The Tight White Collar (23 page)

“I have to be going,” said Anthony, and Jim Sheppard came to the door with him.

“Listen, Anthony,” he said, “if you have to let Polly down about her book, do it as gently as you can, will you?”

“Sure, Jim,” said Anthony and thought later that he would have said anything at that moment just to get away.

He went home and started to drink in earnest and after about an hour, he began Polly Sheppard's novel. He finished it at two o'clock the next morning and was, as he put it, ready to commit suicide over the thought that anyone could string words together that badly. The novel was called
Pagan's Way
and it was full of bold, handsome men and women with big breasts that were continually being handled by the flashing-eyed men who took a quick roll in bed and then were off to more feats of derring-do. Except that Polly Sheppard never came right out and said that. She was an asterisk writer and Anthony reflected that all that was missing was for Polly to have written the line about drawing a curtain of gentleness over the ensuing scene. But Lisa had liked it, just as she liked all novels full of sex and action and brave deeds.

My poor baby, thought Anthony and before he could stop himself he was weeping.

But the next morning he had his excuses ready. He'd become drunk, a lot drunker than he had thought and he'd gotten maudlin over a dumb little broad whom he'd taught to be good in bed. That was all there was to it and he'd make damned sure it didn't happen again.

Maybe I was a little in love with her for a while, he told himself. If you can call sex love. But that's long over and done with. So I had a little summer fun. There's no need to make a federal case out of it. It's over and she's gone and I'm damned lucky to have escaped as easily as I did.

He returned Polly's novel and told her exactly what he thought of it.

“It sounds like something an overly romantic college girl would write,” he said unkindly. “For Christ's sake, Polly, burn this before anyone gets hold of it by mistake. It'd be terribly embarrassing.”

Polly's face flushed angrily and Anthony laughed.

“What're you mad at me for?” he asked. “You said yourself you were giving it to me just for laughs. Well, I laughed all right. It was a riot.”

“Lisa didn't laugh,” said Polly and tried to laugh now herself. “She thought it was great.”

“What does Lisa have to do with it?” demanded Anthony, angrier than he had been in a long, long time.

“Why, nothing,” said Polly. “It's just that she's the only person I ever showed it to, except Jim, and he'd be prejudiced, of course. All I meant was that Lisa's was the only outside opinion I ever had about it. Until you. And of course, Lisa wouldn't count, really. She was never very bright. I mean, she was a sweet girl and all that, but she's never been anywhere or done anything.”

The crafty, sly look came into Polly's eyes again, the look Anthony had seen there before, and the look he had seen in Doris Delaney Palmer's eyes.

“And now there she is, poor thing, pregnant again,” said Polly with her false sympathy. “Now I don't imagine she'll ever get to go anywhere or do anything. She'll be more tied down than ever with a new baby coming.”

Anthony longed to slap her face but he merely smiled.

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Lisa was dumb all right.”

“I'll say,” said Polly in a tone that seemed to imply that now that she and Anthony were in agreement about something, they were close friends. “If she hadn't been rather stupid she'd never have let herself be caught the way she did. Certainly she and Chris can't afford another baby.”

“If Lisa hadn't been so dumb,” Anthony went on as if Polly hadn't spoken, “she would have advised you to write about something you know.”

They were alone in Polly's big, countrified kitchen, with its fireplace with a false Dutch oven and its wide-board floor. Anthony looked around and sipped at the beer Polly had given him when he had come in. He looked at Polly in her slacks and open-necked shirt, one leg flung casually over the arm of her chair. Phony, he thought. Phony colonial house, phony country wife and phony friend.

“Why don't you write about some of the more interesting relationships between husbands and wives?” said Anthony.

Polly laughed. “I'm afraid I don't know much about things like that,” she said. “I've always lived a rather insulated life as far as the grimier things are concerned.”

“Oh, I don't know,” said Anthony suavely. “Take infidelity, for instance. That would make interesting reading, properly written up, of course.”

He saw fear in her eyes and knew what she was thinking.

How much had Lisa Pappas told him?

“I don't know what you mean,” protested Polly.

Anthony laughed out loud. “Polly Sheppard,” he said, “you're a complete phony. You know goddamned well what I'm talking about.”

So Lisa had told him everything. Polly slammed her beer glass down on the kitchen table.

“I'm no phonier than you are,” she said coldly. “You knew Lisa was gullible and you led her on, making her believe that you were in love with her, sleeping with her, even getting her pregnant. Oh, yes,” said Polly viciously. “Don't bother to deny it. She told me herself that the baby was yours.”

Anthony put down his glass next to hers, then he stood up and bowed slightly.

“My dear Polly,” he said. “Before you go about looking for skeletons in other people's closets, wouldn't it be wiser to clean out your own?”

“You bastard,” said Polly softly.

“My dear,” replied Anthony, “you know the old cliché about how it takes one to know one.”

“That goes for phonies, too,” said Polly, wanting and getting the last word.

Mark Griffin sat in David Strong's studio sipping a tall drink while David played a Chopin étude on the piano. The room was filled with the heavy perfume of a dozen red roses that Mark had brought with him and which stood now, long-stemmed and beautiful, in a crystal vase that David had bought in Paris. From the green-covered couch where he half reclined, his head against three of David's small satin pillows, Mark watched the gleam of the evening star through one of the studio's tall, undraped windows, then he turned away and narrowed his eyes a little and watched the smoke from his cigarette. Every time he exhaled the smoke stood motionless in the air for a moment and then drifted in blue trails toward the room's high ceiling. The smoke was gauzy and ethereal looking and reminded him vaguely of the filmy costumes of the dancers in
Les Sylphides
. Slowly, Mark moved his head and looked at David.

David's face was partly in shadow but the dim light in the room struck sharp streaks of gold in his hair. He held his head tipped backward slightly and his eyes were closed.

David is extraordinarily beautiful, thought Mark. He has such a pure, youthful look about him that it seems impossible to believe he's over thirty. He looks so innocent. So sweetly virginal. I wonder if he is.

Mark thought of his last evening in David's studio and smiled indulgently to himself. How ridiculous, he thought. The things they had said to each other, like children in a quarrel! How ridiculous it had been for him to say that he would never come back and how foolish David had been to think that he would not call him back. It was fate that had brought them together and it was fate that held them together now. They were like twin roots, he and David, meeting, entwining and growing together. Mark Griffin smiled and sat up as David's fingers struck the last note of the étude.

“Would you like another drink, Mark?” asked David.

“Please,” replied Mark.

The conversation had been constrained at the beginning of the evening, but now David relaxed and tried to speak more expansively.

“Mark,” he said, “I sent for you because I need someone to talk to before I go completely out of my mind.”

“Yes, David,” answered Mark with a little smile.

“Mark, what was it that first made you suspect that I was—” The hated word formed itself in his mind but he could not speak it aloud. “That I was different,” he concluded.

Mark raised one eyebrow and made his favorite
je ne sais pas
gesture with his shoulders.

“I don't know, really,” he said. “I just knew, David. It was something I felt.”

“Mark, I've spent a lot of sleepless nights since you were last here,” said David intensely. “I've been trying to figure myself out and I think I've come to some sort of conclusion. Well, perhaps not really a conclusion but at least an admission about myself.”

Mark sipped from his glass. “Yes, David?” he encouraged.

“Perhaps I'm really the way you and Jess Cameron seem to think I am, but even if what both of you think is true, I'm still capable of distinguishing right from wrong.” David stopped and reached out a long, white hand toward his drink. “And if I know anything at all I know that it's wrong for anyone to be the way you say we are.”

Mark's eyebrows went up again. “Wrong, David?” he asked.

David put up a restraining hand. “Let me finish,” he said. “Mark, I need some advice from you.”

“It goes without saying that I'm only too happy to be of any service at all to you, David.”

“Then tell me how you live with yourself, Mark,” said David. “Tell me how you've rationalized being what you are until you've managed to make it not only acceptable but even desirable.”

Mark leaned back against the sofa pillows and lit a fresh cigarette.

“David, I don't have to tell you how happy I am that you've finally admitted the truth to yourself,” he said. “But accepting the truth, well, that's quite a different matter.” He looked at David for a long, quiet moment and then his voice took on a low, musical, persuasive quality. “Listen, David, the first thing you must do is to rid your mind of all the dreadful labels you've picked up along the way. There's no such thing as right and wrong in our case. What's ‘wrong' for most people is ‘right' for us so you see how little sense there is to putting name tags on anything, don't you?”

David looked at him helplessly. “I don't know,” he said.

“David,” said Mark, “please listen to me carefully. There's nothing wrong in my loving you. Even that Bible of yours that you seem to set such a store by teaches you all about love. Love is good, kind, sweet and merciful so how can you think for a minute that there's something ‘wrong' about it?”

His voice was firm with deep undertones of assurance and listening to him, David felt rather like a child whose hand is being held in the dark. Mark was nearly ten years younger than David, but still he made David feel like a boy.

“Listen to me,” said Mark. “Don't ever let yourself be influenced by others. By the so-called ‘normal' people, I mean. Don't be impressed with their actions and especially not by their words. If you listen to them, your very soul will be lost because they'll try to make your thoughts, your passions and your hopes fit their tiresome little pattern and you'll wind up as nothing but a carbon copy of them. Oh, David, listen to me with your heart as well as with your mind,” said Mark imploringly, and it occurred to David that perhaps his friend was getting a little drunk. But still, his words did not slur and his eyes remained as clear as ever. “You are you, David,” said Mark. “Nothing can change that. You must allow yourself to develop or you'll die acting out a part for which you should never have been cast. Believe me, David, there's no such thing as sin in this world of ours. There's only fear. Fear of the law, fear of what people will think and say and fear of God.”

David fixed fresh drinks for himself and Mark and hope had begun to flare in him. Just suppose for a moment that Mark was right? David shut off his mind. Mark was a mere child and of course he had an immature set of values. Still, just suppose . . .

“Just think, David,” Mark was saying. “Think of what it would be like to live your life without fear! To live fully, completely and to be rid of this imaginary bogey man that you call Sin. Imagine it, David! Imagine yourself giving expression to every thought and passion, resisting nothing. You've never done that before, David, and this very denial of yourself shows in your face and in your music and it even makes you physically ill. If you'd only let go, David, and accept yourself as you are, you'd be well again.”

David noticed with surprise that his glass was empty again and now the hope that had only made itself known to him before began to burn with new vigor. Mark was right, thought David. He had to be.

“You know the old saying about the only way to be rid of a temptation is to yield to it, don't you, David?” asked Mark. “Well, it's true.” He raised his glass as if in salute. “Give in to your desires again and again, until your appetite is satisfied and the temptation is gone,” he cried, then he lowered his glass and his voice simultaneously. “Resist and your soul is lost,” he said dramatically. “Your soul is lost, consumed with longing for the things it has forbidden itself. You must know this, David. In the very core of your being you must know that I speak the truth. You've had desires that have frightened you, dreams that have terrorized you and memories that have tormented you and made you writhe with shame. And all the time, you needn't have suffered at all. You needn't suffer ever again if you'll only reject the thought of sin and admit the golden presence of pleasure.”

“Stop it, Mark,” said David. “I have to think.”

“You
have
thought, David,” said Mark quickly. “And it's done you nothing but harm. Don't think any more. Just accept what I tell you. Believe me, if anyone in the world understands how you feel, I do. I've walked through the same valley of fire more than once. But now I
know
, David, and it's only to spare you future suffering that I speak to you as I do now.”

Mark leaned forward and David stared into the eyes of his friend. He felt his whole being strain forward to grasp an edge of Mark's shining, sin-free world. But there was one harsh chord in David that would not be still. It struck the same monotonous note over and over.

Evil. The word would not dislodge itself from his consciousness. Evil. Evil, said David's mind. This person is not a boy at all. He is a man, and he is evil.

The candles on the coffee table reflected their flames in Mark's eyes so that David could see tiny, flickering lights in the blackness that stared at him.

There must be something that I can say to him, thought David. There must be an answer of some kind that will prove him wrong. He must be wrong.

Mark Griffin knew the value of words but he knew also the greater value of silence. He could see the conflict in David and he smiled and gazed into David's tortured eyes.

But what if he's right, thought David and felt a curious new excitement flow through him. He felt as if part of him were on fire and his face grew flushed and his hands were moist. Music did this to him sometimes. Really great music played in a great auditorium. Music that contained a great many crashing crescendos. But music often left his mind in chaos while now, suddenly, his thoughts seemed to be articulate.

He could be free! He could be unafraid. He could do anything without fear of the consequences. If he chose, he could lead an utterly bacchanalian life without a single fear of punishment.

What have I missed? David asked himself. How could I have missed knowing that life could be happy and carefree and fearless?

David drank from the fresh glass that Mark put in his hand and wondered if he might be getting a little tight.

Well, what if I am? he asked himself angrily. What difference does it make? I guess I've got a right to get slightly plastered if I feel like it.

“You can't afford to waste time, David,” said Mark. “You're young and beautiful now, but youth and beauty are soon gone. If you hesitate now to take all the joys and pleasure that are rightfully yours, you'll wake up one day and find that it's too late. You'll be old and bent and you'll sit and weep for all your wasted golden years. Don't waste time, David. Don't torture yourself in trying to become what you can never be.” Mark gave a short, sharp laugh. “Just think how tiresome it would be to be a dreary, dreadful so-called normal man with a fat wife and a slew of runny-nosed children and a house in Cooper's Mills. No, David. Live the wonderful life that is yours. Enjoy it.”

“Perhaps it's too late already,” said David and felt like crying. “Too, too late.”

Mark Griffin walked slowly through David's studio, extinguishing lights.

“Don't be silly, Davy,” he said. “Of course it's not too late.”

The room grew darker and darker and it seemed to David that Mark's words still sounded eloquently in the room.

“Not too late?” asked David.

“Of course not,” replied Mark, and as he walked toward David, it seemed to him that all the words he had spoken to David had had a special beauty. A beauty that they had never possessed when Oscar Wilde had put them into the mouth of Lord Henry Wotton that they might fall on the ear of Dorian Gray.

Hours later, in the darkness of his room, David Strong woke suddenly. His cheeks were wet with tears but it was the heaving sensation of sickness that had awakened him, and he stumbled awkwardly through the dark toward his bathroom. He vomited until there was nothing left in him but bitter, green bile and still his stomach heaved and he retched weakly. When it was over he stood, shivering, against the cold tile of the walls while sweat broke out all over his body and his teeth began to chatter. At last, he felt strong enough to find a face cloth and dab at his face, then he brushed his teeth and gargled very cautiously.

“Oh, God,” he moaned as he fumbled his way back to bed. “Oh, dear God, help me.”

He covered himself with bedclothes that still smelled of Mark Griffin's lavender cologne and although the odor nauseated him all over again, he knew that he hadn't the strength to strip the bed and make it up fresh. So he huddled himself and tried to keep from shivering. He had been dreaming, he remembered, and now he groped vainly for the warm, golden feeling of comfort that had enfolded him earlier. He searched his mind for the belief that he had taken for his own, but he could not find it even when he repeated Mark's words over and over.

Sin is nothing and pleasure is all, he told himself. But the feeling of comfort would not come and he knew that his new philosophy was an empty one made up of words that held neither conviction nor truth.

Suddenly, David could stand his bed no longer and he kicked impatiently at the sheets and blankets that seemed to hold him pinned and helpless. At last he was free of their hatefulness and he stood up, shivering in the cold room. He wrapped himself in a heavy robe and felt his way across the darkness to the coffee table where he found a cigarette. As he smoked he walked carefully around his studio and his hands seemed to encounter only the things that were most dear to him. His fingers stroked the satiny finish of his piano and then he caressed a small statuette on the mantelpiece. He walked to a window and stood staring down at the snow-clean sleeping street and suddenly he was strangely calm. He could see clearly now, as if each of his thoughts were a painstakingly perfect pen-and-ink drawing and he would not allow the blunt, wish-filled edges of his mind to rub across his thoughts, to smudge their clarity with the forgetfulness. He thought first of Jess Cameron and of the doctor's words quiet and casual almost, so David had thought at the time, to the point of indifference. It had been the day after David's first experience with Mark.