Tornado Pratt (16 page)

Suppose I’d gone to Nat one day and said:

“Honey baby and most dear light and companion, I must say something disagreeable.”

And then gone on to confess candidly and sadly that all my adoration for my wife could not obscure the innumerable candles burning beside her altar and that their flames plucked continually at my awareness. Why if I could have done that, we might have made sense of it in the end—perhaps even found a new way of life
—purged of the lies, lies, lies that belch and gurgle through our culture, turning Eden into Disneyland and lovers into clowns. See what I mean?

But then after six months, something irresistible cropped up. Now what the hell was it? That dame on the beach who called me over for a light and then ostentatiously stroked her—no—hell, that was years later and—sure!—in Chile. So, in that case—I keep getting a flash of Betty but hell that wasn’t even me—that was Austin and by that time—I got it! It was the reporter—the midget—only about four foot eleven, pretty as a doll. Yeah—she came to the office for an interview and—amazed me—because that
tremulous
, fragile thing—say, you wouldn’t have believed, Horace, that she could have taken on anything more robust than a choir boy. But she was one hundred per cent nympho because, just as she was going, she squeezed my hand—hard. So I searched in her eyes, puzzled, and she winked at me. Hell, boy, ten minutes later she was screeching beneath me on the thick pile carpet of my office and I recall that even as the waves of bliss began to pulse through me a spectral lawyer in my mind had already begun to wrestle with the problem of how to square Letty who might hear something.

But she didn’t because—yeah, that was the bitch! I never had to square Letty. She’d gone out of the office for some reason and so I got clean away with it. Why was that the bitch? Think, boy! If I’d had a bad time with Letty it might have kept me straight, for some time anyhow. But having that joy-ride and no comeback, it made me greedy and reckless. So I pulled Wanda about a week later and screwed her in the back of the Caddy on the way home from the office. And Nat never suspected a thing. Nor the next time. Nor the next. I reckon it was about the twentieth or thirtieth time I came unstuck.

Then Nat caught me out by careless words and pride. We were walking out on the lakeside in high summer. The breeze off the lake kept the air bearable but when it died the naked sun clawed at your skin. A bunch of black kids were diving bare-ass from a jetty, shouting:

“Tasmania! Tasmania!”

I had an impulse to join them. I was a porpoise in big surf but there was no surf here and orange peel and scum ringed each pile of the jetty. Although I knew the water was foul, I still felt an impulse to plunge with those imps into the tainted depths. I said:

“They sure do love the water. There was one here last week—”

Then I stopped because I realized that I’d blundered. The week before I’d strolled this same waterside with a Swedish girl called Ingrid. To camouflage the pause I glanced away as if I’d seen something enthralling. Then, deciding it was a minor and not very threatening slip, I resumed:

“—yeah, there was a black boy couldn’t have been more than ten doing swallow dives and jack-knives from that pile.”

“Really? But how did he get up it?”

“Just walked up—remember how we saw them walk up coconut trees in Hawaii?”

“Oh, wasn’t that amazing?”

“He just walked up the pile the same way.”

There was a little silence and then Nat said:

“I didn’t know you were out here last week, Tug?”

“Uh-huh.”

I grunted the affirmative absently, meanwhile conducting a
lightning
debate in my mind as to the relative merits, for purposes of deflection, of halting and eagerly pointing to something in the surrounding scene, squeeezing Nat’s hand as if overcome by an affectionate impulse or just strolling quietly on, which wouldn’t deflect but might lull. The consideration, however, went on a fraction of a second too long for convincing implementation of either of the first two courses and I was just beginning to realize that I was stuck with the third when Nat asked:

“But what day was that? You didn’t mention it.”

“Sure I did—Thursday when I got home.”

Now the options were dwindling. Nat was far too cute to be deflected by clichés like: well, it wasn’t important. Or: Hell, I don’t mention everything I do. We shared—or at least she still thought we shared—all things and if I’d left my office one day last week and driven thirty miles out of Chicago, I’d certainly have told her about it. I could already sense Nat glancing at me dubiously and the little vortex of her dawning disquiet. She protested:

“Did you? I don’t remember. Thursday? But, Tug, Thursday you were at the board meeting all afternoon?”

Now the lions were snarling close. Could I tell her I was here Thursday
morning
? To what end? What had the weather been like? Would the kids have been swimming? Anyhow, I hadn’t much alternative, so—and I felt the rush of blood heat my face at the blunder I’d been about to make. I’d phoned Nat Thursday morning. And if I’d been out here I’d certainly have mentioned it. So what
was left? Could I switch to another day? Nat was now sifting her own memory.

“It
was
Thursday, wasn’t it? The board meeting? Yes, it must have been because—”

Suddenly, Horace, the solution homed. Oh, she was cute! Nat was cute—with a mind like a gardener. She knew just where
everything
was sprouting but—she didn’t know a hell of a lot about business. If I made out we often held board meetings outside Chicago, that we had a slap-up meal, liquor—told her that we’d booked a hotel suite out here for this occasion and—

The torpedo that came hissing out of my psyche to sink this trim-looking craft, Horace, was pride. The hell with it, I thought. The hell with it! What have I done wrong, for Christ’s sake? So I screwed Ingrid? So we bounced together on the double bed that flowers in my conniving automobile? So what? What does that take from Nat? Why the hell do I have to cringe into hypocrisy? I frowned. I felt the swamp-water of anger beginning to rise in my heart. I growled:

“The hell with it.”

“But, Tug—I mean—”

She still suspected nothing. And perversely that thickened my anger. She was oblivious to the rancid cargo of fermenting desire I had to cart through the world. And this woman was supposed to love me, to be closer to me than anyone else. Surly, I muttered:

“I was out here—there’s no law against it, is there? If you must know,. I was out here with a girl.”

Immediately, I sensed her white flash of appalled understanding. She stopped walking. I stopped too, with feigned impatience.

She asked:

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—a girl. Just a girl. Oh hell—that’s how it is—I didn’t want you—”

But she was running, forging through a torrent of oncoming pedestrians, all of them glancing in steely disapproval. And I was loping beside her, pleading and exhorting, repeatedly brushed back by the dense sweep of the human current and then fighting my way back to her side to continue my protestations. But I must have got it wrong, Horace. That clip must be from some other scene because there couldn’t really have been sidewalk crowds suddenly out there by the lake. Did she jump in a cab? Hell I’ve lost the continuity.

In the next shot we’re in our bedroom—and Nat’s packing! Yeah, packing! And I’m going crazy!

And then, just as she reached for the telephone to call a taxi, I croaked desperately:

“At least talk to her! You owe me that much, Nat.”

“Talk to whom?”

“To Ingrid, of course.”

“Why?”

She frowned slightly and shook her head. Understandably, she couldn’t see what I was driving at. At that stage, I was none too sure myself. The plan was inchoate and probably cuckoo. But, encouraged by its initial success in at least detaining Nat a little longer, I plunged on:

“Hell, Nat, if you could meet her—hear it from her own lips—it was unique. I’ve never heard of anything like it and poor Ingrid—she doesn’t know what hit her, literally. She says it was like a tornado. That’s crazy, huh? But that’s really what she says—like being lifted by one of the big twisters and—let me give her a ring now, huh?”

“I don’t want to talk to her. She’s the last person I want to talk to.”

“She could make you understand.”

“Understand what?”

“How it happened.”

“Oh, don’t be so—it’s perfectly—”

“It’s not! Now, that’s straight, Nat. It’s not what you—the ordinary—a guy cheating on his wife with some girl he scoops up. It just wasn’t like that.”

She suddenly slumped down in the chair. I realized she was near tears again.

“Oh, Tornado, don’t torment me.”

This was it! The breach in her defences. She’d been so strong and determined till now. I turned up the sincerity level.

“What you’ve got to understand, Nat, is that this was not a promiscuous girl. She hadn’t had a man—anything to do with a man—for three years, since her husband died. She was a respectable widow. So when, three hours after we’ve met, she asks me to screw her, you can imagine how I felt? It was as if our old colonel had done a handstand on parade. Anyhow, we’re in the car so I can’t just beat a retreat.”

“Why were you alone together? Where were you going anyway?”

“I told you, honey. I was running her home. She’d come in at our request to clear up a couple of points concerning her husband’s
estate and her old coupé throws a crank-shaft. So I offered to drive her home—”

“Why?”

“Not for any—hey, you’ve got to
see
this dame! I’m surrounded everywhere I go by swell broads—in the vulgar sense—and you think I’d crave Ingrid Pope? Honey, she’s forty-two! Her face is good but her figure’s slipped its moorings. Her ass is trying to crawl out of her girdle. I mean it’d take some man to get a hard-on with
her.
”

“You managed it.”

“Yeah—well, I guess I was flattered. Oh not as a man—not that. But—”

“Well?”

“How can I explain? Will you listen a minute—without
interrupting
? Ten minutes—that’s all. Then—if you want—I’ll call you a cab myself. Okay?”

She sighed and said:

“Go ahead.”

“Well—Thursday—what was it? We’re zipping along the
highway
, doing a steady sixty and it’s a hot, muggy day and I’m
thinking
: after I drop her, I’m gonna get me a nice, cool beer somewhere, and I’m feeling real happy. Now if I think back, Nat, I realize that I’m happy because Ingrid Pope and I have been having such a good conversation. We’ve been talking about—yeah, well, nothing and everything: opera, business, the war and
particularly
love and death. She’s told me how much she loved Ralph—that was her husband whom I remember as a creep but no matter—and I’ve told her with joy about us. Maybe that was the heart of it. She was such a good listener about us and, honey, that always gives me a lift. Then, after a pause—quite a long pause—maybe quarter of an hour—she addresses me in a different tone of voice—trembly and intense. She says something like: Mr Pratt—no, that’s silly, I have to call you Tornado for this. Tornado, I don’t know how to say it so that it doesn’t sound just awful, so I must just say it: will you make love to me? Hell, I nearly drove straight off the highway. The last thing—okay, so there’s always a kind of erotic dust floating between any man and woman anywhere—but I never was less aware of breathing it than during that car ride with Ingrid Pope and then—out of the blue—she says that. First thing I sift for misunderstanding: I mean, maybe I heard wrong or maybe ‘make love’ means something different to her—like it does in old novels. I mean, it seems to me that I can’t take what she says at face value,
so, ungraciously I guess, I just gulp and ask: how do you mean? Then it pours out in a breathless torrent: I don’t understand it myself—I’m not a voluptuous girl—you must believe that, Tornado. Before marriage, I only had one proper boy-friend. I loved my husband and was very happy with him but not demanding if you understand me. And since he’s died, I’ve never thought about it—that’s the truth—I’ve never even thought about sex. I know that some women dream about men and—lovemaking. Well, I never do—never—so I can’t explain it—I really can’t. She sounded real distressed, Nat, and she was so candid, so—obviously—bewildered herself that it was just as if we were talking about mortgages or something. I asked her: what happened then? She came back: I guess—I don’t know—I just suddenly darn near fainted. I suddenly heard you—that’s the truth—I
heard
you!—the roar of your—being—soul—I was so conscious of you, I had to gasp for breath and then my whole body yearned towards you like—like a tree—in a gale—and I’ve been sitting here—trying to suppress it—and I can’t—I just can’t. And then she burst into a great long wail—as if her heart were busting—crying and crying with shame and I guess desire—all mixed up. And I was flattered—yeah, not as a man—because it could have been any man but because—somehow she trusted me—and—that’s it, Nat. That’s how it happened.”

Can you guess, Horace, what I felt as I served up this stuff? Relief, sure, that she was swallowing it. But I also felt delight and pride. Because the yarn came out as natural and fluent as if I’d been spinning them all my life. I wasn’t exactly lying and I wasn’t exactly inventing. I was more—creating. Yeah, creating a new continent of reality and, as I talked, it opened up before me as rich and unpredictable as life itself.

We went on chewing it over for maybe an hour and I became bold and experimental, changing the direction of the narrative, as well as adding whole new provinces. Once I suddenly altered a key episode, which Nat had already swallowed, just out of bravado. It was a tricky thing to do because I was secure with what I’d already put over and I could tell Nat was melting but I suddenly undercut the tale and plunged Nat right back to the edge of
distrust
. Then for a while my invention flagged and I inwardly
reproached
myself that I hadn’t let well enough alone but then it started flowing again and soon I realized that my instinct had been sound. My apparent confusion and reversal now seemed to ratify the essential truth of the thing.