The Collected Stories of Richard Yates (18 page)

The pickets were backed off and standing still now, holding their placards high with one hand and curving the other around their mouths to call, “Boo-oo! Boo-oo!”

The crowd picked it up: “Boo-oo!” “Boo-oo!” And somebody called, “Go back to Russia!”

“Keep moving,” the cops were saying. “Move along, now. Keep moving.”

“There he is,” said the muttering voice. “There he comes now—that's Mitchell.”

And Fallon saw him: a tall, slight man in a cheap double-breasted suit that was too big for him, carrying a briefcase and flanked by two plain women in glasses. There was the snobbish face of the newspaper pictures, turning slowly from side to side now, with a serene, superior smile that seemed to be saying, to everyone it met:
Oh, you poor fool. You poor fool
.

Not until several people whirled to look at him did Fallon realize he was yelling; then all he knew was that he had to yell again and again until his voice broke, like a child in tears:
“KILL that bastard! KILL 'im! KILL 'im!”

In four bucking, lunging strides he was through to the front of the crowd; then one of the pickets dropped his placard and rushed him, saying, “Easy, Mac! Take it
easy
—” But Fallon threw him off, grappled with another man and wrenched free again, got both hands on Mitchell's coat front and tore him down like a crumpled puppet. He saw Mitchell's face recoil in wet-mouthed terror on the sidewalk, and the last thing he knew, as the cop's blue arm swung high over his head, was a sense of absolute fulfillment and relief.

BECAUSE OF THE
midnight noise on both ends of the line there was some confusion at Harry's New York Bar when the call came through. All the bartender could tell at first was that it was a long-distance call from Cannes, evidently from some kind of nightclub, and the operator's frantic voice made it sound like an emergency. Then at last, by plugging his free ear and shouting questions into the phone, he learned that it was only Ken Platt, calling up to have an aimless chat with his friend Carson Wyler, and this made him shake his head in exasperation as he set the phone on the bar beside Carson's glass of Pernod.

“Here,” he said. “It's for you, for God's sake. It's your buddy.” Like a number of other Paris bartenders he knew them both pretty well: Carson was the handsome one, the one with the slim, witty face and the English-sounding accent; Ken was the fat one who laughed all the time and tagged along. They were both three years out of Yale and trying to get all the fun they could out of living in Europe.

“Carson?” said Ken's eager voice, vibrating painfully in the receiver. “This is Ken—I knew I'd find you there. Listen, when you coming down, anyway?”

Carson puckered his well-shaped brow at the phone. “You know when I'm coming down,” he said. “I wired you, I'm coming down Saturday. What's the matter with you?”

“Hell, nothing's the matter with me—maybe a little drunk is all. No, but listen, what I really called up about, there's a man here named Sid plays a really good jazz piano, and I want you to hear him. He's a friend of mine. Listen, wait a minute, I'll get the phone over close so you can hear. Listen to this, now. Wait a minute.”

There were some blurred scraping sounds and the sound of Ken laughing and somebody else laughing, and then the piano came through. It sounded tinny in the telephone, but Carson could tell it was good. It was “Sweet Lorraine,” done in a rich traditional style with nothing commercial about it, and this surprised him, for Ken was ordinarily a poor judge of music. After a minute he handed the phone to a stranger he had been drinking with, a farm machinery salesman from Philadelphia. “Listen to this,” he said. “This is first-rate.”

The farm machinery salesman held his ear to the phone with a puzzled look. “What is it?”

“‘Sweet Lorraine.'”

“No, but I mean what's the deal? Where's it coming from?”

“Cannes. Somebody Ken turned up down there. You've met Ken, haven't you?”

“No, I haven't,” the salesman said, frowning into the phone. “Here, it's stopped now and somebody's talking. You better take it.”

“Hello? Hello?” Ken's voice was saying. “Carson?”

“Yes, Ken. I'm right here.”

“Where'd you go? Who was that other guy?”

“That was a gentleman from Philadelphia named—” he looked up questioningly.

“Baldinger,” said the salesman, straightening his coat.

“Named Mr. Baldinger. He's here at the bar with me.”

“Oh. Well listen, how'd you like Sid's playing?”

“Fine, Ken. Tell him I said it was first-rate.”

“You want to talk to him? He's right here, wait a minute.”

There were some more obscure sounds and then a deep middle-aged voice said, “Hello there.”

“How do you do, Sid. My name's Carson Wyler, and I enjoyed your playing very much.”

“Well,” the voice said. “Thank you, thank you a lot. I appreciate it.” It could have been either a colored or a white man's voice, but Carson assumed he was colored, mostly from the slight edge of self-consciousness or pride in the way Ken had said, “He's a friend of mine.”

“I'm coming down to Cannes this weekend, Sid,” Carson said, “and I'll be looking forward to—”

But Sid had evidently given back the phone, for Ken's voice cut in. “Carson?”

“What?”

“Listen, what time you coming Saturday? I mean what train and everything?” They had originally planned to go to Cannes together, but Carson had become involved with a girl in Paris, and Ken had gone on alone, with the understanding that Carson would join him in a week. Now it had been nearly a month.

“I don't know the exact train,” Carson said, with some impatience. “It doesn't matter, does it? I'll see you at the hotel sometime Saturday.”

“Okay. Oh and wait, listen, the other reason I called, I want to sponsor Sid here for the IBF, okay?”

“Right. Good idea. Put him back on.” And while be was waiting he got out his fountain pen and asked the bartender for the IBF membership book.

“Hello again,” Sid's voice said. “What's this I'm supposed to be joining here?”

“The IBF,” Carson said. “That stands for International Bar Flies, something they started here at Harry's back in—I don't know. Long time ago. Kind of a club.”

“Very good,” Sid said, chuckling.

“Now, what it amounts to is this,” Carson began, and even the bartender, for whom the IBF was a bore and a nuisance, had to smile with pleasure at the serious, painstaking way he told about it—how each member received a lapel button bearing the insignia of a fly, together with a printed booklet that contained the club rules and a listing of all other IBF bars in the world; how the cardinal rule was that when two members met they were expected to greet one another by brushing the fingers of their right hands on each other's shoulders and saying, “
Bzz-z-z, bzz-z-z!
”

This was one of Carson's special talents, the ability to find and convey an unashamed enjoyment in trivial things. Many people could not have described the IBF to a jazz musician without breaking off in an apologetic laugh to explain that it was, of course, a sort of sad little game for lonely tourists, a square's thing really, and that its very lack of sophistication was what made it fun; Carson told it straight. In much the same way he had once made it fashionable among some of the more literary undergraduates at Yale to spend Sunday mornings respectfully absorbed in the funny papers of the
New York Mirror
; more recently the same trait had rapidly endeared him to many chance acquaintances, notably to his current girl, the young Swedish art student for whom he had stayed in Paris. “You have beautiful taste in everything,” she had told him on their first memorable night together. “You have a truly educated, truly original mind.”

“Got that?” he said into the phone, and paused to sip his Pernod. “Right. Now if you'll give me your full name and address, Sid, I'll get everything organized on this end.” Sid spelled it out and Carson lettered it carefully into the membership book, with his own name and Ken's as cosponsors, while Mr. Baldinger watched. When they were finished Ken's voice came back to say a reluctant goodbye, and they hung up.

“That must've been a pretty expensive telephone call,” Mr. Baldinger said, impressed.

“You're right,” Carson said. “I guess it was.”

“What's the deal on this membership book, anyway? All this barfly business?”

“Oh, aren't you a member, Mr. Baldinger? I thought you were a member. Here, I'll sponsor you, if you like.”

Mr. Baldinger got what he later described as an enormous kick out of it: far into the early morning he was still sidling up to everyone at the bar, one after another, and buzzing them.

Carson didn't get to Cannes on Saturday, for it took him longer than he'd planned to conclude his affair with the Swedish girl. He had expected a tearful scene, or at least a brave exchange of tender promises and smiles, but instead she was surprisingly casual about his leaving—even abstracted, as if already concentrating on her next truly educated, truly original mind—and this forced him into several uneasy delays that accomplished nothing except to fill her with impatience and him with a sense of being dispossessed. He didn't get to Cannes until the following Tuesday afternoon, after further telephone talks with Ken, and then, when he eased himself onto the station platform, stiff and sour with hangover, he was damned if he knew why he'd come at all. The sun assaulted him, burning deep into his gritty scalp and raising a quick sweat inside his rumpled suit; it struck blinding glints off the chromework of parked cars and motor scooters and made sickly blue vapors of exhaust rise up against pink buildings; it played garishly among the swarm of tourists who jostled him, showing him all their pores, all the tension of their store-new sports clothes, their clutched suitcases and slung cameras, all the anxiety of their smiling, shouting mouths. Cannes would be like any other resort town in the world, all hurry and disappointment, and why hadn't he stayed where he belonged, in a high cool room with a long-legged girl? Why the hell had he let himself be coaxed and wheedled into coming here?

But then he saw Ken's happy face bobbing in the crowd—“Carson!”—and there he came, running in his overgrown fat boy's thigh-chafing way, clumsy with welcome. “Taxi's over here, take your bag—boy, do you look beat! Get you a shower and a drink first, okay? How the hell are you?”

And riding light on the taxi cushions as they swung onto the Croisette, with its spectacular blaze of blue and gold and its blood-quickening rush of sea air, Carson began to relax. Look at the girls! There were acres of them; and besides, it was good to be with old Ken again. It was easy to see, now, that the thing in Paris could only have gotten worse if he'd stayed. He had left just in time.

Ken couldn't stop talking. Pacing in and out of the bathroom while Carson took his shower, jingling a pocketful of coins, he talked in the laughing, full-throated joy of a man who has gone for weeks without hearing his own voice. The truth was that Ken never really had a good time away from Carson. They were each other's best friends, but it had never been an equal friendship, and they both knew it. At Yale Ken would probably have been left out of everything if it hadn't been for his status as Carson's dull but inseparable companion, and this was a pattern that nothing in Europe had changed. What
was
it about Ken that put people off? Carson had pondered this question for years. Was it just that he was fat and physically awkward, or that he could be strident and silly in his eagerness to be liked? But weren't these essentially likable qualities? No, Carson guessed the closest he could come to a real explanation was the fact that when Ken smiled his upper lip slid back to reveal a small moist inner lip that trembled against his gum. Many people with this kind of mouth may find it no great handicap—Carson was willing to admit that—but it did seem to be the thing everyone remembered most vividly about Ken Platt, whatever more substantial-sounding reasons one might give for avoiding him; in any case it was what Carson himself was always most aware of, in moments of irritation. Right now, for example, in the simple business of trying to dry himself and comb his hair and put on fresh clothes, this wide, moving, double-lipped smile kept getting in his way. It was everywhere, blocking his reach for the towel rack, hovering too close over his jumbled suitcase, swimming in the mirror to eclipse the tying of his tie, until Carson had to clamp his jaws tight to keep from yelling, “All
right
, Ken—shut
up
now!”

But a few minutes later they were able to compose themselves in the shaded silence of the hotel bar. The bartender was peeling a lemon, neatly pinching and pulling back a strip of its bright flesh between thumb and knife blade, and the fine citric smell of it, combining with the scent of gin in the faint smoke of crushed ice, gave flavor to a full restoration of their ease. A couple of cold martinis drowned the last of Carson's pique, and by the time they were out of the place and swinging down the sidewalk on their way to dinner he felt strong again with a sense of the old camaraderie, the familiar, buoyant wealth of Ken's admiration. It was a feeling touched with sadness too, for Ken would soon have to go back to the States. His father in Denver, the author of sarcastic weekly letters on business stationery, was holding open a junior partnership for him, and Ken, having long since completed the Sorbonne courses that were his ostensible reason for coming to France, had no further excuse for staying. Carson, luckier in this as in everything else, had no need of an excuse: he had an adequate private income and no family ties; he could afford to browse around Europe for years, if he felt like it, looking for things that pleased him.