

  “I’ll have to walk. It may take a little longer.”

  “As soon as possible, darling. Please hurry.”

  She hung up, and I did too, and if you are thinking that I was a damn fool, I won’t argue the point, but I would like to say at least that circumstances were extenuating, and everything, as you can see, was still working just right to come out all wrong in an afternoon and an evening and a night that were filled with the nostalgia and idiocy of going and gone. In my opinion, so far as I was involved, that damn Rose Pogue and Zoroaster were as much to blame as anyone else.

  Death and Transfiguration was out of the largo and into the allegro. I went over to the player and turned the reject dial, and the arm lifted, and the music stopped. Carrying the glass my gimlet had been in, I returned to the kitchen and found a little gimlet left that it seemed a shame to waste, and so I poured what was left into my glass and
drank it. While I was drinking it, I closed and locked the back door, and after it was drunk I turned out the light and went out of the house the front way, and all this time I was trying to do just the opposite of what I had been trying to do all evening earlier. I was trying to think only of Beth and not at all of Sid, instead of Sid only and not at all of Beth, but this did not work perfectly, of course, or even very well, for Sid is not the kind of person you can just quit thinking of in an instant, even for someone like Beth.

  Nevertheless, I kept trying, because I knew that Sid would not exactly approve of what I was doing, not, in fact, by a damn sight, and the truth was, I didn’t exactly approve of what I was doing myself, although I wanted to do it and was still feeling a little of the old ache for Beth that seven years and Sid had not quite cured. “What the hell!” I said to myself in my mind. “I am only innocently going to see an old girl for old time’s sake.”

  “Like hell you are!” Sid said in my mind to me. “You are going to see an old girl for tonight’s sake, and not so damn innocently, either, if you ask me.”

  I hadn’t asked her, but she kept telling me, and I kept trying not to listen and to think of Beth only as I walked along. Dreamer’s Park was quite a long walk away, on the other side of town, and as an aid to the exclusion of Sid, who refused to be mute or invisible, I began to remember how it used to be with Beth and me in the pre-Thatcher days, and there wasn’t really anything remarkable about it or us or anything we did, but it seemed remarkable at the time, and still did at times like now, and this is the way, to put it clearly, it was.

  Beth had been a girl around town, born there and growing up there, and I had known her since way back. She had always been the kind of girl that boys notice, even back in elementary school days when she was a very small girl being noticed by very small boys, but later, sometime in high school, she was suddenly the loveliest girl in the world. This was an opinion I shared with many others, and the truth of the opinion was something we felt instinctively and passionately, although we had never seen all the other girls in the world, or even a fair share of them. She had this pale hair and these brown eyes that seemed sometimes in the light to be almost golden, and she had a natural way of walking that some women have to learn at great expense as an essential element of their professional equipment. It is a way that is difficult and almost impossible to describe, but you have seen it in the best actresses and models, and it has in it a kind of complete grace and vibrancy that communicates itself without excessive intrusion of moving parts.