Intimate Victims (15 page)

Harvey ordered another Old Smuggler and water. He could feel his knees shaking. He gulped half of it, and took the rest around the corner in the Logan, through the office to the phone booth.

“Hello?” — a man’s voice.

“Mr. Cutler?”

“Yes.”

“Harvey Plangman, sir.” “Yes.”

“Please don’t sound that way, and please don’t hang up. What I said this evening was very rude, sir, and I apologize.”

“All right, Plangman.”

“You see, sir, I really think it’s a fine thing to have strong family ties. Where would anyone be without them, sir, after all? And I meant it when I said I’d like to be a part of your family, because I need that very much, to be a part …"

There was the dial tone.

C
HRISSY SLAMMED
her hand down hard at the fly on the table in the soda shop. “Damned bee!” she cried out. The spoon from her ice cream sailed onto the floor, chocolate drippings spotting the table, and she began to cry as the fly buzzed out of her reach.

“Honey, it wasn’t a bee.” Bunny said to her.

“She said damn, Mommy,” Carla tugged at her mother’s sweater. “Chrissy said damn, Mommy.”

Battle tried comforting the baby, but Chrissy gave him a slap and wailed all the louder.

“Now you stop that,” Battle said firmly, pointing his finger at her. “You stop it or you’re getting a spanking.”

“Won’t top!”

“Oh, yes you will!” Battle threatened. “Mommy, Chrissy said damn!” said Carla. “Ray, there’s no reason to yell at her like that!” “Won’t top!” Chrissy wailed.

“Chrissy said damn, Mommy, and that’s naughty. I don’t say damn.”

“You just said it!” Battle said angrily.

“If you’re out of patience, Ray, you can go on without us.”

“Why aren’t they trained? Why do they just carry on like wild Indians?”

“I don’t say damn either!” Carla said angrily, pounding the table with her four-year-old fist. “You’re not a nice man!”

“Just go on without us, Ray.”

“Chuss go on out us,” said Chrissy, pouting at him.

Battle sat there glumly. It was never any good when they went out, even when they were alone. Bunny was wiping the children’s dirty faces with Kleenex. “It was your own idea to come here for ice cream,” she said. “You just don’t have any patience, Ray.”

“Oh, and I suppose Banjo does.”

“We like Banjo!” Carla said emphatically. “We like him, don’t we, Mommy?”

“Yes, dear, but don’t call him Banjo. It’s Scott.”

“We like Stot,” said Chrissy, giving Battle a snide look.

Afterward, when Battle loaded them all into the secondhand Ford he had purchased last week, Carla said, “And we like Scott’s car better too! We like to sit behind the buckets.”

“Bucket seats,” said Bunny. “Not buckets.” She giggled.

“You see,” Battle told her as he started the car, “that’s how they get that way. You just giggle at them and don’t bother correcting them.”

“It’s a harmless mistake. Buckets for bucket seats. Am I supposed to punch her in the jaw for saying it?”

“I don’t mean that. It’s rude for Carla to say she likes his car better. She has to learn respect, learn to control herself. It’s just rude.”

“Oh, piffle!”

“And I hate that expression. It’s childish.” “What a lovely afternoon it’s been with old Scrooge. Thanks, Ray.”

“I hope you enjoy your evening more,” he said. “Don’t worry!”

“I hope bed is just great. You can start with
Gone With The Wind
and work your way up to
Peyton Place!”

Bunny shouted, “Haven’t I told you that kind of talk in front of the children is out, Ray? Let us out of the car!”

“Oh, stop dramatizing yourself!”

“You’re not going to say things like that in front of the children.”

“Yes,” Carla said from the back seat. “We’re just little girls!”

“Chuss go on out us,” said Chrissy. “We like Scott better!” Carla said. “Stot better!” said Chrissy.

Bunny began giggling again. Ray pressed his foot down on the gas and drove faster.

“What I want someday,” Bunny said, “is a nice little Triumph convertible to match my hair, with a bunny on the door.”

“What a noble ambition, Mrs. Carson.”

“Well, I won’t be driving a second-hand Ford when I’m forty-two years old.”

“No, you’ll be too busy receiving curtain calls on Broadway, I suppose.”

“Make fun of me all you want, Ray.”

“And Banjo will be your leading man. Bunny and Banjo. Lunt and Fontanne.”

“Every time we go out it’s like this,” she said. “Every single time.”

“I know it,” Ray said. Then he reached for her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said.

They drove along in silence for awhile. As he turned on Wentwroth he said, “I love it the way you let things drop. I love that.”

“Thank you, Ray.”

“Can you come in for a minute? Do you have to go right upstairs?”

“I’ll come in if Mother’s home to take the kids,” she said.

“We like Scott better, don’t we, Mommy?” Carla said from the back seat.

Bunny said, “Don’t say that, Carla. It’s not nice.”

“Is it worse than saying damn? Chrissy said ‘damn.’ ”

“It’s just as bad,” said Bunny, “only it’s different. Damn is an impolite word, and saying that you like someone else better, in front of a person, is an impolite feeling.”

“What time is your date?” Ray asked.

“Seven.”

“It’s four now.”

“I have to feed the kids. I can’t stay long.”

The letter was in his pocket. The advertisement he had answered ten days ago turned out to be one placed by a firm in Canada. They manufactured swimming pools and were expanding into the manufacture of home bomb shelters. The opening was for a personnel head to handle the hiring of franchise representatives for the United States. The applicant would be required to live in Toronto.

Battle had drafted a careful resume. He listed the bulk of his experience with a defunct mayonnaise factory in upstate New York. The factory had been under surveillance at King & Clary with Robert Bowser handling the reports, and while it had been turned down as a likely investment, it had enjoyed a good reputation in its time; and Battle knew that the man who had headed the business was now retired in Spain. Battle had distorted the address of the man in his references, just enough to make it impossible for him to receive any letter of inquiry. He had an idea that the matter would not be pursued too persistently. Time was an important factor in the new business of survival equipment; every swimming pool company in the country would be adding the line before long. The Canadian firm had a unique design and the advantage of a new material, which was economical and easy to ship, but it would also be easily imitated once the boom was in full swing. Battle had listed the vice-president of the defunct mayonnaise corporation as Harvey Plangman. He had already received and answered a letter of inquiry about Battle. The letter had been mailed to 702. Battle had rented a P.O. box in St. Louis for his own correspondence. As Plangman, he had written to the Canadian firm that he thought Battle was a sales executive in St. Louis now, adding that any establishment would be lucky to have a man of Raymond Battle’s caliber.

The letter Battle had in his pocket was an invitation to fly to Toronto for an interview, a very reassuring invitation that all but guaranteed Battle the position.

It was the third and only promising response Battle had received from the various advertisements he had answered. He had been searching through
The New York Times,
the
Kansas City Star,
the
Wall Street Journal,
and other newspapers, for the past two weeks. He had looked specifically for opportunities in Canada and Mexico. He had gone about St. Louis and Columbia and Kansas City acquiring various pieces of indentification as Raymond Battle. A bank account in Kansas City, a charge account in St. Louis, and now his wallet contained three or four cards listing that name. At a post office in Jefferson City one afternoon, he had seen a Wanted bill with a picture of Robert Bowser glaring out at him like a bored old owl. He had studied the picture carefully. It was almost as though he were looking at a photograph of a stranger. He was amused to see that it was a Bachrach portrait, with Wanted For Embezzlement printed where the Bachrach credit would normally be. Bowser looked much older than Battle, slightly formidable and very tired. Battle wore the contact lenses full time now. He had put on some weight, and his face was no longer as gaunt as Bowser’s — but there was a more important difference. Battle tried to pinpoint it, but he could not; he only knew Bowser would hate a Bunny Carson. She would be the sort that had always irritated Bowser — a gum-chewing waitress who forgot his order, a servant who played the radio too loudly, a secretary at King & Clary who did her nails at her desk. No, Battle was wrong — Bowser would not hate her. He would simply dismiss her from his mind. He would be what Battle had not been able to be — indifferent to her.

Raymond Battle for the past two weeks had drowned in feelings of hot and high and terribly intense happiness, only to be rung out immediately afterward by his own nearly morbid self-hatred. It was not morbid in any true sense of helpless despair, for he fought off his demons in very practical ways: he made his plans. He told himself he was finding a way to get out and get hold of himself again and he would whistle down the halls, a slight but noticeably brave spring to his step, his head held high, his resolve to stay away from her firm. He considered Bunny a necessary but despicable ingredient in this soup of confusion which Plangman’s plot had thrust him into. Without her, he might very well have wallowed in the soup. He might have gone on practicing the same little habits of picayune gratification (the TV and the tea timed with the toast, the tiny, foolish ways of one alone) week after week, month after month, feeling bewildered and sorry for himself, and yes, even grateful that his fate was out of his hands. But this terrible physical involvement with someone else made him miss freedom and want it again. There was nothing like the thorough dissipation of meaningless sensuality to force the sensation of remorse, and ultimately, to force him again to think. First, he would get out from under her clutches. Step by step, step by step; it would all take time. Meanwhile, he told himself, meanwhile he would have nothing to do with her.

He could not stand it, seeing himself the way she made him, so that he was jealous of a type like Banjo.

“Not jealous, Bunny,” he would tell her. “It isn’t that. But shocked that you haven’t any more ego than that — to accept someone like him, so beneath you. His hair down his back, and did you ever hear him speak intelligently?”

“You’re right,” she would say.

“Of course I am. You know I’m not a moralist — morals haven’t anything to do with it. You’re on your own, we both know that, but there are Chrissy and Carla to consider. He’s a very low type to have around your home.”

“You’re right.”

“Now, if it were a decent chap — one of the fraternity boys or someone with a background that amounted to something. I’m not a snob, but …"

“He doesn’t believe in fraternities.”

“Oh, he just can’t get in one. Do you see the fraternity boys running around with their hair down their backs?” “You’re right. I told him his hair looks silly.”

“He won’t listen. He’s one of these Bohemians!” “I like Bohemians, Ray!”

“Sure. Yes, and so do I. But don’t cheapen yourself by becoming overly attached. Don’t you see what I mean? You know I want the best for you. I don’t want to see you getting a bad reputation. It’s not dignified, you know. You have to think of that. There’s Chrissy and Carla to consider. Someday you’ll want to marry a decent man; never mind all this about wanting to be an actress, Bunny. You’ll want to marry someone substantial. That’s it — someone substantial. I wouldn’t say a word, if you’d pick someone substantial.”

“I know what you’re saying is right.”

He would carry on and on like that, only to wake up the next day and remember his attacks of womanish hysteria with revulsion — for her and himself. And she, never one to think quickly, would mull it over and compound his self-revulsion by appearing in his place next day just long enough to let him have it.

“Who are you anyway,” she would shout. “You fix the johns around here, for God’s sake! Who are you to look down on anyone?” she would hammer away at him. “You’re forty-two and what did you amount to? If you’re not careful, your goddam eyes fall out on the rug!”

Then there was the naked rage spilling open between them, with its ugly name-calling and shouting hatred, and he would stand amazed at the red homeliness of her face as she screamed at him, and at his own shrill sounds, and at the spectacle of himself come to this, wanting this. He would feel lecherous, as he often felt when they were out somewhere alone together and he knew the college boys looked at her, and then at him. It was always bad when they went out; still, he would insist on it, because he felt she knew it was bad, and each time he set out to remove that obstacle — and each time it was there again.

Once he said to her, when they were in bed, where it was always easy to talk and things were good between them, “Why don’t you ever say you love me?”

“Oh, Ray!”

“Well, it’s a good question. You always say ‘Thank you’, but you don’t say that you love me.” “I can’t.” “Why not?”

“I love you, but I can’t say it.”

“You just did. You can say it that way, but not after I say it.”

“I just can’t. I just don’t ever. Not with anyone.” “Why? Why can’t you with me?” “I can’t.”

“You could. You could.”

“Ray, don’t pick on me again,” and she began to cry that way she had of crying that absolutely turned his stomach with disgust. The first time he ever heard it, he thought she was fooling. It was a child’s way of crying, a horrible wahhhhh sound, and she would pound her sides with her fists and just go wahhh! wahhh! O-wahhhh!

He had left her that time with another promise to himself never to go back, and he had made himself some tea on his stove downstairs, and damned himself for his asinine conversation with her about why she could not say she loved him.

It was being such a goddamed fool that he was getting away from, and each time his resolve was firmer.

Of course he would break, and the break would come quite suddenly in the midst of some perfectly ordinary task — scrambling his breakfast eggs, cleaning out his tub — just at a time when he would feel a confident incredulousness at the very fact of his whole involvement with her. How had it ever happened? He would shake his head in amazement — perfectly wretched little hoyden, empty as an ant — and he would daydream about working again at the things he was good at and knew. Random ideas and memories came back to his mind: “the merger agreement provides for an exchange of 199,560 shares of a new $2.125 cumulative preferred stock of …” and then he would stand helpless while the pulling apart began inside him, finally recognizing the symptom; then the accompanying flood of panic while everything crumbled and he knew where he was really headed.