Miss Lonelyhearts (9 page)

Doyle had been staring at Miss
Lonelyhearts
as though searching for something, but he now
turned to Shrike and tried to be agreeable. "You know what people say, Mr.
Shrike?"

"No, my good man, what is it
that people say?"

"Everybody's got a
frigidaire
nowadays, and they say
that we meter inspectors take the place of the iceman in the stories." He
tried, rather diffidently, to leer.

"What!" Shrike roared at
him. "I can see, sir, that you are not the man for us. You can know
nothing about humanity; you are humanity. I leave you to Miss
Lonely-hearts." He called to Goldsmith and stalked away.

The cripple was confused and angry.
"Your friend is a nut," he said. Miss
Lonelyhearts
was still smiling, but the character of his smile had changed. It had become
full of sympathy and a little sad.

The new smile was for Doyle and he
knew it. He smiled back gratefully.

"Oh, I forgot," Doyle said,
"the wife asked me, if I humped into you, to ask you to our house to eat.
That's why I made Jake introduce us."

Miss
Lonelyhearts
was busy with his smile and accepted without thinking of the evening he had
spent with Mrs. Doyle. The cripple felt honored and shook hands for a third
time. It was evidently his only social gesture. After a few more drinks, when
Doyle said that he was tired, Miss
Lonelyhearts
suggested that they go into the back room. They found a table and sat opposite
each other.

The cripple had a very strange face.
His eyes failed to balance; his mouth was not under his nose; his forehead was
square and bony; and his round chin was like a forehead in miniature. He looked
like one of those composite photographs used by screen magazines in guessing
contests.

They sat staring at each other until
the strain of wordless communication began to excite them both. Doyle made
vague, needless adjustments to his clothing. Miss
Lonelyhearts
found it very difficult to keep his smile steady.

When the cripple finally labored
into speech, Miss
Lonelyhearts
was unable to
understand him. He listened hard for a few minutes and realized that Doyle was
making no attempt to be understood. He was giving birth to groups of words that
lived inside of him as things, a jumble of the retorts he had meant to make
when insulted and the private curses against fate that experience had taught
him to swallow.

Like a priest, Miss
Lonelyhearts
turned his face slightly away. He watched the
play of the cripple's hands. At first they conveyed nothing but excitement,
then
gradually they became pictorial. They lagged behind to
illustrate a matter with which he was already finished, or ran ahead to
illustrate something he had not yet begun to talk about. As he grew more articulate,
his hands stopped trying to aid his speech and began to dart in and out of his
clothing. One of them suddenly emerged from a pocket of his coat, dragging some
sheets of letter paper. He forced these on Miss
Lonelyhearts
.

Dear
Miss
Lonelyhearts
--

I
am kind of ashamed to write you because a man like me
dont
take stock in things like that but my wife told me you were a man and not some
dopey woman so I thought I would write to you after reading your answer to
Disillusioned. I am a cripple 41 yrs of age which I have been all my life and I
have never let myself get blue until lately when I have been feeling lousy all
the time on account of not getting anywhere and asking myself what is it all
for. You have
a
education so I figured may be you no.
What I want to no is why I go around pulling my leg up and down stairs reading
meters for the gas company for a stinking $22.50 per while the bosses ride
around in swell cars living off the fat of the land.
Dont
think I am a greasy red. I read where they shoot cripples in Russia because
they
cant
work but I can work better than any park bum
and support a wife and child to. But
thats
not what I am writing you about. What I want to no is what is it all for my
pulling my god darned leg along the streets and down in stinking cellars with
it all the time hurting fit to burst so that near quitting time I am crazy with
pain and when I get home all I hear is money
money
which
aint
no home for a man like me. What I want to
no is what in hell is the use day after day with a foot like mine when you have
to go around pulling and scrambling for a lousy three squares with a toothache
in it that comes from
useing
the foot so much. The
doctor told me I ought to rest it for six months but who will pay me when I am
resting it. But that
aint
what I mean either because
you might tell me to change my fob and where could I get another one I am lucky
to have one at all. It
aint
the fob that I am
complaining about but what I want to no is what is the whole stinking business
for.

Please
write me an answer not in the paper because my wife reads your stuff and I
dont
want her to no I wrote to you because I always said
the papers is crap but I figured maybe you no something about it because you
have read a lot of books and I never even finished high.

Yours
truly,

Peter
Doyle

While Miss
Lonelyhearts
was puzzling out the crabbed writing, Doyle's damp
hand
accidentally touched his under the table. He jerked away, but then drove his
hand back and forced it to clasp the cripple's. After finishing the letter, he
did not let go, but pressed it firmly with all the love he could manage. At
first the cripple covered his embarrassment by disguising the meaning of the
clasp with a handshake, but he soon gave in to it and they sat silently, hand
in hand.

They left the speakeasy together,
both very drunk and very busy: Doyle with the wrongs he had suffered and Miss
Lonelyhearts
with the triumphant thing that his humility
had become.

They took a cab. As they entered the
street in which Doyle lived, he began to curse his wife and his crippled foot.
He called on Christ to blast them both.

Miss
Lonelyhearts
was very happy and inside of his head he was also calling on Christ. But his
call was not a
curse,
it was the shape of his joy.

When the cab drew up to the curb,
Miss
Lonelyhearts
helped his companion out and led
him into the house. They made a great deal of noise with the front door and
Mrs. Doyle came into the hall. At the sight of her the cripple started to curse
again.

She greeted Miss
Lonelyhearts
,
then took hold of her husband and shook the breath out of him. When he was
quiet, she dragged him into their apartment. Miss Lonely-hearts followed and as
he passed her in the dark foyer, she goosed him and laughed.

After washing their hands, they sat
down to eat. Mrs. Doyle had had her supper earlier in the evening and she
waited on them. The first thing she put on the table was a quart bottle of
guinea red.

When they had reached their coffee,
she sat down next to Miss
Lonelyhearts
. He could feel
her knee pressing his under the table, but he paid no attention to her and only
broke his beatific smile to drink. The heavy food had dulled him and he was
trying desperately to feel again what he had felt while holding hands with the
cripple in the speakeasy.

She put her thigh under his, but
when he still failed to respond, she got up abruptly and went into the parlor.
They followed a few minutes later and found her mixing ginger-ale highballs.

They all drank silently. Doyle
looked sleepy and his wife was just beginning to get drunk. Miss
Lonelyhearts
made no attempt to be sociable. He was busy
trying to find a message. When he did speak it would have to be in the form of
a message.

After the third highball, Mrs. Doyle
began to wink quite openly at Miss
Lonelyhearts
, but
he still refused to pay any attention to her. The cripple, however, was greatly
disturbed by her signals. He began to fidget and mumble under his breath.

The vague noises he was making
annoyed Mrs. Doyle. "What in hell are you talking about?" she
demanded.

The cripple started a sigh that
ended in a groan and then, as though ashamed of himself, said, "
Ain't
I the pimp, to bring home a guy for my wife?" He
darted a quick look at Miss
Lonelyhearts
and laughed
apologetically.

Mrs. Doyle was furious. She rolled a
newspaper into a club and struck her husband on the mouth with it. He surprised
her by playing the fool. He growled like a dog and caught the paper in his
teeth. When she let go of her end, he dropped to his hands and knees and
continued the imitation on the floor.

Miss
Lonelyhearts
tried to get the cripple to stand up and bent to lift him; but, as he did so,
Doyle tore open Miss
Lonelyhearts
' fly, then rolled
over on his back, laughing wildly.

His wife kicked him and turned away
with a snort of contempt.

The cripple soon laughed himself
out, and they all returned to their seats. Doyle and his wife sat staring at
each other, while Miss
Lonelyhearts
again began to
search for a message.

The silence bothered Mrs. Doyle.
When she could stand it no longer, she went to the sideboard to make another
round of drinks. But the bottle was empty. She asked her husband to go to the
corner drug store for some gin. He refused with a single, curt nod of his head.

She tried to argue with him. He
ignored her and she lost her temper. "Get some gin!" she yelled.
"Get some gin, you bastard!"

Miss
Lonelyhearts
stood up. He had not yet found his message, but he had to say something.
"Please don't fight," he pleaded. "He loves you, Mrs. Doyle;
that's why he acts like that. Be kind to him."

She grunted with annoyance and left
the room. They could hear her slamming things around in the kitchen.

Miss
Lonelyhearts
went over to the cripple and smiled at him with the same smile he had used in
the speakeasy. The cripple returned the smile and stuck out his hand. Miss
Lonelyhearts
clasped it, and they stood this way, smiling
and holding hands, until Mrs. Doyle reentered the room.

"What a sweet pair of fairies
you guys are," she said.

The cripple pulled his hand away and
made as though to strike his wife. Miss
Lonelyhearts
realized that now was the time to give his message. It was now or never.

"You have a big, strong body,
Mrs. Doyle. Holding your husband in your arms, you can warm him and give him
life. You can take the chill out of his bones. He drags his days out in
areaways and cellars, carrying a heavy load of weariness and pain. You can
substitute a dream of yourself for this load.
A buoyant dream
that will be like a dynamo in him.
You can do this by letting him
conquer you in your bed. He will repay you by flowering and becoming ardent
over you..."

She was too astonished to laugh, and
the cripple turned his face away as though embarrassed.

With the first few words Miss
Lonelyhearts
had known that he would be ridiculous. By avoiding
God, he had failed to tap the force in his heart and had merely written a
column for his paper.

He tried again by becoming
hysterical. "Christ is love," he screamed at them. It was a stage
scream, but he kept on. "Christ is the black fruit that hangs on the
cross-tree. Man was lost by eating of the forbidden fruit. He shall be saved by
eating of the bidden fruit. The black Christ-fruit, the love fruit..."

This time he had failed still more
miserably. He had substituted the rhetoric of Shrike for that of Miss
Lonely-hearts. He felt like an empty bottle, shiny and sterile.

He closed his eyes. When he heard
the cripple say, "I love you, I love you," he opened them and saw him
kissing his wife. He knew that the cripple was doing this, not because of the
things he had said, but out of loyalty. "All right, you nut," she
said,
queening
it over her husband. "I forgive
you, but go to the drug store for some gin."

Without looking at Miss
Lonelyhearts
, the cripple took his hat and left. When he
had gone Mrs. Doyle smiled. "You were a scream with your fly open,"
she said. "I thought I'd die laughing."

He did not answer.

"
Boy,
is he jealous," she went on. "All I have to do is point to some big
guy and say, 'Gee, I'd love to have him love me up.' It drives him nuts."

Her voice was low and thick and it
was plain that she was trying to excite him. When she went to the radio to tune
in on a jazz orchestra, she waved her behind at him like a flag.