Letty Fox (63 page)

He went away, with his slippery backward smiles and grimaces of his dark face, saying, “You're a dangerous little girl.” “Come back and see me soon,” I cried. “Ah, Letty,” said he, and went through the door into the street. I saw him passing the window with hunched shoulders under his overcoat; he spat into the gutter. He looked old and chilly. My appetite was sharpened for him; I telephoned him two or three times before he came again, and then he came unexpectedly. How soft, genial, hesitant his voice on the phone at his office: it amused me to hear his chary, wary tones when I spoke, “Is that Luke?” “Ye-es, ye-es, who is it?” One night at eight he telephoned, “Are you alone, Letty?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well—perhaps I shouldn't come.”

“Why not?”

“We-ell,” a soft laugh, “you're all alone, Letty; that's dangerous.”

“Well, come if you like.”

“I suppose I shouldn't.”

“Make up your mind, Luke.”

“No, I shouldn't,” a soft, dolorous laugh.

“Luke!” I cried, “why don't you come? I'm all alone.”

“Well, maybe, I will.”

I arranged things to look as if I were working on my Robespierre novel (not waiting for him); and put out some brandy which fortunately I still had. Sitting, typing expertly at the window, I perceived Luke Adams, mooching along the sidewalk opposite, taking stock of me. When he came in, he said paternally, “You weren't waiting for me, you were working; you're the kind of girl I like, Letty.”

“Oh, yes; since you couldn't make up your mind.”

“My mind. He-he!” He threw himself in the corner armchair and beamed at me. I picked up his coat and hat; I noticed his clean shirt and new shave. “Have you some coffee, Letty? It's getting frosty,” he rubbed his lean hands together. I made coffee, brought it to him, pulled down the blinds, and drew a straight chair close to him. When he had drunk the cup, he said gently, “Come here, little Letty. A real woman! I bet you're a good cook. You'll be a good wife. You won't spend money on clothes, or movies, you'll just stay at home and mind the children”—he chuckled—“and sew a fine seam. Or perhaps write short stories, eh, for the slicks? Eh? Isn't that your ambition?”

“Luke,” said I, “why are you putting me off?”

He laughed, “Sit here, on my knee.” I sat down, a stout young creature, and felt uneasy enough, for the chair sloped deeply backwards and I was being slid onto his chest. I kissed him on the face and on the throat. “I love thee,” I said in French.

“Je t'aime. I know what that means,” he said.

When I got off his knees, he rose, chuckled, “I must go; it's late.”

“Did you come to see me to talk over the world situation?”

His eyes cleared, he pulled off his hat again and laughed indulgently, “You see, Letty, I'm a married man.”

“Let me love you—let the fault be mine.”

A wild light came into his face, he threw his hat on the floor and put his arms round me. He said rapturously words which I cannot put down. He muttered, “I'd get on the bed with you, but I know what would happen.”

“Only what we want to happen.”

He held me, his face turned up toward the ceiling and the words of rapture tossing out of his writhing dark lips; he became less incoherent, “I could spend the night with you.”

“Why don't you?”

“But you see, I am married; I want to be honest. And then I don't want to go through all that, Letty—if I could have you for a night or two nights, then I could forget you—” I listened, with surprise and irritation.

“I want to go away with you,” he said, ardently, “for a whole week end.” I almost danced with despite, but kept smiling and murmuring at him, “Darling, I am almost French, I know so much but I am afraid of you—” At each sentence of mine he yielded a few feet, softened a little.

“Why afraid?”

“You are only an American, Luke; probably you don't know anything about love; I'd be afraid with you, to—”

“What do you mean?” he said, no longer smiling.

“You probably know nothing about all the ways of making love.”

“Letty—at my age—” he said, coolly extending himself and looking fixedly, cynically before him.

I knew his caution and even his egotism was part of his age, his forty years. I never had had to do with an old man before; I felt myself repulsed by his curious coldness; and yet with all his gestures and strange looks, he encouraged me to further play. I could see that he wanted to give himself to me, but that he wished me to coax him, as if against his will. The reason for this was plain. Presently, with a shadowy, almost regretful smile, he suddenly slid his clothes from his smooth limbs, but this was not done, when he sprang to his feet, standing straight, his eyes starting, muttering, “Listen, someone at your doorbell: someone is coming here—”

“No one is coming here; I won't answer, Luke, Luke—”

“Listen, shh” he said, putting his hand in anguish on my head.

“Come to the end of the room,” I whispered, “throw yourself on my bed.”

“No, no, not there, because there, we—”

“Yes,” I whispered, “there it is out of the lamp light and lamp shadow: there's no silhouette.”

With a wild air he went there, and at first, as his springing to his feet had brought my lips against his naked thighs, he dragged me after him, for I was embracing him, and there I was on my knees dragged at his feet for a step or two, like a woman worshiping her pagan god. I kissed his bare knees; then I laughed, seeing the disorder he was in, how wild, almost unconscious, so that there was no longer any barrier between us. I let him go and followed after him; he lay panting, murmuring words beneath his breath, and I began to kiss him all over, saying softly, full of joy at my triumph, “I always thought of kissing you like this; I dreamed of it; living alone would not be so hard, if only I did not dream.”

He murmured words which precipitated me upon my knees in adoration, for I had resolved this night to conquer him rather than to think of my own pleasure; I did my best to fill him with love and joy and had the satisfaction of hearing him say my name many times, at the very moment when I thought he had fainted, so that I knew that he had been obsessed with me, too. It was me he had thought of, not others. His voice filled me with passion; I experienced a new and unexpected pleasure at this unselfish love of mine and I had a cunning hope too that I now really owned him. When he left, I smiled languidly and threw myself back in a chair at the window to watch him pass. His coat squatted on his back in the early gray morning: the streets were filled with a miserable mist; I saw him spit seedily in the gutter; he was unhappy because I had no coffee made and he was hungry. For some time I had no word from him and was disappointed; and yet I hoped every day to hear from him, I felt he loved me; and I seemed to see him, making plans for a week end, even an hour together. Wintry weather came; in spite of the icy rain and snow, he would go off to his shack in the country to be alone, and I expected to be invited there. True, he shared his shack with another man. I dreamed of us lying embraced in the icy upstairs room, of even climbing through the manhole into the freezing attic, but anything to be alone, for we were so hot for each other that even this would be a pleasure. I thought of the whole company walking at night, and our touching hands in the dark and how he would halt behind some shed or tree in the freezing dark, so that he could embrace me. This did not come about.

About Christmas, he came back to the house and invited me to be present (though not to go with him) to a New Year's Ball given by some union; and I said I would be there. I was in low water and could not dress as I wished for this ball, but when I saw myself in the large mirror which stands in the foyer of the hall, I saw I looked very handsome; I wore a long red dress with a white fur borrowed from Aunt Phyllis. I was like a great flower in this dingy place; and among these working girls. As an escort I had taken along Bobby Thompson, to whom I had breathed no word about Luke; but somehow or other he had a suspicion and was in no very pleasant mood. Another boy I knew came up to me and began laughing, saying, “You look as if you're on the make.”

“Oh, I am,” I said.

This made Bobby more attentive to me. We walked around the upper gallery; dancing was already in progress downstairs on the big smooth square floor; they were doing the Big Apple, the Conga, and the Rhumba, which was just coming in as the rage. I thought we ought to go down and dance, since when Luke came he would see me in the arms of a handsome young man, and this might stir his sluggish senses. What worried me about Luke was that he was not jealous; for every man I had known, even when he was not much attracted to me, would show jealousy when I was with another man and would struggle to get me to himself; but not Luke. I was not sure that my appearance there with another man would not simply give him an excuse to neglect me for another six months. In imagination, I heard him saying, with his sweet, sultry smile, “I could see you were not lonely.” But, of course, I went and danced with Bobby, and had almost forgotten the man of my heart, when I looked across the hall at some groups of older men who were talking together and I thought, “What a handsome man; is he South American?” before I recognized in him Luke Adams. I looked at him for some time silently, rather surprised to find that he was so handsome; but he was conscious of me. He had a secret which I had surprised. One side of his face, being much handsomer than the other (the other was drawn and showed his hungry years), he did his best to keep this glittering, dark, full cheek, with its patine of sexual beauty, toward the woman he wanted to attract; and I now saw that, apparently all unconscious of me, he moved gracefully, as he talked, the few inches that were necessary to keep his beauty in my view. I said nothing of this to Bobby Thompson, but I could not conceal my wild exultation at this discovery, and Bobby naturally supposed that he was having this effect upon me.

“How beautiful you are tonight; I hate to pay compliments, but—” I saw that he was falling in love with me but would not admit it; and full of glee, I did my best to conquer him too. Thus, he followed me upstairs, after the dance, in a dream; and I felt sure that Luke Adams would soon follow. This he did, always pretending to be unconscious of me. But now he had in tow his ugly, clumsy, plump wife who was very ill dressed in a dirty housedress. When I saw her, I flashed round, turning my back to them all, and indeed I felt quite sick at heart at the sight of her; for Adams had plenty of the hypocrite in him and always pretended a joviality and decorum in public toward this woman, which seemed to me in the worst taste. Everyone knew that she was his disaster: other women called her “the scourge of God”; and said she had been sent to him, to punish him for his ravaging of so many fine women. It was as if a plate of oatmeal had been stuck in the middle of a banqueting table, otherwise covered with wines, fruits, sweetmeats, and splendid dishes. I sat down in a booth with Bobby, and as he did not think to get me a drink from the crowded buffet, I waved to the other boy, who had said I was on the make, and he at once brought me what I wanted. Bobby understood the rebuke, and he became sulky; but I, thinking only of Luke, did not care what he felt; and this supreme indifference gave me an added charm in Bobby's eyes. He was, alas, a typical New York college boy, the only son much spoiled of two doting parents who did not care for each other and had stayed together for Bobby's sake. Of course they had to make much of Bobby to pay for their sacrifice; he fancied himself a young prince and was usually a most disagreeable and difficult, though much sought after, escort, because so handsome and usually in funds. I had my fill of this kind of man, but I knew how to handle him fairly well; and I was not so absolutely dependent upon him as the usual sighing college girl. These boys make a regular traffic of their sex, taking up girls and throwing them away at will, twisting them and making martyrs of them, just because they have and withhold what the girls are sighing for. Naturally, this did not work with me; and I knew Bobby for what he really was, a sulky, weak, and lazy boy, that some stronger woman could manage, once she had, by some sleight-of-hand, got him to marry her; he was, of course, quite frankly looking for a girl with money, for he did not care to work too hard and yet he wanted a professional career.

As I sat there, in the booth with my two admirers, I saw Mrs. Adams coming up to me, and this made me feel almost faint. I greeted her with unusual modesty. She sat down and said, “Letty, Luke is over there.”

“Is he here?”

“Yes.” She smiled as if she knew that I knew; then she said, “Don't you want to see him?”

“Yes—of course, but you see—” and I grinned at the boys.

“I'll bring him over,” she said, and lifting her heavy body off the seat, went away. Presently the couple came back, Luke laughing chastely and good-humoredly with his wife. He stuck out his hand, “Oh, hello, there, Letty; I did not know you were here.” His wife left us together and the other two boys hauled off and began to talk over some things that interested them. Of course, I taxed him with avoiding me and having no affection for me, and he only smiled, said caressing words, and said he had been busy, but some day, some day—I saw all my fantasies about going out with him to his shack had been mere daydreams; and this upset me, for I do not like to waste my time in such things. Had he really forgotten that he had invited me to this ball? But half an hour later, when the entertainment began, I saw another part of his game. The lights were turned low and people crowded into the boxes upstairs, to overlook the hall and see the stage. People pressed about me like the ghosts in Richard III's tent; they rustled, it was warm and delicious, and I saw, with my heart in my throat, Luke standing on a chair just beside me and leaning over me. There, beside me (I had not observed them all moving in), was his wife, and in front of her, against the wall of the box, a sad-looking woman with fair hair who was the woman Luke had lived with for years before his marriage; and behind this trio was a dark, vicious, neurotic girl who was one of Luke's light-o'-loves; while I sat at his feet, almost and beside me were my two men. Tableau. Mrs. Adams was speaking to the fair-haired woman with a sisterly superiority and yet a stiffness which showed that she knew who she was, she knew who I was, and so I suppose she knew who they all were, the five or six women of Luke's that he had got round him there. He stood over them on the chair, husky with a cold, crooning the songs in his broken voice and an unpleasant gaiety in his voice; and I thought, “He's a famous Love-lace, we break our necks to get him; but is this the truth, this aged croak and this lewd shameless behavior, getting us together, the creatures who—” I did not now care about the wife, but I was upset by the fair-haired castoff. I knew she had worked for him for years, when he was ill. Would he be grateful to me and remember me, simply because I had kissed him once or twice? I did not want him; I had no wish to live with such an old man, used up by so many affairs; and the hollowness of my life appeared to me as I sat, sang, and laughed in the yellow and ruby lights that came from the stage. It was the lovely old opera picture, pretty women, sharp-faced and handsome men in a box in the half-dark; and I could taste a kind of filthy dust in my mouth. Yet when the lights came on, his wife and he insisted upon our sitting together at a small table, while he got drinks for us; and I wondered if she had pleasure from looking at all these women she was humbling; I had to admire, unwillingly, her nerve. As we stood in the foyer to go out, I in my coat again, he came up beside me and we made a fine picture, I saw us in the mirror. I looked beautiful then, excited by the evening, and I saw hungry regret pass over his face. He moved nearer to me and I felt his scorching fire dart out and lick me; but he made no move, not with hand or foot. He muttered, “You're pretty, Letty, I'd like to go along with you,” just as his wife came up.