Some Came Running (54 page)

Well, he would be damned if he would! She could rot first. Anyway, he
couldn’t
do it. He didn’t
want
to; he had no
desire.
She probably couldn’t understand that. But what did she expect?

The raw truth was, she had beat him. That meant he had lost. She had dominated him, had forced him, by using tricks and unfair tactics, to do something he had not wanted to do. Did she expect him to just shrug that off? and come running back to her? Well, he couldn’t. He’d rather go to Terre Haute and take on a whore.

Damn you, anyway, Agnes! he thought. It wasn’t as if he didn’t love her. He just failed to understand it.

And the infuriating thing was, there wasn’t a single damned thing he could do about it. He had already done all he could. He had called Geneve, and met her and talked to her, and it was just about the most humiliating experience of his life, and he could thank Agnes for that, too.

In the dark car, Frank puffed convulsively on the big Churchill, letting the thick smoke billow out around him, the red glow of the coal lighting his warped features.

After getting home from Chicago, he had had no time to call her for the first two weeks because of the taxi service, and indeed, had not even thought about it. But that would have made no difference because immediately upon getting home from Chicago, he found out later, Dotty had talked to her again and whatever it was Agnes had done began having its powerful effect. When he did call her the following Monday, he had not even intended to then. Maybe it was the information she had told him in Chicago that had bothered him and made him want to get hold of her badly, while he still could. Usually, as they had agreed, she was to call him, but he did have a little out of town business that he thought he might as well do, and she could always get a day or two off from Dotty if she really wanted to. He had even been careful enough to call from a booth phone, and explained this to her, but he immediately sensed some change and not a good one had taken place from the cool, crisp tone of her voice. It had always been a cold-bloodedly merciless voice, anyway, even when she was being affectionate. Apparently, someone had been standing right beside her, because she took the course of turning down an invitation to some kind of hen party; but it was more than that. No, she could not possibly attend. She had important business that day. She was sorry. So in the end, but still coolly crisp: Yes, she would love to meet at the Club for a cocktail tomorrow. That was a prearranged gimmick between them that he would pick her up at dark on the street that led out to the Country Club. With intense forebodings of disaster, he had hung up. It was strange how
everybody
could always make him feel guilty as if whatever it was, it was his fault if it was bad.

Well, she had been there, walking, when he drove by and he had picked her up. He drove, slowly, out east of town toward Israel and over the new bridge and on north toward Terre Haute while Geneve coolly asked him about the taxi service. He was a pretty foxy one, wasn’t he? He hadn’t told her a word about it. She might have been willing to put a little of hers and Al’s own money in it, if she had known about it. Feeling impatient, he nevertheless took the time to explain that it was only something he had dreamed up to get his brother Dave off his back, and that was why he hadn’t bothered to tell her. He hadn’t done it, he said, to make money. She didn’t bother to answer that, and let it go. Calmly, she told him what he wanted to hear about, how Dotty had talked to her again and this time it was worse so this was her last warning.

“I can’t blame Dotty. And I don’t see how you can blame me,” she said. She was very beautiful with her cold, marble face like a
Vogue
model. “I can’t go out with you anymore,” she said. “It isn’t worth it to me.”

“Well, I guess that’s right,” Frank said, trying to sound as businesslike about it as she did, but not succeeding very well.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at him—almost accusatively, he thought. “Someday perhaps, we may be able to run into each other at the Club now and then, and get away and have a little fun.” Here she smiled. She was the most beautiful—and the sexiest—woman he had ever laid, Frank thought wistfully. “But that will not be any time soon. It certainly won’t be until after all the big stink’s blown over,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess that’s so,” Frank said. “Well, I guess I’ll miss you a little,” he said, trying to make it casual.

“It’s that damned wife of yours,” Geneve said. “It’s a wonder to me you’ve ever succeeded as well as you have, with that millstone hanging around your neck. She dominates you completely. And you let her. You have nobody to blame but yourself in all this, Frankie.”

“Well—” Frank said. He didn’t think that was
strictly
true, but he didn’t want to tell her that. Anyway, he didn’t like to talk about Agnes with Geneve. In a way, she was right though.

“You can’t blame me for not risking myself and my plans over something you can’t handle,” Geneve said.

“No, I sure can’t,” he said; “anyway, it’s all water under the bridge now I guess, ain’t it?” He had seen the mouth of a side road ahead, and braked the car to turn down it. It ran down off the steep highway grade into a little tree-lined lane.

“What are you turning down here for?” Geneve said as he swung the Buick down into it.

“Well,” he grinned, a little guiltily, “I thought we might park down here a little bit. And have ourselves one more party.”

Geneve swung around in the seat to stare at him. “I haven’t ‘partied’ in the backseats of cars since I was in high school,” she said with cold contempt. “And I am not about to start in again now.”

Stung deeply, feeling his neck stiffen, Frank did not answer right away. It took several seconds for the full humiliation of it to sink in. Anger flowed up through him, like blood from a wound, to coagulate and form a protective scab around the hurt.

“I’ll turn around,” he said stiffly. There was a driveway into somebody’s field just ahead. “I’ve done a lot of things for you and Al,” he said as he swung into it. “A lot of them things I haven’t even been asked to do.”

“You’ve been paid back in full for everything you did,” Geneve said coolly.

“Yes, but I won’t be gettin paid anymore,” Frank said.

“No, you won’t,” Geneve said. “Not in any parked cars. I’m not a whore. And if I’m going to have any love affairs, I’m going to have them in comfort.”

“That’s your privilege,” Frank said. Without looking at her, he backed the car out into the lane, headed back the other way. What he wanted to do, desperately, was to tell her that she could lay for him right here and right now like the whore they both knew she was, or else he’d kick Al out tomorrow and to hell with what everybody would think. But instead, he said:

“But in spite of the fact I won’t be gettin paid, I hadn’t intended to let Al go from the store.” He pulled the car up the grade back onto the highway. “He’s not very bright. But he’s learnin. And someday I intended to make him the manager of it. I might be a lot of other help to both of you. In a lot of other ways. Whether I got ‘paid’ or not,” he said. It wouldn’t have worked anyway; the other. He knew her well enough to know she would have gotten out and walked home, or caught a ride.

Geneve did say anything. He was beginning to feel pretty righteous. The scab of anger surrounding his wound softened a little. Staring straight ahead, he drove along not hurrying, keeping it at fifty. They drove all the way back to the bridge in silence, and then across it.

“Well, are you going to let him go?” Geneve said, as if the evening lights of Israel sweeping past below them were the code which unlocked her lips. Those lips, he thought, damn! They knew their business.

“No,” he said. “At least, I don’t think so.”

Again they drove on in silence.

“Incidentally,” Geneve said softly, “That was why I married Al. That dumbness.”

“Well, that was your privilege, too,” Frank said, not looking at her.

“You know, I like you,” she said with her cold grin. “I guess, because you’re a smart businessman. You make money. Dotty is a smart businessman. I admire anybody who makes money.”

Frank wondered how much of this was flattery. “I’m not goin to fire Al,” he said.

Geneve smiled at the joke, but did not even bother to answer. They were passing the old tree-grown cemetery at the foot of the hill a mile outside of town. Just before they got to the outskirts she spoke.

“Damn it, it’s all due to that damned wife of yours,” she said. “And because you let her dominate you. You ought to dominate her, Frankie.”

“Like Al dominates you, you mean,” Frank said.

“Al and I understand each other,” she said, out of that cold-marble face.

“You better be glad, then,” Frank said. “Because if you do, you’re the only married couple in the world who do.”

They had driven the rest of the way in silence.

In the dark car, parked before his store, Frank pulled a pint bottle out of the dash compartment and took a big drink that was less of an enjoyable drink than it was a wild expression of flagrant rebellion against his wife.

He still couldn’t understand it. Why did she have to take such a damned dog in the mangerish attitude? As he came back slowly to himself from the painfulness of remembering, he noted that Edith’s light was still on in the store, and quite suddenly, he had to be where there were people— As powerfully as just a few minutes before he was unable to stand the thought of people, now he couldn’t stand the thought of being alone. He opened the door and jumped out into the street.

The cold air outside bumped him in the head, after the thick cigar smoke in the car. Calmly, he threw the chewed butt away and fished out his keys and went over to the door. It seemed like a haven, suddenly, in there; the one place in the world where he could go, he thought, turning the key.

“It’s me, Edith. Frank,” he called as he opened the door. Carefully, he felt his way back through the darkened display room and across the storeroom to the office. He would sit a while, and maybe have a drink out of the desk, and smoke a cigar, and maybe then he could go home. Agnes would be asleep by then.

Edith was sitting at her own desk, working. She looked up and grinned at him as he came in.

“Well! What are you doing roaming around in the middle of the night? Hello, Boss.”

“Oh, just roamin around,” he said. “I sort of had the blues.” He took off his topcoat and laid it on the desk and ran his fingers through his hair. “Don’t let me bother you. I—I had a couple things I wanted to look at,” he lied.

He sat down at his desk and opened the double drawer where the whiskey was and poured himself a little. Then he put some papers on the desk, but he did not look at them. Instead, he leaned back and cocked his feet up on the corner of the desk and sipping the whiskey, stared at the corner of the ceiling.

“’Bout to get it finished up?” he said.

Edith wrinkled her nose. “I’ll have it all done before very long. I don’t mind doing it. I enjoy it.”

“Well, you go right on with your work,” Frank said. “Don’t let me bother you.”

“What’s the trouble?” Edith said, as she turned back to the desk. “Dave been giving you some more trouble?” Like just about everybody else in town, Edith had heard the Geneve Lowe story; and
knew
what was troubling him.

“Who?” Frank said after a moment. “Dave? Oh, no more than usual. Tonight he wanted to quit.”

“Quit!” Edith said without looking up. “What for?”

“Because his rights as a human being was bein infringed on,” Frank said. “In other words, he wanted more time off.”

“Did you give it to him?” she asked.

“Sure. Why not?” Frank said. “I didn’t expect him to last this long. You go on with your work,” he said.

Taking him at his word, Edith did exactly that. Pouring himself another small drink, Frank watched her from his desk. She wasn’t beautiful at all, like Geneve. And yet—such a pretty girl. She probably had a very satisfactory love life, he thought.

“How you gettin along with that boyfriend of yours?” he asked.

“What boyfriend?” Edith said without looking up.

“Didn’t you get engaged to a fellow here a while back? A soldier?”

Edith’s ears turned pink. “Oh, him. We broke it off quite a while ago.” She dropped her head lower over her work. “He was transferred to Indianapolis later.”

Frank felt chagrined, and at the same time very fatherly. “Oh, I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. What was the trouble?”

“We just didn’t see eye to eye on a bunch of things,” Edith said.

“Well, I hope you got yourself another one right away, didn’t you?” Frank said kiddingly.

Edith turned around and grinned. “I sure did. Four or five of them, in fact.”

Frank threw back his head and laughed. “Safety in numbers, hunh?”

“That’s it,” Edith said, grinning. “And there sure is.”

“Well— You go ahead with your work,” he said. “Don’t let me disturb you.”

“I don’t mind,” she smiled. “You don’t disturb me. After all, you do own the store.” But she turned back to her desk.

From his own, Frank watched her again and then looked off at the corner of the ceiling. He could feel tears of warmth and affection come almost into his eyes. Great Christ! what was getting into him anyway? He wondered if she was sleeping with all four or five of them. But no; not Edith. She was too good a girl, and too levelheaded. She’d never have an affair with more than one man at a time.

Feeling pleasantly old, and pleasantly fatherly, in a way he almost never seemed to feel with Dawn, he reached for his whiskey just as the door out front rattled loudly. He took his feet down off the desk.

“I’ll answer it,” he said. “It’s probably just the night cop.”

“He certainly earns his money,” Edith said behind him. “This is the second time he’s been here.”

Frank felt his way out to the front where the night cop’s flashlight shone in at him through the glass of the door. He unlocked it.

“It’s only me, Pete,” he said.

“I saw your car out front, Mr Hirsh,” the old man grinned. “But I thought I ought to stop and check anyway, you know.”