Cloud Nine (12 page)

“I do, but so happens I think I can help.”

“What do you mean, help?”

“Cure him of his obsession.”

“And how are you going to do that?”

“A good sock on the jaw may help.”

“I’d love to see it happen, but I wouldn’t.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“Let’s get back to Casanova: In London he fell for a girl who played him for a sucker. Who took him for money, and then wouldn’t, as they say, put out. He all but lost his mind, it was the turning point of his life. Until then he’d been well-heeled, elegant, and big. After the interlude with her, or without her, actually, he became seedy, necessitous, and petty. I doubt if socking Burl would cure him of his obsession with Sonya, but letting it die of attrition, of not seeing her, of his incorrigible habit of getting somebody else—that might help.”

“Okay then we’ll freeze him out.”

“Gramie, she mustn’t see him.”

“Well, why would she?”

“She mustn’t let him into the house!”

“Well, she knows that, of course!”

“He might invent some trick to get in.”

“Will you stop imagining stuff?”

“She mustn’t go to this place he’s moved into. He’s taken over his father’s old office, in the Harrison Stuart Building. He’s staying there temporarily—”

“I’d call that office a pad.”

“Whatever it is, he’s living there.”

“The pretended private office was all fixed up as a bedroom with bath attached, where your lately deceased husband took lady visitors, mostly women on relief—”

“I know what my late husband did!”

“Then tell it like it was.”

She blew her top, and took a moment to calm down again, touching her lips with her handkerchief, and not for some time becoming herself again. I felt more or less like hell, but discussing Harrison Stuart in an easy, quiet way was something I was incapable of. After a while she said: “I’m trying to say she must never go there.”

“Okay, you said it.”

That afternoon, I talked with more prospects, and one of them kept me until six, so when I got home Helen Musick was there, and Sonya had fixed dinner. It was kind of a funny job, a mixture of Domestic Science,
Joy of Cooking,
and
Mixology,
a pamphlet I had, for drinks. She didn’t drink herself, but had put out martini makings, according to the pamphlet—gin, vermouth, lemon peel, and ice, big rocks that she chopped with an icepick, from lumps she froze in cartons. The icepick she put in a table drawer, by the door that led to the rear part of the house, “to remind me,” whatever that meant. I made a martini for Helen and me and poured a Coke for her, and we visited, very friendly, with Helen warming to her. Then we had dinner: fruit cup, of melon, grapefruit, and strawberries; roast chicken, peas, new potatoes, and salad, and brick ice cream with brandied cherries. We went back in the living room for more conversation, but around ten Helen left, I taking her out to her car. “I just love her,” she whispered. “So natural, so sweet, so friendly—she’s
just
the person for you.”

“What she have to say?”

“Helen? Well, you heard her.”

“Your mother! What did she want?”

“She told you: She brought pictures of me.”

“Where are they?”

“At the office—I haven’t been there since lunch. I came direct from a guy who wants me to sell his house.”

“What did she say? About
her!
Mrs. Sibert?”

“Nothing. I did but she didn’t.”

“And what did you say?”

“The same, no more, no less.”

“Then what did she talk about?”

“Burl, and the torch he’s carrying for you. She says you mustn’t see him. Mustn’t let him in this house, mustn’t go to that pad where he lives.”

“Does she think I’m a kook or something?”

“I don’t know what she thinks, only what she said.”

“Burl’s not what I’m afraid of.”

“Well, I’m not, so that makes two of us.”

“Mrs. Sibert
is.”

“Maybe, but I know nothing to do about it.”

“The thing of it is, what
I do
about it.”

“For
now,
may I suggest?”

“...Suggest
what?”

“Get a cloudy look in your eye.”

“Is that all you ever think about?”

“You know something better to think about—?”

“...There
isn’t
innything better!”

“Peel.”

“Carry me upstairs first.”

“I’m getting hooked on you. Could it be love?”

“I don’t but it’s
sump’m.”

T
HEN, FOR THREE OR
four weeks, came the period of readjustment, when all kinds of things got done, and we shook down to a new life. Mr. and Mrs. Lang came over, and we straightened the announcements out—they sent envelopes to the office, and I addressed them myself, so they’d be ready when the engraved cards came from the stationer. Then I took Sonya to the bank, to open a personal account. I wanted her added to my account, to make a joint thing of it, but she wouldn’t hear of the idea. “I might make some silly mistake,” she said, “that would cost you all kinds of money. So she opened her own account, with a check for $1,000 that I gave her, and that covered that. Then there was her car, as well as her driver’s license. I got her a little blue Valiant, that she picked out for herself, and sent her to driving school, where she learned fast, and got her license in a couple of weeks.

Then at last she met Modesta, my cleaning woman, and wanted to fire her, but I balked. I said, “So maybe she’s not much of a cleaning woman, but what cleaning woman is? There could come a time when you need her bad, so she stays.”

Then came the piano, a beautiful little Steinway, a baby grand, and when Sonya saw it she cried. But when she sat down and played, I wanted to cry. I mean, her playing had something, and I saw why Mother had liked it.

And in between, every few nights, she gave little dinners—for Mother, for her parents, for my friends, by twos and fours and sixes, each better than the last, and all of them together kind of easing off the necessity for some kind of general reception. The drinks kept baffling her, and she would peep at her icepick, there in the table drawer, and perhaps it was how she put it in there with the napkins, but it seemed to be some kind of reminder of what she mustn’t forget, in the way of bitters, cherries, oranges, or vermouth—none of which did she understand.

And then one afternoon at the office, when I’d just got back from lunch, my phone gave two or three rings I sensed as urgent rings, and when I answered Elsie said: “Mr. Kirby, Mrs. Kirby just called in and said get home at once,
quick!”

I got there quick, I’m telling you.

When I saw Burl’s car outside, you may be sure I didn’t waste time on neat, fancy parking. I banged the curb as I banged it, jumped out, went up the front walk at a trot, and stabbed my key in the lock. I was almost afraid to look when I went in the door, but when I did I saw her at once, on one of the living room sofas, a sulky look on her face. On the cocktail table was a tray, with Scotch, ice, and fizz water on it, and off by itself, a half-full highball glass. Burl was at one of the windows beside the fireplace, looking out, and he turned around quick to face me. I hadn’t seen him in quite some time, but he hadn’t changed much. He was a tall, slim guy, as I’ve heard Don Juan was, but there was something rawboned about him, as though plenty of strength was there. He had dark eyes like Mother’s, and a fairly handsome face. It was nicely chiseled, with kind of a curl to the lip, but what caught your eye about it was its color. He had two red spots on his cheeks that gave him an arrogant, hungry look, and when his big brown eyes opened wide there was something almost animal about it, I mean a predator. Don’t get the idea he was just a jerk. Three parts of a somebody were there, and that kept making you wonder why he didn’t add up to more. Then for a flash something else would show that was just crafty, or crooked, or mean, or something—not in harmony with the eyes, the mouth, or the color. He greeted me, “Oh, hello,” very sour, and then snarled at her: “So that’s why you got me a drink—so you could go to the kitchen and put in a call for this crumb?”

“You didn’t think I’d
really
give you a drink?” she snapped at him, “unless a glass of warm piss in the face.”

“That’ll do,” I warned her.
“I’m
here.”

“Okay, but I wouldn’t.”

I asked him: “What are you doing here?”

“Why,” he answered, “calling on Sonya, of course.”

I asked her: “And why did you let him in?”

“Because,” she answered, speaking very slow and distinct, “I knew when he’d spoken his piece, through the pigeonhole, that we’d come to a certain point, where things had to be said, so we could make a fresh start, and then life could go on. So I asked him in and put in my call to you. So now we commence with the saying. Go on,” she told Burl. “Explain to your brother, please, why you’re calling on me.”

He glowered, took a seat, and picked up his glass.

“Put that down,” she snapped.

He did, and she carried it to the table against the wall, the one where she kept her icepick. Then, to him: “Get going. Tell him.”

He glowered some more, but didn’t say anything. She went on, herself: “To begin with, he doesn’t believe, or says he doesn’t, that I had inny miscarriage. He says that’s an invention of yours, on account of your being a fag, unable to do it to me, and figuring a slick way that I could have his child while you pretend it’s yours. And so, he says the child had rights, like to his father’s seminal fluid”—she called it
siminal
fluid—“on his unborn head every day, so he’ll grow up strong and healthy, and normal in every respect, from the vitamins that it has. So he came here to do his duty, by the unborn child in me, out of the goodness of his heart—or something.”

“If you don’t mind I’ve heard enough.”

He got it off in an elegant way, slapped his hands on his knees, and got up. But she moved too, and took position to block him. “You don’t leave this room,” she snarled, “until I say what has to be said.”

“For Christ sake, what else has to be said?”

His elegance was wearing off, so he yelled it, but sat down when I motioned him. She sat down, but not on the sofa, this time. She perched on the cocktail table, to look down on him. “Burl,” she went on very softly, “did you think it funny, when we were going together, and I got so shook at how you were grieving for Dale, that I wouldn’t go with you to that hideaway you had, your father’s old suite of offices, in the Harrison Stuart Building? You want to know why that was? It was because you stink. Because to me you smell like feet, feet that haven’t been washed.”

On that he flinched as though hit with a whip, and screamed, “What do you mean I stink? You bitch! You—”

He had jumped up, so his face was close to hers, but I pushed him back in his seat. She went on: “That hurts, doesn’t it? First to be God’s gift to women, and then find out you make her puke.”

For some moments, there was just the sound of his panting, while she looked down at him, cold as a lizard. Then she went on: “Now about Gramie, about him being a fag. ...”

“Which he is all right. I ran into a guy in Japan who went to Yale with him, and the tales he told, oh brother!”

“The lies he told, I think.”

“If that’s what you think.”

“Burl, your brother’s not inny fag, and never has been one. So how do I know he’s not? He does it to me in the morning, just before we get up; then again in the afternoon, and then again all night. And why he does, he’s encouraged. He’s encouraged by me, all the time. On account that he smells so nice. Burl, he smells like a man. So don’t you come inny more. Could be I’d let you in, and then throw up on you.”

I asked her: “You done?”

“I guess so. Throw him out.”

I took him by the arm, gave a yank, and marched him to the front door. In the hall, he picked up a jacket I hadn’t seen, a gabardine thing that he’d dropped on the phone table. He started to put it on, but I told him: “You can do that outside.” He went out, and on the walk began stabbing his hand into the armhole of the jacket. “Maybe this will help,” I told him, and popped a cross to his jaw. He went down and I told him, “Get up!” and aimed a kick at his slats. He got up and I let him have it again. I was set for another kick when a hand touched my arm. She was there. “No, Gramie, no,” she whispered, very gently.

And then, to him:
“Git!”

He scrambled to his feet, and she picked up the jacket and tossed it to him, making a face and saying, “Pee-yoo,” as though its smell made her sick. Then she lifted my hand to her mouth and kissed my knuckles. “You shouldn’t have,” she whispered.

“I was telling him not to come back...

“But I already had.”

“...In a way he’d understand.”

“Not that I didn’t love it. Did you hit him for me?”

“Who do you think?”

“Then, act like it.”

“Encourage me, encourage me.”

“Let’s run upstairs real quick!”

By then he’d put on his coat and got in his car, on the left side, and wound the right-hand window down. “So brother-o’-mine,” he called in kind of a singsong, “you’re a big bad two-balled studhorse from down by the Rio Grande—but that’s not how Gwenny tells it.”

“And who the hell is Gwenny?”

“Gwenn Cary. Remember?”

Gwendolyn Cary was the one who showed houses on Sunday, but I had known her as Lynn. “...Yeah? And what about her?” I asked.

“Nothing, except she came every night, every night to this house, hoping for a screw, and not once did she get it. But she finally got your number—the boxing stuff at Yale, all that tough talk with the clients, the act you put on with her,
nothing,
she says, but your way of pretending you’re a
he,
when you’re just a cocksucking fag!”

I drove at him with my fist.

He ducked and I landed on air. I grabbed and got the coat, then tried to pull him to the window, so I could swing with my other hand. But he was crouched on the seat, next to the window wind-up, and turned it without my seeing him. Suddenly the glass jammed on my arm and I was caught. He saw his chance, lurched back to the wheel, snapped his ignition on, gunned his motor and let in his clutch, all in one motion. But he had to back up, to swing clear of a car ahead, so I was jerked along the curb, and my feet went out from under me. He cut his wheel and shot ahead, but then stopped so his tires screamed. She was in front of his car, one hand on her hip, a thick look on her face. “Wind down that window!” she snapped.