Those Harper Women (29 page)

“I'll think about it, Charles.”

“If you still want me to come.”

“I do want you to come. Very much.”

“Good,” he said. He stood up and looked down at her.

“Charles,” she said quickly, “I just want to tell you that if you hadn't come here that first weekend when you did, I don't know what I would have done. Because just a few days before you came, a terrible, awful thing happened—one of the worst things that's ever happened to me. If you hadn't come when you did, I don't know if I'd even be alive. Because I thought of killing myself. It was something I did that was all my fault. That's all I want to say now. It's made me—not sure.”

Bending, he kissed her. He started off quickly through the dark garden.

Leaning forward, she called, “Charles?”

He stopped and turned. “Yes?”

He was coming toward her again, and so she had to say it; she couldn't see his face clearly in the gloom, which made saying it easier. “Charles,” she whispered, “your room is—just down the hall from mine. No one sleeps in the bedrooms between.”

He stood very still beside her.

“Perhaps … I mean—perhaps, later on, when the house is quiet …”

“Yes,” he said.

“My door won't be locked. I—I won't be asleep—”

“Yes,” he repeated.

“Unless—”

“Unless what?”

“Unless you think it's wrong. Unless you think it's wrong for me to—feel the way I do. Then, in that case—no. No, because I think it is wrong. No. We'd better not.”

“No,” he said in a husky voice. “I don't think it's wrong.”

There were tears in her eyes and she was lucky to have the darkness. She tried to speak, and couldn't. “Then—” she began at last, trying to make her voice sound gay and offhand, as casual as possible, “then—”

“Then I'll be there,” he said. He touched her shoulder briefly and was gone, and she sat there, bunched, huddled, on the fountain's lip, feeling that if she didn't hug herself tightly her whole being would fly apart.

The bar is called The Stick of Dynamite, and it is the fourth such place Leona has visited in her search for Eddie. Its interior is redly dark, illuminated with rushlights on the small, crowded tables, and she stands at the door, peering into the smoky, noisy room. In one corner, a Negro is playing slow, almost inaudible blue piano. A waiter approaches her, but she shakes her head. “I'm looking for a friend,” she says. Then she sees him, or rather the familiar shape of his back. He is sitting alone, at the far end of the long bar. She pushes her way between the tables. A group of the gay boys looks up at her and giggles coyly, and then, as she murmurs, “Excuse me … excuse me …” between the backs of chairs, a man reaches out and touches her arm. “Hi, buddy,” he says.

“Oh, hello, Arch.” He is with a large party of men and women, who turn their heads and look up at her with tanned, disinterested faces.

“Sit down a minute. Meet my friends.”

“I can't, Arch.”

“Looking for your friend Winslow? He's at the bar. Drowning his sorrows.”

“Yes.”

“Look,” he says, standing up and separating himself from the others, “about the other night. I'm a blunt guy. I say what's on my mind. I believe in the direct approach, in calling a spade a spade. When I want to go to bed with a girl, I say let's go to bed. Don't hold it against me. Don't blame me for being the kind of guy I am.”

“No,” she says, “I don't blame you, Arch.”

“I don't hold it against you for running off on me. That's the way you are. This is the way I am.”

“Yes.”

“Then are we still buddies?”

“I guess so,” she smiles.

He nods in the direction of the table behind him. “This bunch of swingers wants me to take off in their boat for Montego tomorrow. But I'm not going. I'm going to stick around here for a few more days. So maybe we can get together again. Give it some thought.”

“Yes. Well, good night, Arch.”

Grinning, he shakes her hand. “‘Night, buddy. See? I still like you.”

She continues toward the bar. She sits down in the empty stool next to Eddie and says gently, “Hey.… Hey, remember me?”

He swivels on the stool, his drink cupped in his hands, and gives her a cloudy look. “Oh,” he says, “it's you. How are you this lovely night?”

“Why haven't you called me, Eddie? I've left all sorts of messages at your hotel.”

“Yeah. I got some messages. All sorts of messages. Buy you a drink?”

“All right.”

He lifts his glass and drains it. Then he slides his empty glass across the bar and says, “Two more. Two Scotches. A pair.” Then, turning to her, he says, “Scotch okay for you?”

“Sure,” she says with a little smile. “Scotch is fine.” And then, “What have you been doing, Eddie? I've been worried.”

“Doing? Me?” He gives her another dim look. “Well, I've been drinking. Drinking, and—oh, yes—thinking.”

“What about?”

“About this kid. This little kid I used to know, back in the town I grew up in. In Massachusetts. A kid I went to grammar school with. A little mouse-faced kid. He had a—a face like a mouse's. Mice. Micey eyes too. Nobody liked him, but he had a function. A function, you see. Thanks,” he says as a fresh drink is set down in front of him. He picks it up and takes a swallow of it. “Where was I? Oh, this kid. Henry Nichols. That was his name, Henry Nichols. But we used to call him Henry Quarters. Get it? His function was—when anybody did something, like throw a rock through a window of the girls' can, or put a tack on the teacher's chair—” He pauses, thoughtfully, stirring the ice in his glass with his finger. “But I don't think anybody ever did that, come to think of it. But I remember the rock—through the window of the girls' can.” He laughs loudly. “
I
did that. But anyway, my point is this. That any time anybody did something like that, and the principal of the school would be mad as hell and trying to find out who did it, Henry Nichols—or Henry Quarters—would come up to the kid who did it, and say, ‘If you'll give me a quarter, I'll say I did it.'” He takes another swallow of his drink. “Anything bad anybody did you could pay Henry Nichols a quarter and he'd say he did it. Of course if you didn't give him the quarter, if you didn't play Henry's game, he'd just tell on you. Isn't that something?”

“Yes,” she says, “it certainly is.”

“And so I've been sitting here wondering what ever happened to old Henry Quarters. I have a feeling he's gone—far.” He scowls darkly at his glass. “How's your drink?” he asks. And then, “I love you.”

“I know,” she says quietly. “You told me that.”

He leans back, away from the bar, hooking his feet in the legs of the stool. “Christ, I must be out of my mind,” he says.

Leona says nothing.

“Give me another Scotch!” he calls to he bartender.

“Don't have another drink, Eddie,” she says. “Let's go somewhere else. I hate this dreary place.”

“Nope. Want another drink,” he says thickly. “This place is fascinating. Full of fruits and nuts. You should see the people that have been coming in and out of this place. They're either queers or whores. You wouldn't think that the queers and the whores would hang out in the same place, would you? Fascinating. It's a fascinating—sociological study.”

Leona sighs.

“Now where was I?” he says. “Oh, yes. You asked me what I've been doing. Well, aside from drinking, and wondering about Henry Quarters, I've been working. Yessir. Working. Phone rings in the room when I'm working, I don't answer it. Get lots of messages that way. Damm editors keep calling me up from New York to see how I'm coming with it.” He gives her a sideways look. “With the Harper story.”

“I see,” she says.

He accepts his new drink and leans forward again, one hand curled around the glass, his elbows on the bar. “Yeah,” he says.

“And how
are
you coming with it, Eddie?” she asks him.

He stares at her for a moment, then says, “It's all done. Want to read it?” He reaches in his pocket and pulls out a folded sheaf of yellow foolscap and hands it to her. “Here,” he says. “Read it.”

“Read it and weep?” she asks with a bitter laugh. Carefully, she lights a cigarette. Then she unfolds the typewritten pages. “Dear me,” she says, riffing the pages, “it's awfully
long
, isn't it?” She begins to read.

She asks him only one question during the reading of it. “What does ‘possible suspension of trading' mean?”

“Maybe take the damn stock off the market.”

She nods, and continues reading. When she has finished it, she holds the manuscript pages in her hands and looks at him.

“You thinking of tearing it up? Go ahead. Tear it up.” He gives her a crooked smile. “I've got a carbon copy in my room.”

“You can't print this, Eddie. It will ruin us. If any of this is true.”

He says nothing. The piano has switched to “Twelfth Street Rag.”

“I'll say this for you, Eddie,” she says. “You've got guts. You realize that if this story appears Uncle Harold will sue you,
and
your magazine, for every cent you've got.”

“Let him sue.”

“You've bitten off more than you can chew, Eddie. You don't know Uncle Harold. I do.”

“Listen,” he says, “there's no law against printing the truth. I've spent three months working on this. These are facts. I deal in facts.” He taps his forehead. “Facts.”

Leona bites her lip. She looks down at the pages again. “And it seems—it seems as though you've gone out of your way to say everything in just as
nasty
a way as you possibly can. Is this just to hurt me, Eddie?”

He shakes his head. “No. It's not just to hurt you.”

“
You can't do it!
”

He is silent for a moment, and then says, “Look. What difference does it make to you? He's only your great-uncle. It doesn't affect you.”

“It affects me very much! My gallery!”

“Gallery?” He begins to hum, tapping out the rhythm of the song with his finger on the bar. “‘It seems to me I've heard that song before.… It's from an old fa-mil-iar—'”

“Stop it! Granny's offered to give me the money for the gallery! If you ruin Uncle Harold you ruin Granny, and if you ruin Granny you ruin me!”

“I get it. A chain reaction. Boom, boom, boom.”

“Stop it! Stop treating this as though it were all a great big joke! You can't do this to me, Eddie!”

He turns slowly on the stool and faces her. “If I don't send in this story, will you marry me?”

“What a dirty thing to say! I think your—your friend was named Eddie Winslow, not Henry Quarters!”

“I'm sorry,” he says, lowering his eyes. “I didn't mean that. I meant it—no kidding—I meant it in a different way, Leona.” He sips his drink. “What I meant is,” he says slowly, “that I have a choice. A choice.”

“What sort of choice?”

“I showed you that story for a reason. Let me give you a little bit of the background, okay? Background. I'm way out on a limb with this one. Way out. About three months ago, I went to him, my boss in New York, and said I think there's a story in the Harper empire. ‘Think so?' he said. ‘Well I don't.' So I argued. Finally I won, I sold him. So he said, ‘Okay, go ahead. Take some time. If it's as hot as you think it is, maybe we'll give it a cover.' Now it's three months later, I've got my story, and I can either send it in and be pretty sure of a nice fat raise. Or”—he pauses, giving her a hard look—“or I can
not
send in the story. Tell them, sorry, but there isn't any story. Three months' work, but I couldn't find out anything. Sorry, pal, but Eddie struck out. And I'd probably get fired. Now
you
tell me. Which should I do?”

“You certainly know what I want you to do.”

“Tell me. Just tell me. Which should I do? It's not just a moral decision for me. It's a financial one too. So tell me, Leona.”

“Tell them there isn't any story.”

He says nothing. Then he nods. “Yeah. That
would
be what you'd say to do.”

“You asked me!”

He looks at her for a moment through narrowed eyes. “Aw,” he says, and then, scooping up his drink in one hand, he turns his back to her. “Rich kid,” he says. “Lousy rich kid. Yeah, why should
you
care? Why should a rich kid care if some poor jerk loses his job. Jesus! Why did I have to fall in love with a lousy rich kid? Aw, you rich kids are all alike.”

Leona jumps to her feet. She stands for a moment staring at his back. Then she crumples up the pages of his manuscript into a ball and tosses it on the bar beside him. “Here!” she says. “Use your carbon copy!” She turns and, looking neither to the right nor left, she walks quickly out of The Stick of Dynamite.

Edith is still at her desk when Leona comes into the house. “Ah,” she says. “Here you are. Now come. Sit down. Let me tell you about my little notion.”

But Leona does not sit down. She stands with one arm resting on the side of the door, and says in a tired voice, “What is it, Granny?”

“I'm going to let you have the money, and I'll turn it over to you as soon as I get the check from Harold. But I'm going to give it to you on one very small condition.”

“Condition—”

“Yes. I'm going to ask you to let me write that letter to Gordon—asking him to come down. Maybe nothing at all will come of it when he gets here, but at least I will have tried and you will have tried. You see, dear, I'm not getting any younger, and I think you'll agree that you've been a little—rash—with your money in the past. Just a
tiny
bit rash. That's why I want, if I possibly can, to see you settled—with someone substantial, someone suitable, someone who will take care of you. Someone who has a business head, like Gordon, who can help you. So you may have your gallery money, but with that one little proviso.”