Miss Lonelyhearts (4 page)

Instead of going back to
Delehanty's
they went to an Italian cellar close by the
park. The old man tried to get them to drink coffee, but they told him to mind
his own business and drank rye. The whisky burned Miss Lonely-hearts' cut lip.

Gates was annoyed by the old man's
elaborate manners. "Listen, you," he said, "cut out the
gentlemanly stuff and
tell
us the story of your
life."

The old man drew himself up like a
little girl making a muscle.

"Aw, come off," Gates
said. "We're scientists. He's Havelock Ellis and I'm Krafft-Ebing. When
did you first discover
homosexualistic
tendencies in
yourself?"

"What do you mean, sir?
I..."

"
Yeh
,
I know, but how about your difference from other men?"

"How dare you..." He gave
a little scream of indignation.

"Now, now," Miss
Lonelyhearts
said, "he didn't mean to insult you.
Scientists have terribly bad manners...But you are a pervert, aren't you?"

The old man raised his cane to strike
him. Gates grabbed it from behind and wrenched it out of his hand. He began to
cough violently and held his black satin tie to his mouth. Still coughing he
dragged himself to a chair in the back of the room.

Miss
Lonelyhearts
felt as he had felt years before, when he had accidentally stepped on a small
frog. Its spilled guts had filled him with pity, but when its suffering had
become real to his senses, his pity had turned to rage and he had beaten it
frantically until it was dead.

"I'll get the bastard's life
story," he shouted, and started after him. Gates followed laughing.

At their approach, the old man
jumped to his feet. Miss
Lonelyhearts
caught him and
forced him back into his chair.

"We're psychologists," he
said. "We want to help you. What's your name?"

"George B. Simpson."

"What does the B stand
for?"

"
Bramhall
."

"Your age,
please, and the nature of your quest?"
"By what right do you
ask?"

"Science gives me the
right."

"Let's drop it," Gates
said. "The old fag is going to cry." "No, Krafft-Ebing,
sentiment must never be permitted to interfere with the
probings
of science."

Miss
Lonelyhearts
put his arm around the old man. "Tell us the story of your life," he
said, loading his voice with sympathy.

"I have no story."

"You must have. Every one has a
life story."

The old man began to sob.

"Yes, I know, your tale is a
sad one. Tell it, damn you, tell it."

When the old man still remained
silent, he took his arm and twisted it. Gates tried to tear him away, but he
refused to let go. He was twisting the arm of all the sick and miserable,
broken and betrayed, inarticulate and impotent. He was twisting the arm of
Desperate, Brokenhearted, Sick-of-it-all,
Disillusioned
-with-tubercular-husband.

The old man began to scream.
Somebody hit Miss
Lonelyhearts
from behind with a
chair.

Miss
Lonelyhearts
lay on his bed fully dressed, just as he had been dumped the night before. His
head ached and his thoughts revolved inside the pain like a wheel within a
wheel. When he opened his eyes, the room, like a third wheel, revolved around
the pain in his head.

From where he lay he could see the
alarm clock. It was half past three. When the telephone rang, he crawled out of
the sour pile of bed clothes. Shrike wanted to know if he intended to show up
at the office. He answered that he was drunk but would try to get there.

He undressed slowly and took a bath.
The hot water made his body feel good, but his heart remained a congealed lump
of icy fat. After drying himself, he found a little whisky in the medicine
chest and drank it. The alcohol warmed only the lining of his stomach.

He shaved, put on a clean shirt and
a freshly pressed suit and went out to get something to eat. When he had
finished his second cup of scalding coffee, it was too late for him to go to
work. But he had nothing to worry about, for Shrike would never fire him. He
made too perfect a butt for Shrike's jokes. Once he had tried to get fired by
recommending suicide in his column. All that Shrike had said was:
"Remember, please, that your job is to increase the circulation of our
paper. Suicide, it is only reasonable to think, must defeat this purpose."

He paid for his breakfast and left
the cafeteria. Some exercise might warm him. He decided to take a brisk walk,
but he soon grew tired and when he reached the little park, he slumped down on
a bench opposite the Mexican War obelisk.

The stone shaft cast a long, rigid
shadow on the walk in front of him. He sat staring at it without knowing why
until he noticed that it was lengthening in rapid jerks, not as shadows usually
lengthen. He grew frightened and looked up quickly at the monument. It seemed
red and swollen in the dying sun, as though it were about to spout a load of
granite seed.

He hurried away. When he had
regained the street, he started to laugh. Although he had tried hot water,
whisky, coffee, exercise, he had completely forgotten sex. What he really
needed was a woman. He laughed again, remembering that at college all his
friends had believed intercourse capable of steadying the nerves, relaxing the
muscles and clearing the blood.

But he knew only two women who would
tolerate him. He had spoiled his chances with Betty, so it would have to be
Mary Shrike.

When he kissed Shrike's wife, he
felt less like a joke. She returned his kisses because she hated Shrike. But
even there Shrike had beaten him. No matter how hard he begged her to give
Shrike
horns,
she refused to sleep with him.

Although Mary always grunted and
upset her eyes, she would not associate what she felt with the sexual act. When
he forced this association, she became very angry. He had been convinced that
her grunts were genuine by the change that took place in her when he kissed her
heavily. Then her body gave off an
odour
that
enriched the synthetic flower scent she used behind her ears and in the hollows
of her neck. No similar change ever took place in
his own
body, however. Like a dead man, only friction could make him warm or violence
make him mobile.

He decided to get a few drinks and
then call Mary from
Delehanty's
. It was quite early
and the speakeasy was empty. The bartender served him and went back to his
newspaper.

On the mirror,
behind the bar hung a poster advertising a mineral water.
It showed a
naked girl made modest by the mist that rose from the spring at her feet. The
artist had taken a great deal of care in drawing her breasts and their nipples
stuck out like tiny red hats.

He tried to excite himself into
eagerness by thinking of the play Mary made with her breasts. She used them as
the coquettes of long ago had used their fans. One of her tricks was to wear a
medal low down on her chest. Whenever he asked to see it, instead of drawing it
out she leaned over for him to look. Although he had often asked to see the
medal, he had not yet found out what it represented.

But the excitement refused to come.
If anything, he felt colder than before he had started to think of women. It
was not his line. Nevertheless, he persisted in it, out of desperation, and
went to the telephone to call Mary.

"Is that you?" she asked,
then added before he could
reply,
"I must see you
at once. I've quarreled with him. This time I'm through."

She always talked in headlines and
her excitement forced him to be casual. "O.K.," he said.
"When?
Where?"

"Anywhere, I'm through with
that skunk, I tell you, I'm through."

She had quarreled with Shrike before
and he knew that in return for an ordinary number of kisses, he would have to
listen to an extraordinary amount of complaining.

"Do you want to meet me here,
in
Delehanty's
?" he asked.

"No, you come here. We'll be
alone and anyway I have to bathe and get dressed."

When he arrived at her place, he
would probably find Shrike there with her on his lap. They would both be glad
to see him and all three of them would go to the movies where Mary would hold
his hand under the seat.

He went back to the bar for another
drink, then bought a quart of Scotch and took a cab. Shrike opened the door.
Although he had expected to see him, he was embarrassed and tried to cover his
confusion by making believe that he was extremely drunk.

"Come in, come in,
homebreaker
," Shrike said with a laugh. "The Mrs.
will be out in a few minutes. She's in the tub."

Shrike took the bottle he was
carrying and pulled its cork. Then he got some charged water and made two
highballs.

"Well," Shrike said,
lifting his drink, "so you're going in for this kind of stuff, eh?
Whisky and the boss's wife."

Miss
Lonelyhearts
always found it impossible to reply to him. The answers he wanted to make were
too general and began too far back in the history of their relationship.

"You're doing field work, I take
it," Shrike said. "Well, don't put this whisky on your expense
account. However, we like to see a young man with his heart in his work. You've
been going around with yours in your mouth."

Miss
Lonelyhearts
made a desperate attempt to kid back. "And you," he said,
"you're an old
meanie
who beats his wife,"

Shrike laughed, but too long and too
loudly,
then
broke off with an elaborate sigh.
"Ah, my lad," he said, "you're wrong. It's Mary who does the
beating."

He took a long pull at his highball
and sighed again, still more elaborately. "My good friend, I want to have
a heart-to-heart talk with you. I adore heart-to-heart talks and nowadays there
are so few people with whom one can really talk. Everybody is so hard-boiled. I
want to make a clean breast of matters, a nice clean breast. It's better to
make a clean breast of matters than to let them fester in the depths of one's
soul."

While talking, he kept his face
alive with little nods and winks that were evidently supposed to inspire
confidence and to prove him a very simple fellow.

"My good friend, your
accusation hurts me to 'the quick. You spiritual lovers think that you alone
suffer. But you are mistaken. Although my love is of the flesh flashy, I too
suffer. It's suffering that drives me into the arms of the Miss
Farkises
of this world. Yes, I suffer."

Here the dead pan broke and pain
actually crept into his voice. "She's selfish. She's a damned selfish
bitch. She was a virgin when I married her and has been fighting ever since to
remain one. Sleeping with her is like sleeping with a knife in one's
groin."

It was Miss
Lonelyhearts
'
turn to laugh. He put his face close to Shrike's and laughed as hard as he
could.

Shrike tried to ignore him by
finishing as though the whole thing were a joke.

"She claims that I raped her.
Can you imagine Willie Shrike, wee Willie Shrike, raping any one? I'm like you,
one of those grateful lovers."

Mary came into the room in her
bathrobe. She leaned over Miss
Lonelyhearts
and said:
"Don't talk to that pig. Come with me and bring the whisky."

As he followed her into the bedroom,
he heard Shrike slam the front door. She went into a large closet to dress. He
sat on the bed.

"What did that swine say to
your

"He said you were selfish,
Mary--sexually selfish."

"Of all the
god-damned nerve.
Do you know why he lets me go out with other men?
To save money.
He knows that I let them neck me and when I
get home all hot and bothered, why he climbs into my bed and begs for it.
The cheap bastard!"

She came out of the closet wearing a
black lace slip and began to fix her hair in front of the dressing table. Miss
Lonelyhearts
bent down to kiss the back of her neck.

"Now, now," she said,
acting kittenish, "you'll muss me."

He took a drink from the whisky
bottle,
then
made her a highball. When he brought it
to her, she gave him a kiss, a little peck of reward.

"Where'll we eat?" she
asked. "Let's go where we can dance. I want to be gay."

They took a cab to a place called El
Gaucho. When they entered, the orchestra was playing a Cuban
rhumba
. A waiter dressed as a South-American cowboy led
them to a table. Mary immediately went Spanish and her movements became
languorous and full of abandon.