BUtterfield 8 (27 page)

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Gloria was hungry too. One more discomfort. The other was that ever since she had come aboard the
City of Essex
she had wanted to go to the bathroom, and she was afraid to go. She had used toilets in speakeasies where to breathe the air seemed pretty risky. But there was something intimate about a speakeasy in the family. No one who went to the same speakeasy as you did would be so mean as to give you something. That was almost the way she felt about speakeasy toilets; but she always took elaborate precautions anyway. But on this old boat everything was so
old
. The women’s toilet (as distinguished from the ladies’ room in a speakeasy, the johnny at school, the little girls’ room at a party in an apartment, and the wash-my-hands on a train) was clean enough, and an elderly Negress was there to sell you safety pins. Gloria took one look, went into one of the toilets, and then came right out. The old Negress probably thought she was crazy, but this was not Gloria’s day for caring what old or young Negresses thought. Finally, after failing altogether to win out by “not thinking about it,” she gave in, went to the bathroom, came back and was ready for a fight or a frolic and a small steak.

She was working on the steak when a woman spoke to her. Gloria was alone at a table for two, the woman was alone at a table for four. “Always a nice breeze on Long Island Sound, isn’t there?” said the woman.

“Yes, isn’t there?” said Gloria.

“It’s my first ride on one of these boats, although ha ha I’ve been to Europe several times. But I wanted to take this ride to see what it was like.”

“Yes. Mm-hmm,” said Gloria.

“Just about what I expected. I wonder where we’re off of right now do you suppose? Think we passed New Haven? Because I have friends live there. I’m from—I’ll bet you didn’t come as far as I did for this trip. You’re a New Yorker, I can tell that, aren’t you?”

“You can tell it to anyone you please,” was what Gloria wanted to say. “Yes, New York,” was what she said.

“Want to come over and sit at my table? There isn’t anyone else sitting here, and we’re the only ladies traveling by ourselves I notice.”

“Well—do you mind if I finish my steak? It’d be so much trouble to move now. But thank you. I’ll have dessert with you if I may.” She wished she had what some girls had: the ability to get rid of bores, instead of talking nervously and not thinking what she was saying. She didn’t want to have dessert with this school-teacher or whatever she was.

“Then I’ll come over to your table. I’m all finished eating, but I’d like to have a cigarette, only I hate to light one here when I’m sitting by myself. It looks funny. Yih know? When yih see a woman eating by herself smoking in a public restrunt. Where are you from? Oh, you did tell me, New York. Tsih. I want to go to New York for a real stay some time. I’m always going some place when I go to New York, on my way to Europe or else home after being to Europe. Oh, did I burn you?” Hot sulphur from the woman’s match was scratched loose and stung Gloria’s wrist. “Here, let me have a look. . . . No, it’s all right. It may burn a little. I’d put something on it if I were you. Awful the way they make these matches. I suppose that Ivan what’s his name made these. The match king, from Denmark. No, Sweden. Do you see that man over there with the cigar? That’s the reason why I wanted to sit with somebody. He’s drunk.”

“He
looks
sober,” said Gloria.

“Not, though. Drunk as a coot. Tight as a tick.”

“Tight as a tick. Did you make that up? Just now?” said Gloria.

“Oh, no. Why, we say that all the time at home. Tight as a tick? Didn’t you ever say that?”

“Never heard it before in my life. What does it mean? What is a tick?”

“Well, I’ve always wondered that too, but I guess it must be something tight. It couldn’t mean the tick of a watch, because I don’t see anything tight about the tick of a watch. What do they say in your crowd when someone is three sheets to the wind?”

“I have no crowd.”

“Well—I mean, your friends. What do they say when someone is under the weather?”

“Oh,” said Gloria. “Well, I don’t think you’d like what they say.”

“Really? Why? Is it risqué?”

“Yes, a little.”

“Tell me. What is it? I won’t be shocked.”

“Well,” said Gloria. “Most of my friends, my
men
friends, they say, ‘I was stewed to the balls last night.’ My girl friends—”

“Really. I took you for a lady but I see I was wrong. Excuse
me
,” said the woman, and stood up and left the room.

“I didn’t have to do that, but I guess I had to,” Gloria told herself. “Now I’d like a drink, and isn’t it nice? I won’t be able to get one.” She smoked a cigarette, hoping the strange woman would come back and think she looked funny. She went out on deck, and on the radio on deck the Connecticut Yankees were plugging Mr. Vallée’s recording of “The Wind in the Willows.” The air was pretty good. There was no moon.

This was one of Gloria’s nights for not looking at men. At a party or at a ball, in a railroad station or a public speakeasy, on the street, at a football game, Gloria always did one of two things about the matter of looking at men. She either did one or the other: she either got the eye of a stranger and stared him down, giving him a complete and unmistakable going over the way few American men have the nerve to do with American women; or else she all but did what they call in the movies “fig bar.” Fig bar is a term which covers the whole attitude of the very bashful child; the toes turned in, eyes lowered, and especially the finger in the mouth. Gloria could be bashful when she wanted to, and she frequently wanted to. She never got over her real terror of a strange crowd. She could not recall a time when this was not true. It was true of her as a child, and on one occasion it had made her do something she never got over regretting. It was at a party, and it was that she had stayed with a man with four other people looking on; two men, two women. The other women wanted to do it, and did, but Gloria was the first. It was one of the few times in her life that she did something that made her repeatedly ask why she had done it. When she discovered that the reason probably was that she was showing off more intensely than ever before, and that the reason for wanting to show off was this unconquerable shyness—it didn’t make the whole thing any better. She was glad when one of the women who had seen it, a second-string movie actress, died. That made one less person who had seen it. She wished the others would die, too. But she did not wish it very strongly, because she knew that the other woman, not the actress, probably wished Gloria dead too. And it did nothing to cure her shyness. It only made it worse. Sometimes just as she was about to enter a bar she would remember the time—and she could hardly force herself to enter the bar. Other times she would be passing a row of tables and she would hate her evening gown for the very things that had influenced her selection of it: its décolletage, the way it fit over the hips. Full well she knew the movement of her own hips as she walked, as though each hip were a fist, clenching and unclenching, and the rhythm locked forever, reminding her of a metronome. She knew, because she had watched other girls. A girl walks across a room, her hips going
tick-tock tick-tock
. The girl becomes self-conscious and stops at a table, interrupting the rhythm with the hip resting on
tick;
but when she resumes her walk,
tock
goes the other hip, and
tick-tock
.

It was dark on deck and on Long Island Sound. The thin bars of light on Long Island and Connecticut shore were better light than the cheap lamps on deck. Gloria told the steward to put a chair in the middle of the deck for her. She did not notice anyone.

Thus she did not see Liggett, who was leaning against the rail on the starboard side, looking at Long Island and being honest with himself in that he was guessing, and guessing only, the position of the
City of Essex
. When he heard Gloria’s heels on deck he tightened up. He knew the sound for the sound of a girl’s shoes. He turned and saw that she did not look in his direction. He watched a steward put a chair down for her. He left and went to the dining-room.

The Negro waiter was none too pleasant about giving him something to eat, as it was past the dinner hour, but Liggett was not in a mood for humoring waiters. When the Negro brought the soup Liggett said: “Take that back. It’s cold.” He knew the Negro was making a face at him and when he began to mumble Liggett looked up and said: “What?” so quickly that you could hardly hear the
t
. All aspirate. Then the white headwaiter came over and asked if there was anything wrong, and Liggett said no, thank you. The Negro picked up the plate and the headwaiter followed, obviously asking him what the hell was going on. The Negro answering the man said the soup was cold, the headwaiter telling him well, then for Christ’s sake bring
hot
soup and be quick about it, and the Negro whining that cole soop want his faul, chef to blame for cole soop and anyway looka what time tis. Liggett was pretty well pleased with the way he had handled the situation, not snitching to the headwaiter.

Abruptly, he stood up. The headwaiter rushed over to him. “Anything wrong, sir?”

“I don’t feel well. I think I’d better have some air.” He didn’t feel sick but he certainly didn’t want to eat his dinner. “Never mind the dinner.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said the headwaiter.

“ ’T’s all right,” said Liggett.

He went up on deck again and Gloria was not in her chair. She was standing at the rail on the port side. It was noticeably colder and the only other people on deck were an Italian-American and his wife and two children, the Italian trying to get his money’s worth of sea air, and the sleepy wife and children looking up to him for the signal to go to bed.

“Hello,” said Liggett.

Gloria turned to give him cold stare Number 25, but said: “Good God!”

“I’m quite a stranger,” said Liggett. “I’ll say it for you.”

“I wasn’t going to say that. What—how did you happen to be on this boat?”

“You don’t think I just happened to be on board, do you?”

“No, but how did you know I was going to be on this boat?”

“I followed you.”

“Ooh. What a cheap trick. Followed me.”

“Well, I had to see you.”

“You didn’t have to follow me. You could have called me again.”

“Then I’d have missed you. You left your house a short time after you got my message.”

“It was your message. I thought it was.”

“Yes, it was my message. Do you want to sit down?”

“Not particularly.”

“I do.”

“I’d rather stand. Aren’t you afraid people will know you?”

“Who, for instance? Those Italians? They look like friends of mine?”

“You never can tell.”

“Anyway, there they go,” said Liggett. “Now listen to me for five minutes, will you please?”

“I’ll sit down now. I’m weak.”

“Why?”

“Well, the way you suddenly appear.”

“Been on the boat since five-thirty.”

“You kill me.”

“Here. Do you want to sit here?” he said. “Now look here—”

“Oh, no, thanks. I don’t want any of those now look here discussions.”

“I’m sorry. How shall I begin?”

“Are you all right? I mean after the fight? I thought you’d be hurt pretty badly.”

“I may have a rib kicked loose.”

“Well, don’t fool around with that, then. I knew a boy had a rib kicked loose in football and finally it punctured his lung.”

“You wouldn’t want that to happen to me, would you?”

“No. Whether you believe it or not, I wouldn’t.”

“Why not? Simple humanitarian instincts or what?”

“No. Better than that. Or worse.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“Aw-haw. That’s a laugh.”

“I know.”

“What makes you think you love me?”

“I don’t know. Nothing makes me think I love you. It’s closer than that. It isn’t as far away from me as something making me think I love you. It’s knowing that I do love you. I don’t expect you to believe it, but it’s true.”

“I beg your pardon. Have a cigarette.”

“Oh, how nice. American cigarettes. There’s a big fine if you’re caught smuggling them into Massachusetts.”

“Don’t kid.”

“All right.”

He reached for her hand, but she would not let him hold it. “No. You wanted to talk. Talk, then.”

“All right,” he said. “Well, in the first place, I’ve left my wife. Or rather—I don’t know how to put it. Technically I
have
left my wife—”

“Permanently?”

“Permanently? Why, yes. Of course permanently.”

“Of course permanently,” she repeated. “As a matter of fact you don’t know whether it’s permanently or not. I can tell by your tone, you haven’t even thought about that phase of it.”

“No, I guess I haven’t figured it out by months and days and years. Are you cold?”

“Yes. But we’ll stay here.”

“You don’t have to be nasty about it. I merely asked.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, to get back to the subject. My wife and I have split up. Permanently. I told her about you—”

“Why did you do that?”

“I didn’t mention your name.”

“That isn’t what I meant. Why did you tell her before you told me?”

“I didn’t have much chance to tell you, remember.”

“Even so you should have told me. You should have waited. What did you do that for? I’m not a home-wrecker. You have children. It’s the worst kind of luck to break up a home. You should have told me first.”

“I don’t see what difference that would have made. It had nothing to do with the facts.”

“What facts? You mean my sleeping with you? Did you tell her I slept with you in your apartment? Did you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, you fool. You awful fool. Oh. Oh. Oh, Liggett. Why did you do that? You poor man. Ah, kiss me.”

He kissed her. She put her hand on the back of his neck. “What else did you do? What else did you tell her?” she said.

“I told her everything except your name.”

“What did she say?”

“Well, I didn’t give her much chance to say anything. I told her I loved you.”