She gave him a peculiar smile over the lip of the glass. “Well, it’s not that. Maybe I’m just seeing you differently for the first time.”
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”
She let loose the same peculiar smile. “You must have left your apartment in a hurry…your fly is open.”
He started, looked down, saw it was so, and felt himself turning red all the way down to the exposed area. “Oh, Jeezus!” he blurted, leaping and zipping. She was lying back against the arm of the sectional now, laughter coming in short, sharp buffets. He continued to blush, grew angry, flustered, bemused, amused and convulsed, all in the space of a few seconds.
When their mutual laughter subsided, he was slumped against her, and the scent of perfume on her neck overrode the smell of after-shave lotion in the air.
Without realizing, they flowed. Their mouths touched and the drink bounced once on the carpet, spilling in a dark, living stain. “The light…get the light…” she murmured against his tongue, muffled and desperate. He didn’t listen till she had jacked her knee into his side. “Get the light, damn you!”
It was one of those scenes out of a Mack Sennett comedy. Shelly running zigzag about the suite, flipping switches. When he returned to the sofa, he knew she was naked, even before he touched her.
She had done a workmanlike job on Stag. He dozed with childlike abandon till well after the third round.
“Later,” he said, later, “they lay looking into the smoke spirals, wondering at the nature of the evil bond that now bound them.”
“Lovely,” she commented, drawing on her cigarette. “Frances Parkinson Keyes?”
“Aimee Semple McPherson,” he replied. “If you believe.”
She nudged him. “Move over, I’m half on the floor.”
“This is so sudden, Miss Friedel.” He slid sidewise. “You know,” he said, “you’ve got a very hip looking—”
“Forget it, de Sade,” she said cutting him off. Figuratively. “Or I’ll get dressed.” He had the abruptly distressing thought that nakedness offended her…lights off…quick puffs on the cigarettes casting ruby highlights across her breasts…it was a spooky bit. He shrugged mentally, eloquently.
They lay together—though, oddly, not really together, more like two weary travelers off the same road, seeking a moment’s respite before struggling on—not speaking for a short while. Then:
“Okay: I’ve played your little game. Now why me, why tonight?” he asked coldly.
She did not answer for a time, then said, around the cigarette, “I don’t want to destroy your manhood, my lover, but if The Tin Woodman of Oz had walked through that door I’d have stripped the can off him. Your boy Stagorooney does a good job with tooth and claw. Pity he got carried away; we could have made such beautiful music together.”
“Nasty break,” Shelly replied sarcastically. “Sorry he punked out on you while the fires were banked. But what the hell…”
She sat up, began fumbling in the dark for her clothes. He listened to the rustling for a while, then said, “What’s a guy have to do to make your scene?”
She gave him a long pause, again.
“He has to be set.” There was no banter in her tone now. She turned to him, and he could see her face, hard and tight in the feeble glow of the cigarette. “Look, Shelly,” she said, as though about to state a credo, “I’m a girl with lots of wants. I never had it, and I want it. I want everything there is to want. And I want it to be so much that if I don’t want it…it shouldn’t be worth having. If that sounds shallow, then sue me, sue me, what can you do me.”
“Guys like me are supposed to talk about ‘The Long View’ at times like this,” he said, reaching out to touch her.
She pulled away. “Stop it. You’re the kind of guy I should make a beeline for, every time.”
“So? I’m available: parties, luncheons, bar mitzvahs, orgies, gas station openings, supermarket closings…”
“I know, I know.” She stopped him. “You’ve used that shtick before. I’m telling you something, Shelly, and you’re clowning with me. This may be the only time you’ll ever hear the truth out of me, so grab it while you can.”
He subsided, realizing she was leveling. “Go on. Tell me.”
“Oh, what the hell. Why bother? I’m a poor little girl from Kalamazoo, Michigan, who found at the tender age of fifteen that she couldn’t keep her pants on. So before too many in big K had sampled the wares I decided to get out and sell it; I’ve always contended charity begins at home.
“Up till now I’ve been a scuffler, and I’m sick of it, Shelly. Really fed to the teeth with guys on the make and rent overdue. So now I play it for all it’s worth. You just happened to get caught in the backlash tonight. Chalk it up to nymphomania.”
She stood up and smoothed the skirt across her thighs. “Come on, lover, cheer it up. We all have our little illnesses. I’m not so bad, you know. I might be hot for the wet towel scene, or whips, or even coat hangers. I’ve had some friends with real kinky habits.”
He wanted to say something gentle. Something that would penetrate the crust of scorn and cynicism she had burned around herself. But they weren’t operating on that level. Sentimentality was for Kalamazoo or Pittsburgh (where his father still sat dovening; still studying the Talmud late at night). Sentimentality was for the suckers who’d settle for nine-to-five and two weeks paid in the Catskills. It wasn’t for the hungry ones. He had understood Jean Friedel even before she’d spoken to him like this…his desire for her had been something subliminal, something dreamlike…a villa at Cap Ferrat, a gold-plated Rolls, a night in bed with Loren, Lollobrigida, and Bardot, with Monroe for a chaser. A dream. A wish out of a fairy tale.
“We’d better wake up Primo Carnera,” Shelly said, reaching for his pants. It took a bottle of smelling salts and three cups of coffee to do the job.
Stag Preston, had his picture been flashed coast-to-coast, might easily have lost his followers had they seen the Val-Packs under his eyes. “Don’t blink or you’ll bleed to death, Beany,” Shelly advised him. The singer sat on the floor, head in hands, moaning.
“Why don’t you record that,” Jean Friedel said, coming in from the kitchen with a fresh pot of coffee. “It’s got that whatchacallit—beat!”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself, sister,” he snarled. “You ever lift your paw to me again, I’ll cream ya!” He tried to rise, slumped back again. “Ohh, my head, suh!”
“Lay off him, Grushenka,” Shelly said grinning.
Stag looked up. “Who?”
“Forget it,” Shelly said. “Have some more coffee.”
“I don’t want any more. Where’s The Man?”
“Take the coffee and shut up. You’d better hope the Colonel doesn’t breeze in here while you’re off your pony. He’ll have you back picking boll weevils out of your pompadour.”
“Like hell he will. Forty fuckin’ percent, I got, Big Brother Sheldon. Forty big P.”
Shelly raised his eyes to heaven.
“I’m going home,” Jean said suddenly. “Shelly, will you drive me?”
“I came by cab, but I’ll ride up with you. You’re still on 97th, aren’t you?” She nodded. Shelly caught the glance Stag threw at them, from the corner of his eye. He hoped the boy would avoid complicating matters at this juncture.
“Go to bed, kid,” Shelly said. “We’ve got a heavy one tomorrow.” He turned toward the door. Jean had her shoes in her hand and was almost to the elevator doors. “I’ll take Jean home.”
“Have fun,” the kid said. Sullen. Annoyed. Sick.
Shelly shrugged, and reached the doors just as they sighed open. On the way down he said nothing to Jean Friedel, and in the cab the conversation was sparse.
“He didn’t like that,” she said.
“I know. Nuts to him.” He moved to take her hand. Surprised, he found she did not resist. “Jeanie…” he started.
“Forget it, Shelly. I’m the girl with the cast-iron heart, remember
?” There might have been a softness in her face. There was a softness in her voice.
Manhattan late at night was a pearl. It shone and it rested and it lived all at once. Cabs with dome lights warm and softly-orange cruised past, hissing on the streets freshly wet from the sanitation sprayers. Mailboxes hunkered on street corners waiting for young men in trench coats to post last-minute letters. It was a time to go someplace; a time to have someone nearby. A time when loneliness seemed a sin, and even false acquaintances had merit, were treasured. From this hour of the waning day, the dawning next, phony love affairs were born. But in the back seat of the cab Shelly had no such misimpressions. He was holding a hand, –30–, finis, end of report. This was a ship that had passed him several times in the night, and might again. But there was no breeches buoy to carry one across to the other’s vessel.
“Where was the Colonel tonight?” Shelly asked.
“Don’t you know? I thought you kept the tabs up to date?”
Shelly lit a cigarette with one hand, still holding her with the other. He snapped the match against the striker as a truck driver might. “Well, he was supposed to make some dinner at the Overseas Press Club and then a premiere at the De Mille. But he should have been back by now. Oh well…he’s a big boy; he can take care of himself.”
She didn’t reply, and when they pulled up in front of her building she urged him to stay in the cab. “Don’t bother, Shelly. I’m beat. Thanks. For tonight. For being you. See you around the campii.”
Then she was gone. He told the driver to wait a moment, watching the street-facing window of her fourth floor apartment. The light had been on. A hunch; a mere trickle of an inkling.
When enough time had passed for her to get upstairs, he told the cabbie to wait and left the cab. He walked across the street, into the building, and found the doorman. It was surprising in a city where once you slipped into your burrow in the wall and thought you were secret, how much doormen, bellboys and elevator operators knew.
It only took a fiver. Information goes at a very low rate in certain social strata.
Yes, Miss Friedel had a visitor. No, he had arrived a little earlier. Yes, he had a full head of white hair. Indeed yes, he almost looked like an ambassador, or a celebrity, like a patriarch, like a middle-aged playboy.
Perhaps?
Yes, indeed.
He looked like he might have been an officer; even a Colonel.
Shelly got back into his cab and gave his home address. Carlene was waiting. The cup that chills.
She was lying awake, smoking, when he came into the bedroom. “Joe Costanza called about five minutes ago. He left a number, wants you to call back immediately. He said it was an emergency. Something about the kid.”
“Whaaat? I just left him at the hotel. He was plowed out of his mind.”
She shrugged, proffered a piece of paper with a number. Shelly bit his lip and dialed the number. “Hello, is Joe Costan—Joe, that you? Where the hell am I calling? The Blue Angel? He’s WHAT! Are you putting me on? Oh, for God’s sake!
“Well, the hell with him. I hope he gets his ribs broken…no, I don’t mean that. Get him out of there. That guy’s a born troublemaker and he’ll kill Stag if he gets mad enough. What? No, I’m not coming down. I’ve done my Gandhi for the evening.
“He’s all yours, baby. Just get him out of there, drunk or sober, and up to the suite. Get him to bed. We’ve got a date at the recording studio tomorrow.
“I don’t give a scrim what he’s doing or who he’s feeling up. I don’t care what Kilgallen or Winchell or anydamnbody says. Get him out of there, and don’t bug me any more tonight. I’m beat bushed whacked-out finished. I’ve had the Boy Wonder for one night. And so saying, I retire.
“Good and night!” He slammed the receiver, fell back on the pillow without removing his clothes, and was asleep in a matter of moments, his mouth open, snoring.
Beside him, Carlene smoked for a time, her mouth thin, cruel, undemanding. Then she snubbed the last butt, turned off the light and slid down beneath the covers.
Her last act before dropping off was to turn away from the man beside her.
Her legs were crossed.
NINE
“Let’s forget our friendship, Shelly. This is a business meeting. We have a cursed problem on our hands, and someone has got, I say got, to solve it.”
Freeport paced the bedroom anxiously. He went from the breakfast table on wheels—steeped in odors of kippers, English muffins, oatmeal and shirred eggs—to the window; from the window to the huge bed; from the bed to the chair in which Shelly sat pinned by a glance. And all the time prowling.
“I’ve got a million dollars tied up in this boy, Shelly. He’s been paying off, but the overhead, well, you know what that’s like. I can’t afford to risk it. Something will have to be done to curb his, er, activities.”
Sheldon Morgenstern spread his hands like a pair of diving doves. “What can I tell you, Colonel? I’ve tried to keep the kid straight, but he’s some kind of a nut. He wanders around late at night like the Werewolf of London. After that scene up here I thought he was stacked-away for the night, next thing I knew he was—”
Freeport rattled a newspaper snatched quickly from a stack on the bed. “—he was brawling in a nightclub with a paunchy ex-movie star whose finest examples of histrionic ability have been in pubs and gin mills, the past five years. You’ve made every column in the city…”
“…well, publicity can’t hurt hi—”
“—hurt him! Shelly, I’m surprised that you would try that fast talk on me. We both know this is the worst sort of press he could get. Look at this.” He folded the paper lengthwise as subway riders do, stabbing at an item circled in red grease pencil with an angry thrust. “They’re calling him ‘Stud Service Preston!’ That is impossible, Shelly, impossible! I won’t tolerate it!”
Shelly felt his head swimming. He was suddenly not only his brother’s keeper, but regulator of public morals, suppressor of secrets and nanny to the hottest toddler in or out of perambulators. He raised his hands in mute forestalling, hoping to ward off the Colonel’s next words.
“Shelly, I’d like to tell you something.
“You may have been wondering at these long distance calls I’ve been getting from Atlanta the past two weeks. Well, they’re from an intermediary who has been trying to move a little land purchase for me. I’m almost in the final stages of negotiation to buy back all the land my family owned in Georgia. I’m going to rebuild a home that was sacked and burned at the time of Atlanta, my boy; it is a dream I’ve held for many years. The estate of Freeport will grow again. Now you own a good piece of Stag Preston yourself, Shelly, and I know you feel very much a part of this project, but if my own plans are put in jeopardy, I’m afraid I’ll have to take steps to remedy matters. There are ways, you know.”
Shelly knew. He felt unhappy. Very unhappy.
“So let me summarize, Shelly. If you can’t do something swift and decisive about curbing this cursed infant’s bad habits…I’ll have to seek out someone who can.
“Is there any area of our conversation that remains muddy?”
Shelly shook his head, mollified, subdued, cowed. The conversation was clear as an unrippled pool. He knew precisely what the Colonel meant. There were men who could be hired who charged by the broken limb. One hundred dollars for an arm. One fifty for an arm and leg combination. Two hundred and fifty for a broken back. With prices on request for special services peculiar to the client.
He stood up. “Colonel, say no more. As of this moment, I am the Jiminy Cricket of the hip set. I will stick so close to Huck Finn that he will have to send through an interoffice memo if he wants to use the bathroom.”
The Colonel winced at the indelicate reference, but smiled immediately thereafter, clapping Shelly on the back, adroitly steering him toward the door. “Good, good, my boy. I knew all it would take was a little close talk on our parts. We’re doing fine, Shelly, just fine.”
&n
bsp; And he was outside.
It was the same sort of bum’s rush the Colonel had given outsiders, or people on the staff who were on their way out. The image of Needleman—somewhere out there hustling again—came to him. Was there a power-grab in the offing? Shelly began casting about for ways and means to shore up his position.
Then again, he caught himself, I’m in fairly swinging shape if I can keep the Creature From the Stork Club out of trouble.
It sounded a good deal easier than it was destined to be. As Shelly found out twice within the space of a week and a half.
His first mistake was in taking Stag up to his apartment. His second mistake was leaving the singer with Carlene while he changed out of the charcoal brown business suit into a tux. His third mistake was in not leaving the bedroom door open to overhear their conversation.
They were slated to attend a banquet of pop music publishers, and Stag—who had kept the lamps going all the night before in the watering holes—had not bothered to change out of his Continental tuxedo. He had worn it all the next day, and though he looked rumpled, the animal grace of him canceled the taint of deshabille. But Shelly had to change, and so Stag Preston met Carlene for the first time.
“Listen, Carlene, fix Stag a drink, will you? I’ll be out in a couple of minutes.” It was not that Shelly was unaware of Stag Preston’s proclivities toward new women, nor even that he thought Carlene’s fidelity was a thing of cohesion and permanency.
It was simply that he was rushed, harried and harassed. He went into the bedroom to change.
Stag Preston’s eyes fastened on the long legs and the hidden planes of the face, and for a bright instant the eyes glowed golden.
“Shelly never told me he had a girl,” Stag whispered.
Carlene moved with sinuous caution beneath his glance, stepping around to the small bar, forcing the muscles of her buttocks and legs to strain against the sleek Pantinos. It was the ritual mating dance of the creatures in Jungle York.
“That’s a polite way to put it, Mr. Preston.”
“Put what?”
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