“I want to see where you lived.”
“Okay,” she agreed, “there are no ghosts.”
She'd prove it to both of them. If nothing more he deserved her version of the truth. The place hadn't changed much, some letters and ads shoved under the door.
“It's very nicely furnished. Who would have thought a sublet—” He suddenly held his nose, a fearful odor came from the kitchen. The Frigidaire door had been left open and an assortment of half-eaten food, rancid butter, sour milk, had grown thick with gray-green mold. A broken eyebrow pencil lay on the floor and there was some squiggly writing on the door. They both looked closely.
“It looks like it says I got the message,” Luckmunn said. “Does that mean anything to you?” He left the kitchen for greener pastures and wandered into the bedroom, an orderly place with books, clothes, and no floor-to-ceiling mirrors, certainly nothing offering wild encouragement to men. He went back into the living room. She was sitting by a window, reading a letter. He picked up the mail she'd carelessly dropped. Maybe there was a dividend check among them. Funny, getting letters under the door. Perhaps her box had been full or this was some kind of obscure arrangement for the sublet.
“Jane, cant you do your reading at my place. I can't stand the dust here.”
“Will you shove it for a minute.”
Ontario, Canada, Box 76
January 29th
Dear Jane,
Enclosed is a money order for $300 which squares us financially. I don't suppose I'll ever outgrow this middle-class habit of paying back. But please cash it. This letter obviously is not about money. More or less won't make any difference to you. But, Jane, I had to start somewhere. I wanted to see you to talk to you, face to face, but you've got this remarkable ability to disappear off the face of the earth whenever you want to, living proof no doubt of the efficacy of credit cards. Here goes....
On January 25 Sonny and I were married by a Justice of the Peace in Ontario. Neither of us picked the place. Sonny's new job kind of dictated it. He is still absurdly superstitious and thought that since this city had no memories and only good omens for the future, he wanted it to take place here. It all happened too fast to even bear thinking about.
But, about a week after you walked out on him, his luck changed. He ran into someone he knew from his playing days—now the general manager of a new franchise up here called the Ontario Silhouettes. In darkness we stand out white, in the light we're gray. The team was desperately in need of experienced personnel which accounts for the fact that Sonny was offered a position, a two-year contract. Obviously beginners can't be fussy. I told him to face that fact.
It's hard to describe how happy he is. I'll leave it to your imagination. He's been reunited with Wesley Junior and now both have a home. So do I as a matter of fact. I wasn't cut out for film publicity, since the job really involved wearing short skirts and laying strangers. They're called exhibitors. I've taken a job up here as a trainee with a data-processing company and have also gone back to school (three nights a week) in an effort to get my degree.
This is real life, Jane, and I'm enjoying it. I hope you're happy or will be someday. All in all, whether you know it or not, or are prepared to believe it, you had a pretty devastating effect on both Sonny and me.
Of course you knew, must have, although your profound self-deception must have made you reject the fact—but, Jane, down deep I've always hated you. There it's out and I feel better. No, I haven't hated you as a person. I'm getting confused. I hate everything you stand for. Your freedom, your incredible nonchalance in the face of disaster, your guts, your standing apart, holding back, your thoughtless body that pleased everyone and made me feel inadequate. Jane, you spoiled me.
I know that you won't accept that I've done the right thing, but please believe that I couldn't help myself. I was drawn to him, he was without hope and the inevitable thing happened.
By the way, and I don't mean this in any offhand way, he doesn't love me. I'll live with it and eventually conquer it. He's grateful and affectionate. I adore the boy. I think at the base of it, he married me as a concession to my Irish upbringing. I don't know how or why, but I've managed to go to Mass. Confession will have to wait.
Passion makes us all beginners and it's nothing more than the glandular tennis of the misbegotten. I don't trust it. Maybe we've both outgrown it.
With love from your friend,
Conlon
Jane put the letter in her pocket, walked past Luckmunn, who now appeared calm and relaxed.
“I'm not sorry to leave this place,” he said as they waited for the elevator. “Forget the clothes. I want you to have a new wardrobe.”
His star shone brightly, he was going up in the world. At birth, unbeknownst to him, a holy man must've kissed his forehead.
* * * *
“Jane Teller Siddley.” Luckmunn kept repeating the name. His personal Everest. He sipped Chivas Regal straight, fearlessly, walking right into the trench of his ulcer. It could go to hell. He was accustomed to her silences, her ability to stare right through him when he asked a question. Breeding. You hear what you want, he reflected.
They were in the study, she at his writing desk. Everything was now being used in the apartment. Nothing for show. No ropes around the living room for strangers to admire while they took their coffee on a kitchen table.
“How's the letter coming?” he asked, lonesome for company.”
“I'm almost through.”
He approved of her study attire, bra and panties. Nothing worried her, never self-conscious. Character. A fortune behind it. She threw down the pen and picked up her highball.
He slipped behind her, ran his tongue along the nape of her neck. It had become one of his favorite hobbies. The connoisseur recognized White Shoulders on the earlobe. She pushed him away, aroused, angry, out of the blue.
“What's the problem now?”
“Stop licking me.”
He folded his arms, sat down at the desk, set his face in his best confidant manner. He enjoyed his role as statesman, adviser, father confessor. The wisdom of a lifetime would be imparted to her just for the asking. He was ready for one of their talks.
“Honey, open up a little to me. Lean, Jane. Nothing to be ashamed of. I want to protect you if you'll only give me an opportunity ... your trust.” His eyes glowed with the generosity he inspired in himself. “By the way, since you're in the mood to write letters, I'd like you to write formally to Saranac and advise them that you won't be returning. I don't think it's nice that I should be living with somebody who's still classified as a junior.”
“Aren't your priorities a little screwed up?”
“In what sense?”
“Well, shouldn't I write to my mother and tell her what I'm doing?”
Something sinister here. Luckmunn didn't like the smell of it.
“I don't know that she'd be, well, to put it as kindly as possible, the right one to give you an advice at just this time. Her situation is bleak at best.”
“Might be better than the insulin shock.”
“I fail to see—”
“Do you?”
She left him dangling on the desk, his eyes shifting uneasily along the Persian carpet. He gave himself a thimbleful of Chivas, nursed it down slowly and failed to detect the bouquet of peat. She wiggled her toes at him from the sofa.
“Maybe you ought to skip the letters. You'll get a writer's cramp.”
“Why don't you write to her?” Jane asked. “She must miss you like hell.”
“Me?” he exclaimed, a definite tremor in his voice. “I'll send her a new tennis racquet. That might cheer her up.”
Conlon's letter had aroused her desire to revenge which had lay dormant during the time she'd been with Luckmunn, and he himself with his pretense of innocence had spiked it.
“I'll say Luckmunn prefers me. I'm the better lay.”
“Jane, what is this all about?” He smelled his own blood, a setup. He needed brea
thing space to develop a story. He'd throw himself at the feet of Perry Mason as another victim whom fate had singled out to destroy with threadbare links of circumstantial evidence, which the master advocate would tear apart. He'd brazen it through, make a few harmless admissions. His word against a confessed lunatic.
“I don't know what you mean by that. We were neighbors, and even though I was new, your mother just sort of took me under her wing.”
“You're a goddamn liar and you know it.”
“Proof!” he shouted, shooting his load.
“You're looking at it, Luckmunn. An eyewitness with twenty-twenty vision, no history of mental breakdowns, no previous convictions for perjury.”
He gave a small moan, dropped to his knees in supplication, the statesman asking for his head.
“When?” he asked softly, hoping that this was still a bluff, and that he'd win a showdown.
“In the tennis hut. Do you want the date and the time of day?”
He saw it all slipping through his hands. Is this what the Luckmunns got out of Germany for? When would his tribe get lucky, give other people the shudders?
“It wasn't like that.”
“No? Well, tell me.”
He paused to give himself counsel. A straight confession and he might be given mercy.
“We were both drunk ... and I wanted to be a gentleman, believe me.”
She imagined him naked, lighting cigarettes, holding doors, saying after you.
“Why'd you do it?”
“I was impressed. I wanted to meet people. Look, Jane, honey, how was I supposed to know about you? I brought comfort to a lonely woman. Some people might applaud such an action.”
“Yes, with one hand.”
“I'm an overachiever, not a tragic hero, Jane. It's not incest.... My God, to think how you must have hated me all along.” The thought of himself despised brought tears to his eyes. To come this close.... “Me, you hate?”
“The point is, the awful sickening truth, is that I don't. I'm worse than you are.”
He saw himself struck down by a BMT train, his name written in blood across the Daily News. He opened the desk drawer, she thought for a pistol.
“What are you looking for?”
“An Alka-Seltzer. My stomach's all acidic. Jane, what am I going to do? I love you. Tell me it wasn't my fault.”
“It's not,” she admitted. “It's just that I'm Nancy's daughter.”
She got up, sealed the letter, and put a stamp on it. “I want to mail this now.”
“There's a chute on the floor.”
He followed her out into the hallway, protesting that he'd do it. The potential Mrs. Luckmunn practically naked for a hungry world to see.
“Jane, Jane, come back,” he called in a hoarse whisper. She stood by the mail chute listening to the wind pushing the letter down, remembering every word she'd written, reciting it so that she'd never forget.
Dear Conlon,
I should be more gracious but I can't be. You're not welcome to my leavings. Somehow this should all make some kind of sense, but it doesn't. What does? I don't believe in the unconquerable forces of nature or even simple abstrations. In a way it's all worked out. My closest friend marries the only person I've honestly and truly loved, and he in turn is in love with a game.
I wish I could feel sorry for myself but I haven't got that much sense or strength of character. My life goes on in its confusion. I'm powerless to prevent my fortune from accumulating and am still in a sense a stateless person. I disavow many things, but ultimately myself. I started with nerve ends and now have feelings, progress of a sort, but I'm sure I'll live to regret it.
I have learned that we never make sacrifices except in our own interests. We do a lot of protesting to the contrary but our arguments can only be judged a success if we persuade ourselves. So at least admit that to yourself. I don't think you hated or hate me. You were envious and that's probably a lot worse, more difficult to live with.
On a characteristic note of vagueness I leave you to yourself, our sins, and the unfortunate human being you've chosen to protect, which proves that he's stronger than both of us. He has the edge, make no mistake about that.
I suppose the memory I'll cherish is of his innocence, yours, mine—and I'll have the common decency never to ask what became of it.
So sleep my lovelies, for it is never and beginning, the dream of dreams.
Your old friend,
(the future)
Mrs. Charles Luckmunn
On Luckmunn's face she saw real pain. Marrying him seemed to her the failure most likely to succeed, but she had no regrets. Real life was simply a concession to futility, and she'd fill the void as best she could. He spread his bathrobe over her shoulders.
“It's a circle, a fucking circle,” she said.
“Jane, we've really got to do something about your language.”
She had a moment of hesitation, uncertainty before the open door of the apartment.
“Oh, what the hell.... Come inside, Charles, I'm going to blow you. It doesn't really matter one way or the other. Cash in your chips.”
“Jane, darling”—he faltered, overcome by his own emotion—“there is no sadness sadder than getting what you want.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1971 by Norman Bogner
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-1703-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Making Love Page 31