Some Came Running (42 page)

“Here!” Bob said heartily. “What about another drink, Dave. Your glass is empty.” He got up, unfolding the long lean legs below the long, lean torso.

“Yes,” Dave said. “Yes, I’ll have one. In fact, I’ll have two!” He didn’t understand about Gwen, what had happened to her, but Bob made him feel wanted, honestly wanted.

“A double?” Bob said, “fine! fine!” He went to the bar.

“Or a triple,” Dave said. A kind of wild emotion, reaction to all he had been feeling, all day and this evening, was spreading through him.

“Guinevere?” Bob said.

“Yes,” Gwen said from the stove. “Yes, I believe I will have another.”

“And so will I!” Bob said. “This is an occasion!”

“I had no idea you had any such place as this,” Dave said, looking into the glowing coals of the fire. He looked over at Bob, “I thought nobody but the very rich owned things like these.”

“Well, of course, we have a little family income,” Bob said in that apologetic tone, from the bar. “They are valuable. But, of course, we didn’t have to buy them you know. Most of them. If we had had to live off what we made as teachers and writers, I’m afraid we’d have become wards of the state some time ago.”

“Oh, now, I wouldn’t say that,” Dave said.

“Dad,” Gwen called, in that clear disapproving voice, “I wish you would stop castigating yourself this way. It isn’t healthy.”

“But it’s a proven fact, dear Gwen. Let’s face it,” Bob said, smiling at his use of the modern phrase. “I’m passé. I’m one of those old-fashioned poets. I’m afraid the young people don’t read me much anymore,” he smiled sadly to Dave. “And why shouldn’t one admit the facts?” he said to Gwen. “One’s vanity you know. It makes one rather want a little acknowledgment.”

“The hardest thing in the world to get,” Dave said.

“The least important,” Gwen said, turning the stove burner on. She put a skillet on the burner, added butter and sugar, then dumped in half a small jar of old-fashioned red hots. Dave watched to see what she would do with the unpeeled apples. She dumped them into the skillet on top of the rest and began to stir.

“Here you are, Dave,” Bob said, bending to set a larger glass on the coffee table in front of him. “I believe there’s just a little more there than a double,” he grinned, hunching his spare shoulders and winking. Once again, in the reddish light of the fire, Dave was struck by the strangeness of that full mustache and the crew-cut hair, and between them those blue, bright, all-engulfing eyes.

“Thanks, Bob,” he said as the tall man went back to the bar.

“Pleasure!” Bob said. “Pleasure!” He commenced mixing the new manhattans.

Dave turned to look at Gwen again, who still stood by the stove, stirring. He couldn’t figure out what had happened, what he had done wrong.

“Your drink, Gwen dear!” Bob said. “I assume you want it up there.” And without waiting for answer, he carried it up to where she stood and set it down beside her on the countertop. Gwen, still stirring the apples, glanced down at it and did not touch it. “Thanks,” she said as he walked away.

“And my own!” Bob said. He poured it out into his glass with a flourish and carried it to the coffee table where Dave sat on one divan and sat himself down on the other. Behind them, the Bach still played on on the loaded record changer.

“Gwen tells me you’ve been writing some poetry,” Bob said in a tone that was carefully inflected to express both genuine interest and at the same time the knowledge that he need not talk about it if he didn’t want to.

Dave looked over to where Gwen stood, her untouched drink beside her on the countertop. “Oh, just a little bit,” he said looking back at Bob. He felt embarrassed. “It’s not very good, and it’s not even poetry really.” She shouldn’t have told it. When he looked back at her again, he was surprised to note that her drink was gone. The glass sat where it had before, seemingly untouched, but nothing was in it now but the cherry. Apparently, she had swallowed it off the same way she had the first one.

“Don’t be too sure!” Bob cautioned, holding up a finger. “I wonder if I might have the privilege of reading some of it?”

“He didn’t bring it,” Gwen said from the stove in that clear, prim voice.

“How do you know?” Dave said.

“I just know,” Gwen said and turned to look him full in the face again, her eyes withdrawn this time, instead of warm. “Well? You didn’t, did you?” she said. Then before he could answer, “Gentlemen, we are ready to eat!” Using a hot pad, she lifted the skillet and with a spoon scraped the apples into a dish of that same olive-green-and-white restaurant ware, and carried it to the table.

“No, I didn’t,” Dave muttered. “I thought about it. But I didn’t. I didn’t think it was good enough.”

“Perhaps some other time,” Bob said, apparently unperturbed by the action going on around him. “Come, let’s sit.” He got up. “Bring your drink. If you want another after you finish that one, don’t be afraid to holler at me.”

“If I do, and I probly will, I’ll mix it myself,” Dave smiled at him.

“Good!” Bob said, nodding, “fine! Better yet! Do that! I hope I got that last one dry enough for you?”

“It was fine,” Dave said. He was beginning to feel the drinks a little now.

“You know,” he said as he sat down, “the thing that gets you about this place so much is that it’s so safe.”

“So what?” Bob said, sitting.

“Safe!” Dave said, looking around the room. “You know. Safe!”

“Safe,” Bob said. Looking surprised, taking up his napkin and spreading it, he looked around at it himself. “Yes, I guess it is that,” he said. “Although I had never thought about it in just that way you know.”

“Naturally,” Dave said. “You wouldn’t. But it’s the safest place I’ve ever seen in my life. I feel safe here! It’s
safe
!” he said, as if just extra emphasis on the word would convey what he meant.

Gwen had taken the beef hearts and the huge potatoes from the oven and put them on dishes and set them on the table. That was all there was. No bread, no little extras, no second vegetable dish. Now she brought the big salad bowl of lettuce and cut tomatoes and put it on the table, together with three salad bowls, and a small bottle of salad dressing, which said
Girard’s, San Francisco,
on its label and which she shook vigorously for a moment and then set beside the bowls.

“No,” she said as she sat down. “You’re wrong, it isn’t safe. It just seems that way to you. Actually, it isn’t safe at all. It only removes danger to a more subtle level.” She picked up her own napkin. Her eyes were just a little bit wavery from the liquor, and a wisp of her nondescript-colored hair had fallen over her forehead, her face still flushed a little from the heat of the stove.

“How is that?” Dave said, feeling very prudent. He still didn’t know what it was he had done wrong, but he assumed he must have done something. Maybe it was the way he had looked at her leg. Whatever it was, the confidence he had felt a while ago was fast going out of him, and along with it the charm. And in place of it, he was having difficulty in keeping from getting really angry now.

“Well, what kind of dangers are there?” Gwen said, with that positiveness of hers, as if answering a student’s question. “There are only two. Financial danger and spiritual danger. Financial danger is the social danger from others, the outside danger. Spiritual danger is the danger from ourselves, from within. If we’ve removed the financial danger of day-to-day struggle, we have only removed it to the more distant and more subtle danger of the bank and credit and economizing. We’ve given up a lot of other things to have this place.”

She stopped to catch her breath.

“Secondly, having all this,” she said, “imposes an even greater responsibility on us. When you remove the struggle for basic necessities, you have to supplant willpower in its place. Having no need to work, we could easily become drunkards, or jaded thrill seekers, degenerating into nothingness. All animals are lazy, like I told you before. How do you think I know? Because of the potentialities of laziness in myself that I have to fight against all the time. Nothing’s
ever
safe, Dave, you know that. You’re only being sentimental.” Her voice was shaking ever so slightly, and when she picked up her fork, it was trembling, too.

Dave was puzzled. “Yes, of course, you’re right,” he said warily. “And I’m wrong.” His chest seemed to be constricting on him, and he drew in a great, deep sigh. “I think I’ll mix myself another drink,” he said, getting up.

“Fine!” Bob said to him cheerily, “You go right ahead if you want. I don’t believe I want another.”

“Just imagine Marlowe or Nash or Robert Greene!” Gwen said, “trying to live here as quietly and as cheaply as we do! Tom Wolfe would run himself head-on through that window and be lying out drunk on the lawn from frustration!”

“Gwen, will you pass me those potatoes?” Bob said in a hearty voice.

“What?” she said. Then her voice changed. “Oh. Yes. Yes, of course.” She reached for them.

“They look delicious,” Bob said. “I love potatoes. Dave,” he called, “you’d better come on and eat, fellow, or there won’t be anything left. I’m hungry as a bear.”

I
N SPITE OF ITS
rather inauspicious beginning, the dinner turned out pretty well. Gwen, after Bob asked her for the potatoes, changed again and suddenly became quiet and amenable. And by the time everybody had some food on their plates, she was laughing and joking, her face still flushed and her eyes the least little bit wavery. She kept up a steady stream of talk which displayed a sense of humor she had never shown before and which kept both men laughing. Gradually, as the food sobered her, she became more subdued, but she didn’t become again that way she had been.

The food also had a great deal to do with making the dinner turn out well. It was delicious. The beef hearts, had been peppered with coarse-ground pepper and had partaken of the spicy flavor of the dressing which itself was full-bodied in texture and had been made, Gwen said, of leftover mush and stale bread and had been seasoned with salt, sweet basil, oregano, chopped onion, and celery. The cinnamon-flavored fried apples, which had turned maple-leaf red in the cooking, went deliciously with the rich heart. The boiled-then-baked potatoes filled out the meal to perfection. Dave, who rarely ate sweet potatoes and whose natural choice would have been the Irish, did however, at Bob’s insistence, accept the other half of the huge sweet potato which Bob cut in two, and under Bob’s instruction treated it with a large amount of butter only, and nothing else. He discovered it was as good if not better than any baked Idaho he had ever eaten.

It was a strange meal. There was a sort of catch-as-catch-can quality about it. The episode of the sweet potato showed it perfectly: Bob put it on his own plate and cut it in two, and then handed half of it to Dave. If you wanted salad, you grabbed a small bowl, served yourself out of the big bowl, and then poured your own dressing on it. (The Girard’s dressing was one of the most delicious French dressings Dave had ever tasted. It turned out that Bob had eaten it once in a restaurant somewhere and asked about it, had been given the story of the old-time Girard’s French Restaurant in San Francisco, where it originated, off of the bottle with the address and they had been ordering it from Girard’s Inc. by the case ever since. It was like that with everything—unusual, yes; but always with a very logical reason.) The meal was served by candlelight; reason: because Bob had refused to have any ceiling fixtures put in the room, as they would detract from the beamed ceiling and also would not make the kitchen look as old. The heavy green-and-white restaurant ware was what they always used; reason: because they both liked it and Bob thought it was rather medieval, and also they had made an excellent buy on two whole crates of it; and you could practically bounce it off the floor without breaking it, Gwen said, if you got drunk.

Dave was still puzzled. He still did not know what had gone wrong. He did not know what was happening now. Something was. But whatever it was, it wasn’t flirtation. All the flirtation was gone. So completely gone that he couldn’t help wondering if there had ever really been any, or if it had all been in his imagination. And with it was gone his confidence. And when that was gone, his ability to be charming was gone also. Shyness, inarticulateness, and sullenness replaced it, and he felt again that she must be able to see completely through him and his what must be patently obvious designs on her and this made him feel guilty. Why should he feel guilty? But he did, and frightened and panicky, too. And, worst of all, afraid that she might dislike him. Damn women, anyway. It was a good thing for him he had drunk as much as he had. The first stiff martini he had mixed for himself had relieved the constriction he had begun to get in his chest. The second stiff one had set him up just fine, although this presented him with a new problem in that he got afraid he might get really drunk, and therefore ate a great deal more food than either his belly or body needed in order to sober himself.

If Bob French was aware of any of this, he did not show it, but Dave could not help suspecting that he was on to all of it. Either way, Bob remained his same usual, affable self all through the meal. When the meal was over, and the coffee, which was served without dessert, drunk, he pushed back his chair and announced that he was going downtown to the Grange meeting tonight.

Gwen appeared to be as startled as Dave himself was.

“You’re what?” she said. “To where?”

“To the Grange,” Bob said. “You know they always meet on Thursday night.”

“But I didn’t know you were going,” Gwen said.

“I always go,” Bob said.

“But I thought with Dave here and all,” Gwen began. “And Wally Dennis called, you know, and said he had some material for me to look at and he might bring Dawn and come over later.”

“Wally doesn’t mind if he doesn’t see me,” Bob said cheerily, “Anyway, I rather doubt if he will make it you know.”

“Why do you say that?” Gwen demanded.

Smiling, Bob raised his eyebrows and hunched his high shoulders, spreading his hands. “Well, you know how Wally is. He’s always more inclined to come when he hasn’t thought to.