John D. MacDonald Page 15

  I keep telling myself it was just an instinctive reaction. I mean nobody has given me a bad time about it. They’ve looked at me in a funny way, but nobody has given me a bad time. I’d suspect that they’ve talked. You know. Good story over a five-o’clock shot. But what the hell.

  I wish I could stop thinking about it. It comes up at the damnedest times. When I ought to have my mind on what I’m doing.

  This isn’t a bad job, and I’d like to keep it. But if I keep goofing off, going ’way back there and thinking how I ran, I’m going to flub stuff, the way I messed up the timing yesterday meeting that train. And lose this job.

  It isn’t a bad job. There are twelve theatres in the chain. But now Mr. Walsh has got this idea I should dress up like a damn Martian and walk up and down in front of the Times Square house for this 3D horror thing. I keep telling him it’s a job for an usher or one of the assistant managers, but he keeps telling me I’m the publicity guy, aren’t I?

  It was just like the way you’d snatch your hand off a hot stove. You don’t stop and think, about it first, do you?

  I’d argue more, but I keep thinking about that Sunday morning.

  Do you?

  Chapter Thirteen

  (WALLACE DORN—BEFORE)

  YEARS AGO I put my foot down. Firmly. It isn’t that I do not love Florence. She is my wife. She has carried and given birth to my children. But I had to forbid her presence at any of those social functions that are connected with my position at Fern and Howey.

  I could not function properly while I waited in sick dread for her to put her foot in her mouth. And she always did. Invariably.

  It isn’t as though I keep her in a locked room. We have our own circle of friends and, thank God, none of them has anything to do with advertising, publishing, or the arts. They are plain people. There is nothing brittle or self-consciously clever about them. And I am very glad that most nights I am able to catch the five-twenty-two out of Grand Central Terminal.

  Florence is a comfortable woman. There was a time, of course, prior to and for about a year after our marriage, when I thought she was an enormously exciting woman. It is easy to see now that what misled me was her great vitality. Her hair is red and her skin is very white, and her looks faded very quickly. She seemed to turn, in a few short months, from girl bride to heavy-set matron. But, though I was disappointed at the time, I would not have it otherwise. She knows my wants. She keeps the home neat, cooks well, is good-humored, and very pleasant with the children. They are healthy children.

  Florence is not an intelligent woman. She has a certain native shrewdness, but no mental equipment with which to cope with the people I must deal with each day. I am the head of my household. I have seen to it that there is no doubt about that. Someone must command. Otherwise there is fuss and disorganization.

  I have made it a point not to mention her or the fact of my marriage and my children to my coworkers. Thus many of them are astonished when they learn that I am married. They try to include her in invitations. I say she is not well. That, of course, is a lie. She is as strong as a good horse.

  I have been, I believe, a good husband to her. My salary has increased steadily, though it has never been, and perhaps will never become, spectacular. Except for Ferris, the accounts I handle with Fern and Howey are small. I have an even temper around my home. I give Florence a rather generous allowance. Though I have been unfaithful, I consider those lapses as being, perhaps, an inevitable by-product of my occupation, and commend myself on the fact that there have been so few such episodes. No more than nine, I believe, during sixteen years of wedded life.

  Each morning she drives me to our small rustic station and I get on the train, and during the forty-minute ride I compose myself for the work of the day and prepare the face I will show to the world. I pledge myself to go through each day with quiet dignity, with as much honor as is possible, with affability and understanding of the problems of others.

  And it was with that same attitude that I arrived at Wilma Ferris’ place at Lake Vale. But despite all vows, sometimes one finds oneself in a situation where dignity and honor are denied you. I despise such people, every one, except, perhaps, Paul Dockerty. He retains some of the instincts of a gentleman. Though, in a few more years, he too will be lost. I can save myself because I have a retreat. Each night I can go to my home, to my chair and pipe and robe, to the relaxation of a modicum of excellent Scotch, to quiet conversation, to a game of chess with my neighbor.

  I knew, of course, that Wilma had poisoned Mr. Howey against me. And I knew that in inviting me she undoubtedly had more unpleasantness in mind. I even suspected that she wished to tell me that she was shifting her account to some other firm, perhaps to some brash outfit completely lacking in the dignity that has characterized Fern and Howey dealings since the establishment of the agency in 1893 by the elder Mr. Detweiler Fern. But I could not allow myself to think of such a contingency seriously. The implications were ghastly. Though Mr. Howey is, I trust, a man of honor, I believe he would feel that he should chastise me severely for the loss of the profitable Ferris account.

  Though I did not care for the people, I enjoyed the opportunity of playing games. It took my mind away from the continual problem of what to do if Wilma did what I thought she might do. Scrabble is hardly a challenging game from an intellectual point of view. There are none of the clean rhythms and sequences of chess. I found Dockerty and the Jonah girl rather dull at it, and won handily.

  When I said good night to Wilma, just as her game of gin rummy—infantile occupation—was breaking up, she gave me a glance as shrewd and alien and darting as the glance of a snake. It chilled me. After I was in bed I still felt cold. How have I offended her? I want nothing but the security of my job. Am I not good at my job? The Durbin Brothers, and Massey, Grunewald, and Star, and Bi-Sodium and Tichnor Instrument—they have always been satisfied. Every one.

  The croquet game the next day was almost pleasant. It would have been far more pleasant had the others kept their minds on the competition. They seemed to have no great urge to win. They clowned grotesquely, and I was most disappointed in Paul Dockerty, getting as drunk as he did. I figured the proper angles, and the odds, and played crisply and well, finishing my circuit first, but avoiding the stake so that I could range back out across the court and aid the laggard members of my team as best I could. Wilma walked close to me at one point and put me badly off my form by murmuring, “Talk to you later, Buster.”

  Of all the possible names she could have selected for me, she picked the one most calculated to distress me. It is a name completely without dignity. While still tense and worried about her, I played badly, and my ball was captured and driven into the water. I retrieved it and, setting it down in the parking area, I regained the playing field with one stroke, and hit the stake firmly with my next stroke after seeing that my further efforts would not aid my teammates. I was pleased to see that we won.

  Wilma saw me in her room before lunch. She had me sit down. She had a cigarette and she walked back and forth, from the door to her dressing table, walking in silence as my tension mounted.

  “Miss Ferris, I…”

  “Please hush, Buster. I’m thinking.” That is typical of her. No form, no courtesy. Striding back and forth, ranging like a big cat in a cage, wearing that naked-looking sunsuit, the long muscles in her legs pulling and tightening with her strides, her dark hair bouncing.

  Finally she stopped and faced me, looking down at me. “O.K., I’ve decided there’s no nice way to tell you. Dockerty is doing a job as far as he can. But that creepy agency you work for is dead weight.”

  “Fern and Howey are one of the—”

  “Hush. You’ve never come up with anything either good or original. You just submit to me a lot of fancy presentations of my own ideas. Watered down, usually. I’ve given you every chance. I thought that in spite of the people you work for, you might come through eventually. Dorn, you haven’t had an idea of your own in fift
een years. So you’re an expensive luxury. I need a younger, hungrier agency. Somebody with vitality and imagination. You people think you’re in something a little like banking. Suits by Brooks Brothers. Dark paneling. Hushed voices. You bore me.”

  “Miss Ferris, I…”

  “And you are the dullest man I’ve ever set eyes on. An imitation limey from Indiana. What are you trying to do? Inspire confidence? I am uninspired, Dorn. When I’m in town Monday I’ll phone that unctuous Mr. Howey and kiss him off and pick myself something new. You can cancel out all that stuff they’re working on over there that they laughingly call a campaign. My God, stop goggling at me! I can do this, you know.”

  “I wish you would reconsider,” I said weakly.

  “I have. Too many times,” she said. I looked at her. Nobody knew it but Wilma and me. So far. I could see myself sitting across Mr. Howey’s desk, his eyes like little swords.

  I wished she would fall dead. I wished she would drop dead on the floor. And I could go to the office and be very upset and tell Mr. Howey that she had told me that she had decided the advertising appropriation should be increased, but had died before she could take steps.

  I looked at her throat. I saw a pulse there. I stood up slowly. I couldn’t permit this disorderly and ridiculous woman to put an end to a quiet and satisfying and honorable career. Advertising has become a respected profession. I am a respected man. She was doing this to me out of restlessness, out of whatever it was that was driving her. I stood up and my arms and hands felt heavy and powerful She turned her back on me and went over toward the dressing table. I took one silent step, my arms half lifted. She craned her arms up behind her in that graceful-awkward way of woman and worked at the snaps of the sunsuit top. She said in a flat bored voice, drained of emotion, “Now run along and play games or something, Dorn.”

  She released the top and took it off and sat down. I let my arms fall to my sides. They felt heavy, but no longer strong. I felt old. I felt as though I should totter as I walked, as though my voice should crack and quaver as I spoke.

  I shut her door quietly behind me. I could smell food. Saliva flooded my mouth in sudden sickness. I went to my room. By the time I reached the bathroom the nausea was gone. But my face was sweaty. I dried it on a towel. I looked at my face in the mirror. It is a reliable face. Florence says it is easy to see the character expressed there. I was pale. The color came back slowly, darkening to customary healthy ruddiness. One side of my mustache looked a bit ragged. I took my shears from my kit, and a small comb, and clipped carefully. I stepped back and smiled at myself. That usually comforts me. It did not work. Because I did not know what I would do. I did not know where I would go. Next year I will be fifty. With my usual bonus I make nearly eighteen thousand dollars a year.

  And I thought again of what I wanted to do to her. Of the brutal and exquisite pleasure of digging my fingers into the soft pulsing throat until her face darkened and her eyes went mad.

  And the thought brought the nausea back. Perhaps because I am a fastidious man. Nausea and sweat and the pallor. What do you do when They want to take everything away from you? When They want to smash you and grind you down and take away everything? But why They? It was Wilma. Why, in her eyes, am I a figure of fun? What is there ridiculous about me? Hayes and Hess are ridiculous men. I did not ask for that account. They gave it to me because they knew she was difficult. Mr. Howey gave it to me because he was afraid to handle it himself. She has prepared him for this by poisoning his mind against me, so that lately I have felt unsure of myself when speaking with him. It is not fair.

  Suddenly, almost without warning, I was sick. Afterward I felt faint. I washed my face and rinsed my mouth and lay down on my bed.

  … George, you are just going to have to do something about those dreadful boys. They chased Wallace home again from school today. He was screaming with fright when he ran up on the porch. They were hitting him over the head with their books. They could hurt him seriously. They could deafen him, George. George! Put that paper down and listen to me.

  … No, George. That’s not right. You don’t have the right attitude. Wallace has never been physically strong. He’s not like those boys. He’s sensitive and delicate. George Dorn, you listen to me! I won’t have it. Wallace has told me who they are. And I have a list here of their parents’ names and where they live, and you are going to get out of that chair this minute and put your coat back on and we are going to go call on those people.

  It will not make it worse for Wallace. You can make it quite clear that it will be a police matter if it happens again. And if you keep referring to him as a crybaby, I am definitely going to become annoyed with you, George.

  And, lying there, still tasting the acid in my throat, I remembered the small boy, huddled at the top of the stairs, listening. And how I sneaked back to my room. Mother would take care of things. She’d make my darn father do something about it. A lot he cared about what happened to me. I hoped the police would put those kids in jail.

  I need her now. And she had been gone from me for a long time. Leaving me alone. Leaving me in a world where I had no defenses. They do not leave you dignity and honor. They run after you, banging your head with books, jeering at you, as if you were a nobody.

  It was midafternoon when I left my room. It was very still. Some were napping. Some were limp on the dock in the still sun, over mirror water. I felt far back in my head, as though my eyes were tubes I looked through, destroying side vision, so that I had to turn my head slowly to change the direction of my glance. And I went back to my room. On rusty knees. Squatting far back in my head.

  I felt as though I waited for darkness. As though darkness would provide some unknown answer. I lay on the bed again and tried to play the game I often play when going to sleep. White pawn to king four. Black pawn to king four. White queen’s knight to queen’s bishop three. But I could not go further. I had lost the power to visualize. I could not see the board. The words were just sounds. Half remembered. There was no board. No look of ivory on the squares. No slant and rhythm and precision. My mind was a muddy thing awaiting darkness.

  It knew that darkness would come. It squatted back there, diverting itself with obscene imaginings.

  Chapter Fourteen

  (RANDY HESS—AFTERWARD)

  SHE WAS DEAD.

  I will try to say what I felt. How it was. Once when I was little there was a hypnotist on a stage. Somebody took me there. I remember the boy who went up, scuffing his feet, trying to swagger, giving swift looks at the audience. It was done so quickly.

  You are a chicken. And the boy hopped and clucked and flapped his arms. You are a dog. And he scampered and barked. Oh, there was a lot of fun! Oh, they laughed! Wake up! Wake up!

  The boy woke up. He stared stupidly around. They were still all laughing. I was laughing. He fled in confusion from the stage.

  She was dead.

  I woke up. I looked stupidly around at the world. Who am I? How did I get here? Why do they laugh? By what strange road did I get to this place?

  I remember another time. A summer camp where I was very lonely, and unhappy. They taught us first aid. A man who looked like an ape demonstrated a tourniquet. Roger and I were alone in the cottage during a rest period. It was a contest between us. We knotted huck towels and each used a drumstick to tighten the tourniquet on our own leg, midway between knee and thigh. Nearly as tight as we could get them, and then bet a dime about who would loosen it first. It was very tight. At first my leg throbbed and it was painful. It looked swollen. It turned a lot darker. And the pain went away. It felt quite numb. The contest went on for a long time and then the look of my leg and foot and the numbness began to frighten me. I said we should both loosen them at the same time. He would not. More time passed. I loosened mine. He yelled that I owed him a dime. The towel had cut into my thigh, marking it deeply. For a moment nothing happened. And then I screamed with the pain of returning circulation. I thought my leg would burst, would split
open like something that had spoiled. But it did not. It felt weak and strange for a long time. I paid him my dime.

  She had died and it was like cutting a tourniquet that had bitten deep, numbing me. The circulation came back. My soul could burst like something spoiled.

  But it is more than that. A friend told me of something that had happened to him. Long ago. Back in the days of parachute jumps at the fair grounds, of wing walking, of slow barrel rolls. He had been young then. And madly, helplessly, hopelessly in love with the young wife of the star jumper. A lovely girl, he said. And one day, under a high Kansas sky, he stood with her by the grandstand while the biplane circled higher and higher above the fair grounds, buzzing and circling like a lazy insect. And while they talked she kept her eyes on the plane, and talked without nervousness. Her husband was to make his famous delayed jump. High, high over the hard earth the tiny plane waggled its wings and the drummers in the band began to long roll. Then, he said, the girl ceased talking and he saw her swallow once, her white throat moving convulsively.

  The figure dropped, the tiny figure coming down and down through the clear air. He said there was a smell of fall in the fields, that there had already been warning of frost. And the wife held his wrist and she said, “Now!” And the figure still fell. And she said again, “Now!” And the figure still fell and the drum roll broke into a ragged silence and all the crowd breathed at once like some great beast, and the doll figure hit the autumn earth and rebounded from its hardness, and the great beast made a sound half scream and half roar. And my friend said that through that sound her ice fingers were still hard on his wrist and she was still saying, in that cadence, “Now—now—now.” And then she turned toward him with her eyes clear, unblinded, and with a pretty and bewildered half-smile, half-frown of puzzlement, she said, “But he…”