Brass Bed (8 page)

“Hello, Felix,” Jolly said.

“We just said goodbye,” I said.

“That was yesterday. Eons ago.”

“It was supposed to be for eons. It was supposed to be forever.”

“Forever is such a long time. Don’t you find it so?”

“What do you want, Jolly?”

“I guess what I want is you. That seems to be the simple truth of it, and it is constantly making me humble myself.”

“I suggest that you go away.”

“You haven’t even looked at me yet,” she said. “Why don’t you look at me?”

“Go away, please.”

“Can you look at me and tell me to go away? If you can do that, I’ll go.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

It was the old thing that kids say when they’re trying to convince someone that they’ll keep their word about something. At least they used to say it, and I guess they still do, and I’ve said it myself a thousand times. Once I said it and later broke my word and was in a sweat for days about it, and saying it now brought it all back to mind, the kid stuff, and made her sound somehow small and sad and terribly appealing. After bringing in my line, I turned and looked at her, and she was wearing white shorts and a blue-and-white-striped jersey and a pair of blue sandals with flat heels, and the shorts and the jersey were quite snug.

We stood and looked at each other, and my resolution was all shot to hell, and pretty soon she said, “I promised, and I will keep my promise. Are you going to tell me to go?”

“No.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t.”

“I think you were damn sure I wouldn’t.”

“No. That isn’t true. You sounded very determined.”

“Why in God’s name did you come out here?”

“Well, Kirby and I were out on the back terrace at home and were quite bored, which is a terrible thing to be so early in the day, and pretty soon Fran and Sid came along and stopped, and we all got to talking about what we might do that would be interesting for a change, and I just happened to remember about Harvey and you being out here fishing, and I mentioned it, and immediately everyone thought it would be a good thing to drive out and see how you were getting along.”

“We were getting along very well.”

“And now it’s ruined. Is that what you mean?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m truly sorry. I never wanted to ruin anything for you. All I want is to make you happy. Is there anything at all I can do to make you happy?”

“Sure. Let’s go up and join Kirby and be happy all together. We’ll make a nice cozy little triangle, and it will be just like in a God-damn fairy tale or something. We’ll all live happily in a triangle ever after.”

“You’re bitter, and I wish you wouldn’t be. It makes me miserable when you’re bitter.”

“I know it’s unreasonable of me.”

“Kirby has changed. I think his conscience must be bothering him, and he’s decided that he ought to be pals with me. You know what I mean. That we ought to do things together and all like that. He’s being very congenial.”

“That’s fortunate, isn’t it? Now you need have practically no fear at all of being hit in the eye.”

She didn’t even wince. “That’s true. Kirby’s quite sorry about hitting me. Quite penitent really. It’s absolutely touching to see how penitent he is.”

“I’ll bet. Anyhow, now that you and Kirby are being pals, it will no longer be necessary for you to wish he would die.”

“What do you mean?”

“You and Kirby being reconciled and all. Fine pals and everything.”

“Well, I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“You still consider him an impediment?”

“Certainly. It is obvious that he is a handicap to you and me.”

“That’s true, but don’t you think it’s a sort of dirty way to feel about a guy when he’s working so hard at being congenial?”

“I don’t understand why you keep going over that, as if it would be any different one time from another.” She scowled at me.

“Honestly? You honestly can’t see that it would be any different?”

“No, I can’t. I absolutely can’t. I must say, Felix, that you have the strangest way of looking at things. You seem to see everything distorted or something.”

I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. She stood and looked at me with a tiny crease of puzzlement between her eyes and a small smile on her lips, and it crossed my mind that starting to laugh and not being able to stop, especially when you didn’t feel like laughing at all, was a bad sign of something happening to you. I wasn’t sure just what it was, but it was apparently psychological and had something to do with Jolly and goliards and nothing ever getting anywhere, and after a while I managed to stop the laughter with an effort that was painful and left a kind of constricted feeling in my throat.

“What’s funny?” Jolly said.

“Nothing. There is nothing funny at all.”

“Then why were you laughing?”

“Merely to exercise my laughing muscles. I laugh so seldom any more that I find it necessary to exercise the muscles periodically.”

“It sounded to me like maybe you were hysterical,” Jolly said.

“Really? The idea is fantastic.”

“Well, I’m glad you weren’t, because I don’t believe I could stand a hysterical man. Not even you. There is something so sickly about it.”

“There is indeed. Sickly is the word, and I don’t blame you at all for your attitude.”

Up on the bank by the cabin, Fran squealed happily about something that had been said or done, and Harvey invited everyone in a loud voice to stay for a lunch of good fried bullheads and in the meanwhile to have a beer.

“If you were to kiss me,” Jolly said, “I wonder if anyone would see us.”

“That would depend on whether anyone walked over to the edge of the bank and looked down at us,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t consider it likely that anyone will do that in the immediate future, do you?”

“I don’t know. It seems to me to be something that might or might not be done, depending upon circumstances.”

“I consider it unlikely myself, and in any event I am perfectly willing to take the chance.”

I had turned down an invitation yesterday, and it was entirely too much to expect that I should be so resolute two days in a row, so I took a step across the bar and put my arms around her and kissed her for a long time without stopping, and we were in close and extensive contact that would have left no question of our enthusiasm in the mind of an observer. I know this is true because it didn’t, the observer being Fran, and I will say for her that she was at least considerate enough not to interrupt, but stood watching us politely until we had finished and stopped of our own accord, and as a matter of fact we didn’t even know that she had come over to the edge of the bluff and seen us until a minute or two later.

“That was very pleasant,” Jolly said. “I admit that I enjoyed it a great deal.”

“I’m glad I was able to give satisfaction.”

“You did, Felix. You really did. It was a very satisfying kiss.”

“Would you care for another?”

“Yes, I would. I was just about to ask you.”

I kissed her again, and Fran remained polite and silent for the duration of this one also, but then she decided that she had made sufficient concession to courtesy, short of going away and not looking, so she cleared her throat, and we stepped apart and looked up at her.

“Hey, you guys,” she called, “we’re all about to have a beer. You better come up.”

“All right,” I said. “We’ll be right up.”

Fran turned and disappeared and we could hear her telling the others that we were coming and that Harvey might as well plug two more cans.

“I guess we’d better,” I said.

“Go up? Yes, I guess we had.”

“Fran saw us kissing, you know. Does it matter?”

“Oh, no, not at all. Fran knows all about how it is between us. She’s very loyal, and I tell her positively everything.”

“Everything? Even things like what happened that one night in the spring?”

“Do you mind?”

“Strangely enough, I believe I do,” I said.

“I consider that rather odd, Felix. I had no idea you were so reticent about things. If anything like that happens again, I promise not to tell her about it.”

“Thank you for respecting my reticence. However, I’ll try to see that it doesn’t happen.”

“Is your mind definitely made up on that point? Personally, I think it would be rather pleasant if it did.”

“The pleasantness of it is beside the point, and my mind is definitely made up. Shall we go have a beer?”

“Perhaps you’d better wipe off the lipstick first.”

I wiped it off on my handkerchief, and she went up the path ahead of me to the top of the bank and across to the cabin. Fran was wearing bright red shorts that showed off practically all of her good legs, and Kirby and Sid were wearing slacks and T-shirts and canvas shoes. Kirby looked disgustingly virile, and when he lifted his can of beer to take a swallow, the muscle made a hard knot in his arm. He was a great one for active stuff, as I said, playing a lot of handball and things like that, and he was a guy who could wear a T-shirt and get away with it.

“Hello, Felix,” he said.

“How are you?” I said.

“I’m fine. Feeling great. This is a mighty nice spot for fishing you fellows have here.”

“Well, it’s pretty good. About all we catch is bullheads, though.”

“No channel cats?”

“Once in a while you can get one down by the gravel bar, but not very often. I was just down trying, but I didn’t have any luck.”

“I’d like to try myself. Would you consider letting me use your rod a little later?”

“Sure. Any time.”

He was being very friendly as a part of his new policy, and I didn’t like it. It is no pleasure at any time to hate a man who has done you no harm deliberately, but it is especially no pleasure to hate a man like that when he is practicing a policy of being friendly. I went over and got a beer and sat down on the ground beside Fran. She was sitting Indian fashion, with her feet crossed at the ankles in front of her and her good legs displayed effectively. After being in the ice chest all night, the beer was extremely cold and made my teeth ache with the first swallow.

Kirby got a beer from Harvey for Jolly and carried it to her and remained beside her with his left arm around her waist. She looked up at him and smiled, and I was exorbitantly pleased to notice that her lipstick was a little smeared from the kissing on the gravel bar. Fran was looking up sidewise at Sid.

“Sid,” she said, “why don’t you get yourself a sociable beer?”

“No, thanks,” Sid said. “I don’t care for beer.”

“What do you mean, you don’t care for it? Are you too good to drink plain beer like the rest of us? Maybe you think Harvey and Felix ought to shake you up a martini or something.”

“Oh, cut it out, Fran. I just don’t like beer, that’s all. Is there any law against not liking beer?”

“That’s not the point, Sid. You are absolutely incapable of seeing anything clearly. The point is, here are Felix and Harvey sharing their beer with us, which is the very most they have to offer, a kind of widow’s mite or something like that, and there you are adopting the perfectly disgusting and snobbish attitude that beer is something you just don’t happen to like.”

“God-damn it,” Sid said, “it’s not an attitude at all. It’s my taste, that’s all. Taste is not an attitude.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Harvey and I are sorry that Sid doesn’t like beer, but it’s quite all right if he doesn’t.”

“No, it isn’t all right.” Fran shook her head. “You are only being courteous, Felix. I don’t know why you should bother being courteous with someone who only bothers to be rude and snobbish about your beer. As for me, I like your beer very much, and I intend to drink several cans of it at least.”

“You are more than welcome to all you want.”

“Thank you. I knew I could expect you to be courteous and generous. There are some people you can always count on for courtesy and generosity, and there are other people you can only count on for rudeness and snobbishness.” She had switched her eyes from Sid to me, and now switched them back again. “You have made a great issue yourself, Sid, about being a social drinker, and now you refuse to drink beer and be sociable. What are you, a stinking apostate or something? Haven’t you the courage of your convictions? I would like to remind you that you are committed to drinking for the sake of sociability, and it is your moral obligation to do so.”

Sid appealed desperately to me. “Tell her it’s all right, Felix. For God’s sake, tell her.”

“I’ve already told her,” I said, “and it didn’t seem to do any good.”

“That’s the trouble,” he said. “Nothing seems to do any good. Absolutely nothing has any effect on her. She’s irrational, that’s what’s the matter with her. Sometimes I think she’s really unbalanced.”

“Mentally, you mean? Do you mean mentally?” Fran fixed him with a scornful gaze. “You are merely trying to avoid justified criticism by making wild counter-accusations, Sid. There is far too much of that kind of thing being done these days, and I consider such tactics to be beneath contempt, if you want my honest opinion. I will add in fairness, however, that I am surprised to find you resorting to them. In spite of the weakness of your character, of which I am well aware, I honestly didn’t think you would stoop so low.”

“Didn’t you hear Felix say it was all right? Didn’t you hear him?”

“You needn’t appeal to others to defend you, either,” Fran said. “That’s cowardly. The more you talk, Sid, the worse impression you give of yourself. I’d advise you to quit talking altogether. The truth is, you are obligated to drink a beer and be agreeable, and you are trying to shirk your obligation, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Damn it to hell, Jolly said I was a pig for
drinking
something I didn’t really want, and now you say I’m an apostate and a coward and God knows what because I
don’t
drink something I don’t want. What kind of sense is that?”

“Oh, don’t be childish, Sid. I simply can’t understand why you persist in trying to confuse the issue.”

“All right, all right.
All right,
God-damn it. If it’ll make you happy, I’ll drink a beer if it kills me.”