The Wounded and the Slain Page 5

  When that picture was gone, he tried to pay physical attention to Cora. But of course it couldn’t work: there was nothing there to work with. It was the same as it had always been, with Cora seemingly attempting to do the best she could, with her gasps and groans the sounds of forced and painful effort instead of head-bunting pleasure. The sounds she made were down-right pitiful, and more than once he felt so much pity that he couldn’t continue with it, he had to let go of of her in the instant that his arms fell away, letting her know it was postponed tonight and he’d take a rain check on it, he heard her gasping again. Only now it was more of a sigh. It was a sigh of relief.

  So that was the way it was in the bedroom with

  Cora. He put up with it for nine weeks and ten weeks and in the middle of the eleventh week he couldn’t stand it any longer. He remembered now it was a Thursday night with the alarm clock showing one-fifteen, with Cora sound asleep in the other bed and himself wide awake staring at the green numbers on the face of the clock. The green became active, its circular phosphorescence coiling out from the face of the clock like a reptile emerging from a hole. Then it crawled toward him and into him and he climbed out of bed and started to get dressed.

  Some thirty minutes later a taxi dropped him off at the corner of Fiftieth Street and Tenth Avenue.

  He walked into Hallihan’s and went up to the bar. There weren’t many customers in the place. He saw a sprinkling of the regulars, the little Spanish-looking man whose clothes needed pressing, the fat shapeless gray-haired woman drinking beer, a few middle-aged Teamsters Union organizers wearing their union buttons, and one of the booths contained two worried-looking men who wore sharp-cut suits of cheap fabric and gave the impression that they’d just emerged with empty pockets from a floating crap game. Another booth had a lone occupant, a beefy blonde pug-nosed woman, heavily painted and obviously a professional looking for a customer. The bartender stood there waiting for his order and he asked for a bonded bourbon. The bartender poured it, rang up the sale and gave him his change, and started to move away. He said, “Hold it, Mike.”

  The bartender turned and looked at him.

  He said, “What is it, Mike? What’s the matter?”

  The bartender shrugged and didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t you remember me?” he asked, smiling.

  “Sure,” the bartender said. “Sure, I gotcha checked.”

  He let the smile drift away. He knew the smile was useless, it wasn’t doing any good at all. And then, in the quiet that seemed to thicken and close in like fog, he sensed that the other drinkers were looking at him.

  He heard the bartender say, “Anything on your mind?”

  “I’m looking for Lita.”

  “She ain’t around,” the bartender said.

  “Can you tell me where she is?”

  “Sure,” the bartender said. “She’s in the cemetery.”

  The quiet became very thick and it pressed against him. He had the feeling it would crush him if he didn’t break through it and say something.

  He said, “Tell me, Mike.”

  “Sure, I’ll tell you,” the bartender said. His voice was louder now, somewhat oratorical, as though he wanted all the others to hear. “She went to pieces, that’s what happened. She hit the bottle like I never seen it hit before. We kicked her out so many times I lost count. But that didn’t do no good. If she couldn’t get it here, she’d get it somewhere else. So one night a coupla weeks ago she’s plastered and trying to make it across Tenth Avenue and a big truck comes along. The driver claimed she walked right into the headlights.”

  “You mean she—”

  “I mean she was plastered, that’s all. She was plastered stiff and she didn’t know where she was going.”

  Then it was quiet again. But now the quiet was thin and there was no pressure, there was nothing. “You feel bad about it?” the bartender asked. He didn’t reply.

  “You oughta feel bad about it,” the bartender said, and turned away.

  He lifted the shot glass toward his mouth, then lowered it and slowly turned his head to look at the bartender, who was filling a mug from the draught faucet. He waited until the bartender had filled three mugs for the Teamsters Union organizers. Then he called to the bartender, “What was that you said?”

  The bartender didn’t look at him. One of the middle-aged men was paying for the beer. The bartender rang up the sale, then came walking up behind the bar, still not looking at him. As the bartender walked past him, he reached across the bar and touched the white sleeve. The bartender stopped and said, not looking at him, “You better go home, mister.”

  “I want another drink.”

  Then the bartender looked at him. “No, you don’t.” “Listen, Mike—”

  “That’s another thing, mister. My name ain’t Mike to you. You call a man by his name only when you know him. And you don’t know me. You don’t know anybody here.”

  He said aloud to himself, “I knew her.”

  “No, you didn’t,” the bartender said. “You didn’t know her at all. She was just like that drink in your glass, something you had a taste of now and then.”

  He looked at the bartender. The bartender was a partially bald and chunkily built man with a former prize fighter’s face, the nose battered, the lips thickened, one ear somewhat puffed and twisted. The bartender stood there waiting for him to say something and he tried to say something but it was impossible. He took a deep breath and went on looking at the bartender.

  “I’m sorry I said that.” The bartender spoke with his head lowered. “That was a crumby thing to say.” Then suddenly and spasmodically he turned his head and shouted at the other customers, “What are you bastards staring at? Why don’t you mind your own goddamn business?”

  “We feel bad too,” the little Spanish-looking man said with tears in his voice. “We all of us feel very bad about Lita.”

  “Poor child,” the fat shapeless gray-haired woman said. “The poor, poor child.”

  “Aw, shut the hell up,” the bartender shouted. “Whatcha think I’m running here, a funeral parlor?” He had his lips pressed hard against his teeth. His hand moved convulsively, going inside the white apron toward his trousers pocket. He pulled out some loose change and scattered it blindly along the surface of the bar, the silver coins rolling and skidding down toward the drinkers at the other end. “Let’s have a polka or something, for Christ’s sake. Somebody put a nickel in the goddamn jukebox.”

  The little Spanish-looking man selected a nickel from among the coins and went to the jukebox. For some moments the room was quiet while the machine lifted the record from its slot and lowered it into place. Then the air of the taproom was shattered with hot jumping jazz, the trumpets shrieking and the cymbals clattering. One of the middle-aged men from the Teamsters Union yelled, “That ain’t no polka.”

  The little Spanish-looking man yelled, “Is Stanley Kenton, he play good music.”

  The teamsters’ representative banged his hand flat on the bar and said, “I defy any music critic to tell me that’s music.” He went on with it but Kenton played louder and drowned him out.

  The bartender poured a double shot for Bevan and then poured one for himself. He made a waving gesture to indicate that this was on the house. They touched glasses and drank and then the bartender leaned across the bar and got his face close to Bevan’s, saying confidentially, “We got a new one, George. You see her?”

  “You mean the one in the booth? The blonde?”

  “Yeah,” the bartender said. “She ain’t bad, either. I’ve had her myself a coupla times and she really ain’t bad.”

  “Maybe I’ll talk to her.”

  “Sure,” the bartender said. “Go on over and talk to her.”

  And say what? he asked himself. You came here to talk to Lita. And Lita isn’t here. Lita isn’t anywhere. That’s an established fact and there’s nothing you can do about it. All right, let’s say it’s a damn shame and let it go at that. But
here we arrive at another established fact. You can’t drop it that easily. So I think what we need here is another drink. Of course, our primary need is a punch in the face from Mike’s big right hand. It would make us feel a lot better, and it would certainly reduce the guilt. Oh, Bevan, you heel, you louse, you hypocrite, she’s horizontal in a wooden box and you’re the engineer who put her there. Because you handled her as if she were merchandise. It never occurred to you that she was a living organism with a mind and a soul and feelings. You want to start remembering? Go on, then, remember the night she said that in her book she rated you high. And in your book you had her listed as a Tenth Avenue tramp, strictly slum material that you couldn’t take to dinner at Longchamps, because she wouldn’t blend with the decor there. So what you did, you perfect gentleman solid citizen lousy hypocrite, you came down from your high-rent district to this low-rent hunting ground, where you found it so easy and convenient to…

  “Mike.” He nearly choked on it. “Pour me another.”

  The bartender studied his eyes. “You all right?”

  He nodded quickly, convulsively. “I’m doing great. Hurry and pour me another.”

  The bartender shrugged and obeyed and went on obeying for an hour, during which Bevan consumed some fourteen double shots, not moving once from that spot where he stood at the bar. But although he was making a concerted effort to get drunk, the lightweight cloud of drunkenness refused to come.

  Instead it was on the order of an iron yoke pushing down on his shoulders, getting heavier with each drink, sending him deeper into the downward-slanting corridor where there were no lamps and very little air, where the only sound was a female voice that came from very far away. It said, “Don’t leave me. Oh, please don’t leave me.” Of course, it was Lita saying now what she’d ached to say then when they’d had that farewell talk on the telephone. So now he replied soundlessly into the invisible mouthpiece. “What else can I do? What else can I do?” But she failed to provide an answer. And so quite naturally the only thing to do was to order another double shot and buy a round for the house.

  Some twenty minutes later his bloodstream couldn’t take it and he passed out. The bartender dragged him to an empty booth and he slept there until closing time. When the bartender woke him, he went into the lavatory and threw up. He came out grinning at the bartender and saying, “Where’d the blonde go? I wanna see the blonde.”

  “Can you make it home all right?”

  “I want the blonde, that’s what I want.”

  The bartender was helping him toward the street door. “Come on, you’re O.K. I’ll put you in a taxi.”

  “No blonde? Why can’t I have the blonde?”

  The bartender took a close look at him and saw he wasn’t drunk. It was something else, something that had no connection with drunkenness.

  He said, “I require that blonde. I tell you, I need it, I need it something awful. You have no idea how much I need it.” He was leaning heavily against the bartender’s shoulder. “So why should I go home? What’s the point in going home? There’s nothing there, nothing I can use. You see what I mean? No, you don’t see what I mean. All right, we’ll try to make it clear. I’m looking for the blonde and I’m not referring to the blonde I have at home. The blonde I have at home is a very fine girl, really exceptional quality. Only trouble is, she’s not a woman. That is, she’s not a woman in the full sense of the word. Or the fundamental sense of the word, if you prefer to put it that way. So what this situation calls for is the blonde you wanted me to talk to.”

  “She went out a with a customer,” the bartender said.

  “She did?” He blinked a few times. “Why’d she do that? Why couldn’t she wait for me?”

  “She’ll see you another time.” The bartender patted his shoulder consolingly. “Tell you what. You come back tonight and—”

  He shook his head slowly, then faster, then very fast, emphatically. “No,” he said. “No, I won’t come back tonight. Or any other night.” He was looking up toward the ceiling, frowning thoughtfully and somewhat technically. And then, as though he were addressing an audience of solemn faces, “It strikes me, gentlemen, that we’re dealing here with what appears to be a lost cause.”

  They were at the street door and the bartender opened it. He smiled at the bartender and they shook hands and he walked out.

  He kept his word and never went back to Hallihan’s. From that day on he did his drinking in conservative, sedate establishments where unescorted women were not allowed. It didn’t take long for the drinking to become a daytime as well as a nighttime habit, but he managed to handle it very nicely, managed to walk straight, his eyes steadily focused, holding his glass steadily, his voice always steady, so that no one could tell that his brain was drenched with alcohol. It took considerable effort to handle it that way, but he didn’t mind. He almost enjoyed the straining effort it took, as though the strain of hiding the drunkenness were part of the price he had to pay for the drinking. And sometimes, when his stomach couldn’t take it, and when his liver started raising hell, he enjoyed that too. He really liked the idea of paying the price.

  He had the drinking habit and he had it good. Or bad, although he preferred to think it was good. Cora discovered it one day when he forgot to chew chlorophyll gum before entering the apartment. She asked him if he’d been drinking and he said yes. She asked if he was doing a lot of drinking and he said yes. Then he said he intended to keep on drinking and he hoped she wouldn’t mind too much. He said he needed the drinking in the same way that a ball club needs a pinch hitter, and if she wanted him to explain that, he’d be glad to. But she didn’t ask him to explain. After that, the only times she spoke about his drinking were when his stomach couldn’t take food, and then she’d lecture him quietly and patiently, stating physiological facts she’d read in newspaper health columns and magazines.

  The drinking became bad when he reached the point of trying to fight it. This happened after a particularly difficult night when Cora started one of her health lectures and suddenly faltered in the middle of it, breaking down and weeping, collapsing to her knees at his feet and clutching his wrists, begging him to stop drinking, at least to cut it down to a reasonable degree. He promised he’d try. He began trying very hard to keep the promise.

  It was an extremely painful promise. The less he drank, the worse he felt. And eventually it led him to the neurologist, who couldn’t do a thing about it except to recommend a change of scenery.

  Some change, he thought, sitting there in the chair near the window. We’re situated here in the Laurel Rock Hotel in the city of Kingston on the island of Jamaica. We’re here in the British West Indies, some sixteen hundred miles from Manhattan. But what it amounts to is no change at all. It’s the same gloomy picture. It’s the picture of yourself sliding downhill.

  He got up from the chair and took another look through the window. For only a moment he looked down at the swimming pool, the gay colors of the beach umbrellas and cabanas. After that he was focusing past the wall that separated the Laurel Rock from the crowded low-rent area where the Negroes lived. As he gazed at the littered streets and shabby hovels that were never displayed in the travel folders, he was thinking, Maybe that’s where you belong.

  His eyes narrowed cunningly. The corners of his mouth came up just a little to shape a thin conniving smile, as though he were building a practical joke to play on someone.

  He said to himself, All right, let’s try it. Let’s put this lowlife in a place where he can feel at home.

  The smile was fixed stiffly on his lips as he walked out of the room.

  Chapter Three

  He did considerable walking. It wasn’t the casual strolling of a tourist taking in the sights. There was a certain purposefulness in his stride, as though he had something definite in mind, some special destination. The natives paid little or no attention to him. They got the impression that he was some city official or consulate employee headed somewhere on important business.
Of course, if they’d known he was a tourist, they would have swarmed around him, trying to sell him souvenirs and postcards and whatnot, and those with nothing to sell would have begged him for a handout. In the slums of Kingston there are a great many street beggars and their ages range from five to eighty-five. They are very persistent, much more persistent than the countless women who sit in doorways displaying strings of beads and woven hats and baskets. But they are not so persistent as the taxi drivers. The taxi drivers of Kingston are famous for their persistence. They sell their transportation like carnival pitchmen who can’t take no for an answer. It’s mostly the tourists that keep them in business, and it’s been said that they’ve developed a scent for tourists; they can smell one coming from several blocks away. This is no reflection on the tourists, although many natives are agreed that tourists in general have a smell all their own.

  But this taxi driver didn’t catch it with his nose. He caught it with his sharp eyes. Several hours ago he’d seen the neatly attired man walking past, had seen him again some ninety minutes ago, and now, seeing him for the third time, noticed that he walked more slowly, somewhat aimlessly.