Whipple's Castle (56 page)

Gordon was gathering sternway in the stiff wind. During this exchange he kept looking (who wouldn't? David thought) at Kate. The damn pretty boat was in danger of bumping into the rocks, and though Gordon's mouth didn't hang open, David was quite sure of what was going on in his head. People always looked at Kate twice, then had to drag their eyes away. It was as if they searched hungrily for an imperfection—just one, something, anything. She seemed to glow, her skin lighted from an inner source.

Gordon had a little paddle out now, and was barely holding against the wind. “Anybody want a ride?” he called. “It's great!”

David got up and looked up the stairs. Peggy was sitting near Wood, talking to him and not paying any attention to Gordon and his boat. Horace was nowhere in sight. Then, behind him, he heard a splash. He was held for that second, having that choice, then turned swiftly and dove straight at the horizon.

Gordon reached down, pulled Kate up and sat her lightly on the side of the cockpit. David clambered aboard the foredeck. They were dangerously close to the rocks, but with one swing of the tiller, the little boat turned, mainsail and jib snapped taut, and they were tearing out into open water.

The dock receded, the cabin began to fade into its trees. Then he saw where Horace had been all this time. He must have been hiding, because he appeared beside the one boathouse wall that was still more or less vertical. He squatted there now, on a rock, gazing after them.

David had reason to remember Horace hiding there, because a week or so later he thought he saw Horace doing something like that again. He was at Futzie's Tavern with Gordon one night, and he turned toward the front window to see what he thought was Horace's wide, cragged face lit by the ghastly blue neon, staring in through the grime of the front window. Then the face was gone, but he was quite sure he'd seen it.

Gordon had decided to take David up. He stopped by the cabin several times, twice in the sailboat, this night in his Mercury convertible. They had been in the murky brown barroom for an hour or more, beer sticky on the booth table, smoke flowing slowly toward the exhaust fan above the door. Gordon was telling a story about leave in Naples, while David tried and gave up trying to find anything comparably exotic in his own stateside service. He could feel the beer, and felt like bragging about something or other, but decided that being seen with Gordon, that legitimate hero, was enough to confer upon him an aura, at least, of veteran service and heroics. He wore his Ike jacket, minus insignia. He also felt vaguely traitorous to aspirations of his that were not public and did not concern bragging or posing at all. Letty was real, perhaps even more so at this distance, and his future was real. Whatever talent and passion he had for this life waited, he knew, while Gordon tried to charm him. One of Gordon's methods was an undefined assumption that David, too, had seen and been through much. Never would he allude to David's merely stateside service. It was a strange, collusive situation, in which he was not always sure why he was being charmed. It had much to do with Kate, of course; whenever Gordon thought of her or tried to speak of her his green eyes flickered, as if a sneaky little wind had nearly blown them out.

At the bar several old men, the regulars, sat on the stools and leaned into their beers. One woman at the end of the bar sat alone, wearing a pre-new-look dress that showed her baggy milk-white legs. Donald Ramsey and his girl had been in for a quick rye and ginger before the movie, and in the booths a few of the old Trask's Pharmacy crowd, now graduated to beer, fed the jukebox here as they had the Wurlitzer at Trask's. “Peg O'My Heart” was playing, and it gave David a sad, chill memory of Letty, if only for the reason that they had heard it so often at the University Tavem on Fifty-fifth Street.

Sam Davis pushed the door open, stepped halfway into the doorway, and the door came back to hit him a light but nearly staggering blow on the shoulder. He was very drunk. When he regained his balance he came carefully down the aisle of booths toward Gordon's outstretched legs. Something like vomit, or at least something distributed like vomit, discolored his green work clothes. His eyes were all one shade of dull pink, his face and neck covered with gray bristles. Futzie had been serving a booth toward the front, but he cut around to head Sam Davis off.

Sam managed to see Gordon's legs sprawled across the aisle, and he stopped tipsily and glared down at them. “Git your goddam legs out of the way!” he said. Then he saw whose legs they were. Gordon looked up at him with fierce but not unfriendly interest. “Now, Sam,” he said.

Futzie arrived, and took Sam by the shoulder. “Sam, you're too drunk to be in here you! You wanna lose my license?”

Sam stared at Gordon. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

“Sam?” Gordon said, smiling at him. “Sit down and I'll buy you a drink.”

“Son of a
bitch,”
Sam said. His shoulders straightened with a proud jerk, but this only seemed to stun him.

“Sam, you go home,” Futzie said, wiping his hands nervously on his apron. “You been sick too. I can smell it.”

“Snakes, pigs, buzzards, pig fuckers,” Sam said.

“Sam!” Futzie said, shocked.

“Now wait. Wait,” Gordon said. “He needs a drink, Futz, and I'm buying. Don't worry, I'll take care of old Sam Davis. Go on, now, Futz.” While saying this he'd got up and actually forced Sam down into the booth—manhandled him. “What's your pleasure, Sam?” he asked.

Sam growled like a dog. He couldn't see straight, and he fumbled for the table edge with both hands. His head nodded and nodded. He looked sick to death.

“All right,” Futzie said. “One beer, you get him the hell out.”

“We'll take him home and tuck him in bed. Right, David?” Gordon winked.

It was then David thought he saw Horace's pale blue face at the window.

Sam poured half his beer on his chest and passed out, so they took him by the armpits and carried him, his feet dragging, across the street and into the tenement. Gordon knocked on the apartment door. “Papa, dear Papa, come home with me now,” he said.

The door opened upon Beady Palmer's friendly, ridged and jerky face. His eyes plotted them out. “One, two, three!” he said. He turned toward the room behind him and said, “Special delivery, C.O.D.”

They carried Sam into the kitchen, where Candy Palmer sat at the table with Susie Davis.

“Is he just drunk?” Susie said. She tossed her thick brown hair back and got up. “God, he's a mess!” she said. “Bring him into the bathroom.” She led the way through a dark room, into a little hallway and switched on the bathroom light. “Somebody must have got him some hard stuff again. Where'd you find him?”

“He wandered into Futzie's, where he met a couple of good Samaritans,” Gordon said.

“Oh, sure,” Susie said. “Hello, David.”

“Hi,” David said.

“He needs some sleep and I need a drink,” Susie said. “Leave him in the bathtub and I'll take care of him later.”

“Hell, Suze, leave us do it. We'll hose him off and tuck him in,” Gordon said.

“Well, make sure he's through puking before you put him in bed.”

“Okey-doke.”

They looked down at the wreck in the bathtub. His red neck was lined and crosshatched; tendons and veins laced it like half-unraveled knots. All but the shreds of the vomit had soaked into his shirt and pants. Water from the faucets was dripping on one of his run-over work shoes, and David, his shoulder against the moist commode reservoir, untied his laces and pulled the shoes from strangely clean white socks. Gordon went after the shirt buttons.

“Glah,” Gordon said, averting his face for a moment. “In combat we'd cut his clothes off.”

David was startled by Sam's baby-smooth, ivory feet. As they removed his shirt and pants, this strange metamorphosis continued. They peeled away his long underwear, and his smooth white skin was as pure and unblemished as a peeled egg. A delicate blue vein shone through the translucent white of his chest, where a few limp blond hairs grew. This could hardly be the body that had grown that ravaged head and those scarred and filthy wrists and hands. His genitals looked young and unmarked; relaxed, familiar between the alabaster thighs, they looked like David's own. Sam's bellybutton hid in its little dent and crease.

They looked for something to pour water from. Gordon found Susie's douche bag hanging under her housecoat on the back of the door, so they filled it with warm water and squirted Sam with its little hose. Gordon thought this was funny.

“The old coot,” he said, chuckling as he hosed him down from chin to crotch. “If he only knew!”

There was the grizzled head, mouth hanging open to show an ancient brown tooth, then a pallor of chest that was deathlike, yet new. The man was such a total drunk he must be close to the idea of his own death. He would take with him to the embalmer's whatever fair skin and working organs he had left. It seemed unfair to the good parts of him that they should have to die.

They toweled him off, at least the top of him, and hauled him into his room down the hallway, David taking the smooth white feet. Gordon seemed to know his way around the place. They hoisted Sam into the deepest depression of the hammocky bed and pulled a sheet over him.

“Man, is he
out
of it,” Gordon said. “He doesn't even know what a nice douche we gave him. You know
douche
means a regular shower in French? Did you know that?”

They went back to the kitchen. “We put him beddie-bye,” Gordon said. “He's dreaming of great brown bottles and elephant cunts.”

“Don't be such a foul mouth,” Susie said, glancing at David.

Candy Palmer had reared back to laugh, her breasts heaving under her silky blouse. David could smell her perfume all around her in the air, and he wondered if she could smell it. She wore a pair of shorts so short they were practically panties, and she moved on her chair so that he and Gordon could see more of her. Before she stopped giggling she adjusted a breast and touched her white-blond hair. She was so made-up, so somehow meant only to be looked at, he thought how strange it would seem if she had to do anything—like get a meal or clean up the sink. She didn't seem made for anything like that. She was a bit old for this glamour act, however; tiny red lines appeared here and there on her thighs, and there was a slight downiness to her chin. He had heard
she was older than Beady, who now
reached over and put his hand on her knee as if to prove his ownership of this showboat.

“I call my sugar ‘Candy,'” he said, “‘cause she makes my peanut brittle! Haw! Haw! Hee! Hee!”

“Oh, Jesus, here we go,” Susie said. “I need another drink. Gordon, get us and you and David a drink.”

Susie had little brown shadings under her eyes now, so she looked softer than the last time he'd seen her, and a little tired. Her dark blue eyes were bigger and more vulnerable. She'd lost all traces of baby fat too, and she didn't seem anywhere near as big a girl as she once had—but he supposed his own attitudes had changed a great deal. Perhaps a woman would just not seem as big to him now.

The fifth on the refrigerator was dead, but Susie and the Palmers had a new fifth of blended whiskey they'd chipped in on—Beady and Candy had to keep it in their apartment, Susie said, or else her father would soak it up like a blotter. Gordon had a fifth of bourbon in the trunk of his car, so he went to get that while Beady went for his fifth.

“We'll make a party!” Candy said. “We need a girl for little David, though. My Jesus, ain't he cute? I could go for him myself!”

“How's Wood, David? How's he doing now?” Susie asked seriously, ignoring Candy.

“He's kind of quiet. He reads all the time,” he said.

“I cried and cried when I heard,” Susie said. Tears jumped into her eyes. “He's the nicest person I ever knew.”

“Hey!” Candy said. “Cut that gloom stuff! Turn on the radio! We're going to make a party! How about that little girl upstairs. What's her name? How about it, Suze?”

“Phyllis?” Susie said. David felt that in his presence Susie was being polite, or at least acting in a way that surprised Candy Palmer.

“Yeah. Phyllis. Why not? She's got a cute little set of boobs even if she is a little homely.”

“Well, you could ask her,” Susie said doubtfully. “She's awful young—I mean with drinking and all.”

“Coming from that family? Come on, honey.”

“Her mother and father's home tonight. I saw them come in.”

“They could give a shit and you know it.” Candy got up and went to the telephone. “Hon, I forgot my glasses. What's their number?”

“Maybe David—”

“What? She's not going to scare li'l David.” Candy winked at him. The heel of one of her red pumps tapped the floor. She had a nice figure, even if she was pretty old, and suddenly David did want another woman around to make it even.

“Call her,” he said. “What the hell?”

So Susie looked up the number and Candy spoke to the girl.

“Hi, hon. This is Candy Palmer, and we've got a swell party going down to Susie's place. Only thing is, we've got an extra boy, so we thought maybe you'd like to stop by and meet him? Well, tell them you're baby-sitting for us. Aw, come on! He's a good-looker, hon, no kidding. Come on, now! What?” Candy laughed. “Don't you worry none about that at
all!
For one thing, I don't think so, and for another thing I know it's not true! You're one of the most attractive persons I know. What, honey? Speak up! No, he's not listening.”

She winked at them and drew her mouth down humorously. The listening and convincing went on for a while. Beady and Gordon came back, and were shushed while Candy listened and cajoled. Finally Candy looked at them and nodded her head in triumph. “Oh, fine, honey. Gooood. Ten minutes? See you then!” She hung up. “Poor little thing don't think she's much, you know? But she's awfully sweet. A sweet kid if I ever saw one. You'll love her, Davy.”