Tales From Gavagan's Bar (7 page)

             
"What do you mean?" I asked her.

             
"Oh—missing out on trips, and—a lot of things."

             
I still didn't quite understand, but I was too wrought up to be curious. I just said: "Yes, I want him that much."

             
"All right," she said, "the Barnards are giving a dinner party next week, and I know Walter's coming. I'll get them to ask you. But before you go, be sure to go to Mme. Lavoisin's in the afternoon and have a beauty treatment. Tell her I sent you, and it's a date with a man."

             
I felt let down. You know, as though I'd b
een expecting to take a tremendous dive, and it turned out to be only a step down to the water. But I did it. I accepted the invitation when it came, and I went to Mme. Lavoisin's. I can't say I was impressed by the place when I went in.

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"What was t
he matter with it?" asked Mrs. Jonas. "It looked all right to me."

             
"Didn't you get the impression that the place was somewhat shabby? When you look directly at anything, it's clean enough and nice enough, but you always feel that there's something just at the edge of what you're looking at that isn't quite right."

             
"Well, sort of, when I first went in," admitted Mrs. Jonas. "And I didn't like that receptionist."

             
"The one with the big black cat sitting on the chair beside
her?" said Eloise Grady. She turned to Jeffers. "She's nicely dressed and everything, but she has buck teeth."

             
"Yes," said Mrs. Jonas, "and the two end ones, right here, kind of pointed. You'd think that a girl working in a beauty parlor like that would get her teeth fixed up. I want another Presidente."

             
Eloise Grady gave a little sigh.

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Well, I don't have to tell you [she went on]. Or about Mme. Lavoisin herself. She has very black hair and looks as though she were about thirty when you first see her, and then you make up your mind that she's really much older, only just well turned
out. The receptionist said she only took people by previous appointment, but I said I wanted a treatment that afternoon, and it was urgent, and Betty-Jo Stewart sent me.

             
She came out herself. "Is it a question of—meeting a man?" she asked.

             
I thought that was queer, but I said yes, and she took me into one of the booths herself. There wasn't anything extraordinary about the treatment, except that right in the middle of it a pin in her dress scratched me on the arm, so it bled a little.

             
["Why, that's what happened to me, too!" said Mrs. Jonas. "Only I went there by appointment."]

             
Yes, I know [said Eloise Grady]. That's why I said—oh, well, after she finished with my hair, she said: "I think you will find that satisfactory. If the treatment gives the results you hope for and I expect, you had better come back. You will need more treatments."

             
I will say it gave me results even beyond what I could have hoped. I was a little late at the Barnards. Walter was already there with the Reinschloss girl, and they were talking together over cocktails. He turned around casually to say hello. Then I heard him give a sort of little gasp and do a quick double-take on me. I went on with the introductions, and a couple of minutes later, he dropped whatever he was doing and came and sat by me. It was wonderful. It was
like—magic. He hardly looked at anyone else or talked to anyone else all evening long. The Reinschloss girl was furious. Walter called up the next morning and wanted to take me to the ice carnival.

             
Naturally, I went to Mme. Lavoisin's before going with him. She was very discreet and didn't ask any questions when I said I had another date with the same man. Just gave me a treatment like before, and when she got through, said: "My special customers usually come back." I did keep coming back, too, every time I had a date with Walter, which got to be more and more frequently. About six weeks later, he asked me to marry him.

             
I told Mme. Lavoisin about it and that I wouldn't be in for a while, because Walter wanted to spend our honeymoon on a six weeks' cruise around the Caribbean. At the same time I said I was sure that her beauty treatments were responsible for everything and thanked her and gave her • a rather large tip. Instead of being pleased, she looked worried. "My treatment will last for three weeks, perhaps," she said. "But after that—" and I couldn't get anything more out of her. But then I began to worry, I couldn't tell about what. I understood how Betty-Jo felt, and why she had talked to me so much. But I couldn't tell anybody about it, because there wasn't anything to tell, really. But I did persuade Walter to make it only a two-week honeymoon.

             
After we got back, I kept telling myself that this was absurd, that nothing could make that much difference. So one time, I didn't go to Mme. Lavoisin's for quite three weeks. Toward the end of it Walter kept asking me if I were ill, and then he'd start looking at me in the strangest way. Till I went back. When I was in the chair, Mme. Lavoisin didn't say anything but: "You mustn't neglect your looks like that, my dear. Men always like to have their wives look as nice as they did before they were married." So I kept going back.

             
The next thing was Betty-Jo's birthday party. It was a big party. After dinner, over the coffee, Andy got up and made a little speech. He said he'd been saving this as a surprise, but this was a farewell party as well as a birthday party. The
agency had placed him in charge of the Chicago office. But before he went out to take over, they had given him four months' leave. And he'd shared his wife with all of us for so long that he was going to have her all to himself for a while. So he had arranged for them to spend the time in a cabin in Tahiti.

             
He laid the tickets beside Betty-Jo's plate. Everyone applauded, but she looked so white we all thought she was going to faint. I was the only one at the table who understood why. And I'm one of the few people who understands what's happened to them now. And I'm worried myself, because Walter
is talking about taking a trip to Europe. You see?

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The bus boy came over to the table. "It's Professor Thott on the phone," he said. "He says he's awful sorry he's late, but there was a meeting of the trustees at the college, and he'll be right over
, and do you want to talk to him?"

             
"No," said Mrs. Jonas. "Not now. Tell him I'm very sorry, too, but I wasn't feeling well and decided to go home this evening. I'll see him later."

             
She got up. "Thank you," she said to Eloise Grady, and went out.

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Mr. Gross leaned about two hundred of his pounds on the edge of the bar, so that part of him bulged over it, and said: "Mr.
Co-han,
I feel like variety this evening. How about a Yellow Rattler?"

             
The tall, saturnine-looking man said: "You better be careful. It's the queer drinks like that that end you up with the d.t.'s."

             
"Not no more than the rest," said the bartender, mixing away. "It's all how you take them. Funny that you would be mentioning d.t.'s. along with a Yellow Rattler, now, Mr. Willison. The very last one I mixed in this bar was for that Mr. Van Nest, the poor young felly. The animals was after him, he said, and he needed a drink. But he acted sober when he came in here. As long as a man can stand up and behave himself he can have a drink in Gavagan's."

             
"Ah, it's a shame when a man has to take so much liquor he gets d.t.'s," said Gross. "I got a nephew knew a man like that once. He cut off one of his own toes with a butcher-knife, saying it was a snake trying to bite him. But he was one of them solitary drinkers."

             
"Campbell Van Nest wasn't a solitary drinker," said Willison. "Just a solitary guy. Though he had to be after his animals started coming alive on him."

             
"Huh?" said Mr. Witherwax, almost choking on the olive from his Martini. "What animals? How did they come alive?"

             
"The animals out of his d.t.'s," said Willison. "I saw them. So
did you, didn't you, Mr. Cohan?"

             
"Never a one," said Mr. Cohan, swabbing the bar. "That was why he came here, because they would not follow him into Gavagan's. But there's plenty would swear on the blessed sacraments they did see them. Like Patrolman Krevitz, that me brother Julius says is one of the steadiest men on the force, and old man Webster in the tailor shop. Not to be mentioning yourself, Mr. Willison."

             
"You say the animals from his d.t.'s came alive?" said Witherwax. "I'd like to hear about this. I was just reading in a book about something like that. They call it materialization."

             
"Well, I don't know," said Willison. "The few of us who knew him have always rather kept it quiet. . ."

             
"You can tell them," said Mr. Cohan. "No harm to anybody now the poor young felly is dead and gone, and his animals with him."

             
"Mmm. I suppose you're right," said Willison. "Well—fill me
up another rye and water, Mr. Cohan, and let's see. I want to get this straight."

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Campbell Van Nest [said Willison] was one of those natural-born square pegs, I guess. Nice-looking chap, nothing remarkable about him in any way, but it was as thou
gh he and the world had made an agreement not to get along together. Everything he tried went wrong somehow. Not in a spectacular way, but a little off the beam, so he was always being disappointed.

             
He travelled in toys. It will give you an idea of what I mean about the disappointments, when I tell you that although he was good at it and made plenty of money, he didn't like the life, rushing around and meeting people and going to conventions. He liked to stay home and read—a lot of things like astrology and Oriental lore. The part of the toy business that really interested him was designing toy animals —woolly pandas that would walk, and so on. But there isn't much of a full-time job in designing, so they'd only let him do it a week or so at a time, and then send him out on the road again.

             
He was always falling in love, too; not that he was a woman-chaser. He'd get into real deep, off-the-end-of-the-dock love with some girl, who always turned him down in the end. You've heard of people being hard
r
boiled? Well, I would say Campbell Van Nest was too soft-boiled. It broke him all up when one of these girls said no; and because it was the way he learned to do things from other salesmen, he'd go off on a two-day binge.