Barbary Shore (16 page)

“You’re not wearing anything underneath?”

She shivered in answer. “Don’t scold me, Mikey. I’m warm. I’ve had a wonderful evening.” She picked up a bottle which had been placed beneath the bench, and jiggled the inch of liquid still remaining. “I went into a store, and I said in my worst voice, ‘Give me a pint, kid, and make it the roughest, cheapest brand you got.’ And I’ve carried it all night. I feel just like a bum. I would love to be drunk in a gutter, covered in my own spew, my head in filth, and then I would feel like Christ. What a happy man he was. All night I’ve been thinking about the crucifixion. You put your arms out and you’re at rest, and if people spit at you then you can pity them.” Arms folded, she hugged herself. “Oh, something has happened, something happened today, and then there’ll be more tomorrow.”

“What?”

Lannie shook her head. Instead of answering directly, she told me something else. “You know a couple of months ago no
one would talk to me, and I didn’t see anyone. Once in a while I’d hear somebody yelling, and I remember that I used to cry a lot. And then one day I was in a room all locked up by myself”—she went on, her voice devoid of color—“and in the corner there was a big fat woman with a hard face because all the girls were frightened of her, and this used to make her feel so terrible she would slap them. This time she was changing my linen, and her face wasn’t cruel at all. It was a sad face.” Lannie watched the smoke of the cigarette crawl along her fingers. “I went and looked at her, and she said, ‘You know who I am now, don’t you?’ and then she put her arms around me, and she took me in her lap and ran hands through my hair, and she kissed me. I never loved anyone, Mikey, the way I loved her then. She was beautiful.”

I twisted uncomfortably on my seat. “Why do you tell me this?”

“Because tomorrow and then after and then so long after I pull the cord and hang a man, and that’s what they make me do.” She trailed off listlessly, and I could barely comprehend her. A sodden breeze stirred through the park, and the newspapers which littered the concrete path yawed sluggishly before its passage. I could hear a drunk snoring on one of the benches, saw another right himself momentarily to shake his fist at a passing car.

“What time is it?” Lannie asked again.

I told her, and she nodded dumbly, her dark, stained fingers playing at her throat. “Oh, Mikey, I don’t know,” she said at last.

“What?”

She stared at me, and in her eyes apprehension stirred like the faun aware of distant hunters. “Will you take me home tonight?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“I knew you would”—this impulsively—“I wonder if you
know, but of course you can’t. You’re the kindest man I’ve met in so long.”

I was unprepared for this. “Kindest man?” I parroted.

“Oh, you are. You mustn’t be ashamed of it. You know you’re so fussy, and you’re old-maidish, and you’re proud, but underneath it there’s such kindness in you.” Trembling, she lit another cigarette. “I knew only one man who was kinder than you, and he was a middle-aged man, a teacher in a little school in a small town, and he had beautiful hands, and he used to love to touch little boys with them because the little boys were so beautiful, only he never did dare; he would keep his hands in his pockets. They used to nickname him Wing, and they treated him dreadfully.”

“Why I read that,” I blurted. “It’s a story.”

She looked at me like a child, a finger upon her lower lip. “It is, that’s right.” And she gave her husky laugh with its overtone of exhaustion. “I’m getting silly again.” Her head was lowered. “Oh, let’s go home.”

We started out across the park, her palm dry and feverish against my hand. When we had gone a little way she halted, murmured, “I forgot something,” and fled back to the bench. By the time I followed she had recovered the bottle and held it aloft with triumph. “It would have been a shame to leave it there. Let’s find someone to give it to.” She set off immediately, prancing from bench to bench to examine the sleepers, and stopped finally before an old man with a white stubble. He was snoring powerfully. “Listen to him.” She mocked his sounds. “Here, old graybeard,” she murmured, slipping the flask into his coat pocket, “with this for sustenance may your dreams be sweet.” And she darted away with a delighted laugh.

I caught up with Lannie after running a few steps, and encircled her waist. Beneath the cotton of the pajamas, I felt her grow rigid. “Philanthropist,” I murmured.

She smiled at me. Yet her body, independent of what she
might desire, would not bend, and along the length of my arm I felt its constraint. Soon I released her, and we strode along hand in hand toward the rooming house.

I can hardly account for the route I took. Call it curiosity. In any case I passed by the bar where Hollingsworth had made his date, and found him standing on the street with the waitress. His head lowered, he was plunged into a conversation directed at her throat.

“Well … 
hello
,” he broke off, as he saw us, his head going up, and his eyes flickering from the waitress to us and back again.

I introduced Lannie, and we stood around in a circle not saying anything at first. She and Hollingsworth examined each other closely, but with a surface indifference almost successful in its subtlety. The silence continued, uncomfortable only to myself and to the waitress, who was probably petulant at the interruption.

Then Hollingsworth began to perform. Cockily, he extracted his lighter for one of Lannie’s cigarettes, and flourished it in my direction. “Well, I guess this has been a long night for certain people,” he said at last.

Lannie puffed at the light he had furnished, her body inclined from the waist, her eyes staring at him. With her free hand she still held mine, the pressure intent.

“I’m the new roomer,” Lannie said in a husky voice.

Hollingsworth put the lighter back in his pocket. He cleared his throat. “Well, I know I’ll be pleased to have you for a neighbor, Miss Madison,” he said. “I think you’ll find our place a very interesting specimen of life in New York.”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” Lannie said vaguely.

“Indeedy,” said Hollingsworth. “And the roomers are generally a high class of people with some culture.” He tapped the pipe against his teeth. “I’ve always been very concerned with culture.”

The waitress, who was standing to one side, interrupted brusquely. “Hey,” she said, poking him in the ribs, “I thought your name was Ed Leroy.”

I had introduced him as Hollingsworth. He pivoted slowly, and said, “I told you, Alice. My name is Ed Leroy Hollingsworth. Perhaps you missed the last name.”

“I don’t like it,” the waitress said. “Come on, let’s get going. I’m tired.” She stared with suspicion at Lannie’s pajamas. “I want to get home.”

“In a minute,” Hollingsworth snapped at her. With a look at me, he bent toward Lannie and asked, “Miss Madison, what do you think of our friend, Mr. Lovett?” And in his manner he made the question part of a game which linked them together.

“Oh, I think he’s been very kind to me,” Lannie said, accepting his gambit.

Hollingsworth nodded. “He’s one of the best. We’re great friends. Lovett’s more studious than I am, very bookish, but he’s a capital fellow. And they’re other capital fellows in the house too.”

“What about you?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m wilder. I don’t know why, but I’m very wild. Wine and women, you know, although nothing that’s off-color.” He spoke as if I were not there.

“I’m glad I moved in,” Lannie said with a burst of feeling as strong as it was unaccountable. Hollingsworth nodded his head to this, but I had the idea he was hardly listening. “Yes,” he went on, “I suppose I am the complex type. What do you think, Mr. Lovett?”

“I agree with Alice. I want to go home.”

“Yeah,” Alice chimed in.

Hollingsworth smiled. “I guess now is not the time to embark upon long conversations. But sometime I would like to talk to you, Miss Madison.” He shook hands with both of us quite formally, and then stared again at Lannie. “You have an interesting
dress,” he said in his mildest voice. “I suppose that’s the new advanced style.”

Lannie looked up and nodded her head vigorously. “I knew you would like it, or at least I had hoped you would; there are so many fools and no one sees anything.” We were all silent, and she was shivering.

After a moment we separated. Moving down the street, I heard Hollingsworth say to the waitress, “Well, come on, sister.”

Lannie and I walked on for some distance without speaking. Her hand, still squeezing mine, gripped harder and harder, until with a sudden motion that might have signified a decision taken, she pulled it away. “He’s very beautiful,” she said without preamble.

“Oh, extremely,” I said.

“No, you could never understand. He has no idea of himself, and that’s what makes him so exciting. I love his pious little voice.”

“I detest it.”

Lannie stiffened. “Oh, you would. You don’t understand anything.” To my amazement, she was quite angry. “He’s unique, and there are so few who are. And they’re always being condemned.”

After that we fell silent and walked back without another word. Her head was turned away from me, and I might have thought her in a study if the tension of her body whenever it grazed against mine were not so evident. We climbed the steps of the rooming house, mounted to her floor. At the door I paused, and to my surprise, she invited me in. She was shivering again.

“You must have a glass of water before you go to bed,” she said in a poor attempt at whimsy.

I discovered that she had moved the couch to face the wall once more. It must have required some heavy labor, for the
two of us had been able to shift it only with difficulty. Now she sprawled upon it, her heels jammed against the baseboard. I sat beside her uncomfortably, and the gray dirty wall, its plaster cracked, stared back at me.

“I love this,” Lannie said, her voice going on and on as though to pause would mean collapse, “if I had a dime I’d go out and buy some popcorn and sit here eating it. And whenever I wanted I’d throw a piece upon the floor.” Lazily, smoke drifted from her mouth. “The wall is so nice. I can make it anything I want. This afternoon when you left, I kept looking at it, and I decided it was Guernica, and I could hear the horses screaming.” She sighed to herself.

With a stubbornness she seemed to evoke, I asked, “What are you going to do for a meal tomorrow?”

“I won’t be bothered thinking about it now.”

“Do you have any money left?”

“Millions.” One foot was lifted into the air, and with a slow absorption she waggled her moccasin which was loose at the heel. After a moment she took it off, poked a finger through the gap in the sole, and twirled it about her hand.

“Let me lend you money,” I persisted.

She flung the moccasin against the wall. “Do whatever you please.”

I was busy with private calculations, wondering how much I could give her from my small cache. “Will you take twenty dollars?” I said at last.

“I’ll take whatever you give me,” she said passively. She yawned. “Oh, Mikey, you’re such a guardian. You should be handling investment funds for silly widows.” She cocked her arms behind her head. Abruptly, she giggled. “I ought to make love to you. I’ve always wanted to make love to a guardian and whip his behind with his watch fob. What could be more exciting?” She nudged the ash from her cigarette with a finger tip.

I said nothing. I carried the residue of this long day and
longer night. My limbs ached, my stomach was uneasy, my body was tense. As she talked my responses lost proportion. I would be indifferent to some of her most astounding declarations, and in turn would stifle the irritation she might summon by a passing word. I gazed at her wall, suffering its oppressive emptiness, discovering upon it none of the distractions she would claim.

When I looked at her again there were tears in her eyes. “What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know.” She scoured her moist cheek with the back of her fist. “Oh. We always have to move, don’t we? I know I’ll have to leave this room, and Mikey I’d like to stay here and close the door and have my food slipped in through a trap. Tomorrow I’ll have to go looking for a job.”

“Lannie, where were you living last?”

She smiled ruefully. “I had an apartment.” Somehow this was difficult to believe.

“How did you lose it?”

“I donated it to the enemy.” Lannie gave a small laugh. “What a stupid girl I was.” She looked at me, and then she drawled, “I got kicked out of my own bed this morning, and I was the one who invited him there. Never show kindness to a drunk.”

“Why didn’t you make him leave?”

She gave her smile of wisdom to indicate that I was innocent indeed. “Oh, I couldn’t. That wasn’t possible.” Lannie tossed her head mockingly. “And anyway I don’t remember, not exactly. I woke up, and then I don’t know what happened except that I was on the subway, and I had been sleeping. He threw these pajamas at me as I was going out.”

“But …?”

“Oh, I took pity on him. He was just an old drunk, and they’d canned him from his job, and so I took him in. He’d worked in the same agency I was in once, and he had beautiful
black hair and fat red cheeks. And he just stayed, and I think he knew that I was getting bored with him, and he hated me because I was all he had. And today he just ordered me out. I’ll never talk to him again.”

“But why did you let him keep it?”

She shrugged. “Descend to cabbage and the pinching of a penny? How mean! Let him fight over some walls, let him come after me and take everything I have, one after another, and don’t you understand in giving it away I win every time.” She smiled with forced delight. “Besides I was bored with my apartment.”

I laughed suddenly, explosively, as much from exasperation as from mirth. Lannie yawned. “You’re much nicer when you smile,” she said. She reached over and stroked my face. “You have a wonderful nose,” she told me. “I love the way it’s turned up and your septum is pink. I knew a girl once with a nose like that, and she was very cruel.”

I yawned too, and stood up. “I’m going to bed,” I announced.