Clemmie (7 page)

America has spoiled me. I had not remembered the inconveniences, the awkward things. The shops are very grim. Their stocks are so limited. Television is the current rage. Everyone talks about it, and spends endless time peering at tiny little screens which receive so badly that part of the time it is difficult to make out just what is being shown. I have had to be very firm with the girls.
They have a tendency to expound on how much better things are in Stoddard.

My darling, it is very late and everyone else in the house is fast asleep. I think of you a great deal, and I am drearily lonely for you. The summer stretches ahead of me and it is endless. I am a displaced person, and I do not believe I shall come back here again. I think of how your lips and your hands might feel, and I grow as giddy as that little girl who watched Harry on his motorbike.

I hope your summer is not too desolate. Do not rattle about in that empty house like a lost soul. Go out where people are, my dear, and it will do you good. I did not like the sound of your last letter. The gaiety seemed so dreadfully forced, like a person laughing nervously while someone else stands upon his foot. Do not work too hard, and eat properly. The girls, of course, send their love. They whine for you at least once day. And so do I. In the next letter I shall send the pictures. I love you so very much.

He put the letter on his pillow, knowing that he would want to reread it when he went to bed.

Bill was on a bar stool when he walked into Nick’s. Nick’s was a Stoddard institution. Female trade was permitted in the glossy cocktail lounge adjoining the bar, but was firmly discouraged in the bar itself. The men’s bar was shabby, poorly lighted, with big brass spittoons, sawdust on the floor, dusty trophy heads on the wall. But the bartenders were deft, the drinks both generous and expensive, the bar stools comfortable. At five-thirty on any weekday evening, Nick’s was crowded with men from nearby office buildings, the courthouse around the corner, the city hall two blocks away. Lawyers, newspapermen, realtors, judges, politicians crowded the bar and sat in the dark oak booths that lined the wall opposite the long bar. It was a place to give and receive information, patch up feuds and make new ones.

Now, at six-fifteen, the quick-one-on-the-way-home crowd was thinning out. Craig looked at Bill’s Martini and decided it looked good. He sipped the first half of his drink standing half behind Bill, with Bill twisting
around to talk to him. Then the stool on Bill’s right was vacated and Craig was able to sit at the bar. By the time they ordered the second round, half the bar stools were empty.

They talked in low tones about Paul Ober. “My opinion is very easy to state,” Bill said ponderously. “It is a little gem of simplicity. It requires little elucidation. I think he is a spherical son of a bitch.”

“Spherical?”

“Sure. That means no matter how you look at him, he’s a son of a bitch. From any direction. So God-damn sweet and gentle. He’s a sadist. He’ll cut your throat or mine just for the exquisite pleasure of watching our expression. He’s a specialist in keeping you off balance. He wants everybody sweating to keep their job. L. T. Rowdy is a prop. A menace, like a bit part in a Hitchcock picture.”

“I think you’ve got him wrong, Bill. Do you want him to get us all together for a big fat pep talk? Fight team fight. You know damn well old Q.M. is the lame duck division of the whole works. He’s here to do a job.”

“On you and me. Let’s stop talking about the sweat shop, for Christ sake. Let’s get this ball rolling. Joe, hit us again.” The drinks were potent.

“How many of these are we going to have?” Craig asked.

“Too many. Nobody’s driving. Hell with it. A big red steak will knock the edge off later and then we can start again. A big drunky bachelor evening, kiddo.”

Craig lost track of the drinks. He felt that he was talking persuasively and importantly. It had become necessary to him to explain exactly how he had felt the last few days. It was a highly personal thing that without drinks he would never have thought of trying to explain to Chernek. He could hear his own owlish voice, but he could not turn it off. “I don’t feel like me any more. It’s like losing hold of something. You know what I mean? I’m not wearing my own skin. Hell, it’s like there was a great big gap in time. I’m twenty-four and all of a damn second I’m right next to forty and where the hell have I been? What have I been doing? Like amnesia. I’m looking around and right now—get this—right now I got less time to go than I already had. That’s important. Less
time to go. I’ve used up more than half. Doing what? Eating, sleeping, working. A wooden man. A wooden man with wheels running along a track down a hill, and when the track ends you fall off the edge of the world.”

Chernek nodded heavily and thoughtfully. “It’s tough all right.”

“Now you got to get this too. It’s important. People gotta think about this. Okay, you look at some old bastard.”

“I look at some old bastard.”

“That’s right, and you think he’s old all the way through. Old inside his head. But you gotta realize he isn’t. Inside his head he’s maybe a kid. And this age thing has happened to him. Like—like a disease. You get it. Suppose this old bastard, he’s sitting in a bus station and he’s wearing busted shoes and he’s got a bad heart and he can sit there and listen to his bad heart and look at his busted shoes and wonder how all this time happened to him. Where it all went, and what he was doing with it.” He felt the sting of tears in his eyes. He tapped Bill on the shoulder. “It’s happening to you.” He hit himself on the chest. “It’s happening to me. Every minute. It’s leaking way from you.”

“Leaking,” Bill said, his eyes half closed.

“So whatta you going to do about it. That’s what I want to know. In a few lousy little years I can be a grandfather. Me! Craig Fitz, a grandfather, and right inside here I’ll still be twenty-four and nobody will know it but me. You get it? It’s a great tragedy—tragedy.”

Joe, the bartender, drifted over and said, “It’s nearly nine o’clock, gentlemen. Don’t you think you should get some dinner?”

Bill stared at the small polite man. “When I want some eating advice, I’ll go to a dietician, buster. In Spain the right people don’t eat until eleven. But what the hell would you know about Spain?”

“Take it easy,” Craig said.

“Easy, hell! Scurry off, you little jerk, and whip up some more of these delicious Martinis. We’ll go for doubles this time.”

Joe had turned dark red. He turned white. “I’m afraid the bar is closed to you, Mr. Chernek. I can’t serve you another drink.”

Bill studied the paper money and change on the bar. He picked it all up very deliberately, hesitated, put down a dime. “This is for you, Joe. For superb service. And might I add that this is the last time I shall ever be seen in this over-rated saloon. Good-by forever, old buddy. Screw you, and the same to Nick.”

Craig lingered behind as Bill lumbered toward the door. He made an apologetic gesture, and left two dollars of his change on the bar. Joe nodded curtly and picked up the money. Craig hurried after Bill. Bill could be a very troublesome drunk. But he was the only man in the world who could understand how Craig had felt and what he was trying to say.

Bill stood, swaying slightly. “Never come here again. Craig, by God, I think you’re the best friend I’ve got in the whole world. You’re a deep thinker. You’re sort of a quiet-type guy, but by God I like you. I like you a hell of a lot.”

“I like you too.”

“We’ll have us a ball, old buddy. I’m going to do you a favor, and you’re never going to forget it. Come on. Let’s get a cab.”

“Are we going to eat?”

“Sure we’re going to eat. Come on.”

They found a taxi in a hotel stand. They got in and Bill said, “We want to be dropped off at the corner of River Street and State Street, kiddo.”

The driver turned around in the seat and looked at them. “You gents sure you want to go down there?”

“Why, all of a sudden, is every little son of a bitch in the world trying to give me advice?” Bill complained.

“Suit yourself, chief.” He pulled the flag down and started up.

“Where are we going?” Craig asked.

“Leave everything to old Uncle Bill.”

The driver snorted.

“Skip the editorial comments, buster,” Bill said.

It was a fifteen-minute ride. Bill hummed tunelessly and refused to answer questions. When Craig saw the section he knew what the driver meant. It was the oldest part of the city, down near the sour smell of the polluted river, an area of old warehouses, missions, fleabag hotels, derelict bars. One portion of that area had been razed
two years before and a Negro housing development built to help relieve some of the pressure of the rapidly growing Negro population. The July night seemed stickier down there in the narrow streets.

“Where now?” Craig asked.

“You nervous? I haven’t been down here in two years, but I know a good thing and I remember it. We’re going to see an old friend of mine. Name of Connie. We got to walk a block and a half. I couldn’t remember the name of the other street, so I had to tell him here.”

“A friend of yours lives here?”

“Sort of. She’s got a nice place. Best damn people in town come down here. Hell, we’ll probably run into the Mayor. She’s in the big leagues. She’s in the big circuit. She gets the best merchandise you ever saw. They’re no tramps. Every damn one of them looks like a model. They can carry on a conversation too. It’s fifty bucks for all night.”

Craig stopped. “Are you talking about a whore house?”

“What else? And you never been treated better. This is on me, Craigie old buddy.”

“Damn it, I want some food.”

“Food you’ll get. This is a set up, kiddo. It has atmosphere. She’s got a freezer full of steaks and a little old nigger who really knows how to cook ’em. And we’ll have us a bottle of champagne. And you get yourself first choice of those nice leggy gals. Come on. Don’t just stand there.”

They walked. They passed corners where men leaned against darkened store fronts and fell silent when they passed. A man slept on newspapers in a doorway. They turned onto a darker, narrower street. The buildings were all old, all joined together. The street was littered with paper, and the alley mouths smelled sharply of urine.

Craig walked woodenly beside Bill. He was conscious of how conspicuous they were. He felt nervous about the black mouths of the alleys. Stoddard, with its undermanned police force, its industrial expansion, its venal city government, had a high ratio of crimes of violence. Muggings were commonplace.

Now that he had adjusted to Bill’s program, he felt recurrent quivers of excitement.

“Right in here someplace,” Bill said. “Right along in here.”

He stopped and looked at the stone houses. They were two and three stories high. Each had stone steps from the sidewalk up to the front door, and many of them had a second flight going down at an angle to the basement. There were not many lighted windows on the street. At some of the houses people sat on the front steps. As Bill studied the buildings, Craig could hear a faint discordancy of music, of mingled reception from many sources.

A dark sedan drew up to the curb two houses away. The horn blasted the night twice. A girl came quickly out of the door, hurried down the steps and into the car. It was moving before she could pull the door shut.

“You wait here,” Bill said. He climbed the steps and thumped on a door. When the door opened he said, “This Connie’s place?” The door slammed in his face. He came down the steps. “Bad guess.”

He tried the next house and the next, without luck. He was getting angry. He was kicking the doors instead of knocking. He said, “You know, I’ll bet you the damn place is across the street. You wait here, pal.” Craig waited and watched him. Craig felt the whole street was watching them, watching the pair of noisy drunks.

Finally, Bill lifted his head and filled the night with a brass roar. “Connie! Oh, Connie! Where the hell do you live?”

It was at that moment the prowl car came around a corner, moving swiftly and almost silently. A white spotlight swung onto Bill Chernek and the car stopped close to him. Craig saw Bill glare into the light and heard him yell, “Get that damn light off me!”

Craig had been leaning against the side of a building in the shadows. As he pushed himself away from the wall to cross the street he felt a twist of dizziness. He staggered sideways and tumbled down an unseen flight of stone steps, landing on his hip and shoulder. The fall jolted him and sickened him and he lay there for a moment. He came up the steps, swallowing hard, and when his eye was above sidewalk level he saw the two cops tumbling the unconscious body of Bill Chernek into the back of the prowl. The people on the shallow porches had moved quietly indoors. Craig could hear the cops’ voices clearly.

“Big bastard, isn’t he?”

“Two bits says he’s from that furniture convention. We’ll get the I.D. when we get him in.”

“Figure he was alone?”

“Looks that way.” The sedan doors chunked shut. The car moved off.

Craig stood in the shadows, down in the blackness. The small sounds of living began to be audible again on the street. He told himself it would have done no good to cross the street after Bill had already been knocked out. The damage was already done by the time he had started back up the stairs. They would have taken him in too. He suspected he would have been unable to conceal his intoxication. The fall had sobered him, but only slightly. He felt dulled and witless standing there in the stale night air. The buildings were out of perspective, leaning toward him. A drop of chilled sweat ran down his ribs and he wondered if he was going to be sick. He took several deep breaths, squared his shoulders, marched up the stairs and down the street. He tried to look sober, purposeful, a man with a place to go.

He had enough idea of direction, enough knowledge of the texture of the city to know that he should walk away from the river. There was no chance of stopping a cab down in this area. He walked through the fringe of a Negro district, past jukes turned to maximum volume, past a white-haired white woman who vomited in the gutter, past a child who wept, past a woman who spoke to him insinuatingly. He walked the narrow blocks away from the river and found a small grocery store that was open and put a dime in a pay phone fastened to a sidewall and phoned Al Jardine.