To forestall the expansion of this statement, he said quickly: “Oh screw them, Laverne. You should care about some little pissants in dirty aprons. Besides, I told you to order by phone.”
“Yeah, great, so that delivery boy wants more than a nickel, I can tell you.”
Buddy turned from the table and peered down at the dark roots in her scalp. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He hangs around,” cried Laverne. “He thinks I’m a fast one, Buddy.”
“That little punk!” Buddy thrust his lightly haired chest out beyond his belly. “I’ll hand him his head.” He punched a fist into a palm. “I’ll sour his milk.”
“He wouldn’t do it if you was here.”
“What’s he do?”
“It’s the way he looks. He don’t have respect.”
Buddy walked to the foot of the bed and put a hand on either upright of the bedstead and leaned in.
“Look,” he said. “This thing is driving me wild too. All I want is a life with you. Is that too much to ask? We got a right to happiness!” He took a deep breath and felt the area of soreness where Ballacher had struck him.
“The way you talked back then, it was so simple.”
“It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Well,” said Laverne, “it was March and here we are at the beginning of September.”
“I thought at first we’d just have a few laughs, and then this thing hit me like a ton of bricks. I can name the exact minute—”
“When the band played ‘Always’ at the Palm Terrace,” said Laverne. “‘That refers to us, baby,’ you said. ‘Not for just an hour, not for just a day, not for just a year, but always.’ I want a whole life with you, sweetheart, all of you, all the time.”
Buddy also recalled that shortly thereafter he felt an alien hand on his shoulder, opened his eyes, and saw, partly through Laverne’s hair, the figure of the bouncer, who said: “House rule. No intimacies on the dance floor.” And those pricks collected a dollar cover charge per person.
“I wasn’t talking through my hat then,” he said, “and I have not changed since.”
Leo was going to take Ralph home before driving to the bank, though the latter was much nearer the lot than the Sandifer house, but at the crucial turn he suddenly altered his plan, wheeled to the right, and went along Philathea Street in a southerly direction.
“I got to drop this off,” said he, taking his hand from the black gearshift knob and tapping the fat brown envelope on the seat between them. “It’s full of mazuma, and I don’t want to get stuck up.”
“Did anybody ever knock over this bank? Baby Face Nelson or Homer Van Meter or one of those guys?”
“You’d of heard about it if they did,” said Leo, sucking his teeth.
“Anybody ever pick the lock of the night deposit?”
“Wouldn’t do them any good. You can’t reach down to the basement.”
“What about a long wire?” Ralph asked. “With a hook on the end of it.”
Leo found himself enjoying this juvenile conversation. It postponed the moment at which he must decide what to do about the money in his pocket.
“There’s a swinging shelf or door inside, at the top of the chute, sort of,” he said. “It swings down but not the other way, so if you was pulling something up it would close and you would run up against it, more or less.” He punched Ralph’s bony knee. “You got to think up a better way to make your bundle.”
“Yeah, cutting grass,” said Ralph, and made a face. He thought with annoyance of the lawnmower still down at the lot.
Leo pulled in to the curb, scraping the sidewalls of the tires with a horrible sound. “Here,” he said, taking the key ring from the pocket of his seersucker jacket. “You make the deposit.” His voice assumed a nasty edge. “You’re the son and heir. It’ll all be yours someday anyhow.”
That is, if Buddy didn’t blow it all on his chippies. Leo was intoxicating himself with resentment, as a faint-hearted man gulps alcohol in preparation for an approach on a woman guarded by taboo: race, loyalty, or law. The moment lay at hand. He could still add the diverted cash to the contents of the envelope, correct the slip, punctiliously initialing the changes, seal the flap, and present the package to Ralph for deposit. But to do so, he must once again count the stack of money which in each of the three previous tallies had emerged with a different total from the last.
As it happened, Ralph took the decision from him, seizing key and envelope, and in a trice the boy had crossed the sidewalk to the bronze trapdoor and only his fumbling at the lock gave Leo time to shout from the window.
“Seal that envelope! The flap is open.”
The stickum tasted slightly of menthol. Ralph pressed the envelope against the smooth yellow brick of the bank’s wall and fingered the flap down. He unlocked the entrance to the chute and dropped the envelope within, not seeing the hinged barrier of which Leo spoke. Depositing money in this fashion was like dropping crap into a toilet: down the sewer, never to be seen again in its current form. “Did you ever realize,” Horse Hauser once asked, “how much dissolved shit is in the oceans of the world?”
Leo said nothing en route to Ralph’s house, though his lips moved from time to time as if he were sucking on a Sen-Sen. One long black hair grew from his right ear. A lot of adult guys let things like that go: nose-shrubbery, hickeys, etc. As yet Ralph had good skin, but he was eternally vigilant for pimples. Several kids in his class were acned like the surface of the moon, and many had blossoms on their cheeks. Candy was said to bring these out on girls; on boys, jacking off. Ralph always inspected his face carefully after yanking his crank.
At the conclusion of the sloppy U-turn that brought the car before the Sandifer house, this time about a yard from the curb—for an auto salesman, he was a lousy driver—Leo finally spoke.
“How’s your mom these days?”
“Swell,” said Ralph.
“I ain’t seen her in a coon’s age.”
“Well, she’s always there.” Ralph opened the door and stepped over the running board, to which he had some ritualistic aversion, onto the paved square that interrupted the continuous strip of grass.
Leo was about to move off when Ralph turned and came back. He stuck his head through the window. “I forgot to say thanks for the lift.”
“I thought I had a flat or something,” said Leo. “Don’t mention it, sport.” He liked nice manners in a boy.
With the money in his pocket, Leo postponed going home. He wandered around town in his car. After the second tour of the business district, he went across the railroad tracks and then followed the creek for a mile, passing the dairy, the ice plant, and a siding full of boxcars. Through the open door of one of the last he saw two hoboes. He exchanged bleak stares with them. The life of the road held no allure for Leo: coffee in a can, going to the toilet in a field, getting rousted by the railroad cops, would outweigh the romantic rewards if any.
Though in the earlier Depression years many ruined millionaires, unemployed executives, and forgotten war heroes were alleged to have become bindlestiffs, the tramps you saw locally had low foreheads and if refused a doorstep meal could turn surly unless you had or pretended to have superior force. Leo did not own an animal, yet he had posted on his gate a sign reading: BEWARE OF DOG. Kids pulled it down the next Halloween, having it in for him because he would not contribute to the trash drive by which they hoped to raise money for softball sweaters.
Leo held on to his old newspapers, iron objects, and tinfoil (he had accumulated a sphere the size of an orange) to sell himself to the Hunky junkman who came around twice a month with a horse and wagon, crying some gibberish. If Leo saw a pop bottle in gutter or empty lot he would add it to the collection of such vessels he kept in a milk crate in the trunk of his car, redeeming them for two cents each when his supply exceeded one dozen.
He was that sort of guy. On the other hand, he bought good food, always specifying ground beef and not hamburger (which cou
ld contain anything from pig’s guts to human fingers lost to the chopping machine). And he enjoyed the extravagance of paying Ralph Sandifer fifty cents to cut his lawn every Saturday, so that his own Sundays were free for slow and repeated perusals of the rotogravure section of the newspaper, which often printed pictures of young girls at swimming pools throughout the metropolitan area (“The bevy of local cuties above, l. to r.: Suejane Criswell, Ellen Reingold, Dorjean Wattle”). Sitting on the cistern cover in the shade of a half-dead elm, the smell of mown grass around him, Leo would peer at Dorjean’s little pointy breasts and write one of his imaginary letters: Dear Miss Wattle, I couldn’t help but being passionately attracted to you on the basis of your recent photo as published in The Graphic…This would be more stilted, less inordinate than the note to the girl, Ralph’s acquaintance, he had followed into the Greek’s, because he had seen Dorjean only in the paper.
But here he was, this careful man, driving about with several hundred dollars which as yet could not be termed stolen but in no event could be called his property.
chapter 3
LAVERNE WAS PREPARING one of Buddy’s favorite suppers: fried pork chops, fried potatoes, fried apples. Standing at the stove, she wore his favorite costume: a short frilly pink apron over black-lace step-ins and brassiere, long-gartered silk stockings, and platform shoes.
Buddy relished the sight of her from behind in this garb. Sometimes he would steal up and pinch her bottom. Otherwise he sat at the kitchen table, fully dressed in his street clothes, including necktie but not blazer. He had even brushed his teeth with the Squibb toothbrush he maintained in a celluloid case in the medicine chest.
Laverne was a robust woman, only two inches shorter than his own five-nine, and weighing a good 130: a big blonde, a real armful. She lifted the edge of the pan top with which she had covered the skillet so as not to be spattered with sizzling fat and peered underneath. She squealed and dropped it instantly: a flying grease drop had escaped and smitten her wrist.
“Dagnab it!” Even when hurt she would not curse: Buddy liked that trait.
Concerned, he half rose. “Want the Unguentine?”
She wiped her arm with a quilted potholder and raised it to her squinting eyes. Laverne was farsighted but refused to consider glasses. Because of her attire the windowshade was lowered, and the light was far from good.
“Naw, it’s nothing.”
“Next time,” said Buddy, “hold the lid like a shield; you know, like King Arthur.”
“That’s what she does, right?”
“Come on, honeypot, don’t be a dope. I figured that out sitting here right now. I figure out a lot of things from time to time. I ought to get a patent on them.”
“Oh, yeah?” Using his suggested trick, Laverne determined that the chops were done on one side and levered them over with a spatula. “Like what?” This was no wiseguy, doubting question: she was always interested in hearing his ideas.
“Well, the other day when you had your period, remember, you said how it embarrassed you to go inna drugstore and buy Kotexes if a man waits on you.”
“Worse if it’s some smarty-pants kid,” she said. She seemed to be developing an obsession about teen-aged boys. Buddy thought privately that if it were Ralph, the lad would be more ashamed than she, but he agreed diplomatically.
“Sure, sure. I used to feel like that if I had to buy cundrums from a woman.”
“You have to call ’em that, Buddy?”
“Sweetie, I told you that’s not a dirty word. It’s the right name. It doesn’t come from ‘cunt.’”
“You don’t see it on the package, do you? Why can’t you say ‘prophylactics,’ huh?”
Buddy sighed. “O.K. What I’m getting at is, you know Ralph, he sends away for a lot of free catalogues and samples. Last year the kid bought a dollar’s worth of penny postcards and sent all hundred out…”
Laverne frowned and turned away. She had nothing against Ralph, whom she had never seen, except that he was part of Buddy’s other life—and that Buddy had only an hour ago used him as an excuse for not telling Naomi he wanted a divorce. Buddy was insensitive to this, though he never mentioned Naomi to her if he could help it.
“And you know I get my fishskins by mail, in plain wrapper—could be a box of cigars. They sell everything that way nowadays. Convenience. In your own home, see?”
Laverne had the potatoes all sliced and ready, and the apples as well. She salted the former and dusted the latter with sugar and a sprinkling of cinnamon, the aroma of which reached Buddy and implemented the sense of well-being that had already been created in him by the lovemaking, the shower, Laverne’s costume, and the bouquet of pork chops frying in bacon grease. Ballbacher and, for that matter, even Naomi were distant unpleasantnesses.
“Now, here’s my idea: how about Kotexes by mail order? The feature is, a woman’s period comes up every month on schedule. You could have a standing order. Every thirty days, see, a box of Kotex is automatically mailed to the woman, like a magazine subscription. Plain wrapper, comes right to the house. No embarrassment of drugstores. Also, it would probably be cheaper because of the guaranteed order, like a magazine costs less by mail than on a newsstand.”
“Yeah, I subscribe to Silver Screen for that very reason,” said Laverne, who read more about movie luminaries than she saw pictures. One of her ambitions was to visit Hollywood and take the bus tour of the stars’ homes, as had been done by a female acquaintance who won the trip in a marathon dance contest some years earlier. More than once Laverne had mentioned to Buddy that California would be a nifty place for a honeymoon.
“See,” said Buddy, “that’s the kind of idea I ought to get a patent on. Kotex-of-the-Month Club.”
“That’s a swell idea, Bud.” In taking the pork chops from the skillet she dropped one, and it skidded across the linoleum almost to Buddy’s shoes. “Oops,” said she, “wrong number.” She retrieved it and went to the sink, where she rinsed it under the hot-water faucet. “I’ll take this one,” she said.
“Don’t be dumb,” said Buddy.
“No, the juice is all washed off.” She was a wonderful girl, always concerned for his welfare. Buddy went over and put his hands under her apron.
When Leo got home his mother said: “You missed it, Leo.” She lay on the davenport under an afghan. From the corner the parrot screeched.
Leo said: “I’ll bet.” He went to the parrot’s cage. The bird turned its scruffy green head upside down and uttered a piercing whistle. Leo had owned him for almost twenty years. God knew how old it was. Some said they lived to eighty or more. Leo had been willed it by an old lady to whom he had delivered newspapers as a lad.
The parrot greeted him with its own name: “Hi, Boy.”
“Hi, Boy,” Leo answered, and then clucked with his tongue.
Boy brought his head to its normal position and laughed cacophonously. This was an affectionate utterance: Boy was fond of Leo. Boy and Leo’s mother ignored each other. Boy detested all strangers, but had seen few if any in years.
“You missed my hemorrhage,” explained Leo’s mother. “Blood gushed from my nose and throat. I left a trail throughout the house.”
Leo did not trouble to seek the evidence. In earlier years he would have said he saw no blood, and his mother would have answered that she had cleaned it up, and he would have said the carpet was not damp, and she would have answered that it had dried quickly on such a warm day, and he would have said that it wasn’t especially warm today, and she would have responded with a smug smile.
You couldn’t get an argument out of his mother, who had the peculiarity of talking to herself when addressing him, though she never did it when alone, as he had frequently observed from places of hiding.
“Bum!” Boy cried fondly, behind his back.
With the money in his pocket and the heartburn in his midsection, Leo had little interest in food. Without hope he said: “I guess if you’re so sick you won’t want much of a supper. I w
as thinking I’d open a can of tomato soup—”
“And then?” asked his mother, her eyes full of gluttonous glee. She had never needed glasses and did not have a single filling. At fifty-eight she looked as if she had been a beauty at twenty; yet old photos did not support this assumption, showing her as rather plain.
“Uh-huh,” Leo said stoically, “you want me to heat the pot roast and make mashed potatoes and peas ‘n’ carrots?” His mother was nodding vigorously. “Feed a hemorrhage, starve a fever,” said he. “Well, let me go and get washed first.”
He went through the beaded curtain into the hallway and began deliberately to climb the stairs.
“Leo,” called his mother. “What’s dessert?”
He supported himself on the banister and pondered. ‘There’s some devil’s-food left and then I could open a can of apricots.”
In his room Leo took off the seersucker jacket, examined the collar, saw quite a ring of oily dirt, and hung the garment on the closet doorknob so he would remember to deal with it on the morrow. Looking down at his pants, he saw a conspicuous bulge so near his crotch that a neutral observer might have taken it for an erection: the wad of money. He withdrew it and placed it on the dresser between a cigar box that contained collar studs, a penknife, and other items owned by his late father and a faded photograph of the man in the uniform of the Spanish-American War, in which his father had claimed to serve as one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders; but once when he had one too many he confessed he had actually been some kind of rear-area supply clerk.
From time to time it had occurred to Leo that his father might have jumped, and not fallen, off the roof, where he had ostensibly gone to search for a persistent leak. This was an absurd thought, given his father’s happy-go-lucky temperament: the man was grinning in this very picture. Though if you looked very long at a frozen, photographic smile it turned into a grimace of hatred.
Leo removed his pants and put them on a hanger. He stood now in his sagging BVD’s and dark-green white-clocked lisle socks, navy-blue garters, and light-tan oxfords. Leo was mildly bowlegged—not enough to illustrate his father’s old joke: “If he stood next to a sawbuck he’d spell OX”—but otherwise he had a decent build of the sinewy type. He took good care of himself generally, drinking a pint of milk every day and always starting out with a hearty breakfast of the country-fresh eggs that were delivered once a week by a farmer. The greasy hamburger had been an aberrant snack.