Some Came Running (69 page)

At the door, Frank turned to look back. Clark had already gone back around the bar to mix himself another drink, Bob French and the poker players were still huddled at their table, and Anton Wernz IV still sat like a stone in the corner. Frank grinned over them all and drew in a deep breath. Someday. This was going to be a day to remember, someday. He went out.

He was suddenly very tired. Also he was beginning to feel all those drinks. Just a little. That kind of waveriness inside, which did not quite reach the point of waveriness outside. And that tendency to break into a silly grin. Well, who cared? He didn’t. He liked it, and he was going home and get drunker. To celebrate.

In the corridor, thinking about Clark’s last words about his wife, he looked around the corner into the still-crowded main bar and across it to the slot machine alcove. Betty Lee was still there, cheeks flushed, eyes looking like they were in a trance. He didn’t know what their trouble at home was, but whatever their situation Betty Lee wasn’t happy with it. Any woman who played slot machines like that was desperate and love-hungry and ready for some other man to step in and take her over. He would like to have a shot at it himself. But he couldn’t afford to take the chance even if he had it. Not now since he was dealing with Clark. With one more long look, he shrugged it off and went to look for his wife and daughter. This deal was worth more than any woman in the world. And, in fact, he could already see it in his mind. The big angled ranch-style all done in brown and yellow and the blacktop parking lot all marked off in yellow, and over all of it the big cornice out of red brick spelling out Hirsh Block out of yellow brick laid into it. And people would see it, and every time they did think of Frank Hirsh. Frank Hirsh, the man who built it. For a hundred years, maybe two hundred. By God, it wasn’t every man who would put himself out to this extent just to help his community.

It was funny, but he really did feel that he had seen Edith Barclay naked, that time in the office, and not just imagined it. And he was convinced that should he ever actually see her nude—which, of course, he never would—he would find everything exactly as he had seen it there in the office.

For a moment, on his way down the corridor, he thought with a cold-water shock of the money. That was his next problem. He had told Clark he already had it lined up. Well, he would get it. Clark himself would want to put up some, as much as said so. And maybe that man of his in Springfield would want to put up some. He was sure he could count on Fred Benson in Indianapolis for some more. The rest he would get himself, if he had to hock everything he owned. But it would have to be drawn up for him to have sole control. He was sure he could trust Old Clark. But he was going to start work on Old Lloyd Monds right away just in case. With Old Lloyd’s two corners in his own name he would have it, by God, he thought, and even the thought of having to go home could not puncture the fantastic sense of well-being that filled him.

In the main lounge before the fire, Agnes and Dawn were sitting talking to Gwen French and young Jimmy Shotridge was perched on the arm of Dawn’s chair.

As he came up to them, out of the corner of his eye he saw far down at the other end sitting together at a table with some other young couple, Al Lowe and Geneve. His high spirits were strong enough to weather it, but for a moment he had a terrific twinge of pain in his belly. Carefully trying to look as though he had not seen them, because he knew Agnes would be watching him, he marched on up to his wife’s chair and stood beside her and pretended to listen.

Gwen French was smiling back at Dawn. “As a matter of fact, just about anybody can write, honey. Without even working very hard at it. They don’t even have to be very smart. Look at all our writers today. How many are there? How many books? Thousands every year.” She turned her head and grinned at Agnes. “And I’m not excepting Kenneth Roberts and Frank Yerby, either.”

“Now you just lay off me,” Agnes smiled. “I’ve got your—darned list.” She had obviously been going to say damned, but changed it. Dawn looked irritated. “I’ve even read some of them.”

“Oh no!” Dawn burst in. “I mean really serious, philosophical writers. Who are trying to understand life. Like Wally Dennis is trying to be. A real artist.”

“Well; there you have an entirely different matter,” Gwen said. “How many of those have we? Four, or five at the most. And of them, how many will wind up as great? And there is not one single woman in amongst them. Right now, we have only one who has even a chance of making it: Faulkner. And we haven’t heard anything from him for almost eight years.” She smiled. “You’re talking now about a profession that has a very, very high mortality rate.

“Trying to find the truth is hard enough, Dawnie,” she smiled; “but finding it; and then having to admit to yourself what it is; that’s even harder.”

“Oh, but I’m sure I could write!” Dawn said, her eyes bright. “It would be a tremendous sacrifice! But I could do it!” Then she stretched out her arms and bent back her head. “But after all, acting is my first love. Oh, I feel— I feel as if I was making love to everybody in the world when I get up there on that stage.”

“Dawn!” Agnes said, scandalized.

Gwen French turned to look at her, her face impassive. Then she looked back at Dawn.

“But it’s true, Mother!” Dawn cried. “And I can be a great actress.” She looked up at Jimmy Shotridge.

“She can!” Jimmy said, looking at her with awe. “Surely you can see that, Mrs Hirsh! Don’t you think so, Miss French?”

Dawn smiled at him.

“I expect she can,” Gwen smiled. But something apparently had made her lose interest in the conversation and she said no more, and without her leadership it languished, and then turned to other things as if everybody were embarrassed.

Frank had heard very little of any of it. He was concerned with making his wife think he had not seen Geneve Lowe. To this end, he stood beside his wife’s chair with his hand resting on its shoulder and carefully kept his rebellious eyeballs from rolling themselves down toward the other end as they wanted to and smilingly pretended to listen, while his belly muscles twinged with the pain of it.

He wanted his mistress back! There she sat, decked out in her
Vogue
magazine clothes, and all he had to do was turn and walk down there—and he couldn’t. Because his wife was here, and because her husband was here, and because she herself had coldly informed him she was no longer available to him. So there was that body, that woman’s body, which he knew so well, withheld from him. And encased in those clothes—those flimsy clothes—which to him might as well have been sealed concrete, and he thought he was not going to be able to stand it.

But then, quite suddenly and for no visible logical reason, something happened to him that could only be described as electrifying. His exceedingly high spirits over the forthcoming deal, and his pleased self-satisfaction at it, together with the pain in his belly at seeing Geneve fully clothed, apparently had fused together and shortcircuited, providing him with a sort of arc-lighted revelation. He suddenly had the answer to something that had been bothering him for weeks. He had just realized what it was that had made Edith Barclay act like she had been acting. It was because she was in love with him! He knew it. Edith Barclay had fallen in love with
him!
It was such an intriguing idea that it made him forget everything, including Geneve.

Carefully hiding his excitement, he stood there mulling it over in his head, until they were ready to go and Agnes got up.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to Al and Geneve?” she said after he had helped her on with her coat.

“What?” Frank said, “Who? Where?”

“Al and Geneve Lowe. They’re sitting right down there,” Agnes said sweetly. “Surely you’re not going to leave without even speaking to them. Al works for you!”

“Oh,” Frank said, looking all around. “Oh. No, of course not. I didn’t see them down there.”

“Well?” Agnes said. “Go speak to them.”

“I’ll be right back,” he said and walked down the long room seething and hoping he was not blushing, aware of thousands of eyes watching although there were no more than fifteen pair present at most. It was a very mean thing for her to do to him. He slapped Al on the back and spoke to both of them heartily and explained he had not seen them when he came back from the men’s bar.

Then he made the long trek back up to the door. He had been caught completely off guard. “There wasn’t any reason why I should have to say hello to them,” he said. “They don’t expect it.”

Agnes said nothing, nothing at all, and they said goodby to Gwen and Jimmy. Jimmy, who helped Dawn on with her coat and looked lingeringly after her. And Gwen, who seemed so quiet and collected that none of them had any suspicion of the temper tantrum she was going to throw as soon as she got home.

He had three reasons to get drunk, now, when he got home. The success (at least of the first stage) of the bypass deal; the new realization that Edith Barclay was in love with
him;
and the fact that Agnes had deliberately embarrassed him at the Club. He tried to make Agnes think it was because of what she had done that he was getting drunk, and afterwards was able to feel that he had probably succeeded, though of course he could not be sure. Not with Agnes. With Agnes, you never were sure.

He sat in the darkened front room after the two women had gone on to bed, and drank and thought about Edith Barclay being in love with
him.
It was, to be honest, an almost ungraspable idea. That anybody could be in love with
him.
Especially, a good-looking
young
woman like Edith. It was a pity she worked for him. Ever since he had been taken into the bank by Judge Deacon and voted onto the Board he had made up his mind that he would never as became a successful businessman sleep with any of his hired help again, and it was a rule he felt he could not break without damaging his integrity. But he had not made any rule about thinking about it, had he? No, by God, he hadn’t. So he sat and got drunk, and thought about it.

He wanted something. Something definite. But he did not know what it was and so he could not define it. It wasn’t liquor. It wasn’t Agnes. It wasn’t Geneve. It wasn’t even sex at all. It wasn’t even the big bypass deal, and he had a vague premonition that when he had that, too, it, too, would not satisfy. What he wanted, he guessed drunkenly, was some way of destroying himself that would not destroy him. Now how were you going to find that? It was funny, wasn’t it? how the only times we could really be honest with ourselves was when we were drunk? No wonder the distilleries made money. He got up and went and got another drink and came back and drank it and went to sleep in the chair.

This time he had kept himself from drinking so much that he would get the gastritis like he had that time in Chicago. But he nevertheless had a ghastly hangover. He did not go down to the store until nearly noon. And so it was late afternoon before he called the taxi stand to find out how things were going and learned from Albie Shipe that Dave was gone. Dave’s car was still out in front of the hotel, but Dave himself had been gone since yesterday. Nobody knew where.

The only thing Frank knew to do was to call Gwen French after she got home from school and see if he was there, but Gwen—as calm and cold as she ever was—told him she had no idea where he had gone either. As he hung up, Frank could not help thinking that he had never seen
anybody
who was such a cold fish
all
the time.

S
HE HAD NOT EVEN
waited until she had her coat off, but had let it loose the moment she was inside and had slammed the door. She had held it in all the way home in the car. And before that, she had held it in for a full half hour after they had gone—while she waited amongst that crowd of damned fools for him to wear out his damned poker mania. To have held it any longer and she would not be responsible.

“The world is full of fools!” she demanded of his retreating back. “Did you know that? Simple, ignorant, goddamned fools! And does anyone
admit
it? No! Human beings! Pure ignoramuses! Animals, I tell you!
Thousands
of them!
Millions
of them! And
proud
of it! Smugly going around calling each other human beings to their faces as if that were something significant in itself! With all the rational intelligence of a frightened rattlesnake coiled to strike blindly in self-defense!
Dignity
!” she cried, struggling to get her arms out of the sleeves of her coat, “It
hurts
me! Millions and billions of them! Simple—ignorant—vain-foolish
clowns!
How do you account for that? in your philosophy? Answer me!”

Bob, who was no longer drunk and had not been since he had come out of the men’s bar, in spite of all the liquor she knew he had consumed in the last eighteen hours, calmly went on taking off his coat and hat and leaving them on the table went to stir up the big bed of coals in the fireplace and put on another log and from there, kneeling, looked up at her with those eyes she always felt knew so much, but did not smile at her and for that she was grateful.

“Answer!” she demanded, finally getting her arms out of the coat and throwing it on the floor. “How do you take that in account?”

“I accept it.”

“You accept it!”

“Except when on occasion it gets too much to digest,” he said, “and then I act like you’re acting now. Or else get drunk.”

“You accept it!” she sneered. “I’m supposed to teach them! I’m supposed to help them learn things! They don’t
want
to learn things! It
hurts
them! They want
not
to learn things! How do you think I feel when I stand beside the sausage grinder and watch the big fat sausages rolling out of it day by day? All held together with the grease of their own fat smug minds and vanity? Fully accredited, vitally Christian—
sausages!
Meat and drink for Norman Vincent Peale! And I do it! Why do you think I do it?”

Bob had sat down in the big chair and, propping his elbows on the arms, gazed at her kindly.