Candy (6 page)

Once she had gotten to her feet the nurse quickly regained her professional efficiency. She righted the bed, replaced the mattress and bedding, and then, with a lusty heave, she lifted Uncle Jack—not doubting for a moment that he was Mr. Christian—set him in it and put his nightgown back on him.

Having tidied up and satisfied her sense of order, she paused and looked about the room. She was not at all certain what had happened . . . surely there had been a girl fornicating with—with the patient . . . but where was she?

One thing was evident: the patient’s head was bleeding and would have to be dressed immediately. She sighed heavily and gave a last, brief glance to her assailant before going to get the gauze and antiseptic.

Though unconscious, the patient’s smile—the same sweet smile as before—fashioned his mouth and illumined his face, rather angelically.

N
EXT MORNING
C
ANDY
stepped out of the shower’s biting embrace, now feeling fresh and restored after a sound sleep; she slipped on her bathrobe and hurried down to get breakfast.

Before starting her toast and coffee, she turned on
The Sunrise Symphony,
a morning program of recorded music. Soon she heard the disquieting chords of Bartok’s
Miraculous Mandarin Suite.

“Darn!” she said, realizing she’d missed the nerve-shattering introduction and the hideously discordant section where the elderly sex pervert is murdered by gangsters.

The orchestra was just finishing the formless waltz of the syphilitic prostitute as Candy was putting bread in the toaster, and it was about to begin the anguished cacophonies of the scene where the old mandarin is stabbed and strangled, when the telephone rang. . . .

“Hello?” (It was Aunt Livia’s voice.) “Is Uncle Jack there?”

“Oh!” Candy said, feeling very confused and embarrassed. She had succeeded in putting the previous day’s events out of mind and now, at the sound of Livia’s voice, it spilled back in untidily—all of it—the scene at Halfway House with the Kingsleys, the visit to the hospital . . . Oh, why had she done it! . . . But Uncle Jack’s need of her had been so great, so—so
aching. . .
.

“Would you mind putting your Uncle Jack on the phone!” said Livia.

“Why, Aunt Livia, whatever are you talking about?” Candy asked in real, almost relieved, bewilderment.

“Well, I just happened to notice that my husband didn’t come home last night,” said Aunt Livia with heavy sarcasm, “and for some strange reason I thought he might be in
your bed!”

“Uncle Jack?
Do you mean
Uncle Jack?”

“That’s right.
Uncle Jack!”

With a loud click the golden slices sprang up in the toaster, one of them jumping right out and tumbling on the floor.

“But—but what makes you think he’s
here?”
Candy said, nervously picking the toast up from the floor.

“Put him on the phone!”
Aunt Livia demanded.

“Now, Aunt Livia, there’s no need to—”

“Cut the crap!” she thundered.

“But Uncle Jack isn’t here I tell you! He
isn’t here!”

For a few seconds there was silence, as if Aunt Livia was digesting this information. Finally she replied with tremendous authority:

“Put that rat-bastard on the phone!”

“But Aunt Livia—”

“Cut the crap, you little tight-puss bitch!”

Candy summoned all her dignity. “I’m sorry, Aunt Livia,” she said, “but I don’t propose to be talked to like that by
anyone.
Furthermore, I simply don’t know
what
you’re talking about. Good-bye!”

With that she replaced the phone firmly in its cradle and stood up to brush off her bathrobe, for she’d been unconsciously crumbling the piece of toast she’d picked up and her lap now was completely covered with it. She was quite certain that she had done the ‘right thing.’ Really, there were limits to—to how much vulgarity one could permit and—

The phone rang again, cutting short this train of thought.

“Where do you suppose he is then?” Livia asked in a quite normal tone of voice, just as if the conversation had not been interrupted.

“I’ve no idea,” Candy replied. “Have you tried phoning his office?”

“His office? No, I haven’t tried that. That’s not a bad idea. I’ll do that right now. . . . I’ll catch up with that rat-ass and believe me, when I
do . . .”
and she hung up.

Candy sat silently for a second, her eyes fixed on the telephone. She was waiting for it to ring again, and for that raucous, unladylike voice to complete its demolition of the lovely summer morning. As for the
Miraculous Mandarin Suite,
it had come to an end and the radio was now delivering an extremely nasal rendition of “The Wabash Cannonball.”

Candy bit her full lower lip in annoyance, and had just begun to pour herself a cup of espresso coffee when the bell rang again.

She placed the half-filled cup on the table with a little crash of exasperation and picked up the phone. There was no answer—and yet, the bell kept ringing. Then she realized that it was the front door; she had absurdly confused it with the phone.

Ordinarily she would have thought of such an error as no more than amusing; but not this morning. Coming after the stormy events of the past few days, this little stumble that her mind had made struck her as being significant—ominous as well. My nerves have had about as much as they can stand, she thought as she went to answer the door.

In the doorway stood a very thin old man dressed in a messenger boy’s uniform.

“Telegram for Miss Christian,” he said. He was blinking violently.

Candy noticed how slender and delicate his wrist was when she took the envelope. She looked at him again. He seemed to be on the verge of tears. “Is there anything wrong? I mean are you feeling ill, or—”

“Something in my eye,” he explained.

“Something in your eye! Well, for goodness sake don’t
rub
it like that!”

(He had taken out a handkerchief and was patting at his eye.)

Candy had to stoop down to look into his eye—he was quite short. As she did so her bathrobe opened considerably and, since this took place a few inches before his face, he found himself staring at her bare throat and splendid young breasts. . . .

“No, not that way,” she ordered, “look up!”

“Boy!”
he muttered enthusiastically, squinting as best he could with his watery and twitching eye at Candy’s luscious chest.

Even if he
had
looked up it wouldn’t have been much good—he was standing in the doorway with the light behind him and it was impossible to see the speck in his eye. Impulsively, the young girl took him by the lapels of his jacket and drew him into the room where she turned him this way and that trying to get the proper light.

After a few minutes of this she ended up sitting on a sofa with the elderly messenger boy stretched out beside her and his head in her lap.

He had yielded limply when she had bent him down backward and now, as she leaned over him, her left breast became almost entirely disengaged from the bathrobe and loomed above his face. He snapped at it weakly, missing it by a few inches.

While Candy’s attention was wholly engaged in trying to remove the speck from his eye, the elderly messenger boy continued to regard her breast peevishly, and now and again lunged feebly, like a sick seal, at it. Finally, he paused, his mouth watering profusely as Candy stared at the red, winking eye. “I’ll have it out in a jiffy!” she announced cheerfully, then ordered: “Hold still!” And, as she twisted to and fro, the flimsily attached bathrobe really opened and
both
her pert, inquisitive young breasts appeared. “Don’t move!” she admonished. “I
think
I see it!”

The aged fellow held still as requested, but an instant later, when Candy leaned forward abruptly, bringing her fantastic breasts to within an inch of his face, he lost all semblance of control and dived desperately into the open bathrobe.

Candy was so taken aback that she sat stock-still at first, and for a few seconds the thin old man rooted and wallowed between her breasts, rubbing them with his nose and muttering wildly to himself.

“Now
listen
. . .” she said, suddenly realizing what was up. “What in the
world
are you doing!” and she pushed him firmly from her lap.

He fell immediately to the floor and lay there on his back with his frail limbs waving slowly like a beetle’s. Then he managed to stagger to his feet and shuffle to the open door. . . .

“Good-bye, darling,” he gulped, pausing there and blinking rapidly four or five times.

Candy waited till she was sure he was gone before she crossed the room and shut the door.
“Well!”
she said to herself. “I wonder what the messenger-service people would think if they knew that one of their messengers—” She stopped, noticing the telegram which she’d all but forgotten in the confusion. She stooped and got it from the floor, opened it and read:

E
XPECTING YOU HOSPITAL
10:30
A.M.

D
R.
J. D
UNLAP.

Good Grief, I’ll barely have time to
dress,
she thought and shuddered slightly—a chill feeling of foreboding had come over her as she read the message, and she couldn’t shake it off. . . .

By taking a taxi she managed to arrive at the Racine County Hospital at 10:30 on the dot. She hurried into the first door she saw, which didn’t happen to be the main entrance, and found herself standing in a gleaming long corridor flanked by spotless white doors. She started walking tentatively, looking for an office of some kind where she could state her business. Each door seemed very much like the next and she finally opened one at random, and went in, hoping to find a nurse or someone who would be able to tell her where to find Dr. Dunlap.

She saw at once that she was in one of the sickrooms. There was a disheveled bed, and squatting on the floor for some reason was the occupant.

It was a woman in her seventies with very long gray hair and wearing a white nightgown.

“Git out!” she said in a cranky voice.

“Oh!” Candy said. “Oh—I’m so sorry,” and she carefully shut the door.

After this she was more prudent, but when she came to a door with a bronze plaque on it on which was engraved
OSPHRESIOLAGNIA,
she paused. From inside she could hear the clicking of a typewriter. It stopped when she knocked and a deep masculine voice said:
“Come in.”

Seated behind a desk was a dark good-looking young man. His deep brown eyes were the most sensitive and the most intelligent that Candy felt she had ever seen, and his nose was thin, with a fine aristocratic curve.

Her heart gave a little jump in that first instant of their meeting, and she even had time to think: Perhaps all the rest of my life I shall recall this moment—and then the silence was broken by his sonorous voice, as he cleared his throat and leaned forward slightly, placing his hands gracefully, almost protectingly, on the typewriter.

“Are you here for masturbation?” he inquired briskly.

“I beg your pardon?” said Candy. It was just possible, she thought, that she hadn’t heard right.

The young man held his fist up and agitated it meaningfully, yet with such a disinterested air that his gesture-ordinarily such a smutty one—seemed quite abstract and inoffensive. “You know—onanism—‘
beating your meat,’”
he explained.

“Oh no!” Candy declared, quite taken aback. “I’m not sure why I’m here . . . but it certainly couldn’t be for
that!”

“You said ‘that’ in a peculiar sort of way—as if you thought there were something wrong with the subject,” observed the young man behind the desk, his eyes flashing belligerently.

“Well I—I said, er—I didn’t mean to make a
value
judgment,” she stammered, terribly flustered.

“I see,” he said coldly.

“But isn’t it unhealthy? I mean, masturbation
is
bad for the complexion, isn’t it?”

The young man stared at her with scientific detachment and said nothing.

What she had just uttered sounded idiotic to her and she tried frantically to think of some way to repair the damage, but nothing came to mind. She stood, blushing crimson for an unbearable few seconds, then, unable to stand the tension any longer, she wheeled and bolted—dashing out the door so precipitously that she collided with a nurse who was coming down the hall.

The nurse—a small stocky brunette—stepped back, clenched her fist and prepared to punch Candy in the jaw. (You had to be ready for trouble every moment in a hospital; and anyone who came flying violently out of
that
door could quite easily be psychotic.)

Candy excused herself as best she could and asked the nurse where the administration office was.

“Well, it’s not in
there,”
the nurse replied warily, indicating the room Candy had just rushed out of. (She still wasn’t sure she might not be dealing with some kind of raving, anal-erotic maniac.)

“Yes,” Candy said dryly, “I found that out. . . . But whose office
is
that? I mean there was a young man in there who . . .”

“Dr. Irving Krankeit,” the nurse cut in.

“Dr. Irving Krankeit,” Candy repeated musingly. “And he’s—?”

“He’s our staff psychiatrist.”

“Oh, I see! I was just wondering because some of the things he said were—Well, I understand of course, if he’s a psychiatrist . . .”

The nurse nodded sympathetically, then growing secretive, she suddenly grasped Candy’s elbow and drew her several paces down the hall. “Dr. Krankeit’s theories
are
unconventional,” she confided in a low voice.
“Very
unconventional.”

“Oh?”

The nurse grew even more conspiring. Her voice threatening to descend to a whisper, she said: “Yes,
he
believes that the way to clear up our mental problems, and to settle all the troubles in the world is to get everyone to—” She broke off, regarding the young girl uncertainly.