Bagombo Snuff Box (30 page)

He went to the bedroom window, looked morbidly at the setting
moon. The moon’s rays were flat now, casting long shadows on the golf course,
exaggerating the toy geography. Flags flew here and there, signifying less
than nothing. This was where the great love scene had been played.

Suddenly he understood. “Moonlight,” he murmured.

“What?” said Natalie.

“It had to be.” Louis laughed, because the explanation was
so explosively simple. “We had to be in love, with a moon like that, in a world
like that. We owed it to the moon.”

Natalie sat up, her disposition much improved.

“The richest boy in town and the prettiest girl in town,”
said Louis, “we couldn’t let the moon down, could we?”

He laughed again, made his wife get out of bed, made her
look at the moon with him. “And here I’d been thinking it really had been
something big between Milly and me way back then.” He shook his head. “When all
it was pure, beautiful, moonlit hokum.”

He led his wife to bed. “You’re the only one I ever loved.
An hour ago, I didn’t know that. I know that now.”

So everything was fine.

“I won’t lie to you,” Milly Whitman said to her husband. “I
loved the great Louis C. Reinbeck for a while. Out there on the golf course in
the moonlight, I just had to fall in love. Can you understand that—how I would
have to fall in love with him, even if we didn’t like each other very well?”

Turley allowed as how he could see how that would be. But he
wasn’t happy about it.

“We kissed only once,” said Milly. ‘And if he’d kissed me
right, I think I might really be Mrs. Louis C. Reinbeck tonight.” She nodded. “Since
we’re calling spades spades tonight, we might as well call that one a spade,
too. And just before we kissed up there on the golf course, I was thinking what
a poor little rich boy he was, and how much happier I could make him than any
old cold, stuck-up country club girl. And then he kissed me. and I knew he wasn’t
in love, couldn’t ever be in love. So I made that kiss good-bye.” .

“There’s where you made your mistake,” said Turley.

“No,” said Milly, “because the next boy who kissed me kissed
me right, showed me he knew what love was, even if there wasn’t a moon. And I
lived happily ever after, until tonight.” She put her arms around Turlev. “Now
kiss me again the way you kissed me the first time, and I’ll be all right
tonight, too.”

Turley did, so everything was all right there, too.

About twenty minutes after that, the telephones in both
houses rang. The burden of the messages was that Charlie Reinbeck and Nancy
Whitman were fine. They had, however, put their own interpretation on the
moonlight. They’d decided that Cinderella and Prince Charming had as good a
chance as anybody for really living happily ever after. So they’d married.

So now there was a new household. Whether everything was all
right there remained to be seen. The moon went down.

If the Communists ever expect to overtake the democracies in
sewer pipe production, they are certainly going to have to hump some— because
just one factory in Creon, Pennsylvania, produces more pipe in six months than
both Russia and China put together could produce in a year. That wonderful
factory is the Creon Works of the General Forge and Foundry Company.

As Works manager, Arvin Borders told every rookie engineer, “If
you don’t like sewer pipe, you won’t like Creon.” Borders himself, a
forty-six-year-old bachelor, was known throughout the industry as “Mr. Pipe.”

Creon is the Pipe City. The high school football team is the
Creon Pipers. The only country club is the Pipe City Golf and Country Club.
There is a permanent exhibit of pipe in the club lobby, and the band that plays
for the Friday-night dances at the club is Andy Middleton and His Creon
Pipe-Dreamers.

One Friday night in the summertime, Andy Middleton turned
the band over to his piano player. He went out to the first tee for some peace
and fresh air. He surprised a pretty young woman out there. She was crying.
Andy had never seen her before. He was twenty-five at the time.

Andy asked if he could help her.

“I’m being very silly,” she said. “Everything is fine. I’m
just being silly.”

“I see,” said Andy.

“I cry very easily—and even when there’s nothing at all to
cry about, I cry,” she said.

“That must be kind of confusing for people who are with you,”
he said.

“It’s a mess,” she said.

“It might come in handy in case you ever have to attend the
funeral of someone you hate,” he said.

“It isn’t going to be very handy in the pipe industry,” she
said.

‘Are you in the pipe industry?” he said.

“Isn’t everybody in Creon in the pipe industry?” she said.

“I’m not,” he said.

“How do you keep from starving to death?” she said.

“I wave a stick in front of a band . . . give music lessons.
. . things like that,” he said.

“Oh, God—a musician,” she said, and she turned her back.

“That’s against me?” he said.

“I never want to see another musician as long as I live,”
she said.

“In that case,” he said, “close your eyes and I’ll tiptoe
away.” But he didn’t leave.

“That’s your band—playing tonight?” she said. They could
hear the music quite clearly.

“That’s right,” he said.

“You can stay,” she said.

“Pardon me?” he said.

“You’re no musician,” she said, “or that band would have
made you curl up and die.”

“You’re the first person who ever listened to it,” he said.

“I bet that’s really the truth,” she said. “Those people don’t
hear anything that isn’t about pipe. When they dance, do they keep any kind of
time to the music?”

“When they what?” he said.

“I said,” she repeated, “when they dance.”

“How can they dance,” he said, “if the men spend the whole
evening in the locker room, drinking, shooting crap, and talking sewer pipe,
and all the women sit out on the terrace, talking about things they’ve
overheard about pipe, about things they’ve bought with money from pipe, about
things they’d like to buy with money from pipe?”

She started weeping again.

“Just being silly again?” he said. “Everything still fine?”

“Everything’s fine,” she said. The demoralized, ramshackle
little band in the empty ballroom ended a number with razzberries and squeals. “Oh
God, but that band hates music!” she said.

“They didn’t always,” he said.

“What happened?” she said.

“They found out they weren’t ever going anywhere but Creon—and
they found out nobody in Creon would listen. If I went and told them a
beautiful woman was listening and weeping out here, they might get back a
little of what they had once—and make a present of it to you.”

“What’s your instrument?” she said.

“Clarinet,” he said. “Any special requests—any melodies you’d
like to have us waft from the clubhouse while you weep alone?”

“No,” she said. “That’s sweet, but no music for me.”

“Tranquilizers? Aspirin?” he said. “Cigarettes, chewing gum,
candy?”

‘A drink,” she said.

Shouldering his way to the crowded bar, a bar called The
Jolly Piper, Andy learned a lot of things about the sewer pipe business.
Cleveland, he learned, had bought a lot of cheap pipe from another company, and
Cleveland was going to be sorry about it in about twenty years. The Navy had specified
Creon pipe for all buildings under construction, he learned, and nobody was
going to be sorry. It was a little-known fact, he learned, that the whole world
stood in awe of American pipe-making capabilities.

He also found out who the woman on the first tee was. She
had been brought to the dance by Arvin Borders, bachelor manager of the Creon
Works. Borders had met her in New York. She was a small-time actress, the widow
of a jazz musician, the mother of two very young daughters.

Andy found out all this from the bartender. Arvin Borders, “Mr.
Pipe” himself, came into the bar and craned his neck, looking for somebody. He
was carrying two highballs. The ice in both glasses had melted.

“Still haven’t seen her, Mr. Borders,” the bartender called
to him, and Borders nodded unhappily and left.

“Who haven’t you seen?” Andy asked the bartender.

And the bartender told him all he knew about the widow. He
also gave Andy the opinion, out of the corner of his mouth, that General Forge
and Foundry Company headquarters in Ilium, New York, knew about the romance
and took a very dim view of it. “You tell me where, in all of Creon,” the
bartender said to Andy, “a pretty, young New York actress could fit in.”

The woman went by her stage name, which was Hildy Matthews,
Andy learned. The bartender didn’t have any idea who her husband had been.

Andy went into the ballroom to tell his Pipe-Dreamers to
play a little better for a weeping lady on the golf course, and he found Arvin
Borders talking to them. Borders, an earnest, thickset man, was asking the band
to play “Indian Love Call” very loud.

“Loud?” said Andy.

“So she’ll hear it, wherever she is, and come,” said
Borders. “I can’t imagine where she got to,” he said. “I left her on the
terrace, with the ladies, for a while—and she just plain evaporated.”

‘Maybe she got fed up with all the talk about pipe,” said
Andy.

“She’s very interested in pipe,” said Borders. “You wouldn’t
think a woman who looked like that would be, but she can listen to me talk shop
for hours and never get tired of it.”

“‘Indian Love Call’ will bring her back?” said Andy.

Borders mumbled something unintelligible.

“Pardon me, sir?” said Andy.

Borders turned red and pulled in his chin. “I said,” he said
gruffly, “‘It’s our tune.’”

“I see,” said Andy.

“You boys might as well know now—I’m going to marry that
girl,” said Borders. “We’re going to announce our engagement tonight.”

Andy bowed slightly. “Congratulations,” he said. He put his
two highballs down on a chair, picked up his clarinet. “‘Indian Love Call,’
boys— real loud?” he said.

The band was slow to respond. Nobody seemed to want to play
much, and everybody was trying to tell Andy something.

“What’s the trouble?” said Andy.

“Before we play, Andy,” said the pianist, “you ought to know
just who we’re playing for, whose widow we’re playing for.”

“Whose widow?” said Andy.

“I had no idea he was so famous,” said Borders. “I mentioned
him to your band here, and they almost fell off their chairs.”

“Who?” said Andy.

“A dope fiend, an alcoholic, a wife-beater, and a
woman-chaser who was shot dead last year by a jealous husband,” said Borders
indignantly. “Why anybody would think there was anything wonderful about a man
like that I’ll never know,” he said. And then he gave the name of the man, a
man who was probably the greatest jazz musician who had ever lived.

“I thought you weren’t ever coming back,” she said, out of
the shadows on the first tee.

“I had to play a special request,” said Andy. “Somebody
wanted me to play ‘Indian Love Call’ as loud as I could.” “Oh,” she said.

“You heard it and you didn’t come running?” he said.

“Is that what he expected me to do?” she said.

“He said it was your tune,” he said.

“That was his idea,” she said. “He thinks it’s the most
beautiful song ever written.”

“How did you two happen to meet?” he said.

“I was dead broke, looking for any kind of work at all,” she
said. “There was a General Forge and Foundry Company sales meeting in New York.

They were going to put on a skit. They needed an actress. I
got the part.”

^t “What part did they give you?” he said.

“They dressed me in gold lame, gave me a crown of pipe fittings,
and introduced me as ‘Miss Pipe Opportunities in the Golden Sixties,’” she
said. “Arvin Borders was there,” she said. She emptied her glass. “Kismet,” she
said.

“Kismet,” he said.

She took his highball from him. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m
going to need this one, too.”

“And ten more besides?” he said.

“If it takes ten more to get me back to all those people,
all those lights, all that pipe,” she said, “I’ll drink ten more.”

“The trip’s that tough?” he said.

“If only I hadn’t wandered out here,” she said. “If only I’d
stayed up there!”

“One of the worst mistakes a person can make, sometimes, I
guess,” he said, “is to try to get away from people and think. It’s a great way
to lose your forward motion.”

“The band is playing so softly I can hardly hear the music,”
she said.

“They know whose widow’s listening,” he said, “and they’d
just as soon you didn’t hear them.”

“Oh,” she said. “They know. You know.”

“He—he didn’t leave you anything?” he said.

“Debts,” she said. “Two daughters ... for which I’m really
very grateful.”

“The horn?” he said.

“It’s with him,” she said. “Please—could I have one more
drink?”

“One more drink,” he said, “and you’ll have to go back to
your fiance on your hands and knees.”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, thank you,”
she said. “It isn’t up to you to watch out for me.”

“Beg your pardon,” he said.

She gave a small, melodious hiccup. “What a terrible time
for that to happen,” she said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with drinking.”

“I believe you,” he said.

“You don’t believe me,” she said. “Give me some kind of a
test. Make me walk a straight line or say something complicated.”

“Forget it,” he said.

“You don’t believe I love Arvin Borders, either, do you?”
she said. “Well, let me tell you that one of the things I do best is love. I
don’t mean pretending to love. I mean really loving. When I love somebody, I
don’t hold anything back. I go all the way, and right now I happen to love
Arvin Borders.”