Clemmie (10 page)

He reached for her, wanting to touch her, to comfort her, but she scrambled back out of his reach and stood
up, indifferent to her nakedness. “Take that sloppy look off your face, Fitz. I don’t want pity or understanding or a lot of wet philosophy. I can’t imagine why I told you that. I’m sorry I did.”

He sat up and bent over and picked up his scattered cards and put them back in his wallet. She came quickly and sat beside him and put her arm around his waist. “You are such a stable citizen, dearest. A joiner. Daddy would be enchanted. He adores earnest men. He keeps hurling them at me as if we were an Indian club act. Or is that a Freudian simile? Oh, dear. I hope not.”

“In case you missed anything, I make fourteen thousand five. I almost own my own home.”

“On Federal Street. Horrible neighborhood.”

“I have a loose filling that needs fixing. Penicillin gives me hives. I need reading glasses, but I’ve been stalling. Vanity, I guess. These scars are burn scars from the war. I was blown out of a tank. This is my appendix operation scar.”

She hugged him. “You sound so stuffy and indignant. I think I love you, somewhat. You have almost all your hair, and your voice makes me feel tingly, and I like the way you look fierce when you’re annoyed, like right now. You could be in better condition, but your shoulders are just wonderful. You’ve got a funny unexpected kind of shyness and nice flat cheeks, and you’re gentle and fierce and luscious in bed, and I am going through this inventory because maybe I am not going to let you get away.”

He twisted and pushed her down on the bed and held her pinned there, his hands on her shoulders. She lay in the gray, soft, pre-dawn light. “Are you nuts?” he demanded.

“I love the way you look so scared when you think I’m going to make trouble for you.

“I will make a little trouble for you. Like this. And like this. And, also, like this.”

The sun awakened him. It streamed across the couch, blazing on the white sheet. He knew at once where he was. He sat up and looked for her. She was on the far side of the room, at a bar set waist high, an exercise bar he had not seen before. She wore a black leotard, soiled
white ballet slippers. Her face was shiny with sweat, intent with effort. She smiled at him and said, breathlessly, “Halfway through, lamb.”

He sat on the edge of the couch, the sun hot on his back, and watched her. She worked with fury, twisting and contorting her body. If this was a daily routine, he now knew what caused her firmness, the muscled hardness of her body, the tension of thighs like spring steel encased in warm rubber. She left the bar and moved to the center of the room and whirled and leaped. Her slippers scuffed and thumped, and he could heard the hard tempo of her breathing. When she finally stopped she looked wilted. “Phoof,” she said, and smoothed sweaty hair back from her forehead with her forearm.

“Once I saw ballet,” he said. “They seemed to float. Are you just learning?”

“If somebody who knew ballet said that, he’d get a hit in the eye. I started too late, Craig.” Her breathing was beginning to slow down. “I was twelve. That’s six years too late. But I’ve got the right sort of body for it, all but my hands. I do this because it makes me feel firm and good. Maybe I’m too fond of my body. But I’m willing to work to keep it. You saw, there at the end, a linked
ballonné simple derrière, pas de chat
and a
ballotté
, with a little
glissade
stuck in just for the hell of it. And all reasonably well done. Now I am not coming near you because I smell like a horse. Firsties on the shower. You make coffee while you wait, please.”

“You did get pretty high off the floor,” he said.

She paused in the bathroom doorway, looked back over her shoulder at him, waggled her hips saucily at him and said, with hauteur, “My
ballon
was always considered excellent.”

He folded the sheet and knotted it around his middle. He found what he needed in the kitchen, made coffee, poured a steaming cup and carried it out into the studio. Her strenuous exertions had made a faint scent of gymnasium in the air, a slightly acid taint of her perspiration. It was not unpleasant to him. He could hear the soft thunder of her shower. He stood, sipping the coffee, looking out at Saturday morning. He felt very good. He suppressed the dim stirrings of conscience, the fear of consequence. He did not want to feel remorse. Not yet.
It was enough to taste hot coffee, feel the hot sun on your chest and belly, look at the bright morning and try to remember each specific micro-second of their tousled union.

She came out of the bath, black hair damp, leotard and towel in hand, as casually naked as a child. “Next,” she said, and smiled at him and walked into her bedroom. The shower was good. He spent a long time under the water. He found a razor and blades, and used bar soap for shaving. He brushed his teeth with the corner of a towel, and used her brush on his hair.

When he went out she had pulled the draperies across the whole expanse of window. They were an odd shade, more green than blue. They were heavy, but enough light came in to give the studio an underwater look, still and deep and green. She lay naked on the couch, a sheet under her, her eyes closed. When he sat on the couch beside her she said, without opening her eyes, said in a small far-away voice, “Be very slow and very sweet, darling. Make it happen like we’re dreaming it happening.”

Later on when the sun was so high they could open the draperies, they became very brisk and practical. She was crisp in pale blue linen shorts and a tailored white shirt, her hair pulled back into a shiny black bun, emphasizing the delicate modeling of her face. They worked together and prepared brunch and served it with the utmost ceremony. There seemed to be a shyness between them. Sixteen years apart, and it was a generation. He realized there was less difference between Penny’s age and hers than between hers and his. They spoke politely, almost formally, and he watched her eat, and there was a small flavor of greediness about the way she ate, small white teeth neatly incising the toast, red membrane of lips closing quickly over the fork of omelette. Over coffee she changed the mood with characteristic abruptness. “What’s happening to us, Craig?”

“Is something happening?”

“Don’t
try
to be dense, please.”

He smiled and shrugged. “What do I say? Thanks loads. Thanks for all the hospitality.”

She banged her small fist on the table. “Crap! Just say what you think.”

He looked at her and looked away and said, “I don’t
think I want to say what I think.” When he looked back at her she was smiling broadly and contentedly. “Now what?” he asked.

“I like what you said.”

“My God, you want to jump at things.”

“I always have. This time Paris will be good, but Spain will be even better.”

“This makes me nervous.”

“I know it does, darling.” She reached across the table and patted his cheek. “I love to make you nervous. You’re such a pillar of the community, darling.”

He could not understand which way this was drifting, or what his response should be. She could have a compulsion to rationalize a one-night stand by making it sound like love. Or it could be another of her games, an attempt to scare hell out of him, which, if she succeeded, would be followed by her husky, ribald laughter. The third possibility, and the least likely, was that she had fallen in love with him. The pleasure they had taken in each other had been intense. In any event he knew he had to make his position very clear.

“So I’m stuffy and dull, Clemmie. But listen. I have a good life. I don’t want to change anything. I don’t want to complicate anything. I don’t want any emotional responsibility, not any more than I already have.”

She leaned back and studied him somberly. “What do you want, Craig?”

“What I wanted I’ve had, and I’m grateful to you.”

“And never climb those stairs again?”

“I don’t think it would be very smart to climb those stairs again, Clemmie.”

“All right. I’ll be honest with you. I think you’re good for me. I think I’m good for you. So while your Maura is in England, I offer you a summer affair. I’ll play it your way. No tricks or sly gimmicks. I shall be available Clemmie, your summer love, and when it’s time for it to be over, we’ll shake hands, shed one tear and part forever. Will that suit your lordship?”

“It’s—a damn flattering offer. I’m tempted. But I’m also a coward. I don’t think it would be good for either of us.”

She shook her head sorrowfully. “Fitz, you are a highly
moral type. Will you settle for this, then? It is now one-twenty on Saturday afternoon. It is thirty-six hours until one-twenty Monday morning. Let’s see just how sick of each other we can possibly get.”

After a long moment he grinned and nodded. “A deal.”

“Thank you, sir. Thank you so much, kind sir.”

“But I can’t face it without fresh clothes.”

She opened the drawer of the telephone table and threw him a keyring. He caught it in the air. “That’s the key to the shed and the key to the bug. Porsche Speedster.” She explained the shift to him. When he was ready to go she hugged him by the door and leaned back and looked up into his face and said, “Bon voyage, lover. And don’t be shy. Bring spares. Bring a toothbrush. Sort of move in on Clementina. The girl doesn’t mind. She loves it.”

It was a little white convertible with a black top. After he fathomed the shifting, he found it responsive, a pleasure to drive.

He went into his own home like a thief. He did not want to give himself time to think. Thought would bring guilt. Maura was too much with him in this house. Her hands had touched too many things too many times. He changed quickly to a lightweight suit, fresh shirt. He yanked a small suitcase down from the closet shelf, threw in underwear, sports clothes, toilet articles. As an afterthought, he went to the kitchen cupboard, found the last two bottles of bourbon and put them in with his spare shorts, socks and shirts.

When he reached the door again, he stopped hurrying. He put the suitcase down and lighted a cigarette and made himself look around quite calmly. No great decision had been made. He could unpack and phone her. And then drink the bourbon and go to bed alone. She was dangerous. She was a girl who lived too close to the unpredictable edge of hysteria. She hunted trouble. The breasts, too evident under the basque shirt last night, had been an invitation to trouble. She walked the night streets with chippy stride. She was an exhibitionist, body-worshipper, sensualist—without discipline, morals, scruples, ethics, a child in search of the father she had never had.

But, after all, it was only one weekend. He stubbed his
cigarette out in a pottery ashtray Puss had made in the second grade, a Father’s Day gift with a melted image that was indubitably a duck. And he left.

On Monday, the fifteenth of July, Craig was a half-hour late to work. Everything looked quite different to him, as though he had exchanged eyes and color sense with someone else. Everything was intensely familiar, and totally strange. As he went through the main room to his private office, he tried to make his morning greeting cheerful but not boisterous. It sounded too loud, and he saw Betty James start and look at him strangely.

“Watch it, son,” he said to himself. “You are just the slightest loveliest bit tight, and you feel absolutely wonderful, and when it all wears off you are going to be lucky to be able to hold your head up. So step carefully.”

Betty followed him into the office as usual and shut the door. “You didn’t look at the board.”

He leaned back in the chair. “A terrible oversight. And I’m a half-hour late.”

“I waited Saturday, but you didn’t come in.”

“Did I ask you to come in?”

“No, Mr. Fitz. But I knew you were coming in. I didn’t have anything else to do. I thought I could help.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Sooner or later they’re going to start hollering for those back reports, you know.”

The jubilant mood soured in an instant. “Miss James, if you want to sit here and let me sit there, I’ll see if I can clear it with Personnel.”

She flushed and abrupt tears stood on the sandy lashes. “I just thought I’d—”

“Sometimes you think too much.”

She got up very quickly and quietly and started for the door. He moved more quickly and caught her right at the door, put a hand on her shoulder and turned her around gently.

“Sorry, Betty. Wrong side of the bed.”

She stood with head bent and then looked up slowly, the tears still there. “Is anything wrong, Craig? Is there any way I can help? You’ve been so—odd.”

He concealed his annoyance with her. She was too adept at gamesmanship. Make a bad slip and when you comfort her, she moves a step closer and starts calling you Craig.

“I’m fine, Betty. Nothing wrong. Let’s get to work.”

His mind felt clear enough. He went through the morning stack of memos, reports and orders quickly, so quickly that twice she had to ask him to repeat. He studied the board, made a few phone calls, then went out into the production areas. When he got back to his office Betty said Mr. Chernek had phoned.

“Get him for me, please.”

When Bill got on the line he said, “What the hell, Craig?”

“What do you mean, what the hell?”

“Where can I talk to you?”

“Come over here. I’ve got a breathing space.”

He told Betty that while Mr. Chernek was in his office, he did not want to be disturbed.

Bill came in and sat down wearily. “Does it show much?”

“It shows some.” The left side of Bill’s mouth was puffed. His left eye was discolored. There was a large flesh-colored Band-Aid on his left temple.

“Those God-damn cops beat the crap out of me. They had no reason to do that. Thanks for alerting Al.”

“Did he get you out?”

“Right away. There was no more fight in me, brother. I was sick. He says I shouldn’t try to sue those cops.”

“He’s right.”

“How would you know?”

“You swung first, Bill. Before I could have gotten across the street to help you argue, I fell. Then it was too late.”