Barbary Shore (13 page)

I could not respond. At another time, in another mood, I might have entered the game, but behind the gaiety, her mouth was strained, her eyes were vacant. Abstractedly she would finger the ends of her bedraggled hair.

“We ought to dust the place,” I suggested.

Lannie surprised me by nodding her head. With an effort she roused herself. “You find something to clean with, and I’ll open the windows,” she told me. “We can move the furniture around. I love rearranging. That will make the room mine.”

I went into the hallway and found a broom and a cloth that Guinevere had left in a corner. When I returned, the windows were indeed open, and Lannie stood on the broad low sill and stared into the courtyard below. I made no sound. There was such absorption in her study that I hesitated to interrupt it. Arms on the window frame, her body inclined outward, a bird prepared for flight. Slowly she leaned forward, leaned forward even more, until one brief unclenching of her hands, and she would have plummeted to the concrete below.

With a sudden gesture she pushed herself back into the room, and started when she saw me. “I like the view,” Lannie said quietly, all animation gone. “I looked down, and I thought, It’s the bottom of the ocean. It’s deep, and you’re all alone there.’ ”

I nodded casually, as though nothing untoward had passed, and went to the sink, filled a glass with water, sprinkled it on the floor. Industriously, I swept. Lannie tugged feebly at an armchair, and then with a sigh perched herself upon it.

“The furniture will be too heavy for you to move.”

She moved her head in agreement. “Sit down with me, and let’s talk.”

“I’ll continue sweeping. I can still talk, you know.”

Her chin rested on her hand. “I wasn’t lying about getting a job,” she told me.

“I believed you.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have. I usually lie. But this time I did get a job. I walked in on Mr. Rammelsby and told him I was an expert advertising woman.” She began to laugh. “I think Mr. Rammelsby’s real name is Ter-Prossamenianvili, or something
like that. Poor little Turk. He’s so fat and he sweats so much, and he’s going to lose his job for hiring me. If there had been anyone but him, some lean efficiency expert, I would never have been taken.” She sighed.

“What will you do there?”

“Oh, I have to make slogans. You know they get hundreds of little men who work deep down in the earth trying to find new inventions, and then when one of them does, it’s given to hundreds of people like me who try to find slogans. And then when we find one, a product is made and sold to millions of people, and finally it works for somebody and the product is a success.” She smiled wearily. “I can do the job, but I hate it. I’ve had so many things like it, yes I have”—much as if I had contradicted her. “I was supposed to start this morning, but when I woke up I knew it was more important to find a room. Poor Mr. Rammelsby. He always puts his faith in the wrong people. But maybe they’ll fire him this time, and he’ll have to go back to Turkey, and he can sit on a hassock and have lots of wives with beautiful navels.” She watched me ladle the dust into her wastebasket. “Let’s arrange the furniture,” she said.

To move the sofa and two armchairs took a disproportionate amount of effort. We had to discuss where to put each piece, and whenever we came to a decision, she would change her mind. We shifted the sofa several times—to the windows, against the fireplace, by a wall—but nothing pleased her. She agreed at last to place the armchairs with their backs to the window, and when we had accomplished this, she looked up and surveyed the room. “Why don’t we leave it?” she asked. The sofa was temporarily facing a wall, its back to the center of the room. She tugged it away perhaps a yard so that someone sitting there could touch the baseboard with his feet.

“I think this is wonderful,” she announced.

“Lannie, you can’t leave the sofa that way.”

“Why?”

“It’s separated from the rest of the room.”

She nodded dumbly at this, her face stricken for a passing moment. “Oh, of course, how stupid of me,” she said airily, waving her hand in the air. “Come on, let’s turn it around.”

So we tugged and hauled again, reversed the sofa’s position, and rested when we were done, perspiring from the summer heat. “It’s another room now,” she announced.

But of course this was not true. The big bare chamber was still dirty, still gloomy, and the dull faded furniture rested stolidly in its new positions, heavy and inert. We were silent for several minutes, and I looked up to see her mouth trembling. “What’s the matter, Lannie?”

“I don’t know.” She smoked a cigarette restlessly, the ashes tumbling into the fold of her skirt, and not until the ember touched her fingers did she let it fall to the floor.

“I’m going to put some pictures into the room,” she said, “and I’m going to make some drapes. And for that, they won’t be able to stop me. And then”—her mouth curled, her small teeth were exposed for an instant—“I’m going to turn the sofa around, and leave it where it belongs, facing the wall.” She coughed, and said in her husky voice, “I wish you’d go now, Mikey.”

I was startled. “Go?”

“Yes, Mikey.” She sat still, not looking at me.

“Well, maybe tonight or tomorrow we can …” I hardly knew how to finish.

“Yes, yes.”

She did not turn around as I left the room.

I
N
the evening I stopped by Lannie’s door, and no one answered. She would be sitting in an armchair, her legs tucked beneath her, chin upon her hand, the sound of my tapping penetrating so slowly through her reverie. Startled, she would come to let me in.

But nothing stirred. Probably she was not there. I went downstairs and into the street, paused for a moment beside the brownstone balustrade, looking at the lights in Guinevere’s cellar apartment. Her husband must be home now, and between them was passing the daily exchange of their marriage, casual words I could not hear. On an impulse I thought of ringing her bell.

Instead I walked through Brooklyn Heights and came to rest at the end of a little street which abutted the bluffs. My arms resting on an iron railing, I stared out across the docks and across the harbor to the skyline of New York deepening into the final blue of night. Among the skyscrapers, windows here and there were lit, the charwomen had started their work, and throughout those pinnacles of stone the fires were banked, the offices bare.

The ferryboat to Staten Island had begun its trip. From where I stood the boat looked very small, its deck lights twinkling across the water to form the endless flickering legs of
a centipede. An ocean freighter nosed across the harbor seeking anchorage, and in the distance bridges arched the river, supporting in a stream the weight of automobiles. Through the summer night, ships sounded their warnings, clear and unmuffled.

I looked at the water and my thoughts eddied aimlessly.

While I dreamed at the railing, an hour passed, night came. The outline of the ships which moved through the harbor could be discerned only by their lights.

“Well, hello, it’s a fine evening, isn’t it?” a voice murmured.

I must have started. Hardly had I been waiting for Hollingsworth.

“I see you like to stand here, and think about things,” he insinuated softly.

“Once in a while.”

“I do myself.” He took a cigarette from his pack and offered it to me in a motion so persuasive I could hardly refuse. Then a lighter sprang from his pocket, and he clicked forth the flame, patently waving it before me to solicit my admiration. The gadget was made of silver with a black shield upon which were engraved two letters. “When did you get that?” I asked.

“Oh, a day or two ago. You see the initials for my name. Leroy Hollingsworth. L. H. I think that’s very clever of them, don’t you?”

“Yes.” With some regret I realized that he intended to keep me company. “Well, where did you buy it?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know.” He smiled apologetically. “You see, it was a gift. A lady presented it to me.” He gazed complacently at the water, his blond hair and small curved nose illumined by the moonlight. “I don’t know why,” he said in a smug quiet voice, “the girls seem to like me a great deal.” Filling his pipe bowl, he drew the lighter again, and sucked reflectively at the stem. “Yes,” he said meaninglessly.

Perhaps as a result of what happened the night before, I had become agitated at the sight of him. How he could have
sensed this, I do not know, but when he opened his mouth it was to say, “Last night was interesting, wasn’t it?”

“Mmm.”

“That McLeod’s an odd fellow. I thought he had, if you’ll permit me, a lot of crust.” Hollingsworth paused delicately after this pale vulgarity. “But then, some of his ideas are interesting.”

“What ideas?”

“Well, the blowing up of people and poisoning them. Sometimes I can understand how a fellow can get to feel that way. Don’t you sometimes?”

I decided he was going to question me now. “Invariably.”

But he merely laughed. “I’d like to make a study of the Bolshevists,” he told me. “I think there’s a lot to history. It broadens your outlook.” He puffed at his pipe, released the smoke with a pouting motion of his lips as if he parted with something valuable. “What would you say to a libation?” he asked formally.

I could not think how to refuse him, and so we walked back the street, Hollingsworth chatting about his job, about opportunities for himself, about the weather. We picked a bar finally, and at his insistence, installed ourselves in a red-leather booth. I ordered a beer; Hollingsworth, to my astonishment, a double Scotch. When the waitress brought the drinks, he insisted on paying for them. Then he smiled at the girl.

Rather, he leered. The change smacked of alchemy. If he had comported himself with the politeness and formality of a divinity student who is without promise, that now vanished. As the waitress counted out the change, Hollingsworth cocked his head on his hand, cheek almost parallel to the table, and stared coolly at her, humming a phrase of music “I’ve seen you somewhere,” he said without preamble.

“No, I don’t think so,” she told him.

“You dance, don’t you?” he asked. “Yes?” Hollingsworth smiled, crafty, almost jeering. “Sure, I saw you dancing somewhere,”
he announced, “you’re a good dancer, you like to dance, don’t you?”

The waitress was young with a coarse attractive mouth. “Yeah, I like to dance.”

“I like to, too,” Hollingsworth murmured. “I like to dance and dance.” He hummed his song again. She had finished making change, and he passed a quarter to her for the tip. “There’s more where that came from,” he assured her. “You’ll be here to serve the next round, won’t you?” and when she nodded, he leered again, “Okay, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

He was in a curious mood. When the waitress was gone, he looked across the table and winked. “I guess I’ll be able to slip a little present to her, as they say.” His opaque blue eyes stared blankly at me.

“You’ll like that, won’t you?” I asked.

“Well, it’s the thing to do.” He yawned, and made a point of looking at his wrist watch. “Once in a while I come into these places, and strike up an acquaintance with one of the girls.” He gave his smug diffident smile. “They put out, too.”

I sipped my beer judiciously. “What happens if they don’t? I should think you couldn’t make a connection every time.”

He fingered his straight corn-colored hair. “Well, now, that all depends. If they’ve led me on, and given me reason to think there’s something doing, then I just won’t take no.” He paused as though deliberating whether to illustrate this remark. “Now, there was a lady I met in one of these places, a real lady, well-dressed, but not above having her good time. We got to talking and she invited me to her apartment for a drink, and then in what might be called the crucial moment, she changed her mind.” He gave a small reflective shrug, “So I just forced her to do it.”

“Forced her?”

“Oh, yes, she knew she would have gotten hurt. Sometimes I can be very stubborn.”

I hardly knew what to say. He had told me this with such finality. “But do you think that’s worth anything? I imagine the next time you saw her things didn’t go so well.”

“I never saw her again. I don’t care to see these women again. I mean, you know, I always think it’s much duller the second time.” He caressed his small curved nose. “How many girls have you done it with?” he asked baldly.

Before his curiosity, I found myself uneasily compliant. If it had been possible I might have made a count. “It hardly matters,” I said.

“I bet I’ve had more,” he told me.

The juke box, primed with a coin, had begun to blast our ears. “I’m sure I don’t care,” I said. “I’ve never gone in for matching chips.”

He roared at my reply with his odd hir-hir-hir, and stopped abruptly. “You think that’s bad manners to ask a question like that, don’t you?”

“I really never have thought about it,” I said frostily.

Hollingsworth smiled widely, revealing the black line at the root of his four front teeth. “I’ve noticed that the people with good educations act like this,” he said. “I suppose I’m lacking in manners, and that’s why you don’t like me.”

I could hardly have told him I did, and yet for the first time since I had known him my antipathy flagged. “I wouldn’t say that,” I muttered.

“Oh, yes.” He nodded his head in confirmation. “I’m not a child, and I can see these things. With Mr. Wilson and Mr. Court I can sense a difference. They’re made of a finer mold than me.” He nodded his head wistfully. “You see I’m of humble birth.”

His china-blue eyes held a hint of aggression. “I’ll tell you
something, Lovett,” he said, “I’m really not concerned with whether you like me or not.” He drew designs through the wet ring of his glass. “I’ve got other irons in the fire. Bigger irons than you.”

“Probably, you have. I’m no one to emulate.”

“In your heart you think you are. Don’t deny it. You think I’m dirt.”

As the waitress came by, he held up his glass. “Refills, okay, honey?” he asked, the leer once more upon his face. Again he insisted on paying the check, and passed the waitress another quarter. “You work long tonight?” he asked.