“Yes,” Old Gus said, “that is a reason. We must get back to our table—Come Little Joe,” Old Gus said. And Little Joe got up and made just about the most elaborate attempt of a debonair, man-of-the-world farewell Nick had ever seen. Then just before he departed, he said to Pierro: “You see that presents I got for your sister? I paid one hundred dollars cash for that presents. Cash,” he said proudly and Nick noticed the reddish tint of embarrassment penetrate slightly the dark brown skin on Pierro’s dark, ancient face.
“I think it’s time we got on,” Nick whispered to Nora.
“Where will we go?” she asked.
“Home?”
“Let’s go some place first. Let’s let ourselves go. Really go. Have fun. Then go home,” she said turbulently.
Marci was watching them. My God, is that what it is, she half laughed to herself. Why don’t they just do it on the table, she thought, but feeling an excitation of her own. She decided then, instantly, that she was going to sleep with Pierro this night.
Nick excused himself to go tell his mother and father he was leaving. As he was coming back to the table, passing the bar, Lou Duck called him over. He was very drunk and put his arm around Nick and whispered in a secret way: “You got some guts, kid. Some guts, I tell you, bringing that whore.”
“You’re drunk,” Nick said.
“How much she charge you, kid? When I was a kid your age, I no pay for it. I tell you that. Even now old as I am I get it for nothing,” he said drunkenly, braggingly.
“Have you blown your top?” Nick looked at him quizzically.
Lou Duck, cigar in mouth, drink in hand, drunken eyed, continued on as if he hadn’t even heard Nick-”Bringing one of the biggest call broads in the city to his own family wedding and passing her off as a respectful widow. You’re something, kid. Did she tell you who’s best? You? Or the old man? Or me? She’s not bad, I can tell you that. Well, I guess that makes us all brothers, eh?” he said grinning a titillated grin. “Eh, Nickie?” he snickered, then began to laugh a snickering laugh.
Things began, suddenly, to fall into place. Nick wanted terribly to smash Lou Duck’s face in, to shove his fist right through it. He shoved the old Greek away roughly and stormed away toward the table, then just before he got there he slowed down and with clenched fists, and a nauseous, sickening-to-have-to-take-hold of himself.
“Let’s go, Nora,” he said penetratingly.
Everyone stopped talking. Even Pierro could never remember having seen Nick so enraged. Nora could tell something had gone terribly wrong. She had never seen him like this and she herself was frightened. You don’t suppose his father told him—No, of course, he wouldn’t dare, she said to herself.
“Now. Please,” Nick said to her deliberately, commandingly.
She nodded and he nodded to everyone at the table and they began to walk out of the room: “What’s wrong, Nick?” she asked putting her arm through his.
“Not a goddamn thing. Not a fucking, goddamn thing. Let’s take a ride.”
CHAPTER XXX
THEY did not say a word. They got into the car and he began to drive feeling the sickness ballooning up in him, a sick hungry bottomless feeling, then blind anger at the deliberate attempt she had made to hurt him, wanting to smash his fist again and again onto something, to gnash his teeth like a crazied dog, his fist clenched tight to the wheel, his knuckles white, feeling he wanted to scream out his misery and anguish—Scream—Smash—Blindness—then suddenly she tugging at his arm, then screaming, terrifyingly.
“Nick, Nick! Slow down. For God’s sake, slow down!”
He actually shook his head like a fighter shaking off a punch and recovering a little saw the terrified look on her face then his eyes shifted to the speedometer. He was going over eighty north down the outer drive. Quickly he braked way down so that he was under the limit and looking over at her saw that she was actually shaking, her head in her hands, then she began to cry, uncontrollably.
He could feel the blood pounding in his head. His breath seemed choked. Christ, look at him. Look at that face, he said to himself, looking into the car mirror. Is there murder in you? Is this what you have become because you are used to killing? Do you, somehow, glory in this fury, this rage, that must be so deeply and furiously imbedded in you that it frightens people into hysterical half images of themselves? Is there a devil of some sort in you that in the futility and totality or your rage you are blind, no longer of yourself, black in a light world, unseeing and unperceiving as if truly enshrouded in the cloak of some invisible Lucifer?
His control suddenly began to come back.
What reason did he really have to believe what Lou Duck had said? What reason to believe a horny (that was the only word for him), snickering old man? And when he was drunk besides? Stupid, sloppy, horny old man who stroked and pawed at every woman who ever worked for him. He could hear Lou Duck’s titillated laugh ringing in his ears. And again he wanted to smash—smash—smash—
I must be drunk, he thought suddenly. Drunk.
Castration upon castration.
And Lou Duck’s face loomed large: Snickering. Perverted. Old Sex hungered like a dog in heat. Old and perverted and snickering and titillated and pawing. Rip the scrotum from him. Hear the tear.
I am drunk.
Drunk, he wanted to holler.
The mind began to focus again. She was crying hysterically, loudly.
As they passed other cars, or other cars passed them, the passengers looked over—wondering. They must be able to hear her, he thought.
He put his arm around her gently, patting her. She came over close by him. He was about to say: “I think I’m drunk. I’m sorry.” But through her half hysteria she spoke first.
“I’m sorry, Nick. Sorry,” she said loudly. “I do that. Drive that fast,” she mumbled, “when I’m upset. This has been coming on—all day,” she whimpered.
He turned off the drive at Belmont Avenue. Found a parking space. Put up the top. Held her while she cried herself out. Then they went over to Clark Street and stopped at the first bar they passed and went in. He got her a double brandy while she went into the ladies’ room.
She came out looking, almost, as if she hadn’t even been crying.
“God but you get mad, too, don’t you?” she smiled. It was a weak smile. “I’d better take a pill,” she said going into her large black alligator bag.
“What do they do?”
“Calm me, I guess.”
“If I was sure of that I’d take a few myself.”
“I don’t think you’d better,” she said smiling, making him feel even guiltier than the first time she had smiled weakly. It was a kind of frightened, forced, weak (and weary) little smile, he thought, feeling guiltier the more he thought about it. Silently he began to admonish himself. There was no reason for him to act like he had—even if Lou Duck was right.
Right?
Oh, you fool. You goddamn punk fool. You suspicious fool. Being taken in by an ex-pimp, ex-conman. And drunk. Paralyzed, sloppy drunk.
“What are you so serious about?” she asked. She was smart enough not to ask him what had enraged him though she had wanted to several times.
“I can’t figure out why my old man infuriates me so easily,” he lied.
“Was that it?”
“It always starts off simply enough but then he gets me in a boil. He gets in a boil, too. But never when there’s anyone around. Then he always plays the wounded angel. Christ,” he lied again, “all I said was that I was leaving. And he said I should be the last to leave. Then we just got into it. And he said I’m crazy in the head from the war. He’s been saying it over and over. I think it frightens me. Then it infuriates me.—Do you think I’m a little off?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you, Nick,” she said. “We all get mad at times. This kind of life isn’t going to be easy to get used to after the one you’ve been leading,” she said sympathetically. “I mean, there’s not much excitement in the of
fing. I think we all like excitement.”
“Well, you had your cry. I blew my top. Let’s go to Hy’s and have a drink or two. We haven’t been to Hy’s since we met.”
It was fine with her and they went down to the Four Winds. Hy was not there, the head waiter said. It was his poker night.
After two furious, tension mounting drinks he suddenly said: “Let’s go.”
“Now, right now,” she said throatily and he felt a warm flash wing through him.
Inside the door, close to her, his mouth in the curve of her neck, her body long against his body, full free wanting-to-give against him, feeling not only through her touch, but through some imperceptible thing that hovered between them, all at once sacred and pagan, was it Truth? Was that why it was now as it never had been, never could have been, never dreamed that it was? Was this truth? I do not care if she is a whore, or white, or diseased, only that this here and this now was, as it was intended to be, always, forever. Could it really be? Was this truth him? Constellation beyond constellation. Universe beyond universe. To know now the weightlessness of space and what it feels to travel freely in the universe with Truth.
Then later: “You’re not sleepy, are you, Nick?” she asked.
“I’ve never known of love like I feel it with you,” he said.
“I feel it too, Nick. I want to make you feel like a king sometimes. The King of All Kings.”
“You do,” he said.
“You’re so black,” she said.
“You said that like you wanted me black.” Her head was on his shoulder now. “Did you ever have a black man or want one?”
“I never had one. I thought I never could want one. But one night I went to a Katherine Dunham Dance Revue. There was one in the revue. He was from Trinidad, more brown than black. I wanted him. When I saw him dance I wanted him. And for a long time afterwards.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Six months.”
“Not long ago,” he spoke airily. “Let’s have a drink.”
“We’ll fix it together.”
“Fine.”
They got up and fixed their drinks. Then he took a quick shower and came back and sat on the edge of the bed next to her.
“Have you had a lot of men?” he asked her. He had thought when he was in the shower he would ask her that. He did not want to ask it really. To know. And knew that now that he had started he wouldn’t be able to stop. It had just come out, inevitably. It was going to come out sometime, some way, anyhow. Even he knew that.
“Is that a fair question?” she asked.
“You don’t have to answer,” he said in that half sardonic way of his. “If you’re so damned ashamed of it. All you damn Catholics are ashamed of it, aren’t you? But you do it just as much as everyone else.”
“Do you have to spoil it, Nick? Do you have to?”
“I guess it’s spoiled already, isn’t it? Maybe you spoiled it that night you said you weren’t feeling well and had me drop you off—what did you do that night, for instance?”
“You Greek bastard.”
“And where did you learn all that fine language you use? At Saint Mary’s?”
“Who told you?” she said glaring at him suddenly. “Who told you I was a whore?”
He sat there dumbstruck, speechless for a moment, the vast reality of it sinking in slowly against the grain that did not want to let it sink in.
“A whore?” he said emptily.
Then she realized that he hadn’t really known, or wasn’t really sure.
Then it hit him. Hit him like the first time he had been hit in the war.
“One of your customers,” he said. “One of your dirty old men customers,” he said viciously. “Lou Duck by name. Lou Duck. Horny old Lou Duck,” he said feeling miserable and castrated and then suddenly throwing his drink furiously across the room against the wall, glass and liquid splattering.
“Is this the same bullshit you tell Lou Duck?” he said contortedly, wild eyed. “Is this the same bullshit you gave Old Pete? Is it?” he practically screamed, knowing that now that he had started it he would never be able to stop it.
“You know it’s not like that with you, Nick,” she said in that cold controlled way. “You know that.”
“How’s Old Pete in the sack?” he asked cynically. “Tell me, how’s my old man in the sack?”
It was still hard for him to really believe it—a whore. A rotten whore.
“Fine,” she said. “Remarkable for his age, actually. Is that what you wanted to hear? It is, isn’t it? Because you’ve got a filthy rotten suspicious mind. You have to hear it, don’t you? Do you want me to tell you about Lou Duck’s fetishes, too? That should really please you. You fool. You goddamn punk kid fool,” she said her eyes blazing, sitting there propped up on the bed nude, unaware of her nudeness it seemed.
Nick felt sick, almost like he would have to vomit. Old Pete, he said to himself. It would have to be Old Pete. And dancing with her, openly, right in front of Mary. The son-of-a-bitch. Old Pete, he felt like screaming. Always, Old Pete!
“Why didn’t you tell me? For Christ’s sake, why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I swear to Christ I don’t know, Nick,” she said, her voice quivering as if she were about to cry again.
“You swear to Christ. That means a hell of a lot—you swearing to Christ. That really means a hell of a lot. I suppose you go to confession every Saturday. I suppose that’s all the license you need to be a whore.”
He could see the anger and hurt and animal vengeance that-comes-from-sudden-fear welling up in her eyes and her brown shoulders go all taut and the pointed swelling of the nipples of the small firm pointed breasts
“I suppose you think I enjoy it. I suppose you really think I enjoy it,” she said. “What are you complaining about? You’re not paying for it. You’ve got one of the highest priced women in this country and you’re not paying one red cent for it. That ought to give you something to brag about. To brag to Raul and Tuttle and Old Pete and Lou Duck. Ask Old Pete what he pays. Or Lou Duck what he pays. Then tell them you’re getting it for nothing. That ought to make you feel just about as manly as even you could want to feel. It would make you unique. Unique. That’s what you want to be so badly, isn’t it little Nickie? You don’t have to ask, Nick. I wouldn’t want you to be like all the rest and have you ask: “How did a girl like you ever get into the racket?” God forbid, I wouldn’t want you to ask that! That would make you like all the rest then, wouldn’t it Nick? Just like all the rest. And you couldn’t stand that. You want to hear what your father’s like in the bed?—You couldn’t stand that, could you Nickie? Could you?”
Her face was all twisted up and he thought she was on the verge of becoming hysterical.
“Stop it,” he said. “For Christ’s sake, stop it.”
“Yes, Master. Stop it. Start it whenever you want and stop it whenever you want. Resolve it. Now. Here. Well I’m not going to stop it. I’m not going to stop it just because you want me to stop it. You might as well hear it. Every bit of it. It’s really a very interesting story. It’s too bad you can’t write because it’s really a very unusual story—from the steel mill district of Gary to Saint Mary’s to respectable wife to whore. Really, it is, don’t you think? Whore? Hell, I’m not even a whore. Not a real real whore in the old sense. I’m a call girl. That makes me kind of special. Who do you suppose made up the word call girl? It had to be a man, didn’t it Nickie? Obviously a common phrase like that had to come from some common man who wanted to feel uncommon, didn’t it Nick?” She drank her drink down, started to walk from the room, then paused and said, “Would you like another drink, Nick? I’ll fix you one if you promise not to smash the glass. Or would you prefer to leave? Wouldn’t you prefer to leave, Nickie? Wouldn’t the big soldier boy prefer to leave so that he will live to fight another day? I’m sure you came to me a virgin,” she said icily. Standing there nude she looked at the dejected figure sitting on the e
dge of the bed.
“I won’t break any more glasses,” he said. “Make me a big one—I suppose you go with women, too,” he blurted suddenly.
“Women are the only ones who can do anything for me,” she said. “That is until I met you.” She was standing by the door. “Of course I hate to tell you that. I wouldn’t Want you to swell up any bigger than you are. But as long as I’m being honest I might as well be completely honest. It’s been so long since I’ve been honest. Of course, you’re honest all the time, aren’t you, Nick? Virgin Nick—I’m sure you never laid a hand on Ellen that night you went out to the country club with her for dinner. Remember telling me on the phone: ‘It was more or less a duty date, Nora dear.’ Loyal, faithful, Nick.” She walked from the room.
She came back with the drinks.
“I think you ought to hear it all. I think you deserve to hear it all. After all, you’re so goddamn possessive of me, you think you own me so thoroughly. I think it’s only fair that you know what you own. Don’t you, Nickie? You can’t answer that, can you?
“Well, I’m mentally and physically unbalanced; that’s what’s wrong with me. My husband died when he was having intercourse with me and I went insane. I was institutionalized. In one of the finest, most exclusive institutions in this part of the country. It costs a lot of money to be institutionalized. And a lot of money to prove that you’re mentally capable. You must admit I am capable, anyhow, mustn’t you, Nick?
“Oh, it was a very fine institution. First they convince you how very unbalanced you really are. Which is not difficult. You ought to see some of the people in those institutions. Really, after you’ve lived with them a while it’s not very hard to be convinced. Then when you are thoroughly convinced—have no confidence whatsoever except in the doctor who has in a sense become your father, someone you look up to, then to reassure yourself you sleep with him, and somehow, some way, it gets around to the attendants who immediately begin to treat you kind of extra special, then you begin to sleep with them. Oh, it is very reassuring in an institution. And then one day, when you are slightly reassured, you wake up and realize that if you don’t get out of that place soon all your money will be gone. Then you hire an attorney, an old friend of your husband’s and, of course, out of habit, you sleep with him. It’s very reassuring,” she said bitterly. “For some reason, lawyers and doctors never seem to make any allowance for that on their bills. I suppose it’s because they want their secretaries, if they’re not sleeping with them, to believe in the upstandingness and virtuousness of their employers.”
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