“You don’t look like a Greek either,” she said when they were in the kitchen. “I’m not sure what you look like.”
Yvonne came down the back stairs.
“You’ve met,” she said to them. She was still red eyed.
“Obviously,” Nick said.
He was thumbing through the book of O’Neill plays Pat had been reading, sitting on the edge of the kitchen table.
“Well, do you want breakfast?” Pat asked.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I mean I’m hungry but I’ve an appointment downtown.”
“Why don’t you take Pat?” Yvonne said, being mischievous again.
“It’s business,” Nick said. “Besides, I won’t be long. Then maybe we could all go to the beach?”
“I’d like that,” Pat said. Her back was to him as she stood at the toaster. Nick was staring at her legs again.
Yvonne admonished Nick with her eyes and a shake of her head, then came over and whispered: “Don’t you ever think about anything but that?”
Nick grinned and whispered back. “You’ve got a warped mind, that’s all. I appreciate beautiful things,” he whispered back.
“She’s only seventeen, Nick.”
“You’d never know it now, would you?”
“You S.O.B.” Yvonne whispered back but unable to keep from giggling slightly.
They all sat down in the breakfast nook together and Nick had toast and coffee. They asked him about his fishing trip.
Almost reverently, he began to speak of the islands, of the solitude and beauty and beauty of creation that he had seen, speaking in a gentle, soft, modulated voice, speaking so softly that both Yvonne and Pat had to strain to hear what he was saying. It was as if, Pat thought, he had been to some earthly paradise and brought back with him a part of it, had in a sense, for a moment, transcended the alien and overwhelming power of reality and substituted in its place a reflection and humanization and rationalization, seemingly assuming that by his very rationality of all the everyday conflicts that faced man, by his very rationality of those very things all other things assumed a sense of beauty and order. It was an almost mystic dissertation, she thought, yet it seemed a mysticism held in check, as he truly did not believe it right that man should empty his heart and mind of all things as the true mystic believed, as if he believed that the heart should be full, for why empty it when it was so full of beauty and order?
It was hard for Pat to believe that she was hearing this from Nick. She had been in Chicago almost a week and had attended several of the wedding parties and everything she had heard about him was completely contradictory to the way he spoke, and the way you could feel him now. His simplicity of speech did not seem to matter. Nor did his continuous misuse and mispronunciation of words seem to count. Only that he projected, somehow, as if by some almost inaudible tone of spirit and appreciation for the solitude and beauty and order of this wilderness of nature that had affixed itself to him. He seemed to speak above them, yet to them, yet not down to them, and there was no trace of inarticulateness as if what he spoke he understood completely and that from his understanding they understood, too, some way.
To Pat it all seemed so ancient and foreign and alien to hear the voice, the feeling in the voice of the almost, she thought, Neanderthal looking head that rested on the hugely veined huge neck and the large protruding forehead and the scarred face. The candor, the purity, the seeming serenity that seemed to have so suddenly extended from him like the rays of some invisible spectrum, a spectrum of an awareness, it seemed to her an awareness of a different maybe even higher world. She went to church but she was not religious.
She sat there transfixed. Yvonne seemed mesmerized. She had never heard Nick speak like this. Yvonne was very religious at times (twice when she was younger she had had visions, she thought) and she wondered for a moment if Nick had been “called.” And, too, she felt like crying again but it was another kind of cry than the one she had just had; a crying of not wanting it to end, not wanting him to change from this way that he was now.
Suddenly it was over. Nick took a sip of coffee. The coffee was cold. He did not know exactly what he had told them about his trip but suddenly he felt there had been a time passage of which he had not been aware. Yvonne said she would get him more coffee but he looked at his watch and said no. He had been sitting there over half an hour and realized he would be late meeting Nora.
“I have to go,” he said lazily, sleepily, as if he had just been relieved of a tension of a sort and was relieved tired. “Jesus, I’m tired. It must have been the goddamn trip.”
“Nick, watch your language,” Yvonne said. The sudden sardonic way he spoke suddenly angered his sister, as if somehow Nick had suckered her in then slapped her.
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry, Pat. You’ll get used to it if you’re around me.”
“Damn it, Nick,” Yvonne said, “you can watch your language a little. It won’t kill you.”
He was lighting a cigarette. “I’ll be back in a while. We’ll go to the beach. Or I’ll meet you there. If you’re not home when I get back I’ll meet you there,” he said in that half-sardonic way of his, then got up. “You’re pretty,” he said to Pat looking at her in that invading way. Pat, obviously embarrassed, looked at Yvonne and Nick turned grinning sardonically and left.
“What a mixed up character,” Yvonne said to Pat.
“He’s not at all like I thought he’d be.”
“Look, honey,” Yvonne said to her, “I don’t like the way you said that. Either keep your skirts pulled tight or get yourself an old-fashioned chastity belt. You saw the way he looked at you,” Yvonne said, then began to giggle that slightly mischievous giggle. “Or undressed you. Whatever way you want to put it. He’s my own brother but, damn him, sometimes he reminds me of a genuine sex fiend. But I love him. He’s really sweet underneath. And gentle. I think, well, he’s just all mixed up from that damn war.”
Pat was truly quite shocked by the forward way Yvonne had spoken. Yet she could only assume that was the way girls her age talked among themselves and decided she would do her utmost to conform to the customs of this generation in this time in this city.
Oddly, as Nick drove downtown to the Drake for his luncheon date he was not thinking about Nora. The traffic was rather heavy and he was going to be considerably late but did not seem concerned. He was driving slowly and was thinking that for the first time in his life he had really explored a part of America. He had, he felt, in a sense defied an American concept in exploring rather than exploiting and he liked what he had seen and learned and felt of the land. It made him feel that somehow now he knew what the older America was like and in the knowing of this it added perspective to his observations of the land and the people as they were presently. Times had changed. The goal of the older world was achievement and not adjustment. Man alone measured himself in the older world, it seemed to him, while now, presently, it was the plurality of men, the group, that measured what conformity was.
Nora was at the bar. They kissed and then she moved away a little. “You’re black as an Indian. You look wonderful, Nick.”
“You look wonderful,” he said. “I’ve missed you.”
“I missed you,” she smiled.
“I’m glad you didn’t wear a hat,” he said. “I don’t like hats on women.”
“I never wear a hat,” she smiled and he ordered a scotch on the rocks.
“What was it like?” she asked him.
“Good. It was strange being in the wilderness again and not worrying that someone was behind every tree waiting to take a shot at you. And not seeing any airplanes. And to fish. There’s a beautiful beach down in the islands. I want to take you to that beach some time. You’re not in a hurry, are you?”
“Yes. But only because you’re late. I thought you said you were never late.”
“I’m hardly ever late,” he said. “We can order from here. That way we can have an extra drink. What about tonight?”
&
nbsp; “I’m sorry, Nick I didn’t know when you were coming back. I’ve an old school friend staying with me for a few days. We’re calling on another friend tonight.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Fine,” she smiled.
“Then we’ll warm up for the wedding tomorrow night. The wedding’s day after tomorrow.”
“I didn’t realize that,” she said. She was wondering suddenly if Old Pete Stratton would recognize her and what he would do if he did. “I’ve never been to a Greek wedding. But I’ve heard about them.”
“Everybody gets drunk in the end.”
‘Then I’ll get drunk, too,” she said.
“Not too drunk.”
“No. Nice drunk.”
“Yes, you can get nice drunk,” he said. “Me, I don’t know what kind of drunk I’m going to get. On leave, in the Army, I got pretty bad drunk sometimes.”
“I believe that,” she said. She spoke graciously, looking at him with that rich well-bred look of no flirtatiousness, no sexualness, looking extremely rich in the simple white cotton dress and spectators, with the diamond wrist watch on the richly red manicured nails and the large cocktail ring and the hair that now he knew was combed but to appear carelessly combed; cropped, feather cut, metallic blue it seemed now in the dark of the Camellia Bar. She really made quite a picture in the extremely rich looking room with its expensive wallpaper of camellias and its old-fashioned crystal chandelier.
During lunch he was very quiet. Almost placid, she thought. And he had not, as she had expected him to, even tried to get her to call off her appointment for this afternoon. Certainly, she told herself, he was feeling well. He never looked better, healthier. He probably, she thought, just whored himself out those two days he spent in Palm Beach, recuperating on the trip back. She had had enough experience with men to know that anyone who packed as much tension as he had to get it out one way or another. Fishing, working at his fishing, tiring himself in the hot summer sun of Florida, he wouldn’t be too prone to go whoring. But after that, with two whole days in Palm Beach? Alone?
“What did you do in Palm Beach?” she asked him.
“Not much. Swam a lot. Played tennis. The second day I went fishing in the bay,” he said.
“Oh,” she said.
“What have you been doing?” he asked her.
“Not much,” she said. “I’ve been to the beach a lot. And read.”
What was wrong with him, she wondered? Where was that tension, that wiredness that he always seemed to exude? He had never been able to hide that. And it did not just go away. Not in ten or twelve days it didn’t just go away.
“What will you do today?” she asked him.
“Go to the beach, I suppose. Or run some errands. I understand things are pretty hectic around the house because of the wedding. They asked me to help if I would. Besides, we have company. A house guest.”
“Relatives?”
“No. Friends of the family,” he said. “A young girl from Atlanta. Staying with Yvonne.”
He was thinking now that this whole idea of having lunch with her was foolish. It had taken him over forty-five minutes to get here and it would take him at least that long to get back and the lunch and drinks would cost at least twenty bucks. It was really very foolish. Why hadn’t he just called her up and told her he was coming down to her apartment? Why?
You know damn well why. Because you just don’t call up a woman in this day and age and say let’s go to bed. It wasn’t done. It was not in vogue. There were certain things that you went through, and she went through, and when you had both performed all the secret, unmentionable rites of this twentieth century deity to the other’s satisfaction, of course, then you went to bed. The whole thing, this business of lunch, her so close and so formal, suddenly made him feel very uncomfortable and the two drinks had made him feel quite sluggish. He ordered another hoping it would help snap him out of this lethargic state.
“What will you wear to the wedding?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll let you know.”
“Tomorrow night?” he asked.
“Yes. I won’t be seeing you until then. Will I?” she asked. He thought he noted the slightest trace of invitation in her voice but he wasn’t sure. The fact of the matter was she had an appointment. When she had an appointment she kept her appointment.
And at the very same time, she was seriously considering excusing herself to go to the phone to change her appointment to have her hair and nails done. Then she could spend the afternoon with Nick. Perhaps on the beach. Then they could go up to the apartment, perhaps go out to dinner.
“I guess you’re in a hurry,” he said.
“Oh!” She looked at her watch. “I am a Little late,” she said.
He called for the check.
“Can I drop you?” he asked her.
“I can take a cab. It would be out of your way. Will you call later?”
“Of course.”
“I really don’t want to go to that dinner. I might be able to get out of it,” she said. She suddenly realized that she had become quite nervous. Under the table she was rubbing the two fingers of her right hand against her thumb and, catching herself in this nervous action, calculatingly fought to control herself. “Nick,” she said almost uncontrollably, saying it almost before she knew she was saying it. “Nick, could I have one more quick drink before we go? I’m afraid I don’t feel too well.”
“Of course. What’s wrong?” he asked concernedly.
“I don’t know,” she said feeling that familiar nameless fear. “I think I might be about to start my period. I’m so irregular, you know,” she lied, not knowing why she had lied. She had just finished her period three days before. “I’ll drink it quickly. I really must hurry,” she said.
He ordered and the drink came. She took a small pill from her purse and took it with the drink. He asked her what it was and she said she didn’t know, something her doctor had prescribed to alleviate the tensions that always accompanied her period. He was suddenly very concerned, wishing that he could do something for her. He would, he knew, probably have been very awkward discussing the word “period” with anyone except her. But she was so frank, so natural about it.
She finished her drink quickly and asked him if he would mind driving her as far as Randolph and Michigan, which was about a mile downtown. He drove her, and dropped her at the comer, and made a U-turn and got flagged down by the policeman on the comer but on finding out he had just returned from the service the policeman said he would let him go this time.
It had really been some day, he thought, driving north fast and not trying to hide his own irate feelings. But what in the hell was the use in needlessly frustrating himself? Lunch! She said “Lunch” and you said “Yes” before you knew what was happening. Why didn’t you just say: “I’m home. I’m coming up.” In Evanston he got a ticket for speeding.
When he got home the maid said there had been two calls from his father and that he was to call him right away at the office. His mother had not as yet come home and, the maid said, Yvonne and Pat had gone to the beach.
He called Old Pete.
“How you doing, son?” Old Pete asked tiredly. “I’ve been trying to get you.”
“I had an appointment,” Nick said.
“I thought you were going to stay around the house and help your mother.”
“Mother’s out,” he said.
“Well, she coulda needed you.”
“I had a business appointment.”
“Yeah. What kind of business?”
“I was looking into that coin-operated business. I told you about that.”
“Yeah. That’s a tough business, son. Lots of racketeers in that business.”
“Well, I’m just looking into it,” he said. “There something you want?”
“I hear you’re going to the beach with the girls.”
“I planned to. For a while anyhow. It’s getting late.”
“Well,
I thought it would be kind of nice for you to take Pat to dinner. I’m taking her father down to Greektown for a little dinner, then we’re going to play a little cards,” he said. “It’s fine with her father.”
“Don’t you want me to take Yvonne, too?”
“Well, I think it would be nice if you took Yvonne. But somebody ought to be there to help your mother. So why don’t you just take the girl. Some place nice. She’s never been out with a boy before.”
“Well, that costs money, you know,” Nick said. “And I was going to try and hang on to what I got left in case I find something I want to go into.”
“You don’t worry about the money. I owe her father lots of favors. I take care of whatever you spend. And a little more, besides. All right?”
“All right,” Nick said. “She’s a very pretty little thing,” Nick said in that half sardonic way of his.
“No monkey business, son,” Old Pete said in a new resolute voice, a starch meaning voice. “I’ll kill you you lay one dirty hand on that girl,” he said.
“I’m not out for any girls. Not that young,” Nick said believingly, but grinning to himself nevertheless.
“I mean it,” Old Pete said. “You take her some place nice. But get home early. One o’clock the latest.”
“I’ll get home,” he said. “Where you going to play poker?”
“I’m not sure,” Old Pete said. “We decide that at dinner.”
“Well, have a good time,” Nick said knowing damn well the game would be at the Lake Hotel and there would be women. A good old Roman debauchery, Greek style he thought. “I think I’ll take Pat to the Lake,” Nick said. “That’s a nice room, that Rose Room.”
“Well, do as you please. But don’t you think you ought to take her some place where the younger people go?” he said cagily. “Like the Sherman. They got a jazz band at the Sherman. She’d probably like that. You know, son, when you entertain a guest you got to consider them.”
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