Barbary Shore (14 page)

“Till one.”

Hollingsworth seemed to be deliberating. “Well, now, if I came walking by at one o’clock, would you be outside waiting for me?”

She laughed doubtfully. “I might, I don’t know, I might,” she giggled.

“When’s your night off?” he drawled.

“Oh, it’s almost a week away,” she told him.

He shook his head. “Well, I think I’ll come walking by tonight, Gloria.”

She giggled again, “Alice, you mean.”

He snapped his fingers. “That’s right, of course, Alice, I knew I’d met you somewhere; it all comes back to me now, Alice. Well, now, my name is Ed Leroy, and this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” he said softly, the axis of his head parallel again to the table, his eyes boring up at her from an angle.

“Oh, you’re a card,” she tittered in some confusion.

“That’s right, I’m a card, and I don’t take any wooden nickels, and I don’t give any. You know what I mean?” he asked cryptically.

“Oh, I know what you mean, but if I answered you, would you know what I meant?” she asked.

Communicating by questions so they talked for another minute. When she left, the date arranged, Hollingsworth swallowed a large draught of his Scotch. “I think that’s always the best policy not to give your right name,” he told me. “Complications can set in.”

I did not answer him, and a silence grew between us. Taking out the cigarette lighter he began to play with it, his forefinger tracing over the embossed initials. Obviously, he was feeling cocky. “I wonder what you think of your friend McLeod now?”

“Can’t say as I’ve thought about it.”

Hollingsworth shook his head. “I have. I thought he showed the white feather.”

This penetrated my reserve, and left me furious. “I thought he was making fun of you,” I said.

Hollingsworth showed his teeth. “Well, now that’s interesting you say that.” He flicked the lighter viciously, and gulped the last of his drink. With the whiskey in him, his eyes assumed a trace of expression; the pupils seemed to narrow. “I suppose you guess you know a few things about the people in our house,” he told me.

“A few things.”

Hollingsworth snickered, and slid the lighter across the table to me. “What would you say if I told you that was given to me by your lady friend?”

I stared at him in bewilderment.

“Oh, yes,” he continued. “It was. It was given to me by the lady downstairs, by Mrs. Guinevere.” He laughed triumphantly. “Yes, she had the initials put on specially for me.”

With what effort I managed to grin. “And did you get around to seeing her a second time?”

He lit his pipe again. “I think you’re scouting for information,” he reproved me, his voice quiet and stiff. However, he could not maintain the attitude. “I will say that I have had some
very pleasurable experiences with the lady in question.” And as he smiled, I sensed finally the extent of his hatred for me. It left me not wholly unfrightened. He was smoking his pipe so calmly, his elbows relaxed upon the table.

Slowly I was beginning to appreciate what he had told me about Guinevere. I was stunned. My vanity bled. I could imagine her discussing me with Hollingsworth.

As if to probe the wound, he added, “Yes, she told me many things.” He yawned delicately, one of his fair hands at his thin mouth. “She’s a very unhappy woman, and a great deal of it is her husband’s fault. I have lots of sympathy for her.”

I swirled the last inch of beer in my glass. “Oh, yes,” he went on, “it’s a very interesting marriage. I was surprised to find out who her husband was.”

“Did she introduce you?” I asked flatly.

He deliberated as if deciding what story to tell. “No,” he said, “I discovered it. I happened to look in the window one night, and then, well, I put one thing and another together.”

“You mean you spied.” I was acting like a cuckold, reshaping to my misery all that had passed between Guinevere and myself. She had wanted me to spy on Hollingsworth. “I guess that is the only way you could do it,” I whipped at him.

“Do you want to go over there now?” He sneered, his mouth ugly.

“All right, let’s go.” We might have been two boys jostling one another in preparation for a fight.

“Come on,” he answered.

And with exaggerated gravity we stood up, each in turn, and left the bar, walked up the street, our bodies a stiff yard apart. Neither of us said anything. We strode along at a rapid pace, breathing heavily, our mutual animus almost tangible. When we came to the house, we halted irresolutely. My heart thumped in stupid anxiety, and I knew I did not want to go in. Once again we repeated the formula.

“Well, come on.”

“Come on.”

Puppies snarling over a bone, we rang the bell together, our fingers colliding, stood waiting, panting.

I could hear it peal inside, boring through layer after layer of protection.

There were footsteps on the other side of the gate, and the light went on in the entrance-way under the stone stairs. Guinevere appeared. She opened the gate a crack and stared at us. “Well, I’m a son of a bitch,” she shouted heavily. “What do you jokers want?”

But Hollingsworth pushed her aside, and started in. She flung herself on his back, pummelling him with her heavy fists, and shrieking, “Who invited you in? You got a nerve,” her voice close to panic, her bathrobe trailing. It might have been a scene in a bawdyhouse, the madam roughing futilely the latest of her drunken clients. We landed all three in the living room, all of us puffing, all of us glaring at one another. “Well, I’m a son of a bitch, I’m a son of a bitch,” she kept saying.

Hollingsworth held her by the arm. “All right, trot him out,” he told her.

“Trot who out?”

“Get him out. Your husband. I want to show this character over here.”

Hollingsworth was much more drunk than I had realized. His skin was pale, his blond hair sagged upon his forehead, and his eyes burned. “Come on, trot him out,” he snarled.

“You can go shove it,” she shrieked.

Hollingsworth lashed Guinevere across the face with enough force to send her staggering backward into a chair. Her robe flew open, exposing her body even as her mind must have been stripped, and frantically her arms swam out and pulled the wrapper about her again, her modesty desperate. This once accomplished, she put her hand to her cheek, sat swaying, her
emotions visibly balanced on the point of the blow. She might have cursed, she might have wept, she might have thrown herself upon him, but instead she remained motionless, her face blank.

“Cut that out,” I shouted furiously, belatedly. I think I was the one who might have wept.

Monina was tugging at my arm. Her eyes wide and delighted with the tumult, she pulled me from the room. “Come meet Daddie, come meet Daddie,” she sang.

I had no idea where I was led. I left Guinevere and Hollingsworth staring at one another, locked in their positions, strange animals confronted suddenly. Pulled behind Monina, I could only follow her into the bedroom. She ran immediately to the man who stood in one corner, and shouted with glee. “Daddie—Ditter Luft, Daddie—Ditter Luft,” drawing us together to shake hands.

The man was in shadow, but I knew him immediately. He came forward into the light, sweat upon his forehead, mouth warped into the silly grimace of a man caught hoisting his long-johns in the midst of a raid. Drily, he said, “Well, Lovett, the lassie’s uncovered me.”

T
HE
grin compressed into the thin line of his mouth. He looked no longer foolish. In a dull voice he muttered, “Once you’ve found a father, you’d do better not to track him to a brothel.”

After this, neither of us could say a word. “McLeod,” I blurted at last, and whatever it was I thought to tell him—that I was sorry, that I wished it had not happened—choked into silence. I turned around, started toward the door, and retraced my steps through the hall. Behind me, I could picture Monina still clutching him about the knees.

In the living room I paused for an instant. Hollingsworth had left, and Guinevere was collapsed into an armchair, her slim arms and legs thrust out at odd angles from the bulk of her body. The ruddy face was white now and bore the red signature of Hollingsworth’s hand. She looked bloated and defenseless. “Oh, why do they do this to me?” she groaned, the fleshy tip of her nose pointed into the air. All at once I could not bear to look at her, and hurried outside.

For the second time in the same night I came to the railing which overlooked the docks, and stood there, holding to the iron posts, gazing down on the harbor below, while through my body coursed the reaction to the drink I had swallowed, to the hours spent with Hollingsworth, and the minute in the apartment.
Why relate how my limbs ached or my stomach raced or my head whirled—there is something comic in such a catalogue. Suffice it that I was wretched, and if I had found a balance of sorts, the balance was lost now.

Guinevere McLeod.

So I stood at my distance above the river, and watched a dirty moon yellow the water. Somewhere, today, I had read in the newspaper, a woman had killed her children, and a movie star had enplaned from the West to be wed in a tiny church upon some hill. A boy had been found starving on a roof, a loaded rifle in his hands. The trigger squeezed, the shot rang down the street, and I could have been holding the rifle. I could even hate the boy because he had missed.

The tread of my foot heavy on the heat-softened pavement, I walked back at last to the house. As I came up the street, McLeod was sitting on the steps, a cigarette in his hand, elbows resting on his neatly creased pants. I nodded at him, feeling a considerable desire to pass him by, climb the stairs, and fall into bed. With an upraised hand, he detained me.

“Sit down,” he said. “Don’t you want to talk for a while?” He exhaled smoke carefully.

I squatted beside him while he gazed soberly into the illumination of the street light across the gutter, his body seemingly at ease. One might have thought him weary from his day’s work and content to rest in the cool wind which drifted across the harbor. We did not speak for several minutes.

“Brothels,” McLeod said abruptly. “I find their existence a fascinating subject. Ever considered it, Lovett?”

“No.”

“You might. I’ve seen your kind dead-drunk more than once on a whorehouse floor. There’s a certain requirement only a brothel can satisfy. To fornicate without emotional involvement—for the man in the street that’s wish fulfillment.”

He laughed, his eyes set straight ahead, his mouth pinched
over the cigarette. Some sequence played itself out in his mind for first he sighed, and then as though to correct himself, grimaced. “Come on,” he murmured softly, “let’s take a walk.”

I obeyed him, fell into stride with his long legs. We moved along at a rapid pace, unwinding a little of the constraint each of us felt. When we came to the foot of Brooklyn Bridge, he started across and I followed, our footsteps echoing over the planked boards. A heavy mist had come in from sea, and the lights from neon signs and the windows of office buildings flickered dully through the murk. Foghorns bayed, and the automobiles which passed on the ramp to either side were almost obscured.

“Considerable attraction Hollingsworth has for her,” McLeod stated from the recess of his silence.

“You think so?”

“No doubt about it. I can understand the reasons.”

I tried to detect some expression on his face, but it was too dark. “What are you going to do?” I asked.

“A stupid question, Lovett. Do you think I’m such a young chicken that m’sexual esteem has been cruelly scored? What’s been going on for several years, man?” He scratched his chin. “You think there haven’t been the months when I wished that she’d find her gentleman caller, and he’d take her away? No, friend, I was born with what you might call an analytical disposition, and the experiences of m’life have reinforced it. I’m a thinking man, and moreover I don’t give a toot.”

“Then why haven’t you left her?”

“Ah.” He held up his hand. “Perhaps I’m not sure. No, I’ll sit around and watch. I’m curious toward the outcome.”

“That isn’t natural,” I protested.

“Natural?” He mimicked. “Lovett, you’ve got no conscious past to hinder you, so need you carry all the impedimenta of a middle-class moron? Distinguish, man, between your own desires and the realm of political possibility.”

“As you do,” I jeered.

“Look,” he told me, grasping my shoulder, “a question must have occurred to you last night: Why didn’t I boot Hollingsworth out of my room? I’ll tell you why. Somewhere a mistake’s been made, and for some reason or other, certain parties must think I know or have certain things. I’ll have no rest till it’s worked out. To satisfy my impulse, which was to whop the bejesus out of Mr. H., would have been a very expensive gesture. I’d have been paid back and with a profit. Do you understand? I decide such minor issues on the lowest practical level.”

“You didn’t seem so indifferent last night.”

“Certainly not. I was frightened, more frightened than you could know.”

“What was it all about?” I asked directly.

He did not answer my question. “I consider possibilities, and I work within limits,” McLeod stated dogmatically. “What I may want has nothing to do with it.”

We were passing beneath the arch of a suspension pillar. At the edge of the boardwalk, which extended over the automobile ramp, I could discern a man peering through the mist at the city beyond. He was a bum wandered up from the Bowery to retch his whiskey into the water. As we approached, he uttered a liquid belly sound and sank to his knees, hands still clutching the iron paling. Then, slowly, ludicrously, he slid backward until his stomach touched the ground, and lay there, face propped upon his arms, staring at the city. The fog was lifting.

I bent over him, but he was sound asleep. A snore of contentment rumbled out of his throat.

“We ought to do something for him.”

“Let him be,” McLeod said. “He’s happy.” Taking up a position beside the drunk, he blinked at a red light on the dome of an office building. “I can remember I took a walk over this bridge twenty years ago, and there was a drunk in practically the same place.” He ran his long forefinger back and forth over
the narrow bridge of his nose, kneading the tip vigorously between thumb and forefinger as if he were milking it. “How old do you think I am?”