Entrapment and Other Writings (20 page)

I always wake up just in time
, he thought, still asleep, sweat just pouring down,
shows there’s someone watching over me
.

In the utmost country of his brain, the bookie heard a far-off mourning bell of silver so thin-wrought nothing save sleep could make it toll. Gloom and the dark-drawn shade, an iron traffic rolling below. His sleep-drawn breath came slower, at three-to-one, than the muted ticking of the clock. He made up his mind that he wouldn’t bother turning over. And in that darker country the bell began to sound like a name going farther than ever from home, like a name too dear for losing. The breath quickened in his throat and he broke out of the barrier of sleep to lie with eyes unseeing, a rumpled man in a new gray suit flung across a rumpled bed. He sat up, fumbling at the open collar. Post-time still some time away.

I have until post-time to reconcile myself
, he decided.

The bar below wouldn’t be open for more than an hour.

His eyes rubbered short-sightedly for the little clock’s prim face. The framed photograph of Native Dancer hung above the party girl as it had always hung. Yesterday’s
Form
lay open on the dresser and today’s lay folded beside it. His gray felt, neatly creased, hung on the dresser mirror, his tie looped neatly about it. About the room were a dozen signs:
DO NOT DISTURB … KEEP OFF THE GRASS … PLEASE LEAVE KEY AT DESK … IF YOU CAN’T STOP PLEASE SMILE AS YOU PASS BY … WE’RE HERE TO SERVE YOU
. Everything was as it had always been.

Except the night-lamp that had burned with such a steady fury a few hours before, but now burned on ever so wanly. All night the little bell had tolled a name too dear for losing, and all night the lamp burned yellow. Now the lamp burned white—as if something had happened in the night that could not now be ever undone by yellow light or white. “Baby,” he told the dresser mirror, “don’t, don’t. Just don’t do it.” And seeing, he picked up the note in the
gloom of the second-rate hotel room, the note that had fallen from his hand when the lamp turned wan.

He had let the right moment go by.
You either take the moment when it’s there or forget it, like a daily double that you’re too damn careful about and it comes through. And will never come again in a million years, and even if it came again in ten, that would still be too late. So let the note go
.

The note wouldn’t go. It stuck in his hand, and even if he tore it up, every line would be with him now. Pretty soon he’ll tear it up and toss it in the basket, and in a day or two or a week or two, or a month, the lines, just the way she put it all, would be forgotten.
I’ll forget every line of it
, he assured himself.
My memory will slip
.

Yet he knew that though he forgot every line, the note would still be sticking to his palm. Though he forgot her name, it would still be with him.

Then there’s no sense crumpling it up
, he compromised.

It’s a combination that can’t come up again
, he told himself.
You have to be careful in my trade
—trying to justify the caution that had cost him more than he was willing to pay, could not afford to pay.
All I did was carry caution a little too far
.

He sat on the bed with the note in his hand, studying the ceiling. But he didn’t look like he really saw it, looked like he needed the glasses on the stand beside the bed. But he didn’t reach for the glasses. It looked like he had read it already; it looked like he was going to keep on reading it forever; it looked like he had never read it before.

Feel as if you’d died is all, Baby. I thought the broads who had to be coaxed were the sweet kind, but I know they’re only the what-will-everyone-think kind. I thought the girls who slept alone till they got a deposit down were the good kind. Baby, your kind is the only good kind. And you were the best of your kind
.

He glanced at the clock: a quarter to eight.
I’ll get through the barrel all right now. I’m supposed to send a wire saying, “Good luck and God bless you,” only I won’t. I’d rather count cracks in the mirror
. And the sky began to fall.

He got up and looked down the long hall to keep it from falling any further. But the hall looked a hall that had no season at all. The door held a shaky threat:
DO NOT DISTURB
.

I’ll disturb whoever I’m damned pleased to disturb
, he decided.
NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR VALUABLES NOT CHECKED AT THE DESK
, the mirror mocked.
You leave me cold
, he told the mirror.
And I’ll use all the towels I want
, he promised.
PLEASE LEAVE KEY AT DESK
, the management apologized.
I thought you’d change your tone
. He was satisfied and fumbled in his pockets for a tip, a valuable he’d forgotten to check, a cigarette, or anything at all.

For some reason he caught the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign between his palms like a man who has trapped a moth and can’t make up his mind whether to crush it or let it free. After a moment he let it free.

“Wait till your goddamn sky falls in. You may get it back in place but it’ll never look the same.”

I could send a wire saying, “Good luck to all three of you,” and have the messenger hand it to the best man
.

You tried that route before
, he reminded himself.
It didn’t work. Just wire, “They’re running in the mud here today too, Baby.”

But they’ll run all the same. Let them all run in the mud
. And the rain came on again to make up for lost time, as if fearing there wouldn’t be mud enough by post-time.

I have to go down to the lobby and tell the people they’ll run in the mud …

Maybe I’d better just sit and count the cracks
.

Baby, that half-wild look you had in love, and that old-fashioned smile when love was over
.

She had loved the great city’s electrified forests stretching out endlessly from the tiny hub of the roof. When her eyes first looked at him, from this same pillow, the light that burned now so wanly had burned a deeper yellow.

And the smell of her nakedness—at once that of a girl freshly bathed and that of a woman of passion so mature … he had felt he held both the young girl and the woman
.

For a moment, he had no breath left.

“He says it’s the little girl he loves in me.”

Pops, you’re missing one hell of a woman
.

He made his plans for the rest of the morning.

I could go out and get breakfast any time now. One large orange juice, two eggs up, coffee black. Get suit pressed
. He prided himself on staying neater, generally speaking, than the suckers.
And pick up the bets downstairs. Then I’ll reconcile myself
.

Downstairs was the bar where, no matter how riotous the night before had rung, by morning there abided a dusky hush like the muted stillness of a cathedral during early Mass, when only the rasp and clink of currency stirred amid the muted organ’s notes.

House odds for both bettors and parishioners were, the bookie knew, forbidding.

I could get a fifth at the drug store and call that breakfast
.

I could go back to sleep. I could write a mutuel ticket and tear it up
.

No
, he changed his plans again,
I’ll reconcile myself first. Here I am with all my bridges burned. No use putting it off. Here, right now. Okay, here I go
. He stood up to begin but didn’t know how.
Breathe deeply, that’s how to begin
. He breathed deeply and exhaled. “You made a sucker out of me, Baby,” he said aloud and sat down.

He picked the note off the floor.

Six stories below them the river had reflected whiskey ads and starlight. And never a mail plane or helicopter, beacon or star had found them out, there in their secret place where rainbows of neon spanned the deeps. Where stars were paired, in the river’s deeps, so that each star seemed leaning each to each.

Those first hours together had been no more than those of any side-street solitary, any bar-wise, woman-wise bookie falling in love with any brash young chick from the suburbs wearing white batiste.

It was autumn, but summer came back, a full week, just for them …

Marriage was a bit he had never regarded seriously, one bit in which he had never seen himself. Marriage, he had always felt, was a standing joke. He had mocked it. She had slipped onto her finger a ring that he might have found in a box of Crackerjacks. Its stones, as it were, were plastic dice. He had slipped it onto her finger intending mockery, a mock marriage; instead she had put her lips to it. The mockery failed. The summer air had married them.

Then the rain came on to make up for lost time. All ran in the mud. “You couldn’t bear those squares I have to put up with for a single hour,” she had assured him early in the game. So he had never gone into her country, albeit he had been sufficiently presentable at the time. Beauty had come into his own patch, between billboard and bar, instead.

Beauty, the fog is blowing off. I hope things never get too clear
.

Yet bleak or bright, his own side had been better lighted. Where now by the light of one ordinary lamp the self-same clock tick-tocked, tick-tocked. As it had that first moment he had breathed in her breath. Had counted the pleasured moments off when his lips had explored her yielding breasts.

Had felt her impudent nipples stiffen and heard her low breath … 
wide you go
was how he had instructed her white thighs.
In
had been love’s invitation.
Now
had been the order of love’s hourless night when Baby had been giving the orders—“
Now
. For all you’re worth.” And her voice had had a deep throat rasp, he had caught a girl-in-love scent. Even now his stomach muscles contracted a little from that remembered odor. Then all scents drifted down to nothing more than the odor of a sliver of discolored Lifebuoy … all things washed down, all colors faded, everything burned off from deep orange to ash white.

As the lamp that at midnight had burned like blood everlasting shown now in the heartsick morning light no stronger than ash.

Now, my Wide-and-Dearest. Now, my Now-and-Never-Again. For all you and I are worth together …

“If you let me go, I’ll hate you,” she had warned him on their last night together. Then she had taken the shade off the lamp and shone the light right into his eyes, let its glare help her hate him with an icy hate. When he had tried to shield his eyes, she had put his hands to his sides.

“How can I hate you with an ice-cold hate if you won’t cooperate?” She wasn’t trying to be funny. Baby had just never run into anyone who didn’t do as he was told.

Then the shade was back on the lamp and he had simply turned over onto his side and thought drowsily, “Hate away.” A marvelous feeling of satiety followed this, coupled with his waning desire, and he had wanted to escape, but to his surprise, she had clung to him still, eyes open now, lips uttering endearments and phrases that shocked him …

Her crying had awakened him. She was sitting up, sniffing into a kleenex. “I’m no good at hating,” she had confessed. “I’m not quite strong enough to really hate you. I don’t have any experience at it. I don’t even come close to the real thing. I’ve worked for six minutes by my watch to get into a real ice-cold rage. I almost had it. I could have killed you with a hammer without a qualm. Cold rage. But you went on sleeping like a baby. Tears began in my throat and went to my brain—I felt it getting out of control, I really went sort of crazy. I didn’t come around until I felt your slap—it showed you were concerned for me after all. But I know I’m no good at ice-cold rage. I’m not strong enough for that sort of thing. I’m not strong enough to hate you.”

“You’re strong enough for two,” he had reassured her.

Baby
, he remembered with satisfaction now,
you really looked a mess after that one
.

That had been the first time it had been no good. And never again
was the way it had been high up in the rainbow forest when the homecoming stars had come down.