“Are you married?”
“What do you think?”
“Well,” she said, “I don’t know.”
He looked at her a moment before making up his mind. “I’m married, yes.” He picked up his drink and swished the ice slowly around in the glass. “I’m married all right, no fear,” he added with a sigh. He glanced up at the mirror over the bar and at once seemed to become lost in thought.
“What’s the matter,” Gloria said.
“Nothing.”
“Why are you looking like that?”
“You asked me if I was married, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I told you.” He downed the drink and pushed the empty glass across the bar toward Sam.
Gloria waited. When the new drink had been set before him, she said, “Tell me about it.”
He took a deep breath and expelled it with the words: “I’m married and I have two little boys. Anything else you want to know?”
“Is she pretty?”
He struck a note of heavy irony. “Lovely. Lovely, Gloria. She’s so lovely she isn’t human.”
“What’s her name?”
“Theodora. But she’s called Teddy.”
“Teddy. That’s cute.”
“Yes, isn’t it. God.”
“I’d love to see her. I knew you’d have an awful pretty wife, Mr. Birnam.”
“I have. I have that.”
“Does she dress nice?”
“Very. It’s her chief interest in life.”
“More than you?”
“Are you kidding?”
Gloria slid a cigarette from his pack. “Where do you live?”
“We have a little house, just a two-by-four really, in Sutton Place. And then a place in Greenwich.”
“Greenwich Village?”
“God don’t talk to me about Greenwich Village. Stinking slum. Greenwich Connecticut.”
“I never was there.”
“God.”
“Why do you say God all the time?”
“Because that’s the way I feel.”
Gloria considered a moment. “A farm?”
He permitted himself a small rueful laugh. “A farm. Christ I wish it were. That would be something useful, at least.” He took a drink. “No, it’s no farm, dear. It’s just a great God-damned moratorium of a place—mausoleum of a place, fronting the Sound. Private beach, stables, gardens. Hell, what’s the use. Let’s change the subject for Christ’s sake.”
“Are you that rich?”
“My wife is.”
“Oh.”
“What do you mean, oh?”
“Is that the trouble? She has the money?”
“You’re just being romantic now, Gloria dear. Money doesn’t necessarily mean trouble. She’s always had it. I’ve always had it too, for that matter. And there are lots worse things in the world than money, Gloria. Lots. Frigidity, for example.”
“What’s that?”
“Leave it lay. Don’t get me started. Hey, what are we talking about this for, anyway? I thought we were going to have fun?”
“I’m interested, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Birnam. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
He downed his drink and then started to pay, as if he were about to leave. “Before you get married”—he waved a finger at her—“be mighty sure, Gloria, that your wife isn’t frigid.” He heard himself, and laughed. “Hell, I was forgetting. You’ll be marrying a man anyway—I hope. And they’re never frigid.”
“What’s that word mean?”
“I will a round unvarnisht tale deliver—”
“But what does it mean?”
“Frigid? It’s one of nature’s little tricks of revenge, dear. One of woman’s tricks. It’s all terribly terribly nice and proper, and keeps the lady a lady. Oh, always a lady. And makes a bloody monkey out of the poor sap who happened to marry her—because he loved her. If monkey was the worst of it, the story would merely be comic.” He sighed. “As it is, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word— Well, never mind.”
“It’s a rotten shame.”
“What is.”
“That you’re not happily married. Teddy—I mean, your wife—ought to be ashamed of herself. A nice man like you—”
“Oh-h-h no-o-o!” he said, his voice shuddering humorously. “I’m not nice, Gloria. Not a bit of it. I’m no better than I should be, like the cat in th’ adage. But I could have been a nice guy, if—given a chance. If given half a chance.…”
“By who? Your family?”
“By my wife. My dear beautiful lovely frigid wife. Now look. Are you going to drink with me, or are we going to waste the whole afternoon with wild and whirling words.”
“I never know when you’re kidding and when you’re not, Mr. Birnam.”
He smiled quizzically. “Neither do I, Gloria. Neither do I. Now what about it. Drink?”
“Sure, I’ll have another. The usual, Sam,” she said, and turned back to Don. “I bet you been taking me for a terrible ride, though.”
“Really? That’s not kind. What makes you think so?”
“The way you kid all the time.”
“And if I kid at any mortal thing, ’tis that I may not weep.”
“You see? You are now.”
“I promise not to crack another crack. No, not even a smile.”
Plainly, she was interested in him. “I like you to laugh, but I want,” she said, “I want to believe what you say.”
“You don’t mind if I keep on drinking, do you?”
“You said you had two little boys.”
“My jewels.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Well, I have two little boys. They’re wild as Indians and smart as whips.”
“Funny, a minute ago you were all in the dumps.”
“I’m resilient, Gloria. Mercurial. Volatile.”
“What are their names?”
“Who.”
“Your little boys.”
“Oh. Malcolm and Donaldbain.”
“Funny name.”
“Donald?”
“Oh.”
“Bright as buttons.”
“How old are they?”
“Four and six. Just like that. That’s planning, dear, in spite of the frigidity. That’s one time I got my oar in. Or two times.”
“Are they dark like you?”
“Blond, both of them. Just like their blonde lovely frigid mother. A pity, isn’t it? Christ what I am standing here with an empty glass for? Sam what the hell are you doing? Here!”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”
“I want a drink!”
“Why is it a pity? Don’t you like them to look like their mother?”
“God I don’t care. I’m only too thankful they aren’t girls. Because if they were, and if I thought they were going to grow up and put some poor devil through hell, the way—” He broke off, unable to go on, and picked up the glass.
“Are you crazy about them?”
“Gloria, I love those two boys this side idolatry. Now if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk anymore about it.”
“I know. Okay.”
He stared at his face in the glass. “Gloria,” he said, without turning toward her, “I’ll tell you something.” He lowered his voice. “And this is something I’ve never confided to a living soul till now, Gloria.”
“Don’t say something you’ll be sorry for, Mr. Birnam. It don’t make any difference.”
“God, I won’t. Maybe I’m even glad to find release, get it off my chest. Gloria look. My wife is a lovely woman, and she’s a good woman, understand? A good woman. Do you know what that means? Do you know what a good woman is? They’re hell on wheels. They’re simply not for men. Not for a man like me they aren’t.”
“What’s there about that? I mean, I don’t get it.”
“Wait a minute, let me finish. My wife, she’d— Yes, honestly. She’d rather have me be unfaithful to her, habitually—rather I’d sleep with one of the chambermaids even—than go to bed with her.” Gloria had colored, but he pretended not to notice. “She tries every trick known to woman to keep me out of her bed. Feigns headaches, reads, falls asleep the minute she hits the hay, has the curse practically every day in the month—” He stopped, aware that Gloria had turned from him and was staring down at her glass.
“You ought not to talk like that, Mr. Birnam,” she said, almost sadly. “It isn’t nice.”
“My dear girl.” He put his hand tenderly on her arm. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. Did I offend?” Suddenly he felt all affectionate and warm toward Gloria. “Look Gloria. Have a drink with me now to show that you forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” she said quietly, “it’s all right.”
“Have a drink anyway. Sam!” He turned to her. “I forgot myself. I was forgetting you were only a child—that you didn’t understand the talk of a man.”
Amazing then, touching too, the way Gloria responded, the way she seemed to open up to him, under the warmth of his words. “You’re a terribly nice person, Mr. Birnam,” she said very soberly. “I want you to be nice.”
He could have wept, of course. It was one hell of a long while since anybody’d said anything remotely like that—to him. Gloria plainly meant it. The words were so simple there couldn’t be any thought of trying to fool him. He told her he was touched and grateful. Perhaps he could be a nice person, for Gloria. He had an inspiration and suddenly became very happy.
“Gloria listen. What time are you off tonight?”
“Why?”
“I was wondering if you’d do me a great favor and go out with me. Please say you will.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere.” He wouldn’t make the mistake of suggesting some place like the Coq Rouge or LaRue’s where Gloria would only be miserable. He’d let her pick the place and then play up to her idea of the evening. “You say where. Wherever you’d like to go.”
“I don’t know if I could.”
He could see she was eager to accept, but holding back. Certainly she must know by now he wasn’t pulling her leg. He’d never been more sincere in his life than he was this minute. “You’d make me a very happy man, Gloria.”
“I’d have to ask the boss.”
“Do. Will you? Right now?”
“Yes.” She flushed, smiling. “Wait a sec, I’ll be right back.”
She left him and went to the rear of the room where the proprietor sat alone at a table reading the evening paper. As she bent over his shoulder and began speaking, he saw the man turn and look up at him with a puzzled frown on his forehead. He bent his attention on his own reflection in the mirror while Gloria continued to talk with the boss.
A wonderful idea—Wick would certainly approve of this! He couldn’t wait to tell Wick—Wick wouldn’t mind any of it in the least. He was doing the girl a kindness, being nice to someone else for a change. For once he wasn’t on the receiving end. He wanted genuinely to put himself in the role of benefactor and gentleman and give Gloria as good a time as he possibly could.
Apart from all that: what an experience it would be; almost a study. He was curious to know what the evening would be like, what kind of place she would want to go to, the things she would say, the things she would find pleasure in. He would try to fill all that Gloria longed for and looked up to in her idea of the ideal escort, which tonight would be him. Think what he himself might learn before the evening was out, about places he’d never seen the inside of (Danceland?), about young aspiring girls of her class to whom a date of this kind (and a gentleman at that) was as near to romance—so they thought, perhaps—as it would ever be given them to come. He would be careful and watchful to get the most out of it himself, to add to his own experience and knowledge—not drink too much, only enough to make the evening a pleasant social one for Gloria. He would be careful, too, to act the gentleman only insofar as Gloria understood the term. He must not embarrass her by ordering things she had never heard of, translating the French if there was any, taking a taxi when a bus or walking would do. With Gloria at his side he’d remember not to say “Please” and “Thank You” to the waiter; he’d join in the fun with people he didn’t know, if that was what she wanted; buy her a gardenia or an orchid, a lavender orchid of course, but not a camellia. Certainly he would not wear his dinner-jacket.… All this, Wick would understand. Wick wouldn’t mind his drinking at all, under these circumstances. He’d approve, even commend him for it. The evening promised to be a wonderful, a happy experience, something he would enjoy telling Wick all about later and hearing Wick’s approval of the whole thing.
Gloria was back at his elbow. “Is eight o’clock too late?” she said, almost under her breath. “I can go.”
“Gloria, that’s wonderful!”
“You don’t mind waiting till eight?”
“Hell no.”
Her face fell. “Now don’t talk like that, Mr. Birnam, or I don’t want to go.”
“Excuse me, Gloria, I’m just so glad, I guess. I forgot my manners. Where would you like to dine?”
She loved the word. Tentatively she suggested her idea. “Would—would The New Yorker roof be too much?”
“I think we could manage it very nicely. I’ll ’phone for a table.”
“They have a floor-show, you know. Ice and everything.”
“It sounds wonderful.”
“You’ve never been there?”
“Not yet. And you know? I’ve always wanted to go.”
“It’ll be the first time for you, too!”
“Let’s see.” He glanced at the clock. “Suppose I go home and take a tub and maybe get a bite to eat—”
“Don’t eat too much!”
“I won’t. Then call for you here at sharp eight.”
She touched his sleeve. “Listen. Do you care? I’ll have to wear this old thing I’ve got on.”
He glanced down at the brown satin dress. “Why, you look perfect!”
“There wouldn’t be time to go all the way home and change. Not when I don’t get off till eight.”
“What’s the matter with it? You look all dressed up, Gloria, just as you are. And I’ll buy you a flower and you’ll look even more so.”
“You’re awfully nice to me, Mr. Birnam. I told you you were a terribly nice person.”
“Now none of that or I won’t go. Sam, here!” He tossed a ten-dollar-bill on the bar and Sam made the change and counted it out to him. “Goodbye, Gloria. I’m so glad you’re going to do this for me.”
“For you. What about me?”
“We’ll talk about you later. ’Bye. I’ll be here on the dot.”
When he walked out into the street, he realized he was suddenly very tight. Why wouldn’t he be? He’d had at least six or seven in Sam’s bar alone. He supposed the stimulus of conversation with Gloria had kept his wits in order, but now he felt everything beginning to sag and blur and drop. What he needed was a good drink, a stiff one, a straight one, to bring him around.
There was an empty bottle from yesterday on the living room table and a quart more than half full. He tossed the empty pint into the leather wastebasket. It landed in the bottom with a loud kunk. He poured half a glass of Scotch into the sticky tumbler that had been standing there since noon. He carried it to the big chair and settled himself for a comfortable slow drink. He shook out a cigarette and fished in his pockets for a match. He came up with a paper folder advertising “JACK’S—in Charles Street—WHERE GOOD FELLOWS GET TOGETHER. Close Cover Before Striking Match.” He drained the glass almost at a swallow and read the advertisement again.
If it wasn’t one thing it was another, and it never mattered which. Always something to run away from, no matter what, no matter why, as though you’d been born with a consciousness of guilt and would find that thing to feel guilty about regardless.
Feel? Be.
He ought to stay away from the Village. Knew better, after what happened once in 10th Street. Ought to stay away from bars, for that matter, but certainly Village bars. A few years ago, when Rudolph’s was still a speakeasy, he had been drinking alone at the crowded bar one Saturday night. He wasn’t tight, not yet. He was saving that for later—had a quart of gin at home, looked forward to making a night of it in his chair, and that’s where he was headed for after a few preliminary drinks here. As he started to leave, someone touched him on the shoulder.
“Have one with me before you go.”
He turned. It was the fellow who had been standing next to him since he came in, but this was the first he had really noticed him. He was a young man about his own age and class, dressed very much the same as he was. Good suit; presentable; decent manners. He was shy, but friendly. He looked a little worried; also faintly belligerent; the frown challenged Don not to misunderstand the impulse which prompted the invitation. Don got it at once; and as he recognized, like a veteran before a neophyte, the stage of drinking the other had reached—the confidential, the confiding stage—he began to feel superior, amused, tolerant, generous, and warmly friendly himself. “Why, thank you very much,” he said with a smile. “And then perhaps you’ll have one with me.” They exchanged names and ordered drinks. Amid the babble of the bar Don missed the last name; but it didn’t matter, the first was Brad.
“You probably wonder why I did that,” Brad said.
“No I don’t, at all.” Don smiled to reassure him.
“I’m staying up late tonight and I feel like talking to somebody.”
“I understand.” Oh, he understood. How many times indeed, under just such circumstances, in just such places, had he been in on conversations of just this sort. That familiar opening line: it was the prelude to who knew what confidences—boring, very likely; nothing to confide about; intimate but unrevealing and finally elusive or even resentful. Oh well, he could afford to listen awhile and ask the necessary colorless questions to give the guy relief. On many an occasion he himself had wanted a stranger’s ear, and got it. Now he gave his own.
“I’ve got to ’phone Chicago at midnight and it’s rather on my mind.”
“Oh?” Don fiddled with his glass, knowing it would all come out in due time.
“My father had an operation in Chicago today. I can’t ’phone till twelve to find out how it went.” Brad addressed his highball. “I’m very fond of my Dad. He’s a minister.” He glanced sharply at Don. “But he’s a good guy!”
Don smiled to himself. God knows I can see how a man could be a minister and still be a good guy, if that’s what’s worrying you. “I’m sure he is,” he said. Then, in case Brad got the idea he was thinking different, he asked, to show his interest, “Does he have a church in Chicago?”
“No. Philadelphia.”
“Oh? I went to school in Philadelphia.”
“Did you,” Brad said. “So did I.”
“The U of P?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that funny. Because so did I.” Normally Don gave a wide berth to Pennsylvania guys, but tonight, somehow, it didn’t matter. This one was a little tight, and he could steer the conversation where and how he pleased, or, if things got close, pull out whenever he liked. For once, he was in the driver’s seat, because—as always happened when drinking with someone else—the tighter the other got, the soberer and clearer he became.
Acquainted now, with something found in common, Brad grew a little shyer. “What Class were you?”
“ ’24.”
“Well for God sake. So was I.”
Nothing so remarkable about that, to either of them. They merely exclaimed out of politeness. It had been a big class, of course. Couple of thousand. Not at all unusual that they’d never met or had been there at the same time. Don could and should have left it at that. Ordinarily would have. And knew that ordinarily he would have. But now he was engaged by the idea, interested, and tempted to go into it further. “I suppose, if we cast about long enough,” he said, “we’d turn up some mutual friend.”
“I suppose so.”
He named the first one that came into his head—and him because of who he was and what he had meant to him. “Ever know Johnny Barker?”
“Johnny Barker! Why, Johnny Barker was my best friend!”
Now wait a minute. This was going too fast and cockeyed. Take it easy here, don’t make any mistakes, somebody’s apparently made one already. For how could Johnny Barker have been his best friend when he was your best friend. But you couldn’t say that, of course. He said, “Now, that’s very odd. I knew Johnny very well. For a while, there, we were inseparable. And I knew all the fellows he knew, or—or thought I did. But I—I don’t remember you.”
“Funny, I was just thinking the same thing about you, as a matter of fact. Because Johnny and I were pals all through college. In fact we were fraternity brothers.”
“Johnny Barker?”
“Certainly.”
Don picked up his glass and looked at the whisky. “You mean you were Kappa U?”
“Johnny and I both. What were you?”
Cockeyed wasn’t the word. He felt he was being made an absolute fool of—by whom or what, he didn’t know. That was the trouble, he couldn’t tell. Not by Brad. Brad obviously meant what he said, thought he was speaking the truth. Not by the drink, either. He wasn’t tight. He had never been soberer in his life. But all this had no basis in reality whatever. Here were facts different from what he knew to be the facts. He knew this guy had no connection with Kappa U whatever, not the Chapter and house and gang he had known, not when he went to school. He could almost suspect a trick or a trap but for the fact that it was he himself who had first mentioned the U of P or brought up the name of Johnny Barker. It was dangerous ground, the more so because it didn’t make sense. The further into it he got, the more fantastic it became. Like when you first experience an earthquake and foundations cease to be foundations at all. Was he completely crazy? Was he hearing right? But he had to go on with it. Some devilish compulsion insisted that he find out and be put on the right track. Or the wrong track, even. But any track.
“Now listen, fella,” he said, very calmly. “I don’t doubt your word at all, so don’t get me wrong. But there’s something screwy about all this.”
“Why?”
“Well, now look. I knew all those boys very well, the Kappa U pledges. True, I was only there one year, but I knew the whole freshman crowd, all twelve of them. Joe Bruce, Hans von Wille, Arch Gilbert, Potter Smith—”
“Yes, and Shrimp Taylor, Russ Gerard—”
“That’s right,” Don said. “I knew all of them. I—I lunched at the house, often. But I don’t remember you in the outfit.”
“Oh, I get it. You only knew them as pledges, in freshman year. Well, I wasn’t taken in till May. They kicked a guy out just before Easter Week and that made a place for me.”
Like all other moments of crisis, of course, the incident had never ended. It sent its reverberations down to this very second, to this very place, and all but shook the glass from his hand. Was the incident finally closed? But in a sense, it was only happening now, for the first time. Out of the past, across miles and years, the accusing finger of the Senior Council pointed at him over the bar. He raised the highball and drank as calmly as if they had been talking about the weather. “Who was the guy,” he heard himself saying, “—and what did they kick him out for?”
“I don’t remember his name. Not sure that I ever heard it, because the fellows didn’t talk about it much. But it seems he had a crush on Tracey Burke and Tracey got fed up. He showed the Senior Council a letter the kid wrote. Hero-worship stuff, but pretty passionate. Well, they couldn’t have that sort of thing in a fraternity, so they kicked him out. Lucky for me, of course. I’d always wanted to be a Kappa U but they were full up, till this happened. Remember Tracey Burke? Upperclassman.”
It was outrageous. Outrageous. (Was there a stronger word? Were words ever strong enough?) Oh, not the story, not the incident itself. He had been over that so many times it had ceased to be anything but inane. But outrageous that this should and could happen tonight, or ever. Out of all the how many millions of people in the world, outrageous that this one should have come here, to this bar, at this time, and engaged him in conversation. What could he do about it? Tell Brad I’m the guy who made the place for you—which was one way of putting it? No, he couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be fair to scare him half to death; Brad wasn’t to blame. What he could do and did do was go home and drink himself blind in five minutes, just as he was going to do now. He could and did (but he’d never do that again) ring up the Kappa U house in the middle of the night and ask some sleepy freshman if anybody knew where Johnny Barker ’24 could be located. Why? Because he had to know if Johnny ever believed the story and what he thought about it now after all these years. But as far as Johnny was concerned, when he finally did get hold of him, it was just some drunk calling up from New York; and he said, bored and sleepy as the sleepy freshman: “Write me about it sometime.”
He got up from the big chair and filled the glass half full again and then half again. Remember Tracey Burke? Thank God he was drunk now and one more would finish the job. He went back to the chair, determined this time to drink more slowly and feel himself go and appreciate the going. “Outrageous.” Ridiculous word. But some words were strong enough. One was. Tracey’s word and the way he had said it. He swallowed some of the Scotch. But the raw stuff, hot and cutting, would gag him if he lingered over it. Not daring to taste or pause, he finished the rest at a gulp. He let the glass fall to the carpet and lay back in the chair, in sudden sleep.
Somewhile later (he did not know what time and was too foggy to think or look) he awoke. For a moment he sat staring at the brightly lighted room. Every lamp in the place was on. He got up, shaking with chill and cold, and turned them all off but one. He was so tired he could gladly die. All he thought of and longed for was a sleep forever. He emptied the bottle into the sticky glass, filling it almost to the top. He shut his eyes and drank it down, leaning against the table for support; then, coughing and sputtering, his throat and stomach afire, he staggered over to the couch and fell at once into sound sleep again.