Some Came Running (90 page)

“Why, yes!” Gwen smiled, “I was going to. I noticed it when you first came in. But I figured you’d tell me. What is it? manuscript?” She was still reserved with him. But in her eyes was that natural eager interest that she could no more reserve than she could her breathing.

“Manuscript!” Dave said. “Of course, manuscript! Well? Hell, don’t you want to see it?”

She had finished with preparing the coffee, and was wiping her hands. “You want me to read it?”

“Why, hell, yes! What the hell do you think I brought it over here for! Here,” he said, and picked up the bound copy of “The Confederate.”

And, smiling, almost shyly, Gwen came on down and sat down across the table.

“Here, this is what I want you to look at first,” he said, and handed it to her, then riffled the pages of the rest with his thumb. “And this is all on the novel. All of it’s what I’ve done since I last saw you. And all these,” he said opening the folder of notes, “are on how to go ahead with the novel.”

“You’ve done quite a lot,” she smiled. “‘The Confederate,’” she read, “what’s this?”

“It’s a story.”

“Not a Civil War story?”

“No, no. Just a story.”

“All right, I’ll read it for you, Dave,” she smiled. She opened the cover and scanned the first page. “I see you’ve changed your name?”

“Yes. I— I suppose it’s silly. But I wanted to get away from— It’s a sort of a symbol to me, you see,” he said. “You know what I mean? Like Cabell.”

“You mean you wanted to get away from all the old associations of the old name D Hirsh?” Gwen said.

“That’s it. And then I thought, what the hell? David Herschmidt is my
real
name, after all. You— I suppose it sounds silly.”

“Not at all,” Gwen smiled. “I think it’s an excellent idea.”

“Well, that was why I did it,” he said, trying to pull himself back down to calmness. “But damn it, I want you to read it!”

“I’ll read it, Dave. But I can’t read it with you looking over my shoulder. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll—” she paused, and gave her almost-embarrassed little laugh, “I’ll go get those Christmas presents of yours, and you can be opening them while I read the story.”

“That would be fine,” Dave said.

“And I don’t want to forget to give them to you!” Gwen said. “They’re just lying around here taking up space. I’ll go find them.”

He watched her put the manuscript down on the table and then stride down the long kitchen to the pantry door. She was back with a flat paper sack almost before she had gone. “Now, you go ahead and open them,” she said with a restrained smile, putting the package on the table. “Or else go get yourself a book. You can just as well open them later at home.” She picked up “The Confederate.” “But you’ll have to leave me alone while I read this. I’ll take it over here in the corner. Oh, and if you care for coffee, you help yourself when it’s done, won’t you?” she said. He could see quite clearly that he wasn’t going to get any biased reading. She sat down with it in the big chair by the fireplace—where a small fire burned now—and from then on not a single flicker of expression crossed her face. She read on, page after page. And the restraint and strange, polite reserve that she had shown him since he arrived, lasted until she was done.

Or rather, until she was about halfway done. Because it was then that Dave essayed to speak to her, to thank her for the present. He had, first, gotten himself a cup of coffee, and then had sat back down quietly on the near side of the table, so he could watch her. Then he had tried working the crossword in the daily paper. And finally, there being nothing else, he had opened up the presents.

Inside the paper sack, they were still neat in their Christmas wrappings. That in itself touched him; but when he saw what Gwen had gotten him (the Roget’s
Thesaurus
and the wallet-notebook across the front page of which was written, “Writers should keep notes! Gwen”), he had again the sudden sick wrench of pain that was almost unbearable and simultaneously inflamed his ego. And the nerves all over his back seemed to ripple as before an attack of vomiting, and he felt he had to speak. If only to protect himself.

“Gwen!” he said. “Gwen? Listen, I want to thank you for—”

That was as far as he got.

“Dave, please don’t talk to me!” she said looking up, her eyes flashing. “How the hell do you expect me to concentrate? And please stop squirming around!” And before he could even nod, let alone answer, her eyes were back down.

So he shut up and sat, and opened the other presents, trying to do it quietly. The other three presents touched him, too, and only added to it. Bob’s beautiful handmade cufflinks and tie tack set; the humorous but thoughtful box of typewriter ribbons from Wally; and the to-be-expected copy of Joyce’s
Ulysses
from Dawn. But more than these, the knowledge that it had been Gwen who had been behind it all, so that Christmas he would have felt remembered. And all of that, too, just made it that much worse. Why in the name of God he had ever gone to Florida he no longer had any idea at all. It seemed it must have been another person altogether. And when he pictured the happy bliss he could have been living here all the time, with her! Finally, his shoulders hunched up tensely, he went back to the crossword.

When Gwen finally finished and closed the heavy paper binding, she sat for a time and stared off across the room, her face totally without expression. Well, he had always known it wasn’t any good, he thought sickly, and that he was only kidding himself—as she got up and came over to him and laid it gently on the table.

Well, here it comes, he thought. It was almost a relief, in a way.

“Dave,” she said, “it’s magnificent!”

“You really think so?” he said. “I thought it was pretty good.”

“Yes,” she said; “yes, it is. And the title is magnificent, too. ‘The Confederate.’ And those two men . . .” It dwindled off, and she looked back down at the manuscript.

“Well, gee,” Dave said. “That’s swell. I don’t know what the hell I’ll ever do with it. Nobody’ll ever buy it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gwen said. “This is the best thing you’ve ever written. It’s one of the best things ever written by anybody of your generation. If not
the
best. All that glib supersensitive arty stuff you used to write. Or the heavy portentous emotionalizing. This is
life,
Dave!
Life!”

Dave felt for a moment as if he were going to cry, and swallowed.

Still standing by the table, Gwen reached out and ran her fingers almost lovingly over the cover, and looked up at him suddenly and grinned, and then sat down across the table from him.

“It’s a very controversial subject,” she said looking off over his head as if she didn’t see him. Dave wished she would look
at
him. “Very controversial. The tendency today among all the literati and the intelligentsia is to join the NAACP and hate the cruel, brutal, sadistic Southerner. Of course, they’re oversimplifying. That’s the psychological need of the literati for a righteous cause, of course. This ought to prove very healthful.” She broke off, and slowly stroked her temple. “I’m sure I can get it published for you.”

“You can?” Dave said. “Where? No you can’t,” he said, “look at the length.”

“There’s a new publishing firm called New Living Literature. They’ve gone into the field of reprinting all the old classics in paperbacks. But in addition, they’re going to bring out a semiannual anthology of
new
writing. I know the publisher and several of the editors. The length of ‘The Confederate’ won’t matter to them, and neither will the controversial subject; in fact, that will help it. I’m sure I can get them to publish it.”

“Well, Jesus!” Dave said. “I never thought of anything like that when I brought it over. I just wanted you to get your opinion.”

“Well, I think it might be done,” Gwen said. Excitedly, then, she sort of passed her hand across her face, and then looked up at him with that same almost-but-not-quite-embarrassed smile of earlier. “You know, I was so worried about you! I thought you’d just quit, and given it up. But then I found out at the hotel that you’d taken your typewriter with you. But even so, it’s so easy to lie to yourself about working, you know?” Again, she passed her hand across her face embarrassedly.

Dave wished suddenly he could just step around the table and get down on his knees and put his arms around her.

“Tell me,” Gwen said, “those two men. Is one of them drawn from your friend the gambler?”

“’Bama? No, no. Those are just two guys we happened to run into on the way to Miami. At Dering, Florida. But just the same, a lot of that story is due to ’Bama,” Dave said. “It was him who showed me what Southerners are really like. I always belonged to the ‘Sadistic School’ of the literati, like you were talking about. Until I got to know ’Bama.”

“He sounds like a pretty remarkable person,” Gwen smiled. “You ought to bring him over some time.”

“Well, as a matter of fact I’d like to,” he said. “You’ll want to watch out for him, though. He’s a great seducer of women.”

Gwen laughed. “Then I’m sure he won’t be interested in me.” She reached out for the manuscript and pulled it to her and sat looking down at it, smiling.

“I’m glad you changed your name,” she said, reading the title label on the cover, and then looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with pleasure. “A thing like that can be very important to you, as a symbol.”

“It didn’t change anything,” Dave said. “I’m still the same bum I’ve always been.”

“No, it can be very important—to
you,”
she smiled. “It can give you a different—part to play. A different role to act, in life. That ‘D Hirsh’ you used to use was such a sort of literary affectation.”

“But so is ‘David Herschmidt’ an affectation,” Dave said. “Isn’t it?”

“Of course! But the point is, is it not a better affectation? for you, and what you want to accomplish?”

“I suppose it is,” Dave said, thinking about what he hoped to accomplish—still hoped to accomplish. “Yes, I guess it is,” he grinned. “If you like it.”

Excitedly, and still holding the manuscript, she stood. Then she folded it in against her breast, like a schoolchild carrying books, and yet still lovingly, too, and looked down at him. “Oh, you don’t know how I’ve worried about you the last six months! Afraid you’d just throw it all away! Or else start writing that same old trash again. You don’t know
how
I’ve worried!” she exclaimed, and smiled. “But this!” she said, bringing it forth again and looking at it, “This is great! This is the kind of writing you ought to have been doing long ago!” she said, and leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek.

Dave, who had been watching her hold his manuscript and looking at the part of that small right breast that swelled out around its edge, suddenly turned his head, and her lips came against his mouth.

It seemed to him to last a very long time. But actually, of course, it didn’t. Nevertheless, he made a number of observations. There was that peculiar distinctive fragrance of hers, a sort of sweet-bittersweet aura, that he remembered well from the time he had been drunk and she had helped him on with his coat before he slept in the cornfield. It was delicious. Then there was the warmth of her body, radiating out from her. And her lips, light and cool, sealed against his mouth, her nose lightly touching his cheek. There was the light drift of that no-color hair against his face, and that lovely Gwen-French-fragrance coming from it. He partook of all of these hungrily, and filed them away. He had been wanting to kiss her for such a long time.

Then Gwen straightened up—almost, actually, in the same instant she had discovered her lips were touching him on the mouth instead of on the cheek—and stood looking at him helplessly, as if she wouldn’t have done it for the world, and with a look of wide-eyed embarrassment at how it could have happened. Then her face changed slightly and knowledge came into it, seeing in him something which in her excitement over the story she had entirely forgotten about and which changed everything. Namely, love—or at least what he thought was love.

She started to put her hand up to the side of her face and then stopped it midway and just left it.

Dave said nothing. But his face displayed that he felt guilty and that he’d pulled a cheap trick on her. But he hadn’t even meant to do it, really.

“Dave, I’ve got to tell you something about myself,” she said half desperately. Then abruptly she turned and looked down at the far end of the kitchen as if someone had just called to her.

“Yeah?” he said. “What?”

But instead of answering, she just continued to stare down the length of the kitchen.

He did not understand. All right, so she had apparently completely forgotten he wanted to sleep with her, was in love with her. It was probably more his fault than hers. But even if it wasn’t, there wasn’t anything to be so terribly embarrassed about. Standing there, she looked totally helpless, and he thought she had never looked so lovely. He got up and went to put his arms around her.

But before he could, she turned back toward him and moved away. “Don’t, Dave,” she said. “Please. Dave, I have to tell you.”

“Okay,” he said, feeling awkward. “Tell me what? That you forgot? Hell, I don’t care. I—”

“Forgot?” Gwen said. “Forgot what?”

“About you and me. Okay, so what? Hell, it’s a compliment to the story. Hell, I love you.”

For a moment, Gwen looked as if she were going to laugh. But she didn’t. “Dave, Dave,” she said. “Don’t say any more. You’ve been embarrassed enough already. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. My God, you’ll hate me!”

“I could never hate you,” he said. “I love you.”

“You really do? Do you really want me so much?”

“Jesus Christ!” Dave said. “What do you think I did everything for? Why do you think I stayed in this town? and put all my money in that damned taxi service of Frank’s? What do you think I did all this writing for? Why do you think I’m staying here now? What do you think I went to Florida for?”

“I
know
why you went to Florida,” Gwen said.

“I thought you didn’t want me,” he said anyway. “What do you think I’ve done
all
this for?”