Vicki’s voice? “Pete, for God’s sake, don’t go out. You’ll be picked up. Pete—”
I turned to look at her, but she wasn’t there. It was dim again, and I was looking at a door. The outside of a door.
I turned around and saw a light, a street light, shining over the Merc. Somebody said, “Home for Christmas? What Christmas?”
I looked at a light and it was red, and I was sitting in the Merc waiting for it to change. This part they couldn’t accept later. Takes better orientation, better concentration, better continuity of thought than I could possibly have summoned at that time, in this state.
I know the Merc, and the Merc knows me. I know the town. I knew where I wanted to go. I wanted to go home, home to my brother, and there wasn’t anybody or anything going to prevent that.
With my people, I had to be with my people. My family, my blood, my own.
Green lights and red lights and Christmas lights, and Pete coming home, the prodigal son.
An amber light, caution, slow down, yellow light. Yellow. The only thing we have to fear is fear. I’d been eleven when he’d said that.
A green light; Pete’s coming home, open the door, open your arms, open your hearts to this slob.
Up the driveway, and here was a knob in my hand, a doorknob again; I was home. Into the entrance hall; where were my people? Were they out?
I walked across the hall to the living-room, and there they were playing cards, and pausing to look toward the doorway. My people—Nick and Chris and Paul, cozily playing cards.
I swayed—and crashed.
“Heaven only knows why he put it in the pocket of his jacket. Burned out in there and through to the lining. Yes, marijuana. Not completely that, no, though I’m only guessing so far. Delirium is no disease, you know, but a symptom complex and I’m not prescribing a particular treatment until I can get a complete diagnosis. Could be infectious, toxic, traumatic—I know, Mr. Arnold, but we have to wait. If you’ll pardon me, please?”
B1 salt capsules, water, water, water, more salt.
“A delirium might, for example, release a latent schizophrenic or manic-depressive tendency. Doctor Delavarun should be consulted I feel sure.”
“He’s looking better this morning, isn’t he, Pop?”
I opened my eyes and smiled at Chris. “Hi.”
“Hi, Pete. Hey, hello!” The clean grin, the white teeth, the crew cut.
“Did the Bears beat the Lions?” I asked him.
“Yup. Play-off, here with the Rams, Sunday. Hey, Pete, you still nuts?”
“Chris!” Nick’s voice was sharp and I looked at him.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m not nuts any more. Hello, Nick.”
“Hello,” he said. “You called me ‘Father’ when you were—still delirious. Father Nick—and some things not so nice.”
“Bring in the contract, Nick,” I said. “I’m still weak. What’s been happening in the world?”
“Nothing good. I’d better call your brother. He’s been worrying about you. And your sister-in-law. She’s sure a honey.” He went out.
Chris came over to sit on the bed. “Think you’ll be all right by Sunday? I’d like to see that Ram-Bear go.” A pause. “With you.”
“I feel okay. Has Ellen been around much?”
“Nights. She’s working days. At Bullock’s. For the Christmas rush. In lingerie. I mean not in it, selling it.”
She had finally amazed me. Ellen in lingerie for the Christmas rush.
Chris said, “Your brother sure picked a winner, didn’t he? Isn’t she something? So natural, so—”
“All wool,” I said. “The genuine and unadorned.”
He looked at the patchwork bedspread. “What happened to you, Pete?”
“I got unwound. The mainspring let go. Too many things happening for a man of my limited mentality. Chris, keep things simple in your life, as simple as you can.”
“That won’t be hard. I’m the simple type.” He looked up. “Paul’s the guy to take that advice.”
Paul stood in the doorway, smiling. “What advice? Hello, Pete. Everything’s all right now?”
“Fine,” I said.
He came over to sit on the other side of the bed. “Are you trying to give Meat the Word?”
“I haven’t got it,” I said. “Have you, Paul?”
He shook his head, smiling. “I know less than nothing. I didn’t even know the Rams were playing in the Coliseum Sunday. Chris was shocked at that ignorance. I’ve missed some classes, though, with the Professor. I took your advice there.”
“Don’t take my advice on the literary scene, scholar,” I said. “For all I know, Professor Arranbee is a bearded Hutchins. Writing, are you?”
“Nothing you’d want to read. What would you like for breakfast? You can have almost anything you want.”
I said I’d like some eggs, and I got them, but they were poached. Toast came with them, and mixed fruit juice, and Nick came with them, bringing the coffee.
He sat on the chintzy chair next to the bed and looked worried. “Where’d you get the reefer, Pete?”
I gave the question some thought and said, “Over at Vicki Lincoln’s. It could have been a mistake.”
His eyes locked mine. “What the hell were you doing there?”
“I’m not sure. I went there to talk to Vicki, but I got unraveled. What happened to me?”
“I don’t know. Blood, indecision, war news, alcohol—who knows what’s happening—to all of us?”
I ate some toast, rich with butter.
Nick said, “Why didn’t you take Mike along?”
“He was afraid to go there. I guess Jake’s got him scared.”
“He’s got reason to be. Jake’s normal unless he gets the screwy idea somebody’s moving in on one of his hags. Dog in the manger then. What sent you there? What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know. I’m no cop. My instincts, maybe. Thought she might know about Calvano. Was he up here for some kind of payoff, Nick?”
I looked at him as I said this, watching his face. The expression didn’t change. “No. But there’s talk going around. You know, what keeps me solid with the boys, I never play it rough unless I have to. That’s my rep. And now I’m getting out, nobody’s going to have a line on me. Nick can go clean and nobody cares. Nobody’s hurt.”
“And why do you want to go clean, Nick?” I sipped my coffee.
“Why not? It doesn’t cost me anything I can’t afford to lose. And I’m a family man. I’ve always been a family man.”
The coffee was strong and of good flavor. “And these kills have you worried. Puzzled.”
“Scared,” he said.
I put the cup on the small table and put my hands quietly on the bedspread. I looked at this two hundred and eighty pound man who’d fought his way out of Chicago’s south side to this estate in the Valley. Scared—Nick Arnold? Scared—
I said it. “Scared?”
His gaze met mine honestly. “Aren’t you?” I thought about it. And said, “I must be, the way I broke down.”
“Look at it my way,” he said. “It’s easy to keep things straight if you’ve got the money. The ones you can’t buy you freeze out. Once in a long while it needs a strong arm, but less often than you think. The lines are out to all the right places; everybody’s making money, and everybody believes in Nick. And then somebody goes nuts and starts knifing.” He paused to breathe audibly. “How do they know it ain’t Nick?”
“I see,” I said. Father Nick, and the blessings flowing out from the big take. Father Nick, to whom Pete had run in his delirium.
What strange gods are these we have created?
“Thinking, Pete?” His voice soft.
I rubbed my eyes. “And if you go straight, what happens to the lines and all the—businesses your boys have?”
“I’ve got a man to take my place, a man in Minneapolis. He’s just about got two thirds of the old business now.”
I smiled at him. “You’re national, huh, Nick?”
“Tie-ups,” he said, and shrugged. “Guys that haven’t got it and need a lay off for the big ones or the ones that look queer.” He stood up. “I’m going to get some breakfast myself. The boys will probably be through already. Pete, say nothing to Jake about being with Vicki. Jake can be—unreasonable.”
“Right,” I said, and thought of Jake’s skinny legs and his cordiality and Vicki’s plaster face.
The papers were there, one of them the Times. A display ad occupying an eighth of a page offered atomic bomb shelters for your back yard of reinforced concrete, properly domed, expertly engineered.
The navy was taking the boys off in Korea, though the loading beachhead was under constant Red attack.
I put the papers away and looked around the room. The bank of windows on the opposite wall faced out onto the patio. All the bedrooms, except for the servants, probably faced on the patio. The furniture in here was spool-bed, rag-rug Colonial, but this was only one room. The others undoubtedly showed a different motif.
Cozy, that was Nick now. Early American Nick, landowner. My fingers moved across the patchwork quilt bought with blood money. Nick having a breakfast with his two sons.
I heard steps coming along the hall and turned my head toward the doorway. A man and his woman stood there staring at me. I had never seen the man’s face this serious before, nor the woman’s this anguished.
Jake Schuster and Vicki Lincoln.
I held my breath.
CHAPTER NINE
AND RELEASED IT as Jake said, “Hot at me, Pete? I don’t blame you if you are.”
I smiled at him. “About the boat race? Nick explained it. Good morning, Vicki.”
“Morning, Pete. What happened to you?” Fast she said it, the tip-off.
“Jake gave me a cinch,” I said, “and it broke my heart. I’m just recovering.”
Her face went back to normal, her normal. And so did his.
“Aw, Pete, don’t rub it in.” They stood next to the bed now, looking down at me. “Whisky, Pete, or women?”
Did Vicki flinch? I said, “Neither. Nerves. Looks like a fine day out.”
“Great day,” Jake said. “They’ll be opening Santa Anita soon.”
Small talk, faintly formal. Light talk, while my mind wondered about Vicki. I felt unclean, thinking of Vicki. No girl had ever made me feel that way before. Had it been a dream, or had we shared it?
You couldn’t tell by looking at her.
They left after some more oral nothings, and I stretched out and arched my back and felt the old lassitude returning. Door chimes. Talk. Foosteps.
John and Martha. John looking concerned and Martha anxious. John wearing a gray flannel suit and Oxford shirt, Martha wearing the pale-green sweater and skirt again.
“Petey, baby,” and she had my hand. John looked faintly uncomfortable, but he stooped to pat my leg where it ridged the bedspread, and he smiled.
He said, “You’re going to be all right, Pete.” That made it official.
“You poor, sad sack,” Martha said. “What hit you?”
“Cheap liquor. You’ve made a hit around here, Mrs. Worden.”
“Everywhere I go,” she said, “the sunshine kid.” She sat down on the bed, still holding my hand. “Level, mug. What happened?”
“I don’t honestly know. You could ask the doctor. I had a couple drinks and a cigarette and came apart at the seams. So help me, that’s it.”
John said, “What kind of cigarette, Pete?”
A stone in a quiet pool, that remark, and the ripples danced in the room. I looked at him and saw the gravity of his face, and its coldness. It hadn’t been a question motivated by concern. It had been a judgment handed down.
“I thought it was a standard cigarette, but maybe it wasn’t, John,” I said. “Why?”
“I wondered how far you’d gone, Pete.”
“Gone down, you mean?”
He started to say something, but Martha interrupted. She said, “Wait in the car, John.”
He stared at her. She still hadn’t looked at him, and she didn’t now. Her voice was as quiet as a cobra’s glide.
“Wait—in—the—car—John.”
Flushed, he was, staring at her back. Then he turned and left the room.
Her voice was shaky. “He can get so damned stuffy. Oh, Pete—”
“Tears again,” I said, and tightened my grip on her hand. “He’s a good boy, Martha. A real good boy. Some day the world will blow up in his face, and then you can explain things to him. Then he’ll be ready to listen.”
“Then it will be too late. Oh, Pete—and you so wild. I certainly married into something, didn’t I?”
What could I say to that?
She pulled her hand free of mine. “As soon as you’re up and around, come home, Pete. I’ve got your room ready for you. You’re good company, and we want you around. I’ll see that the allowance starts again.”
“I’ll give it some thought,” I said and put a finger on the tip of her nose. “Is it bridge or canasta these days?”
“Don’t be anti-stuffy. One attitude’s as bad as the other.” She stood up and smiled down at me. “Lamebrain. Egg-head. Home for Christmas, Pete?”
“I’ll have my secretary phone you. The doctor says I’m not permitted any decisions for a while.”
She shook her head and sighed. “Well, Mr. Arnold will tell me when you’re ready to be moved.” She made a face. “As the phrase used to go, he kind of sails for me.”
I clucked and winked at her.
Pale greenness getting dimmer, and I was again alone. With my varied thoughts. Nick was scared, but he’d wanted me to quit looking. And if I looked, to take Mike along. My love at Bullock’s making the Xmas sugar. Somewhere someone laughed, a woman’s laughter. Low voices in a hum of undecipherable dialogue, and a splash from outside, from the pool. A car starting up.
I pulled the bedspread as low as my arms would reach and put my palms flat on the mattress beneath me. Cooperation from my flaccid muscles and concentration from my flaccid brain, and here I was, sitting up.
What the hell, I was well! Faint shooting pains in the skull, but I’d had those on my good days. L-shaped now, and I swung my feet around and pushed to the edge of the bed and let my legs dangle.
Here we go again, into the warring world. Up and at ‘em, kid.
I stood up. Weak, but not so weak it meant anything other than the atrophy of indolence. The pajamas must have been Chris’s; they weren’t more than a foot full or six inches too short. My feet looked wan and pale and far away.
Where was my ray-blaster? Where was my Junior G-Man badge? Where was my Hopalong Cassidy suit? This hero is ready to move.
A step. Another, and I stood at the windows. Chris was on the diving-board and his chunky body looked harder than I’d imagined it.
He backed up a few steps and took the hop and the jump and his bulk was outlined against the back wall of the garage in a perfect full gainer.
I watched him in the water, diving and blowing like a porpoise, and then heard steps behind me.
I turned to face a man I dimly recognized. “Doctor Ziegler?”
He was short and gray and compactly built. “Yes. How do you feel?”
“Fine.” I went back to sit on the edge of the bed. “And the other doctor was named Delavarun, if I remember.”
“That’s correct. I’m not sure you should be up. Get back in there while I take your temperature.”
He fussed around me in his clinical way with no bedside manner I could notice. Maybe he didn’t like working in this house. Maybe he wouldn’t add his dislike to his bill and see that his buddy got his, that noodle specialist. Dr. Delavarun should be consulted, I feel sure—Natch.
He frowned at the thermometer and said, “Almost normal.” Why should that make him unhappy? He added, “Don’t leave the house and keep warmly dressed when you’re out of bed. You’ve a fine constitution, Mr. Worde
n.”
“Me and the UN,” I agreed. “I’m not an habitual marijuana user, Doctor Ziegler.”
His smile was bleak. “Of course not. That was only part of it, Mr. Worden.” His smile was less bleak. “I’ll be on them myself before this next year is out.”
Things, it seemed, were tough all over. He left and I found a robe in the closet, and my shoes and socks, and put them on. I went down the long hall to the living-room, and heard the whine of a vacuum cleaner.
A maid was cleaning this end of the living-room. Nick sat at the other end in a huge, green leather chair, staring out the windows toward the pool. His arms were along the arms of the chair and he was perfectly motionless.
A quick, unreasonable chill moved through me, and then his heavy head turned and he was regarding me.
“Should you be up?”
“The doctor says it’s all right.” I took a chair near by.
Paul had joined Chris in the water. Slat-thin, Paul was, but he moved through the water with the easy grace of a natural swimmer.
“Good kids,” I said, and he nodded.
“Paul gives you a bad time, though. He’s young.”
“He’ll learn.” Nick’s voice was dead, his eyes weary. “He wants to sign up, too, now.”
“They’ll go soon enough, anyway, Nick. They’re in creasing the induction requests.”
“I know. I know. I want them to finish school.”
Nick turned to face me now. “Your brother left before your sister-in-law did. You two don’t get along, do you?”
“I guess not. I don’t know.” I shrugged.
“He’s owed me five thousand dollars for two months,” Nick said. “I wasn’t going to mention it to you, but—Oh, he’s so high and mighty.”
I was staring at him, and his words still rang in my ears. “John betting? On what?”
“One bet. A horse, early in the season. He doesn’t know I booked it; it was—one of my upper-class outlets. But he always paid before, and—”
“Before—” I interrupted. “John’s been betting right along?”
“For years. And always paid. Did I tell you something you didn’t know?”
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