Except that somebody should have known. I’d always prided myself on being self-sufficient. That I never needed anyone to care about me. That I could live completely alone and inside myself. But this was one time that I wanted some excessive sentimentality that the world dishes out in such abundance.
And so when I got back to the ward and found Artie holding my suitcase, I almost burst into tears. My spirits went way up and I gave him a hug, one of the few times I’d ever done that. Then I asked happily, “How the hell did you know I was leaving the hospital today?”
Artie gave me a sad, tired smile. “You shit, I called Valerie. She said she thought I was picking you up, that’s what you told her.”
“I never told her that.” I said.
“Oh, come on,” Artie said. He took my arm, leading the way out of the ward. “I know your style,” he said. “But it’s not fair to people who care about you. What you do is not fair to them.”
I didn’t say anything until we were out of the hospital and in his car. “I told Vallie you might come down,” I said. “I didn’t want hem to bother.”
Artie was driving through traffic now, so he couldn’t look at me. He spoke quietly, reasonably. “You can’t do what you do with Vallie. You can do it with me. But you can’t do it with Vallie.”
He knew me as no one else did. I didn’t have to explain to him how I felt like such a fucking loser. My lack of success as an artist bad done me in, the shame of my failure to take care of my wife and kids had done me in. I couldn’t ask anyone to do anything for me. I literally couldn’t bear to ask anyone to take me home from the hospital. Not even my wife.
When we got home, Vallie was waiting for me. She had a bewildered, scared look on hem face when she kissed me. The three of us had coffee in the kitchen. Vallie sat near me and touched me. “I can’t understand,” she said. “Why couldn’t you tell me?’
“Because he wanted to be a hero,” Artie said. But he said it to throw her off the track. He knew I wouldn’t want her to know how really beat I was mentally. I guess he thought it would be bad for her to know that. And besides, he had faith in me. He knew I’d bounce back. That I’d be OK. Everybody gets a little weak once in a while. What the hell. Even heroes get tired.
After coffee, Artie left. I thanked him and he gave me his sardonic smile, but I could see that he was worried about me. There was, I noticed, a look of strain on his face. Life was beginning to wear him down. When he was out of the house, Vallie made me go to bed and rest. She helped me undress and lay down in bed beside me, naked too.
I fell asleep immediately. I was at peace. The touch of her warm body, her hands that I trusted, her untreacherous mouth and eyes and hair made sleep the sweet sanctuary it could never be with the deep drugs of pharmacology. When I woke up, she was gone. I could hear her voice in the kitchen and the voices of the children home from school. Everything seemed worth it.
Women, for me, were a sanctuary, used selfishly it is true, but making everything else bearable. How could I or any man suffer all the defeats of everyday life without that sanctuary? Jesus, I’d come home hating the day I had just put in on my job, worried to death about the money I owed, sure of my final defeat in life because I would never be a successful writer. And all the pain would vanish because I’d have supper with my family, I’d tell stories to the kids and at night I would make completely confident and trusting love with my wife. And it would seem a miracle. And of course, the real miracle was that it was not just Value and me but countless other millions of men with their wives and children. And for thousands of years. When all that goes, what will hold men together? Never mind that it wasn’t all love and that sometimes it was even pure hatred. I had a history now.
And then it all goes away anyway.
– -
In Vegas I told all this in fragments, sometimes over drinks in the lounge, sometimes at an after-midnight supper in the coffee shop. And when I was finished, Cully said, “We still don’t know why you left your wife.” Jordan looked at him with mild contempt. Jordan had already made the rest of the voyage and gone far past me.
“I didn’t leave my wife and kids,” I said. “I’m just taking a break. I write to her every day. Some morning I’ll feel like going home and just get on the plane.”
“Just like that?” Jordan asked. Not sardonically. He really wanted to know.
Diane hadn’t said anything, she rarely did. But now she patted me on the knee and said, “I believe you.”
Cully said to her, “Where do you come off believing in any guy?”
“Most men are shitty,” Diane said. “But Merlyn isn’t; not yet anyway.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“You’ll get there,” Diane said coolly.
I couldn’t resist. “How about Jordan?” I knew she was in love with Jordan. So did Cully. Jordan didn’t know because he didn’t want to know and he didn’t care. But now he turned a politely inquiring face toward Diane as if he were interested in her opinion. On that night he really looked like hell. The bones of his face were beginning to show through the skin in sickly white planes.
“No, not you,” she said to him. And Jordan turned his head away from him. He didn’t want to hear it.
Cully, who was so outgoing and amiable, was the last to tell his story, and then, like all of us, he held back the most important part, which I didn’t find out until years later. Meanwhile, he gave an honest picture of his true character, or so it seemed. We all knew that he had some mysterious connection with the hotel and its owner, Gronevelt. But it was also true that he was a degenerate gambler and general lowlife. Jordan was not amused by Cully, but I have to admit that I was. Everything out of the ordinary or caricatures of types interested me automatically. I made no moral judgments. I felt that I was above that. I just listened.
– -
Cully was an education. And an inspiration. Nobody would ever do him in. He would do them in. He had an instinct for survival. A zest for life, based on immorality and a complete disregard for ethics. And yet he was enormously likable. He could be funny. He was interested in everything, and he could relate to women in a completely unsentimental, realistic way that women loved.
Despite the fact that he was always short of money, he could get to bed with any of the show girls working in the hotel with romantic sweet talk. If she held out, he might pull his fur coat routine.
It was slick. He would bring her to a fur shop farther down the Strip. The owner was a friend of his, but the girl didn’t know this. Cully would have the owner show the girl his stock of furs, in fact, have the guy lay all the pelts out on the floor so that he and the girl could pick out the finest. After they made the selection, the furrier would measure the girl and tell her the coat would be ready in two weeks. Then Cully would write out a check for a thousand dollars as a down payment and tell the owner to send him the bill. He’d give the girl the receipt.
That night Cully would take the girl out to dinner and after dinner he’d let her bet a few bucks on roulette, then take her to his room where, as he said, she had to come across because she had the receipt in her pocketbook. Since Cully was so madly in love with her, how could she not? Just the fur coat might not do it. Just Cully’s being in love might not do it. But put both of them together and, as Cully explained, you had an ego-greed parlay that was a winner every time.
Of course, the girl never got the fur coat. During the two-week love affair, Cully would pick a fight and they’d break up. And Cully said, not once, never, not one time, had the girl given him back the receipt for the fur coat. In every case she rushed down to the fur store and tried to collect the deposit or even the coat. But of course, the owner blandly told all of them that Cully had already picked up his deposit and canceled the order. His payoff was some of Cully’s rejects.