Three by Cain: Serenade, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, the Butterfly (45 page)

There was a murmur, then the Looney Lolligaggers broke off their tune and launched into “O Sapphire Gem of Glory,” the Lake City municipal anthem. Mr. Jansen smiled, bowed, and allowed his hat and coat to be taken from him. He had not put on evening clothes, no doubt because his dark gray suit gave suitable emphasis to the mourning band that was sewed prominently on his sleeve. Otherwise he had changed, in ways too subtle for the naked eye, from the archetype of a Swedish dairyman into the archetype of an American Mayor. He was handsome, oily, and absurd. He had a word, a bow, and a smirk for everybody. When the anthem finished, he shook hands with June, then with her at his elbow made the circuit of the room.

When he got to Ben, he said: “Hello, please to meet you, nice party June geev us, hey, yes?” But when he got to Mrs. Lyons, he bowed low, kissed her hand, and said: “Ah, Mamma, Mamma, I been looking forwert dees meeting so much.”

He said quite a little more, and she interrupted with little answers, trying to get started, but before she could do so June had him by the elbow again, leading him away, introducing him to people on the other side of the palms. Mrs. Lyons watched hungrily, then caught the expression “Mr. Mayor,” as somebody bellowed it from the alcove. Horror-stricken, she turned to Ben. “Is that what you call him? Oh, I called him Mayor. I—”

“It’s O.K. Anything.”

“But I’ve got to apologize—”

“He’s getting paid for it! What difference does it make? It’s a free country, go up and call him Olaf and he’s got to take it.”

“Call him Olaf—why?”

“It’s his name.”

She settled back, shedding boozy tears and watching while His Honor passed a group of men, then happily squared off to face six women, all of them young, all of them reasonably pretty.
Suddenly she wriggled in her chair, making ready to get up. “Hey, where you going?”

“There’s something I completely forgot.”

“Yeah, and what’s that?”

“Mr. Grace, I have to congratulate him.”

“Oh, he got elected six months ago.”

“No, no, I mean on his engagement. To June.”

“His—where did you hear that?”

“Oh, she didn’t tell me. She wouldn’t give me the satisfaction. She thinks I’m dumb, she always treats me as if I didn’t have good sense. His secretary told me. She was over here, the day before Christmas, bringing the flowers he sent, and—she told me. Let go of me. I’ve got to congratulate him. I—”

Ben, however, didn’t let go of her. He held her firmly by the wrist until she subsided into another trickle of tears. Then he wigwagged June. Busy with her important guest, she looked away. The next time he caught her eye his face was a thundercloud and in a moment she came over. “June, which is her deaf ear?”

“She can’t hear you now. What is it?”

“You better get her out of here.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“She wants to congratulate him. On the engagement.”

“What are you doing, being funny?”

“If so, why?”

“How would she know about—the engagement?”

“His secretary, darling.”

June’s eyes dilated until they seemed like big black pools, then she took her mother by the arm. Mrs. Lyons was quite amiable about it, and permitted herself to be led, as long as she was under the impression that she was being taken over to Mr. Jansen. When she saw she was headed for the door, however, she began to balk, and June had a ticklish time. Guests turned their backs, so as not to see the pathetic figure in blue, gesticulating foolishly toward the Mayor, and the Looney Lolligaggers suddenly started the “Maine Stein Song.” This was
played through, however, before June got Mrs. Lyons through the door.

Ben lit a cigarette of relief, and smoked for a few moments alone. Then he became aware of the figure that was standing on the other side of the palms. Dorothy, in her peach-colored dress, stared out at the room. It was the first time he had really had a look at this girl who had started such a chain of circumstances in his life, and he looked with lively interest. It was all the more lively, since he was totally unable to connect this face with all he knew about its owner. It was, in anybody’s contest, an extremely beautiful face. It was perfectly chiseled, in profile, at least, its slightly droopy lines reminding him of pictures he had seen of ancient sculpture. There was some exquisite invitation about the mouth: it pursed a little, with an expression of expectancy. The skin was soft, with just a brush of bloom on it. What he could see of the figure was lovely too, not too tall, but slender, soft, willowy. He had decided that there must be some mistake when their glances met, and he saw the kleptomaniac.

Her eye had a bright, dancing light in it.

He squashed his cigarette, looked at the palms of his hands. They had pips of moisture on them. He had the dizzy, half-nauseated feeling of a man who has been rocked to the depths by a woman, and knows it. He got up, crossed in front of her, went into the alcove for a drink. When he had downed a hooker of rye he looked and she was still there. He started to cross in front of her again, and instead stood looking at her. He was to one side of her, and a little behind, only a few inches away. Soon he knew that she knew he was there. After a bellowing silence he heard himself say: “You’re bad.”

“I didn’t speak to you.”

“I said you’re bad.”

“Leave me alone. You belong to her.”

“Says who?”

“I hear her call up everybody, to invite them here. When she came to you, I knew you were hers. Why do you talk to me? I haven’t said a thing to you.”

She leaned against the wall. Her head tilted up and she closed her eyes. His heart was pounding now. He knew he was courting danger, knew he should drift away, and all he could do about it was begin to talk rapidly, so he could finish before June got back: “You can break away from this party. You can if you want to. I’m going to break away. And I’ll be on the sixteenth floor, in Number sixteen twenty-eight. You go up in the elevator, that’s all. You slip away from the party and go right up in the elevator. You don’t even need a coat.”

Her eyes opened. She stared straight ahead of her, and for a long time she said nothing. Then she licked her lips. “You’re bad, too.”

“We’re both bad.”

Through the stillness of early morning, so profound that even the faint whine of elevator cables was audible, came the sound of hammering fists: a woman in green, with a great coral comb in her hair, was beating on the door of 1628. She took off one slipper, beat with the heel of that. Across the hall, a door opened and a middle-aged man in pajamas asked whether she realized that he was trying to sleep. She began to cry, and as the man closed the door, staggered hippety-hop back to the elevator, where she put on her shoe. Then she pressed the button. In a moment or two the door opened; one would have said the car was there waiting for her. She stepped in, trying to control her sobs.

Inside 1628, a man and woman looked at each other by the eerie light of a radio dial. Superficially, they were handsome: he tall, fair, big-shouldered in his evening clothes; she young, slim, lovely with her trick of throwing back her head and staring at some shadowy beyond. And yet, at closer inspection, they weren’t handsome at all, or big, or lovely. There was something ferretlike about them both, something small in their faces, something wild, something a little wanton. They seemed, in some vague way, to be aware of this, and to realize that it was the reason for the intense, almost exalted delight that they took in each other, so that they touched each other eagerly, and
stood close, inhaling each other’s breath. Presently she said: “She’s gone.”

“Sounds like it.”

“I’ve got to go, Ben.”

“Oh nuts, sit down, stay a while.”

“I’ve got to go, so she won’t know. I’ve go to get back into my room so I can pretend it was all some kind of a mistake. I—don’t want her to suffer. She’s suffered enough from me.”

“… I don’t want her to know either.”

“Then—good night, Ben.”

“Listen, did you hear what I said? I don’t want her to know either. She—she’s important to me. That cluck, that Swede, is stuck on her, and through her I can make him do what I want done.”

“I know, I guessed all that.”

“Look, you got to get this straight. She does it because—”

“She’s in love with you, of course.”

“And what do you say now?”

“You know what I say.”

She hid her face in his coat, clung to him, dug her fingers into his arm. Obviously, they had got to a point where the word love, if either of them had uttered it, would have been somewhat inadequate. Insanity would have been better, and there was some suggestion of it as she raised her face to his. “I know, it means money. And so long as you give her her share, I don’t care. I don’t see how any of it could be helped. Don’t worry. She won’t know.”

“You sure? How you going to work it?”

“I don’t know … That’s the funny thing, about what makes you bad. You can go through walls, Ben. Through walls. Once I went through a whole locker room and took four handbags and got out and I wasn’t even seen. You know how I did it?”

“No.”

“You never will.”

He caught her in his arms, and for a few moments they seemed to have melted together. Then he released her, and she floated toward the door. “Don’t worry, Ben.”

She was gone, and he put away the highball tray he had put out for Lefty, emptied the ashtrays, set the room to rights. In the bedroom the phone rang. “Ben?”

“Yes?”

“June.”

“Oh, hello.”

“I’m terribly sorry, Ben.”

“About what?”

“Didn’t you hear anything?”

“I’ve been asleep.”

“Thank heaven … I did something terribly silly. On account of Dorothy. I—thought she was with you.”

“With-me?”

“You don’t have to snap my head off. I
admitted
it was silly. You can imagine what a ninny I felt when she popped out of the door a few minutes ago in her pajamas and all, and it was perfectly obvious she’d been asleep for hours.”

“Well, it’s all news to me.”

“You might tell me it was a nice party.”

“One thing at a time. I’m still asleep.”

“Well?”

“Sure, it was swell.”

“Good night, Ben.”

“Good night.”

He really was asleep the next time the phone rang, and he answered in a tone that was to remind June that enough was enough. But it wasn’t June. It was Lefty. “Well, what do you want?”

“They got Caspar.”

“You mean they rubbed him out? Who did?”

“They got him. In Mexico. They’re bringing him back.”

“… Who’s bringing him back?”

“The U.S. government. For income tax violation.”

“How do you know? Say, what is this, anyway? What time is it? And what’s the big idea calling me up at this time of morning anyhow?”

“It’s five-thirty
A.M
., and I been passing the time with Joe Cantrell and he just had Mexico City on the long distance wire. They’re flying him back today. They’ve left for the airport already, the planes take off at six-thirty, he’ll be in Los Angeles tonight, and Lake City tomorrow. Here’s where it gets good, Ben: for income tax violation, they may give him bail.”

“O.K., so he gets bail.”

“Just thought I’d let you know.”

C H A P T E R

10

Ben saw quite a little of Dorothy the next two or three days. He gave her a key to his apartment, and would find her waiting when he came in. She was insistent, however, that they find some other place to meet. “She knows, Ben. I fooled her the other night, but now she knows. We’ll have to go somewhere else. I can’t bear the idea of hurting her.”

But Ben’s mind was on other things, particularly on the newspapers, which were reporting minutely the movements of Mr. Caspar. They carried his arrival at Mexicali, at Los Angeles, at St. Louis. At this point reporters from the Lake City papers met his plane, and rode with him on the Prairie Central to the local airport, interviewing him on the way, and giving copious space to his remarks. The general sense of them was that he had been crossed, but that he believed in being a good sport and taking it until his turn came again. At the big pictures of him, wearing the charro hat with bells on the brim that he had bought in Mexico City, Ben waxed thoughtful, and read the caption carefully, to make sure they had really been taken at the Post Office Building, in connection with the rites of booking, fingerprinting, and incarceration.