Short Stories: Five Decades (29 page)

“Your life line is short.”

Dutcher took his hand back gravely. “Thank you very much,” he said, his hand still aware of the soft promising feel of Maxine’s fingers. “Now I’m all cleared up about myself. I certainly am glad I brought you down to San Diego.”

“It’s all there in the palm,” Maxine said defensively. “I didn’t put it there.” She drew her collar around her. “Let’s get out of this joint.” She walked toward the door, with all the men in the room watching her.

“You’re not her type,” Dolly whispered to Dutcher. “She told me in the ladies’ room. She likes you, but you’re not her type.”

Dutcher shrugged. “Palmists don’t like me. It’s something I’ve always noticed.”

He caught up with Maxine and held her elbow as they walked toward the car. “Now,” he said, “we come to a most delicate point. We—uh … We have to go to a hotel—and—I …”

“I want my own room,” Maxine said firmly.

“I just thought I’d ask.” Dutcher shrugged.

“A gentleman doesn’t ask,” Maxine said.

“What does a gentleman do for girls?” Dutcher asked.

“He doesn’t talk about it! It just happens.”

“It never occurred to me before,” Dutcher said as they got into the car. “But you’re absolutely right.”

They could only get a two-room suite at the hotel, because it was all filled up, and there were some other people from Hollywood in the lobby and Dutcher tried to appear as though he were in no way connected with Maxine. If only she didn’t have that red fox, he thought. And all day tomorrow, at the races, there would be people he knew, and he’d have to try to be eight paces in front of her or at the betting windows or at the bar …

Upstairs, Maxine primly put her bag down next to Dolly’s in one of the two rooms. Machamer looked at Dutcher.

“We have the west wing,” Dutcher said, and walked into the next room.

“Look.” Machamer followed him. “This was supposed to be a holiday for Dolly and me. She lives at home and her mother prays to God every night to save her sinful daughter’s soul.” Dolly came in and looked at them. Then she giggled.

“Go in and talk to Maxine,” Machamer shouted to Dutcher.

Dutcher shrugged. “I see my duty,” he said.

He went into the next room. Maxine was sitting neatly on the bed, her hands folded, her eyes reflectively on the ceiling. “Maxine, old girl,” Dutcher said.

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m tired,” Dutcher said wearily. “There’s a war on. I give up. There’re two beds inside. I promise not to touch you. For Machamer and Dolly …”

“Let Machamer be a gentleman!” Maxine said loudly. “For one night.”

Dutcher went back into the other room. “She says let Machamer be a gentleman for one night,” he said. He took off one shoe. “I’m going to sleep.”

Dolly kissed Machamer. She hung on, her arms wound around his neck and Dutcher made a big business of carefully arranging his shoes neatly in line under a chair. Dolly came over and kissed Dutcher lightly. “You sure make a big hit with the girls,” she said, and went in.

Machamer and Dutcher put on their pajamas and turned off the light and Machamer got into bed. Dutcher went to the door of the girls’ room. “Latest bulletin,” he announced. “Machamer has promised not to lay a hand on me. Good night.”

The girls laughed and Machamer roared and Dutcher joined them, the two rooms resounding wildly with laughter, as Dutcher climbed into bed.

Outside, the newsboys, far off along the dark streets of San Diego, cried that England had declared war.

Dutcher lay in his bed and listened to the newsboys’ cries, swelling and wailing in the streets, and looked up at the dark ceiling; and the hour and the war, which had been kept off all night by drink and speed and laughter and lust, like lions warded off by a trainer’s chair, now closed in on him. The cavalryman in Poland now lay across the dusty Polish road, his mouth open in surprise and death and his dead horse beside him and the boy in the German bomber flew back from Warsaw saying to himself, “One more time. I came back one more time.”

“It’s for Dolly’s sake,” Machamer’s voice came across the small dark abyss between the beds, grating, but young and sorrowful. “It’s nothing to me, but she’s crazy to grab every hour. Do you want to go to sleep, Ralph?”

“No.”

“She wants to grab everything. Everything. She hates to go to sleep. She always has her hands on me. She’s going to die.” Dutcher heard Machamer sigh and the bedsprings click gently and the newsboys coming nearer. “She’s sick; the doctors can’t cure her; she has Bright’s disease. She gets numb, she feels as though an eye is falling out, an ear … That’s why she takes those pills. She doesn’t tell anybody except me. Her family doesn’t know, and her boss …”

Dutcher lay rigid in his bed, looking up at the ceiling.

“I don’t love her.” Machamer’s voice was harsh but small. “I tell her I do, but … I like other girls.… I tell her I do. She doesn’t want to lose an hour.”

“Sssh,” Dutcher said gently. “Don’t talk so loud.”

“Even now,” Machamer marveled. “Even now my voice would break down a wall. Are you sad, Dutcher?”

“Yes,” said Dutcher.

“It came funny, didn’t it?” Machamer asked.

“You hardly felt it.” Dutcher talked with his eyes closed, his head straight back on the pillow. “You were waiting for it for six years and expecting it, and each time a shot was fired you’d say, ‘Here it is,’ but it wasn’t, and you read the papers every day, and by the time it came you didn’t feel it at all. We’ll feel it later, we’ll feel it later …”

“What’re you going to do now?”

Dutcher laughed. “Go to sleep.”

“Good night,” Machamer said.

“Good night.”

The bomber was coming down to a landing and the boy banked and looked down to see that the landing gear was out and he, Dutcher, was on his way with a fat citizen in a red fox-trimmed suit to a rat-eaten Mexican racetrack, where the youngest horse running was at least nine years old, where the Hollywood people in their scarves and dark glasses and buckskin shoes, with their agents and beauty-contest winners for the week end gambled their crazy easy money in the dusty Mexican heat, talking of sex and dollars, saying over and over, “Colossal, terrific, he’s hot this year, it lost Metro a million.” The war was on, and it was on here, too, among these idle, unbombed, frivolous people. I’d stay here, in Hollywood, Dutcher thought, if I could bear
Murder at Midnight
and all the Murders at Midnight to come. I don’t want to write any more books. An honest book is a criticism. Why should I torture myself into criticizing this poor, corrupt, frantic, tortured, agony-stricken world? Later, let the criticism come later.…

The newsboys wailed in the streets below.

Here I am, Dutcher thought, in a hotel room far from home, with a dying and unloved girl, cheated of an hour, and a movie writer who wanders like a refugee from studio to studio, week in, week out, beggary plain on his face, looking for a job, and a palm-reader who could have been bought for the night with three compliments and ten minutes of polite charade. Fickle, jealous, selfish, moody, not successful, short of life.

“England, England …” The boys’ voices, wavering in the night wind, came faintly through the window. I’m ashamed of myself, Dutcher thought. I meet the tragic hour in a mournful and ludicrous costume.

Now is the time, Dutcher thought, for some noble and formidable act. Who will supply me with a noble and formidable act?

“I would like to speak to the continent of Europe,” Dutcher said aloud.

“Huh?” Machamer murmured.

“Nothing.” Dutcher pulled the covers up to his chin. “You know what I’m going to do?”

“Huh?”

“I’m going to get married. I’m going to have a wife and live on a farm and grow corn and wheat and grapes and watch the snow fall and slaughter pigs and become involved with the seasons. For a little while I want to become involved in an eternal motion.”

“Sure,” said Machamer. “I just dreamed Mervyn LeRoy was offering me a job. Isn’t it too bad, isn’t it too, too bad …” His voice trailed off.

“Involved with the seasons,” Dutcher said, rolling it on his tongue. “Involved with the seasons.” He closed his eyes.

Now the bomber stopped and the boy jumped out, feeling the ground solid under his feet and cold in the early morning. The boy grinned and the sweat of relief ran down under his arms and he said, “I made it, I made it again,” as he went off across the field to report to his commanding officer.

Night, Birth and Opinion

“
T
ents!” Lubbock was saying, gloomily swishing his beer around in his glass, his voice echoing hoarsely in the empty shadows of Cody’s bar, dark and almost deserted now, deep in the heel of the winter night. “Yuh join the army, yuh sit in a tent and freeze yer tail all winter. I’m a civilized man, I’m used to living in steam-heated apartments.”

He looked around him challengingly. He was a big man, with huge longshoreman’s hands and a long neat scar down one side of his face. The other two men at the bar looked carefully into their beer.

“National defense,” the bartender said. The bartender was a pale little man in a vest and apron, with pale, hairy arms and a long, nervous nose. “Everybody has to make certain sacrifices.”

“The trouble with this country,” Lubback said loudly, “is there are too goddamn many patriots walking the streets.”

“Don’t say anything against patriotism,” said the man nearest Lubbock. “Not in my presence.”

Lubbock looked consideringly at him. “What’s
your
name?” he asked.

“Dominic di Calco,” the man said clearly, showing that he was not to be bullied. “I don’t see anything wrong with being a patriot.”

“He doesn’t see anything wrong with being a patriot,” Lubbock said. “An Italian patriot.”

“They need you,” said Sweeney, the man on the other side of Lubbock. “They need you bad—in Greece.”

The others laughed. Sweeney looked around him proudly, his little creased red face beery and complacent.

“I’m an American citizen,” Di Calco shouted. “After you boys get through laughing.”

“You know what I’d like to see?” Sweeney waved his arms, laughing. “I’d like to see the Italian army try to invade Red Hook.”

“I’m not in favor of Mussolini,” Di Calco shouted. “But keep yer trap shut about the Italian army!”

“Three Irishmen,” Sweeney said. “It would take three Irishmen about a half hour. The Italians’re wonderful when they fight other Italians.”

“Would you like to step outside, whatever yer name is?” Di Calco asked quietly.

“Boys!” the bartender spread his hands pacifically. “Remember, we’re in America.”

“Remember,” Di Calco said, “I offered you satisfaction, whatever yer name is.”

“My name is Sweeney!” Sweeney shouted. “I got two cousins in the Royal Air Force!”

“That’s a hot one,” Lubbock said. “A man by the name of Sweeney with two cousins in the English army. Yuh can just about imagine”—Lubbock spoke reasonably to the bartender—“what type of Irishman yuh could get to fight in the English army.”

“What do you want?” the bartender asked. “You want to disagree with every patron of this saloon?”

“That must be some family, the Sweeneys.” Lubbock went over and clapped Sweeney on the back.

“They’re fightin’ for you and me,” Sweeney said coldly. “They’re fightin’ to preserve our way of life.”

“I agree,” said Di Calco.

“Yeah,” said the bartender.

Lubbock turned on the bartender. “What’s
your
name?”

“Cody,” said the bartender. “William Cody.”

Lubbock glared at him. “You kidding me?”

“I swear to God,” said the bartender.

“They got a statue in Wyoming. Buffalo Bill. Any relation?” Lubbock asked.

“It’s a pure coincidence,” the bartender said.

“Beer, Buffalo Bill,” Lubbock said. He watched the bartender draw the beer and place it before him. “From the very hand,” Lubbock marveled. “A man with a statue in Wyoming. No wonder you’re so patriotic. If I had a statue in Wyoming, I’d be patriotic too.”

“Pure coincidence,” protested the bartender.

Lubbock drank half his glass of beer, leaned back, spoke quietly and reflectively. “I just love to think of two Sweeneys in England protecting my way of life. I just love it. I feel safer already.” He smacked the bar savagely. “Tents! We’ll be sitting in tents in the middle of winter!”

“What do you want?” Di Calco said. “You want Hitler to come over here and clean up?”

“I hate him; I hate the bastard,” Lubbock said. “I’m a Dutchman myself, but I hate the Germans.”

“Give the Dutchman a beer,” Sweeney said. “On me.”

“I hate the Germans,” Lubbock went on, “and I hate the English and I hate the French and I hate the Americans …”

“Who do you like?” the bartender asked.

“The Italians. You can’t get them to fight. They’re civilized human beings. A man comes up to them with a gun, they run like antelopes. I admire that.”

Di Calco tapped warningly on the bar. “I’m not going to stand here and have the Italian army insulted.”

Lubbock ignored him. “The whole world should be full of Italians. That’s my program. My name is Lubbock, boys. I come from a long line of Dutchmen, but I hate them all. If the British’re defending my way of life, they can stop right now. My way of life stinks.”