He might have had me in a spell, almost to the point where I saw his own old brown script on the letters, except I’d seen that unconscious mincing hunch against the curtains and knew Catherine was standing back in the shadows of the kitchen, hearing.
“Lock has come,” he said. I lit a cigarette and shook the match. If he would look my way I would signal that she was back there. The fact is, I never saw the man eye to eye. “You are far and away the most appealing, with your medical school.”
“That isn’t necessarily paradise,” I said.
“Would you tell her about Lock for me?”
“Tell her what?”
“Tell her Lock will not—”
Catherine walked right in and cut him off. Her nose did look a fraction flat. What a shame. It was a nice nose. She still looked fetching. She wore a green and yellow plaid dress. Her legs were very lovely in stockings. She had gold rings in her ears, after the pierced-ear fad with coeds. On her feet were brown patent-leather shoes with one strap over the top of her foot This was similar to the way Bet Henderson dressed, and Bet was always the precursor of style.
Peter simply walked out of the room.
I had in mind taking her to the Subway, a night club in the basement of the Robert E. Lee Hotel where you could take in your own bottle, buy mixers from the bar, and every now and then catch a good band, a soft one, so you could talk to your lover over the drinks and look around at a sort of wooden purple cloister. I’d been faithful to this girl, in my way. I’d had no other dates. We sat down and I ordered the soda for the Scotch I’d brought. She said she’d like that. When she got her glass, she sank down in the chair in that bent slouch she always had in the car. This posture robbed her of almost anything romantic. I heard her mouth make a slight sucking noise as she was drinking.
“You heard Peter tell about him and his wife,” I said.
“Peter, he’s so sweet to me. I knew his wife, it was my blood aunt, she got some notion where she wouldn’t be normal with him in bed. He turned her out. I don’t blame him. He gave her everything and she wouldn’t let him go the normal way at all.”
“He told you that?”
“Change the conversation to another topic.”
“He told me not to notice your nose. What’s wrong with it? I don’t see anything.”
“You get me into daylight and it shows all right. The niggers threw an apple and it broke my nose. I saw you at the parade and you waved? It happened on down the street. We got down amongst a bunch of niggers and one of ‘em across the street threw a apple. Yes sir.”
We drank more than a pint together of the fifth I’d brought, Catherine taking a drink more often than I did. The band tonight was fine, keeping guard over the mellowness, even when they played bop. I noticed that the trumpet man was getting away with a lot of bad notes playing through a steel mute.
“I can play a trumpet about four times better than the man in the band.”
“Hotty toddy,” she said. I had not expected this hostility. She went on to say she had noticed a lot of snoots in this place; she said she wouldn’t have picked this place if she’d known what it was. She enjoyed the Scotch, though, thank you.
I was all planned to tell her how she was wrong, how I knew the person who’d thrown the apple, when she came out with this, looking at the ceiling, rather smugly: “I’ve had Scotch and soda before with another person.” She wanted me to inquire about this person. It was so tacky I couldn’t let it pass. Also, I knew who she meant.
“You mean Gillis Lock? I saw him with you at the parade, didn’t I? I thought you detested him,”.
“I never said that.”
“You implied it.” She drew even lower down, looking surly. I don’t think she understood the word implied. “At school Lock was known as a merde accompli, if you know what I mean.” This drove her into a rage of silence. I confess I was only pursuing this game out of the rotten delight of seeing her cringe even more than she usually did.
“He doesn’t think all that much of you either, brother. He said you are a over-interlectuall playboy that thinks of yourself all the time.”
“That son of a bitch never saw me that I know of.”
We left.
I parked in the driveway at Peter’s; the garage with its false steeple was above the nose of the car. I thought she would jump right out of the car immediately, but she didn’t. She sat up in good posture and crossed her arms over her breasts. She had said nothing, but her anger had brought her out of that perpetual crouch. It would have been good if I could tell her how pleasing she was, out of that slouch, but I couldn’t. I could imagine her as all sorts of pomped-up lovely women of thirty.
She was looking out the other window and I put my mouth to the back of her neck. She uttered a crooning sound and made her neck unavailable by bending back her head. I sought her cheek then, kissing as much of it as I could, and I put our lips together for a few seconds before her hands reached my chest and pushed off.
“That beard don’t feel good, unh-uh! No hand stuff either. Who you think you are? You don’t see me often enough to think you can do that.”
So she called me to a halt. Again, I expected her to jump out of the car. But she didn’t.
“What’re you staying here for? Why don’t you ran on in the house to Peter? I’il bet I’m boring you, humh?”
She just sat there, stiff as a bust. “Run in the house!” I told her. All right, I did jam my hand up to her thigh, searching for the silk. She giggled.
“Are you giggling?” I asked her. I opened my hand and one finger touched a string. I had no idea what it was. Then she pushed my hand off and straightened up.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Have you had an operation, or something?”
“Don’t be slimy. Them snappers out at the ninth grade that I practice-teach on, they’re slimy. You haven’t ever been slimy around me before. Being tricky-devious on me.”
I was outraged. “That was Tampax, wasn’t it? Does he buy that too? Your panties, your toenail polish, your Tampax.”
“Okay, Uncle Peter did buy the panties and he gaven me the money to buy the unmentionable item I have on too. I don’t feel shamed. I say I have on these things and I’m a lucky girl to say it, in case anybody was so nosy to ask me, if they wanted to pry out those kind of secrets. He give me … everything I am now.” She looked at me cool and proud.
“So go on and get in bed with him,” I said. I took the Cutty Sark bottle out of the well and brought it around to my mouth. “Get out of the car. Go on.” But she stayed as I drank.
“You’re a little bit slimy but you’re really a silly old boy. We could’ve had a lot more fun.”
I pretended I was drinking, swigging it neat. I never could do this. Even pretending, my eyes watered up and my throat snarled up, protesting. She asked for the bottle and I handed it away. In the corner of my eye I saw her plant it on her lips and give herself a large douse of it.
“Harry!” she cried to me. Her voice was choked and faint. “I’m on fire! Don’t let me throw up!” I clapped my hand over her mouth. She twisted under it wildly, and I bore down harder with it. She quit squirming finally, opened her eyes, and nodded. I took my hand off.