Chapter 15 Night Spots
In the following weeks, Pride became known in the city as the young man who was dating Fame. They were pictured together in the City Magazine and discussed in the newspaper’s gossip column. Reporters followed Pride even when he was alone.
He came to know Fame. He came to know her answering machine. (She screened all calls and could not be counted on to pick up the phone simply because it was him.) He came to know her absences: her brief, exotic trips, such as a skiing weekend in Switzerland or attendance at a coronation in Belgium. He came to know her nervous, tapping foot, her impatience, her insanely cluttered schedule. She was always on the move, high strung; started at sudden sounds. He knew her complaining mouth, her dullness, her lack of any spark of conversational wit. He noted that she would never look him in the eye.
Fame also proved to be very nicely sensitive. She would not allow low talk, would not touch blood or anything blood had touched, feared germs and sickness. She turned him away when he arrived for a date with a head cold. She despised Pride’s old, worn tennis sweater and forbade him to wear it in her presence.
To his surprise, he discovered that she was not physically perfect. She had a weak wrist and several food allergies.
Two girls named Loneliness and Depression she called her friends, though neither seemed at all affectionate toward her. Beyond these, Fame kept up with a wide circle of acquaintances by frequenting the best night spots in town, and it was to these places that Pride was allowed to escort her twice or thrice a week, places such as the Lustlight Bar, Mammonette’s, Cruel’s, and Numb’s Place. Although the two were for the most part uninterrupted and isolated at each table together, he met peripherally her crowd: people such as Beauty, Fashion, the ubiquitous Mammonette, and Mr. Power. Mr. Influence he did not see again, though he often imagined that he detected his odor.
He could not get truly alone with Fame, for she only wanted to meet him in these night spots or very occasionally at the country club. So he began to think of himself as mere window dressing for her public appearances. His suspicions were confirmed by her physical remoteness, for after several weeks, she still eluded his embrace. She allowed him only one kiss at the end of each date and it felt like kissing a fish.
Yet through all this Pride’s love raged on. Her many faults only seemed to make her more dear to him. His moments of boredom and indifference were invariably washed away by fresh waves of infatuation. Her presence tortured his heart, but he welcomed the torture. To possess her as his wife: that was his great goal. He believed with the fervor of religious zealotry that she would soon turn to him with a look of admiration and warmth that he had not yet seen. They were fated for each other.
One evening Pride arrived at Mammonette’s and went straight to the Cornucopia Lounge where Fame was waiting for him. The waiter directed him to her table where, to his surprise, he found seated not only Fame but his own boarder Miss Tedium.
“Tedium! What are you doing here?”
The blond waif almost glanced away from her wrist TV. “Oh, nothing much,” she said listlessly.
He turned to Fame with a questioning look.
“Tedium and I were chums in high school,” Fame explained. “We still get together now and then for old time’s sake. This was the only time I could see her this week. You don’t mind letting her share our table, do you?”
Fame’s mind was obviously made up, so Pride sat down, and they began another session of somehow getting through an evening together.
Fame appeared to have finally exhausted her store of reminiscences about her days as a college cheerleader. Pride, for his part, was tired of trying to arouse her interest in anything else. Tedium stared at her wrist and chewed gum. No one said a word for ten minutes.
After twenty minutes, Pride began to feel a little punchy. No one else in the lounge had stirred during this time. Not even the cigarette smoke around the bar moved. The lounge had no windows, so only his wristwatch proved that time was passing. He considered the eerie possibility that it was not.
Fame was personified loveliness as always, but for the first time he found himself examining her a bit critically. He discovered that she wore too much make-up on her eyelids and decided that the line of her jaw might be improved slightly. He looked at his watch: twenty-five minutes.
He reconsidered the possibility that time was not passing. What if the three of them just sat like this for all eternity? No one in the lounge had stirred. Fame stared at an ice cube in her drink. Tedium blinked. He looked at his watch: thirty-five minutes.
After forty-five minutes, Pride excused himself and escaped to the rest room. However, he found there the same antiseptic stillness. He played at making faces at himself in the mirror until he heard someone coming in. It was Mr. Power, who looked Pride over with steely eyes, then lurched to a wash basin and began to wash his hands in a slipshod fashion. Mr. Power was drunk.
Pride was on the point of leaving, but with his back to him, Mr. Power started talking loudly.
“It doesn’t matter whether you understand her,” he said. “Your problem is you don’t own her. I own her and I’ve got no problems. No, no, no problems at all.”
“Do you mean Miss Vainglory?”
“Yes, I mean Miss Vainglory,” Power said, mocking Pride’s tones. “I’ve got her pretty neck on a short leash. She’s in debt up to here. I own her.”
He finished his hands and pounded the hot air blower violently. Over it’s roar he said, “Maybe you thought you were going to marry her?” He smiled, and Pride, who had never seen him smile, was sorry that he had. “Well, there’s plenty of icing on her cake, but it’s only to look at. She’s Company. We won’t let her marry.”
He turned to face Pride, giving the young man an unwelcome whiff of his breath.
“Did you ever think what would happen to our stock if just one little boy took Vainglory all for himself? No, she’s got to at least seem possible for everybody, just dangling there like a carrot in front of the public nose. That’s what I say, you’ve got to own her.”
Pride only half understood, but he was shaken. “I don’t want to own her,” he said stoutly. “Did you say she’s in debt to you?”
A look of cautious cunning came over Power’s face. “No, I don’t believe I said that.”
Pride had no wish to find out what Power meant. He tried to leave again, but he was drawn up by the older man’s voice.
“Keep your hands off her, boy. I own the police in this town, and I can have you arrested if you so much as touch her.”
“Why?” Pride asked in astonishment.
“Because she’s flighty, that’s why.” Power fluttered his hand in the air to demonstrate. “She can’t do her job for us if you put her nerves in an uproar. She knows she’s got to change boyfriends every few months, so she can’t care, do you see? She can’t love you and she can’t hate you. Your job is just to go in one door of her life and out the other, and you better not miss your exit. You’re on the way out. Don’t fight it.”
“I’m going to ask her to marry me,” Pride insisted. “And she will! If she’s in debt, I’ll pay it. I’ll get her out from under your control.”
“Stupid, stupid, stupid.” Mr. Power’s eyes were closed as he said the word several more times.
Pride had a thought. “Look, she dated that one fellow, the skier, for a year. They were engaged, until she broke it off.”
“I broke it off. Stupid! Mammonette had an overstock of skis, didn’t she? We sold skis that year where it doesn’t snow. Look, I’m not wasting any more time on you. Hands off her, that’s all, and no scenes. Play it smart and you’ll get out of this with your skin intact.”
Power went out, leaving Pride frightened and angry.
He returned to his table and sat down, finding all as it had been. Fame did not so much as look up to acknowledge him. With her finger she traced the pattern on her napkin. Tedium sat
entranced.
“Uh, Fame?”
“Yes,” she sighed.
“Do you work for Mr. Power?”
She laughed. “I don’t work for anyone. What gave you that idea?”
Pride could think of no way to proceed. She had given him a clear answer and, after all, Power was drunk.
“Let’s leave here,” he said suddenly. “Let’s go for a drive by ourselves. Do you know we never get alone together?”
“I have to go home now,” she said. “I have to prepare an article for the City Magazine, and I’ll be half the night on it. There’s just no time.” She smiled a firm smile.
He had heard these excuses before. They always infuriated him, but he always kept his anger concealed.
“When are we going to talk about us, Fame? Where our relationship is going?” he asked as evenly as he could.
“Oh, I love you in a way. You’re a dear. But you have to understand I’m very busy pursuing a career, so I can’t let any relationship come between me and my personal goals. Do you understand?”
“But you just said that you don’t work for anybody.”
“I meant,” she said firmly, “that I work only for my own satisfaction.”
“But Mr. Power owns the City Magazine, doesn’t he? So you work for him?”
“I suppose he does. Oh, what does it matter?”
“It matters a lot to any guy who really cares for you.”
At last he caught her eye, and it was bright as if with fear. He noted that she was breathing harder. Although fear was not what he had told himself he wanted from her, he was well pleased for a moment or two.
She rose with her purse. “I’m going home now.”
He would have continued the argument, but he noticed that Mr. Power had moved to a nearby table and was watching them. Pride took Fame’s arm and they went out to their separate cars.
He drove home in agonies, kicking himself, feeling that he had been too blunt and offended her, that this was perhaps their last date.