Making Love (39 page)

“I even had the architect knock off a development that Saarinen built in Sweden,” he muttered. “That's what I had in mind for Monmouth, not cheeseboxes.”
 

A victim of his own chicanery, she discovered he could be silenced, subdued by loss or profit. All this to impress her. What a waste. She'd hoped from her mother's lover for a revelation, some depth, an image that he'd project from the past that would enlighten her. Guidance he might provide only on a profit-and-loss statement. She needed direction, not financial advice. And yet in spite of himself, she liked him for what he was, an honest true model of corruption, the visionary who saw only himself.
 

He'd report to his investors that La Cosa Nostra had done him in, and he'd been faced with the choice of getting
hit
or pulling up stakes. After all, he couldn't be a hero everytime. Some top builders also got kicked in the balls, took losses—he who runs away lives to build another day. Jane had been right. The site looked like an Indian village after a massacre. In the meantime he was still on the threshold of love and the chaos that her fortune inspired.
 

“Jane, how about dinner? The least I can do is try to make this up to you.”
 

“I might have to see somebody.”
 

“You still have to eat.”
 

“It's been an unforgettable experience as it is, Charles.”
 

“I appreciate that—your calling me Charles. Who do you have to see?”
 

“You're really not so bad.”
 

“I don't think of myself quite that way. What do you say?” Visions of country dining amid gracious surroundings sprang into his mind, followed by serpentine leg wrappings and practical applications of
Human Sexual Response,
which for ten dollars had been a remarkably cheap method of gleaning inner truth.
 

She could see how he could be attractive, the pestering tenacity of his approach as habit-forming as chocolates. He was beginning to wear her down. His heart on his sleeve, kick him in the teeth, he pleaded, then bite the leg off. She wondered how long Nancy had survived these tactics. Possibly fifteen minutes and two martinis, before he moved in, established a claim to her wayward affections. He clung, accumulated like dust. Impossible to get rid of, until he decided to leave, when all the time he pretended to be a satellite helplessly evolving around a greater sun.
 

A refusal and he would moan and cajole, so she stalled him.
 

“Can you call me later this evening?”
 

He could not live with suspense, and he endeavored to reduce such moments to an absolute minimum or else stomach knots occurred, hampering clear thought.
 

“I have fifty-seven numbers I could call, and any one of them would answer with a smile, pleased to accept my invitation. But Jane, and this is a big but, I don't want to phone them. I want to be with you. There, I've put it on the line and I feel better, even though I'm at a disadvantage,” Luckmunn stated, an octave of hope fluttering in his voice.
 

“It's impossible to hate you.”
 

“That's a nice positive approach if I've ever heard one.”
 

He remembered having read somewhere that in the Orient, suitors faced with romantic defalcation employed the cunning trick of wearing the lady down by always turning up whenever she went outside. The foxy oriental sent candy (or the equivalent), flowers, kimonos, statuary, paintings, hard-to-get Kabuki tickets, privately printed
haiku,
until the girl finally yielded; then when the man had her, he really laced into her, put her on rice three times a day, hit her with a thin cherry-blossom stick until she knew the true meaning of submission and had paid him back for every free kumkwat she'd ever consumed.
 

Such a plan Luckmunn had in mind. Executing it was the only problem he faced. Somehow or other he didn't think the five-pound Barricini assortment would faze Jane one bit, or tickets to
Coco,
or even use of his box at Shea for Jets games. He was hitting his head against the wall of another generation. Maybe drugs? Unfortuately, he had no idea where to purchase them in volume. He'd been holding on to half a marijuana cigarette for a year, secreted in his sock drawer. He'd smoked half, but failed to inhale, preferring his own smooth Havanas, three thousand of which were under lock and key at his humidor vault in Dunhill's.
 

“How are you for clothes?” he inquired. “I've got some really outstanding wholesale connections if you're interested.”
 

She revealed the see-through body hugger under the rabbit coat.
 

“That's pretty terrific. Can I ask you were you bought it?”
 

“In Paris last summer. I'm not sure. Saint Laurent or Courrèges. One of them.”
 

“What do they get for a dress like that?”
 

“Six or seven hundred. I'm not sure.”
 

“That's a pretty penny.”
 

“I didn't know you were interested in dress prices.”
 

“Me, I'm interested in everything that pertains to you.”
 

He remembered with great relief that she didn't need furs and diamonds. They arrived at her apartment house.
 

“Jane, just say the word and Bob will tool down here for you.”
There, he was talking like a Hell's Angel already, establishing a line of communication.
“Or would you like me to come up with you now?”
 

“No.”
 

“You've got a very great directness about you, Jane. I'll call you at six, all right? And thanks for coming with me. I'd hoped, well ... forget it. Blot it out of your mind. Two hundred thousand dollars of my investors' money down the drain. It's not a pretty sight.”
 

 

* * * *

 

She didn't see him at first; he'd stationed himself on the staircase behind her. But when she did, she felt an explosive quake inside her, the
Angst
of loss, a hotness in regions concealed, shortness of breath, the onset of heartburn, a buzzing in the middle ear as though an insect had flown inside and was attempting a solo to her brain. A gray film formed over her eyes, him, her life, blurred. He staggered toward her, reeking of drink.
 

“Jane, could I come in for a minute?”
 

“Sure, Sonny.”
 

He pressed his palm against the wall for support, then blinked when the looping afterglow of late sun hit his eyes. The living room appeared larger than he remembered it, and he moved uncertainly.
 

“You've started kind of early,” Jane said, as he fell into a chair. It had been a month since she'd last spoken to him, and small guilty sorrows tethered her like a harness, which only confirmed the fact that being right was a dismal consolation. “How've you been?”
 

“Great, just great.”
 

She sat down opposite him to avoid the sunlight, and removed her glasses.
 

“Christ, it's still discolored.”
 

“I'm on the mend.”
 

“Well, I'm glad to hear that ... I dint mean to hit you.”
 

“I know.”
 

“Just frustration, Jane. Have you got anythin' to drink?”
 

“Everything but gin.”
 

“Whatever you grab first is okay by me. Just straight. Got so that I can't stand ice or soda. Makes me nauseous.” He laughed self-consciously, uneasy. “An' I always been a highball man.”
 

He didn't understand. The blow meant nothing. Anger, a reflex. Infantile; she dismissed it. The collusion was unforgiveable. He had motives, thinly disguised, but she'd failed to recognize them. She'd been the more deceived, for the treachery of his actions overwhelmed her. Luckmunn at least admitted the truth, paid his money on the line. No sanctimony. A standard way to close a business deal Gratitude expressed with somebody else's body. Nothing wrong with it really so long as the ground rules were established. That was the trouble all along with everyone—her parents, Alan, Sonny; they made up the game as they went along, insisting all the time that she play on her honor.
 

She brought over two glasses and a bottle of White Horse. Unable to wait, he picked up his glass, tortured by the suspicion that more talk would precede the drink. He didn't say when until the glass was half full, still concerned about impressions, but she watched him tip it back without a grimace, a sign she'd seen many times before with Nancy after she'd been drinking nonstop. The drink steadied him and he managed to look friendly and unconcerned.
 

“We been outa touch too long, far as I'm concerned,” he said. “I'm sorry, honest. Could you forgive me, like it dint happen? What I said....”
 

“I have,” she said, knowing that any hesitancy would merely increase his suffering.
 

“That makes me feel real good. I was worried, you know. How should I explain? I got a little confused, that's all. It was too hard to take, Pudge stabbin' me like that. Tryin' to break us up.”
 

“Who do you believe now?” she asked.
 

“You, naturally,” he replied quickly, with a total lack of conviction, avoiding her eyes. The inconstancy of friendship, a hazard he could never quite accept, nor that his judgment could sustain such serious error and he himself had been the passenger of a delusion. “Left a sour taste....”
 

“It's bound to.”
 

He poured himself another drink, tinkled his glass pointlessly against hers even though she hadn't raised it. There was little to toast and she was afraid that the past might vanish if she moved a muscle, since magic worked only in negative ways for her.
 

“Best times of my life nullified. Like I run for a TD ninety-eight yards, which I never done, but I thought about the feelin' a lot, then to have the ref call it back ‘cause somebody got caught clippin'. If you study the game as I have, whenever a player makes a great play and there's a penalty, it's always against his team. He sighed and moved out of the sun's range. Unilluminated, his face had a pastiness and hung slack as if some microcircuit in the control center had shorted. “I sure feel better that you're not sore. It's been hell to live without you.”
 

“For me, too,” she admitted, fearing contradiction would make him crumble into dust, and she'd remain with the dismembered limbs of a dream, memory a puzzle with many parts missing. She didn't feel sure of herself, or confident, and couldn't understand why she of all people should attract the weak. Could they see something she couldn't?
 

“It makes everythin' worthwhile, you forgivin' me. I had a few problems, but now I want to celebrate. Dance or somethin'.”
 

“What kind of problems?”
 

“Nothin' important that I can't handle,” he assured her.
 

“Come on, tell me.”
 

“Aw, Jane, don' make me.”
 

“Please.”
 

“You can wheedle anythin' outa me. It's no good for a man when he can't keep secrets from a woman.”
 

He yielded before her firmness, the intensity of realized drive a weapon he could not overcome, be it instructions, a hard look, printed rules, or perseverance.
 

“I got locked outa my place. A little late with rent, that's no crime. I went down to see the landlord, but he's in Florida and they got a company of snot-nosed kids with lousy college degrees who just push people aroun'. I'm sick of it.”
 

“What about Wesley?”
 

“He's fine. Seen him last week an' he asked about you. He's in Jersey with my cousins. Plenty of ground for him to play, an' the school's damn good. It's better that he's away from the West Side, ‘specially where he was, which is filled to capacity with junkies and rough trade. The fags is worse than the hookers, cause they're usin' the park across the street for their pickups. The girls at least wait for a car to steer in. I mean it's not like a great home that he give up which he couldn't wait to get to after school. Kids aroun' the corner are shootin' horse on their stoops an' there are so many of ‘em the cops can't even take pride in a bust. All in all a bad scene. So Jersey's a lifesaver. An' he's twenty minutes away from the ocean. The place my cousin's got really comes into its own in the summer.”
 

She knew he hated the separation, having lost his only friend, but this was an unacceptable conclusion. Living with the boy, looking after him, kept him straight. Now the reason had been geographically removed. He'd emptied half the bottle so casually that she hardly noticed.
 

“What else?” she asked.
 

“Oh, here we go again? I packed in my lousy job. Asked for a raise an' the boss tole me to tell my story walkin', which I'm not sorry about. You give people loyalty and you get booted in the can. In the time I was there I never beat him for a nickel. Even drinks—sometimes I bought for the house—I paid half. I'm lookin' for the right situation now. When I find it, I'll be able to ask you to marry me.”
 

Unprepared for the kicker, she gulped air down the wrong pipe. He got up and patted her back.
 

“Fish bone, huh?”
 

“Sort of.”