Making Love (36 page)

He handed her a towel, his initials flamboyantly inscribed in Gothic, and got one for himself.
 

“Jane, I've got an admission to make.” He came across nicely low-key, he thought. He waited for a moment, hoping for a helping hand, a little bridge, but she didn't even look up from her toes. “You're having a very strange effect on me.”
 

Still silence. He played his ace.
 

“Would you like a sauna?”
 

“I'd like Bob to take me to my car. I left it near the Carlyle ... on a side street.”
 

“Bob can get the car and drive it here, if you tell me exactly where it is.”
 

“No, don't bother.”
 

“It isn't any trouble. He can handle just about any make of car.”
 

“I believe you.”
 

“Well?”
 

“It won't be necessary.”
 

“From whose point of view?”
 

“Mine.”
 

“Do you mind telling me why?”
 

“Yes, Luckmunn, I do.”
 

He recoiled as though shot, his hand moving to his head, the place of his wound.
 

“What did you say?” he managed to ask.
 

“I said I minded Bob getting my car. I can get it myself.”
 

“Why'd you call me by my last name?”
 

“Did I? Habit I picked up at school.”
 

“Oh, I see.”
 

He found her shoes in the bedroom and handed them to her.
 

“You know, it's snowing. Have you got snow tires?”
 

“I don't think so.”
 

“You could skid.”
 

He was becoming disconcerted, and maintaining his composure was a real trial.
 

“You could stay here. I've shown you the guest bedroom.”
 

“I'd prefer to go to my own place.”
 

“I'll admit the color scheme is nothing to write home about, but it wouldn't interfere with your sleeping. If the bed feels strange, I can give you either a Seconal or a Nembutal. You can decide for yourself.” All manner of suicide was in his possession. “Jane, I won't try anything. You can take my word.”
 

“I will.”
 

“I respect you.”
 

To think that he did, was sincere, shocked her.
 

On the high arch of infatuation, Luckmunn considered himself a danger to all women. “Then it's settled. Lee can make anything you like for breakfast. Shirred eggs?”
 

“Will you get my coat?”
 

“Jane, when am I going to see you again?”
 

“I don't know.”
 

“That isn't fair. Will you go out with me again?”
 

“I'll see.”
 

He gave an audible sigh and took her into the study, showed her his diary. Dozens of blank pages.
 

“Name a day, a time that's convenient.”
 

“Christ, I said I'd let you know.”
 

“Look, before you run out of my life, tell me, have I done something to hurt or upset you?”
 

“Nothing. I've done it to myself.”
 

“It isn't a question of my faith, is it?”
 

“There you go again, whining.”
 

“Hit me again,” Sonny said to the bartender.
 

He'd begun early in the day, at first on a harmless winetasting course with a couple of overage bottles of Médoc he found in his linen closet. They suffered from sediment and tasted distantly of prune juice.
 

“Conlon, lay out for me, will you.”
 

On the way to the john, he couldn't hold it and pissed in his pants. Contempt he had demonstrated expertly for himself, but this public humiliation was a new one and he hadn't expected it quite so soon. He reached for the pack of brown-paper towels above the sink to mop himself when a gray-faced, unshaven splinter of a man deposited a huge nugget of green phlegm into the urinal beside him, turned, and said:
 

“Don't let it embarrass you, friend. Just go more often. Nobody's ever won a war with his bladder, so don't be a hero.”
 

Sonny told the man to fuck off and dried himself as best he could, lining his underpants with paper. His swaying bulk intimidated the man and he hustled out quickly.
 

He'd been out from work for a week, pleading illness; but the owner, who'd started in drunk bars before going in for singles, knew the slurred sounds of a bat, even when he heard it over the phone. Unionless, Sonny was threatened with immediate dismissal if he didn't show for work that evening. A sudden decision to go for unemployment insurance and relief hit him, a flash of inspiration, and before hanging up on the owner, Sonny advised him to get killed.
 

It was getting to be a habit, this quick termination of discourse. He had mastered the art of creating his own dead ends, the world blameless. Returning to the bar, Sonny caught himself in midstagger, grumbled about the wet floor. He didn't walk so much as lumber from side to side, proving the difficulty and precariousness of human balance, unnatural, an acquired skill.
 

“Here's your drink,” Conlon said. “Being with you is a real treat.”
 

“I dint invite you, did I?”
 

His reply had the merit of truth. She'd picked up the phone; he'd called for Jane, and as disguising his anguish was beyond his slender talent, she became alarmed, insisted on meeting him, and waited some minutes while he went outside to check the street number of the bar. No one inside seemed able to help him. An upper West Side place, Broadway, low nineties, with a long line of men standing at the bar, a steam table in front; he couldn't read the name but his powers of description had not forsaken him. She found it, a meeting place for some gypsy cab drivers in which heroin futures were discussed with the usual intensity brokers bring to any marketplace.
 

Conlon noticed his trousers bulking.
 

“I had an accident,” he said.
 

“Could happen to anyone.”
 

Except for three women, outnumbered five to one by the men, her presence did little to change the ratio of the sexes. Nobody even noticed her. This was the private world of people forgetting, and encroachment into the conversations of others and
bonhomie
were kept to a strict minimum. Everyone was too busy being sullen to look for trouble.
 

“I didn't say anything.”
 

“I know.” He draped an arm around her shoulder. Coming to terms with the peculiarities of human plumbing was not a tolerance to be ruthlessly discarded, that much he knew. “You're a real good girl. Could I hit you for another twenty?”
 

“I already gave you twenty.”
 

“You want to be cheap, that's okay with me.”
 

“It's not that. I only have twenty more for the week, and I've borrowed from Jane.”
 

“Me, too. An' it wasn't money.”
 

“I know, Sonny.”
 

“Conlon, why'd she lie about Pudge?”
 

“Maybe she didn't.”
 

“Shit, ‘course she did. A lifelong friendship on the rocks. Do you think I'm a bum? What's your opinion on the subject?” He downed drinks with invisible speed. “I got things wrong with me, who hasn't? Never said I was perfect.”
 

“You're not a bum. You could become one. It wouldn't take much trying. Let's get out of this place.”
 

“Good thinkin'.” Shapeless suggestions in his mind were striving for the status of an idea, foundering in the process. “Lookit, I go home, change my clothes, then we cab down to Jane an' straighten the whole thing out.”
 

“It's three o'clock in the morning.”
 

“We can all sleep late tomorrow.”
 

“It's the wrong time.”
 

“When am I gonna see her? She stood me up las' time,” he protested, gripped her wrist tightly as if she had it in her power to control his destiny and had unreasonably refused.
 

“I did what I could.”
 

“Is she gettin' it from somebody else?”
 

“I don't know.”
 

“I haven' been near a woman for almost a month. Kept myself pure for her. That's got to sway her. Ain't my fault I lost my temper. Happen to any man.”
 

“Sure it could.”
 

“That's what I said.” He slammed the bar, calling for service, drawing the eyes of the other drinkers. Nobody liked noise, especially as this was near closing and the bartender might get uptight and refuse to serve after hours. He calmed down with the appearance of another round. The bartender looked at him cautiously and decided not to warn him about the house policy against rowdyism. He continued to complain. An eerie, wasted grief that could find no outlet, no converts.
 

People began to leave the bar; the women lingered, hoping for an invitation. The snow had turned to sleet and a ride in a car or bunk up nearby with a bottle was a price any of them would settle for. A few discarded copies of the
News
were being designed as rain hats, a trick most of the drinkers had learned.
 

She found a cruising taxi and he pleaded with her not to leave him. He had taken a hotel room downtown.
 

“Only to talk,” he carefully explained, fearing solitary confinement if he didn't clarify the ground rules. “What do you say?”
 

“I'm tired and I've got to be up at seven for a job interview.”
 

“Really? Doin' what?”
 

“I've got this superstition that you don't talk about what you want until you've got it.”
 

“I'll buy that.” The taxi stopped. She hesitated, then got in reluctantly. “Can't persuade you?”
 

“Not tonight, Sonny.”
 

“Will you speak to Jane? I'd consider it a real favor.”
 

She petted his head regretfully, the two of them not terribly different, defenseless. A kinship of the lost, Conlon thought. She kissed him on the cheek, friendly.
 

“I'll call you tomorrow,” he said. “Without her, I ain't worth a shit.”
 

“That's me, Patricia Conlon, the professional good sport.”
 

“Well, you are, you know.”
 

 

* * * *

 

Jane sat in bed reading and didn't hear Conlon come in. She looked up, noticed the fuzzy lines on the pictureless TV, and got up to switch it off.
 

“Hitting the books?”
 

“I've seen the late movie three times. What did you do tonight?”
 

“I saw your friend.”
 

“The two of you are getting to be a couple. I expect to read an announcement about you any day now in the
Times
.”
 

“Oh, cut it out, Jane. I'm tired.” She dropped her damp coat on a chair.
 

“How is he?”
 

“He's going to phone tomorrow. You can find out for yourself.”
 

“Drunk?”
 

“He holds it pretty well. Amazingly well, in fact.”
 

“Who ever said he was unskilled?”
 

“Did you have a good time?” Conlon forced herself to ask, her eyes closing. She hadn't planned to go out and had set the alarm before retrieving Sonny.
 

“I had a date with my mother's old lover, ate Chinese food, soaked my toes in a whirlpool until my ankles crinkled. All in all, a typical evening in the life of a young socialite. Conlon, does he really care about me?” She waited for an answer, but heard only the regular breathing of someone sound asleep. Some things she'd have to find out for herself.
 

 

* * * *

 

Seven a.m. unfailingly found Luckmunn cracking his three-and-a-half-minute egg and poring through the
Wall Street Journal
. He always read the articles, having been informed of closing prices the previous day. A wise old uncle, a German refugee, in fact, who spoke little English, had once given him a bit of advice, more than that really, about
Geld
—a Hanseatic evaluation of the noun which Luckmunn took to his breast and nurtured during his early CPA days of swindling. “The only vulgar thing about money is its absence, never forget.” He never did, and keeping tabs on its whereabouts became a routine not without its pleasures. He was a thoughtful man, never looking for quick trades and profits, but a visionary who analyzed, then invested and watched the prices jump.
 

He planned a long life, and his opinions were inevitably projected on the basis of decades. For the seventies he liked air pollution (companies specializing in combating it); medical products, particularly if the research was geared to producing artificial hearts, lungs, and kidneys (livers were still a long way off); and finally leisure-time industries, for people were finding themselves with more and more time and fewer ways to fill it. He could've been an analyst for a brokerage firm, but his first brush with employment had not had happy results. Beginning in a large firm of accountants, he had waited four years before stealing the dozen most important clients, threatening disclosures to the district attorney, all documented, if the clients or the firm beefed. He had kept himself clean and unindictable during his tenure. The clients walked, running to Luckmunn, who having to find investments to shelter and hedge against taxes became interested in real estate. After a period of gestation, a builder was born.