Clemmie (20 page)

He pulled a dime of his change to him and found the booth and dialed the number and heard her answer and heard, beyond her, the tinsel and rumble of party.

“Where have you been?” Her voice curled and whip-cracked.

“Am I supposed to be there?”

“You promised. You promised faithfully.”

“I forgot.”

“Get here,” she said and hung up.

So he went back to the bar and took his time and listened to the questing lyrics and watched the red mouth make the words and told himself he would not go, even up to the time when he got into the car, right up to the moment when he had the final choice at the stop light, and turned right toward the river.

It was nearly nine when Craig drove into the alley beside the warehouse. The shadows were blue-black. He looked up and saw the light that came from the big window. There were cars parked by the loading dock, and a man in a chauffeur hat sitting on the dock, a pink glow on his face when he drew at his cigarette.

The big metal door was unlocked. When he pushed it open he heard the music from above. It was one of her records that she had played for him last week end on her high-fidelity equipment. Strange music, a stirring, eerie thing by a man named Chavez entitled
Toccata for Percussion
. She had played other music for him and had been amused and slightly contemptuous of his lack of knowledge of them. Bartok, Stravinsky, Sheldon, Stotl. Odd music, full of jagged edges and prolonged discords that seemed to set up a sympathetic resonance in his teeth. And since so much of that music had been a curiously
apt background for the decadencies of their experimentations, that music, as he climbed the stairs, awakened specific memories, hollowing his belly and greasing his hands.

He looked up and saw Clemmie at the head of the stairs talking to a man. They stopped talking and looked down at him. Clemmie wore a white linen shirt, white tailored slacks, a gold mesh belt. Her hair was piled high on her head. She looked dainty, fragile and virginal. The man was elderly, stocky, brown as an Hawaiian. Crisp gray hair curled close to his head. He looked fit and forceful.

“Hello, Craig darling,” Clemmie said in a caressing voice. “I was afraid Daddy was going to have to leave before you got here. Daddy, this is Craig.”

They shook hands. The studio door was shut. Party sounds came from behind the door. George Bennet’s handshake was hard and warm, and he looked at Craig with pale blue eyes startlingly like Clemmie’s.

“I had about all of that group in there that I can take, Craig,” Bennet said.

“Now, Daddy.”

He released Craig’s hand. Sighed. Looked at Clemmie. “Kitten, I’m no fool. I haven’t led what you would call, in any sense of the word, a sheltered life. With a few exceptions, those people in there are degenerate trash. You claim they amuse you. I believe you collect them and expose me to them just as a part of your tiresome persecution of me.”

She pouted. “Now, Daddy, really. No parlor psychiatry. They’re creative people. That’s why they make you uncomfortable. You’re being too self-conscious about it.”

He turned her around gently, slapped her across the back of the slacks and said, “Go on back into your snakepit, kitten, while I talk to your Craig.”

She went meekly in and closed the door. Bennet offered cigarettes and Craig took one, lighted Bennet’s and his own. He felt most uncomfortable.

“Clemmie’s had a lot to say about you.”

“I—I suppose she has, sir.”

“George. Call me George. You’re at Quality Metal Products.”

“That’s right.”

“You look mature enough to know what I’m talking about, Craig. Maybe you’re mature enough to handle her, maybe even understand her.”

“I hope so, sir. George.”

“She’s my only child. I had too much money. I’ve always had too much money. I wanted all the fun and all the games, and the money was nice because I could put her in good schools and tell my conscience I was doing well by her. I rejected her, Craig. And that rejection drove her into a horrible experience when she was fifteen. I won’t go into details, but she had to be institutionalized. And since then she’s never been—completely stable. She needs stability. And maturity. And understanding. I can’t control her.”

“I … understand.”

“I like you, Craig. I like the look of you. I’ve been hoping she would … form an attachment to somebody with his feet on the ground.”

Craig dropped his cigarette and ground it out. “Maybe you don’t understand. I—I’m married.”

There was no expression on Bennet’s face. “She mentioned that.”

“Well, I …”

“I’ve got to get along. I’ll give you a ring. We’ll have lunch one day.” Again the firm handshake, and George Bennet went down the stairs, holding himself and moving like a much younger man.

Craig waited a few moments and then went in. The big studio seemed crowded with people, a confusion of areas of bright light and deep shadow, talk and motion, glitter and change. Clemmie came swiftly to him and her fingers were cool around his wrist as she drew him over to the bar improvised from the large painting table. He fixed a drink for her and one for himself.

“Take care of my poor bewildered, precious little girl,” she said, making her voice deep.

“Something like that.”

“Well, are you?”

He touched his glass to hers. “In one way or another. Do I get dragged around and introduced?”

“Gawd, no. Come over here, Fitzhoney. Now this is a lovely vantage point. Get set for an intensive briefing. The barefoot and raddled blonde doing the strenuous
interpretive dance is named Hildy. She used to do it for a living. The powerful young man who looks like an Indian is her husband, Rick Kelly. He paints. They live out in Belson Village. Rick is about twelve years younger than Hildy. They can’t actually get married or the alimony would stop. Over there on the couch and on the floor by it is the intellectual set. The big pasty one with the ginger hair, the one sounding off now, is Fletch Harrikon, probably refuting Barzun. The small fussy-looking man trying to interrupt him is an essayist named Morton DeVell, and that bored-looking young boy with the curb and the salmon pants is Morton’s latest acquisition. Derivation, pure gutter American. The other member of the group, the mean-looking man with the gray butch cut, is Jake Romney. He’s a collector. He’s fondling his latest acquisition.”

Craig, looking across the room, saw the girl who sat on the floor at Romney’s feet, her head against his thigh. Romney, while listening to Harrikon, rubbed the nape of her neck. She had a coppery skin, a sullen and vital face, a ripe body so precariously confined in a light cotton dress that it looked as though she could burst it with one indolent stretch. Her eyes were half-closed, her feet broad and bare.

“Jake was in Guatemala dickering for some ancient gunk, and he found Esperanza and brought her back on some sort of a tourist permit. He could get in trouble, but probably won’t. She’s only sixteen. Now look over there. That woman in boy clothes, with the silver hair and the Viking face, smoking the little cigar, is Gretchen McRory. She came uninvited. She’s very tiresome. She has a crush on me. The frumpy little overdressed matron type talking to Gretchen is a nothing named Mrs. Hudge. Bernice Hudge. Let me see now. Oh, that businessman type standing alone and looking bored and uncomfortable is Dan Bradley. And the tall, slim, blonde, lovely young thing over there talking to the man in jeans is Taffy Bradley, Dan’s second wife and one of my most long-term friends. The man in jeans, with the beautiful body and the El Greco face, is Raoul Caprichos. He’s a dancer, a true dancer, not a fake like Hildy. He could be a great dancer if he weren’t so lazy. And that’s the lot. Have I missed anyone? No. Daddy thinks they’re terrible unwholesome,
all but Dan Bradley and poor little Mrs. Hudge.” She laughed and when he looked at her he saw that she had had more to drink than he had guessed.

“It’s—an unusual group,” he said uncomfortably.

She gave him a tilted and hoyden look and said, “Poor stuffy Craig. You look as disapproving as Daddy. I’m almost tempted to shock you right out of your socks, darling.”

“Go ahead,” he said, attempting to sound casual. “I might be tougher to shock than you realize.”

“Let me try then. I’ll tell you the wheels within wheels. Young salmon-pants is getting bored with poor Morton. I just hope that when he decides to leave he won’t beat Morton up like the last one did. The center of tension tonight is Raoul, though. When male dancers aren’t queer they’re almost desperately male. Raoul is all male, and he’s been zeroed in on that Indio girl, Esperanza, all evening, without having to say a word to her. Esperanza is aware of it, and so is Jake Romney and so is poor Bernice Hudge, and so is Taffy. Bernice is Raoul’s current means of support. See her look at him with all that naked yearning adoration. Raoul is working her for all he can get. But right now he wants Esperanza. Bernice is alarmed about Esperanza, but actually she should be alarmed about Taffy. Our Taffy has Raoul squarely in her sights, but Raoul isn’t aware of it yet, and Dan Bradley certainly isn’t. And Taffy generally gets what she goes after. It’s an interesting operation to watch. Shocked yet?”

“Not yet.”

She looked up at him with an odd expression. “Then try this, dearest. Taffy has been angling for Raoul ever since I gave her a full report. He’s very virile and practically tireless, dearest. And I take it Dan isn’t.”

He felt his face get red and his muscles tighten. He looked down at her incredulously. “You mean you …”

“But, darling! I wasn’t alone with him! He brought a friend. A little Pole named Yancha with the most incredible breasts I’ve ever seen. It took us days to exhaust him. But does it matter, dear? That was before I knew you.”

He knew his face was contorting. He wanted to smash his glass against her eyes. “You’re sick!” he said.

“Hush, baby,” she said, touching her finger to his lips. “Taffy is giving me a signal.”

She left him. He made a fresh drink. Clemmie and Taffy stood together in a corner, talking earnestly, the tall blonde, the tiny brunette, both fresh and poised and lovely and utterly evil. He looked at all the others, and walked over to where Dan Bradley stood and introduced himself. Bradley was fifty, large, soft, redfaced, an older version of the same physical type as Bill Chernek and Chet Burney.

“Where have I seen you before, Fitz? General Lighting?”

“No. I’m at Quality Metals.”

“Hell, we do a lot of your short haul stuff. B and L Trucking. I owned it. I sold out a while back for a fat capital gains. A man’s a fool to work his ass off when they take it away from you fast as you can make it in salary and profits. But I rigged a consultant deal out of it so I’m still on the old expense account. You known Clemmie long?”

“Not very long, no.”

“Taffy—that’s my wife over there in the blue—she and Clemmie are old buddy buddies. So I have to come to these things. Taffy thinks they’re the apex of glamor or something. These jokers give me a pain. I’ll bet we’re the only sound people in the place, Fitz.”

“They’re different.”

Bradley had a deep laugh. “They sure in hell are. I’m sorry to see that McRory woman here. She always makes some kind of a pass at Taffy. It makes my stomach turn over. That Kelly guy doesn’t seem so bad, but did you ever see one of his paintings? Like somebody threw Easter eggs into an electric fan. My God, if one of my kids ever got mixed up in a crowd like this, I’d blow my stack. But there’s no danger, I guess. They’re good kids. Jimmy is taking aeronautical engineering at M.I.T. and doing damn well. Kit got married her second year of college. I raised hell but it didn’t do any good, I guess. She’s happy enough, she says. The kids are by my first wife, Marge. We broke it up three years ago. Agreed to disagree, like they say. Then I married Taffy. She’s a great girl.”

“She’s very beautiful.”

“She’s got a real sense of humor and a lot of life. Good head on her, too. My friends wondered what an old joker like me was doing getting mixed up with the young
stuff and breaking up my marriage, then marrying a twenty-one year old kid, but when they meet her, they catch on fast. But we don’t see much of the old crowd any more. They’re pretty dull for Taffy. She likes to travel. You know, she’s got friends all over the world. Her people had money, but Taffy got screwed out of her inheritance when she was twenty-one. I’m glad to have the business off my neck. You got to have fun while you’re still alive, Fitz. Next month we’re flying down to São Paulo and have a time. God, you couldn’t even get Marge on an airplane. If I’d stuck with Marge, I’d have spent the next fifteen years easing myself into the coffin. A young girl like that keeps you young, Fitz, and don’t you forget it.” He nudged Craig heavily and winked broadly.

Taffy and Clemmie came over to them, arm in arm, smiling.

“What have you two been cooking up?” Dan Bradley asked. Clemmie introduced Craig to Taffy. Liquor had softened Taffy’s mouth and slightly glazed her eyes. As soon as he could Craig got Clemmie aside.

“You were making that up, weren’t you?” he said.

“Of
course
, darling,” she said, too blandly. “Now I have the most delicious little ending to what I was telling you before. Taffy was talking to Raoul and Bernice. She took a big chance and switched to French, and fortunately Bernice has no French at all. So, right in front of the poor little lamb, Taffy set it up with Raoul. So tomorrow, dear, I’m homeless from two to five.”

He looked beyond Clemmie at Dan and Taffy Bradley. Dan had his big arm around the girl’s slim waist. His thick hand was at the indentation of her waist, his fingers working as he smiled down at her. Taffy, with mask face, was looking across the room, her stare locked with Raoul Caprichos, her underlip swollen.

The evening continued. He drank. He blurred the voices and the movements with drink, but he could not blur the sick and vivid little images in the back of his mind. Raoul and Clemmie. He tried not to look at Raoul. He had a startling breadth of shoulder, lean waist, belly and hips. His dark hair was long, his face pale, his nose sharply beaked. His eyes were flat, green and feline. He had a look of cruelty, humor, and complete and arrogant maleness. Craig knew that Clemmie was ignoring him because
of his sour mood. The intellectuals had switched to French. Morton and the boy in salmon pants were having a bitter, whispered quarrel. Dan Bradley kept trying to make conversation with him. The others ignored him.