Making Love (41 page)

“Here's your check.”
 

It worked out to $176.49 less deductions. He slipped it into his wallet, capital upon which to build a lifetime. He owed his cousin two weeks' board for Wesley and that knocked fifty off. He passed a Merrill Lynch branch, studied the tape for a minute and decided to invest it all. Outside of a track, or crap table, he'd never seen such fast action. At least here he'd be sure of getting his money back without having to lodge a protest or threaten his local runner with a beating.
 

He spoke to the manager and learned that they didn't handle investments of that size, then beat a hasty retreat. Strolling down Park Avenue, a street he'd seldom seen during daylight hours, he believed he was as good as any of the people walking out of apartment houses; the only drawback, money. He regarded the presence or absence of money as some fickle trick of nature, fortuitous, like height or eye color. He couldn't worry about it.
 

He cashed the check at his bank, taking a hundred of it in singles. With his pocket swollen, he might have any amount. Jane had never seen him with a roll. Snow flurries began in earnest and he took refuge in a Fifth Avenue store. He had to ask a salesman in the shoe department the name of the store. Learning that it was Sak's he wondered how they'd react to a new credit customer. He found out quickly enough, citing Jane Teller Siddley and Pudge as references, both of whom had accounts and enjoyed credit. A hundred dollars' worth of charge was extended, until final checks enabled them to clear him for bigger things.
 

With the run of the store he wandered into lingerie. It had been years since he'd bought a woman a present, and he thought Jane required a transparent shortie nightgown. He fell instantly in love with a flimsy maize affair, trimmed with lace, bespeaking good taste. Conlon wound up with a ski scarf which could also convert to a head wrapper if she insisted on it, and Wesley Junior, a sports jacket. The world of shopping opened up to him and he embraced it. His days had formerly been employed in sleeping, handicapping horses, and worrying about the sports line. With nineteen dollars still left out of his advance he put down a deposit on a gray herringbone overcoat. A prospect motel manager had to make a good impression. Leaving the store, he became troubled by the TV commercial: an elderly couple poring over a looseleaf notebook and some unidentifiable text. Perhaps they were studying bookkeeping or accounting procedures. He hoped not, now alarmed. He could count cash with the best of them but he was certainly no scientist.
 

 

* * * *

 

Jane gave the Western Union boy a dollar. She had no change and he had snow on his hair. She brushed her teeth, gargled, then ran the bath. Distracted and without curiosity she opened the telegram.
 

 

dear jane i am going to connecticut for the weekend stop will you please consider joining me stop every room has a fireplace stop lee naturally comes with me and can cook many things in addition to mandarin cuisine stop we are also as you know close to some lovely restaurants stop i promise faithfully to shoot on sight anything that even resembled a cheese danish though we don't keep firearms stop please affectionately
 

charles luckmunn
 

p.s. a prepaid answer has been provided to save time

 

Sonny rang the doorbell as she was about to step into the bath, and she crumpled up the telegram before letting him in. He proudly held up his striped Sak's shopping bag, no longer a stranger to luxury. He kissed her cheek, cautioned her to use the spy hole and ask who was outside before opening the door.
 

“How're you? Rested? Snowin' like mad outside.” He contemptuously dropped his overcoat on a chair; the form-fitting herringbone would be ready in a few days.
 

“I'm having a bath.”
 

“I'll keep you company. Wash your back, even if you don' say please.”
 

He stationed himself on a stool, peered over the tub rim to get a better view, but saw only bubbles, the roll in his pocket solid as an ancient bunion.
 

“So this is why you smell so good all the time.” He looked around the small room, dimly recalling something familiar about it. “Brilliant idea, me leavin' a suit and stuff here.” Undershorts had not turned up and he wore a pair of her baby-blue bikini panties. Snug, but he was enjoying them. It had given him the idea for seeking lingerie for Jane. If they gave him pleasure, what must they do for her? The nightie would be a banquet.
 

“Listen, I called my cousin's wife an' she invited us for Christmas. Family thing, what do you say?” He couldn't contain his happiness. “You, me, an' the kid together with them. Christ, I never had anythin' like it. When I was playin', we used to get together at the stadium—the whole team—an' eat there. Wives, girlfriends, but it was never like family. I guess it can't be when you got waiters pullin' your plate away.” He kissed the top of her head. “Conlon can come, if she's got nothin' on.”
 

“Okay, if you like.”
 

“What're you down about?” The intolerable suspicion that she still harbored a grievance against him was terrifying. “You're still tired.”
 

“I'm fine, Sonny.”
 

“Nursin' a drunk is no pitnik.” He bowed his head. “I just had to get it outa my system. Picked up my check an' now I feel clean with nothin' pullin' me down. Honest, Jane, yesterday was the las' time for a number like that.”
 

In penance he massaged her neck muscles, eliciting groans of pleasure from her.
 

“You're real tense. Did you know that?”
 

“Who used to give the team party?”
 

“It was Pudge's bash. We used to get drunk together every time. Joy-Sue included. She come drunk. Couldn't wait; then we'd run back to Pudge's place—big Colonial with them white pillars, maybe thirty, forty feet high. Lotta Wild Turkey got drunk there.” A half-smile of pleasure danced on his lips, a waltz never to be forgotten. “One year we got so smashed that him and me wound up sleepin' on the same bed. Come mornin' I reach out for Joy-Sue, and there's ole Pudge laughin' his head off.
Sonny,
he said,
I know you done just about everythin' a man could do, but I don' think there's room on our team for a fag halfback.
Laughed ourselves sick.” His face shone with other-worldly joy. “I'm the leadin' ground gainer that season, too, which makes it double funny. Love o' God, what a season that was. Never had more fun. Broke trainin' whenever I wanted to. On the town everyplace—Cleveland, LA, New York. I tell you, Jane, I never been so happy....”
 

She eased out of the water to soap herself and looked at his animated face. He sat convulsed with laughter that he couldn't hope to share.
 

“Do you think Pudge could ever cut your throat?”
 

“Never! We was asshole buddies....!” He caught himself, ill at ease, tricked into a sucker play. “Hey, Jane, I thought we had that out once. Why's it so important I should believe you? What's it matter? My personal life wasn't like a saint's, neither. Fact is I couldn't care less one way or the other. He promised me a job. It dint work out, so what. I'm not gonna lay down an' die.”
 

He picked up a washcloth and soaped her back. Small atonements were unquestionably called for.
 

“You give me a bath, I give you one.” He laughed, hoping it would be infectious.
 

“Is it better with me or Joy-Sue?”
 

“What a question! Man, I'll never understand women. It's like bookkeeping. Numbers in columns which add up to nothin'.”
 

“I mean in the old days.”
 

“Shit, I was a kid on a good time. Dint know my ass from my elbow. No responsibility, just plowin' through a hole when I got the ball, or pickin' up my blockin' assignment. That ain't life. It's a game ... only a game.”
 

“Don't you want to answer?” she persisted.
 

“Lookit, what do you want me to say? She was my wife. I dint know she was along for the ride till I tapped out. What am I, a mind reader? You share somethin' with a woman, an' it's good, so I'm supposed to tell her she's a liar an' it's all phony. I can't look at things that way. She put up with a few things herself. All that travelin', strangers pawin' her, yours truly supposed to be at the baths an' drunk in some dump, the whores thicker than flies givin' me the romance. An athlete's got to grab what he can. I'm thirty-two, an old man. Finished four years ago. Spoke to a boxing champion a few years ago ... one of the greats, Rocky Graziano. You know what he tole me:
How soon they forget.
I want it on my tombstone. A man my age should be beginnin' his prime.”
 

“Was it good with your wife?”
 

“Damnit, ‘course it was.” He angrily threw the washcloth in the tub.
"Who do you believe, Sonny? Me or him?
This is gettin' to be a real slow track. I'm goin' out for a Christmas tree. I see the fruit store aroun' the corner's sellin' them.
Believe
you....” he spat the words out like a bit of dirt.
 

“Nobody ever has,” she said regretfully. She had a moral obligation to save him from herself.
 

She packed a bag hurriedly, rooted around for her boots, then realized that she was wearing them. He'd taken her keys, so he could let himself in. She didn't believe in notes or good-byes. Against her will she cried in the taxi, and the driver who'd refused to let her put her suitcase in the front stopped and apologized. Christmas was here. He didn't want to be responsible for grief. The mortified cabbie refused a tip, which made them both feel worse. He carried the bag to the vestibule of Luckmunn's building and waited while the doorman rang the apartment.
 

Luckmunn greeted her by the elevator, wearing a maroon-velvet smoking jacket, although he'd given up Kools way before the scare. Maybe he used the jacket for reading.
 

“Hello. I saved you the prepaid answer. You'll get a refund.”
 

“Jane, you've got a fine sense of economy. But really it wasn't necessary. Just a convenience.”
 

She gave him a sullen look. Self-sacrifice had been an incredibly difficult decision and she couldn't be gracious about it.
 

“Don't bother taking your coat off, I'm ready to leave.”
 

“Were you waiting for me?”
 

He took her hand, kissed it reverently, and said:
 

“Yes, yes, I was. I didn't think you'd come. I was hopeful but not optimistic.”
 

“If I didn't come ...?”
 

“I wouldn't have gone. I'd have pestered you until I could see you again. I have a simple philosophy. Perseverance always wins. I have one small vice I think I ought to tell you about. I don't like losing.”
 

On the drive up—
home in chains,
she thought—she couldn't bring herself to say a word to him. After a while he got the message, spent his time reading
Barron's.
Passing through Southport, he dropped the review and put his arm around her.
 

“Charles Luckmunn, builder,” he said, “and mender of broken hearts. Cry your head off, Jane darling. I'm taking the job voluntarily. A task force of one. I'll make you better, I promise I will.”
 

He kept quiet after that, which required enormous self-control. His emotional balance sheet revealed incontrovertibly that he was in love. Like the beginning of any new C. Benjamin Luckmunn development, it had started off in the red. Since he was the only stockholder he had to account to, he made a few estimates, asked himself the right questions. Would unstinting time, energy, investment, eventually produce a profit in the ledger of his life? Inclined to rush, remove obstacles, he reluctantly counseled patience and forbearance.
 

He was making a market in himself, underwriting the entire thing, another Luckmunn shit-or-bust operation. A bankruptcy here could not be profitable, might prove fatal. He couldn't quite picture her as mother to as yet unissued Luckmunn heirs, nor for that matter himself as a father. How could he plan? They hadn't made love. His partner might have a collapsed uterus, damaged tubes, uncontrollable ovulation, a chest hernia. Menopause she was too young for, but he'd heard of strange cases, statistical freaks. To be on the safe side, he'd get himself a list of adoption societies, investigate procedures. He put his foot down on Vietnam orphans and other foundlings of misadventure, although the idea might appeal to Lee. Sexual tax loss, a hell of a way to start a business. He cast the thought out of his mind, exiled it to the contingency department. He jotted down a note and handed it to Bob, a message from García, the Luckmunn version of the Zimmerman Telegram. Attack!
 

First drop us off, then go into Fairfield to record store and buy all Bert Bacharach and/or Dionne Warwick records available. Charge to my account. Bring back bill!
 

He developed a solitary tolerance for this recording team. He meant business. Romance swelled his pupils, lust glowed in the irises, his capital turned over merrily. She hadn't accepted his generous offer of a cry on his beige cashmere shoulder. A holdout. Sooner or later they all came to terms. In the meantime, delicacy, he told himself, diplomacy, deliberateness, the Luckmunn 3-D trinity. He'd experienced brooders for years—his mother was still alive, a study in ambiguous hostility, always angry, never certain about what. She disapproved of his personal life (too many women), his business she didn't understand, so it had to be illegal, and his relations with members of his family, selfish. When he asked her what was wrong, she invariably replied, “Everything.” Pressed to be specific, she would whine that she couldn't put her finger on it.