Sweet Thursday (24 page)

Joe Elegant was only the cook at the Bear Flag, not the bouncer, with the result that his ser vices were never required late at night. He retired early and set his alarm clock for four. This gave him three or four hours every morning over his portable to tap out green letters on green paper.

The book was going well. His hero had been born in a state of shock and nothing subsequent had reassured him. When a symbol wasn't slapping him in the mouth, a myth was kicking his feet out from under him. It was a book of moods, of dank rooms with cryptic wallpaper, of pale odors, of decaying dreams. There wasn't a character in the whole of
The Pi Root of Oedipus
who wouldn't have made the observation ward. The hero had elderly aunts beside whom the Marquis de Sade was an altar boy. The pile of green manuscript was three inches thick, and Joe Elegant was beginning to plan his photograph for the back of the dust cover: open collar, he thought, and a small, wry smile, and one hand relaxed in front of him with an open poison ring on the third finger. He knew which reviewers he could depend on and why. He typed: “A pool scummed with Azolla. In the open water in the middle of the pond a dead fish floated belly up…”

Joe Elegant sighed, leaned back, and scratched his stomach. He yawned, went into the Bear Flag's kitchen, and started a pot of coffee. While it was heating he walked out into a glorious morning. The pelicans were drumming in for a run of tom cod, and little pink Kleenex clouds hung over the bay. Joe saw the flowers in front of the boiler door and moved over to inspect them—a huge bouquet of tulips, early roses, jonquils, and iris. They might have been anyone's offering, except that their stems were in a museum jar.

Joe Elegant's life had not been in danger since the engagement and raffle party, but he hadn't felt much friendliness in Cannery Row either. He carried his news into the Bear Flag and served it to Fauna on a tray along with her coffee and crullers. By eight o'clock the news was in the Palace Flop house, and the early men were ingesting it with their whisky sours at the La Ida.

The best seats were in the Ready Room with its windows overlooking the vacant lot. Mack was there behind a drape, munching Fauna's crullers. The girls were there in their best kimonos. Becky had put on her mules with the ostrich feathers. At eight-thirty the audience heard the boiler door screech and shushed one another.

Suzy, on her hands and knees, poked her head out of the firedoor and rammed her nose into the giant floral tribute. For a long moment she stared at the flowers, and then she reached out and dragged them inside. The iron door closed after her.

At nine o'clock Suzy re-emerged and walked rapidly toward Monterey. At nine-thirty she was back. She went into the boiler and in a moment came out, pushing her suitcase ahead of her. The audience was filled with dismay, but only for a moment. Suzy climbed the steps and rang the bell at the Bear Flag. Fauna chased the girls to their rooms and Mack out the back way before she answered the door.

Suzy said, “You told me I could use your bathroom.”

“Help yourself,” said Fauna.

In an hour, when the splashing had ceased, Fauna knocked on the bathroom door. “Want a little toilet water, honey?”

“Thanks,” said Suzy.

In a few minutes she emerged, scrubbed and shining.

“Like a cup of coffee?” Fauna asked.

“Wish I could,” said Suzy. “I got to run. Thanks for the bath. There ain't nothing like a good deep-dish set-down bath.”

Fauna, from behind a drape, watched her crawl back into the boiler.

In her office Fauna scribbled a note and sent it by Joe Elegant to Western Biological. It read: “She ain't going to work today.”

Doc laid his best clothes out on his cot. There were pale acid spots on the washed khaki trousers, the white shirt was yellow with age, and he noticed for the first time that his old tweed jacket was frayed through at both elbows. The tie he had worn to the dinner at Sonny Boy's was spotted. He found a black army tie in the bottom of his suitcase. For the first time in his life he was dissatisfied with his clothing. It was silly to feel serious about it, but there was no doubt that he was serious. For a time he sat down and regarded his wardrobe and his life, and he found them both ridiculous. And not less ridiculous was the quaking certainty that he was frightened.

He spoke aloud to the rattlesnakes, and they ran out their forked tongues to listen.

“You are looking at a fool,” he said. “I am a reasonable man, a comparatively intelligent man—IQ one hundred and eighty-two, University of Chicago, Master's and Ph.D. An informed man in his own field and not ignorant in some other fields. Regard this man!” he said. “He is about to pay a formal call on a girl in a boiler. He has a half-pound box of chocolates for her. This man is scared stiff. Why? I'll tell you why. He is afraid this girl will not approve of him. He is terrified of her. He knows this is funny, but he cannot laugh at it.”

The eyes of the snakes looked dustily at him—or seemed to.

Doc went on, “Let me put it this way: there is nothing I can do. They say of an amputee that he remembers his leg. Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole. At the time I didn't realize how important it was, but I do now. I am not a dope. I know that if I should win her I'll have many horrible times. Over and over, I'll wish I'd never seen her. But I also know that if I fail I'll never be a whole man. I'll live a gray half-life, and I'll mourn for my lost girl every hour of the rest of my life. As thoughtful reptiles you will wonder, ‘Why not wait? Look further! There are better fish in the sea!' But you are not involved. Let me tell you that to me not only are there no better fish, there are no other fish in the sea at all. The sea is lonely without this fish. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

He took off his clothes and had a shower and scrubbed himself until his skin was soap-burned and red. He brushed his teeth until his gums bled. His hands were frayed with formalin, but he gouged at his discolored nails just the same, and he brushed at his overgrown hair and he shaved so close that his face was on fire. At last he was ready—and still he looked for things to do, to put off his departure.

His stomach was crowding up against his chest, forcing him to breathe shallowly. I should take a big slug of whisky, he thought. But it would be on my breath and she would know why I'd taken it. I wonder if she's frightened too? You never know. Women can conceal these things better than men. Oh God, what a fool I am! I can't go this way. I'm falling to pieces. My voice would tremble. Why, the little—no, don't do that. You can't build your courage by running her down. You're going to her, not she to you. Why do I say “you” when it is “I”? Am I afraid of “I”?

And then he knew what to do. He went to his records and he found the
Art of the Fugue.
If I can't get courage from his greatness, he thought, I might as well give up. He sat unmoving while Bach built a world and peopled it and organized it and finally fought his world and was destroyed by it. And when the music stopped, as the man had stopped when death came to him, stopped in the middle of a phrase, Doc had his courage back. “Bach fought savagely,” he said. “He was not defeated. If he had lived he would have gone on fighting the impossible fight.”

Doc cried to no one, “Give me a little time! I want to think. What did Bach have that I am hungry for to the point of starvation? Wasn't it gallantry? And isn't gallantry the great art of the soul? Is there any more noble quality in the human than gallantry?” He stopped and then suddenly he seemed to be wracked with inner tears. “Why didn't I know before?” he asked. “I, who admire it so, didn't even recognize it when I saw it. Old Bach had his talent and his family and his friends. Everyone has something. And what has Suzy got? Absolutely nothing in the world but guts. She's taken on an atomic world with a slingshot, and, by God, she's going to win! If she doesn't win there's no point in living anymore.

“What do I mean, win?” Doc asked himself. “I know. If you are not defeated, you win.”

Then he stabbed himself in vengeance for having run Suzy down. “I know what I'm doing. In the face of my own defeat I'm warming myself at her gallantry. Let me face this clearly, please! I need her to save myself. I can be whole only with Suzy.”

He stood up and he did not feel silly anymore and his mission was not ridiculous. “So long,” he said to the rattlesnakes. “Wish me luck!” He took his box of candy and went jauntily down the steps of Western Biological. Crossing the street, he knew he was being observed from every window from which he was visible, and he didn't care. He waved a salute to his unseen audience.

Going through the vacant lot among the mallow weeds, he thought, How do you knock on an iron door? He stooped and picked a rusty tenpenny nail from the ground and he arrived almost gaily at the boiler and tapped a little drumbeat on the iron wall. The firedoor was slightly ajar.

Suzy's voice sounded with a metallic ring. “Who is it?”

“It's I,” said Doc. “Or me—somebody like that.”

The firedoor opened and Suzy looked out. “Thanks for the flowers,” she said.

“I brought you another present.”

She looked at the candy box in his hand. Being on her hands and knees, she had to twist her neck to look up at him. Doc couldn't tell whether there was suspicion and doubt on her face or only strained muscles from her position.

“Candy?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I don't—” she began, and then Fauna's words crowded in on her with short punches. “What the hell,” she said. “Thanks.”

Doc was losing his poise. Suzy had straightened her neck and from her position she couldn't see above his knees. Doc tried for lightness again, and he sounded clumsy to himself. “This is a formal call,” he said. “Aren't you going to ask me in?”

“Do you think you can get in?”

“I can try.”

“There ain't much room inside.”

Doc remained silent.

“Oh, for God's sakes come on in!” said Suzy. She backed her head out of the opening.

Doc got down on his hands and knees. He threw the candy box through the firedoor, then crawled through the opening. He thought with amusement, A man who can do this with dignity need never again fear anything, and at that moment his trouser cuff caught on the door and pulled it closed against his ankle. He was all inside except one foot and he could not free himself. “I seem to be hung up,” he said.

“Hold it,” said Suzy. She straddled him and worked the cuff loose from the door corner. “I think you tore your pants,” she said as she backed off over his shoulders. “Maybe I can mend 'em for you.”

Doc's eyes were getting used to the dim interior. A little light came in from the smokestack and met a little more that entered from the firedoor.

“It's hard to see at first,” said Suzy. “I got a lamp here. Wait, I'll light it up.”

“No need,” said Doc. He could see now and something in him collapsed with pity at the pretension of the curtains, the painted walls, and the home-built dressing table with its mirror and bottles. My God, what a brave thing is the human! he thought. And then Suzy brought his rising compassion crashing down.

“There's a welder eats at the Poppy. Know what he's going to do first any day he can? Bring his torch and cut windows in the sides.”

Her voice echoed with enthusiasm. “I'll put in little window frames and some flower boxes with red geraniums,” she said. “'Course, I'll have to paint the outside then, white, I think, with green trim. Maybe a trellis like in front. I got a nice hand with roses.”

Then she was silent. Constraint and formality sifted in and filled the boiler.

Doc thought in wonder, It's not a boiler at all. Somehow she has managed to make a home of this. He said, “You've done a wonderful job here.”

“Thanks.”

He spoke his thought. “It's a real home.”

“It's comfortable,” she said. “I never had no room of my own.”

“Well, you have now.”

“Sometimes I set in here and think how they'd have to blast to get me out if I didn't want to come.”

Doc gathered his courage. “Suzy, I'm sorry for what happened.”

“I don't want to talk about it. It wasn't none of your fault.”

“Yes, it was.”

“I don't think so,” she said with finality.

“I would do anything to—”

“Look, Doc,” she said, “you won't let it alone, so maybe I got to rub your nose in it a little. It wasn't no fault of yours, but it sure as hell give me a lesson. I had myself a bawl and now it's done. There ain't nothing for you to do. I don't need nothing. Anybody's sorry for me, they're wasting their time. I ain't never had it so good in my life. Got that? Well, don't forget it! There ain't nothing for you nor nobody to do 'cause I'm doing it all myself. If you can get that through your knocker, okay. If you can't, you better take a powder.”

He said, “What a conceited fool I've been!”

Then silence hung in the boiler. Suzy broke it when she felt that his nose was sufficiently rubbed in it.

“Know what?” she said brightly. “They got a night class, typing, at the high school. I signed up. Next Saturday I get a rent typewriter. I can learn.”

“I'll bet you can too. Maybe you'll type my paper for me.”

“You're going to write it after all?”

“I've got to, Suzy. It's all I have. I'm a dead duck without it. I'm going to La Jolla Saturday for the spring tides. I'm glad. Are you?”

“Why not?” she asked. “I don't like to see nobody kicked in the face.” She drew up formality like a coverlet. “You want I should make you a nice cup of tea? I got a Sterno stove.”

“I'd like it.”

She had the situation in hand now, and she talked on easily while she lighted the stove and put her little teakettle on to boil.

“I'm making good tips down at the Poppy,” she said. “Paid off Joe Blaikey in two weeks. Ella's thinking about taking a week's vacation. She ain't never had a vacation. Hell, I can run the joint easy. 'Scuse that ‘hell.' I don't hardly never cuss no more.”

“You're doing fine,” said Doc. “Could you tell me, without rubbing my nose in it, what you want in a man? Might help me—another time.”

“Tea's ready,” said Suzy. She passed him the steaming cup. “Leave it steep a little longer,” she said. “Sugar's in the cup on the dressing table.”

When he was stirring the sugar in she said, “If I thought it wasn't a pitch you was making I'd tell you.”

“I don't think it's a pitch.”

“Okay then. Maybe what I want ain't anywhere in the world, but I want it, so I think there is such a thing. I want a guy that's wide open. I want him to be a real guy, maybe even a tough guy, but I want a window in him. He can have his dukes up every other place but not with me. And he got to need the hell out of me. He got to be the kind of guy that if he ain't got me he ain't got nothing. And brother, that guy's going to have something!”

“Except for toughness, you're kind of describing me,” said Doc.

“You keep out of this! You told me and I was too dumb to listen. You like what you got. You told me straight. I'd spoil it. Took me a long time to wise up, but I sure wised up.”

“Maybe what I said wasn't true.”

“When you said it with your face it was true all right.”

Doc felt beaten. There was no anger in her tone, nothing but acceptance, together with an undertone of excitement. That was it, excitement, almost amounting to gaiety.

He said, “You know, Suzy, you sound happy.”

“I am,” said Suzy. “And you know who done it for me?”

“Who?”

“Fauna. That's a hunk of dame! She made me proud, and I ain't never been proud before in my life.”

“How did she do it?” Doc asked. “I need some of that myself.”

“She told me, and made me say it—‘There ain't nothing in the world like Suzy'—and she says Suzy is a good thing. And goddam it, it's true! Now let's knock it off, huh?”

“Okay,” said Doc. “I guess I ought to be going.”

“Yeah,” said Suzy, “I got to go to work. Say, remember that guy you told me about that lived out where we went that night?”

“The seer? Sure, what about him?”

“Joe Blaikey had to pick him up.”