Skulldoggery (14 page)

So there was a problem, and I hadn’t seen her or even telephoned her and was trying to kid myself into feeling good about it. I talked about goliards and other things to bright kids who were in a hurry and to schoolteachers who might possibly get a small raise out of it, and it was no good wanting to see someone and not seeing her, and then all of a sudden I did. It was in the afternoon, and it was hot, and it was, as I said, the third week in July.

I was going upstairs to my apartment, which was a bedroom with a large closet that was euphemistically called a kitchen because it had a small stove and a sink and a refrigerator in it, and on the stairs on the way up I could hear the telephone ringing. I went through the bedroom and into the euphemistic kitchen and got a drink of water at the sink. After drinking the water, which was tepid, I went back into the bedroom, and the telephone was still ringing, so I decided I might as well answer it. I picked it up and said hello, and it was Jolly. I hadn’t heard her voice for a thousand years, not since way back in early June, and it was very good to hear it in one way, and in another way it was very bad, because it wiped out the thousand years in an instant, and everything that had been accomplished in them.

“Hello, hello,” she said.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and said hello again.

“Is that you, Felix?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“I’ve been ringing and ringing.”

“I know. I could hear you on the way up.”

“Did you just get in?”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that the luckiest thing? I mean, getting in just in time to answer and all.”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

“Well, it’s like destiny or something. Don’t you think so? Like it’s meant for us not to miss each other.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t think it’s like destiny or something.”

“Really? It seems very much like it to me. You know perfectly well that things just sort of happen to us, Felix. Like that night in early June. Do you remember how things just sort of happened?”

“Yes, I remember, but I don’t want to think about it.”

“Is that so? Really so? I think about it quite often myself.”

“Well, I do too, as a matter of fact, but I don’t want to.”

“Whyever not?”

“I just think it’s better not to.”

“I suppose you’re right, under the circumstances. It’s very tiresome, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. It’s tiresome as hell.”

“Poor darling. Maybe it would be less tiresome if we quit fighting it.”

“Oh, sure. Less tiresome, maybe, but a hell of a lot worse.”

“You swear so much. Is it necessary to swear?”

“Yes, it is. I’m a little man with glands and an unsolvable problem, and swearing is my only relief. What do you want, Jolly?”

She didn’t answer right away. She said something at the other end of the line, and I could tell that she had turned away from the mouthpiece and was calling to someone there. I couldn’t understand what she said, so I sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the unintelligible and strangely vibrant huskiness of her voice, and after half a minute she turned back to the mouthpiece and me.

“Felix?”

“Yes.”

“What did you say?”

“I asked you what you want.”

So she told me. “You.”

“I don’t mean that,” I said, lying in my teeth.

“Well, it’s really very simple, darling. I want you to come and have a drink with me.”

“Having a drink with you is not simple, Jolly. Seeing you for any reason whatever is not simple. It is complicated and difficult and involves emotional excesses that I do not wish to cope with ever again.”

“Are you afraid to see me?”

“That’s right. Where you are concerned, I am the most miserable coward.”

“We would be very conventional, darling. We would have a drink and talk about impersonal things and maybe shake hands when you leave.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think we would be conventional?”

“I don’t think I’ll come.”

“Darling, you
must
come. It’s absolutely essential.”

“Is it? Why?”

“Because Sid and Fran are here drinking martinis, and I am positively unable to stand it any longer.”

“Sid Pollock and Fran Tyler?”

“That’s right. Fran insisted on martinis, and I told her she would have to make them herself, because I’m no good at it. That was her I was speaking to a minute ago. Did you wonder?”

“Not much.”

“Well, it was, anyhow. She had run out of olives and wanted to know where to find some more, and I was telling her. Wouldn’t you like to have a martini?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Darling, are you going to be stubborn?”

“I hope so.”

“Would you like to know how it was that I suddenly decided that I couldn’t stand it any longer?”

“I’d rather not.”

“What I mean is, I was just sitting here with Sid and Fran, and we were drinking these martinis that Fran had made, and Sid was saying something perfectly ridiculous about just having one to be sociable, and all of a sudden it came to me that I couldn’t stand it any longer. It must have been some kind of insight or something, because I’ve been trying very hard not to think about you too much or let it disturb me because of the way you’ve been acting all nasty and virtuous about the way things are, about you and me and the way we really feel and all, and then I had this sudden feeling that I simply had to see you or die. You know?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Have you ever felt that way, darling? About me, I mean. That you simply had to see me or die?”

“Yes. It was an illusion. I didn’t see you, and I didn’t die.”

“Are you trying to make me unhappy?”

“By not dying?”

“You mustn’t joke with me, Felix. I’m much too miserable to be joked with.”

“I’m not joking. I don’t feel at all like joking.”

“Will you come have the martini?”

“No.”

“You may have something else if you’d rather.”

“I’d rather not have anything at all.”

“It would be very proper, darling. How could it be anything but proper with Sid and Fran all over the place?”

“It would not be proper. I’d sit and look at you and listen to your voice and what I’d be thinking would not be proper at all.”

“Thinking doesn’t count. What a person thinks doesn’t make any difference.”

“On the contrary, it makes a great deal of difference. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. That’s in the Bible.”

“Really? Well, even if it is, it’s a terrible thing to believe. If we really believed something like that, where would we all be?”

“I don’t know. Just where we are whether we believe it or not, I guess.”

“Wouldn’t you like to see me?”

“Yes, I would like very much to see you.”

“Will you come, then?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“If I came and saw you, I would have to start all over again getting used to
not
seeing you, and that is something I want to avoid.”

“Perhaps I’ll die after all, even if you don’t think so.”

“You won’t die. You’ll have another martini instead.”

“If I were to die, would you be sorry?”

“Goodbye, Jolly.”

“Really? Really goodbye?”

“Really.”

“All right. Goodbye, then.”

Her voice sounded very small and sad. I hung up and lay back across the bed and wanted to cry. It was hot in the room. It was a very hot July. Third week in July. I tried thinking about goliards in general and about the goliard I was trying to write a novel about in particular, but goliards seemed very dull, whether in general or in particular, even with a sexy duchess thrown in, and after a while I sat up and reached for the phone and called Jolly back.

“Are you dying or having a martini?” I said.

“Right now I’m having a martini,” she said, “but later I may die.”

“Dying is sticky business. You are wise to settle for a martini, and I’ve decided that I would like to have one too.”

“With me?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not at all sure that I still want you.”

“Well, do you or don’t you?”

“I do.”

“In that case, I’ll be right over.”

I hung up again and got off the bed and went downstairs to my Chevvie. The Chevvie was old and tired, and sometimes it ran, and sometimes it didn’t. This time it did, and I drove to Jolly’s in it.

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