Pretty Leslie (10 page)

Again Ben closed his eyes. I'm more afraid than he is of what I might do to him, he thought—for a moment deliriously and insanely proud of his control. His fear was real. What caused it was in doubt. The thought had scampered through his mind like one hysterical warning of … well, after all, of what? Merely of the presence of hate too great in scale for the flimsy resolutions possible in verbal argument.

“You don't understand, so I want to do some real magic for you, Dave,” he said quietly.

In one of the kitchen cupboards there was a leather dice cup, and two white dice lay in it. Sometimes he and Leslie rolled to decide where they would accept invitations on Sunday, who would do the dishes, whether or not to go to a movie. Probably once it had been part of some game they played in the evenings. He got it out now, and let all those with him inspect it. Dave rolled the dice on the top of the pass-through counter a couple of times. Five and three.

“Put the dice in the box,” Ben told him. “Go ahead.” Dave dropped them in and shook.

Ben took the box. “The roll will be nine,” he said. He was still not sure quite whether he was joking, building up some elaborate, shaggy-dog maneuver to dissipate his feelings in nonsense.

“I don't believe it will,” Dave said. “I have a C-note that says it just won't.”

“Be careful of him,” Sue warned. She respected some prowess of Ben's and was not sure how far it extended.

Dave knew. There is no way to control unloaded dice in a box.

Ben shook his head. “I'm going to perform a miracle to convince a doubter. You don't expect me to do it for money.”

“I'll cover,” Dolores said. Her left hand, with dimples at every knuckle, yielded one of the old-fashioned engagement rings to her tugging. She let it rattle from her hand onto the counter. With incredible hauteur she said, “It's worth considerably more than a hundred dollars.”

Dave winked. She did not acknowledge the wink.

“The roll will be nine,” Ben said. He hefted the box one more time. He let the dice fall.

The first one stopped a three. The other spun a corner, hit Sue's glass.

“Six,” she squeaked.

It fell showing a face of five.

“Well, back to the old penicillin,” Dave said. “Sorry, Ben. What we
need
these days is a miracle worker all right, all right.” With the back of his hand he brushed the ring toward Dolores.

“It was going to fall six,” Sue insisted. “
I
saw it. In principle he did it.”

“In principle he is Jesus Christ,” Harley said.

But then goosey old Dolores Calfert went to pieces. She would not pick up the ring thrust so cavalierly back to her. She sat humped over, looking at it as if it were some kind of vermin materialized on the immaculate wood. Then she said, in a broken voice, to Dave, “The ring's yours. I don't want it. I don't want it!” The last word was shrill and so loud she might have been heard in the basement.

They all tried to coax her then. Of course, they said, the ring was obviously worth much more than a hundred dollars. At most she should plan to pay her bet in cash … if she felt she had to. But of course, of course, she must not part with her ring for a single night.

“I didn't want to bet with
you
,” Dave said abjectly. “Really, Mrs. Calfert. It was just horseplay between Ben and me. We're used to each other. We insult each other all the time.”

She glared at him like a duchess who understood that his kind well might insult a decent person by his mere presence. He began to work up anger again. “Still, my hundred dollars was real,” he said.

“You'd better have the ring appraised,” Dolores said.

“I'm sure it's very valuable to you.” Dave let his eyelids settle heavily down, satisfied that his tone was devastating.

As if he had made a major choice, Ben said, “Pay him off in cash. I'll lend it to you. We'll pay him off. It was my roll.” In the exchange of hostilities he had chosen sides more definitely than he had expected to. They both felt it—Dave, his old friend; Dolores Calfert, someone new in his life, unaccountably important.

She had them both where she wanted them, as if she had foreseen or calculated it so. “I bet him the ring,” she said. “I want him to take it.” She
dared
him to take it. She smiled with the malice of an old sibyl promising disasters to follow the winning of this ring. The triumph, subtle as it might be, was hers after all. “You shouldn't have played if you weren't prepared to win,” she told Dave. “Probably the history of your life.”

It probably was at that, though it was equally probable that Dave didn't know quite what she meant. It was enough that her condescension had gone through his defenses. He couldn't take the ring and he couldn't force it on her. He was belittled. His one recourse was to get out quickly.

Dolores meant to beat him to that, too. She took a swift step backward—probably meaning to head for the basement and say good night to Leslie. One of her spike heels snapped. She collapsed embarrassingly on the tile floor.

When the men tried to pick her up there seemed to be no proper place to catch hold. The soft wads of flesh were ready to slip off her heavy bones. Dave's exertion-reddened ear came near her mouth as he tugged at her. She spoke to him in a whisper. His whole head turned turkey-wattle purple, but he did not let go until they had her on her feet.

“However you want it, lady,” he mumbled. “Sorry. I didn't know you'd take it so hard.”

That was supposed to be a reflection on her tact, but tact no longer counted. There had been an encounter of passion with doubt, and passion had the roundabout victory. It had caught Ben. He did not make the mistake of arguing further about the ring. He put it up safely in a cupboard. Leslie could take it to her at work sometime.

It was not much later when he drove her home, welcoming the chance to let go his responsibilities for the party—welcoming as much, though not quite so understandably, the prospect of getting a relaxed word with her.

She walked across the grass to his sports car in her stocking feet, needing no help, thank you. She thought it just as well, “considering everything,” she said with a grand, suggestive chuckle, not to say good night to Leslie, whom she would see at work on Monday morning. A wise decision. He supposed Leslie might have had to be told about the rumpus, would have wanted him to “do something.” It appeared that he and Dolores understood there was nothing to be done. No one even knew for sure what the argument had been about. As he thundered his little car through the suburban streets, sympathetically holding his tongue, he could see from the way she lolled in her bucket seat how far she had depleted her reserves of strength.

The night was almost incredibly mellow with a dampness from the river settling among the trees and houses and a corn-yellow moon following the car like a kite.

The breeze cooled their faces, and once when he turned to look at her he was startled to see an adolescent girl riding with him, an unbearable steadiness of trust in her shadowy eyes as she watched him drive.

They drove past the Menankha Country Club and heard the band playing some song unrecognizable to him. “‘Drifting and Dreaming,'” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“A sirupy tune. It was popular, oh, about 1927.”

“Oh. I thought you said it
was
1927.”

“What?”

Then they decided they were both too groggy to talk. They rode as if both asleep, driver and passenger, over the high bridge. Below them the river spread like a flooding current of moonlight down through the black silhouette of skyline and on among woods and farms toward the Gulf. It was a river she had known a long time ago. The skyline and this bridge were as new to her as to him. He remembered how she had lived here once and had then come back, and the thought seemed to have some compelling meaning he could not quite seize.

A car full of teen-agers passed them. The kids hooted mockingly—as if mocking lovers; but he supposed the real inspiration for boos was the sight of his expensive little car. He was rather used to such harmless assaults.

He thought they were quite close to her home when she said, “You're a dandy, Ben.” The voice was a young girl's.

“Gee,” he said. “Gee, thanks.”

“You are,” she said from the dauntless tranquility of her age. “Leslie is, too. I suppose you know what a crush I have on her. I don't mean nonsense. I mean love. I love her.”

“Yes,” Ben said, rather awed.

“I know enough about people to know you're better than she is. She's awfully good.”

“I know.”

“Do you know?” she asked, as if from a drugged clairvoyance that might have been desperate if melancholy had been denied it. “Yes, you know.”

“There's so much wrong with her,” he said. He had not believed there was anyone alive to whom he could say such a thing. He had less the sense that he was betraying her than that—somehow—he was delivering her home.

“Considering what a freak world it is, you've got the best possible marriage.”

“The pathology is written on our foreheads.”

“I'll bet you're a very good doctor.” Meaning: Don't imagine you can dodge from me with your jargon. Don't be afraid to listen, sweetie. What I say won't hurt much.

“I'd like to help,” she said. “And, believe it or not, a woman like me learns things. I could help if … I wish Cy could have seen her. He'd have loved her. She's better than my daughter Esther. We never fooled ourselves about the children. Cy knew exactly how good every human being he ever met was. He was like a jeweler appraising. Do you know?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, you know. He'd have adored her.”

“I believe you.”

“She deserves … what you give her. Don't forget that, brother.”

No response.

“I deserved Cy. Jesus, dear God, I hate it that man is dead. Only a dumb ball player, but he was the smartest man I've ever seen. He didn't die until he died. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know? Yes, you know. Do you know how good a marriage can get to be? A woman doesn't need any more than her marriage. It can be a
beautiful
thing.”

He heard and understood as if he were talking to himself and getting answers absolutely purified of any need to pretend things were different than his anxiety knew them to be. What kind of ghost had he put in his car tonight? He was afraid to look at her face again—as if this time he might fall too painfully in love.

But when he stopped in front of her house and the streetlight shone on her, he saw how her makeup was beginning to seep over her bagging unwholesome face. She grinned back at him as if to say, Yes, this too is part of the beautiful thing.

“Good night, handsome.” She pinched his cheek.

He offered to walk up the lawn with her to her door.

“I've come home barefooted before this,” she said, refusing.

He waited nevertheless, waiting for her to put on an inside light. She was a long time making it to the door. He could see her pause and lean into the shrubbery by the porch steps and was afraid she might be ill.

Then he saw her in dark, fat silhouette against the sudden light from her hall. She waved and undulated. For laughs. Home safe. Returning, costumed as she had left except for one ring left as a pledge. The last of the torch singers.

He was halfway home before it occurred to him what they had really been talking about. About Leslie's walking out of her own party with Dave Lloyd, of course, and about the curious, bloodless duel he and Dave had fought afterward.

All the time she was consoling me that I couldn't quite make the dice fall with a nine, he thought, that I almost won but didn't quite. Yes, he knew that. He never
quite
won where Leslie was concerned.

chapter 6

O
NCE THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL
named Leslie Skinner feeding ducks on a chilly day. The water of the pond across which the ducks swam to her was brown, with blue-gray ridges of ripple not quite exactly the color of the sky. The ducks swarming around her feet were of many colors and sizes—such a collection of types as a park or zoo would collect, not the flock of a commercial breeder. There were tame mallards and pintails, fat white waddlers with bills and feet yellow as paint. There was a variety of colors and shapes like those of the merry-go-round horses, stacked for winter storage under canvas across the pond. A few females of a smaller breed competed most nimbly for the chunks that the three-year-old tossed them.

“Leslie, sweetheart,” her father said, “quick now, throw the rest of it. You're not really feeding them. We have to meet Mama back at the car in a minute. Mama's waiting.”

As her hand hesitated full of bread, she wondered what kept the ducks warm in the impossible cold of such water. Of course they had their feathers, just as she had a nice Sunday coat, buttoned to her chin. The feathers were wet. Surely the cold would come through them, would touch its misery against their yellow-and-rosy skin. Inside their coats of feathers there must have been hearts, pumping excitedly the way hers did. But what did those wild hearts pump instead of the comfortable blood that warmed her so well? What could run in their veins that wouldn't be chilled when it was brushed, outside the skin, by the muddy, blue-brown horror of cold water?

There was something altogether uncanny about those water-sleek bodies contorting and struggling and darting their long necks like snakes just below and beyond the white tips of her shoes and the mudbank on which she was standing. Fearing the uncanny thing that made them immune to cold, she did not want to feed them from her warm hand. These inhuman hungers were not the gentle, grateful bird friends she expected.

“Feeding the ducks”—Mother made it sound like being kind to her baby brother, who was always warm and pampered in his crib, and who grinned a silly, perpetual gratitude to her when she brought him a toy or a bottle.