You Live Once (6 page)

“I’ll get it my own self.”

“Okay, okay.” It was not happy to watch. I wondered if our Nancy were a lush. I decided no. Female lushes carry the mark on them. Their faces coarsen, their features thicken, they grow fur on the larynx. So it had to be the Mary Olan situation, and an intensification of the strain I had noticed on the first date.

The four of us ate at a table for six with another couple. I was between Nancy and a hollow-eyed brunette with a staccato bray of a laugh which made her husband, across the table, wince visibly each time she tinkled the chandeliers with it. Nancy had somehow managed to get a double martini at the table. When Dodd reached over for it, she wrapped her hand around it. She had reached the glazed state, monosyllabic, practically inert. After too many awkward holes in the conversation, Mary Olan began to carry the ball. She did it well, too. Conversation bounced and pranced, passing back and forth in front of the dead eyes of Nancy Raymond. Mary kept hauling me in by the heels, but I still found time to whisper to Nancy that she should eat something. Her great slab of rare roast beef arrived and was removed untouched.

We were on coffee when she stood up abruptly. The conversation stopped and Dodd started to stand up too.
“Not you,” she said to him with great clarity. “Have to walk. With Clint.”

He gave a little nod and I went off with Nancy. She walked with rigid dignity until we were outside and then clung tightly to my arm. There had been a misty rain earlier. The stars were covered and the grass was wet. We could see by the light from the club.

“Special service,” she said. “Walking drunk ladies.”

“Where do we walk?”

“Round and around. Hooo. Dizzy as a bee.”

We walked in silence back and forth across the wide grounds near the tennis courts. She kept lifting her head high and breathing deeply. We must have walked for fifteen minutes and then she said, “Sit down now. Over there.”

We went over to some benches beside the tennis courts. In the faint light the nets had a forlorn sag, the asphalt courts gleamed wetly. I used my handkerchief to wipe the dampness from a bench. We sat down and I lit our cigarettes.

“Clint, you ever try to … to match yourself against a great tradegy, tradegy … hell, tragedy.”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“That Olan bitch. Her mother went crazy. Murdered her father. Dodd told me all about it when we were married. He wanted to marry her. No she says. Can’t do. Insanity. Very tragic. I ask Dodd if he still loves her. No, no, no. Kid stuff. All over. Sure. Loves me. Just me. We’re fine. Good marriage, Clint. It was. Then he starts wondering if he can get back here. Mother all crippled up. Lots of old friends. Me, damn fool me, I say why not. So a year ago he starts working angles. Pulls strings. Real careful. Back we come. Warren! I hate it. Oh, how I hate it. You see, she’s here. And it isn’t dead. It never was. Not with her and not with him. Oh, I got the picture. She won’t play. She won’t sneak. Very noble. He wants to see her, it’s got to be right out in a open. Like this. Where she can work on him. Make me look
bad. Pat the little wife on the head. Take him back just so she can show her muscles. Lots of money but a cheap bitch anyway, you know?”

“I don’t think it’s like that.”

“Oh you don’t! What do you know anyway? You’re the patsy. You don’t take her out. You just make her handy so she can work on him. And I can’t do a damn thing. I can’t say we don’t go out with you two. That makes me look worse even. I have to stand still for it. I have to just wait and watch everything blow up. Good sport. Good old Nancy. Fine! Clint, you could fix it. If only she’d just … If you could make her … No, I can’t say that. Won’t say that. Won’t ask you to do anything like that.”

“Want to walk some more?”

“It was so wonderful. We had our kind of friends. Everywhere we went. Not like these people. They act like his job stinks. Like it’s a … a hobby. These aren’t my kind of people. You know what? He won’t let me tell anybody here. It was okay to tell it other places where we lived. Big joke. We could laugh. Here he hasn’t got any sense of humor. Know how I met him? Want to bust laughing? I cleaned his teeth. Dental hygienist. Kept coming back to get his teeth cleaned. Had the cleanest teeth in the country. Had to marry him before I wore ’em right down to the gums. Other places we could tell that. Not here. Here it would be like dirt. Like I’m something to be ashamed of. Gee, it isn’t something you can just
do
. You have to study for it. I studied hard. I was good. What’s wrong with that?”

She sounded so lost I wanted to take her in my arms. I wanted to anyway—even drunk she was a desirable woman. And I wanted to smack Dodd Raymond right in the nose. There wasn’t a damn thing I could say to her.

She stood up suddenly and said in an awed voice, “I’m going to be sick.”

We went over to some bushes. I held her and held her
head as she was wrenchingly ill. Then I went up to the men’s room at the club and got a wet towel and a dry towel and took them back down to her. She bathed her face and then used the towels on the spattered front of her dress. As she bent over, working on her dress, she said, “How awful, Clint. How perfectly awful.”

“It happens to the carefullest.”

“I wasn’t very careful. You’re sweet, Clint.”

“Friend of the family.”

“Would you do me one more thing?”

“Sure.”

“Drive me home. Don’t tell Dodd you’re doing it. Tell him when you get back. If you tell him now he’ll insist on taking me home. He won’t say anything later but he’ll have that damn patient look that will mean I spoiled the party. Added to everything else, of course. Do you mind?”

“No. Want to leave now?”

“Please.”

I drove her to the Raymond home. It was a high-shouldered job, mansard roof, iron fence, in a neighborhood that was decaying in slow genteel fashion, preparing its soul for the inevitable invasion of funeral parlor, supermarket and masseuse. The big house was dark.

“We moved Mother Raymond up to the place at the lake early this afternoon,” she explained. “I wouldn’t dare come home alone if she was here. She said it was earlier than usual for her. Then she sighed and she said it would be nice for us two young people to be alone. And she sighed again and said she hoped it wouldn’t be so damp at the lake this time of year, and so cold that it would hurt her arthritis. Sigh, sigh, sigh. Damn it all!”

I walked her up to the door and she handed me the key. I opened the big door and it creaked as it swung back. She reached inside and found a switch that turned on the light in the big narrow gloomy hallway.

“Clint, I talked too much. I talked an awful lot too much.”

“I can’t remember a darn word, somehow.”

“Can I tell you you’re a nice guy?”

“Sure.”

“You’re a nice guy. What I said is between us. I’m unhappy here and I drank too much and I’m ashamed of myself. This isn’t my house and it doesn’t seem like my husband any more and I became a fool tonight. I won’t do it again. That isn’t the way to fight this thing. That’s the way to hand him to her on a platter, with an apple and cloves. I’ll do better.”

“I know you will, Nancy. Temporary lapse. Maybe overdue.”

She smiled. “If I wasn’t so messy, I’d like to be kissed.”

I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “That do?”

“It does fine, Clint. Goodnight … and thanks.”

I drove back to the club. The dancing had started. The five piece orchestra sounded like an awkward fusion of Meyer Davis and Bobby Hackett. Every other number was mechanical Latin, gourds and all. Dodd wasn’t on the floor. I tracked him down over in the men’s bar. He was talking down at a man who looked like a bald Pekingese. When I caught his eye he wound up the conversation and came over to me, glass in hand.

“Where’s Nancy?”

“She didn’t feel good. She had me take her home.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have taken her home.”

“She wanted it that way.”

“I’ve never seen her do that before. I can’t understand what got into her.” He glanced at me sideways, suspicion shining in his eyes.

I made a noncommittal sound. It was no time for a brand new friend of the family to tell husband he knew what was wrong with wife.

“Did she tell you what was eating on her?”

“No. Is something?”

“There must be, for her to act like this. My God, she
knows how this town is. They’ll clack for a week. I suppose I ought to get on home. Wait a minute, we all came in your car. Well, I can get a taxi.”

“She sounded as if she’d like it better if you stayed, Dodd. She said she didn’t want to spoil your evening.”

“Any more than she already has.” He finished his drink, reached over and set the empty glass on the bar. “I might as well hang around, I guess. Buy you a drink, Clint?”

“Not right now, thanks.”

He put his hand on my shoulder, gave me a couple of squeezes. I was born with a catlike aversion to such stray gestures. I merely endure them, hoping my expression doesn’t give away my distaste. Besides, there was something forced about the way he did it. He looked at me intently. “Clint, I’ve never had a chance to tell you how damn well much it means to me to come out here and find a guy like you to help carry the ball. I mean that.”

“Well, thanks, Dodd.”

“You know what you can get sometimes in this outfit. A politico. An oily switch artist. Hell, I know where you stand.”

He took his hand off my shoulder, made a fist out of it and punched me lightly in the arm. “We’re both going places in this outfit, boy.”

I told him I hoped so and watched his broad back as he went off toward the festivities. It was obvious that he had just enough quasi-feminine perception to sense that Nancy had somehow acquired an ally; how much else she might have in me he couldn’t tell. He wanted to pour a little water on the flame. Deciding that wouldn’t do, he had built a back fire. I cannot say that it was ineffective—mellow words from the boss are always welcome. And he was almost a nice guy.

Between eleven and twelve the party was in overdrive. Every time I saw Mary she was with Dodd. A junior miss who took considerable pride in the gaudy details of
the recent escapade that had gotten her tossed out of Sweet Briar on her pretty tail, had taken me over and kept bruising my morale by frequent references to how much “older men” appealed to her.

She steered me, not too unwillingly, out into the darkness. But when I came to kiss her she sagged softly against me, a boneless, gasping, wide-mouthed horror. I have no idea where and how such a response happened to become fashionable among the younger set. Maybe they think it sets a mood of sweet surrender. You reach for a firm-boned young morsel and she falls into suet. I pushed her away and eased her back into the bright lights.

After the first cut-in I moved back out into the shrubbery alone. The clouds had thinned and a moon cruised blandly through the ragged edges. Music thudded out across the somber fairways. I fingered an empty cigarette package and remembered the half carton in the glove compartment. I walked across the grass toward the parking lot.

I was close enough to the car to touch it when I heard Mary Olan’s voice coming from inside the car. Her tone was lazy, taunting. “My dear, you aren’t on the basis where all you have to do is whistle. So I won’t take your key. Any time I go back there—if I ever do go back there—you’ll damn well be there waiting for me, not I for you. This isn’t Back Street, sweets.”

Dodd’s heavy voice said, “This double-dating is childish.”

“Is it? I know what you want. You want me waiting there for you any time you happen to take a notion. You don’t want me to go out at all. I happen to like this arrangement. Clint is sweet. Wasn’t he sweet with your plotzed Nancy?”

“Are you falling for him? Damn it, if I find out you’ve let him get to you, I’ll get him shipped so far away from here he’ll …”

“Jealous, darling?” she drawled.

“Why don’t you just take the key and then …”

“You want one cake to eat, one to look at and one in the cupboard. No thanks. I might decide never to pay you another visit there.”

“Mary, listen to me …”

“You listen to me. You’re boring me. That wasn’t in the agreement. I’ll continue to go out with Clint. You’ll continue to come along too, with Nancy. It’s a cozy arrangement.… And I’m getting sick of sitting here like a college girl on a date.”

“But tonight Clint took her home and we could …”

“We could but we won’t, dear. Not tonight. Face it like a brave little man.”

I had stood there and listened. And learned a great deal. It was a situation that smelled faintly of mental illness.

“But Mary …”

“And, darling, I didn’t like that phrase ‘get to me.’ People don’t ‘get to me.’ I get to people. Now if you’d take that slightly clumsy hand off my breast …”

I moved back fast as the door latch clicked. She got out of the car quickly. She’d have seen me if she’d turned my way, but she headed off, heels punching the gravel, toward the front door of the club. I was back in better cover when Dodd got out and lighted a cigarette. I watched him take three long draws, then snap it away toward the wet grass. He followed her slowly. When I got my cigarettes the interior of the car was heavy with the perfume she used, a musky, offbeat scent.

When I drove them home I dropped Dodd off first. Mary Olan didn’t move over next to the door after he got out. She stayed pleasantly and encouragingly close to me, the side of her leg touching mine. I took her out to the Pryor place where I had picked her up. Though a lot of the old line families have stayed down in the shady quiet streets of town, a few, such as Willy Pryor, have built out in the country. It has a stone wall, a bronze sign, a quarter mile of curving drive before you get to
it. Probably the outmoded term for it would be a machine for living. You know the type—all dramatics. Dramatic window walls, dramatic bare walls, dramatic vistas. Two floodlighted pieces of statuary—one all sheet aluminum and the other a grey stone woman with spider limbs and great holes right through her where breasts should have been. The architects do fine, they can really set up a place. The only trouble is that no one has been similarly occupied redesigning people. Such machines cannot sit in sterile functional perfection. We people have to move in—bringing, of course, our unmodified belch, our unreconstructed dandruff, our enlarged pores and our sweaty love.