The Cocktail Waitress (24 page)

“Baby, I’m getting dizzy.”

“Liz, if it was as you said, that I have that kind of marriage on account of torching for Tom, I’d say so, I’d be only too glad, I wouldn’t be too proud. But it’s not that. If I could, I’d have gone through with it, Liz—the lawyer told me I had to. But it came to a head tonight, everything just as I feared it would. And I
couldn’t
go through with it—not because of Tom, just because I couldn’t stomach the thought of that old man climbing on top of me, and—and—”

“So, you’re leaving him?”

“… I don’t know yet.”

“Joan, you’re as bad as Tom. Suppose you stop handing me horseshit too. Why did you call me today? Why did you ask me to lunch? Way I saw it, I was to take a message. O.K., then, I took it. Now you’ve
given him hope. So if you go back on the message, he’s been made a fool of. And I’m warning you, he may not take it friendly.”

“… O.K., Liz. Thanks.”

All that took longer to talk out than it takes for me to tell it, and by then the place began to fill up again, this time with the late, after-the-picture-show bunch. As usual, they were younger than the dinner people, and as usual, they began running Liz ragged. In a minute I got up and began filling orders for her—a lot of people knew me, and began calling my name very friendly, not paying too much attention that I wasn’t in uniform. And then all of a sudden in front of me there was Earl, his face trembling with rage. “Mrs. Earl K. White,” he roared, “does not serve drinks in a bar!”

“Mrs. Earl K. White
the Third,”
I told him. “Let’s use the full thing if we’re going to use it at all. And Mrs. Earl K. White the Third decides for herself where she serves drinks, whether she serves drinks or throws them in somebody’s face that interferes—or tries to interfere.”

I was at the bar, a tray of rickeys in my hand, and he stepped aside, but quick. However, I didn’t walk past him—not yet. “I thought I told you,” I went on, “to call off that snoop you had
—and I thought you promised to do it.”

“Snoop? I didn’t need any snoop! A dozen people have called to tell me you were here! That Earl K. White’s wife was serving drinks—”

“The Third,” I said, and walked past him with my tray. I set the rickeys in front of the guests and beckoned Liz to make out the check—I being strictly a bus girl helping out. Then I turned to Earl and told him: “I’m ready now if you are.”

“… Ready for what, Joan?”

“To go home, what else? Having been left alone all evening, I decided to visit with friends—and when they needed help to give
it—being in the Social Register has obligations—noblesse oblige, it’s called. But now, as you’ve arrived and made a scene—”

He snapped his fingers in the direction of the vestibule and I saw Boyd come forward. “We’re going home,” he announced. “Bring the car around.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Not for me, thanks,” I said, “I’m using my own car. You may ride with me if you like, Earl, or take yours, as you prefer, but I’m taking mine.”

He was steaming, and I expected him to storm off as he had earlier. Instead, he told Boyd to take the car back on his own, and waited for me to get my jacket. I suddenly realized it was not his humiliation he was here to make sure I knew of, or his embarrassment, or his shame, or any of the things he pretended, but a triumph of some sort, that he had to gloat over with me. There was something he wanted me to know, and he didn’t want me out of his sight until he’d said it. But my realization was vague, as I wasn’t caught up yet, as to what kind of evening he’d had. I just had an uneasy feeling there would be more.

I didn’t know the half.

I led outside, opened the passenger door for him and put him in. Then I got in myself and drove home—his home, at least, and the place I had to call home, as I seemed to be living there. I drove around to the garage and put my car away, then walked back to the front door with him. All this time he was holding in whatever it was he wanted to say. As soon as we made it inside the drawing room, he burst out: “What was the idea? Disgracing me? Earl K. White’s wife doesn’t work in a cocktail bar!”

“Earl K. White’s wife
did
work in a cocktail bar, as Earl K. White well knows—and Earl K. White’s wife can do as she goddam well pleases, and it pleases her, when left alone for an evening, to spend it with friends, and if they need help in the work, to give it. Any more questions?”

“… Why don’t you ask one?”

“Such as which one?”

“Why don’t you ask where I spent the evening?”

“It’s none of my business, that’s why—but since you make it my business, O.K., where did you spend the evening?”

“Massage parlor.”

“You mean, a junior whorehouse?”

“… O.K., call it that.”

“I call it what it is—at least as I’ve heard, in such way as to believe it. And you enjoyed your little visit?”

“You bet I did.”

“Then I’m glad.”

“I thought you would be. You might be interested to know it proved you wrong, and Dr. Cord wrong. I had myself what we can call a massage, two of them, matter of fact—with no fatal results, as you see.”

“That’s wonderful, Earl, but it doesn’t prove Dr. Cord wrong.”

“It doesn’t? I’d say it does.”

“Not if by ‘massage’ you mean what I think you mean, namely a young woman working you over with her hands. All right, she took the towel off at the end and worked a little more than she’s supposed to under the law—you might have died from that, and thank goodness you didn’t. But there’s a difference between that and what you were proposing we do, and if you don’t know what the difference is I’m not going to be the one to tell you.”

“I survived the one, and I would survive the other just the same.”

“You might as well say, I can step off the curb so I can step out a window.”

“You’re saying you think the act with you would be that much more tremendous?”

“I’m saying you do, or you wouldn’t be pursuing it so single-mindedly. Earl, I’ve seen what happens to you when you get excited. A woman you’ve never met and will never see again cannot excite you like your wife, and the touch of a woman’s hand cannot excite you the way possessing her entire body would. You’ve learned something tonight about what your body can withstand, but you haven’t learned enough to say you’re ready for what you want. And the only way you could find that out is too dangerous.”

“And you know that how? You’re an impressive woman, Joan, I don’t say you aren’t—but I don’t recall your having a medical degree. Let me show you something ” He got up and pulled over a little stairway, a mahogany thing no more than eighteen inches high, with two steps on it, for use in front of the bookshelves, which on one side of the room were quite high. “Journal Dr. Jameson lent me—has an article in it, on angina.”

“Won’t change my mind, but all right, show me.”

Fuming, holding onto the shelf with one hand for balance, he climbed up, stood on top, and reached for a narrow volume. Suddenly, instead of getting it, he clutched his chest and turned to face the room. I knew a seizure had hit him, and that if something wasn’t done quickly he’d topple and fall. I got to the stair and wrapped my arms around his legs. Then, “Lean on me, Earl,” I whispered. “Don’t try to step down—lean on me and slide down.”

He did, and then was down on the floor. I’m fairly strong, and was able to half carry him to a chair. Then: “Your pills are by your bed, the way they were in London?”

“Yes!
Yes!”
He whispered it, and then: “Joan, hurry! For Christ’s sake, get them,
quick!”

I hurried. I didn’t even know which room was his, but by opening doors I found it, then found the vial, in the corner at the head of his bed. I grabbed it and ran downstairs. He was still in the chair, in agony. I got him a pill and put it in his hand. He popped it into his mouth, and I could see him roll it under his tongue. He held out his hand for another one and I gave it to him. He popped it in and after a moment his breathing began to ease. Whispering hoarsely, he started in again, as he had in London, about what to do if he should die this time.

“Will you, goddam it, shut up?”

He exhaled hugely, his whole face red and tortured.

“You won’t die this time. I’m here, and I’ll see you don’t.”

“You don’t want me to?”

“What do you think?”

“… Joan, you don’t love me, not even a little bit, but I love you, I can’t help it.”

“Earl, I love you, but know no way of loving a corpse.”

“O.K. O.K.”

*

Little by little his seizure passed. “When it starts going away, that’s the worst of all. Feels like a hand was there, squeezing the air out of your lungs—not your heart, your lungs, though of course your heart is the cause of it all.”

“Take it easy.”

“Joan, I’m trying to.”

And then, all of a sudden, it was over, and he half lay in the chair, still in a state of collapse. When he was somewhat recovered, so he could sit up, I asked: “Now—can we talk?”

“… O.K. What is it, Joan?”

“About the massage parlor.”

“… All right, but I want to add something to what I told you. It all happened as I said, except that it happened with you, not the massage girl at all.”

“Oh?”

“I pretended, that’s why. Pretended she was you. In my mind, in my heart, she
was
you—it’s what I wanted to say. I’m trying to tell you, spite of everything, spite of how you feel toward me, I do love you. I do.”

There, once more, was the thing Liz had suggested, to fix everything up by pretending. I suddenly realized I had, back in the early days of my marriage, when Ron and I were still trying, and I’ve since read it’s something the whole human race does, at one time or another. But with Earl I just couldn’t. No amount of pretending would help.

He waited, and then: “But I interrupted you, Joan. What was it you wanted to say?”

“About the massage parlor—please don’t go there anymore.”

“Will you give me a reason not to?”

“You can still ask me that, after what just happened?”

He didn’t even look abashed. “It wasn’t the parlor that did it,” he said, “it was the argument with you, the strain of it—”

“It was both, Earl. It was the combination. And even without the
argument it might have happened if what came before had brought you to a similar emotional peak. And if that happened with me, as a result of my allowing you what you’ve been begging for—I couldn’t live with myself, knowing I’d been the cause of it. Do you get my full meaning, why I can’t, won’t let myself, say yes? Do you realize what that would mean?”

“But do
you
realize, Joan, what it would mean to me, to know I can be normal—live the life everyone leads—and forego it just because you are afraid? I cannot promise that, Joan. I can’t.”

“… Then, if you must have it, at least we can remove as much of the risk as possible.”

“Meaning what?”

I said: “You liked her, that girl in the massage place?”

“Believe it or not she was very nice—kind, understanding, and sweet.”

I couldn’t help myself, and snapped: “I’m sure she was.”

“It wasn’t cheap, what I did.”

“Who knows better than I that you couldn’t be cheap, Earl? So O.K., do you know her name?”

“Bella.”

“Do you know the name of the place?”

“Kitty-Cat, in Arlington.”

“Then, if, as, and when, tomorrow night or whenever, you feel the urge coming on, and can’t resist or don’t want to, I want you to call them—I’ll look up the number for you—and have Bella come here.”

“Joan, that would be messy—”

“Nothing like as messy as what
could
happen, in the Kitty-Cat, if you had a seizure there. Earl, to them you’d be just a problem, something to be got rid of, to be put out in the street before the police could get there. We can’t have that happen to you.” I brushed a few strands of hair out of his eyes. “The same as you need to know how I feel, and accept it, it’s up to me to know how
you
feel and accept that. And—I guess I do. I wish, for your sake, you didn’t—but you can’t hold back Niagara—and it seems to be that strong, this compulsion you have.”

“You’d actually want me to …?”

“If you have to, I want you to do it that way. So that you’re here, where we know what to do with you, and how to get hold of the doctor, in case he’s needed.”

“If you put it that way—”

“I do put it that way.”

“You’re remarkable, Joan.”

Next day, he went in to the office, but came back almost at once, as I was finishing breakfast. He said, “Something occurred to me, driving in, that I want to get out of the way—that I’ve been intending to do, but realize I had better do now. Can you come with me now, to the bank?”

“But of course.”

I took a coat, went out with him and got in the car while Jasper held open the door, and drove with him to the Suburban Trust in College Park. There the manager, Mr. Frost, came bouncing out of this office, to shake hands and be introduced to me, as of course the marriage had been in the paper. “Dick,” Earl told him, “I want to change all four of my accounts, the checking, the Special No. 1, Special No .2, and Savings, from single, in my name, to joints, in my name and Mrs. White’s—so she’s protected in event of my death.”

“… Which seems highly unlikely, Mr. White, but if that’s the arrangement you want—?”

“It’s not only likely but certain—give God time, it’s amazing what He can do.”

“He always has his little joke,” said Mr. Frost, smiling at me.

“Oh, always.”

He cut off with the small talk then, and took us into his office, a
sizable one, enclosed in glass. We sat down, Mr. Frost called a girl, and then told her to bring certain forms, which ones I don’t recollect. Then we signed—Earl, to O.K. me as joint holder on the accounts, I to give specimen signatures on four different cards. The Special accounts, it turned out, were for taxes, one for federal, the other for state. I was put on all four, and finally, Earl called for the balance showing on each. I was stunned. On the checking account it was over $600,000, on one Special $230,000, on the other $90,000, on the savings $65,000. I had known he was rich, but had had no idea how rich. When we were done, I shook hands with Mr. Frost and thanked him, and Earl gave him a nod. Then we were at the door, going out, but Mr. Frost took the nod as a dismissal, and didn’t come with us. In the glass vestibule at the bank’s entrance, Earl suddenly took my arm, and said: “Joan, I said some bitter things last night, as a man in love does, every so often. Make no mistake, Joan, I
am
a man in love. I love you insanely, and—”