The Caine Mutiny (57 page)

Willie’s face flushed. “All this on one martini?”

“And a temperature of, I would say; 101.8. We’ll take it when we get home, just to check. Really, though, I don’t call that very good luck. You telephone me after coming halfway round the world and a man answers. Star-crossed wires. If Shakespeare answers, hang up.”

The taxi swerved sharply around a comer and she leaned against him. The smell of her hair was the same; sweet exciting. His arm tightened around her. Her body was thinner than he remembered. She said, “Darling, tell all the little lieutenants on the
Caine
never to surprise their girls. Tell them to give their girls plenty, plenty of warning, so that they can get the men out of their apartments, and rest up for a week, and go to a beauty parlor, and work over all their little stupid bags of tricks. I am terribly impressed by your battle stars, Willie. You were never hurt, were you, sweet?”

“Not even close-”

“Do you know something? I have a slave. Real slave. Name of Marty Rubin. He has never heard of the Emancipation - Proclamation. See the advantage of a college education) Promise me you won’t tell him that Lincoln freed the slaves. Uncle Tom Rubin. I think I’d be dead if not for him, or have a couple of parents in the poorhouse, anyway. Wow! Home so soon?”

Her apartment was a wretched little room on a dark areaway. The bedcover, the rug, the chairs were worn to the gray threads, and paint hung in patches on the ceiling. She closed the door and kissed him passionately. “You’re as big as a bear in that coat. Not bad for three dollars, this room, is it? Special favor to Marty that they let me have it. Sorry, there’s no bathroom. Down the hall. Well, first of all, let’s see about the good old temperature. Maybe I don’t have to get into bed. Here, read my book of fame.”

She watched him drolly, the thermometer pressed between her lips, while he turned over the leaves of the scrapbook. It was full of one-paragraph clippings. Featured on a page by itself, with an arc of gold stars pasted over it, was a long fulsome write-up, including a picture of May, from the New York
Daily News. May Wynn Latest Threat to Dinah Shore
, it was headed.

“I’d hate to tell you what I had to do to get that,” May said through her teeth, biting the thermometer. She added, “Not what you’re thinking, however, from your expression.” Willie hastily changed his expression with an effort of his face muscles. “Well, now, let’s see.” May held up the thermometer toward the window. “Why, not bad at all. Mere 101.2. Let’s go horseback riding in Central Park.”

“You get into bed. I’m going to call a doctor-”

“Now, dear, don’t go rushing around making kettles of hot water and bathing your arms to the elbows. I’ve seen a doctor. I’m supposed to rest and take aspirin. The question is, what’s the schedule? When do you have to go home to your mother?”

“The night is ours.” Willie sounded insulted.

“Oh? That’s wonderful.” She came to him and put her arms around his neck. “Is it all right if I lie down, then? We can have a nice old chat-and I’ll be all bright and beautiful for the evening.”

“Of course.”

“Well, then, you look out of the window for a minute. It’s a gorgeous view.” Willie obeyed. On the window sill across the air shaft, three feet away, were two bottles of milk, a tomato, and a package of butter, surrounded by little ridges of snow. The brick wall was black with grime. Behind him he heard quick feminine rustlings.

“All right, dear. Come and sit by me.” May’s dress and stockings were draped on a chair, and she was propped up on the bed, under the covers, in a gray rough bathrobe. She smiled wanly. “Hedy Lamarr, all set up for the seduction scene.”

“Darling,” Willie said, sitting and taking her cold hand, “I’m sorry I came at such a bad time-sorry I didn’t let you know-”

“Willie, you’re not half as sorry as I am. Only it’s done, and there’s no help for it.” She clasped his hand between hers. “Dearest, I know you must have pictured me in a warm pink vacuum at home, writing you letters, and reading yours over a thousand times, and otherwise in a state of suspended animation. But that isn’t what happens. Fathers get pleurisy, and stockings get holes in them, and I have to scratch for cash, and fellows make passes at me-which I can’t even get too mad about because it proves I still have a stock in trade-but I’ve really been a pretty good girl.” She looked up at him with shy weary eyes. “I even pulled a B-minus average on the midyears. Got an A in Lit.”

“Look, why don’t you sleep? You knocked yourself out at that audition-”

“Which was a bust-I couldn’t even see straight, waiting for you to show up-”

“Do you have to work tonight?”

“Yes, dear. Every night except Monday, the contract says-if Mama and Papa and May are going to eat-a lot of girls are just dying to substitute-”

“Why didn’t you let me know you were in trouble? I have money-”

A look of fear came over May’s face. She pressed his palm. “Willie, I’m no charity case-maybe I’m overplaying the scene, trying to cover up for looking so ratty. I’m in fine shape financially and every other way-I just have a lousy cold, see-haven’t you ever had a cold?” She began to cry, pressing his hand against her eyes. Warm drops trickled down his fingers. He held her close, and kissed her hair. “Maybe I’d better sleep. I am really shot,” she said, in a low dry voice, her eyes hidden against his hand, “if I stoop to turning on the tears.” She looked up at him and smiled. “What would you like to read?
Troilus and Cressida
?
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
in French? Trevelyan’s
History of England
? They’re in that pile on the table-”

“I’ll take care of myself. You turn in.”

“Why don’t you go out and catch a movie? Better than sitting around in this mousehole, listening to me snore-”

“I’ll stay here.” He kissed her.

She said, “This is wrong. You’ll catch God knows what plagues.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Some home-coming. A weepy, drunken, jabbering sweetheart passing out on you in a roach trap-” May slid down into the bed, and closed her eyes, murmuring, “I have amazing powers of recuperation. Wake me at seven-thirty. You may have to dump over the bed, but get me up. I’ll surprise you-just pretend we’re meeting for the first time at seven-thirty-” She was asleep in a minute, her hair tumbled loosely, dark red on the white pillow. Willie looked for a long time at the pallid face smudged with lipstick. Then he took up
Troilus and Cressida
, opened it at random, and began to read. But as soon as he struck a speech about love, halfway down the page, his mind wandered off.

He was quite fixed now in his decision to break with May. Seeing her again had confirmed it. He was certain it was right. He estimated himself, as truthfully as he could and with no great pride in the result, as a rather mediocre middle-class intellectual. His ambition went no further than the life of a gentleman-professor at a gentlemanly university. He wanted a life upholstered with the good things that money bought, and that meant his mother’s or his wife’s money, not university money. He wanted a wife, in the dim future, of his own kind, smooth, sweet, pretty, and educated, with all the small graces of good background and a moneyed family. May Wynn was bright, yes, unbearably attractive, maybe, though not at this moment. She was also vulgar, brassy, and over-perfumed in the show-business way, and she had allowed him all sorts of liberties from the first, and had slept with him. She seemed a little soiled to him, a little cheap; and in every way jagged and wrong for his planned future. And she was a Catholic. May’s disclaimer of any devotion to her faith had not convinced Willie. He was inclined to believe the general notion that Catholics never wholly abandon their religion and are capable of sudden great plunges back into it. He was very unwilling to complicate his life and the lives of his children with such a disturbing possibility.

Whether all this might have been swept away had he come back to a girl triumphant and gorgeous, the star of a hit musical comedy, it is impossible to say. He was at her bedside now in a shabby room in a dirty hotel, and she was sick and messy and broke. The schoolbooks made her seem more pathetic, not more desirable. She had made a bid to reform herself nearer to his tastes, and it had been a feeble failure. It was all finished.

She was sleeping with her mouth open, and her breath came quick, irregular, and noisy. The gray bathrobe had pulled open, uncovering her bosom. The sight made Willie uncomfortable. He pulled the blanket to her chin, and slumped in the armchair, and dozed.

“Am I seeing things?” said Willie, when the cab pulled up in front of the Grotto Club. “Where’s the Tahiti? Where’s the Yellow Door? Isn’t this where-”

“This place used to be the Yellow Door,” said May. “The Tahiti is gone. That Chinese restaurant used to be the Tahiti. Nothing lasts long in this godforsaken street.”

“What happened to Mr. Dennis?”

“Died,” May said, stepping out into the bitter dusty night wind.

She had been subdued and listless through dinner; and listlessly she waved at Willie as she vanished from his sight through the dressing-room curtain. He was amazed when she came out to sing half an hour later. She was fresh-faced and radiant. The customers, crowded in the smoky cellar between narrow walls of papier-mâché rocks interspersed with tanks of gloomy gray fish, listened in silence, and applauded loudly after each number. She acknowledged the applause with gleaming eyes and a genuine girlish smile, and sang on. She performed five numbers with undimming verve, gathered her full green skirt, and swept off the little stage as bouncily as a gymnast. “How does she do it?” he said to Rubin, who had arrived midway in the act, and was pressed beside him on the wall seat behind an infinitesimal table.

“Well, you ought to know, Willie, the show must go on. She’s a pro. The customers aren’t paying any less for their beer because May has a cold.”

May came to their table with a yellow gauzy shawl around her throat and a black velvet jacket over her shoulders. Rubin rose and kissed her cheek. “Honey, maybe you ought to have colds more often. You’re really putting out tonight.”

“I feel fine- Think I’m any better, Willie?”

“You’re wonderful, May-”

“Don’t lay it on, I’ll know you’re lying- Where are you sneaking off to, Marty?”

“I have other clients. Get her to bed after the two o’clock show, Willie.”

Willie sat on the little hard seat for five hours, talking to May or listening to her sing. Customers came and went, but it almost seemed that the departing ones handed their faces to the newcomers at the door to wear, so much alike did they all look. The air grew staler and the crowd noisier, and the fish in the tanks sank to the bottom and lay motionless, gaping and goggling in the slime. All charm had departed out of night-club surroundings for Willie. To earn a living amid such fusty make-believe struck him as a worse fate, even, than perpetual steaming on the
Caine
.

He told May nothing of the mutiny, though he took pleasure in making her laugh and gasp at stories of Queeg. She had recuperated startlingly. Her manner was bright and lively, and in the cellar gloom, with her make-up, she seemed rosily healthy. But Willie had been too scared in the afternoon by her appearance to feel free with her. The evening went by in restrained, good-humored, evasive chatter. May accepted his tone and followed it.

When they came into her squalid room back at the hotel, it was a quarter to three. Willie was suppressing yawns, and his eyes smarted. Without a word they took off their coats, lay on the bed, and kissed hungrily and wildly for a few minutes. Her forehead, her hands, felt hot to Willie’s lips, but he went on kissing her anyway. At last with a common impulse, they slowed and stopped. She looked him full in the face, her eyes shining in the dim light of the floor lamp.

“Willie, we’re all washed up, aren’t we?”

It is the worst question in the world. Willie didn’t have to answer. The answer was on his miserable face. May said, “Then why are we doing this?”

“You’re right, as usual. I am a swine. Let’s stop.”

“No. I still love to kiss you, unfortunately.” And she kissed him again, several times. But the spoken words had snapped the sweetness. They sat up, and Willie went to the armchair. “If only I hadn’t had a cold,” May said dolefully.

“May! May! This afternoon made no difference-it’s just the kind of guy I am-”

“Darling, you don’t know. It might have made all the difference in the world. Nobody loves a sick cat. However, it’s all past history. It was an uphill struggle. Your letters were bad-”

“What can I say, May? You’re the most wonderful girl I’ll ever know-”

“Strangely enough, that’s the truth. For you, I am. Only you’re too young, or you love your mother too much, or something.” She rose, and opened the zipper of her dress in an absent-minded way; went to her closet and changed into her bathrobe, not troubling to hide herself. The glimpse of her young body in the clinging slip was very painful to Willie. He wanted to gather her in his arms as he wanted to breathe, and he knew that it was absolutely impossible now. She faced him, her hands deep in the pockets of her robe. There was a tremor of uncertainty and pain about her eyes and mouth. “It’s all quite definite, I suppose?”