He pried himself from the narrow booth, a constricted situation that now also seemed suspicious, and went towards the men’s room, to reach which at Wong’s Gardens you had to use the same corridor as the laden waiters and at one point to pass through an edge of the kitchen with its horde of sweating glossy-black heads, fanatically barking at one another in a heathen tongue and bobbing through clouds of steam.
The toilet was closet-sized. To close its door he had to elevate a buttock over the washbasin. There was just the regular sit-down can, no urinal, and Buddy leaned over it, his hand on the wall above covering the legend saying, SOME COME HERE TO SIT AND THINK, SOME TO SHIT AND STINK, written purplish with an indelible pencil dipped in water. Whoever had been there last had taken the second alternative and was well remembered for it. Buddy had no trouble in bringing up the small supper he had eaten.
Contrary to standard opinion, he felt no better for it. He needed water, but not from the basin, which was glazed with a lavender slime, suggesting that the poet and recent defecator were one and the same, a degraded braggart, unless, as was too possible, the sink had not been scoured since the pencil point had been dampened in it weeks before.
Buddy lurched through the Asiatic hell of the kitchen, reached the table, and seized Naomi’s water glass, which had been refilled though his own was yet empty. In his first draught he got an ice cube, hurting his teeth with chill. He spat it back. The water had a pronounced chemical taste, but she would not have doped what she herself drank.
He took a grip on himself and remembered: “They get city water here. It’s full of chlorine. Fooey.”
“That is why,” said Naomi, “I never drink the tea, which tastes even worse.”
Buddy made himself S-shaped and reclaimed his seat. “What a dump this has got to be, Kee-rist.”
Naomi crushed out the cigarette in her unused teacup, though a Bakelite ashtray, with slotted book of paper matches, lay nearby. Buddy grinned in a kind of general chagrin.
Naomi said: “I’m delighted to see you’re feeling better. That’s the old happy-go-lucky Buddy I have always known.”
He squinted. “By God,” he said, “you never let up, do you?” But as usual he was the prisoner of her assumptions about him, and even shrugged happy-go-luckily and said: “But I got to hand it to you, Nay.”
“Well thank you, Buddy.”
“I mean it. You can’t be fazed. You live like you’re all alone in the world.”
“That’s an interesting concept.”
“No,” said Buddy, “in fact it ain’t. And it ain’t living, either, for my money.” There, it was out at last, horrifying but also relieving him strangely.
“But it’s odd,” said Naomi. “Because in addition to you and Ralph I have a sister, two aunts, one uncle, and a number of cousins.”
“I didn’t mean being alone in that way. It’s your personality.”
She laughed merrily. “I suppose I’m stuck with that.”
“No,” Buddy said again. “I am.”
With a distressed look she reached across the table and scraped thin, spidery fingers across the back of Buddy’s hand. “Oh, Buddy, you shouldn’t ever feel that sort of burden.”
“You’re mocking me, you know that?” He wanted to snatch his hand away from under that claw, but lacked the will.
“I do wish you would consider taking that vacation I suggested.”
Buddy said fearfully: “I don’t want your pity.”
Naomi brought her fingers back and put one into her cheek. “I think I have got it,” she said with spirit. “Why don’t you get yourself a girl?” Under the old-lady hat her face was radiant as a child’s.
Buddy gripped the edge of the table with both thumbs, to keep from rising on the thrill that swooped up from the small of his back.
“Pardon me?”
“I’m no good with those old saws,” said Naomi. “How does that one go, better a goat than a sheep, or whatever?” She smiled expectantly.
Astounding himself, he understood what she was saying and seized the initiative. “You make a lot of enemies in the used-car business. People will accuse you of anything if they think they got gypped. Other day, some nut even tried to murder me.” That was Ballbacher. “I could of had him put away, but not me.”
“Goodness, I think you probably should have.”
“Not me,” Buddy repeated, with even greater conviction. “I consider the source.” He made a sitting swagger. “Buddy Sandifer don’t run from just anybody who comes down the pike.”
While Naomi looked sympathetic, Buddy said: “I guess you heard a pack of lies. But do somebody a favor, they take it as their due and never make a peep. Why, just today I gave a preacher a real good deal. But you never get thanked for that in this life.” The philosophical observation gave him the tragic strength to ask: “Whajoo hear about me? Some yellow-belly sapsucker send you a poison-pen letter? Well, that won’t curdle my milk. I had bum raps before. Or maybe Gladys had her yap open: a lot of filth pours outa that sewer.”
Buddy deplored the loose way Naomi’s sister talked in front of Ralph, saying “goddam,” “crap,” and “I laughed so hard my pants would never dry.” She was the kind of woman he most despised: the kind who thought she was lively. She had big legs and a flat chest, piss-colored hair and dirty freckles. On her overnight visits she refused to dislocate Ralph from his room and slept on the living-room sofa. Buddy had come upon her in various stages of undress throughout the years and was about as thrilled as if he had seen Leo in BVD’s.
It occurred to him, for the first time, that she may have been hot for him for eons, purposely exposing herself in slip, shimmy, bath towel, but finally gave up and was now getting the knife in out of spite.
“That’s ironic,” said Naomi. “Gladys is your staunch defender. More than once she has said she could not imagine you with a woman.”
“That could be taken two ways,” Buddy said instantly. “But wait a minute—how come she’s got her nose in this at all?”
“It seems that Vern is involved with a woman on his route.”
“That mailman?” Buddy’s brother-in-law was a little twerp who wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. “Aw, she must be talking through her hat. Some housewife probably gave him a cuppa coffee and a fresh cruller. My mother used to do that all the time.”
Naomi shook her head. “He has asked for a divorce.”
“I’ll be good goddam.”
“His friend is a widow, and she is pregnant.”
Buddy felt personally violated. “You mean it?”
“Gladys has flatly refused.”
“Good!” Buddy said spitefully. “He’s a skunk, and probably a fool too: the woman’s playing him for a sucker.”
“Well, we don’t know that. She may be sincerely in love.”
“Oh, sure,” said Buddy, “and the moon is made of cheese. Listen, she plays around with a respectable married man, she can take the consequences. As for that Vern Bursaw, I never trusted him from the word ‘go.’ Civil Service bum! I got to pay his salary, you know.”
“Her name,” said Naomi, “is Mary Wentworth. She lives over there but drives here every day to work in the bank.”
Granite-faced, Buddy said: “I sold her the car.”
Naomi sniffed in wonder. “Isn’t it a small world.”
“Gladys never knew that, I guess.” When Naomi failed to respond, Buddy suddenly reversed his previous position, with the idea that if Gladys did know that and more, and had told her sister, he would show least guilt by praising Mary in a lofty manner. “That’s a different kettle of fish, then. It’s still as wrong as can be, but Mary Wentworth had a lot of trouble, her husband dying so sudden. He was a friend of mine, see, and I gave her a nice deal out of sympathy. I saw her at the bank just this morning. She’s a hard worker and she’s got some sense in her head. Maybe I could give her a word.”
Naomi however looked negative. “Oh, I don’t think that’s expected of you, Buddy.”
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“You know what, Nay: if I didn’t know you better I’d say you don’t seem to want to keep those folks together.”
Naomi opened her purse and got out a pack of Twenty Grands. “Why should I?”
Buddy realized this was more than they had talked, at one time, in years.
“Well, knock me over with a feather.”
She said mildly: “I could never understand the attraction there.”
“I figure she thought he was steady. Which turned out to be a laugh.”
Naomi widened her eyes. “I mean, what he saw in Gladys.”
Buddy did not hear this immediately, thinking as he was, from his experience of lechery, that the first element was access, of time and then of place; Mary would be at the bank during both daily deliveries made by Vern. So they had to meet at night, Saturday afternoon, or on Sunday, none of them times when a mailman worked unless he was on special delivery. Whereas it was quite reasonable that a used-car dealer might have professional appointments at hours when customers were free of their own vocational duties. Buddy had not gone into the business for that reason, but it was true that in another calling he could not have got so much cunt with impunity—nor could he have done so if he had had another wife than Naomi.
In this light, then, she could be considered indispensable. The recognition disturbed him to the degree that he allowed her statement to travel from his neutral eardrums to his critical brain.
“What’s that you say? Christ, blood is thicker than water. You ought to stick up for your own, Nay.”
“Why should I?” she asked again.
After all these years he had only now discovered she had no principles. “That’s basic. You just do it, for pity’s sake.”
“Gladys,” said Naomi, making a sanctimonious mouth, “is absolutely insensitive to other people. Basically she’s always remained a little girl. I grant you Vern is coarse, but that is all the more evidence that he needs a woman and not a child.”
“So what’s the gist of this, then?” he asked. “You want him to go off with Mary Wentworth?”
“Not at all.” She still held her cigarette unlighted. “My point is simply that Gladys should not oppose him if he wants a divorce.”
“That don’t make sense. If he gets a divorce he’ll go with Mary. Where’s your logic, Nay?” Buddy didn’t really give a hoot in hell what the Bursaws did, or Mary Wentworth for that matter, yet he found himself enjoying this discussion. It was a novelty for Naomi to take a stand on anything, and in all these years he had never heard her say anything meaningful about her sister. Now it appeared that she had, for her, strong feelings in this regard. Perhaps she had them in other areas as well. It was also a novelty for him to consider that other people, especially women, had ideas and inclinations that they might conceal for ages before suddenly exposing them. Leo’s transformation, for example, had taken him utterly by surprise. Now it turned out that he had underestimated Vern Bursaw. Mary was no Miss Roundheels: Buddy had had virtually to rape her the first time. Unless, on the basis of her experience with him, she had changed. The thought gave him no satisfaction; he had no respect for naturally loose women like Grace Plum.
Naomi was pointing the Twenty Grand at him. Buddy, who often used his own finger as a kind of weapon, squirmed when under somebody else’s muzzle. He hailed a passing Chinese and asked for the check. It was not his waiter, and the request was taken stolidly.
“Suppose,” Naomi said, “that Gladys persists.”
“O.K., I’m supposing.”
“Two possibilities. One, forced to live with someone he wants to leave, he hates her for the rest of their lives. Two, perhaps this whole thing is a test.” Naomi made a squinting, sinister smile. “Yes, that has occurred to me.”
Buddy was at sea. To cover up, he said: “Aw…”
“That Vern really wants her to refuse.”
“This thing is getting pretty involved,” said Buddy. “You’re batting your brains out over maybe nothing, Nay. The whole business might blow over.” Pretending to be bored, he was actually in the grip of a peculiar dread and half rising, his thighs against the constraining table, he swiveled his head desperately, looking for the waiter.
“Buddy,” said Naomi, “I have never criticized you, and I’m not doing it now. But persons with your sort of integrity are perhaps innocent when it comes to the awareness that many people are devious. They do not say what they mean, and they do not mean what they say. Often they cannot help themselves in either case. They intend no wrong. They do what they must. They may be warped.”
Buddy took the cue to say eagerly: “Like Leo. I never would of—”
“Like Mary Wentworth,” said Naomi. “To your mind, she’s a fine woman because you knew her husband, because you sold her a car, because she’s a helpless widow. But all this while she abuses you behind your back.”
Buddy’s back was frozen at this moment. He felt that if he so much as altered his expression his spine would break like an attenuated icicle.
He murmured: “Is that right?”
“Therefore,” said Naomi, decisively dropping her cigarette for emphasis, “Gladys would serve her own cause best by insisting on a divorce. If you see what I mean.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Buddy with a staggering effort. “Well, I guess it’s not the first time you do somebody a favor and they take it the wrong way.”
“You see,” said Naomi. “I predicted that would be your reaction. ‘Buddy will be philosophical,’ I told Gladys.”
“Aw, sure…” He tried twisting himself gingerly on the seat, but was too brittle to go far. “The way I look at it…”
“Precisely. And I hasten to say that Gladys must be given a certain credit, which, childish as she is, amazed me. ‘Gosh,’ she said, ‘I can’t imagine Buddy doing anything like that. Why, he’s a real Boy Scout.’”
Buddy knew for a certainty now that that bitch Gladys had been flashing her flat ass at him for years; he was happy to have denied her.
He also knew that he could not have Naomi murdered. He was too fascinated by her complex ignorance of him, in contrast to which Laverne’s simple knowledge was superficial. It was Naomi alone who gave him a sense of mystery about himself.
The trouble was, he had no idea where to get hold of Clarence and call off the dog.
chapter 13
RALPH GOT an almost sexual thrill from eating certain things by himself: Leona sausage with horseradish on buttered “real” rye bread, i.e., the kind that came unsliced and unwrapped; canned chili with dry soda crackers crumbled into it; above all, melted cheese between two slices of white bread, dark-browned in the waffle iron, impressed with the griddle marks and squashed flat as a wafer, goldenly oozing.
He got the Wonder Bread from the tin box and in the Frigidaire found a package of Kraft American, of which the individual slices had fused into a solid block. He was old enough to remember back to when they had an icebox in summer, and in winter a zinc cooling-chamber that hung outside the window.
He took out a fresh quart of milk and poured off the cream into a pitcher of green glass. He then filled an opalescent tumbler to the brim and drained it into his throat continuously, breathing normally through his nose, until it was empty, feeling the solid column of milk descend through his chest. He was cooled instantly: this could not have been done with a carbonated beverage.
He placed the cheese sandwich in the waffle iron and would look at it many times before it browned and melted, his fantasies confined to the anticipation of succulence. When it was done he pried it off the grids with a fork and took a huge bite too soon and burned his mouth during the moment of indecision as to whether to spit it into his hand or drench it with milk.
After having a lone supper Ralph might well have masturbated on his bed with the door open, an unusual luxury, had not the guilty memory of his cock’s hardening against Margie’s butt rendered him sexless. Her failure to move away suggested that she had been benumbed with fright and/or disgus
t. While he was so occupied, Laverne Linda Lorraine had fled. What she would have thought of his despicable, obscene swelling, the advertisement of his punkhood, was too awful to imagine.
Another of Ralph’s rituals when he was by himself at home was to have a smoke or a shot of booze. Though disliking both tobacco and hard whiskey, he felt an obligation to Horse Hauser to report at least a minimum of wickedness, and could never bring himself to lie. Horse’s own claims were of course impossibly extravagant: half a bottle of Four Roses in three hours, two big White Owls, etc. Once he allegedly lured in Wanda Wallace, a halfwitted neighbor girl of thirteen, and showed her his dong, stemming her tears with a handful of Lorna Doones and a little ring his uncle had beaten from an Indian-head penny. Pure bullshit, though Ralph had subsequently seen slack-mouthed Wanda wearing a copper ring on her fat pinky.
Honoring the responsibilities of friendship, Ralph went to see whether his mother had left any whole cigarettes behind. If not, he might collect the tobacco from a number of butts and smoke it in the ten-cent Missouri Meerschaum corncob he had bought for that purpose during the summer.
The coffee- and end-tables displayed only magazines and a few books of paper matches, one hawking an art course by correspondence, showing the cartoon face of a grinning shiny-black Negro with huge white eyes and teeth, below the legend DRAW ME! Ralph headed for the catty-cornered secretary desk on the shelves of which, behind glass doors, was the permanent library of the house, a matched set of six dull-green James Oliver Curwoods once owned by his maternal grandfather, and several more recent books in paper dustwrappers, dating from the time his mother had belonged briefly to some book club, but finding it rather expensive, the charges running to as much as two dollars per volume with the charges for postage and handling, she mostly used the public library.
Ralph was fed up with reading at the moment, which he either did incessantly or not at all. Currently he was in the phase of wanting to live in reality or, failing that, in his own and not someone else’s fantasy. He tried the bottom drawer of the desk, where his mother kept her supply of Twenty Grands, which she bought at a cut-rate drugstore for eighty-five cents a carton, a saving of fifteen cents per ten packs. This drawer was locked. He went to his own room and got the key to his desk, a maple piece from Sears, Roebuck that matched his bed, dresser, and night table.