Intimate Victims (10 page)

“Sure, buddy. I just — didn’t think of it, Plangman.”

“That’s quite all right. I’m used to it by now.”

“Next time.”

“Sure, next time. Next time!”

“Tell me about the gal you’re marrying.”

“Always next time. I’m used to it.”

“Tell me about the gal you’re marrying, Plangman.”

“She’s not a gal, Boy. I wish you’d show some respect. She’s very prominent socially. Her father is on the exchange too, for your information. You may even know him. Hayden Cutler!”

“On the Mercantile Exchange?”

“On the Stock Exchange,” Harvey said. “On the New York Stock Exchange!” “Good for him.”

“I don’t know if the Mercantile Exchange is more important than the New York Stock Exchange, but her maternal grandparents were descended from John Alden and Henry Adams.”

Again, Boy burst into laughter. “Oh Jesus, I do remember Lake telling me something about that. I remember the John Alden, Henry Adams bit — ha! ha!”

“It’s true! It’s a true story!”

Boy was rocking back and forth in his chair, his face very red from laughing.

“Her uncle’s a Boocock!” Harvey said angrily.

“Boocock, Plangman! Jesus, but that sounds oestrous!”

Harvey picked up his drink and gulped it down. He could feel his heart banging against his new S.A. Avery narrow-pleated shirt. He signaled the waiter for another drink, his hands trembling with humiliation.

• • •

It was eleven-fifteen when Harvey Plangman arrived back at his apartment. He was quite drunk. He had gulped his last three, and his very last he had been forced to drink by himself. Boy had said he had a date downtown, when Harvey suggested Boy wait, so they could cab home together. Boy had said he would give Harvey a ring one day soon. Harvey never wanted to see Boy Ames again. The whole episode had failed miserably. At one point Boy had laughed so hard, tears had run down his cheeks and he had said his stomach hurt from laughing. Harvey had forced him to be serious only once, at a point when Harvey spoke of Boy’s father’s death. Harvey had begun to be high at that point and he had asked Boy just exactly how Lake had broken the news to Boy.

“Just exactly what did Lake Budde say,” Harvey had asked. “I’m just curious.”

Boy Ames had answered. “You don’t remember things like that in terms of exact words, Plangman, but Lake handled it just great! Lake,” Boy Ames said solemnly, “is a beautiful person!”

A beautiful person — as Harvey stumbled around his apartment, getting out of his clothes, fixing himself a nightcap, and wrapping himself in his red Sulka dressing gown, he kept thinking back on those three words. Boy made them sound so spiritual, so damned special — the way Boy had said them, they no longer seemed like ordinary, everyday words — the combination of them and Boy’s tone, made them seem as though they had never been spoken before. A beautiful person. Harvey liked it. He wished someone would say that about him; he wished there were someone he could say it about — just as Boy had said it. It was as though they enhanced whoever said it, more than the person it was said about.

Harvey sat down on the bed next to the telephone. Boy had made him feel 100 times as left out as he felt after his German classes. It was his lowest point since the change in his life. It had put him back where he had been a year ago, that far back, and he stared at the telephone as though only that instrument could reinstate him now. The trouble was, there was no one to call but Lois. With Lois, he had never established a habit of casual chit-chat over the long distance phone. Both of them were slightly self-conscious on the telephone, and he had never called her without an excuse for the call. He would have to think of an excuse. It was eleven-twenty now, too. He would have to have a reason for calling that late. On the bedtable was a stack of cookbooks. He had spent that afternoon searching for a recipe he might use for the dinner he was fixing Lois and her father. One of the cookbooks was open to a recipe for a pie, made of bottled gooseberries and scalded cream. Tears came to his eyes as he looked at the recipe. Why was everything in life so very complicated? Why did he need to scald cream and make excuses to telephone the girl he was planning to marry? Never mind. He was used to it. He sat there afraid to shut his eyes because he would become very dizzy, and he tried to make up an excuse. At last he decided to say he was going out of town until Saturday — that he would not return until late Saturday afternoon, and that they had better decide on the dinner time this evening.

He lifted the phone’s arm from its cradle and gave the number to the operator.

“This is Harvey Plangman,” he told Hayden Cutler. “I hope it’s not too late to call Lois.”

“She’s at the Playhouse,” Cutler said. “Play’s probably over now. She ought to be home soon.”

He wanted to keep Cutler on the phone, until he felt reinstated. He would not be able to wait for Lois. He was very, very tired, growing dizzy even without closing his eyes.

“I’m expecting you for dinner Saturday,” he said. “Yes.”

“I’m fixing something special. Scalded cream.” “Pardon me?”

“Gooseberries with scalded cream,” he said. “Look, Harvey, Lois should be back in a half hour or so.”

“Mr. Cutler?” “Yes.”

“Would it be better if I called her ‘morrow morning?”

“I think it would.”

“’Morrow morning, first thing.”

“All right, Harvey. I’ll tell her you called.”

“How are you?”

“Fine thanks. I’ll tell Lois you’ll call tomorrow.” “How’re things at the Tock’change?” “Just fine, Harvey.”

“I hada drink Mercantile Exchange, Mr. Cutler. T’night.” “Yes, well, I think you’d better call tomorrow, Harvey.” “Mr. Cutler, sir?” “Yes, Harvey!”

“Mr. Cutler, sir, you’re a beautiful person.” There was a momentary pause, a click — and then the dial tone.

In his red Oriental-style Sulka Luxury Lounging Robe, Harvey Plangman spent the night passed out on the floor beside his bed, with all the lights burning.

R
AYMOND
B
ATTLE
had arrived at Mrs. Carson’s early. Her mother, Mrs. Hill, had gone hours ago to St. Louis, and the children, Chrissy and Carla, were already tucked in bed. It was quarter to eight by Raymond Battle’s wristwatch. Time enough for a few amenities before Mrs. Carson left and Raymond began his chore of baby-sitting.

“Ah! You’ve added a desk up here, I see,” said he, as young Mrs. Carson came from the bedroom to the living room. She was wearing a light blue skirt and a white sweater, with light blue Keds and no stockings. Her hair was a fiery red, and she had many freckles, a round sort of pretty baby-girl face, and a small but very well-developed figure. She certainly did not look like the mother of two children, but more like one of the new freshmen at the University. She was throwing things into a tan leather shoulder bag, murmuring to herself, “… my lipstick, my pencil, my compact, my saccharine, my hay fever pills …"

Again, Raymond Battle said, “You’ve added a desk up here, I see.”

“It’s all right, isn’t it?” She took a wad of Kleenex from her bag and blew her nose, then rushed across to a table where a pair of pearl earrings were resting. Hurriedly, she screwed them on her lobes, saying, “It was my husband’s mother’s desk. It’s a Governor Win-something. I don’t remember. Not an original, natch.”

“A Governor Winthrop,” said Raymond Battle, wishing she would stand still for a moment and behave politely. After all, he was doing her a favor. He was certainly not going to accept payment for this chore.

He said, “These fall-front desks are called that. They’re patterned after the fall-fronts from the Chippendale period, only their name is a misnomer.”

She was nodding her head, but her attention was fixed on her change purse, which she was pushing through with her finger, counting to herself.

Raymond Battle walked closer and spoke louder, peeved at her disinterest. She behaved like a spoiled child. “You see,” he said, “although there were several governors named Winthrop, they all lived a good century before this type desk came into existence.”

His voice, his nearness, had forced her to give him her attention. She fidgeted, looked at him with very vacant blue eyes.

He sighed and turned away, and she said, “The children should sleep right through, Mr. Battle. They didn’t have naps this afternoon, natch.”

He was slightly surprised at himself for remembering that little bit about eighteenth century furniture; he had really never been very interested. Everything he knew he had picked up from Margaret’s talk, and he had always had the idea that he never listened to anything Margaret had to say on the subject — but there you were, he had. With such a good opportunity for conversation with a relative stranger, he was disappointed to find it thrust back at him, as though it were a boomerang, he had thrown out.

Mrs. Carson said, “Chrissy whimpers in her sleep. It doesn’t mean anything. She’s the baby, the two year-old.”

Mrs. Carson was standing at the mirror in the living room now, fluffing up the sides of her short feather-cut hairdo with the palms of her hands. “There’s some kind of wine there in the decanter on the table,” she said. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t drink much. It’s Mother’s, but help yourself …"

“Oh, no, thank you,” said Raymond Battle. “I’m going to write a letter. Probably watch television.” “Well, help yourself to anything you want.” “Thank you.”

She turned around and their eyes met again. Her way of looking at him annoyed him — it was so much a way of not looking at him. He had no interest whatsoever in this person, and for that reason she irked him all the more — the very fact that she had imposed on him, and then could not even go through the simple social motions of attentive discourse or the gestures of a smile, or an expression of receptivity when he spoke. Before he knew it, she was out the door. Her footsteps on the stairs were every bit as self-concerned as she was, banging and important and rushing.

Raymond Battle was glad she was gone. His impulse earlier this afternoon, to talk with someone, was gone along with Mrs. Carson. There was no one worth talking with. On his way to Apartment 3, Battle had a brief encounter with Professor Bullard, who was going down the stairs as Battle was going up. They met on the landing. Raymond inquired, “And how are you, Professor?” to which the old man nodded, unsmiling — as seemed to be the custom at 702. Raymond had then said, “There’s a runner loose on the stairs, about the third step. I’ll fix it, but be careful as you go down.” And Bullard’s response? Not even waiting to hear the end of the sentence, Bullard clattered down the stairs reciting Shakespeare in a loud voice: “I am amaz’d, methinks, and lose my way, Among the thorns and dangers of this world.” He bounced off the bottom step crying, “King John, Act Four!” He was out of the house without so much as a thank-you-for-the-warning to Raymond Battle.

Battle settled himself at the imitation Governor Winthrop, brought out his stationery box and ball point pen, and spread the equipment in front of him. He had an hour before the English mystery movie on television, and he lit his pipe (he was still new at it, still had difficulty keeping the pipe going) and began his letter.

He sat back, gave four or five quick sucks on the pipe stem, then leaned forward and began with a determined air.

At this point, Raymond Battle heard a banging in the bedroom. He dropped his pen and rushed into that room. He was confronted by the sight of the two year-old in her crib, on her knees, with her eyes closed, banging her head against the wooden headboard.

“Here, here,” he said, bewildered and awkward, as he turned the child over on her back. “Go to sleep!” he said, ridiculously, because she was already fast asleep. Her thumb went to her mouth, and Raymond snapped off the overhead light, just as the child in the bed across the room from the crib, murmured “Nighty, Mum!”

Feebly, Raymond whispered, “Nighty.”

He shut the door, uncertain about the whole thing. What on earth was the baby doing hitting her head against a wall! He had no idea, but somehow he thought of the silly redheaded person rushing off to a play rehearsal in blue sneakers, and he decided it had something to do with that. Perhaps the child was deranged.

Back at the desk in the living room, Raymond wadded up the letter to Plangman and tossed it in the wastebasket. On another piece of paper he simply wrote, “Dear Plangman, this a good recipe,” copied down the recipe, and signed the letter: “R.B.” He took an envelope from his stationery box, put a stamp on it, and shoved the paper inside.

Then he walked across the room and turned on the television.

He found he could not concentrate on the program which was finishing up, prior to the movie showing. He kept thinking of spaghetti alla carbonara — of that, and inevitably of the trip to Rome with Margaret years ago.

They had stayed at the Excelsior on the Via Vittorio Veneto. Long ago on trips they had learned to split up during the day and pursue their individual interests, meeting for cocktails in the evening. Margaret’s interests were the same as they were in any city of the world. The beds in their hotel room would be stacked high at day’s end with boxes from Fontana Arte, Myricae, Castelli, Buzzetti, Cartoni, and Bellini. Margaret would be both exhausted and exhilarated from her day of shopping, and Robert would be worried about paying for her purchases and tired from his own wanderings through museums and churches. It was not that Robert Bowser was unhappy about their periodic visits to Europe. He enjoyed them; he looked forward to them. But inevitably there was that corner of his thoughts which was wholly occupied with the dread knowledge he could not afford them. The incident Raymond Battle remembered, as he sat before the television set, was a strange little isolated one out of many, many trips as Robert Bowser, with spouse. They had met for cocktails that afternoon at the Fagianno, in the portico overlooking the famous column of Marcus Aurelius. He remembered that he was discussing the stoicism of that emperor with Margaret, going into the details of his reign, which was plagued by earthquakes and the attacks of Parthians, Germans and Britons — and he was at that point in Marcus Aurelius’ life, when he was victor over the Marcomanni, when suddenly he noticed that Margaret was flirting with a man at the next table. He sat shocked, watching her. She had not even noticed that he had stopped talking. Her head was slightly tilted to one side, and she was alternately staring directly at the man and dropping her eyes for some slow seconds to her glass of Soave, only to lift them again and search the face of the man. The man looked very greasy to Robert Bowser, and hairy and too plump. He wore a cheap suit, and he needed a hair cut. He was smiling at Margaret, and Robert saw that his teeth were yellow and misshapen.

At last Robert said to her, “And just what is this little play all about?”

Margaret was very embarrassed. She said, “Don’t be silly, Robert.”

“It doesn’t strike me that I’m the one who’s silly.”

“He’s just a fool.”

“I can see that,” said Robert.

It was not jealousy that Robert felt at all. It was anger. Only moments before he had begun his discussion of the Roman Emperor, Margaret had confessed to the purchase of a very costly antique. Instead of losing control at this news — because they were on a holiday — and truthfully, Robert had to admit, because he was slightly afraid to go against Margaret when her mind was set, he had simply dropped the matter and turned to something more objective for discussion. He had felt very noble doing that, noble and husbandly, and thoughtful. Put-upon of course, but agreeable despite all. And there was Margaret leering at a greasy, yellow-toothed scoundrel, who doubtless could not even afford one of Margaret’s hairdressing bills. And would never have to, what’s more.

He remembered that he had sulked about it. Margaret teased him that he was jealous and she was pleased, and they said very little more until after dinner. Over some Strega, Robert remarked that the man was a very crude sort — that he was surprised at Margaret for letting down her barriers to such an extent — and in public.

Margaret retaliated by saying, “Sometimes we women can’t be bought.”

“What?” Robert had exclaimed.

“Sometimes,” Margaret smiled to herself mysteriously, “it’s just the man himself. Not his looks, not his background, not his potential — none of that — but the man himself.”

Then, when Robert said, “Don’t tell me you’d go to bed with that greaseball!”, Margaret had had the nerve to arch her eyebrow, draw herself up stiffly, and announce: “I don’t like you to speak that way to me, Robert. I won’t have it!”

The very next afternoon, Robert had done a strange thing — most strange. He had gone shopping with Margaret this time; she had wanted his approval on a silk blouse. In the shop, once Margaret paid for the purchase, the change, in lire, was resting on the counter top. Before Margaret picked it up, Robert took some of the lire ($5 worth) and stuffed it into his own pocket. He simply stole it from her. Halfway down the street, Margaret counted her change and found the amount was too little. Robert let her go back to the store and complain unsuccessfully. In anger, Margaret refused the purchase she had just made at the store, though she had wanted the blouse very, very badly. She had punished the store for shortchanging her. Robert had let her go through all of that, simply by insisting he had payed no attention to the transaction. It was funny that it seemed to make up for the episode in the Fagianno; funny too, that one seemed to have something to do with the other, but that neither one was of any great importance. But there you were, it was another fragment from Robert Bowser’s life — another nothing to add on to the nothings stretching across the years, and adding up now to this evening, to Raymond Battle.

In the middle of the English movie, which Raymond could concentrate on and was enjoying, the noise came again from the bedroom. Again he rushed in, turned on the light, and put the child on its back. This time the baby would not have any of it; she rolled over to her kneeling position and banged away.

Let her, Raymond thought. Let her bang the devil out of her little head — but he could not let her do that; each time her head hit, his own head ached in sympathy.

“Will you stop that?” he said to the child, who was fast asleep and bent on self-destruction with a will of iron. “Here, here!”