Go Naked In The World

by Chamales, Tom T. ;

  “I think so.”

  He ordered.

  “Divorced?” he asked her.

  “My husband’s dead,” she said without trace of dramatics.

  “The war?”

  “No, not in the war.”

  “Have I ever met you before? I think I have,” he lied.

  “You didn’t go to Notre Dame by chance.”

  “Sorry, why?”

  “I knew someone that looked like a younger version of you there. I went to St. Mary’s.”

  “That’s where my little sister wants to go,” he said. And looked down at the drink in his hand and as he did so catching a quick glimpse of the long leanness of her crossed legs, feeling at once a sudden disturbance; then craftily faked a shake of his glass as if to stir his drink and caught one more glimpse. “You’re Catholic then?”

  “Bastard Catholic, you might say,” she said.

  “I wish I could say bastard like that. When I say it it sounds vulgar.”

  “I can imagine,” she smiled momentarily, then laughed a full delicious laugh.

  He took another drink, then another, feeling the drink and the excitement too, a strange excitement exclusively suited to her; then thinking again of what Hy had said: Not Nick. Not Nick Stratton. But Old Pete’s son. Old Pete’s building; Old Pete’s theatre; Old Pete’s church; and Old Pete’s wife. Not Mary Stratton; no, not even that. Old Pete’s wife and Old Pete’s son. Maybe, he thought abruptly, that’s why I liked the Army, wanted to stay in it. Because there at least I had as much identity as the next person, was maybe an expendable identity, but as least it was Nick Stratton that was expendable. Not Old Pete’s son. Though God knows had he been expended it would not have been the loss of Nick Stratton back here. It would have been Old Pete’s loss: ‘Did you hear? Old Pete’s kid got it.’ Nick wasn’t dead. Only Old Pete’s kid; the anger had mounted fully again and Nora saw the blood pounding redly in the thick veins of his neck and the slight sardonic twist of his lips.

  “Excuse me,” Nick said. “I’ll be right back.” And started for the men’s room.

  Her eyes followed him as he walked his determined bearlike walk away, his head bowed his body bent slightly forward as if he were packing something on his back, walking with a kind of angry rush, until he vanished into the crowd.

  Hy came up to her: “He’s only a kid, Nora.”

  “A pretty big kid,” she said.

  “Well, he hasn’t got anything. At least if I know Old Pete he hasn’t.”

  “I just want to have some fun, Hy.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m not working for a few days. That trip Cindy and I took to Hot Springs with those eggheads from New York turned out all right.”

  “Yeh, I heard about that.”

  “It was hardly worth it,” she half-laughed a fatalistic, cynical little laugh. “I won’t hurt him. We’ll have some fun, maybe. I need to have some fun—don’t tell him?” she asked.

  “All right, Nora. But take it easy. You know how those kids are when they’ve just come home.”

  “No, I don’t. But maybe I’ll let you know,” she saluted him with her drink.

  Hy chuckled. “Have fun,” he said. “If you change your mind, there’s a doctor friend of mine in the dining room who would like to meet you.”

  “I don’t like doctors, Hy. I mean that kind of doctors.”

  He walked away, his round red face as void of emotion as if he had just gotten up from a ten hour sleep, his mind, however, a whirlpool of vivid recollections of the few years ago when he himself had fallen in love with Nora, had even wanted to marry her after over forty years of bachelorhood, had practically begged her to marry him.

  That was after her husband had died, when she first began to come in, before she had gone to the sanitarium, and only a little while before she had completely dissipated the seventy-five thousand he had left her. As much as he had fallen for her and wanted her, he told himself again, it was a damn fortunate thing that she wouldn’t marry him considering what had happened to her in the years after that up until now. Well, you can’t win them all, he said to himself with his gambler’s philosophic attitude, and there ain’t no use in crying about what you’ve blown, ‘cause what you’ve blown is really only a figure on the percentages, which eventually must be put down anyhow if you are ever going to win again.

  Hy stopped by the entranceway and chatted for a moment with several members of a departing party, then turned and looked back at the bar. He could see Nick arguing with the bartender as he had expected him to argue with him. Outwardly Hy’s round face was an emotionless mask, but inwardly he was smiling. He walked over.

  “What’s the trouble, Nick.”

  “I can buy my own drinks,” Nick said. “I’ll take the first one. But it isn’t right, you buying all the drinks,” he persisted. He was holding a twenty in his hand.

  “What the hell,” Hy said, “you don’t come home from a war every day. I’ll make it back on you.”

  “Keep your money, Nick,” Nora said. “You might not get this chance again for a long time.”

  Nick stared at her for a second, then looked back at Hy. Then Nick put the twenty in his pocket, pulled out a ten, set the ten on the bar: “For the bartender,” he said to Hy half triumphantly.

  “Thanks Nick,” Hy said.

  “Thank you, Major,” the bartender said.

  “We’re going down to the South Side and hear some music,” Nora said to Hy.

  “Spade music?” Hy asked.

  “The Little Celebrity Club,” she said. “I thought Nick would like that.”

  “Thanks for the drinks, Hy,” Nick said with satisfaction and a still slight edge of triumph.

  “Good night,” Nora said.

  And Hy watched them walk away: The kid officer with the monkey on his back and the five hundred dollar call girl from the steel mill districts of Gary: What a generation this had turned out to be. Jazz. Rhythm. Beat. And war. And no longer days to remember, only days to forget. The frenzy and the easy forget provided by the Jazz, Rhythm, Beat.

  JAZZ, RHYTHM. BEAT. The Twentieth Century opium and alcohol, its sedative and purgative. And yet, Hy thought, we are still here.

  Still living.

  Still existing.

  Still prospering.

  Miracles, he half laughed to himself. The Big Guy never pulled no miracles like this one. He turned and started for the kitchen. He began to laugh inwardly. Water into wine? compared to this, this...maybe, he thought in that inarticulate way he had of approaching religion, maybe the Big Guy’s still in action but ain’t letting on.

  Somebody had to be going for them all...Somebody had to be.

  CHAPTER VII

  NORA and Nick took a cab to the South Side. The Little Celebrity Club was on South Michigan in the core of the black belt one flight down in the basement of an old brownstone three story house in a district that had, during World War I, been exclusively upper middle class white.

  The small club was jam packed tight with colored sports in all their long draped finery and their bleached blonde mulattoes, and their dyed red-haired mulatto women, their young almost teenage white women and their older more sophisticated richly groomed white women. There were few soldiers or sailors in uniform but Nick knew that there were probably many soldiers and sailors that were not in uniform.

  There were five in the combo and a black-fat white-smiling overly-madeup overly-jeweled vocalist in a green satin dress blasting: “Hey daddie I want a diamond ring, bracelets, everything...Daddie. . Daddie...”

  The crowd was stomping their feet with a wild rhythmic exaltation; exhilarating and primitively contagious.

  “Daddie...”

  The crowd interjecting:

  “Yeah Daddieee” “One mo time, babbieee...Jus one mo time.” Vocalist: “I want a diamond ring, bracelets, everything” And a roar from the crowd: “Mo.” “Once mo.”

  And they took off again.

  Nora knew the o
wner. At the least the co-owner; the truly stabilizing factor of the business, Nora had said. Her name was Bobbie: a middle twentyish mulatto woman with almost perfect Aryan features, red haired and shiny brown-skinned with the most provocatively sentient long hands Nick had ever seen, accentuated by extremely long and well-kept silver polished nails.

  There were tables around the small dance floor in the low ceilinged room and booths along the wall in back. Nora suggested they take a booth where, she said, if they hollered at each other in moderately loud voices they might be able to communicate. They ordered.

  The big-fat black woman was still whitely singing “Hey Daddie”, but a little louder now, and the combo was playing a little louder, the stomping more rhythmic and more in unison. They had their drink which was very mild. They drank quickly, then ordered another; a double this time. Finally the combo took a break. The gay room of revelers was very up now, very high, even though the music had stopped. It was several minutes before Nick could hear the lone pianist who had relieved the combo.

  “This is one place that I missed out here,” Nick said.

  “They go on until ten or eleven in the morning sometimes,” Nora said. There was an animation in her eyes now that she hadn’t had at the Four Winds, and an excited restlessness in her voice. Then her eyes began to wander and Nick was watching her, wanting suddenly to put his hand in her hair which was cut short, cropped, in a feather cut, which was the vogue. In the murky, smoky light the dark hair glistened an almost metallic blue, and the waves lay coiled round naturally. Nick could not tell whether it was a meticulously groomed head or if it had been brushed carelessly without thought or effort.

  “I used to come out around here all the time before the war,” he said to her. “To see Lionel Hampton. In fact one night I had my picture taken with him. I was very proud of that picture. But I had to keep it hidden. You see, there was a colored girl in the picture. Hampton’s vocalist. And I was standing next to her. If my mother would have ever seen that...” he smiled as if to himself.

  “I hardly knew my mother,” Nora said “Take a look at that, Nick,” she motioned. Across the room near the bandstand there were two white couples formally attired. They were obviously society, or the very very rich attempting to crack society. They looked to be in their thirties. Both women wore white ermine wraps and were very elegant but could not hide their boredom or remoteness or vast sense of superiority behind their forced smiles: To Nick they looked for all the world like the Russian aristocracy out to see a rabble terrorist strung by the neck.

  “I don’t like that brand,” Nora said.

  “I wonder how those bastards stayed out of the Army,” Nick said.

  “I wonder what they’d do in it,” Nora joked; knowing from the rigid, calculated tone of Nick’s last statement that he was becoming angered again.

  Looking at her he was forced to laugh.

  “I never thought of that.”

  The piano player was singing now:

  “I’m going down to St. James Infirmary. saw my babie there...laid out on a long white table...so cold...so sweet...and so bare.”

  A tall thin Negro came over to the table. Nick recognized him as the clarinet player. He had a small neatly trimmed moustache, wore sunglasses, and his black knit tie was hugely knotted. He said hello to Nora, then was introduced to Nick. Without invitation he floated down into a chair at their table.

  “Man,” he said, “I had to come over. I never sat at no table with no officer. And this was my chance.” His name, Nora explained to Nick, was Woodie. It was not Woodie because he played the clarinet but because his name was Woodrow Wilson Jones. He had very feminine hands and a feminine high-pitched voice.

  “What outfit?” Nick asked.

  “I trained down in Georgia,” Woodie said. “But I didn’t last so long. They say my morals and the army morals they in conflict. And they is. Thank God fo’ that. I lasted sixty-one days and that’s sixty-one days too long.”

  It was quite obvious listening to the slow way he talked and the slow easy way he motioned, that he was high. Nora touched Nick’s leg lightly, warningly. The waitress came over. Nick did not order a drink for Woodie or for them.

  “Is you one of those tough Majors?” Woodie asked. “You look like one of them tough Majors.”

  Nick looked over at Nora for a moment. She was smiling. She did not seem perturbed at being imposed upon. Nick noticed how fine her deep tan was, and the way the tiny crows’ feet spread out from the corners of her eyes.

  Bobbie came up: “What you doin’, Woodie, moving in on people like this,” she said to him. “You actin’ like one of them black southern niggers. Go on. Get. Can’t you see these people want to be alone.”

  “It’s all right,” Nick said half-heartedly.

  “That’s all right, Major. You don’t have to be polite. Not to this one. He always say he’s a white Negro. He don’t know what he is...Get,” she said to Woodie.

  Woodie began to laugh a kind of nit-wit laugh, a drooling, oafish laugh. Standing up loosely Woodie dumped his arm over sideways in a salutary farewell gesture, the arm so lax it appeared to be boneless, then grinning widely floated away.

  Bobbie watched him, chuckled a motherly little chuckle, then burst out laughing slapping her knee. “All I can say is it’s a good thing he blows that reed the way he does,” she said smiling that beautiful white Aryan smile, with absolutely no trace of apology in the smile. Then she walked away, her buttocks swaying.

  Nora and Nick were laughing too. They ordered again and the combo began to play. “You got to kiss ‘em in the mawning and kiss ‘im in the night...

  “Give him plenty of what you got and give it to him right.. .

  “Cause a good man nowadays is hard to find.. .”

  Nora was intently watching the combo, and he was looking at her. She was enjoying herself, he could tell, and the music and the place were having their effect on her. He was holding her hand now and he could feel the warm bloodrush of her wrist vein against his, the steady and warm life-giving pulsation, feeling suddenly now the intensification of his own blood pounding in his veins against hers. They sat there hardly moving for several moments, then his eyes met hers and they said to each other, without saying, what can be said only with the secret implication of the eyes, all doubly augmented by the not saying aloud, the secret exciting subtlety of not having to say it. There were so many ways to blunder it by saying it aloud. And there was no need.

  Their hands gripped tight.

  “Go?” Nick whispered a restless suppressed whisper.

  She nodded, slowly.

  It was daylight out. The sun was bright, blinding bright after the light of the club. They took a cab to her apartment on Scott. They did not speak, and did not speak on the elevator. But when they were inside, in the comfortable and rich decor of her apartment she said she would make them a drink. They took the drink into her bedroom and while she went into her dressingroom he silently undressed down to his shorts, stood there silently drinking and waiting in the half-dark of the small-lamp light of the heavily richly draped room with its wide elegant Hollywood bed. She came out in a simple white negligee so sheer that he could see the tan of her body against the white of her body. He put the drink down and kissed her, opening up the robe and pushing it off her. It fell lightly to the floor, and his head sank down to her breasts. Then she was on the bed, and he on his knees by the side of the bed, tenderly touching the smooth brown skin of her firm thighs, seeing the neat line of the brown skin as it turned to white, then a little while later he felt her quiver and moan, and later quiver again.

  With no shame, no hesitation, only initially a careful and subtle exploration, done, it seemed, with a mutual consideration and aim to please—they made love twice. Her only complaint was of the bristle edge of his beard. He made them a drink and showered and shaved and came back.

  She was sitting up in the bed with the drink in her hand, the sheet pulled up to her waist, her fine breasts pointe
dly exposed and contrastingly white against the tan of her shoulders and he could tell from the now half-serene half-womanliness of her eyes and the slight pensiveness of her smile that they were purposely exposed for him. He came over and sat on the edge of the bed, putting his left hand over her and resting it on the smooth skin indentation of the hollow above her hip. Silently, softly with a gentle motion she rested one hand up on the side of his neck, and slowly pensively her fingers moved forward and back and it was a wonder to him that she wanted him again, too.

  Then together they showered and she got back in the bed, he sitting on the edge of the bed as before, and they sipped their drinks, not seeming to care at all of the time, and he asked her things about herself and she was slightly hesitant at first, but then she began to tell him.

  She told him of her childhood days which had been spent in the steel mill district of Gary. Her father had run a small newsstand and notions store, she said, and her mother had died when she was nine. She had died in childbirth, Nora said, and her father had never married again and never quite recovered from the shock of his wife’s death. They were very poor in those, the depression years, but almost everyone was poor then; and she told him how at times, looking back, she would marvel at how they all had laughed and made jokes of their poverty.

  Nora had sold newspapers on the streetcorners from the time she was nine. In the winter she had worn boys’ corduroy pants because of the cold, and her father wouldn’t let her wear her only winter coat unless it was below freezing.

  “He had a thermometer outside the newsstand,” she half-smiled reminiscently. “We lived over the store. In the mornings, in the winter, I used to call down and ask him what the temperature was. If it was thirty-three—no overcoat. Dad was a set man. A bullhead really, Nick. But he always meant well as far as I was concerned.”

  “American?” Nick asked.

  “Polish,” she said. “My mother was French though. French-Canadian, actually. Dad migrated from a farm outside of Kiev. Actually you might say he was almost Ukrainian.”