Young Mr. Keefe (2 page)

“Well, first of all, we had trouble getting over the Golden Gate,” Claire said. “They're tearing up the highway for miles and miles, and then we ran into an accident on Route 40—”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Jimmy said. “What highway are they tearing up?”

“Don't try to pin me down!” Claire said. “Of course it's a fib, but why make me admit it?” She looked around the room. “So this is the apartment,” she said. “It's very nice—bigger than ours, don't you think? And your furniture is in sensational taste. I love that lowboy with stirrups for handles.”

Jimmy laughed. “I bought it for a song in a very, very old motel in Salinas. The driftwood lamp came across the continent on a prairie schooner.”

“There
was
an accident,” Blazer put in. “That part is true three people killed. It was awful.”

“Nobody knows how to drive in California.”

“And then we stopped somewhere to eat,” Claire said.

“Oh, that's nice,” Jimmy said. “I've been waiting to have dinner with you. It's now nine o'clock, and you've already eaten.”

“Well, you wouldn't have wanted to eat where we ate. The carhops were all dressed to look like jockeys with little short skirts. Their buttocks were absolutely flapping in the breeze. We decided there must have been a house rule banning girdles.”

“And requiring chewing gum.”

“We had two lovely, leathery hamburgers.”

“Mine had a hair in it—”

“And mine had a few bristles from a suède brush—”

“And the waitress went off duty while we were waiting for our check.”

“And of course,” Claire said sadly, “Blazer's been horrible to me all the way up. We've been parked in front of your building for the last hour—squabbling.”

“Oh, so that's it.”

“He's been just awful,” she said. “He had me in tears.”

“She's a psychotic crier,” Blazer said. “She's a compulsive weeper. A manic depressive.”

“Blazer says I'm a manic depressive. Well,” she said, turning to him, “did it ever occur to you to be just a little bit
nice
—”

“Just because I pointed out that she was driving like a madwoman,” Blazer said.

“But would he offer to drive instead? Oh, no—he was too tired! All he could do was criticize, and—”

“She always starts talking about me in the third person,” Blazer said. “As though I weren't here.”

“Isn't he horrible?”

“Isn't he
horrible
!” Blazer mimicked.

“If my mother ever heard how he talks to me!”

“Now, speaking of your mother—”

“Listen to him talk about my mother!”

“You haven't even given me a chance!”

Jimmy stood up. “Drinks, quick,” he said. “Drinks for both of you!”

Their quarrels weren't real quarrels. It was a familiar pattern to Jimmy. He had heard them, bickering like that, in hotels, bars, restaurants—anywhere—and the purpose of it all was really only to entertain the people they were with, or, possibly, to amuse each other. They pretended that this was the consistency of their marriage, and yet, Jimmy noticed that when the quarrelling grew dull, or the accusations grew flat, they seemed to sense it together, and stopped. Jimmy now rose and patted Claire on the shoulder affectionately. “I think Blazer's a complete bastard,” he said. “I'm totally on your side—because you said you admired my furniture. Now, I want to show you the largest jug of martinis in the world. You'll have to drink them because they're all I have.” He went into the kitchen and brought out the Thermos and three cocktail glasses.

“What in the world is that?” Claire said.

“A gallon Thermos. For our trip.”

“But it will be so heavy!”

“Let's lighten it right now.” Jimmy filled the glasses. “I must admit I tapped it while I was waiting for you.”

Blazer lifted his glass. “Here's to the trip,” he said.

Claire sat back deep in the sofa cushions and sighed. “I'm so
tired
,” she said. “I feel as though I'd spent the whole day on the Pennsylvania Railroad—on a flatcar—with thousands of little tramps. I feel so dirty. I feel as though I should put some Mum on. Do you have any?”

“In the bathroom, yes.”

“Well, never mind. You'll have to bear me as I am. I hate bugs.”

“Bugs?”

“Yes. California bugs. Our windshield is smeared with them. I don't remember Connecticut having so many bugs in summer.”

“It's the valley,” Jimmy said. “They breed in the tules—in the marshes, out in the delta.”

“Ah—”

“And it's hot,” Blazer said. “Christ, it's hot. It's much hotter here than in San Francisco.” He pulled off his sweater.

“Valley again.”

“How do you stand it?” Claire asked. “Why don't you come to San Francisco with us?”

Jimmy shrugged. “I've got a job here. Remember?”

“Oh, yes. A job. How dull. Why don't you quit work and just play? Live on the Keefe millions.”

“What Keefe millions?”

“Don't tease me,” Claire said. “I know all about the Keefe millions.”

Jimmy looked at her. “I don't think that's very funny,” he said.

“Sorry. Why are you ashamed? After all, we're all from the same, shall we say, background? The flowering of New England and all that.”

Jimmy laughed dryly. “I notice Blazer works,” he said.

“Oh, I know, I know.” Claire let her blonde hair in the orange scarf fall back lazily across the back of the sofa. She looked up at the ceiling. She was in her bored Katherine Hepburn mood, sucking in her cheeks and blowing a long thin stream of smoke from her lips. “I'm so glad you came to California, Jimmy,” she said. “We were wretched here among all these primitives, until you came. It's a shame we didn't get together until a month ago.”

“When are we going to meet that wife of yours?” Blazer asked suddenly.

“Well,” Jimmy said quickly, “her mother's sick—as I told you—and—”

“I hope we'll like her,” Claire said. “Even if she is a Californian.”

Jimmy extracted a cigarette from a pack and lighted it with the enamelled lighter.
Be careful
, he remembered,
that lighter throws out sparks
.

There was a pause, and then Jimmy said, “You've seen this picture of her, haven't you? I took it in Nassau.” He handed them a photograph in a small leather frame.

Claire took it and studied it. “I think you're making her up,” she said. “You don't really have a wife. This is just a picture of a pretty girl.”

Jimmy laughed. “She is pretty, isn't she?” He accepted it as Claire handed it back and looked at it. There she was, in a loose yellow sweater, her camera slung over the handlebars of her bicycle, her short light-brown hair blowing in the wind. She looked distant, fragmentary. She was looking away from him, towards something. What had it been? A sailboat on the horizon, a cloud? The expression on her face was not exactly a smile. It was tense, preoccupied. She eluded him now, as she had eluded him then. “That was on our honeymoon,” he said.

“Yes, I've heard about your honeymoon,” Claire said. “You went everywhere under the sun for months and months.”

“Six weeks,” he said. “That was all.”

“Is it all right if Claire and I sleep here to-night?” Blazer asked, pouring himself another drink from the Thermos. “It's a little late to find a hotel room.”

Jimmy hesitated. “Well, the accommodations will be a little on the Youth Hostel side,” he said. “The sofa opens out into a double bed—you and Claire can have that. I can take my sleeping-bag into the kitchen and sleep on the floor.”

“You can put our two sleeping-bags underneath you for a mattress,” Claire said.

“You don't need to sleep in the kitchen,” Blazer said. “Just spread out here on the rug. We don't mind.”

“Doesn't give you much privacy, old man.”

“Privacy, schmivacy.”

“If you get chilly, you can crawl right in with us,” Claire said. “I've always wondered what it would be like to sleep with two men.”

“Don't worry—I don't mind the floor.”

“Do you talk in your sleep?” Claire asked. “If you talk in your sleep or snore or do anything uncouth like that, you
will
have to sleep in the kitchen. Blazer does both. With two of you doing it, I couldn't bear it.”

“It all seems rather modern and casual, doesn't it?” Jimmy said.

The telephone rang. “Oh, God,” he said. “Do you know what that is? It's Jeep Tanner. I called him in Florida this afternoon. Do we want to talk to Jeep Tanner?”

“Jeep
Tanner
!” Claire said. “Do you mean that dreadful football player with the Buick? Let it ring.”

“All right.”

“Jeep Tanner would break the spell.”

“Why in the world were you calling Jeep Tanner?” Blazer asked.

“This afternoon—I didn't have anything else to do. It was beginning to look as though you two weren't coming. I wanted to hear a friendly voice.”

“You
are
in a bad way,” Claire said. “Fill my glass with that golden elixir!” She extended her glass to him. He filled it and she put it down carefully on the coffee table. The phone stopped ringing. Claire stretched her arms high over her head and yawned. “Blazer says I'm ugly and fat. Am I? I think I'm rather gorgeous, what do you think?”

“I think you're splendid,” Jimmy said.

In a way, she was, though she was not gorgeous. Her legs were a little too heavy, and her nose was too small. But she had, Jimmy thought, a wonderfully elfin face, and her blonde hair, long and twisted into that strange bright scarf, fell across her back and made her look like a polished urchin, or a little girl who had been left alone for the first time with her mother's cosmetic tray. She used too much make-up, but somehow got away with it. Her lips were rouged a dark creamy red, and her pale blue eyes were accented with dark mascara and eye shadow. Claire wanted to look worldly. She dreaded looking “Smithish,” as she put it. But under her movie-star patina, her face was round and smooth and snub as a cherub's.

“I'm glad that one person agrees with me,” she said.

“Tell me what you brought for food,” Jimmy said, before he realized that now he, not Jeep Tanner, was breaking a spell.

Claire let her arms droop. “Everything,” she said sadly. “I brought everything except eggs. I decided eggs would break. I brought bread and butter and jam and corned beef hash and tomato soup. I brought chicken gumbo soup. That's Blazer's favourite kind. I brought everything. You'll see. I even brought my silver knives and forks. Much nicer for a picnic, don't you think?”

“Our packs weigh fifty pounds apiece,” Blazer said. “You'll have to carry all three sleeping-bags to make up for it.”

“Why don't you let me carry Claire's pack?” Jimmy said.

“He'd never let me live it down,” Claire said. “He doesn't think girls are worth anything if they can't do everything a man can.”

“Do her good,” Blazer said. “Carrying that pack may help her whack off a few pounds.”

“Hear him?” she said. “He talks to me that way all the time. Do you know what he did the other day? I called him from work the other night to tell him what was in the refrigerator—”

“Did you say from work?” Jimmy asked.

“Oh, yes! Didn't I tell you? As of three days ago, I'm a working wife. It's terribly exciting. True to Smith tradition, I'm doing case work. I had to do something. I couldn't spend my entire day admiring the view from Russian Hill! But Blazer called me—or rather I called Blazer—and I said there were some tomatoes and some tuna and so forth. And then, all of a sudden, I heard this
peculiar
, this unidentifiable—this sound—from the other end of the wire. Well!”

“Well—what was it?” Jimmy asked.

“Well, it was—well, I can't bring myself to say it. It was too terrible a thing.”

Jimmy laughed. “I'm only slightly confused,” he said.

“Not an uncommon occurrence when Claire tells a story,” Blazer said. “Not only does the story have no point, in the first place—but when she gets to it, she won't tell you what the point is.”

“Isn't he dreadful? Isn't he awful?”

Jimmy laughed again. “He certainly is.”

They laughed and joked aimlessly, pointlessly, through another cocktail. Claire had learned to do the hula. They had finally gone to the place in the International Settlement. The strip tease had been a disappointment. But the hula! Claire performed it for them: “Lovely hula hands, hands that seem to say, ‘I love you,' lovely hula hands—” They applauded her. Claire said suddenly, “Jimmy, are we really clever and amusing? Or are we only silly?”

“Both,” he said. “Clever and silly. It's a pretty combination.”

She sat down. “I have a terror of being silly,” she said. “Blazer says I sometimes am. Don't let us be silly people, Jimmy. Really—the only thing I want to be is young!”

“You are young.”

“Jimmy—old sobersides Jimmy. Even when you laugh and smile, I think you're being very serious, thoughtful, deep inside. You're the audience to everything; you have that quality. Even when someone says something very silly—as I did, just now, when I said I wanted to be young—you turn to me and nod, very seriously, and say, ‘You are young.' You're a funny boy.”

They decided that it was time for bed. Claire went to the linen closet and took out sheets and pillow-cases. “I hate to say it, Jimmy,” she said, “but you're a terrible housekeeper. Look at this linen closet. Everything's stirred in the middle.”

“Well, as soon as Helen gets back—”