“That’s why I advised a Reno divorce,” he went on. “I felt it would be better for all concerned.”
It was decent of the old bastard.
“Mr. Flanders?”
I gave another grunt.
“Mr. Flanders, divorce is a sideline with me and it’s something I’m not particularly fond of. I’ve sounded out Mrs. Flanders and I’m quite certain she’d be willing to try a reconciliation if you’d meet her halfway. She’s coming to my office early this afternoon and I thought that if you’d drop up to the office it might work out for the two of you. I may be costing myself a fee but I’d rather see it turn out that way.”
He said some more things that I didn’t listen to. I gave the notion a whirl in my mind. I’d wanted a reconciliation; hell, I would have given my right arm for it. Lucy and I together could push all the bad part out of the way and start fresh. Maybe we’d even have a kid this time—that might be good for us both.
“Mr. Hardesty?”
“Yes?”
“Where’s your office?”
He said it was way downtown in the financial district. I thought about going all the way down there, thought about getting out of bed and changing my clothes and taking a subway downtown and walking around and …
“Hell with it,” I said. “Let her get the divorce.”
And I hung up on him, too.
Gee, I thought a good half hour later, it’s a shame that lawyer couldn’t have brought Lucy over to the hotel. Then the two of us could have gotten together and everything would have been sweetness and light again. Funny how little things like the location of a law office can make all the difference in the world.
Yeah.
Funny.
Real funny.
Like a rubber crutch.
Like a wheelchair without wheels.
Funny. This is the way your mind works during a seventh grade hangover. Not that I spent all my time on such trivia as the way my life was going. I took a good hour figuring how many shots could be poured from a fifth of liquor, how many shots if the bartender was shorting you and giving you one-tenth of what you should have been getting, how many if he was filling the glass the same amount over the line.
Now these are important questions and I had to give them a great deal of thought. I gave all sorts of important questions a great deal of thought while the time crawled by on little cat feet, and I went on sitting and thinking and, occasionally, smoking, went on in this manner until it was midnight and I was tired enough to sleep.
This may be hard to believe. It should be hard to believe unless you have had the privilege of living through just this variety of hangover. But I actually sat in that chair for better than fourteen hours and did nothing more active than smoke.
Well, I made a few trips to the bathroom. And there was one time when I stared out the window at a woman who was parading around half-naked. But only for a minute or two because I remembered my last experience at window-peeping and decided it wasn’t worth it.
Fourteen hours.
It seems impossible. In retrospect it seems thoroughly impossible because, looking back on it, it seems as though I didn’t even do much thinking during that time. I should have taken notes but it didn’t seem to be worth the effort at the time.
At midnight I went back to bed, my stomach empty because I hadn’t eaten anything, my body ready for sleep more because of the weakness caused by lack of food than because of any tiredness or desire for sleep. But I went to sleep quickly and slept very soundly for eight solid hours. If I dreamed any dreams I cannot remember them.
When I woke up I felt as though I could eat a horse. Or a box of candy.
I got undressed—I never did manage to undress the night before—and I took a hot shower and followed it up with a cold shower, and I brushed my teeth and shaved my beard and combed my hair and got some clothes on.
I felt wonderful. It seemed positively indecent to feel that good, but that’s how I felt.
I took the elevator downstairs and went across to the Alamo for breakfast. Chile may not sound like the most sensible breakfast in the world, especially on an empty stomach, but it was delicious and I surprised myself by downing two plates full of the stuff. I washed them down with two bottles of ice-cold ale, which sounds nauseating now that I think about it, but which was great at the time.
And then, a spring to my step and a whistle on my lips, I walked briskly to my office.
There I was informed, without undue ceremony, that I was no longer an employee of the Beverley Finance Company.
Joe Burns did the honors. Weasel-faced Joe Burns with a gigoloish moustache and a perpetual sneer. He was waiting for me like a spider for a fly, leaning against my desk and sneering at me. It was a few minutes to nine when I walked in but both he and Les were already at the office, Joe sneering and Les looking very very sad.
“You’re through,” Joe Burns said.
I must have looked surprised. I should have. I was surprised.
“Clear the bottles out of your desk and get the hell out,” he said. “Your mustering-out pay’s in the top drawer. You were a good man but you sure went to hell in a hurry.”
I also left Beverley in a hurry. There was nothing in my desk that I wanted except for the pay; Joe and Les could fight over the nearly-empty bottle of rye in the bottom drawer. I didn’t want it any more than I wanted the picture of Lucy that still reposed in its cheap metal frame on the top of my desk.
So out I went from the office. So down I went in the elevator. So back I went to my room.
To brood.
There was plenty to brood about and if I hadn’t felt so god-damned great that morning I really would have felt terrible. God knows there was plenty to feel terrible about. No wife, no woman, no job.
But things didn’t seem that bad. I had been pulling down around two hundred a week for some time now with no expenses outside of food, liquor and rent. I had a lot of money in my wallet and a lot of money floating around the room so I could get by for a while without working. I couldn’t live like a king on the dough I had but I wouldn’t starve either, and if I felt like it I could get unemployment compensation. For that matter I could get another job on a moment’s notice. Legit loan sharks are like used car salesmen—they spend their lives floating from one outfit to another and they don’t need glowing recommendations from former employers in order to get work. Both businesses are too much on the border between respectability and thievery for employers to care much about their workingmen’s characters.
So, a member of the ranks of the unemployed after years of job-job-job, I felt positively great.
So great that the Candy problem seemed to be no problem at all. Hell, I was a reasonable man. The world was a reasonable world.
Why shouldn’t the dyke be a reasonable dyke?
Why indeed?
It seemed simple. I would get hold of the dyke, get her off in a corner somewhere and explain to her just how much I needed Candy. I would also tell her that her sex life was twisted and convince her of the error of her ways. She would break down, cry a little, give Candy back to me, and go out to find a man and raise a family.
I would snarl a little at Candy, get her to beg me to take her back, then pet her and kiss her and slip her a quickie on the rug or something. Then we would be thicker than thieves and life would be a bowl of cherries again.
Simplicity itself. I gave myself a mental pat on the back for being such a logical member of the human race, able to view the world and its problems with enviable objectivity, clear-headed and always on hand to come up with the right solutions to any pressing difficulty.
Shrewd old Flanders.
Sharp thinker.
Cool-headed bastard.
One in a million.
Great guy.
Genius.
Double genius.
Genius in spades.
I got carried away at this point and delivered a weird monologue on the way down in the elevator, informing the elevator o
p what a lucky Joe he was to have me in his car. He must have figured I was stoned again because he nodded very sagely and didn’t open his mouth.
I walked to the dykery, my own private name for Candy’s current love-nest. I passed all the bars and remembered the time I had passed them before and the trip back when I hadn’t passed them. That was the beauty of it—I could remember the whole scene, the whole evening, and I found the House on 53rd Street without any trouble.
I took the elevator to the fourth floor this time and found Apartment 4-B without any trouble. I stood outside the door for a minute, getting myself ready for the master salesmanship pitch, and then I buzzed the little buzzer.
The door opened.
Chapter Eight
I’D HAVE FELT a lot better about the whole thing if she hadn’t been such a damnably attractive woman.
Black toreador pants were tight on her slender legs and tighter still on her hips and tail. She had the right type of figure to be wearing them as well as the right sexual outlook on life and they looked fine.
She also had the right build, or lack of it, to be wearing a man’s shirt. This particular man’s shirt would have been out of place on any man unless he was as queer as she was. It was pale green and it was tucked neatly into the pants which were secured by a yellow alligator belt. How the devil they got that belt will ever remain a mystery to me. When did you last set eyes on a yellow alligator?
The shirt had a button-down collar and I was willing to bet there was a button in the back as well. She came on real ivy league, even to the dirty tennis shoes on her little feet. Her eyes peered at me through severe black glasses. The eyes were a pale blue, the shade they call steel-blue. The look she was giving me was a steely one, too.
“Good afternoon, Miss—”
“Not Miss,” she said. “Mrs.”
That damn near floored me. I couldn’t picture the bloody dyke married to somebody. But you live and learn, so I said Mrs. and paused valiantly, waiting for her to come through with the last name.
She didn’t come through.
“Look,” she said, “whatever you’re selling, I strongly doubt that I want any.”
“I’m not selling anything.”
“Neither am I,” she said. “I’m neither selling nor buying, and if you’ll excuse me I’d like to shut the door. With you on the other side of it.”
I was beginning to get the idea that she didn’t like me.
“Hang on,” I said, “My name’s Flanders, Jeff Flanders. I’m a friend of Miss Cain.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I wanted to—”
“You’re not a friend of Miss Cain,” she said. “Not a friend at all. I don’t think she likes you.”
“I—”
“I don’t think she wants to see you any more.”
“I—”
“In fact,” she said, “I think I might tell you that I’d rather you didn’t see any more of Candy.”
I scratched my head. “Funny,” I said, hilariously, “but that’s what I came here to tell you.”
Her forehead squinched up and she didn’t know exactly how to react. The door opened wider and I entered the apartment; then she gave the door a shove and it closed. She waved me on inside and pointed a tired finger at a chair for me to sit in. Then she wandered over to another chair and plopped herself down into it.
On my way over to the chair I took a good look at the apartment, at least at the room I was in. This was what Candy had peddled herself to get and by the looks of things she hadn’t done badly. The room reeked of money. The carpet reached from one wall to the other wall and it was thick enough to get lost in. The furniture was so modern they must have designed it a couple of days before but it wasn’t poorly chosen. It was Swedish modern in design and it cost a fortune. That much was easy to see.
There were a few pictures on the wall, original oils that I didn’t want to recognize. Big splashes of helter-skelter color that looked like something out of a bad dream.
I didn’t recognize the pictures. But I did recognize the signatures in the lower corners of the pictures.
Mrs. Whoevershewas was rolling in dough.
“Mr. Flanders,” she said, pronouncing the name as if it was one she could easily learn to detest. “I have the feeling that you are going to pose a problem. I strongly doubt that the two of us are going to see eye-to-eye.”
I agreed with her in stoic silence.
“I’m not sure where to begin, Mr. Flanders.”
“You might tell me who the hell you are. That’ll do for a conversational opener.”
“I hardly see—”
“It’s just that I like to know who I’m shouting at.”
“Caroline Christie,” she said. “You may call me Mrs. Christie.”
That was decent of her.
“You’re here to make trouble,” she said. “Aren’t you, Mr. Flanders?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether or not you’ll cooperate.”
“In what manner?”
The conversation was beginning to get me down. “Mrs. Christie,” I said. “I want Candy back. Candy and I were together and I want her back.”
An eyebrow went up. “That’s touching.”
“I need Candy,” I said.
“You don’t need Candy,” she told me icily. “You need stuffing. You’re a unique specimen and you ought to be displayed somewhere. But you do not need Candy.”
“Look—”
She was amused now. “Do you love Candy?”
I only hesitated for an instant but that was enough for the bitch. She crinkled into laughter and smothered the laugh daintily with the palm of her hand.
“Of course not,” she said, answering her own question. “You don’t love Candy, Mr. Flanders. You couldn’t possibly love Candy.”
“But you can?”
“Hardly.” This time there was a trace of bitterness mixed with the amusement. “How in the world could I love Miss Candace Cain? She’s not the type of woman one loves, Mr. Flanders. She’s desirable and I desire her. She’s enjoyable and I most definitely enjoy her. She’s pleasant company and a tigress in bed.”
She didn’t have to tell me this.
“Enjoyable and desirable,” she went on. “But not lovable. Some people are capable of being loved; others are capable of loving. Some are capable of both. Candace Cain is capable of neither. That’s all there is to it, Mr. Flanders. You do not love her and neither do I.”
“I see.”
“Do you, Mr. Flanders?”
I gave up trying to figure out that subtlety and took refuge in lighting a cigarette. I offered her one but she took one of her own. I reached out to give her a light but she lit it herself.
“I want Candy, Mrs. Christie.”
“You want polishing, Mr. Flanders. You want polishing rather desperately because you’re quite rough about the edges. Haven’t you understood a word I’ve said?”
I must have looked blank because she didn’t wait for an answer.
“To Candace Cain,” she said, “who is of course the focal point of our conversation, only two things are of any real importance. One is security and the other is sex.”
This much I knew, too. “You figure you can give her more security than I can?” I asked. “I suppose you’re right, if you’re thinking of security in material terms.”
“Why not? That’s how Candy thinks of it.”
I nodded, agreeing in spite of myself. Caroline Christie was right on that score. Candy had strictly a dollars-and-cents mind and I couldn’t come close in that department. The furnishings of the apartment, hell, the furnishings of the living room alone would come to more than I earned in a good year.
“That’s security,” I said. “How about the other angle? You’re certainly not suggesting that Candy’s as satisfied sexually with you as she would be with me.”
Caroline Christie sighed. “Men,” she said sadly. “You’re all s
o stupid … and so proud of yourselves. If you had any idea of the pleasure Candy and I bring to each other—”
I had a good idea. I had a fire-escape memory to keep me warm.
“Men,” she repeated. “Do you actually think that simply because you possess a male organ you’re so much more skilled at pleasing a woman?”
“Why—”
“You’re a fool, Mr. Flanders. I am a woman and Candace Cain is a woman.”
I was beginning to get a little bit angry. Not everybody calls me a fool so readily. Not everybody belittles maleness so readily.
“Candy’s a woman,” I said. “I’m not so sure about you. For my money—”
“Your money? What money?”
While I was digesting that one she flicked her cigarette disdainfully at an ashtray and took up where she left off. “I am a woman and Candy is a woman,” she repeated. “Each of us knows just what caress will bring just what response. Each of us is able to bring the other to a complete and delightful fulfillment that no man could ever understand. Each of us truly understands the other’s body. Each of us … oh, let’s forget it, Mr. Flanders. You may want Candy but you don’t stand a chance in hell of getting her. Why don’t you leave now and stay away from both of us?”
I took another tack. “You said your name was Mrs. Christie,” I said. “What does Mr. Christie do?”
“He rots.”
“Huh?”
“He rots, Mr. Flanders. He rots in his grave. I assume this, that is, because I’ve never even considered exhuming his remains to determine what state of decay he is in. But it’s more than likely that he’s rotting.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t waste your sorrow on my husband, Mr. Flanders. It was his decision. He took an overdose of sleeping tablets and slept his way to his grave. You need not feel sorry for the man, no more than I feel sorry for him.”
I was beginning to get the picture. “I see,” I said. “You married him for his money and then he found you were a lesbian and it killed him.”
She laughed so hard I thought the terrible pictures were going to fall off the walls.
“Mr. Flanders,” she said finally, “while it’s hardly necessary to acquaint you with the facts, I can’t pass up the opportunity to give you a verbal face-slapping. To begin with, my husband and I were equally wealthy when we were married. My maiden name is Lipton, the Boston Liptons. So you need not say that I married Howard for his money.”
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