Bright Segment (36 page)

“Whyn’t you tell me you wanted to make a pass? I’d have saved you the trouble. She won’t be good for anything for weeks yet. She can’t think of anything but—”

“It wasn’t anything like that. I just asked her if there was anything I could do. She didn’t seem to hear me, so I asked her again. Then she got mad and hit me. That’s all.”

I laughed at him. “Well, you probably did her a favor. She’s better off mad at something than sitting there tearing herself apart. What made you think you could get to first base with her, anyway?”

He grinned and shook his head. “I told you, honest I didn’t want anything, only to see if I could help.” He shrugged. “She was crying,” he said, as if that explained something.

“So what’s in it for you?”

He shook his head.

“I thought so!” I banged him on the shoulder. “That’s where we’ll start, Henry. We’re going to make you over, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to get you out of oversize second-hand shirts and undersize Boy Scouts ideas. We’re going to find out what you really want and then we’re going to see that you learn how to get it.”

“But I’m all—I mean I don’t really—”

“Shut up! And the first and rock-bottom basic and important thing you’ll learn till you’re blue in the face is, never do nothing for nothing. In other words, always ask ‘What’s in it for me?’ and do nothing about anything until the answer comes up ‘Plenty!’
Steve! The check!
That way you’ll always have a new wallet to put in your new suit and nobody, especially girls, is going to clobber you in a filthy joint like this.”

Actually it wasn’t a filthy joint, but Steve came up just then and I wanted him to hear me say it. I gave him what the check said, to the penny, and told him to keep the change. Once in a while I’d tip Steve—not often—and then I’d make it a twenty or better. What he didn’t know was, if you total all the bills and all the tips, the tips came out to exactly nine per cent. Either he’d find that out for himself some day or I’d tell him; one way or the other, it would be fun. The secret of having fun is to pay attention to the details.

Out on the street, Henry stopped and shuffled his feet. “Well, good-by.”

“Good-by nothing. You’re coming home with me.”

“Oh,” he said, “I can’t. I got to—”

“You got to what? Come on now, Henry—whether you know it or not, you need help; whether you like it or not, you’re going to get it. Didn’t I say I was going to tear you down and make you over?”

He stepped to the right and he stepped to the left. “I can’t be taking up your time. I’ll go on home.”

I suddenly saw that if I couldn’t change his mind, the only way I’d get him to come along would be to carry him. I could do it, but I didn’t feel like it. There’s always a better way than hard work.

“Henry,” I said, and paused.

He waited, not quite jittering, not exactly standing still. Guys like Henry, they can’t fight and they can’t run; you can do whatever you want with them.

So—think. Think of the right thing to say. I did, and I said it.

“Henry,” I said, real sudden, real soft, sincere, and the change must have hit him harder than a yell, “I’m in terrible trouble and you’re about the only man in the world I can trust.”

“Gosh.” He came a little closer and peered up at me in the thickening twilight. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Sticking out of the marrow of his soul, every man has an eye-bolt. All you have to do is find it and drop your hook in. This was Henry’s. I almost laughed, but I didn’t. I turned away and sighed. “It’s a long story … but I shouldn’t bother you with it. Maybe you’d better—”

“No. Oh, no. I’ll come.”

“You’re a pal, Henry,” I whispered, and swallowed as noisily as I could.

We walked down to the park and started across it. I walked slowly and kept my eyes on the middle distance, like a hired mourner, while Henry trotted alongside, looking anxiously up into my face every once in a while.

“Is it about that girl?” he asked after a while.

“No,” I said. “She’s no trouble.”

“Her husband. What happened to him?”

“Same thing that happened to the ram who didn’t see the ewe turn.” I hit him with my elbow. “U-turn, get it? Anyway, he drove over a cliff.” We were passing under a street light at the time and I saw Henry’s face. “Some day you’re going to split your head in two just by grinning. What do you go around showing your teeth for all the time, anyway?”

He said, “I’m sorry.” And when we were almost through the park, “Why?”

“Why what?” I asked vacantly.

“The husband … over the cliff.”

“Oh. Well, she had a sort of a roll in the hay with somebody, and when she told him, he up and knocked himself off. Some people take themselves pretty seriously. Here we are.” I led him up the walk and through the herculite doors. In the elevator, he gulped around at the satinwood paneling. “This is nice.”

“Keeps the rain off,” I said modestly. The doors slid open and I led the way down the hall and kicked open my door. “Come on in.”

In we went and there, of course, stood Loretta with The Look on her face, the damned anger always expressed as hurt. So I pushed Henry ahead of me and watched The Look be replaced by tight Company Manners.

“My wife,” I told Henry.

He stepped back and I pushed him forward again. He grinned and bobbed his head and wagged his figurative tail. “Huh-huh-huh—” he said, swallowed, and tried again. “Huh-how do?”

“It’s Henry, my old school pal Henry that I told you about, Loretta.” I’d never told her a thing. “He’s hungry. I’m hungry. How’s for some food?” Before she could answer, I asked, “A couple paper plates in the den would be less trouble than setting the table, hm?” and at this she must nod, so I shoved Henry toward the den and said, “Fine, and thanks, oh, best of good women,” which made her nod a promise. We went in and I closed the double doors and leaned against them, laughing.

“Gosh,” said Henry, his eyes heating up. “You never told me you had a—uh—were married.” The smile flickered, then blazed.

“Guess I didn’t. One of those things, Henry. The air you breathe, a post-nasal drip, the way you walk from here to the office—same thing. Part of the picture. Why talk about it?”

“Yes, but maybe she … maybe it’s trouble for her. Why are you laughing?”

I was laughing because of the change in Loretta’s face as we had come in. I was late and dinner was ruined, and I’d been drinking to boot; and primed as she was to parade hurt feelings all over the
apartment, she hadn’t expected me to bring anyone home. Ah, Loretta; so mannered, so polite! She’d have died rather than show her feelings before a stranger, and to see her change from hostility to hospitality in three point five seconds was, to me, very funny. There’s always a way of getting out from under. All you have to do is think of it. In time.

“I’m laughing,” I told Henry, “at the idea of Loretta’s having trouble.”

“You mean I’m no bother?”

“I mean you make everything all right. Sit down.”

He did. “She’s pretty.”

“Wh—oh. Loretta. Yep, nothing but the best. Henry, I am a man different from all other men.”

He fumbled with some facial expressions and came up with a slow grinning puzzlement. “Isn’t everybody?” he asked timidly.

“Yes, you idiot. But by different, I mean
really
different. Not necessarily better,” I added modestly. “Just different.”

“How do you mean, different?” Good old Henry. What a straight man!

By way of answering him, I took out my key-case, zipped it open, thumbed out the flat brass key of my filing drawer and dangled it. “I’ll show you, soon as we have something in our stomachs and no interruptions.”

“Is this the … the trouble you said you were in, you wanted my help?”

“It is, but it’s strictly private and confidential that I don’t want you even thinking about it until I can lock that door and go into detail.”

“Oh,” he said. “All right.” Visibly, he cast about for something else to talk about. “Can I ask you something about the girl who was … whose husband …”

“Fire away,” I said. “Not that it matters. You have the damnedest knack, Henry, of combining the gruesome with the trivial.”

“I’m sorry. She seemed so, well, sad. What was it you said, I don’t think I understood it?” His voice supplied the question mark to his
odd phrasing. “She and somebody …” His words trailed off and he went pink. “And her husband found out—”

“She sure did. And he didn’t exactly find out; she
told
him. She was mixed up in some research, see. Field-test of a new drug, a so-called hypnotic. So there she was, awake and aware and absolutely subject to any and all suggestions. And as you saw for yourself, she’s not a bad-looking chick, not bad at all. So nature just took its course.
Carpe diem
, as the Romans used to say, which means drill not and ye strike no oil.”

He looked at me foggily, but smiling broadly, too. “The researcher, the one who gave her the drug. But that wasn’t exactly her fault. I mean her husband didn’t have to—”

“Her husband did have to,” I mimicked, “being what he was. One of those idealistic, love-is-sacred characters, who, besides all of this, was sensitive about the side of his face he left in Korea. “Love,” I said, harpooning Henry’s collarbone with my finger again, “is cornflakes.”

I leaned back. “Besides, he had no way of knowing how it happened. This drug, it’s something like sodium amytal, though chemically unrelated. You know, ‘truth serum’! Only it doesn’t leave the subject groggy or doped. She went straight home, walking and talking just like always, and incapable of concealing what had happened. She didn’t even know she’d been—ah—medicated. It was in her coffee. All she could say was that such-and-such had happened to her and it was all so easy that, from now on, she could never know when it might happen again. He chewed on it for most of the night and then got up and got in his car and drove over the cliff.”

Henry smiled twice, one smile right on top of the other. “Now all she does is drink in bars?”

“She doesn’t drink. Ever read that William Irish book,
Phantom Lady
, Henry? There’s a girl in there who cracks a character just by haunting him—by being there, wherever he is, day and night, for weeks. This chick in the bar, in her goofed-off ineffectual way, is trying to do the same thing to me. She sits where I can see her and hates me. And cries.”

“You?”

I winked at him and made a
giddap
sort of cluck-cluck with my back teeth. “Research, Henry. A scientific project. It covers a multitude. And covering multitudes is a happy hobby, especially if you do it one by one. Sure, I know chemistry—told you I was a specializing non-specialist. Now wipe that grin off your face or you won’t be able to chew: here comes the food.”

Loretta carried in a tray. Butter-fried shrimp with piquant orange sauce, a mixed-greens salad with shallots and grated nuts, and an Arabian honey-cake.

“Oh!” gulped Henry, and bounced to his feet. “Oh, that’s just beautiful, Mrs.—”

“You didn’t bring a drink first, but I guess we can have it along with the food,” I said.

“I don’t really want any, really,” Henry said.

“He’s being polite. We don’t let our guests be polite, do we, Lorrie?”

For a moment, she had only one lip because she had sucked in the lower one to bite on. Then she said, “I’m sorry. I’ll mix—”

“Don’t mix,” I told her. “Bring the bottle. We wouldn’t think of troubling you any more, would we, Henry?”

“I really don’t want—”

“Right away,
dar
ling.” Two out of five times when I say darling, I roar at her. She set the tray down on the coffee table and fairly scurried out. I laughed. “Wonderful, wonderful. She doesn’t exactly hide the liquor, but she sure tidies it away. Now, by God, she’ll bring it to me.”

I could actually hear the soft sound at the corners of Henry’s mouth as his smile stretched it.

Loretta came back and I took the bottle. “No chaser; we’re
men
in here. Okay
dar
ling, you can leave the dishes here for the night.”

She wouldn’t back to the door and she wouldn’t—maybe she was frightened just then—she wouldn’t take her eyes off me, so she got out sidewise, not forgetting to flip the crumpled fragment of a hostess’s smile to Henry.

Henry was saying, “Well, thank you very much. Mrs.—” but by
the time he got it all stammered out, I had the door closed.

I went to the settee, rubbing my hands. “Bring the bottle, Henry.”

He brought it, and sat down by me, and we ate. It was very good, which is the least a man can expect. I toyed with the idea of yelling for some tabasco, but I’d had enough fun with Loretta for the time being. Enveloping that food, my stomach felt well pleased with itself. Silent, unsmiling and intent, Henry absorbed what was on his plate.

I poured a slug for Henry, knowing I could afford to be generous, and one for myself. I leaned back and enjoyed a belch, which made Henry jump, threw down the bourbon, poured another and went to the desk.

On my desk is a typewriter, and under the typewriter is a sound-absorbing mat, and in the mat I keep a sewing-machine needle, the best toothpick Man ever made. It’s strong and it’s sharp and it has a base you can get a grip on without snapping it. I sat in the swivel chair and leaned my elbows on the typewriter and picked my teeth and watched Henry mopping the honey off his dessert plate with a piece of bread.

“That was—your wife certainly can—”

“Like I said, Henry, nothing but the best. Sit down over here. Bring your drink.”

He hesitated, then brought it over and put it on the desk where I could reach it. He sat down on the edge of the easy chair. He looked like a worrisome kitten making its first try at sitting on a fence. I laughed in his face and he smiled right back at me.

“What I am going to do, Henry,” I told him, I told average, stupid, fearful, dogface Henry, “I’m going to let you in on some things that no human being on Earth knows. I’m going to tell you at the same time that these things are known to a number of people. Not a large number, but—a number. Could both those statements be true?”

“Well, I—” he said. Then he blushed.