THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction (13 page)
“Nearly lost?”
“You know what I mean. Once was all he could muster. And she’d appeared so beautiful, like the blond goddess in the temple.”
“Well,” said Hammond. “That was the first time. People can work those sorts of things out. That’s why they have sex counselors.”
“Tell that to Hartwig,” I said. He didn’t want any more of it. Sandy was ten times better and more natural at least in the act. This episode drove him right back into her arms though he never came right out and said that. It wouldn’t do. With women you have to keep them guessing. With June, of course, he didn’t let her onto his secret either. You can’t insult someone drastically about the most sacred ritual in their life. It’s better just to avoid the subject entirely. Say nothing at least to them. When she’d bicycled all the way out to a friend’s house in Belvedere that Hartwig was visiting the next day because she mistakenly thought he’d invited her, he politely told her ‘no’. He couldn’t see her. He was busy. She’d gone off crying on her bicycle.
“You’re kidding,” said Hammond, “after just one night?”
“The world’s full of lonely people,” I advised him, “and sometimes it is true. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. It can’t buy happiness, though for her maybe nothing could.”
“And Hartwig?”
He was searching for security more than anything else. I don’t think the person mattered as long as she was tolerable. On the other hand, a donkey’s bray, never. He, of course merely told her he couldn’t have sex anymore. There was someone else. The night’d been a mistake but they’d both been carried away. Because of Marcus, June and he remained friends. He’d discovered another nice place to drink and hang out. He was sure to be over at the Colonial mansion going through June’s liquor cabinet where she had an ample supply. And also’d be talking to her about every subject under the sun, which she with her man’s mind in a woman’s body, provided unusual insight into.
“Then this June wasn’t the despot everyone made her out?”
“No,” I said, “she was. In her cold calculated way she sat back and waited until she could bring down the axe. At least in her own mind. Remember some people die unhappy and it’s not their fault. It’s just the way they’re made. She’d lost none of her hatred; none of her viciousness. For the time being in Hartwig’ presence she’d just managed to suppress a little of it. She, of course, had also fallen in love with him.”
“Why, why, why?” Blurted Hammond disapprovingly. I, of course, merely shrugged my shoulders.
At least Sandy had fun with the tryst after she’d been apprised of the real issue. Beforehand watch out. She almost went crazy. When June learned there was to be ‘no more’ of course, she figured there was no longer reason to keep the secret so she phoned Sandy and let it out.
“Your boyfriend’s all right,” she said, “but I’ve had better. Could do it only once. Is that all he does with you?”
“June,” said Sandy, “are you all right? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And Sandy hung up on her. Of course she knew what June was talking about. It made her furious. To think that sly son-of-a-bitch’d do something like that to her was wholly infuriating. It was exactly what she’d feared the most.
At that point she once again drove from the beach at breakneck speed over the twisty mountain road putting her own life in jeopardy and in doing so she was furious enough to want to kill Hartwig. She didn’t even want an explanation. On the other hand her sadness at Hartwig’s betrayal humbled her to no end as love also does to some people. It can make then sad enough to want to die. She knew, of course, this was merely June’s version so maybe she did want another.
As she had before, she’d burst in on him, cursing literally out of her mind. This time, however, she paused in the tiny kitchenette by the entranceway long enough to pick up a large carving knife, a Bollingen, of good steel too. And she came at him brandishing that, raving like a Sybil with her nonsensical sounds, her hair flying.
“God damned no good mother-fucking...” she raised the thing up like an executioner ready to bring it down.
“Did she?” Said Hammond. “The story could’ve ended right there and it might’ve been a better one.”
“No.” Hartwig in his dire surprise, believe me, said,
“Sandy, what?” He grabbed her arm and was able to wrestle the blade away where it dropped harmlessly to the floor as Stanley began to sniff at it. Maybe he smelled old meat on the thing. Those beagles, you know, have funny noses.
Hartwig then thrust her onto the couch where she calmed down or more appropriately ran out of strength to fight him much as the woman does with the rapist, who is then able to take advantage because of the man’s superior power. She was quite strong too said Hartwig. He’d never tussled with her before and said there was a moment there he had his own doubts about subduing her. He did, of course, and then she began to talk.
“You’ve been with that God damned June, haven’t you.” She gasped and sighed and started crying. “She phoned me and…”
“She phoned you eh? Well,” he said, “she has a lot of nerve phoning, anyone as
bad
as she is. And besides I didn’t do anything. She came over here and barged in on me. What was I supposed to do yell
rape
as she was taking off her clothes? Please.”
He then told her everything, emphasizing, of course, how ‘put upon’ he’d been by her
girlfriend
.”
“Did she believe him?” Said Hammond.
“Of course, what do you think? When you’re in love you believe all sorts of things whether they’re true or not as long as you want them to be. And besides in this case his aversion wasn’t so far from the truth.”
“Really,” said Sandy, “was she that bad?” As Hartwig went into more detail.
“That bad,” said Hartwig, “and worse. I’d certainly never do it again with her. If you don’t believe me ask her. I believe she can’t live without me,” he sprayed her with hyperbole, “she’s really got it that bad.”
At that point, naturally, Sandy chose to believe him. Poor soul that she was, what more could she do? She not only believed his disgust, but that he would never do it again with June. That in the long run turned out to be true. Our faithful martyr.
“So,” said the sandy haired socialite feeling much lighter. I’m better, eh, by how much?”
“By the number of the stars in universe you’re better.”
She liked his trite metaphors. You see at the time they were enough to make her believe. She stayed with Hartwig all that day and into the night. It certainly did a lot to eliminate Sandy’s self-doubt in regard to her own ability to attract and keep a man. And then on the spot this was Hartwig, who she’d fallen in love with. According to him this definitely made her easier to get along with. An element, I’m sure, that also drew him more to her. After all, what does any man need if not more than one real good woman? In truth we’re not made to be polygamists as some sects preach.
One who wasn’t so happy but definitely needed some kind of support was Sarah the beauty, Marcus’s mother who lived alone at Oceanview in her little Cape Cod style cottage on the hill. With no one else to turn to ‘out there’ since she had no friends, her son’d left her for her worst enemy and her boyfriend’d been taken away to jail she put her energy into drinking, the worst thing for her, and
pining
for the miscreant, a tragedy in the making.
One night as she’d been drinking her welfare money in the expensive Sand Piper, she, more sloppily than usual, had divulged her plight to Mort the Hollywood screenwriter and local gadfly when this wit said to her.
“I don’t know what you’re so upset about dear, if you’re really interested in getting the string bean out of jail, just put up your house as collateral and bail him out. Just be sure if you do he doesn’t disappear and you have to forfeit what you’ve put up, otherwise you’ll lose everything.”
Without apparently even having heard the last sentence, she said,
“Can I do that?” It was something she hadn’t thought of. Mort, of course, didn’t point out that action’d undoubtedly only result in so much free time before his trial came up and they put him away perhaps for good. He already had a lot of strikes. I believe more than three with matters pending.
“I don’t see why not.” And he’d named a bail bondsman he knew over the hill. When it comes to things like that, you know, friends stick together.
“So did she?” Said Hammond.
“What do you think?” She’d been phoning Barney every day in jail and that contact had come to be her only solace in life. Drinking didn’t even seem to appease her anymore. And when an alcoholic gets to that stage they’re really in trouble. Hard to believe such a beautiful woman like that’d pick out a convict as her heart’s desire but she had. Circumstances don’t reward beauty any more than brains when one loses control and gives up, which is apparently what she’d done. And hers wasn’t the only case like that. Women who are complete strangers to inmates often find occasion to contact them by electronic mail. The next thing you know they’re exchanging pictures. The two then meet face to face as she visits him in prison and the next thing you know those two are head over heels in love and they marry. Like
Sonia
she’s across the river waiting for her loved one to walk out of the prison gates a free man. Or maybe he’ll never get out. Their love nonetheless may persist until both expire even though it’s unfulfilled physically. I’ve never understood such relationships but the power to ‘save’ on the part of women is great. One of the greatest forces on earth, I believe, despite the fact that it seldom lastingly works. And it doesn’t seem to matter what offense the convict’s committed as long as he appears genuinely repentant. With love as an anodyne he can, for it puts us naturally into that state of suspended hostility towards our surroundings and our fellow man. Without it it’s difficult if all but impossible. There are women in prison too, of course. That sort of relation where the man on the outside has to go to her occurs much less frequently. Men … well they’re just less forgiving and that’s the nature of the beast. For that reason love affects them far more than women whose core it is, even though it’s strangely enough thought to the contrary.
The very next day, in fact, after her conversation with Mort, Sarah dressed up in one of her subdued outfits to connote humility, a dull colored full dress with flat shoes and a scarf tied tightly over her full bodied auburn hair, got on the bus and rode over the hill to San Rafael. First she went to the bank where she acquired the deed to her cottage, which at market value in those times was worth a lot. Whether viable or not, property values at the beach had sky rocketed just like everywhere else in the country; perhaps more so.
Then she walked down Fourth Street to the Seligman bail bond office at street level. A bell ding-a-linged as she walked in and looked cautiously around. Seligman himself waited on her. He shared the office with his wife but she was absent.
“Ah, pretty lady,” said Seligman with a half chewed cigar in his mouth as he stood up from his desk to greet her. For as I said she was a woman who no matter how hard she tried or how haggard she happened to appear couldn’t hide her beauty. “What can I do for you? Please sit down?”
He listened to her story, which she recited seriously.
“Five hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money,” the shyster began.
Needless to say after he had initially scared or ‘tempered’ her as they say in that business and with no legal advice (who could afford an attorney?) she agreed to be assessed by what’s called a two percent borrower’s fee when the defendant was released, half of which was to be returned to her when his case was resolved. If, of course, he skipped bail, the struggling mother lost her house. The only thing she’d ever owned. It had to be put up as collateral.
Sarah had no money to pay the borrower’s fee but since her house was owned free and clear J. T. Seligman sent her down the street to a friend of his, a loan shark, who was willing to give her a second mortgage on the house.
“You mean I can have ten-thousand dollars for myself?”
“Yes,” said the banker, “when your friend comes to trial. And your payments’ll be virtually nothing per month. They can come, ahem, out of your assistance.”
Sarah, of course, paid little attention to the rules of the transaction. Her mind was concentrated on getting her lover freed. She’d never financed anything before. The house had been her settlement in the divorce. All she knew as she left the bank was that she had ten thousand dollars to be deposited in her meager account and she was on a bus to the jail to pick up her lover.
“All will be arranged by the time you get there,” Seligman had informed her and so it was. She walked down Fourth Street through the throngs of the downtrodden of the cosmopolitan city intermingled with
regular
citizens in suits. A beggar woman held out her cup and Sarah put something in it.
She
was onto bigger and better things.
Having taken another bus to the stadium like civic center, Barney came down out of the elevator in a respectable suit that had been available by donation. He met her in the lobby and the two hugged.
“How … how’d you ever do it?” This cheerleader looked into her light blue eyes. She shrugged her shoulders. She honestly didn’t know and now that she’d seen him the thrill she’d expected at his presence left her almost entirely. His jaw looked OK. She knew it’d been wired shut but he’d been in there long enough for it to’ve healed and it had. The entire bus ride home, although the two held hands, she brooded over whether things’d work out better after all. Or even over what she was doing. Had it been worth it? One thing she knew for certain was her situation couldn’t get any worse. And that in itself brought hope, which is all that concerns most of us in nearly any crisis. We cherish it selfishly right up until the time of our death.
It just so happened that this time the recalcitrant maverick was ready to supply it. After two days back you wouldn’t’ve recognized him.
“You’re kidding?” Said Hammond. “What’d they do, replace his brain?”
“No,” I said seriously, “but something in there seemed to’ve done it for him.” Stir can do that to people. It doesn’t always but … The man was in his early forties. He’d obviously lost credibility in the community for having been taken away and … he realized it. As I said, under his crudeness was an intelligent, sensitive person. It just seemed to me he’d given up, for if not he’d’ve tried to escape. On life if you must. And whether it was his swansong or not it was a pleasant change for all those who were exposed to it even though it didn’t last very long and in the end turned out to be self-defeating. His hearing wasn’t to come up for several months, which can be to some a long time; in this case an eternity. It almost seemed he attempted to atone for his wrecked life before his sentence began, cramming it all into one. A deed that was not only meaningless but unnecessary.
The two entered the general store, Fred’s Superette, together for the first time in several months much to the owner’s and his employee’s surprise and chagrin. But the tall wiry superhero stood there with a smile framing his large jaw. He was free so they waited on him. Most persons in a case like that are so mentally confounded they don’t know what to do, so they do nothing, or rather react from habit. Then the trait of man to forgive his fellow is so overwhelming it’s easy to be over powered by it, especially if he’s behaving.
The two bought their bottle and some foods, returned home, drank, ate, snuggled up and were apparently content.
“It seems so long since I had a meal like that,” said Barney. “I’ve forgotten what it could be like and it’s only been several months, not even that.” And he told her about the life of some of the characters in there and a little of his own in the not so distant past that he’d never revealed before.
“Things’ll get better,” said the beauty, “you’ll see.” For, although the conjecture made little sense, she didn’t know what else to say. He then asked her how the locals were behaving and about his friends on the lagoon.
“And the pimp? (Hartwig) You haven’t been dancing with him?”
“He’s still around,” Sarah made a little face and grimaced in dismay.
“Well,” said the giant smiling and seeming to rise out of himself, “we won’t bother with him. He’s a nobody. Matter of fact, who’s anybody? You should’ve seen what I’ve seen in there.”
“I wouldn’t’ve wanted to.”
And just like the two’d walked into the general store and been waited on they approached Monahan, the owner and manager of the Windjammer. Barney apologized for his ruckus behavior and though the two weren’t reinstated there – because no one pulled a gun in Monahan’s establishment and returned to it – they were acknowledged and had a friendly chitchat, for Barney’d done some carpentry work for the man in the past. It was one step from there to the Sand Piper where they’d never caused any trouble though the owner there’d heard about the gun incident just as had everyone in town, both literally and figuratively. Sarah’d been in there constantly since her friend’s fall, so they were let stay.
It certainly filled Barney with hope and cheer for when your entire life’s spent drinking in certain spots acceptance in them after being barred takes on an exaggerated meaning. A senator doesn’t like to be banned from the senate, no less the alcoholic from his favorite watering hole. It’s his own peculiar treasure chest, a matter of degree, which in a larger scope reduces itself to no degree whatsoever or zero, for in some bizarre way it’s true, all men are equal even if it’s only because they’re born.
At any rate Barney was back home, he was out, he was happy. And Sarah, she cheered up fully after a couple of days.
“Come on darlin,” he said to her one morning, and taking her hand the two went on a pilgrimage through town. They stopped by the older motel to visit the elderly lady who owned and ran it, whom Barney’d done some work for. And they asked her to dinner. She couldn’t come but nonetheless reestablishment crept along like a wave up the beach as the tide gets higher and higher. The two stopped into the artist’s studio on the coast highway to compliment the fine work. Barney informed the man and wife,
“I … I’ve been away, you know.” And, of course, the tall wiry giant with the clean-shaven face made no excuses for his absence. The Adamses had both been there the night he’d gone overboard and been taken away. Matter of fact they’d been at Hartwig’s table. For some reason Edie (the portraitist) told them to return that afternoon. She wanted to sketch a convict. She laughed, so did Barney but maybe the artist in her noticed something there that other people wouldn’t and she hoped to bring it out. She certainly didn’t mind the carpenter’s gratuitous attention to her work. It was more fruitful than, for instance, Hartwig’s snide insinuations to the contrary. An attitude both she and her husband had been aware of but had tolerated for Sandy’s sake.
That day, evidently, the two did a lot of visiting to the bookstore and the surf shop included, neither of which they’d been in before. Barney even purchased a hat. Just the same, they stayed clear of the firehouse and the community center where prejudice’d just been too strong to overcome. The firemen had wanted to beat him up and were glad Hartwig had. Then, of course, no one can appeal to everyone and the two knew that and were willing to take it in stride. Who knew, maybe the judge or jury’d see things differently and this ‘new leaf’ or whatever it was wouldn’t’ve been in vain?
“If, of course,” said Hammond, “we weren’t tried for our ineluctable pasts, which we always are for that’s the point. The offender could lead a perfect life after the fact and little it’d matter. That, naturally, is why it’s so difficult to forgive. No, it’s impossible. People have to be held responsible for what they do whether they actually are or not and are willing to reform completely. That’s society’s safeguard. It’s why we have one at all.”
And the man even picked up what could’ve turned out to be a steady job. The school needed a maintenance worker and hired him. It appeared there weren’t too many skilled carpenters out there who were willing to do that sort of work. They actually hired him despite his record. Let me just say that it was a very independent community that’d do something like that for a man like him but even here, I believe, they had ulterior motives.
“Ulterior mot… Over a guy like that? In a one horse town?”
You remember the swamp people, who Barney’d virtually led like the Pied Piper his rats before his departure. It was because of him in essence, that they’d filtered up through the town and hence commingled among the residents who’d been intimidated and appalled by their crudeness. It seems Barney’d relegated his ‘new ideas’ to them also. There was still respect between them, a bond those sorts can never live down really because of their identities. It could be a group of priests all of different denominations or ballplayers from different teams. They’re associated by identity just like races and ethnic groups. In logic it’s called sets, in psychology, types, man’s simplest form of comparison. It’s the tunnel we dig ourselves by our desire to classify the world around us which also tends to guide our behavior.
