Clemmie (27 page)

And, repeated so many times, one great wide eye an inch from his, a pale blue eye strained wide, with red tracery on the white, with flecks of a different color in the iris near the pupil. The anthracite pupil shrunken by the strength of the light over her face. A great blue eye filling all of the world, then beginning to shift back and forth in aimless pattern, faster and faster, and then focusing hard on some far strange place, then suddenly, violently pinching shut, lids deeply wrinkled, staying shut through the eternal seconds, and then a relaxation that smoothed the pinched wrinkles and the eye opening again, sleepily, lid moving up, but not far, eye turning down to find his eye, then a little pinching at the corners to show the mouth was smiling.

And her hands again, in another mood, moving with precision. The fingers held the pale gray airweight envelope and he could see the British stamps. Then some question had been asked, and he did not remember the
question, nor his answer. The letter was torn in two, then the halves in two, then again and then once more. He knew only that the letter had not been opened, had not been read. She had found it in his pocket where it had been, unopened, for a long time. There were others at home, unopened. She went off to throw the bits away. One square fluttered down and he picked it up and found only a fragment of one word in that familiar hand. “… idently …” He rolled it into a ball between thumb and finger, and snapped it into a corner.

He drifted through a shadowed place, marked with these bits of vividness. It was like a long tunnel which, once you had entered it, would bring you out into the light again at some unimaginable destination. Or the tunnel might have no ending. That was not important.

He came out of the end of the tunnel, opening his eyes and sensing that the sun was high. He did not know where he was. He kept his eyes open, unfocused, and waited for the onset of the needle pains behind his eyes, the slow uncoiling of nausea, the driving urge of thirst. But these did not come to him. He felt dulled and listless. He had slept very heavily, he knew. Somehow it was like awakening in hospital. He could remember having been very sick. His stomach felt sore from the continual vomiting. That had happened when? Yesterday? Last night? Whatever it was, it had drained the alcohol out of him and now there was no hangover. Just weariness. But a vision formed in the back of his mind. It took shape and clarity. It was a shot glass held up so the sun came through its amber depths, filled precisely to the brim. His own fingers held it steadily. It moved closer to his lips. Saliva flowed into his mouth.

Directly in front of his unfocused eyes there was a dark area. He was on his right side, knees bent, one hand under the pillow, the other hand resting near his chest. The sheet was down across his thighs. His body felt sticky. He focused his eyes and saw Clemmie’s hair, black, thick and tangled. She lay facing away from him, the sheet at her waist. Some strands of the dark hair were under his cheek. Her hair did not have a clean scent. The texture of the skin of her left shoulder was directly in front of his eyes, in perfect focus, so that he could see the almost invisible imperfections
of the skin. Her hip made a curiously high mound under the white sheet. Not a very white sheet. It had a grayish tinge to it.

He lay there too enervated to move, and gradually the smell of her hair became more unpleasant to him. He lifted his head and pushed it away, sank back again. He began to wonder dimly about time and place. Double bed. Some hotel or motel or something. God knows there had been plenty of those. Saturday? Sunday? He listened and he heard the city sounds, the murmur of a busy arterial street.

Suddenly the placement and intensity of those sounds became all too familiar. He sat up abruptly. His own bedroom. His bed. His and Maura’s. Her clothes were draped across the dressing table bench. His clothes were on the floor. There were two glasses on the dressing table with dregs of drinks in them, another on the bureau. Printed in big clumsy letters across the dressing table mirror was, “Keeryst, Oliver! Not that way!”

He slid his legs out of the bed. There was a gray and flattened cigarette butt in the bed, tobacco crumbs, a scorched place on the sheet. When he put his left foot down, he put it on the edge of an ash tray. It tilted and clattered and spilled gray ashes over the top of his foot. He brushed the ashes off, bent and picked the butts up and put them back in the ash try. He saw where cigarettes had been mashed against the hardwood floor, and he found a glass tipped over with a piece out of the rim, and the varnish white where the drink had spread.

He got up and went into the bathroom, into the stale odor of dried vomit. He took a yellow plastic sponge from the closet, got down with bare knees on the cool tile and cleaned up. Only when the place was presentable did he wash, brush, his teeth vigorously, comb his hair. He needed a haircut and his teeth had a yellowish tinge. He went back into the bedroom. There was room on her side of the bed to sit beside her. Her face was sallow in sleep, her breath sour, her hands grubby. He put his hand on her hip and shook her.

“Wake up, Clemmie. Hey!”

She opened drugged eyes, focused on him and scowled. “Lemme sleep, damn it.”

“Wake up!”

She grumbled and complained, but finally she hiked
herself up onto her elbows and looked at him unpleasantly. “Just why are
you
so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?”

“What the hell has been going on here? What are we doing here anyway? I told you I didn’t want you to come here!”

“Here? To the shrine? To the temple of love? We back on that? Lover, it’s too late now. We’ve been here a long time.”

“How long? What day is it?”

“Give me a chance to think. Oh God, what a head. Is blood running out of my eyes?”

“What day is it?”

“Don’t shout. It hurts. I’m thinking. We’ve been here one, two, three, four. That’s it. Four nights. Today has to be Monday, little chum. Blue, blue Monday.”

“The office!”

“That’s right. The office. We got here Thursday night. We came over from my place. I wondered if you shouldn’t go to work Friday, but you said it wasn’t at all necessary. You phoned the irreplaceable Miss James and you were very lordly with her.”

He stared at her. “I can’t remember.”

“Can’t you remember even coming here? That is one very long blackout. As your friend and advisor, I recommend you lay off the sauce. By the way, what
did
dry you out? Oh, I remember. Tummy trouble. How do you feel now?”

“Tired and confused. And sober.”

“I’m sorry you missed your own house party. People say we had a wonderful time. God, I’m a ruin, completely. I’m dirty and I itch. Get out of the way like a good boy. I’m going to use that tub of yours. Maybe I’ll use some of dear Maura’s lavendar bath salts.”

“What people? Was anybody else here?”

“Just an expression, darling. We were all aloney.”

“What did I say to Betty James?”

“I couldn’t possibly remember. Now will you
please
let me go get into that tub?”

He started to ask another question but the bathroom door closed firmly behind her. She seemed so damned—at home. And why not. The fourth day. He and Maura had little to do with their immediate neighbors, but this little arrangement would certainly not go unmarked. He
heard the flush of the toilet, then the thunder of water into the old fashioned tub. He padded down the stairs to look at the rest of the house. The living room was not too bad. More glasses. A bowl of water that must have once contained ice. Two very sheer stockings laid over the back of a chair. He picked them up. They were as insubstantial as cobwebs. His legs had felt very weak when he had walked down the stairs. Suddenly they started to tremble and a cold drop of sweat ran almost simultaneously from each armpit down his naked ribs. He sat down, leaned his head back and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them he saw, through the window, some object close to the front of the house that he couldn’t immediately identify. He stood up and walked to the window. The pale green Austin-Healey was parked in the front yard, close to the house. He could see the skid marks where it had ripped up the turf in a skidding stop.

Why not hang out a sign, he wondered. Clemmie sleeps here. Jesus! The top was down, and had probably been down for the four days, and it had quite probably rained during the four days. When it gets full of water, she’ll trade it. As he turned from the window he saw records on the floor by the record player. He went over and looked down at them. Old 78’s, one laying in two pieces, splintered in the middle where a heel had come down on it. He squatted, twisting his head to read the label. Fats on an old Decca. A piece of the melody went through his head, off key. If it isn’t Bartok or Chavez or Whoinhellski, you break it.

When he stood up he stepped on one of the halves with the ball of his right foot, pressing down until he felt it snap under his foot. He went out into the kitchen. He looked around slowly. You could not see it all at once. You had to pan it, he thought, like a documentary movie.

Plates with congealed food. One gas burner lighted, turned high, nothing over it. Glasses and bottles. Garbage smell. Butts tramped into the floor. A pair of red shoes with heels hooked neatly over the back of a kitchen chair. Faucet dripping. Back door open. A new and inexplicable hole in the top panel of the screen door. Broken glass swept into a corner, the broom standing beside it. He turned off the gas and went to the screen door and looked out through the hole. There was an unbroken Scotch bottle
in the middle of the backyard. The grass was high and scraggly, half concealing the bottle, but after going through the screen and clearing the railing, it had landed label-up.

He turned and looked helplessly at the kitchen, wondering where to make a start. He heard water start to roar into the tub again. He looked up at the ceiling. He crossed over, knelt in front of the cupboard where he kept the liquor and looked in. One bottle. Gin. There should have been a lot more bottles. He seldom drank gin. He stood up with the bottle in his hand and looked around the kitchen. He broke the plastic with his thumb, unscrewed the cap. Get right back where you came from, Fitz. Go right on back to never-never land where maybe this hasn’t even happened, and if it has, it doesn’t mean anything anyway.

He tilted the bottle and opened his throat and drank deeply. He drank until he started to gag. He lowered the bottle, made the sink in two strides, threw the gin back up and clung there retching, his eyes streaming. When he was able he washed his face, he rinsed his mouth.

Too much, he thought. Moderation does it. Slow absorption. He took one half-swallow. It stayed down for perhaps twenty seconds, and the spasms lasted longer. He thought of trying again, but he could not get the bottle to his lips. Limit of tolerance, he decided. Built-in safety switch for the aspiring alcoholic.

He heard her calling him. She called again and again as he went up the stairs. He went into the bathroom. It was hot and muggy, the windows steamed over. She had it very full and she lay back, her chin above water, dark hair afloat. At the other end her feet were braced between the faucets, pink toes in alignment. Her face was flushed. He never liked to look at her toes. Ballet had malformed her toes.

“I had to drain off the first batch, Fitzlamb. It was like gruel, truly. What have we been doing? Rolling in your cellar?”

“I haven’t looked down there yet. I’ve seen the kitchen.”

“Ghastly, isn’t it. I’ll send Olsen over. Where did you go? I called and called. You look absolutely green.”

“I feel green.”

“I have been offering up a prayer. A very important prayer. If it comes true, there is going to be at least one
more can of beer in that antique box of yours. Be a lamb, will you?” As he turned toward the door she said, “And put coffee on, if we have any.”

There were three beers in the refrigerator. He opened one, started to open another but felt his stomach knot, and put it back. When he came in with it she sat up and reached for it, eyes alight. She held the chill metal against her cheek and said, “Mmmm. Ambrosia. No, that’s solid. Nectar? Hardly. That’s sweet and icky. Mead. That’s a good word.”

She tilted the can up and drank deeply. She paused for breath, drank again. She finished it at the third try and, without warning, flipped him the can. It startled him and he missed it and it clattered off the tiles.

“Bad nerves, dear? You know this hanging over is cooking out very well indeed. I thought I’d have it all day, at least. But Clemmie comes bouncing back again, hooraw. For God’s sake, Fitz, go put something on. You look like a litter case. All ribs and hip bones and strings. And try to stand up straight.”

He looked down at himself, and was shocked. The bathroom scale was in the corner near the closet. He pulled it out with his foot and stood on it. The needle wavered and steadied at one fifty-eight. From one eighty. Twenty-two pounds.

“Dearest, you look like somebody just told you you were going to lose the baby.”

He looked at her. “It’s Monday, you say. This sounds like a damn fool question. What Monday?”

“No piker he. No crummy little one lost week end. This boy loses big gobs of time. Wait a minute. This will require computation. Maybe I’ll have to whip out the trusty sextant. Today, sir, is Monday, the twelfth day of August.”

He put the lid down on the toilet and sat down, face in his hands, trying to figure back. “That Monday you wouldn’t let me in your place. Wasn’t that the twenty-second of July?”

“Correct. Three weeks ago today.”

“It seems like longer.”

“I’ve never been so complimented, sir.”

“Have I missed much work?”

“Not one day, until Friday last. But you have not been setting off in the best of shape lately. You’re probably the
talk of the industry. Face it, old Fitz. It’s been a three-week binge, and I’m getting old before my time.”

“Clemmie, I’ve lost twenty-two pounds. Haven’t you noticed? Or worried or something?”

“I’ve tried to make you eat. Waiters have tried to make you eat. Husky waiters have tried to make you eat. Oh, no. Not Craig Fitz. No food for him, boy. Maybe just one mouthful of the steak. You could get your calories from the liquor, but too often, my friend, just when you have a nice snug load of calories aboard, you have to run to the side of the road and go whoops.”