You Play the Black & the Red Comes Up Up (13 page)

"I don't know what to talk about," I told her.

"Tell me what you think about."

I thought a long time.

"I think you didn't ought to ever have anything more to do with me," I said.

"That's a silly thing to think," she laughed.

"No, I'm serious," I told her. "I'm a bohunk—I'm not made for a nice girl like you."

"You're not a bohunk, Dick," she said. "Don't you see, you're whatever my eyes and my spirit behold; and as long as I love you and you love me, all the other things are silly and small and petty, and you'll stay exactly as I see you."

"It's too much to ask of love, perhaps. What if you woke up and saw me like I am?"

She got up.

"Don't worry," she said, laughing. "My love for you, Richard, will last quite as long as my life does."

"It gives me the willies when you talk like that," I said. "Gee, you're a funny girl."

"Of course I ajn. You
see, you are beginning to under
stand me."

"What can you see in a guy like me, though?"

"I see you're brave, a
nd strong, and honest, and hand
some," she said.

"Sure, I'm a statue in the museum."

"And all your senses are fine and alert and alive."

"Yeah. I started working before I finished grade school"

"Education is silly. What does that matter? When you're a child you think it does. Look at me. I've so much education—so much—too much. That's it. They gave me too much. My only salvation is you. Someone who is exactly you. Don't change, Richard. Don't want to change. Don't change me. Let me see you as I do, with beauty and serenity in your mind. And don't talk of education that is just reading books. You're more educated than I, because you're more prepared to live in the world, and more fit to exist in the world."

"That's cuckoo," I said.

"It isn't. You'll see. You're a strength that I cling to. The strength of being able to live, and being fitted to live."

"That's a cinch—going on living," I said. "It's one of the easiest things in life."

"I suppose that's why I love you," she said. "Because you believe that so beautifully. I never wanted much to live. But now I know you I do. I want to go on living. It seems important."

She looked so serious I wanted to cheer her up.

"Sure," I said. "But you gotta eat, too."

She didn't smile at all.

"I guess you don't know that one," I told her.

"What one?"

"It's a story. Everybody knows it."

"Well, tell me."

"Oh, no! If you don't know it, I can't tell it to you."

She was laughing again.

"You must," she said." I'm a woman now. You can tell me."

I felt funny about it.

"Well," I said. "It's just a story they tell. A fellow and a girl get married and they go on their honeymoon down at a Southern place he has, and in the morning the colored mammy makes breakfast; but they don't come down. So at lunch she makes a swell lunch, but they don't come down to lunch, either. So she gets dinner ready, and the girl comes down and looks out of the window, and the scenery is very beautiful. So she says, 'Oh, it's marvelous.' And the mammy, she says, 'I know, honey, but you gotta eat, too.' So you always say that line for a joke, like. Now, you made me tell you."

Sheila wrinkled up her nose.

"I think it's a very wicked story," she said. Then she laughed, and I felt good for her. "I shall always remember that story, and just because you told it to me, I'll get you some dinner here."

"Hadn't we better go out somewhere?"

"No, we'll have it here. We'll make dinner and cocktails. Do you know how to make cocktails?"

"Not very good."

"Well, what do you drink?"

"Me? Oh, almost anything."

She laughed as if that were the funniest thing she'd ever heard.

"Well, I do," I said.

I couldn't get her stopped laughing.

"But you don't understand," I told her. "What I mean is, I'm not fussy about it. Beer is okay. Whisky is all right—especially Scotch, that's pretty good."

That made her laugh so much that I got laughing, too. So she got a bottle of swell Scotch from a trick sort of folding bar. I poured one for both of us. She only drank a bit of hers and then I finished it. She said just that sip made her feel funny. I don't know whether it did or it was just part of the kidding. So I finished hers, and then we went in the kitchen, and I made a swell omelet, while Sheila set the table. I kept telling her not to jump around or slam the drawers because the omelet would sink. She was telling me how I was a wonderful cook, and I told her all about running the restaurant back in Oklahoma and what we called the different orders, like two on a raft with their eyes open, when we wanted eggs on toast; and graveyard stew, for a bowl of milk toast.

I told her all that, though, of course, I didn't say anything about Lois or Dickie. But I kept thinking about them, and first thing you know it was like the liquor went dead inside me, and neither of us were laughing any more. We weren't laughing. We were sitting down there at a breakfast nook, with a beautiful thick white ta
blecloth, and all the fine shin
ing silver, and expensive cut glass tumblers, and napkins and a silver coffee pot and cream pitcher—everything all so beautiful that every time I tried to eat a piece of omelet I'd choke on it and couldn't swallow it. When I looked up there was Sheila with tears running down her cheeks, only she was making no sound. But she was trying to laugh, and she said:

"Tell me again about we gotta eat, too."

"I can't," I said. "I've told it to you once."

"Well, I'd be happy if you'd tell it to me again," she said.

But I didn't say anything,
and we both sat there, not eat
ing anything, and both looking at all the beautiful things on the table.

PRINCE OF EVIL

W
e were driving up through the Beverly Glen one night when Genter saw us. I knew someone would see us sooner or later. Genter's chauffeur was honking the horn and he cut in ahead of us with Genter waving his cane through the window. I had to pull up.

Genter got out of his own car and got in with us and we drove to his home. I could tell he was excited about Sheila. At first I was scared he'd be sure to say something about Mamie, but he didn't.

Up in his house we sat in the patio and when he w
as talk
ing he'd keep interrupting himself and saying to Sheila, "Do you mind me using rather a vulgar word?" And then he'd go on talking. It wouldn't be anything rough he'd say, anyhow. Not like the usual things he could say, very raw things like he'd say when Mamie or Patsy were round, but saying them so's you couldn't get sore. It was like he was afraid even the least thing would hurt Sheila.

He asked her how she liked his house, and if she had any suggestions for redecorating it. He said he was going to pull down a wall and make two rooms into one, and he showed it to her and asked her how she thought the walls would look done in gold brocaded silk.

Then he said, "I have one room I am proud of. It is done in white velvet panels with ivory-finished woodwork and the floor of intense black
with white bearskin rugs. I con
sider it very successful."

He showed us the room, a bedroom it was, next to his bedroom. He kept looking at Sheila and asking her if she liked it.

"It looks entirely feminine," she said.

"Ah, it is," he said. "Often girls visit me and I put them here." He stood looking very sad. "As often as not I lock the door there and go driving off to San Pedro or to San Diego when the fleet's in. Ah, forgive me. Let us talk of other things."

He went and got a bunch of things and gave them to Sheila. There was a white silk kimono all embroidered in white silk, stitched so heavy you could hardly see the design. And he kept bringing out other things—he had a walrus-ivory necklace and a jade bracelet an
d some wom
en's Russian boots made of white leather and trimmed at the top with white fur. She didn't want to take them, but he insisted.

"They lie here unexisting with no one to ennoble them," he said. "And you should have them—they have been waiting for you. You shall wear them; Snegoritchka, the snow maiden, always virginal in white. You should wear white always."

He made her wear them all, and he made her walk in the patio. He ran out to a flower bed and plucked dozens and dozens of big calla lilies and put them in Sheila's arms. He made her stand there and I can't ever forget how she looked all in white with only her hair black and the lilies in her arms with the long stalks, and the yellow pollen stuff spilling down from the big tongues in the middle of the lilies, spilling down and smudging down the white silk of the kimono.

"Now," he said, "You should go."

It sounded funny, but Sheila just walked away like she understood.

"Say, I can't thank you for giving those things to Sheila," I said.

"I did not give them. You gave them to her."

I didn't know what to say. I just went after Sheila and we got in the car. I said:

"Isn't he a prince?"

She looked at me a long time. Then she said:

"He is evil. Don't you know that he is evil?"

"Say, after he gave you all those things!"

She stood up in the car and threw them all out on the road, pulling off the kimono and throwing it away so that I was scared she'd fall out. I stopped the car and wanted to go back and get them, but she wouldn't let me.

I said, "Well, even if he's evil, you don't have to throw good things away like that. He really wanted you to have them. I know he did."

But she wouldn't talk about it any more.

ON ICE

W
e were swimming in Sheila's pool in the dark. I could hear her coming through the water with her feet going a steady beat. She pulled herself up on the edge and sat beside me and I kissed her hair, all wet. She took my hand and put it on her belly.

"Do you know what is there?" she said.

I could feel her belly, hard and small, and the skin getting warm under my hand.

"It's a baby," she said.

"Are you sure?" I said. That's all I could think to say.

"Of course I'm sure," she said. She seemed pleased. But I began to think very fast and not able to think any one thing clearly.

"Well, what are you going to do about it?" I asked her.

"Nothing," she said. She didn't seem to be worried at all.

We sat there close together, and I couldn't think about it happening. All I could think about was the way Sheila didn't seem to worry; as if everything that was going to happen had to happen.

Mamie was getting ready to go out. She had on her white robe and the gold sandals. Everybody who was any sort of a leader in Patsy's Party wore them now.

"Look, Mamie. I've got to talk to you," I said.

"I've got to beat it, big boy," she said. "I'm late for Battle Council now."

"Well, it can wait a minute," I said. "Sit down."

She sat down and I began to think hard. I knew I had to get it over with. But I didn't know how to start.

"Now look, Mamie," I said. "You've been swell to me. You took me in when I didn't have a dime. And I don't want you to think I don't ap
preciate it. I appreciate every
thing you've done, and I want you to know that."

She jumped up.

"So what?" she said. "You think you're going to take a runout on me, like any dirty heel?"

"I'm not trying to run out on you," I said. "I'm just telling you square, that's all. I'm a heel, all right; I'm anything you say. But I want to split up—you and me."

That started her off for half an hour. She called me every name she could lay her tongue to, and that was plenty. Then she started crying. She said how good she had been to me, and always faithfu
l to me and how men never appre
ciated it. Then she said it would ruin her career with Patsy's followers.

I'll tell anyone I felt like everything she said I was, sitting there and taking it all. But I had to play square enough to tell her after the way she'd been decent to me. Finally she got through, and lay on the couch, face down, and crying. I said to myself it mustn't make any difference.

"Please, big boy, stay with me," she said, crying.

"Mamie," I said. "I can't."

"Oh, won't you change your mind, please?" she said.

"I can't, Mamie."

"Is that final?"

"That's final," I said.

She got up from the couch and stopped crying.

"Okay, then," she said. "Okay. You think you're tough. Well, tough or no tough, you won't get away with this."

"Why not?" I said.

She just gave a nasty grin.

"I'll show you why not," she screamed.

She ran into the bedroom. I was scared she was going to get a gun or something and shoot herself—or maybe me. I was so miserable I began to hope it would be me. I heard her slamming a drawer open and shut. Then she ran back into the room.

"That's why not, mister smart boy," she said. "Now laugh that off."

She slung something in my face. It fell onto the carpet. It was a strip of leather from the holdup bag.

I sat looking at it. I'd forgotten all about it; I suppose it was because of Sheila, thinking about her every minute I was awake. I must have thought about her so much my mind hadn't any room
to remember the holdup and Gott
stein getting killed.

"Where'd you get this?" I said, like a stupid.

"So you recognize it, do you?" she said. She started to laugh. "Well, the plumber pulled them up after you stopped up the toilet at the old place. And I've got the rest of them. And I've got them where you can't put your hands on them. I got them in different places. I got them guarded by people and you can't ever find them all."

I didn't say anything.

She sniffed and began to laugh real loud.

"Oh, quiet down," I said.

"So, you want me to quiet down now, hey?" she said. "You don't want to talk so loud as you did before? You don't want me to put my head out of the window and yell for police?"

I sat there a long time, not saying anything. Finally she sat beside me.

"Honest, big boy, I didn't want to have to do that. I'm sorry I did it. Look, just forget it. Stay here with me always, and I'll never let on. just stay here like we’ve been and I'll be good to you and take care of you and work for you or anything. I'd even go out on the streets for you if I had to."

"Okay," I said.

"Well, kiss me, then," she said.

I kissed her. She got up and went to the bedroom and washed her face and powdered her nose and then went off to the meeting.

I sat there, still looking at the piece of leather, and I kept thinking that Mamie had known it all along—I had thought she hadn't but she had. All the time she'd had me on ice. And then I got to thinking that it didn't help me any. I kept thinking of Sheila and her taking my hand and putting it on her belly, and I could feel how firm her muscles were there and how smooth her skin and how it was chilly from the water and night air but afterward it got warm under my hand.