Go Naked In The World

by Chamales, Tom T. ;

  Her makeup, which had been moderate to begin with, was completely gone now and Nick noticed the childlike quality of her face as she spoke.

  Then abruptly, unexpectedly, Nick remembered Gary from the days when he was a small boy and Old Pete had taken him on trips to visit the theatres. They had had two theatres in Gary. And Nick had a second cousin, a Stratton, that lived there and was Nick’s age. The boy’s father owned a chili-burger stand and they lived on one of those garbage-strewn streets where all the houses were tall and narrow and wooden and covered with layers of soot from the millsmoke, each house an exact replica of the next, and packed as tightly together as a freshly opened pack of cigarettes.

  “I went to St. Rita’s,” Nora was saying. “I had swiped a sweat shirt from the boys’ gym at St. Ignatius across the street. That’s what I sold newspapers in,” she said plaintively; perhaps ashamedly, Nick thought. “That sweat shirt came almost down to my knees, and the other girls used to razz me about it. But it was so warm. I think I was only about eleven then.”

  Nick smiled a wounded smile thinking for a moment of all the advantages that he had had, was now for a moment awkwardly ashamed that he had had those advantages, as he suddenly plainly visualized the beautiful child of her standing on the street corner in the cold ugly gray soot of Gary and hawking her papers. Gently he raised his hand and took hers and held it.

  “How did you ever manage St. Mary’s?” he asked her.

  “Well, to begin with, we were strict Catholics. Really strict, Nick.” He was still sitting on the edge of the bed and he lighted a cigarette for her and for himself. “Dad had that immigrant urge to get me ahead. You know how that is. Of course he was always disappointed that I wasn’t a boy, but he still wanted to make the best of what he had. As the country grew out of the depression he prospered a little by selling numbers tickets on the side. He was very close with his money and saved. He was very close to the parish priests. Practically all the priests bought their papers and tobacco from my dad, and one of them had gone to Notre Dame. To my father Notre Dame was the epitome of life itself. His only real weakness was betting on Notre Dame at fantastic odds. Well, I couldn’t very well go to Notre Dame and I guess the way he saw it St. Mary’s was about as close as you could get.

  “I worked one year after I got out of high school and saved so I could have the proper clothes. But Dad had enough to send me through as well as most of the girls that were there. But it took every dime he had, and then some, I found out after he died.

  “I learned a lot there. I mean about things that a young girl with my background would want to learn. And I studied hard. Not so much out of curiosity, I don’t think, but more or less in payment to my father. He thought that what you really got out of a school like that was reflected in the grades you received.

  “God, it’s been ages since I’ve talked this much,” she said. “How about some breakfast, Nick? Let me fix us some breakfast.”

  “I was very lucky meeting you last night,” Nick said. “Damn lucky,” he spoke softly. There was a kindness and tenderness in him now that she had recognized momentarily earlier in their love. But now she was more aware of it, and the contrast it was to the gruffness of his exterior; the tight wired way that he had been the night before, first at Hy’s then again a little later at the Celebrity Club.

  “How about it?”

  “Well, I’ll start out with some eggs if you can arrange that,” Nick said. “I think I know what I’d like later, too,” he grinned lowering his eyes slightly from her eyes.

  She laughed: “I think that can be arranged.” She began to get out of the bed.

  “You’re some woman,” he said. “You’re spoiling me rotten.”

  “I’d like to spoil you. Not rotten, though,” she said. “There’s some of my husband’s pajamas in that bottom drawer, if you want.” She was slipping into the white negligee. “And slippers in the closet.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll just put on my pants if that’s all right.”

  “Feel at home, Nickie,” she came up to him and patted and kissed him, and then he held her and kissed her long and hard. And she left and went down the hallway toward the kitchen.

  A few moments later Nick wandered out into the living room, replenished his still half-filled glass with fresh ice from the portable bar, and momentarily browsed. The living room had a very high ceiling compared to the hallway and bedroom. It was a richly furnished room thickly carpeted. It had an immediate effect; the effect of comfort and good taste in a conservative modern way. There was a long wide couch deeply soft and well pillowed, cheerfully brightly colored in contrast to the plain carpet. And two large comfortable matching occasional chairs, covered in a rich chartreuse, and one wingback chair. There were bookshelves in the vacant wall areas and the studio windows were longly draped in a rich fabric that Nick could not identify but was immediately aware of its thick, expensive elegance. And at the far end of the room was a marble fireplace and over the fireplace was an oil of Nora in a white strapless summer frock.

  There was something about the painting that struck Nick as being immediately wrong, that he did not like, and he stood there a long while trying to place what it was. It was not in the eyes, as he had thought at first, though they might have something to do with the overall effect. The eyes in the painting were slightly green, not the real color of her eyes, and they were narrower than they should have been. But it was in the mouth that the artist had apparently failed. There was something about the mouth that was slightly twisted in the painting, as if Nora had been chewing on something, or was hungry, or—he just couldn’t place exactly what it was.

  Standing there still searching the painting Nick began to feel the tiredness seep into him, felt the ache in the back of his legs, felt suddenly the weight of his spinal column and the effect to keep it straight, and knew that now too his mind, as his body, was tired and dull and not as quick as it should be. Then from the kitchen he smelled the frying bacon and he was overcome by an almost ravenous hunger.

  She served him in the small dining room off the living room. He ate his first plate of softly scrambled eggs and bacon hurriedly and she scrambled three more eggs for him. He consumed the eggs and altogether four slices of toast and three glasses of milk and did not feel overly filled. Then she served coffee and brandy.

  It was really a very homey affair, Nick thought, as if they had known each other for years. Perhaps were even married. She took pleasure in serving him, he realized. But what struck him oddly was that it seemed the pleasure of a little girl who was playing house. He poured a little more Courvoisier into his coffee, feeling already the effect of the first brandy and coffee, and no longer feeling quite the tired ache in the back of his legs nor the weight of his spine. Then she motioned for a little more brandy in her cup.

  “You drink well,” he said.

  “I practice all the time,” she smiled that slightly plaintive little girl smile. The smile which horrified while it fascinated Nick; the way it so suddenly voided her of her womanliness. She sipped on her coffee. Then, in a serious, mature way. “What are you going to do now, Nick?”

  “Today?”

  “No, silly,” she laughed. “Today you’re going to sleep. I mean now that you’re home from the war.”

  “I wish to Christ I knew,” he said. Then he went on to explain to her how he had been in the country for over a week and still hadn’t notified his parents, and how it had been his intention not to go home for several days after he had arrived in Chicago, maybe not go home at all. He still could not explain the exact why of not wanting to go home, and she did not press the question and seemed in some way, he thought, to understand.

  Then she told him how she had met her husband while visiting a school friend of hers in Chicago during the Christmas holidays her last year at St. Mary’s. He was an insurance broker, a friend of the girl’s father, and considerably older than she. They were married right after commencement that year. She was twenty-one then
and he was forty-three. He was fairly well-to-do and she had lived a good and not unhappy life, unexciting, until he had died suddenly and unexpectedly a year and a half to the day after they had been married.

  “Accident?” Nick asked.

  “Heart attack,” she said her voice quivering slightly. She did not mention to him what had caused the heart attack and for a moment she thought she would become hysterical just thinking about it; thinking too of the sanitarium.

  “A little brandy, please,” she asked Nick.

  Quickly he poured it for her, and picked up her cup and held it for her while she drank.

  “You tired?” he asked her.

  “Oddly, no,” she said, recovering her composure remarkably quickly. “Are you?”

  “I ought to be, but I’m not either. Really.”

  After that they went into the living room and had more coffee and brandy, listening to the radio and smoking, and they began to feel once again that strange attraction that as yet they had not been able to even partially gratify; the exciting way it was with them, he had decided later, not only because of the wanting-to-please but because neither seemed to have any fear of the wanting-to-take for the self, selfishly. That was what really had made it unusual, after they had made love once more ragingly on the living room couch.

  After that they slept. When he woke up she was not there and he vaguely remembered having heard the phone ring. There was a note on the night stand. It had been written, it said, at four-thirty that afternoon. She had been called away unexpectedly and would be back around eight. And to be sure and wait. There was a key on the night stand in case he wanted to go out for a while.

  Still sleepy, slightly hung over, he took another shower; cold this time. In the shower he vaguely recalled having half-heard her speaking to someone named Clare on the phone. And remembered Nora trying to get out of whatever it was, but finally she had agreed and said she would be over in half an hour. Or was it an hour. Then he wondered if he had really overheard the conversation, or if there had been one. Jumbled up as it was he decided to junk trying to recall whatever it was. Probably a dream.

  Before they had gone to sleep they had agreed it was really very foolish for Nick to be paying room rent at the Blackstone, conditions being what they were. He dressed and went over to the hotel and picked up his things and checked out. He had two martinis at the hotel bar and took a cab back to Nora’s. It was a little after eight-twenty when he returned. Nora was home, soaking in the bath.

  After an affectionate, almost husbandly greeting, he sat down on the bathstool: “You must be tired,” he said.

  “I had about five hours,” she said. “I really don’t need much more than that.”

  “Did I hear you on the phone?”

  “Yes. It was a friend. We had plans for today. I’d forgotten and it was difficult to refuse.”

  “A date?”

  “No. A girl friend. Did you sleep well, Nick?”

  “Fine,” he said. “What would you like to do?”

  “What would you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. Their eyes met for a moment, then his shifted. “You have a fine body.”

  “I like you, Nick.” And she did too, she thought. Was really very attracted to him, she realized now that she had seen him again. She liked the driving animal quality that he had, and the wild, outraged almost, and violated way he would make you feel sometimes; it permeated you not only from the often almost violent primitive way that he would look but from the almost violent and primitive way that you knew was real and inside. There just wasn’t anything passive about him. And that was it. It was one thing, Nora knew, that a woman hated in a man more than anything: Passivity. Women, most all women, spoke of man’s harshness, his injustice, his parsimony, and his tyranny as being his chief deficiencies. But they weren’t. She knew better than that. She had whored long enough to know that. What a woman really detested in a man, no matter what they said, was his passivity. His overdependence. Or meekness. Or neglect. Or indifference.

  Nick was vain. There was no question about that. Any man who thought as much about himself as he did, was as constantly inwardly concerned as he was, had to be self-centered and vain. Overly concerned with himself. His future. His past. As if the entire world revolved around him. But goddamn it, he wasn’t passive. He took time to be considerate. And really he was sweet and lovable underneath all that wired vanity and self-centeredness. It was in his very touch, in his very way, if you recognized it. It would not, she deducted, be easily recognized unless you really knew him. Or had been to bed with him. Of course, going to bed was the best way of knowing anyone—Rather, how it was after you had been to bed.

  “I like you, Nora,” he was saying. “And more than that.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “Nor you me.”

  “I think I do,” she said.

  “What did you do today?”

  She hesitated a moment: “Had a fitting.”

  He lit a cigarette.

  “Tell me about yourself. What you did in the war. How old you are.”

  The brown wetness of her shoulders and the wetness of her body suddenly reminded him of a translation of a Hindu poem he had read in Old Delhi: How water gave the nude female body an added, almost aesthetic dimension.

  “I’m very young,” he said. “At least a lot younger than I look.”

  “I’ll tell you. Twenty-eight. Not over thirty.”

  “Thanks,” he said with a finality. He had decided he’d better not tell her. “About my life? Not much to say. Born. Schooled. Armied. Almost killed. A very commonplace life these days.”

  He stood up and handed her the towel, and took another towel and did her back.

  “I’ve an idea,” she said. “We could take the car and go to the country for dinner. How would you like that?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “And put the top down.”

  “Wonderful,” he said. “Gas?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “Out north. There are some lovely places out north. West of where you live.”

  “The Villa?”

  “Better than that. You’ve been away a long time, Nickie.”

  “I used to hate being called Nickie. I like you to call me that,” he lied suddenly, in that way he had of suddenly lying. Without forethought, or malice, or intent to fool. He had been doing it ever since he was around ten, he remembered again now, still unable to even understand why.

  She dressed and he changed and they went down and picked up the car, which was a late model cream colored Cadillac convertible.

  “You drive?” she asked him.

  “Please,” he said.

  CHAPTER VIII

  DRIVING down the drive in the June night, a silver ribbon of moonglow coming straight in from far out on the lake that was dark and white-capped from the good summer wind, her arm around his arm, and the lights of the cars and the lights in the tall apartments along Lake Shore, all as he had once known it and never thought he would see it or feel it again, filled suddenly with a strange nostalgia that was strangely peaceful and serene, that for now it was not necessary to speak only necessary not to speak, to think contented and clearly for a while only those thoughts that floated up now so clean and clear and undirected, facing them for once as they came and were, unhindered, unhindered by his own choice of thought, or anxiety, of the militant way he had acquired of directing them—

  thinking that

  the lights of this world had never been turned off and they would never know the darkness of the city at war

  up ahead was the Edgewater Beach Hotel somewhere and soon you would see it and it would be all flood-lit imposing and regal

  remember how you had always make-believed when you were a little boy that it was a castle and that someday you would conquer it and hang your own flag from atop its tower and order your fleet to anchor off its shores.

  had they begun
training him for it even then

  even before the great battle of the Dunes, the battle of Wizenburg’s eye

  was the present mistake the result of the past sin or was it a sin if you did not know

  but when the castle was his when the flag waved up there and the fleet was anchored offshore there would be a new domain that would be ruled just and fair and there would be happiness in the land.

  somewhere up ahead near the shore was his house and the lawns would be green now and the tall trees lush and Simplex the mighty German Shepherd dog would be sitting peacefully on the steps

  would he remember him

  he would be old now old and scared and still Nick-would-bet there would be that kindness in his eyes

  that was a real dog

  like his father Schnapps the one they had before him

  and you and Pierro fighting in the dusk the day that Schnapps was killed Pierro so much older than you and bigger than you and tougher than you

  the blood pouring from your nose and mouth and Pierro on top of you pounding and yelling say it say it there-is-no-dog-heaven say it say it Nick there-is-no-dog-heaven Nick say it

  there is there is kill me you rotten sons-a-bitch kill me but there is

  there is you sick syphilis sons-a-bitch there is

  and Old Pete saying how I’ll kill you kid what you said you should be ashamed to talk to your family your blood that way you crazy kid what have I done to deserve this crazy kid that hurts his own name and Oh My God believes in heavens for dogs

  that goddamn Mary and her Catholic ways Oh my God a heaven for dogs Old Pete raves

  what kind of a son you got woman what kind of a son have you raised Oh God what have I ever done to deserve this

  disgrace upon disgrace

  Come Pierro we take a ride and we forget that crazy kid and his crazy ways

  the Catholics are ruining the world I say beware of the Catholics Pierro kid behind those Roman walls evil is hid

  You listen to Old Pete Pierro kid and I’ll teach you of dollars remember you’re a Greek kid