Intimate Victims (13 page)

“No.”

“I’ll wait until you’ve finished.”

“What have you got there? Show me now.”

“No, finish up, first.”

Harvey pushed his plate away. “I don’t enjoy the dish very much — not any more,” he said, in a poutish voice. It made no dent on Lois, who said, “I don’t wonder.”

“What do you have there?”

“It’s a clipping from last Sunday’s
Tribune.
Voila!” She handed it to him.

GARDEN WITHOUT A SINGLE FLOWER was the heading. Plangman looked at the picture to the side of the article. It showed a man seated sideways at a small round table, which contained a bottle of wine and one table setting. The man was holding a long cigarette holder. He was wearing a scarf of some sort knotted about his neck, a boat-neck sweater, slacks, and sandals. Under the picture, the caption read:

The article began, “Mr. Trowbridge, a horticultural photographer, is an authority on ferns and other plants. At his studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania, his garden does not contain a single flower….”

Two long columns discussed his flowering crab ensemble, his Spanish wrought-iron gates, his privet hedge divider, and his Hankow screw willows.

The article concluded: “Mr. Trowbridge has his lunch on the terrace each day and it is always the same — raw vegetables of several kinds with tuna fish and a pint of white wine, no bread, butter or anything else.”

Plangman handed back the clipping. “Well?” he said, “What about it?” “That’s Adair.”

“What has he to do with me?”

Lois Cutler smiled. “He has to do with moi, cheri. You see, Adair and I have been writing back and forth in French, while he was in Europe — you knew that, oui? That I was writing this man in French? Well, viola. I guess we just … we’re going to be engaged. He’s home now, and we decided it very suddenly.”

Harvey Plangman stared at her.

“That’s the reason Daddy felt it was better that he didn’t come tonight,” she said. “I told him I was going to tell you about Adair and me.”

A
T THE
top of the stairs that morning, little Chrissy Carson was sitting with her mother’s stocking in her mouth, singing to herself:

She called out to Raymond Battle, who was on his way to his mailbox, on the front porch. “Ga-mornin’ Misser Bat-ul!”

“Hullo!” Battle said. “Don’t fall down the stairs!” he added gruffly.

“Done faw down ‘tairs!” she called back. On Saturday, in his mailbox, Battle had found an envelope containing his left lens. Inside was a note:

He had seen her (without her seeing him; he had peeked through his doorway at her) three or four times over the weekend. He knew her footsteps on the stairs very well — the rhythm was constant, a rush down three, a bounce where she skipped one, a rush down three more, another bounce — a crash at the bottom. He discovered that she had a whole wardrobe of those Ked sneakers, a pair to match every outfit. His glimpse of her was usually of her legs. He would see the hem of the skirt, the white freckled skin, then the bright blue Ked trademark on the white rubber, and the shoe matching the skirt’s color. Her legs looked like bowling pins turned upside down.

Once, she had come down the stairs with a man, and Raymond had guessed it was Scott Allen. From time to time during the long weekend, he had heard Allen up there singing. There was one song he heard over and over:

He would hear the sounds of Allen strumming the guitar, the sounds of all of them singing — Allen, the children, Mrs. Carson and Mrs. Hill. There was always a great deal of laughter and clapping of hands, and a few times Raymond Battle had to use all his self-control to keep from calling on the phone to complain of the noise. Sunday morning Battle had dreamed of Mrs. Carson. In the dream she was standing in a doorway on a New York City street. There was a familiar expression on her countenance. He had said, “You were in some other dream. What are you doing back?” That was all; he had awakened. He remembered when he woke up that he had seen that expression once long ago, on the face of an actual woman in a doorway in New York City. Or was it a man? It was something to do with two people looking at one another, one of them with love spelled out in all his features in such a strange, real way, that at the time Robert Bowser had felt as though something were being taken away from him — an emptiness.

He could not get the song out of his head; he went about humming it, and alternately telling himself it was his duty to inform Mrs. Plangman that Mrs. Carson was seeing men in her apartment. The trouble was there was no rule against it. Mrs. Carson did not come under University control, since she was only an auditor in most courses, and not under age or under the control of anyone. Her mother was living with her, and Battle was certain Allen was not spending the night there. It amounted to nothing.

Raymond had gotten one good look at Allen. He was an unkempt fellow who looked as though he never washed, and wore colored shirts unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and large belts with great brass buckles. His hair was too long; his pants were too tight; his eyes, too cock-sure. He was a fellow who would amount to nothing, Raymond Battle decided; a fellow, who in all probability, was at the high point of his life right now — what had come before and what would come after, was all downhill. “Banjo” Raymond called him, to himself: he would think: “… so she has Banjo up there again!”

On the porch, in his mailbox, there was nothing for Battle but a bill from the eye doctor in St. Louis. Nothing from Plangman, which was unusual for a Monday. He saw a car pull up in front of 702, the back seat filled with children. The car parked at the curb, the motor running, and then from the house came Mrs. Carson with Chrissy and Carla.

He stepped aside.

“Done faw down ‘tairs!” Chrissy said to him. She was still carrying the stocking, holding on to her mother’s hand.

Carla said, “You’re the man that sat with us. You’re Mr. Battle.”

Mrs. Carson went by him without a word.

Battle walked back in the house. When he was almost to his door, he heard the front door open and close, heard Mrs. Carson say, “I still haven’t located your other eye, Mr. Battle.”

The children were not with her now.

He said, “They’re not glass eyes, you know. They’re contact lenses. I have another pair, thank you.”

“You look much better without your baseball cap.”

He was not prepared for a nice word. He grunted something — made some sort of noise, and stood there. Then he said, “Where are the children? Out playing in the street?”

“Oh, you’re so sweet, Mr. Battle! Doesn’t everyone tell you what a sweet man you are?”

“Never mind. Your problem,” Battle mumbled, turning to go into his apartment.

“The children,” she said, “have joined a nursery. They Were just picked up, or couldn’t you see that far?”

She was wearing a cotton house dress — violet-colored, with violet-colored Keds. She seemed very short to Battle, who was extremely tall. He looked down at her, and she met his glance with clear, unsmiling eyes. She said, “Do you want to call a truce?”

“I’m not at war with you, Mrs. Carson.”

“Would you like to come up for coffee?”

It was Margaret who used to say it: that she could always guess the age of an author by the love scenes in his novel. In a young author’s novel they were always very long and suspenseful and tempest-tossed, described almost dutifully, as though the author had been to some country where no one else had been, and must capture its climate for the reader. “Like all travelogues,” Margaret used to say, “they please the narrator the most. And the author less young, middle-aged, was very likely to simply put it down in three words: They became lovers. Margaret used to laugh and say, “It sounds more obscene than all the youthful elaboration somehow, the same way coitus always sounded to me like a four-letter word.”

• • •

Raymond Battle remembered Margaret’s saying that over and over, in the week following the invitation for coffee from Mrs. Carson. She was Bunny now. He was used to sitting on the bed up in 3, watching her peel off her clothes and kick off her Keds prior to pushing him back on the mattress (always smiling; it irritated him); used to the daylight of the room which in the beginning inhibited him, so that he used to stay in his shorts, and accustomed, as well, to her periodic, triumphant reminders that he must not think she was vacant any longer. They had become lovers, just like in the older author’s novel, with very little fanfare and even less suspense. It was a little like morning gymnastics, Raymond Battle decided, and he didn’t wonder; hadn’t he read her diaries? When she fell on top of him; at approximately ten-forty-five every morning, he had the annoying memory of her “Me Again” and afterwards, “Nite! Nite!” The fact was, it was obscene. She had a body that ripped right through him when he saw it uncovered; she was one of those women who look fabulous naked, and not nearly so voluptuous clothed. She was also little interested in receiving any gratification herself, another factor that lent an air of obscenity to the proceedings; and then too, she talked about it too much. It was Raymond Battle’s own fault for asking questions, he supposed. Still, he wished she would have the good sense to put him off. Margaret had had such sense. He had only that much to go by for comparison. But after, when they would lie in bed and talk, it seemed to Raymond what little feeling there had been, went with their words.

“You don’t seem to really enjoy it,” he would say.

“I like it if you do, though.”

“But, don’t you see, I’d like it better if you would.” “It takes me too long. I have to think of things.” “What do you mean?” “You’ll laugh.”

“I certainly won’t. After all, nothing’s strange that accomplishes satisfaction. Don’t be so conventional.”

He was actually very much in the dark about what she had to think about; what was there to think about? He remembered the night in Paris, when Margaret had been unable to concentrate because of the street noises. He was not at all certain he wanted the puzzle solved.

“All right,” said Bunny Carson, “I have to picture something in my mind.”

He decided not to encourage her. She went on anyway. “You know,” she said. “Something from a book I’ve read or something like that.”

“What book?”

“Oh, it doesn’t have to be a particular book. Some best seller.”

“Some dirty part or something?”

“You said it, I didn’t. If you want to call it — dirty.” “All right, sexy,” said Raymond. Well, there you have it, he thought. He felt depressed. “Yes, sexy,” she said.

A refrain from some old song came to Raymond’s mind: “… well, if this isn’t love, it’ll have to do … until the real thing comes along.”

• • •

For a week then, it went that way. Mrs. Hill had taken a job in a jewelry store, and the children were off at the nursery school. They were lovers, without any words of love exchanged, without any modesty, and with no restraint. Raymond Battle found that he was extremely inventive and imaginative; Robert Bowser was slightly shocked, often looking down his nose at the whole sordid mess. One morning in the middle of the week, as Battle was getting into his pants, he said, “You know, Bunny, I read your diaries.”

He expected her to blow up. That was gone too.

She answered. “There’s nothing in my diaries.”

“Exactly,” he answered.

“You’re not going to get me to fight with you again, Ray,” she answered. “That’s all in the past.” “Oh?”

“I don’t care what you think. If you really thought I was so terrible, you wouldn’t be coming up here every morning.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of a man seeing a woman for just one reason?”

She said, “I’ve never heard of a man telling a woman he was seeing her for just one reason. Why should he tell her? You just want to get me to react. Well, I won’t.”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t!”

“I won’t come up here any more either.”

“Have it your way, Ray.” She went on applying Quik-Polish to her Keds. She was sitting on the side of the bed without any clothes on.

Raymond Battle said, “Vacant is an understatement.”

He went downstairs that day thoroughly disgusted with her. Well, it was over, and he was glad. He spent the afternoon washing his clothes and cleaning the apartment. He went to the early movie at the Uptown, and afterward, had a soda in a shop where the Stephens College girls hung out. Most of them were only three or four years younger than she was; he studied them. They reminded him of Margaret at that age. There was something about them. Class, Plangman would have called it. Plangman was right. On his way out of the shop he bought a china rabbit with lollipops stuck in its tail, and the next morning he took it up to Bunny to give to Chrissy.

“Is that all?” she said in the doorway.

“Ask me in,” he said quietly, solemnly.

She said, “The door’s open. You can walk in, but I won’t ask you in.”

He was back in it again.

It was at the week’s end, on late Saturday night. Mrs. Hill had taken the children to St. Louis, and it was their first evening together. Raymond had cooked spaghetti alla carbonara for their dinner, and he had bought a bottle of red wine.

They lingered over the wine and cigarettes at the end of the meal, and she was tight.

“I never knew you could cook so good!” she was saying. “There wasn’t anything to it.”

“So fancy! With the raw egg on top. I never had anything like it before, Ray.” “I’m glad you liked it.” “It was yummy! You’re sweet.”

It was the first endearment she had ever offered, and it pleased Battle. He actually leaned across the table and kissed her. She clung to him with a sudden force murmuring, “Red wine and everything; it was so nice and yummy!”

It was the first time, too, that they had been unable to wait out the walk down the hall to the bedroom. They made love in the living room, on the floor. It was her first time too.

“What book was it?” Raymond Battle smiled afterward.

“No book.”

“Honestly?”

“I swear it!” she said. “It’s never happened before.” “I guess the answer is a bottle of red wine.” “Natch!” she giggled. “Or raw egg yolk.” They laughed and Raymond Battle felt good. When the phone rang, he said, “Let it ring.” “I can’t. It’s probably Mother.” “Does she know anything?”

“She thinks you’re very mysterious,” Bunny said, getting up to answer the phone. “She says you don’t look or act like what you are.”

“What am I?” He put the pillow over him, sat up and lit a cigarette.

“Sweet,” she said, disappearing into the other room.

He leaned against the couch, smoking the cigarette. He had a really good feeling. He felt the way Bowser used to wonder what it was like to feel, a way Margaret would have said was not like him at all. It wasn’t either. He shut his eyes and smiled. He thought of how it had been making love with Bunny a moment ago — and then he remembered the poem Bud Wilde had tacked up in their room at Princeton:

He remembered what Plangman had said months ago, back at the Black Bass, about there being a reason why their lives had been completely changed by each other. “I believe there’s a reason it was you, in particular, and me, in particular,” Plangman had said.

“Hey, hurry back!” Raymond Battle called out. He felt very high himself, but not on wine. He grinned and hugged the pillow to him, and thought how good it was to be the first one with a woman — not her first man, but the first time.