“Friends, tha's all ‘at counts.”
“You said it, Pudge. Here's my number. You can get me at either one.” He pressed a scrap of paper on him.
“Ring you tomow.”
They shook hands, and Sonny released the small fat hand reluctantly, his body refusing to lose even for an instant what it had momentarily regained.
“Will you keep me in mind for a scout job?”
“I will, ‘course. But whut about you business heah?”
“It runs itself. Just an income. Listen, we won't hassle over money. Doin’ what you want is the most important thing.”
* * * *
He arrived at the apartment in a state of helpless euphoria, as close to hysteria as he'd ever been. Too excited to speak, give vent to the cloudy dreams swirling through his mind, he stalked from room to room as though searching for a key to a door he couldn't find, behind which lay the mystery of existence. Jane wanted to turn him on, simply to calm him, but he batted the joint out of her hand.
“Got to keep my head clear,” he said, then looked quizzically at her. A man who'd run sixty-seven laps around Gramercy Park would hardly require it. If he wasn't turned on, who was?
“What is it, Sonny?”
“I got my future ridin’ on a man, a friend. Somebody I can trust.” He was so happy, so filled with the pure contemplation of his dream, that he wanted to cry. “There are some people walkin’ around who believe in me, Jane. Isn't that wonderful? Unbelievable? I've got a chance. I need this like a pint of blood. Once and for all I'll be able to show everybody who I am. Wesley Jackson ... born Tallahassee, Florida, 1937; All-American at Florida Tech; halfback for Birmingham Colonials 1962-1966; leading ground gainer 1964; rushed over a thousand yards in two seasons; average carry 4.9 yards ... has accepted the position—no, post—as chief scout for the Birmingham Colonials, it was announced today by Mr. H. E. (Pudge) Denison, owner of the Colonials.”
“Is it true?”
“We have to come to terms, naturally, but you can expect to read about it in the New York Times sometime next week. You can bank on it. Now I know why I was readin’ that paper all night lookin’ for my name. Christ, I found it, too.”
She wanted to continue talking, exploring the possibilities. Visiting high schools in Lackawanna or Duluth every Saturday afternoon (to spot and report on what, if anything, had been spotted) didn't exactly capture her imagination. She had envisaged other more alluring side effects: roasting their backs in Positano at a cliff hotel; eating sandwiches of chorizo in the Plaza del Toros of Madrid: pedaling together over soft waves at the Lido; film festivals and making love—not entirely contemptible activities. Instead she saw herself wearing three pairs of knee-high woolen socks, requiring boots of a larger size, draped in a serpentine of scarves, a parka concealing all of her natural goodies, on a permanent pigskin parade. He spoke lyrically of Green Bay and she remembered its reputation for snow and chilblains, good for iron maidens from Iowa, maybe. But who could eat winter corn raw, even if it did keep teeth white? Hers were white enough.
He tapped a copy of Jerry Kramer's Instant Replay, like a representative from the Gideon Society warning a conventioneer that there were other things to do at a Hilton apart from drunkenly smashing glasses and banging broads. This is the word, thine is power, he seemed to be saying. She had never responded positively to chastisement.
“Look, Sonny, you haven't the job yet.”
“I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life walkin’ on sawdust, smellin’ beer and checkin’ for drunks in the wash room. Sink overflowin’ from them stickin’ their wrists under the cold water....” He was breaking out: obviously alone, she thought, if need be. “Pudge won't let me down. Since I met you, Jane, things have been breakin’ my way. This is on ice awready.”
“What are you going to do with Junior?”
“Private school. Like a military academy, or maybe not. Aunt Gloria ain't the best kinda company for a kid.”
“But she makes great meat loaf.”
“How'd you know that?”
“Junior swears by it.”
“Arguments I'm not gonna have with you.”
“Why not?”
“I don't argue with somebody I love.” Direct, honest, and final, he hit her between the eyes. She fell victim to his total simplicity. “I'll get expenses, too,” he added, demolishing all possibility of disagreement. “Could work it up $24.99 a day, when I'm travelin'.”
“What made you pick 24.99?”
“Under twenty-five, you don't havta account.”
“Live and learn.”
“You're still in school. What do you know about the business world?”
Obviously nothing, so she bit her tongue, not without some effort. What did he know about the laws governing rationality, the architecture of the syllogism, the pantheon of logic in which the sorites is enshrined? In evasions he was as surefooted as ever, fleetly twisting on the off-tackle slant of reason. She wanted to tell him the truth, force him to face the fact that motels, motorways, and tooling second-hand Plymouths from one miserable town to another (and freezing his ass off on a stone slab while kids smashed each other's bones, snorting their words out for the rest of their lives because of unrepairable nose breaks) had little of the paradisal idyll he imagined.
“One thing I've learned, Sonny, is that you can't educate other people. You break your heart trying, so I'm not going to.”
“What kinda crack is that?” Munching Fig Newtons, he was irresistible. Her dozen-box purchase at the A&P had elicited a response from the usually sullen packer, who through his babble of Puerto Rican had asked if she were running an orhpanage. No, not an orphanage; just catering to Sonny's deepest needs, her child bed-companion with a sweet tooth, less harmful than hangups. He emptied the milk container, complaining about the wax that landed in the glass, and recalled softer days with mild bottles jingling, and running to the wagon from the vacant lot where he'd been since 5 a.m.: a kid throwing a ball through an old flat tire hung on a tree with the wire from a chicken coop, also abandoned when his father took to Sneaky Pete. He had developed great accuracy and could unload the ball remarkably fast, but glibness and signal calling were skills he would never acquire. His first coach at Tallahassee High had slotted him in as halfback after five minutes of the first quarter of his freshman debut, his self-esteem forever intact after his tear-assing young jack-rabbit made All-State from his sophomore year on, dying a happy man when his charge was later picked on three consecutive All-American teams at Florida Tech. Pitching through old tires made Sonny formidable on the halfback option play. Nothing had been wasted on him and yet everything was.
“I want you to be happy, Sonny,” she said, given to futile concessions.
“Happy? Is breathing air happy? No, you got to. Since I've been out of the game, I haven't been breathin', ‘cept maybe piss when I lug the ice block into the urinator. Come two a.m. you'd never know there was ice. It's all water. Same thing goes for me. Could anybody believe I was ever a man, somebody people respected, a person that got asked his opinion on things?”
“It's that important?”
He couldn't answer and simply stared at the wax bit floating on top of the milk, wondering if he'd at long last found a human being who could be accused of greater denseness than he himself.
“Aw, Jane, come on, now”—he made a small gesture with his hand—“it's my life.”
Impossible to reason with, he batted down every argument she presented which contradicted his optimistic dreams and she saw the sinister outlines of ambition about to be realized. The incandescent glow in his eyes had not been placed there by her, she realized, but by his reckless fantasy, and it was dishonest because he denied it. No, nothing had changed except him, and she was still single-handedly running her society for wayward children who refused to acknowledge her existence.
* * * *
They slept fitfully, together but with that separateness that emerges when passion becomes the answer
to nothing. Conlon had not come in that night, and neither of them remarked on her absence. They were three free souls together, united in their liberty. He stirred early, unusual for him because of his hours, and put the coffee on. It was a day for anticipation, perhaps grief, impossible to sleep through. He made a call and she quietly picked up the extension and heard the metallic voice of the weather-bureau recording. Priming himself for future greatness, he wanted the elements on his side. He took out a brown gabardine business suit and a tan tie, brushing both meticulously. She'd never seen anyone brush a tie and thought of asking her mother, next time she saw her, if this was the sort of thing people in institutions might be expected to do. He dressed himself, fought a losing combat with his unruly, lawless curls, and sat down in the living room to wait. Dressed, and comprehensive, he had all the color and style of a Teamster business executive who'd been Jimmy Hoffa's last official appointment, concerned for his destiny lest new management oust him from his split-level.
It was nine o'clock, and she throttled a small cry about to emerge from her throat. Gagging her mouth with the cup of her hand, she knew then that she'd never love any man as much, or him more, and it was then that he needed her least. The currency of small victories and big defeats were impossible for her to calculate. People hardened, folded up, stopped smiling for the rest of their lives, drank more booze, lost hope, developed undefinable cruel streaks to prevent them from caring, Jane thought—making a rough estimate of Sonny's situation, since there was no consumer's research of the soul to guide her, or enable her to gauge just what the man was going through. She was ready to lay down her life if he asked for it, but he didn't even want to talk to her. Had her inheritance been in her hands, she would have secured him the Colonials or any other team he wanted, put him in as president and let him while away his life on playing fields ... and without thinking twice about it. As his girlfriend, she had only unofficial status, a secure hold on his prick, and no answers, messages, or reprieves for his spiraling fate.
At eleven-thirty the telephone rang, and when she picked it up, he shouted from the other room.
“It's for me, Jane.” As if the caller was empowered to tell him where he could cash in his sweepstakes ticket....
While she dressed he came in, reeling with delight, his eyes North-Star bright. She could wait for whatever news he was bringing, success had little relevance for her. He gave her a smile as broad as a crossbow. Optimism was not merely incurable but the pleasure of a peach. In the happiness race she had finished a distant second to football. That look, she'd always remember it: the open joy of the man informed that his first-born was safe, gorgeous, and nine pounds; that Mars had removed its blight from the seventh house; that the Internal Revenue had not been able to trace the numbered Swiss account. There were many causes for rejoicing, and Sonny's ebullience had combined them all. Not only had the insane two-buck flyer he took on a Canadian mining stock produced a mother lode, but also the 40-28-38 naked blond girl smiling out from the glossy magazine (her nipples gleaming, candlelit, waxy) had in his dream of dreams, while wrapping her legs around his earlobes, said: “Sonny, you're the greatest.” His optimism was not just eternal but a condition of the universe, as unchanging as the wink of the Little Dipper. She had never before known the possibility of employment to bring such helpless ecstasy to a man.
“You've got the job?” she asked, out of courtesy.
“Practically.”
“What does that mean?” He wasn't, she hoped, to be denied.
“Pudge asked me a favor. I couldn't refuse a friend.”
Determined to let him go it alone, she turned her back, faced the mirror, and started working on her eyeline, one of the small concessions she made to makeup.
“He needs a date. Big lunch at Leone's with the rest of the owners before they settle down to the draft. I need somebody who can talk it up for me.”
“You need a car salesman.” She had second thoughts. “Conlon would probably go. Why don't you ask her?”
“Lookit, Jane, even if she was willin’ I wouldn't want her. You're the only one I could ask.”
She turned around quickly, eyes wide open, glaring.
“Sonny, this stinks. I don't like it at all.”
“Jane, it's all bona-fided. What's wrong with lunch at Leone's? Food, I remember usta be great, and it never stops comin'. There wouldn't be any monkey business. Pudge'll be with all execs, an’ he wants a high-class date with him.”
“Ask Gloria. She owes you a favor, doesn't she?”
“You got the wrong enda the stick. This ain't anythin’ like that. He wants to be seen with an educated well-dressed girl. It'd help me if I had somebody out with him who had a high opinion of myself ... my abilities. I got to have somebody close for me.”
“What's wrong with you? Either the man wants to give you a job or he doesn't and you're kidding yourself if you think I can do anything for you.”
Subdued, he sank on the bed, his bag of persuaders depleted.
“If you want a job, you don't have to grovel to anyone. I can introduce you to people who'd help you get yourself set. I've got some money, too.”
“Stick it up your ass.”
“Sonny, be reasonable for once in your life.”
“I want this job on this ball club. I know the front-office people from way back, a couple of the coaches are still there I played under. We got lots of things goin’ for us.”
“Why didn't they come to you years ago?”
“I was messed up. Runnin’ after Joy-Sue. Tryin’ to look out for the kid. Bein’ pulled every which way. How could I think straight? Even if they asked, I wouldn't have joined ‘em.”
“Did they ... did they ask?”
“No! I just explained why.”
“They dropped you from the team.”
“Listen, when you're through and can't help the club you gotta expect that. Everybody in sports knows that after a certain age he can't perform and he's gonna get the push. Why was I any different? What should I've expected? Special treatment? Plenty of guys hang around when it's over and they become creeps. I pulled myself together. Now the sun's shinin’ on me. I been standin’ out in the rain for years. It's my turn,” he protested. “You have a little lunch with a guy, it's gonna kill you?”
“What if it doesn't do any good?”
“Then nothin's lost, is it? Honestly, I don’ see what your objections are. I never asked you to do anythin’ before. No favors, no nothin'. You love me, I love you. Then shit, Jane, let me pull myself together.” He got up, walked into the kitchen, and poured himself another cup of coffee and one for her. He handed her the coffee and she was moved, she didn't know why, by his small acts of gentility. “So?”
She touched the bridge of his nose, swollen forever to the width of a thumb, and thought for a moment that she understood his passion, saw the beauty in the brutality to which he'd pledged his life. Then it was gone. The senseless abuse of one's body seemed to be an impossible project. She lit a cigarette and he batted away the smoke. He held her wrist and avoided her eyes. She knew the definition of failure, falsehood and accusation its sinew, the absurd justifications for something not working out, as sour as a wine drunk—all of it a permanent fixture of Sonny's character; and she gave in, as she realized she would. In her ability to deny him nothing, she denied him everything.
“Okay,” she said, “I'll go.”
He looked at his watch. It was getting late.
“Grab a cab, ‘cause you'll have trouble parkin’ your car.”
“What do I do?”
“Talk it up for me. Tell him you know for a fact that the Jets and Rams are after me to scout. I been approached. But I been waitin’ for the right thing. Don’ come right out with it. Slip it in, when you can. Pudge doesn't like bein’ conned. Give him a little of your background. Connecticut stuff. Your father, the golfer. Saranac College. He'll eat up that stuff. He'll be impressed once you lay things like that on him. He'll respect your opinion.”
“If he wants more than conversation, what then?”
“Listen, Jane, he won't. I told him that I was sendin’ him somebody special an’ you can rely on me in that department. I'm not settin’ you up for anybody. Pudge give me his word that he wouldn't try a thing. He's a gentleman. Come right back to my place, I'll be waitin'. I'm not goin’ into work tonight. Phonin’ in sick. I'll leave a note for Conlon, so she knows where we're at.”
He held her coat for her, then kissed her.
“Honey, I won't forget this. Ever.”
* * * *
Sitting next to the small bloated man in the cab, the lunch at Leone's was a blur. She had drunk too much, found the food portions enormous and detestable, and Pudge's company intolerable. She had reached the headache stage of her lunchtime drunk and floated dreamily along, half listening to a series of achievements delivered in a verbal code that threatened to end only with Pudge's immediate death. There had been some girls present, the kind that she had seen demonstrating front-wheel drive at automobile shows and handing out brochures at conventions. They were not quite hookers, and not quite not hookers, separated by an invisible line which only men could see or cross. Sportswriters swarmed, gabbling to coaches, and owners stood in the background, as dignified as emperors. All of them had money, so much in fact that they indulged themselves, became sportsmen, flinging themselves impossibly back to childhood whims. Her father would understand, he was one of them. Newspaper photographers took a group picture of the owners seated at the dais, the men bunched together in a synthetic bonhomie, tallest to the back, smiling, drunk with their toys, all the rich kids of America posing at the endless birthday party that was their life.
Neither discretion nor gallantry had ever been inflicted on Pudge. He treated everyone in the same way, as chattel. Texas gas, West Virginia sulphur, and Montana copper ran in his veins. He had holdings in livestock, transportation equipment, and beverages, and was conservatively worth thirty million dollars on paper. Next to the Siddleys, she knew, the man was an upstart, and the one thing she'd learned about such people from her grandfather was that they were uncontrollable and characteristically unpleasant. Having failed to wield power at some stage of their lives, they succumbed to spite. The major stockholders of Invictor were fortunately buffered from the Pudge Denisons of the world. She wondered now if it had been a good thing.
Making Love Page 21