(1961) The Chapman Report (43 page)

Softly, Kathleen drew the door shut and went into the kitchen.

Later, having eaten only a small portion of the stringy beef stew and finished the soft drink, she returned to the sofa and the mystery novel. All through the meal she had thought of Naomi, trying to

reconcile her beauty with her coarseness, trying to separate her sensuality from illness. She wondered if men, taking that voluptuous body, were ultimately conscious of the decay beneath. Would Paul, given the opportunity, take her? Enjoy her? Or be repelled? Of course, Naomi’s aptitude was sex. Her physical loveliness and dexterity might offset all else. Committed to lust, no man was a sensitive, perceptive, thinking animal. When he was that way, Boynton would have ravished a corpse. There was a medical name for that, Boynton, yes, but not Paul. No, Paul would not enjoy Naomi. He would prefer someone tidy, composed, restrained. Like herself, of course. Not herself, no, for she was merely the polar opposite of Naomi, which also was a kind of sickness, although less obvious and appalling. Who, then, tidy, composed, restrained? Who, normal? Teresa?

Sitting on the sofa, the unlighted cigarette between her fingers, she considered Teresa Hamish and Paul. Teresa’s practicing intellectuality and artiness might become a bore. But she was attractive, she was a lady… .

Teresa Hamish had arrived ten minutes early, and now he was ten minutes late. She began to worry for the first time whether or not he had received the message. Even if he had received it, would he take it seriously, would he be free, would he remember her?

Impatiently, she circled the pool of seals just inside the entrance of Paradise Park, and disinterestedly she scrutinized her fellow pleasure-seekers. A dumpy, shapeless young mother with a sticky boy in knee pants. Several teenage girls, in some kind of middy uniforms, giggling behind their hands as if it were sinful and not allowed at the seminary. An elderly, gray gentleman in a blue serge suit that had the shine his shoes needed, elbows on the rail, mournfully throwing dead fish from a bag to the slimy black seals below. She listened to the barking of the seals and abhorred their hoarse, guttural gruntings.

She wondered if the breeze from the ocean beyond the pier had disturbed her hair. She fished in her purse for the French silver compact, sprang it open with her thumb, and regarded her hair and make-up. Everything was in place, unmussed, unsmeared. Returning compact to her purse, she examined her attire and was pleased. It had taken her half the morning to select the proper outfit. Over her shoulders, the tawny cashmere sweater. Pressed by the wind to her body, the transparent white silk blouse, almost revealing the lace brassiere beneath. Flaring below, the short, full, tan pique skirt. Legs stockingless; Rembrandt-brown leather moccasins simulating ballet slippers. The effect: youth.

The morning’s choice had been between provocation and juvenescence. After leaving Geoffrey at the shop, she had returned to the study, located Dr. Chapman’s previous book and learned that the male achieves greatest potency between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight. (Also, the happy footnote quoting the Terman and Miles M-F tests: athletes scored highest in masculinity; artists scored lowest.) She calculated, based on education, graduation, football service, that he could be no more than twenty-five. It was all-important that the eleven-year chasm be narrowed. Her wardrobe reflected her final decision. Now his youth vigor, he would see, would be matched by her own.

She peered down at her platinum wrist watch and saw that he was sixteen minutes late. Unless her watch was fast. She swung about girlishly, scanning the whip, the ferris wheel, the roller coaster, the hall of mirrors, the visit to the moon, and then, from somewhere, he strode into her vision.

He wore a jaunty white sailor cap, a t-shirt bearing the fresh imprint that read “Paradise Park,” khakis and open brown sandals. His face was Apollo, and the bulging biceps and chest, Milo of Greece.

She watched Ed Krasowski come to a halt across the pool, searching for her, looking directly at her, and still searching. She hurried around the pool toward him, and then he recognized her.

“Hiya,” he said. “Didn’t see you at first.”

“Because I have a dress on,” she said. “You always see me in shorts. Besides, if you’re used to seeing a person in one place, and suddenly you see them against a different background, they look different.”

“Yeah,” he said.

There was an uneasy pause.

“I’m glad you could make it,” she said quickly.

“Sure. Jackie told me.”

The teen-agers were giggling again. Ed glanced at them, and Teresa followed his glance.

“Can’t we find somewhere to talk?” she asked quickly.

“You mean to sit down?”

“Anywhere.”

He held up his large steel wrist watch. “Well, lady, I got only half an hour for lunch-old Simon Legree don’t like me late-so maybe I better eat while you talk.”

“I’ll have something, too. Is there a restaurant-“

“Couple fancy ones. But I’m not blowing my bankroll there.”

“I’d love to treat.”

He bridled. “What you take me for? No. Dutch.”

She felt a wave of pleasure at his manliness and his gallantry.

“I’m sure any place you say-may I call you Ed?”

“Everybody does.” He nodded toward the main promenade. “Tuffy makes the best dogs in the Park. Come on.”

She walked hurriedly beside his hugeness, skipping several times to keep up, and feeling proud and possessive of his size. He uttered not a word as they progressed, until they reached the whitewashed wooden stand with the monstrous metal frankfurter on top and the four empty stools below, and then he said, “Right here.”

She ascended a stool, elegantly, and he squatted on the one beside her. He wheeled toward the counter. “Hey, Tuffy-“

A wrinkled, toothless old man, wearing a ridiculous starched chef’s hat and a spotted apron, appeared from a rear room, hoisting in greeting the arm tattooed with an anchor. “Hiya, Rams.” “What you doing back there, Tuffy, burying money?” “Got better to do with money.”

Ed Krasowski wheeled toward Teresa. “What you having?” “Whatever you have.”

Ed winked, pleased. “Specialty of the house. Two dogs, Tuffy. The supers. Everything.”

Teresa observed Ed’s arms, the subtle play of muscles beneath the tanned surface as he cracked his knuckles and then proceeded to arrange toothpicks on the counter in some curious formation. “Are you going to be working here long?” she asked. “Couple months maybe. Until we go back to practice.” “Do you like it?”

He shrugged the big shoulders. “Makes no difference.” “Your friend said you had one of the booths. Which?” “Knocking over the wooden milk bottles.” “What do you have to do?”

“Nothing much. Make change. Pick up the balls. Set the bottles. Jolly the dames and kids along. It’s like finding money.” “I’ll bet you meet interesting people.” “Never noticed.”

She pushed on like this, leading him, understanding his halting, monosyllabic answers, appreciating the inarticulate strength of the man of action. The change was stimulating, exhilarating. How many years had she wasted listening to cultivated, hollow words? Listening all those dull years, listening to all those chattering effeminate men? She stroked Ed with a glance. What had Napoleon said? Voila un homme!

The burned frankfurters were served. They were mammoth, twelve inches in length, protruding from either side of the roll, heavy with chopped onion and relish. She held the elongated frankfurter awkwardly, gazing at it, and then at Ed.

She nibbled. He chewed. He swallowed a mouthful, spun partially on the stool toward her. “Jackie said you had some private business to talk to me about.”

She nodded, as he made inroads into his frankfurter. Until now it had seemed vaguely possible, less and less so, but possible, that her planned and rehearsed proposal of mating could be openly broached. But the frankfurters made it impossible. Amid such wine as this-root beer on tap-could Isadora and Essinine flourish?

His nearness was maddening. The magnificent thing must be kept alive. Another way? “I … I’ve watched you-on the beach-” “I thought you was always reading.” “I read, too. Don’t you?”

“Sure. Not books, though. Takes too long. Hated them in school. Coach got the grinds to cram me. Mostly I got time only for magazines nowadays. Anyway, about the beach-“

“I observed you playing ball. You’re extremely agile. You have a good body for it.” “I keep in shape,” he admitted with undisguised pride. “Well, that brings me to why I wanted to see you.” She put down the ridiculous frankfurter and faced him earnestly. “I’m an artist, quite a good one,” she said, almost believing it, “and from the moment I saw you, I said to myself, I must capture him on can-fas.”

His forehead was puzzled. “Paint me? You mean a regular picture?”

“Dozens of pictures,” she said enthusiastically. “I’ve watched you, as I said, closely, and you’re a human being of many facets. I want to know all of them. I want the world to know you as Greek God, Olympian, Roman Emperor, Gladiator.” She had heard Geoffrey’s artists sometimes speak like this, not precisely so, but similarly, and she was sure it sounded correct. “I hope you’ll consent.”

“I never thought about it. Who are the pictures for?”

“Myself. Exhibits. Perhaps some will be reproduced in magazines or books.”

“Does it take a lot of time?”

“An hour or two a day, no more.” He finished the frankfurter and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I don’t know. I ain’t got much time what with this, and practice, and a man’s got to relax a little.”

“You’ll find it relaxing.”

“Not what I mean.”

“What do you call relaxing?”

“Few beers with the boys, maybe a movie, and-well, some fun.”

“You mean, girls?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

Her lips were compressed. She wanted to shake him, scream at him: I’m girls, look at me, all girls, all women, the best, the best you ever met, I’m attractive, well dressed, witty, cultured, I have a large home in The Briars, I’m desirable. I am fun.

She swallowed. “Well, I understand that. But, Ed, you’d be surprised at what good sport this can be.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

Desperate measures were indicated. Finger on the emergency button. Press. “Of course, I don’t expect you to model for nothing.”

He looked up sharply.

“I told your friend I wanted to see you about business,” she added. “What do you make here?”

“Eighty bucks a week.”

“I’ll pay you twenty dollars for each … each session you pose.”

“You mean for a couple of hours?”

“That’s right.”

He grinned broadly. “Lady, you got a deal.”

Inside her, something eased. She had not wanted it to go this way, nor would he want it this way, once he understood her better offer, but for the moment this was enough. There would be the private meeting. It was all that she desired. And now she ached to have it at once.

“Wonderful,” she said. “When can we have our first … meeting?”

“You name it.”

“Tomorrow-eleven in the morning.”

“I’m not free tomorrow until five.”

It was so long a time to wait. But, all right, anything. “I can meet you at your place at five-thirty.” She opened her purse and took out pencil and the white leather pad on which she jotted her aphorisms. “Here. Write your address.”

He wrote it, returned pad and pencil, and looked down at his metal watch. He rose from the stool. “Back to the salt mines,” he said.

She slipped off the stool. He hesitated, staring down at her.

“Funny,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t look like a painter.”

“No? What do I look like?”

“Well, I don’t know-“

“You mean-I look like … like just a woman.”

“Something like that.”

Her heart leaped. “You’re very nice,” she said. “I’ll be looking forward to tomorrow.”

“Okay. Be seeing you.”

She watched him lumbering off, swaying, Brobdingnagian, magnificent. She wondered exactly how it would happen finally, and what it would be like, and she shivered. She watched the ferris wheel revolving and somewhere heard a calliope. She didn’t feel like de Pompadour or de Poitiers, that was for sure. But she felt like more, far more, than she had been before, and that was good enough.

By five-fifteen, the sun no longer high through the kitchen window but the afternoon still bright, Kathleen had abandoned the mystery novel and busied herself heating water for tea.

When the telephone rang out, startling her, she hastened to pick up the receiver, to prevent it from awakening Naomi.

“Hello?”

“Naomi?” The voice was a girl’s voice.

“I’m a friend of Naomi’s-Mrs. Ballard.”

“Kathleen?”

“Yes?”

“Mary McManus. What are you doing there?”

“Oh, hello, Mary. I … well … Naomi wasn’t-she came down with a bad cold, and I’m baby-sitting until a nurse comes in.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

“No, no.”

“I’m sorry about Naomi. I’ve been promising to get together with her, and tonight Dad’s having some people in for a barbecue -and, well, Norman couldn’t make it, and we have extra food, so I took a chance that maybe Naomi was free, but, this way-“

“I know she’ll be glad you called.”

“Tell her I’ll talk to her tomorrow. How have you been?”

“Domesticating.”

“What?”

“Synonym for vegetating. No, I’ve been fine, Mary. Do call me some afternoon and come over for tea.”

“I’d love to. I really would. Tell Naomi I’m sorry. She’s going to miss a good steak. Well, good to talk to you, Kathleen. ‘Bye.”

“Goodbye, Mary.”

After she had poured the hot water and then removed the tea bag, Kathleen drank, admired the built-in stainless-steel gas range, and thought about Mary McManus. She decided that Mary was an argument for zest over beauty. Mary’s bronzed outdoor vigor, her bouncing enthusiasm, made Kathleen feel old. She supposed that she was really no more than six or seven years Mary’s senior, yet she felt used and worn, deep inside. Only technically could she offer Paul a chassis less than thirty years old. Mary, on the other hand, could give a bachelor the miracle of resurrection. Wasn’t it curious, though, that last Sunday she had been at the tennis club with her father and not her husband? Well, young girls and their fathers… .