She left her quizzical expression as it was.
“Listen, Laverne, I just been with a dead body. That shakes you up on a Monday before lunch. I mean, in a living room it’s real creepy, and then some. In a funeral parlor you are prepared.”
“Well, I’m among the living, Buddy, though you may not know it.”
He put on a lascivious smile. “Baby, how could I forget?” He put his hand across the table, trying to reach a tit, but she drew back.
“Buddy, I’ll be glad to give you the conclusion I arrived at,” she said coldly.
“Aw, Laverne.” He put his face in his bracketed hands, which deformed it slightly, orientalizing his eyes, and tried a bit of japery: “No tickee, no washee.” But she stayed stern, pale-faced, and in curlers. “Where’s your funnybone today?” he asked. Then: “You got anything for a sandwich?”
“Sure, Buddy, coming right up!” This was said sardonically. She rose, marched to the refrigerator, opened it, and looked inside. “We have one slice of ham sausage. We have a tomato. We have one egg.”
Buddy made a disdainful nose. “No kind of real meat?”
“We didn’t know we would be serving lunch today, sir,” Laverne said, bending to open the hydrator. “We can make a tomato sandwich with lettuce and mayonnaise.”
“That’s woman’s food,” Buddy said. “All right, fry me that egg—unless you was saving it for yourself.”
“We thank you very much,” said Laverne, “but we aren’t eating, ourself, because we just weighed ourself and found we was too fat from sitting home here alone all the time with nothing to do but chew candy.”
“All right, all right, I feel the needle. Now just be a good girl and fix that egg.”
For the first time ever, she fried it hard all the way through, Naomi-style, and the toast that clutched it was butterless and burned almost black. Buddy’s mouth felt as if full of dust.
“You wouldn’t have a Coke?”
“No, I wouldn’t. The order hasn’t come yet.” She sat across from him again. Now her expression was blank. This was worse, given her passionate nature, than anger, which in time he could always convert into lust.
“Well, some coffee then, Laverne?” On the sibilant a tiny fragment of desiccated toast flew from his lips. “Excuse me,” he said loftily, plucking it up.
Like Leo, Laverne had some breakfast coffee still in the pot. Unlike him, she heated it until an unpleasant odor told Buddy it was boiling. Meanwhile she was running water in the sink, as if in impatience to wash the dish on which she had served him the sandwich—which was furthermore a saucer, not a plate. Buddy hated that kind of error, which signified the inattention of the server. Incredulously he watched her compound it: she lifted the saucer, blew the crumbs from it, and put the coffee cup into its well.
Buddy lowered his half-eaten sandwich to the table, pushed his chair back, and stood up. Consulting his watch, he said: “Gee, I forgot nobody’s at the lot. I better get back pronto.” This was a bluff-calling test. Laverne ordinarily whined if he stayed less than an hour. Nor was there precedent for a visit of whatever length in which he did not plow her within, say, fifteen minutes after arriving.
Now, though, she stood in her old petticoat, holding the marble-enameled coffeepot in one hand and the cup in the other, and said in a tone of eminent reason: “You better do that.”
“Yeah, I better,” said Buddy and waited for her to surrender. She returned the coffeepot to the stove and put the cup and saucer in the standing water of the sink. She wrung out the string dishcloth and with it swept the crumbs from the tabletop into her free palm. She picked up the garbage from his egg sandwich and went to the trashcan and pedaled its top open.
This was unbearable. “For Christ’s sake, Laverne,” said Buddy in disbelieving exasperation.
Laverne dropped the rubbish in the can and wiped her hand with the wet gray rag. After the top came down with a clang, she said: “If you was thinking of pussy for dessert, you can forget it.”
Buddy let the screendoor slam and thundered down the outside stairs. It was monstrously unfair that he should have to suffer this treatment only now that he had hired a killer. She had caused no real trouble in all the months he had done nothing. As usual when he was the victim of an injustice Buddy soon felt defenseless, and in this case he couldn’t go to Laverne for succor, as he had done when felled by Ballbacher’s sucker punch.
As he got into the car he had wild, desperate thoughts of calling Mary Wentworth at the bank, ordering her to meet him after work, perhaps sodomizing her brutally on his desk; or lying in wait at the corner on which Grace Plum de-boarded from the bus and getting blown as he drove home. Though ordinarily Buddy deplored deviate acts as ends in themselves, he now needed ardently to defile some female while at the same time not violating his vow never to make love to anyone but Laverne. Even if she now revealed a unique nastiness, he was still so crazy about that woman that he would have gone back upstairs and kissed her ass had he thought she would thereby be mollified.
With his understanding of the female sex, he knew however that such a move would be useless at this time. Women operated on the principle: Sin in haste, repent at leisure. Left to cool her heels, Laverne would develop a usable shame; regret would stimulate her appetite, and his answering magnanimity would ignite her. Two-three days without cock would put her at the limits of her endurance. Indeed, he loved her so much—despite her current mood—that were it not a subtle kindness he could not have submitted her to this cruel denial.
Ralph was on one of his earlier deliveries when his father drove out of the neighborhood by another street. And for once their routes did not coincide. Neither his father nor his mother knew he had gone to apply for the job at Bigelow’s. He might in fact not tell them for days. For example, they were utterly ignorant that he had tried caddying at the outset of the summer. For no special reason, unless it was an instinctual or hereditary strain of paranoia, of which he was unconscious, Ralph played his cards close to his chest. For their parts, his parents had never been snoops.
The address crayoned on the side of the carton was, cryptically, 23-B Myrtle; no name accompanied it. Ralph found the street, and he found the number but not the supernumerary letter on a big, old, gray, square house with almost no yard: the kind of place that looked as if it would be populated with residents to match. He removed the box, lowered the bike to the grassy strip above the curb, there being no nearby pole or tree, and went around the corner of the building, at which point the concrete path gave way to loose gravel. There he also came upon his “23-B” in unpainted zinc figures affixed to the post of an outside stairway.
With a simultaneous inflation of his chest, he hefted the carton onto his right shoulder and, securing it with one hand and a flattened ear, he ascended to the top landing, where he did not knock but called through the screendoor: “Bigelow’s delivery!”
There was no response from within. Given the current angle of the sun, the light of which was detained by the crosshatching of the screen, much of which was clogged with soot, he could see nothing of the interior.
The carton having begun to hurt his ear and shoulder, he lowered it to the boards of the landing. As his head was rising he saw the bottom of the screendoor swing towards him, and he slid the box away from its projected route. Still bent, he saw upon the threshold a pair of those ladies’ slippers called “mules,” of pink satin with fuzzy pompoms on the toes. The ankles above them were blue-white as skim milk, as were the shins and so on to the beginning of the swell of calf. At this point bare flesh was succeeded by more pink fuzz, now along the hem of what in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue, that classic sourcebook for masturbatory images, was called a negligee. The body of this garment was of a pink satin one shade darker than that of the mules, which were perhaps faded.
Ralph looked only as far as the belt, but he was conscious, through his upper peripheral vision, of two substantial bulges just above and flanking the loose, slippery satin knot.
r /> He lifted the carton in both hands and propped it, Bigelow-style, against his midsection, though skinny as he was he had no shelf there. With an automatic smile he looked then at her face, and saw the sexiest woman he had ever laid eyes on—bright yellow curls and sky-blue eyes fringed with enormous lashes, cheeks of rose and lips of flame.
“Hi,” she said. “You’re a new one.”
Only those remarkable eyes could have kept his own glance from falling to her fantastic breasts, which now his lower peripheral sight told him were unconfined behind the negligee, and he was dying to see whether there were nipple bumps on the sleek satin.
He nodded and mumbled, and adjusted his burden, which caused the remaining bottles to clink, reminding him of the breakage.
“See, I had a little accident—it actually wasn’t my fault—” But suddenly, standing there before the muzzles of those breasts, he understood it would be unmanly to blame Margie. Deserve it though she did in one sense, in another her error could be seen as arising from her attraction to him. He might himself, with this fascinating woman, commit some disgrace for the same motive. The world could use more tolerance.
“What really happened was: a couple of things in your order got busted somehow.” His eyes disappeared into his forehead. “Let’s see now, a Coke and catchup and…” He had forgotten the third item.
With her free hand she gestured to him to enter. “You’re letting the flies in.” She gave him room, but not much, and as he stepped across the threshold, compressing himself so strenuously that had he been carrying a bag and not a box he would have crushed it, his forearm slid along and over not one but both warm, weighty, sleek-surfaced, superficially yielding yet immanently dominant, massive but lyrical extrusions of bosom. He wore a short-sleeved summer shirt.
The accident he had anticipated, and forgiven himself for by exploiting Margie’s example, happened at this point: his sneaker was imprisoned briefly at the threshold, perhaps fouled on the rubber stair tread often encountered in such a place, its lip curled to trap and trip the unwary toe. In freeing his foot Ralph projected himself forward with a violence which, after the liberation of the sneaker, was too much for his equilibrium.
So as not to fall, he ran right across the living room, reaching the entrance of the hallway before he gained his balance. He did not however drop the carton.
She was chuckling behind him.
“Sorry,” said he, coming back with the blood roaring in his ears. “I better get rid of this before anything else happens.”
“Right in here, on the table,” said she. Her satin back led him to the kitchen. Owing to the carton, he could not see the swell of her behind. He was conscious for the first time, though it had been everywhere throughout, of her sense-reeling scent: not that of known flowers, but a compound of fragrances from imaginary jungles, gaudy fruits deliquescing into syrup, the mating odors of fur-bearing animals, along with the sophisticated essences poured from cut-glass decanters into crystal balloons and sipped with closed eyes by tuxedo-clad epicures.
Putting down the carton at last, he remembered for no reason at all: “Cream was the other thing broken.” Again he blushed, remembering its thick, opaque ooze on the pavement, very like ejaculated semen in the palm of the hand.
“Listen!” he said hastily, rudely, then revised it: “I mean, you don’t have to worry, ma’am. I’ll make a special trip back to the store and get those items replaced. Five minutes, maybe less.”
She crossed her arms beneath her sumptuous breasts and smiled gorgeously, but also kindly. “I’m not worried, for gosh sake. Accidents can happen to anybody.”
Ralph just gawked helplessly at her blue eyes. He was smitten by her angelic combination of beauty and generosity.
“A penny for your thoughts,” she said at last.
Ralph emerged from his coma. “It’s nice of you not to be mad.”
She frowned amiably. “When you think how short life is, you concentrate on the real important matters and don’t cry over spilled milk.”
“Cream,” said Ralph, and regretted doing so; she might consider it a correction.
“Oh, sure!” She snapped her wrist at him and giggled marvelously. She bent to look into the box, favoring him with her golden crown. “Hey, here’s two Cokes that are still O.K. Why don’t you have one?”
Ralph was overcome.
“I’ll tell you,” she said, “I don’t use the stuff myself.” She bared her flawless teeth and tapped an incisor with a red fingernail. “I say it’s no good for the enamel. It’s got caffeine in it, and that’s acid you know.” Her expression froze for an instant. She slapped herself on the forehead. “So why am I asking you to drink it then, huh? How inconsiderate can you get?”
She was an inch or so taller than he, but in another year they would be about the same size, given his rate of growth, which had so far proved normal.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Ralph. “I don’t drink much pop anyway. I don’t like the fizz.”
Even her grimace was enchanting. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Like beer, I never cared for it.” She brightened. “But champagne now, that’s different.”
“I never tasted it.”
“Well then, you got something to look forward to.” Her smile now was rather shy. “I’ve just had it on special occasions.”
“Like New Year’s Eve.”
“Right!” she exclaimed, as if it were a remarkable observation. She certainly could enhance a routine give and take. Ralph yearned to have a really brilliant thought that would devastate her.
Straining too hard, he said: “Coca-Cola was invented around the turn of the century by a druggist, as a kind of medicine.”
This was a mistake. Saying, “I oughtn’t hold you up. You got work to do,” she walked rapidly into the living room, her mule-heels clacking, and soon returned, bosoms in motion, with a red handbag already open. She took from within a little red change purse and plucked out a coin.
It was a quarter. “I can’t take this,” said Ralph. “With what I broke and all.”
“You’ll have to pay,” she said. “I know how bosses are. I spilled some tea once on some gingham in a dry-goods store where I worked as a kid, and I had to pay for it. So”—she pressed the quarter on him—“I’m splitting the cost of the damage with you. I can afford it better than you. So you just take it or I’ll get mad, and you don’t want to get me mad or I’m a devil.”
He simply stood there in wonderment.
She went on: “See, what I could do is say forget all about what was broken, because the Coke and the whipping cream were not for me but for my gentleman friend, and he and I won’t be seeing one another any more, and speaking of the catchup, I still got enough in the old bottle—you can always add hot water and get some more out. So you could just go back and not mention it to the boss, and we’d be even-Steven for all I cared.
“But I’m not going to do that. Why? Do you have any idea?” She turned her glorious face at an angle to her swan neck.
Ralph shook his head in adoration. He hoped she would take hours to explain, in that musical voice and exuding that fragrance, eyes sparkling and hair glowing.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “You might call me mean, but I think nothing in the world is more important than a sense of responsibility in a man. Like it might not of been your fault for the accident, but delivering those groceries is your responsibility, and you want to make it good. So if I was to say forget all about it, I would be taking away your chance to be a man who stands for something.” She blinked dramatically. “Does that make any sense? I guess it’s pretty complicated.”
Ralph felt faint. Her intelligence and moral character were comparable to her heavenly beauty.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “It makes a whole lot of sense.” He nodded so vigorously he felt a catch in his nape.
She extended her hand. “Let’s shake on it. Put ’er there, partner.”
Her hand was no larger than his, but warmer, softer, and
with more strength; his own was happily helpless.
“You going to be regular or is it just for today?” she asked. “Frankly, I never have much cared for that kid Horace. He’s an example of what I’m talking about. Now when he breaks something, he never comes clean like you; he tries to sneak it past me.”
With a disloyalty that could be called divine—considering the deed he had performed for Hauser on Saturday night—Ralph said: “He’s not much of a guy. I got his job.”
“Well,” said she, “since we’ll be seeing each other a lot, my name’s Laverne.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Laverne.”
“No, that’s my first name, unless you’re talking like a colored person from Gone with the Wind. My last name’s Lorraine, and my middle is Linda, all L’s, but I wish you would call me just Laverne. We’re just plain folks here.” Her giggle was like the ringing of a silver bell.
“Mine’s Ralph.”
“Hi, Ralph.”
“The whole thing’s Ralph V. Sandifer.” He shrugged. “The middle’s actually Virgil. My dad was stuck with that for a first name, but he doesn’t use it, either, except for legal matters.” Noticing her queer look, he assumed that he had somehow offended her, given her great moral sensitivity, with this kind-of-apology. “I guess names don’t matter really.” But hers did, magnificently: Laverne Linda Lorraine was a song in itself.
She walked briskly to the sink and clattered things there. Whatever the reason, she had, he saw definitely, enough of him at the moment.
He said: “I have to get back to work.”
She made no response. But as he reached the doorway she asked: “That your dad who’s got the car lot?”
He turned and saw her more beautiful than ever. Now, despite her coloring, she looked dark, vulnerable, tragic in fact, with shadowed eyes like Merle Oberon’s. Of what exquisite variations she was capable! Laverne Linda Lorraine, I love you with all my being. But what he said was merely: “Yes.”
“It’s not your uncle or anything like that?”
“No.” He fled in a disorder of feeling.