Appointment in Samarra (11 page)

“No. Don’t be funny.”

“What’s the matter? Did I do something wrong? Did I say something? Christ, I thought we were getting along fine.”

“We were, but something you said worried me. See, you don’t even remember saying it.”

“Well, come on. Out with it, dearie. What did I say?”

“When you stopped the car. When you got out to fix the chain, you said something about you were going to fix it now, while you were sober.”

“Oh,” he said.

“As if—”

“I get it. You don’t have to draw a map.”

“Now you’re annoyed. Aren’t you?”

“No. Yes, slightly. I don’t know. What the hell. I don’t blame you.”

“I’m sorry, darling. I don’t want to be a wet towel or anything, but I couldn’t go through another half hour like that last night—I’d rather die.”

“I know. I’m terribly sorry, Callie. I won’t get drunk.”

“Please don’t,” she said. “Please. And I’ll do anything. Let’s get through these holidays without any more mess or jam or anything. I don’t want to give you a pep talk—”

“I know you don’t. I don’t blame you.”

“You’re my sweet Ju and I love you. I don’t mean don’t drink. You know.”

“Uh-huh. I promise.”

“No, don’t promise. Just don’t. You don’t have to. Lots of times you go to parties and don’t get crazy. So be like that tonight. I’ll do anything, any of the things you like. Anything. Do you know what I’ll do?”

“What?”

“I’ll come out in the car with you at intermission and stay with you, the way we used to.”

“I know, but—that’s what I’d love. It
would
be fun.”

“We haven’t done that since we’ve been married.”

“Yes we did. At Lake Placid.”

“Yes, but we haven’t here, at home, and I want to, don’t you?”

“Yes, but what about you know, business?” he said. She hated to name the contraceptive devices.

“I won’t bother. We can start having a baby.”

“Do you mean it?” he said.

“I never meant anything so much in my life,” she said. “And there’s one way to prove it.”

“Yes, that’s true. Just by being here. Just by coming out here.” They had arrived at the club parking grounds.

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh, my sweet lovely Caroline,” he said.

“Not now,” she said. “I said intermission.”

They got out of the car. Ordinarily Julian would have stopped the car at the steps near the vestibule, where the women got out of chauffeur-driven and husband-driven and beau-driven cars, but tonight they had not thought of it. Julian drove the car in and out of lanes, twisting and maneuvering until he had got as close to the verandah as he could, to make as short as possible the walk through the snow. Arm in arm he and Caroline, their arctics flopping, went up to the verandah and around to the vestibule. Caroline said she would be right down, and Julian went out again to the verandah and all the way around the clubhouse to the men’s locker-room.

It was a grand night for a party. It was cold, and the snow-covered golf course seemed not to be separate from the farmlands that bounded the course on the second, fourth, and seventh holes. In the summer the golf course was so neatly shaved that it made him think of a farmer in his Sunday suit surrounded by other farmers in overalls and straw hats. But now in the night there was no way of telling, if you did not know, where club property ended and real farmland began. As far as you could see the world was white and blue and purple and cold. You learn by living with your mother and father and people that it is bad to lie in the snow for a long time, but when all the world is covered with snow and moonlight it doesn’t look as if it would do you any harm. But it was just a picture now, so it doesn’t do you any harm. Julian took in a deep breath and felt very much like a healthy, clean-living person for so doing. “I ought to get more of that,” he said, and went in to the locker-room.

Many men said hello and hyuh to him, and he said hyuh and hello back at them six or seven times. He didn’t have an enemy in the place. Then he heard someone say, “Hello, Socker.” He looked to see who it was, although he know who it was. It was Bobby Herrmann.

“Hello, Rum Dumb,” he said.

“Yeah, Rum Dumb,” said Bobby in his slow difficult way of speaking. “Jesus Christ. You have a nerve calling me Rum Dumb, I’ll say.”

“Nuts,” said Julian. He was taking off his coat and hat and putting them in his locker.

Everyone seemed to think that the job of kidding Julian was being taken over by Bobby. “Jesus Christ,” said Bobby. “I’ve done a whole lot of things in my life, but by Jesus if I ever sunk so low that I had to throw ice in a man’s face and give him a black eye. My God.”

Julian sat down at the table. “Cocktail. Straight liquor. Highball. What’ll you have, Ju?” said Whit Hofman.

“Cocktail, I guess.”

“Martinis in this shaker,” said Hofman.

“Fine,” said Ju.

“Trying to ignore me,” said Bobby. “Trying to give me the old high hat. The old absent treatment. Well, all right. Go ahead. Ignore me. Give me the old high hat. I don’t care. But the least you can do, English, the least you can do is go in there and pay for an extra subscription to the dance.”

“Huh?” said Julian.

“You heard me. You’re responsible for there being one less man here tonight and the club needs the money, so don’t forget, you sock out an extra five bucks when you pay your subscription.”

“Who is this man?” said Julian to Whit. Whit smiled. “Did he come here with a member?”

“That’s all right,” said Bobby. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Depression or no depression, I think the membership committee ought to draw the line somewhere,” said Julian. “I don’t mind Jews or Negroes, or even a few people with leprosy. They have souls, the same as you or I. But when a man goes to his club he likes to think he’s going to associate with human beings, and not some form of reptile life. Or is it insect? Turn around, Herrmann, till I decide just what you are. Have you got wings?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll get by.”

“That’s just the trouble,” said Julian. “We ought to have
state cops stationed at the club entrance, just to keep people like you away.”

“It’s a good thing we didn’t have state cops here last night. As it was it’s a wonder somebody didn’t send for them. Or the God damn marines or something.”

“There you go, talking about the war again,” said Julian. “You never got over that God damn war. That’s your trouble. You don’t hear Whit, or Froggy—”

“That’s all right,” said Bobby. “When there was a war, I was in it. I wore a uniform. I wasn’t one of these God damn slackers playing sojer boy at some college. Lafayette or Lehigh or wherever it was. S.A.T.C. Saturday Afternoon Tea Club. Yes, sir. When old Uncle Sam needed me, I heeded the call and made the world safe for democracy, and when the war was over I stopped fighting. I didn’t do like some people that put on a uniform back in 1917 and then did their fighting by throwing drinks around in the presence of respectable people at a country club, thirteen or fourteen years after the war was over. Nineteen-thirty. That’s what some people are. Veterans of 1930. The Battle of the Lantenengo Country Club Smoking Room. Surprise attack.”

The others were laughing, and Julian knew he was coming off a very bad second best. He finished his drink and rose to go.

“Not driving you away, are we?” said Bobby.

Julian looked at Whit, deliberately turning his back on Bobby. “Something wrong with the can, Whit? Or don’t you smell it?”

Whit gave a neutral smile. “Going in?” he said.

“Let him go, Whit,” said Bobby. “You know how he is when he has a drink in his hand. Of course you’re safer when it’s a cocktail. There aren’t any lumps of ice in a cocktail to give you a black—”

“Well, bye bye,” said Julian. He walked out of the locker room, but as he left he heard Bobby say in a very loud voice, loud enough not to be missed by Julian: “Say, Whit, I hear Harry Reilly’s thinking of buying a new Lincoln. He doesn’t like that Cadillac he bought last summer.” The locker-room loved it.

Julian walked on, through the smoking-room, through the dining alcoves, out to the dance floor, through to the foyer at the foot of the stairs. That was where you waited for your lady. Julian said hello and good evening to a great many people, and waved especially gayly to Mildred Ammermann, who was giving tonight’s dinner. She was a tall, toothy girl, captain of the women’s golf team. Her father was a drunken roué, quite rich in real estate, and nominally a cigar manufacturer. He never came to the club except on nights like this, when Mr. and Mrs. Ammermann would entertain a few of their—her—friends at a smaller table. Mildred, towering above Losch, the club steward, and pointing, daintily for her, with one finger as she held a small stack of place-cards in her left hand, apparently was one woman who had not heard about the business of the night before. It was axiomatic in Gibbsville that you could tell Mill Ammermann anything and be sure it wouldn’t be repeated; because Mill probably was thinking of the mashie-niblick approach over the trees to the second green. Julian derived some courage from her smile. He always had liked Mill anyway. He was fragmentarily glad over again that Mill did not live in New York, for in New York she would have been marked Lesbian on sight. But in Gibbsville she was just a healthy girl. Good old Mill.

“What are you thinking?” said Caroline, suddenly standing beside him.

“I like Mill,” he said.

“I do too,” said Caroline. “Why, did she do something or say something?”

“No. I just like her,” he said. “I’ve been learning how to take it.”

“How?”

“Mr. Robert Herrmann is in his best form, ribbing me about last night—”

“Oh, Lord, where? In the locker-room? Were there a lot of people there?”

“Yes. Whit and Froggy and the usual crowd. He told me I ought to sock out five bucks to cover Harry’s subscription to the dance. And then he started kidding me about the war being over or something. How I waited till 1930 before I
did my fighting, and a lot of stuff about calling out the state police.”

“Mm. I suppose we can expect an evening of that.”

“Why? Has anyone said anything to you?”

“No, not exactly. Kitty Hofman came in the johnny while I—”

“God, you women, going to the can together! Why do you always—”

“Do you want to hear what she had to say? Or are you going to go into all that again?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, Kitty, you know how she is. Comes right out with it. She said she heard Harry had a black eye, and I said yes, I knew he had. And she said Whit is worried. Did he say anything to you?”

“No. He didn’t get much chance, with Bobby holding forth. I didn’t wait to talk to Whit.”

“Well, apparently Whit knows Harry has money in the garage.”

“Sure he knows. It’s no secret. As a matter of fact I think I told Whit myself. Yes, I did. I had to tell him, because when Whit heard about it last summer he wanted to know why I hadn’t come to him, and I told him everybody came to him. Didn’t I tell you that?”

“No, you didn’t. But anyhow, Kitty said Whit’s worried, because Harry is a bad man to have as an enemy. I told you that.”

“I know you did. Well, we can’t go on standing here like this. There’s Jean and Froggy. Let’s go over there.”

They went over there. Jean was Caroline’s best friend, and Froggy was one of the group whom Julian regarded as his best friends. He had no single best friend, had had none since college. His best friend in college was with the Standard Oil in China, and he never heard from him except about once a year. With these people Julian felt safe and at ease. Froggy, thirty-four, was not quite five years older than Julian. Froggy had lost an arm in the war, and probably because of that Julian felt less close to him than to the other men of the same age who
had been in France. Julian’s war record had been made in college, as a member of the S.A.T.C., and he still had the feeling that he should have enlisted to fight and not to go to college. Year by year the feeling grew less strong, and he believed he did not care any more, but he still did. He always did when he saw Froggy for the first time on any day; Froggy, who had been a beautiful swimmer and tennis player. With Jean, Julian had complete ease. Everything that they ever could have been to each other, Jean and Julian had been. They had been passionately in love all one summer long ago; a demi-vierge affair that left them, when it did leave them finally, with a feeling toward each other which was far more innocent than that of two children, and made them ready really to love someone else. Julian knew, because Jean had told him, that she had “gone the limit” with Froggy the very first night she had a date alone with him, and Julian honestly believed he was glad for her.

Now they talked about people who were visiting the So-and-sos; whether the Reading crowd was coming up for the dance; how swell or how perfectly terrible some of the girls looked; whether Julian had had a flat tire, as they had seen his car stopped on the road to the club; wasn’t it wonderful, or wasn’t it? the way the highway department got the roads clear so quickly; such a lovely corsage; oh, smoke a Camel, you can’t tell the difference; Mill’s father looks worse than ever; there was one thing about the Ammermanns, and that was when they gave a party they didn’t spare the pennies. Then Mill and her mother and father were seen to take their places, standing just inside the ballroom (living-room when the furniture was not cleared away), and forming a little reception line. In less than three minutes there was a milling crowd in the foyer, all waiting to say good evening a bit stiffly to Mr. and Mrs. Ammermann, and a very friendly hello to Mill. The orchestra, Ben Riskin and his Royal Canadians, from Harrisburg, took their places and with two thumps of the bass drum burst forth into (boom boom) Oh, Give Me Something To Remember You By. “Now please don’t drink too much,” said Caroline, and went to find her place at the festive board.

II

The festive board now groaned under the Baked Alaska. The Ammermann dinner party was just about over. Until one o’clock the men, young and old, would see to it that Mill was not left standing without a partner; after that whatever dances she got she would have got without giving the dinner. Tomorrow’s papers would carry the list of guests, and then the dinner would be history. Next Christmas the big dinner at the club Christmas dance would be given by someone else. Whatever she did, Mill Ammermann must not give another large dress-up party for at least a year.