“I wonder if the dining room is open,” she said. “Or do they have a snack bar or something like that?”
Maidenly modesty, I thought. Virginal apprehension. I thought it was cute, this big and lovely girl, so well-endowed for calisthenics of the kind I was envisioning, as delicate and innocent as Her Wedding Night. I really thought it was cute.
At the same time. I had to admit to myself that it was somewhat irritating. I had been patient. I had been patient through courtship and engagement, and I had been patient through an overlong ceremony, and I had been patient through the reception. I had been patient during the waning of the afternoon and evening aboard this ship, allowing us both plenty of time to be rested up for the labors ahead, and it seemed to me that the time had come when patience ought to step aside for action to take over.
These two attitudes, indulgence and impatience, combined within me to cancel one another out and leave only compromise. “All right,” I said. I even smiled, making the best of it. “As a matter of fact, I’m kind of hungry myself. Let’s see what we can get to eat, before we go down to the cabin.”
“Fine, Harvey.” She gave me that beautiful smile of hers, and linked her arm in mine, and off we went in search of edibles.
As it turned out, there was something like a snack bar, adjunct to the cocktail lounge. We had sandwiches, and I plied my darling with daiquiris, on the theory that alcohol makes the heart grow fonder, and warms the virgin blood. I wolfed my sandwich, and she hesitated over hers, and at last our dining and drinking were done, and back on deck we were, for more staring at the sea.
Another hour of this, promenading on the nearly deserted deck, and I was beginning to get just a wee impatient. Every blasted time I importuned my darling about coming down to our cabin for some fun and games, she played sightseeing guide some more, pointing at this and that, exclaiming over one sight or another, and generally changing the subject by the simple method of beating it over the head. This got to be a little strained after a while — face it, there’s a paucity of varied sights in mid-ocean — and at last I took the bull by the horns — that isn’t quite right, is it? — and said, “Listen, Helen, it’s time for us to go down to the cabin. Now, I understand, you’re nervous and all that, but the time has come. Believe me, I’ll be understanding and I’ll be gentle and I’ll be sympathetic, but we just can’t stall around any longer.”
She raised a hand, as though to point out a particularly charming whitecap to the westward, but then she seemed to think better of it. Her hand drooped, and she turned reluctantly to gaze at me, and she nodded her lovely head “You’re right, Harvey,” she said. “It’s got to happen sometime. We might as well get it over with.”
“Of course,” I said, too delighted by her acquiescence to see the snapper in that sentence. Any of the snappers.
Snapper number one: When you say you might as well get something over with, you’re talking about something distasteful, that you aren’t looking forward to at all, in any way shape or form.
Snapper number two: When you say you might as well get something over with, you’re talking about something you have to do once. After that, it’s over with, it’s done, you don’t have to do it anymore.
Snapper number three: When you say you might as well get something over with, you’re talking about something you aren’t going to enjoy and something nobody around you is going to enjoy.
There are more snappers in there, but those three will do for a starter. The point being that I didn’t notice any of them. I just lit up like a pinball machine, and escorted my baby away from the deck and down the long narrow hall to our wee cabin.
Where Helen all of a sudden found a whole new vista of things to point at. We hadn’t been to our cabin before — a steward or somebody had delivered our luggage, and we’d stayed up on deck ever since boarding the ship — and Helen just couldn’t get over the place. She kept saying, “Oh, look at—” and pointing at things. She pointed at the portholes, and the Mae Wests, and the leaping-fish paintings on the walls. She pointed at the chairs, and the bureau, and the writing desk. She pointed at the carpet, and the lamps, and the doorknobs, and the light switch, and everything else she could think of.
She did not point at the bed.
I kissed her. I had to grab her and turn her around in order to do so, but I managed it, and I kissed her, and for the duration of the kiss she was still. She didn’t respond at all, she was merely subservient and passive. For the duration of the kiss. And then she was off again.
I finally allowed my irritation to take command. “Now, hold it a goddamn minute, Helen,” I said. “Maidenly hesitation is all very well, but let’s quit fooling around. At this rate, our grandchildren will be grown up before we start their parents. Now, come on.”
“We have to unpack,” she said hurriedly. Our luggage was on the bed, and that was the only reason she went anywhere near that particular piece of furniture. She hurried over to the bed, and bent over, and proceeded to open a suitcase.
I goosed her. I goosed her a good one. After all that while, believe me, I had to do something.
She jumped a mile, and when she spun around to face me there was nothing on her face but outrage. “Harvey!” she cried. “How dare you! How could you?”
“It was easy,” I said. “I extended my middle finger like this, see, and then I took aim like this, and then I—”
“Harvey, what has gotten into you?”
“Nothing compared to what’s going to get into you if you’ll only settle down for a goddamn minute.”
“Harvey, I want our wedding night to be perfect.”
“And I want it to be tonight.’
“It will be, Harvey, don’t be so impatient for Heaven’s sake.”
“We’ve been married seven hours, Helen. Other people have consummated their marriages half a dozen times by now. We really ought to take care of it at least once, you know what I mean?”
“We will, Harvey, honestly. Don’t you think I know how you feel?” (Another snapper I missed at the time: How I felt, not how we felt. The reason being that she didn’t feel anything. Then or ever.)
“If you know how I feel,” I said, missing the snapper, “then come over here and let’s get going.”
“Darling, all I want to do is get ready for you. Unpack our luggage, so we’ll have a nice room, and put on that beautiful nightgown I picked out for just this occasion, and be really ready for you.”
“I’m really ready for you,” I told her.
“It won’t be long, Harvey,” she said. “Honestly.”
“When won’t it be? It is now.”
She looked puzzled. “What?”
“Never mind. How much longer am I supposed to wait?”
“Oh, please don’t be angry, Harvey dear. Don’t spoil things.”
“There isn’t anything to spoil, yet,” I said. I was growing surly, and I knew it, but I felt that I had some justification.
“Darling,” she said, “I tell you what. You go back out on deck—”
“What?”
“Please, now, listen to me. You go back out on deck, for half an hour. I’ll get the cabin ready, and myself ready, and when you come back everything will be perfect. All right?”
“All right,” I said. Anything, to be assured of a time limit on the stalling. “Half an hour it is,” I said. “Let’s synchronize our watches.”
“Oh, don’t be silly.”
So I wasn’t silly. I left the cabin like a good boy, and went back up on deck, and wandered around, looking at my watch every thirty seconds or so, and waited for the half hour to go by.