Villiers Touch (26 page)

“Excuse me. I thought I already had.”

“Oh,” she said. “That. I'm ignoring your little speech—hadn't you noticed?”

“Then I'll repeat it. I've decided I've fallen in love with—”

“Horse shit,” she said, smiling up at him. “You've decided. Sure you have. A strange bedfellow is better than none—that's about the extent of it, isn't it?”

He took his drink to a chair facing her and sat back, taking a long pull and feeling the heat of the whiskey travel his throat and chest. “I suppose you get this sort of thing from drunks all the time. You must have learned to shut your ears off—build a shell of indifference, it's no good anybody trying to push themselves against it. That right? Okay, let's see if I can bust it down. What do you do if I ask you flat-out to marry me?”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Proposing marriage to me.”

His grin turned sheepish. “Who knows?”

“Don't you ever commit yourself to anything, Russ?”

He recoiled. “I guess I asked for that, didn't I?”

“I hate helping you pour salt in your own wounds, that's all.”

He took another swallow and slid way down in his chair until he was sitting on the back of his neck. “Marry me. Just like that. How about it?”

“No.”

“No pause for thought? No moment to consider how I could take you away from all this?” He waved his arm around.

She laughed. “You're funny when you're drunk.”

He scowled. “I'm not sure it's altogether a joke.”

“Let's pretend it was.”

“Looking at you now, I'm absolutely certain of it. I do love you.”

“And how would you feel tomorrow or next week? I recommend a cold bath and aspirin. Anyhow, this dewy-eyed love business repels me. I suppose most women have some sort of atavistic mating instinct for a warm cave and children, but that got washed out of me a long time ago. Domesticity isn't my thing. A life sentence of dirty dishes and diapers and orthodontists' bills? Hah.”

“You're a cruel and heartless wench, verily.”

“You don't know me at all, Russ—and you're not going to. Nobody likes a whore for long.”

“Ouch.”

“I've got too many fingerprints on me, and they all belong to men who know there's nothing any of them asks that I won't give them. Nothing. You understand?”

“Is that your biggest artillery? Because if it is, you've just fired a blank. I'm not scared off. This is the age of enlightenment and Aquarius.”

In a rich Kentucky twang she said, “Hawss shee-yit.”

He said, “I was sitting in a bar watching my drink sweat, and suddenly I said to the glass, ‘And here I sit alone with you.' So I came up here. I haven't got a lot of money on me. I suppose you wouldn't be impressed by my wallet. What would you charge to marry me?”

“You've beaten that joke to death, Russ.”

He felt a little dizzy; he sat up straighter. It took him a moment to marshal his thoughts. Finally he spoke with slow care. “I am getting very old,” he said. “The world I grew up in seems to have disappeared someplace while I wasn't looking. I grew up equipped with a sense of how things ought to be. Standards—things that ought to matter, right and wrong. There used to be a point to things, you know? But now everything seems to be beside the point, somehow—I don't even know what the point is anymore. Look, I'm thinking of tossing it all up and going out West, live in the country someplace and raise dairy cows. How'd you like that?”

“I'd hate it. I'm an indoor girl. I like soft pillows and air-conditioners, and I never enjoyed getting dirt in my hair.”

“You sound just like my ex-wife,” he mused. “What was her name? Lorelei.”

“You told me her name was Diane.”

“So I did.”

“Lorelei was the woman who lured men to their deaths.”

“The same,” he said, “the very same.” He blinked at her and waved his half-empty glass extravagantly before he brought it to his mouth.

“Do you always get romantic and maudlin when you're drunk?”

“My darling, I am always romantic and maudlin. It shows more when I'm drunk, that's all.”

The stereo rejected and switched itself off. After that the room was thick with silence until he roused himself groggily and peered at her. “I guess this is what they call a pregnant silence.”

She gave him a distant smile; the telephone rang, and she went to it. He watched irritation and resignation chase each other across her face while she spoke and listened; she hung up, and her eyes looked harder than before. She disappeared into the bedroom for a moment and returned carrying a pair of shoes; she sat down and crossed her legs, arched one stockinged foot, and put a shoe on, sliding her forefinger around inside the heel like a shoehorn.

He said, “I find that whole series of movements insanely erotic. You don't suppose I'm a foot fetishist?”

“There are worse things.”

He said, “You're throwing me out.”

“Stay if you want. I have to go out. I may not be back for a while.”

He said in a sour way, “Then you're not going to abandon all this and fly away thither with me.”

“You give me an almost uncontrollable urge to snicker, Russ.”

He nodded wisely. “All my life I've been a figure of ridicule and scorn.”

“Oh, crap. You're all right, Russ, you're fine, all you need is a good stiff belt across the mouth to get you straightened out. Once you've broken loose from self-pity, you'll quit floundering around.”

He said, “You're just full up to here with cynicism, aren't you? Only I suppose you call it realism. I never want to get that way myself, thank you.”

She glanced at him with a bittersweet sort of smile. “Nobody wants to get that way,” she said. “But we all do. You will, too.”

“What for? Look, I
am
thinking about moving out West.”

“Then do it. Good luck.”

“Come with me, Carol.”

He heard the small crisp snap of her purse, and he felt suddenly alone and forlorn. She came to him, bent down, and touched his cheek with a light, pecking kiss. “I hope you find a nice fluffy homey girl and have “steen babies and spend the rest of your life cuddling calves and fixing barbed-wire fences and hoisting beers at the corner saloon with the hands.” She went toward the door.

“God damn it,” he roared. “I'm flying to Arizona tomorrow morning.”

“Forever?”

“I'll be back Monday,” he said in a small voice.

“And you'll stay,” she said. “This is where it's at, baby. All you have to do is make things matter.” And she left.

He thrust himself angrily to his feet. What the hell; they were just two people who'd met one day. But by Christ she was lovely.

He would go home through the steamy, polluted evening and take an Alka-Seltzer, and in the morning he'd go and see Elliot Judd, and maybe, in the clean open solitude of the desert, he'd be able to sort himself out and decide what the hell to do with himself from here on, to justify his existence.

19. Anne Goralski

At the kitchen table, Anne had the telephone at her ear; she was listening with a hollow, sinking resignation to the endless unanswered ringing on the line.

Steve had come to her desk at five o'clock and told her he couldn't see her tonight. She had whispered, pleading, “When am I going to see you?”

“I told you, darling, I have to go out to my mother's. I always do on Friday evenings. No telling when I'll be back—I may stay over. But we'll be together tomorrow—we've got the whole weekend.”

She had come home and sunbathed in the last sunlight on a towel on the buckling tarpaper roof. Her mind was full of Steve. She longed for him to return tonight; love had transfigured her existence—he had become the center of her world; without him she was wrenched from life. She had started ringing his number at nine o'clock, wanting him tonight; she was dressed and ready.

She put the receiver down in its cradle and stood up to open the window wider. The heat was grotesque. She was beginning to turn away when she saw her father's figure come in sight at the corner.

Barney Goralski's heavy shoes thudded and echoed on the pavement. Isolated pedestrians swirled by, their faces as gray as the smoggy air. He was tramping the well-worn route from the taxi garage home, not hurrying, reluctant to arrive, and his head was ducked because he didn't need to look where he was going.

She sat down by the phone and dialed Steve's number quickly, and listened to it ring. She tensed at the heavy sound of her father's tread in the hall; she watched the door furtively. When the knob turned she cradled the phone.

His looming hulk filled the doorway; he came straight through into the kitchen shaking his head. “Rotten miserable day. How's your mother?”

“She had a headache—she's gone to bed.”

“Yeah,” he said, and opened the refrigerator. He took out a beer and pulled the snap-ring top; it came off with a pop and a hiss. He sat down at the tiny oilcloth-covered table and said again, “Rotten miserable day. Hot days like this the stinkin' commuters all bring their air-conditioned cars in. Been a puking jam all day long. Crawl all the way. Some clown didn't give himself enough time, wanted to make a train at Penn Station, naturally we missed it, and the sonofabitch blames me. I got the fare out of him, but not a nickel for a tip. Then I pick up some egghead professor insists we go the hard way, straight uptown through the traffic jam all the way to Columbia University, fifty minutes, for a twenty-cent tip. Big puking spender. Don't these guys know the stinkin' Internal Revenue assumes you make tips that amount to twenty percent of what shows on the meter? I gotta pay taxes on them tips whether I get it or not.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. She could hear the abrasive scratch of his beard stubble when he rubbed it. His black, entrenched eyes came around to lie against her, and he said, “You ain't listening.”

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm waiting for a phone call.”

“Yeah? How long you been waiting?” He loomed forward, scowling at her. “Gotchaself a boyfriend, hey?”

She couldn't keep from flushing; she felt her cheeks heat up. She nodded briefly.

Goralski said, “You look like you got hit with a ton a bricks. What's the guy's name?”

She shaped her mouth around the word: “Steve.”

“Whyn'tcha bring him around here sometime?”

“I—I—”

His scowl darkened. “Ashamed of the way we live, ain'tcha? Christ, I can't blame you.” He opened the refrigerator and lifted out another can of beer, yanked the ring-top opener off, and glugged out of the can, throwing his big head back to drink. He sat down opposite her at the little table, both huge hands wrapped around the can of beer while he brooded. He seemed to be lost in his own miseries, but suddenly, without looking up, he said, “You all dressed up like that for a date tonight? Kinda late for it, ain't it? Whatsa matter, he won't phone?”

“He's gone to his mother's for dinner.”

His head shot back, and he glared. “You're ashamed to bring him here, let him see this slum we gotta live in, that's okay. But he's ashamed to take you home to meet his mother?”

“Poppa, he—”

“What kinda sonofabitch is this guy? Hah?”

“He's wonderful,” she said. “He's the best, Poppa, and I won't have you—”

“
You
won't have! That's rich! This bastard don't mind keeping you out nights till the sun comes up—you think I ain't noticed?—but he won't interduce you to his mother, hah? Christ, honey, y'unnerstand what I'm saying?”

Hot, stiff, eyes flashing, she said in a taut low voice that trembled, “I understand perfectly well, and I don't want to listen to any more of—”

“You don't? Christ, honey, you gotta listen to somebody. You got it sticking out all over you—you think you're in love with this bastard, you're taking it seriously, but he ain't, he won't even interduce you to his precious mother, right? You want love and marriage, and he wants something else, right? I know these guys, believe me—all he wants is sex.”

“That's not so!”

“You think about it, honey. And while you're with this guy, you see if you can tell yourself it ain't just sex. You think I don't know the way you kids carry on nowadays? Hell, I'm a broad-minded old sonofabitch, I don't carry no horse whip, you know that. But this guy—Christ, I never even met the bastard, and I can read him like a book.”

“It's not so! It
isn't!
”

Her father lowered his eyes to the can of beer. He said softly, “Don't try to persuade me, honey—see if you can persuade yourself first. Y'unnerstand what I mean?”

“All right,” she snapped viciously. “Maybe he is just toying with my affections. Maybe I'm just in a mood to have my affections toyed with.”

He murmured, “Don't talk like that, Anne. Not to your old man.”

Wound up, she said with glittering anger, “Loving is more important than being loved, anyway. Isn't it? What does it matter if—”

“It matters, honey. You think about him not taking you to meet his mother, and you think hard, and you see what you come up with.” He leaned forward suddenly and gripped her wrist. She tried to jerk back, but he held her in a tight fist; he said earnestly, “You really love him, Anne? You really want the guy? Then make him marry you before he leeches his way out!”

“What? How?”

“How have women done it for five thousand years?”

“Poppa!”

He released her and slumped back in his chair; his jowls seemed to sag. He said, “Forget that. I take it back. Christ, I got troubles of my own, honey, half the time I don't know what I'm saying myself, y'know what I mean? It's only, well, hell, I'd like to see you get yourself a good husband, get out of this rat hole here. Nothing's ever gonna get any better here. You gotta get out of it while you can, honey. You gotta grab any chance you can get. And don't worry about me and her. We're all used up anyway—I don't want you throwing your whole life away on a couple old wrecks like your mother and me. We got nothing left to look forward to. You have. You got your youth, which is a precious thing, y'unnerstand what I'm tryna tell you?”