"I pity you," Gloria Hilton said to him. "I pity anybody who can't love. They are the most pitiful people there are."
"The more you talk," he said, "the more I'm convinced I'm one of them."
He was the writer, of course. My wife keeps a lot of Hollywood stuff in her head, and she tells me Gloria Hilton was married to a motorcycle policeman, then a sugar millionaire, then somebody who played Tarzan, then her agent--and then the writer. George Murra, the writer, was the one I knew.
"People keep wondering what the matter with the world is," said Gloria. "I know what the matter is. It's simple: most men don't know the meaning of the word love."
"At least give me credit for trying to find out what it means," said Murra. "For one solid year now, I haven't done a single, solitary thing but order a bathtub enclosure and try to find out what love means."
"I suppose you're going to blame me for that, too," she said.
"For what?" he said.
"The fact that you haven't written a word since we've been married," she said. "I suppose that's somehow my fault, too."
"I hope I'm not that shallow," he said. "I know a plain, ordinary coincidence when I see one. The fights we have all night, the photographers and reporters and so-called friends we have all day--they have nothing to do with the fact I've dried up."
"You're one of those people who enjoys suffering," she said.
"That's a smart way to be," he said.
"I'll tell you frankly," she said, "I'm disappointed in you."
"I knew," he said, "that sooner or later you would come right out and say it."
"I might as well tell you, too," she said, "that I've decided to bring this farce to an end."
"It's nice of you to make me among the first to know," he said. "Shall I notify Louella Parsons, or has that already been taken care of?"
I had the gasket glued onto the bathtub rim, so I was free to close the register. I looked straight down through the grating, and there Gloria Hilton was. She had her hair up in curlers. She didn't have any makeup on. She hadn't even bothered to draw on eyebrows. She had on some kind of slip and a bathrobe that was gaping open. I swear, that woman wasn't any prettier than a used studio couch.
"I don't think you're very funny," she said.
"You knew I was a serious writer when you married me," he said.
She stood up. She spread her arms like Moses telling the Jews the Promised Land was right over the next hill. "Go on back to your precious wife and your precious son," she said. "I certainly won't stand in your way."
I closed the register.
Five minutes later, Murra came upstairs and told me to clear out. "Miss Hilton wants to use her bathroom," he said. I never saw such a peculiar expression on a man's face. He was all red, and there were tears in his eyes--but there was this crazy laugh tearing him apart, trying to get out.
"I'm not quite finished," I said.
"Miss Hilton is completely finished," he said. "Clear out!"
So I went out to my truck, and I drove into town, had a cup of coffee. The door for the bathtub enclosure was on a wooden rack on the back of my truck, out in the open--and it certainly attracted a lot of attention.
Most people, when they order an enclosure door, don't want anything on it unless maybe a flamingo or a seahorse. The plant, which is over in Lawrence, Massachusetts, is set up to sandblast a flamingo or a seahorse on a door for only six dollars extra. But Gloria Hilton wanted a big "G," two feet across-- and in the middle of the "G" she wanted a life-size head of herself. And the eyes on the head had to be exactly five feet two inches above the bottom of the tub, because that's how high her real eyes were when she stood up barefoot in the tub.
They went crazy over in Lawrence.
One of the people I was having coffee with was Harry Crocker, the plumber. "I certainly hope you insisted on measuring her yourself," he said, "so the figures would be absolutely accurate."
"Her husband did it," I said.
"Some people have all the luck," he said.
I went to the pay telephone, and I called up Murra's house to see if it would be all right for me to come back and finish up. The line was busy.
When I got back to my coffee, Harry Crocker said to me, "You missed something I don't think anybody's ever liable to see in this town ever again."
"What's that?" I said.
"Gloria Hilton and her maid going through town at two hundred miles an hour," he said.
"Which way were they headed?" I said.
"West," he said.
So I tried to call Murra again. I figured, with Gloria Hilton gone, all the big telephoning would be over. But the telephone went right on being busy for an hour. I thought maybe somebody had torn the telephone out by its roots, but the operator said it was in working order.
"Try the number again, then," I told her.
That time I got through.
Murra answered the phone. All I said to him was, "Hello," and he got very excited. He wasn't excited about getting the bathtub enclosure finished. He was excited because he thought I was somebody named John.
"John, John," he said to me, "thank God you called!
"John," he said to me, "I know what you think of me, and I don't blame you for thinking that--but please listen to what I have to say before you hang up. She's left me, John. That part of my life is over--finished! Now I'm trying to pick up the pieces. John," he said, "in the name of mercy, you've got to come here. Please, John, please, John, please."
"Mr. Murra--?" I said.
"Yes?" he said. From the way his voice went away from the telephone, I guess he thought I'd just walked into the room.
"It's me, Mr. Murra," I said.
"It's who?" he said.
"The bathtub enclosure man," I said.
"I was expecting a very important long-distance call," he said. "Please get off the wire."
"I beg your pardon," I said. "I just want to know when you want me to finish up there."
"Never!" he said. "Forget it! The hell with it!"
"Mr. Murra--" I said, "I can't return that door for credit."
"Send me the bill," he said. "I make you a present of the door."
"Whatever you say," I said. "Now, you've got these two Fleetwood Trip-L-Trak windows, too."
"Throw 'em on the dump!" he said.
"Mr. Murra--" I said, "I guess you're upset about something--"
"God you're smart!" he said.
"Maybe throwing away that door makes sense," I said, "but storm windows never hurt a soul. Why don't you let me come out and put 'em up? You'll never even know I'm there."
"All right, all right, all right!" he said, and he hung up.
The Fleetwood Trip-L-Trak is our first-line window, so there isn't anything quick and dirty about the way we put them up. We put a gasket up all the way around, just the way we do on a bathtub enclosure. So I had some standing around to do at Murra's house, just waiting for glue to dry. You can actually fill up a room equipped with Fleetwoods with water, fill it clear up to the ceiling, and it won't leak--not through the windows, anyway.
While I was waiting on the glue, Murra came out and asked me if I wanted a drink.
"Pardon me?" I said.
"Or maybe bathtub enclosure men don't drink on duty," he said.
"That's only on television," I said.
So he took me in the kitchen, and he got out a bottle and ice and a couple of glasses.
"This is very nice of you," I said.
"I may not know what love is," he said, "but, by God, at least I've never gotten drunk by myself."
"That's what we're going to do?" I said.
"Unless you have some other suggestion," he said.
"I'll have to think a minute," I said.
"That's a mistake," he said. "You miss an awful lot of life that way. That's why you Yankees are so cold," he said. "You think too much. That's why you marry so seldom."
"At least some of that is a plain lack of money," I said.
"No,
no," he said. "It goes deeper than that. You people around here don't grasp the thistle firmly." He had to explain that to me, about how a thistle won't prick you if you grab it real hard and fast.
"I don't believe that about thistles," I said.
"Typical New England conservatism," he said.
"I gather you aren't from these parts," I said.
"That happiness is not mine," he said. He told me he was from Los Angeles.
"I guess that's nice, too," I said.
"The people are all phonies," he said.
"I wouldn't know about that," I said.
"That's why we took up residence here," he said. "As my wife--my second wife, that is--told all the reporters at our wedding, 'We are getting away from all the phonies. We are going to live where people are really people. We are going to live in New Hampshire. My husband and I are going to find ourselves. He is going to write and write, and write. He is going to write the most beautiful scenario anybody in the history of literature has ever written for me.' "
"That's nice," I said.
"You didn't read that in the newspapers or the magazines?" he said.
"No," I said. "I used to go out with a girl who subscribed to Film Fun, but that was years ago. I have no idea what happened to her."
Somewhere in the course of this conversation, a fifth of a gallon of Old Hickey's Private Stock Sour Mash Bourbon was evaporating, or was being stolen, or was otherwise disappearing fast.
And I haven't got the conversation set down quite straight, because somewhere in there Murra told me he'd been married when he was only eighteen --and he told me who the John was he'd thought I was on the telephone.
It hurt Murra a lot to talk about John. "John," he said, "is my only child. Fifteen years old." Murra clouded up, pointed southeast. "Only twenty-two miles away--so near and yet so far," he said.
"He didn't stay with his mother in Los Angeles?" I said.
"His home is with her," said Murra, "but he goes to school at Mount Henry." Mount Henry is a very good boys' prep school near here. "One of the reasons I came to New Hampshire was to be close to him." Murra shook his head. "I thought surely he'd get in touch with me sooner or later-- return a telephone call, answer a letter."
"But he never did?" I said.
"Never," said Murra. "You know what the last thing was he said to me?"
"Nope," I said.
"When I divorced his mother and married Gloria Hilton, the last thing he said was, 'Father, you're contemptible. I don't want to hear another word from you as long as I live.' "
"That's--that's strong," I said.
"Friend--" said Murra hoarsely, "that's mighty strong." He bowed his head. "That was the word he used--contemptible. Young as he was, he sure used the right one."
"Did you finally get in touch with him today?" I said.
"I called the Headmaster of the school, and I told him there was a terrible family emergency, and he had to make John call me right away," said Murra.
"It worked, thank God," he said. "And, even though I am definitely contemptible, he has agreed to come see me tomorrow."
Somewhere else in that conversation, Murra told me to look at the statistics sometime. I promised him I would. "Just statistics in general--or some special statistics?" I asked him.
"Statistics on marriage," he said.
"I'm scared to think of what I'm liable to find," I said.
"You look at the statistics," said Murra, "and you'll find out that when people get married when they're only eighteen--the way my first wife and I did--there's a fifty-fifty chance the thing will blow sky high."
"I was eighteen when I was married," I said.
"You're still with your first wife?" he said.
"Going on twenty years now," I said.
"Don't you ever feel like you got gypped out of your bachelor days, your playboy days, your days as a great lover?"
"Well," I said, "in New Hampshire those days generally come between the ages of fourteen and seventeen."
"Let me put it to you this way," he said. "Say you'd been married all these years, fighting about the dumb things married people fight about, being broke and worried most of the time--"
"I'm right with you," I said.
"And say the movies bought a book you'd written, and they hired you to write the screen play, and Gloria Hilton was going to be the star," he said.
"I don't think I can imagine that," I said.
"All right--" he said, "what's the biggest thing that could possibly happen to you in your line of work?"
I had to think a while. "I guess it would be if I sold the Conners Hotel on putting Fleetwoods on every window. That must be five hundred windows or more," I said.
"Good!" he said. "You've just made the sale. You've got real money in your pocket for the first time. You've just had a fight with your wife, and you're thinking mean things about her, feeling sorry for yourself. And the manager of the hotel is Gloria Hilton--Gloria Hilton looking the way she does in the movies."
"I'm listening," I said.
"Say you started putting up those five hundred Fleetwoods," he said, "and say every time you put up another storm window, there was Gloria Hilton smiling at you through the glass, like you were a god or something."
"Is there anything left to drink in the house?" I said.
"Say that went on for three months," he said. "And every night you went home to your wife, some woman you'd known so long she was practically like a sister, and she would crab about some little thing--"
"This is a very warm room, even without storm windows," I said.
"Say Gloria Hilton all of a sudden said to you," he said, " 'Dare to be happy, my poor darling! Oh, darling, we were made for each other! Dare to be happy with me! I go limp when I see you putting up storm windows! I can't stand to see you so unhappy, to know you belong to some other woman, to know how happy I could make you, if only you belonged to me!' "
After that, I remember, Murra and I went outdoors to look for thistles. He was going to show me how to grab thistles without getting hurt.
I don't think we ever found any. I remember pulling up a lot of plants, and throwing them against the house, and laughing a lot. But I don't think any of the plants were thistles.
Then we lost each other in the great outdoors. I yelled for him for a while, but his answers got fainter and fainter, and I finally went home.
I don't remember what the homecoming was like, but my wife does. She says I spoke to her in a rude and disrespectful manner. I told her that I had sold five hundred Fleetwood windows to the Conners Hotel. I also told her that she should look up the statistics on teenage marriages sometime.
Then I went upstairs, and I took the door off our bathtub enclosure. I told her Murra and I were trading doors.
I got the door off, and then I went to sleep in the tub.
My wife woke me up, and I told her to go away. I told her Gloria Hilton had just bought the Conners Hotel, and I was going to marry her.
I tried to tell her something very important about thistles, but I couldn't pronounce thistles, so I went to sleep again.
So my wife poured bubble-bath powder all over me, and she turned on the cold water faucet of the bathtub, and she went to bed in the guest room.
About three o'clock the next afternoon, I went over to Murra's to finish putting up his windows, and to find out what we'd agreed to do about the bathtub enclosure door, if anything. I had two doors on the back of my truck, my door with a flamingo and his door with Gloria Hilton.
I started to ring his doorbell, but then I heard somebody knocking on an upstairs window. I looked up and saw Murra standing in the window of Gloria Hilton's bathroom. My ladder was already leaning against the sill of the window, so I went up the ladder and asked Murra what was going on.
He opened the window, and he told me to come in. He was very pale and shaky.
"Your boy showed up yet?" I said.
"Yes," he said. "He's downstairs. I picked him up at the bus stat
ion an hour ago."
"You two hitting it off all right?" I said.
Murra shook his head. "He's still so bitter," he said. "He's only fifteen, but he talks to me as though he were my great-great-grandfather. I came up here for just a minute, and now I haven't got nerve enough to go back down."
He took me by the arm. "Listen--" he said, "you go down and sort of pave the way."
"If I've got any pavement left in me," I said, "I'd better save it for home." I filled him in on my own situation at home, which was far from ideal.
"Whatever you do," he said, "don't make the same mistake I made. You keep that home of yours together, no matter what. I know it must be lousy from time to time; but, believe me, there are ways of life that are ten thousand times lousier. "
"Well," I said, "I thank the good Lord for one thing--"
"What's that?" he said.
"Gloria Hilton hasn't come right out and said she loved me yet," I said.
I went downstairs to see Murra's boy.
Young John had on a man's suit. He even had on a vest. He wore big black-rimmed spectacles. He looked like a college professor.
"John," I said, "I'm an old friend of your father's."
"That so?" he said, and he looked me up and down. He wouldn't shake hands.
"You certainly are a mature-looking young man," I said.
"I've had to be," he said. "When Father walked out on Mother and me, that made me head of the family, wouldn't you say?"
"Well now, John," I said, "your father hasn't been too happy, either, you know."
"That certainly is a great disappointment to me," he said. "I thought Gloria Hilton made men as happy as they could possibly be."
"John," I said, "when you get older, you're going to understand a lot of things you don't understand now."
"You must mean nuclear physics," he said. "I can hardly wait." And he turned his back to me, and he looked out the window. "Where's Father?" he said.
"Here he is," said Murra from the top of the stairs. "Here the poor fool is." He came creaking down the stairs.
"I think I'd better go back to school, Father," said the boy.
"So soon?" said Murra.
"I was told there was an emergency, or I wouldn't have come," said the boy. "There doesn't seem to be any emergency, so I'd like to go back, if you don't mind."