Red-Dirt Marijuana: And Other Tastes (27 page)

M. Pommard had already closed his own gate, and he came to his feet at once,
“Attention!”
he cried, “
Vous vous trompez, Monsieur! Attention!”
and he hurried after the man who ran now, as without noticing him, toward the waiting train.

He came back, shaking his head from side to side, a little out of breath. He had worked in the Metro for twenty-five years, he was an old man now.

“The pig,” he muttered, stopping to examine the automatic gate. He was obviously upset.

“I shouldn’t worry,” said the other, thinking certainly he must catch the next train himself.

“The dirty pig,” said old Pommard, his voice quite unsteady.

“Yes, it is scarcely worth it,” the other went on, “Oh I know the type certainly. My God, at Clignancourt! But I never bother, tell me, why should we on our salary?”

“Yes, but all the same,” said M. Pommard, taking his chair, “it sickens me. Besides, we have our orders, isn’t that so?”

“Listen,” M. Pommard was saying to the Clignancourt gatekeeper the next evening, “you understand, I know this man. Certainly. It is not the first time for him, far from it, he has rushed the automatic gate before, running ahead on the steps no doubt, and then just squeezing thru as it shuts. Wednesday night it happened, I’m sure it was the same man, again last night as you saw for yourself, and then tonight.”

“Tonight? It happened again tonight?” the other replied as incredulous, thinking he must not miss two or three trains home again tonight listening to the old man’s stories.

“Certainly. What did you expect,” said M. Pommard making a sweet-bitter face, “that he would allow the gate to shut properly, when he’s in a hurry?”

“In a hurry, eh? So much the worse for him then!” said the other laughing in a patronizing sort of way.

M. Pommard did not laugh. “It will not happen again,” he said in a challenge to the younger gatekeeper, “make no mistake about that.”

“Yes. Well of course you could report him to the Company, or to the police for that matter,” answered the other without any sincerity at all.

“To the
Company?
” said the old man, a little astonished probably. “What would you have me do then, go to the Company and say, ‘Here now, I am no longer able to keep my gates’?” At this he drew himself straighter in the chair, “After twenty-five years service, August eighth, and nine as keeper of this gate, you will have to find a new man! A younger man no doubt.” He looked down the empty platform, where now the
portillon automatique,
like his own gate beside him, stood open wide. “What you may not understand,” he went on, shaking a finger without any real malice, “that in a matter of this kind,
I
am the Company.” There he stopped full, hesitating, as at some kind of distance. “After all,” he began finally, but his voice caught up so that he stopped again, and looking about him, made a small gesture with his hands, “after all, these are my gates,” and when he raised his eyes, for the young man, seeing the dead dry waste of the old man’s face, it was terrible, the tears there.

The old fool, he said to himself, surprised almost at saying it. “I shouldn’t worry,” he said aloud, and for all his hypocrisy, placed a hand on the other’s shoulder.

“It will not happen again,” said M. Pommard, shaking himself and standing. He walked toward the automatic gate, “Shall I tell you why? Because I served three years as apprentice mechanic with the Company, and two years following as full mechanic. In those days,” he stopped before the automatic gate and faced the other gatekeeper, “there were no shortcuts in the Service. One began at the bottom.” He paused as if this point should be allowed to stand alone for a moment, or as if perhaps, he had forgotten the larger point altogether. “Consequently,” he went on then, “I am able to adjust this automatic gate myself, that is, to regulate the pressure so that it will function properly as intended. Notice this,” he continued, leaning over to touch the pressure apparatus at the bottom of the gate, “by turning this valve, the closing pressure is increased; by turning the other, it is decreased. Now you see I have increased the closing pressure.”

He looked at the other man who nodded then as if he had followed it closely. “There you are then,” said M. Pommard wiping his hands, “not a complicated thing certainly, but a matter of knowing how,” he shrugged, “of experience, as they say.” And his voice at once became lighter, as they walked back to the chair, a hand on the other’s shoulder, he was almost jovial, wanting to be told again which the younger’s station was, and how long he had been there. A useless old man, thought the other, feeling quite suddenly very violent, as he felt also the weight of the knife in his pocket.

On the following night the Clignancourt gatekeeper and old Pommard had been talking for only a moment when an incident, something like those of the previous evenings, occurred. From where they were standing, it was difficult to know exactly what happened when the man entered the automatic gate as it was shutting.

This metal door, standing open to admit the
correspondance
passengers, had, as the lights of the train appeared at the far end of the platform, begun closing inward as usual, very steadily, and when the opening was less than a foot wide, the man had stepped sideways between the door and the iron sill, and very quickly thru and onto the platform. Evidently the man had been running, to reach the door as it closed, but whether he actually retarded its closing, one could not say. Certainly it had touched him, and for the briefest instant he stood, his chest against the door’s edge, his back against the sill, yet the door continued to close, or so it seemed, steadily.

As before, it happened so quickly that M. Pommard must have been taken by surprise. He broke off in the middle what he was saying to the other gatekeeper,
“Attention!”
he shouted,
“vous vous trompez là! Attention!”
and he went after the man, calling out, running, hopping in wrath, across the platform to the very door of the carriage.

When he came back he was evidently quite shaken. He looked once defensively at the other gatekeeper, “What would you have me do then, hold up the train?” and here he began something about Schedules, forgetting for the moment how much the other knew, by heart as well.

“Yes, he is a pig, that one,” mused the Clignancourt gatekeeper as he stared after the passing train, “how well I know the type! A rich pig,” and, remembering vaguely, wondered once if it was really the same man. This one went into first-class. Naturally, he thought, fat rich pig. “He’s an anarchist,” said the old man gravely. “Anarchist?” echoed the other, really surprised. “Certainly. What did you expect? He has no respect, no respect for the regulations. He squeezes his way thru the
portillon automatique,
while it is closing, do you understand? But then, of course, you saw it yourself.”

“Yes, I know,” said the other, coming back, “that happens. At Clignancourt they are like cattle. When they see the automatic gate closing, sometimes they run and hold it back by force. Twice they’ve broken it this year. The people are crazy,” just as one day, he thought, they will break these city gates again. And, as for the fat pigs then! He picked at his nose and spat, almost in the same motion.

“Broken! There you are then,” said the old man with a shrug. He turned back to the automatic gate, made some more adjustments there. “Now a team of oxen could not hold back that gate,” he said flatly.

“So much the better,” said the young man, thinking of other things no doubt.

There were only a few people on the platform the next evening when M. Pommard closed his gate as the lights of the 11:03 for the Porte de Versailles appeared at the far end.

In the
correspondence
passage now, was the Clignancourt gatekeeper himself, late from some violent political meeting. He was just coming down the last flight, even as the lights of the 11:03 were closing inward, caught up and twisting on the cold gloss of the automatic gate. Then he was thinking how, in seeing him, the useless old gatekeeper here would raise two fingers to his cap, would slowly, dutifully get to his feet and come over,
noblesse oblige.

Thinking this, he thrust one hand, as automatically as the closing gate before him, deep in his pocket and rushed absently ahead, reached the gate and stepped thru freely, onto the platform.

M. Pommard was sitting easily, and in fact, as anticipated by the other, had just raised two fingers to his cap in greeting, but as their eyes met, holding for one instant the fearful contempt between them, there was some commotion from behind, in the automatic gate. And there, for this same sharp instant, on a young lady’s face was a look of astonishment, child at a magic show, blotted over now by the rush of blood from her nose and mouth.

They both turned at the noise, and M. Pommard nearly bowled the young man over, rushing past, shaking his head, crying aloud through the screams,
“Attention! Vous vous trompez! Attention!”

But then a crowd was already gathering, closing in boldly, as even now under no apprehension themselves, yet making it more difficult, to be sure, for old Pommard, with his halting push and pummel, to get through to the trouble there in the automatic gate.

A
T FIVE O’CLOCK
the afternoon sun wanes aslant the smart low-roofed shops of Westwood, hangs heavy over corners like a loose saffron shawl, flooding office and showroom with folds of yellow light, turning the cream-walled cubicles of the Mayfair Coiffeur to a golden rose.

Seated before the mirror in one of the cubicles, hat and purse on her lap as she pays another last tribute to her own new, fascinating image, Grace Owen feels a sudden, novel affinity for sunlight. She remembers now what it does for blondes, how it darts and shimmers through the strange, beautiful hair lying half-hidden in it, glinting out from deep, opaque recesses.

She takes the hat from her lap, tries it at a tentative angle. Amazing. Who would have guessed that blonde hair could make such a difference—all the difference in the world. What will Ralph say? Ralph had always wanted a blonde and now he would have one. Perhaps it is true, after all, that men do prefer blondes!

For an instant her eye leaves the hat and falls on the chromed bell of the hair dryer. How harshly bright the silvery metal is in the light of the sun! There’s really no comparison between gold and silver. Gold has softness. Grace feels a small, unaccountable shudder at the sun’s sharp glare on the chrome and, again, at the faint resurgence of the odor that has filled the cubicle all afternoon: peroxide, by now dried away, almost to memory. She realizes it is getting late.

At the door of the beauty shop Mrs. Owen says good-afternoon to the receptionist and, in the street, immediately feels a growing excitement.

The quick-march tempo of early-evening traffic has not yet set in: the sidewalks are still in possession of the casual shopper, the woman in slacks, the young couple leaving the matinee; and, in the street, lazy convertibles pull out slowly from the Xanado Drive-In. Only near the supermarket, where housewives, harried and off schedule, fumble in their bags to tip the boys who carry the sacks to the car, is there any other apparent tension in the afternoon.

Grace walks quickly. As her eyes catch at her passing reflection in store fronts, the rest of her fights to appear unconcerned. Five doors beyond the beauty salon, she pauses at a furniture-shop window. But the expanse of plate glass recasts the studied blonde image as Grace recalls from somewhere a tall girl, rising in the surf like an ivory statue, striding up a blazing beach and dropping to one knee to pull off her bathing cap and shake her head. The bronzed face was tilted back and the golden hair fell in a lustrous sweep across her shoulders as the sun glinted through the whole honeyed sheen in a thousand tiny spangles.

Waiting for the changing light, she risks a touch at her hair, and at once senses the eyes of the couple beside her, the quick, lynx-look of the woman, the unmistakable scrutiny of the man. Grace turns her head away casually, drawing in her trim-girdled tummy a bit more. The light changes and she starts across, feeling the loose, clean toss of her hair as she steps from the curb.

Halfway across, looking toward the tightening stream of cars, she draws herself up sharply, catching her breath in a gasp. But Harry was looking past her, toward the drugstore. Had he already seen her and deliberately looked away? She continues briskly ahead, remembering the new suit and her hair. He hadn’t recognized her, of course. Before she reaches the opposite curb she is certain of it, and she has an impulse to stop and turn around. Not that it isn’t all over between them; of course it is. Still, how would he look if he saw her now? What would he say? Slowed almost to a standstill, Grace vaguely considers it, examining her hands, the two rings she has worn for seven years, the bright-colored nails. Anyway, it is certainly not the right moment; she must get home before Ralph. So she hurries on, feeling some accomplishment in what she has done, telling herself that Ralph had never guessed about Harry. How could he?

Grace reaches her car and searches through her purse for the keys before finding them in the ignition. She smiles, a little scornfully, thinking of Ralph’s own carelessness about leaving the keys in the car and how she has scolded him for it. How, in fact, their relationship has gradually been reduced to almost just that, her complaints and his acquiescences, the perfunctory kisses as he leaves for the office, and the circle of friends they see mechanically. But sitting here, her fingers on the keys, she suddenly has a glimpse of Ralph as she had seen him that first time long ago, on a shaded terrace, bending politely toward the seated hostess, lean and tanned, with something of the serious little boy in his smile. She remembers, too, the same smile in other shaded places: the beach at Acapulco, a cottage in Havana during the idyllic month they spent without clocks or newspapers. And Grace Owen finds herself in love with her husband all over again. It isn’t too late to make up for the nagging, the perfunctory kisses. At least she is sure of Ralph, and that is the main thing. She looks at herself in the car mirror. No, it isn’t too late at all.