THE JAMES BOYS were very good. If Lee Vernon was paying them eight hundred dollars a week, they were worth every cent of it.
I sat at the end of the bar where I could take in the entire room, enjoying the music and the singing, and the antics of the patrons at various tables. Not many of the couples danced. It wasn’t the smallness of the floor that prevented them from getting to their feet, it was just that the James Boys were more amusing to watch than they were to dance to. They wore red Western shirts with white piping on the collars and cuffs, but they didn’t restrict their playing to Western music. They seemed to be equally at home with calypso and rock ‘n’ roll. Each of the boys, in turn, sang into the microphone, and they all had good voices.
Dick James was at the microphone, and his face had a mournful expression. He said, “It is now my sad duty to inform you, ladies and gentlemen, that for the next twenty minutes we will be absent from the stand.”
He held up a hand to silent the murmurs of disappointment. “We don’t want to go. Honest! It’s just that we can’t afford to drink here. We have to go down the street to a little place where the drinks are cheaper. And I might add,” he said disingenuously, “unwatered!”
A very small ripple of laughter went through the room. Perhaps the patrons of the Chez Vernon thought their drinks were watered.
“But during our brief absence, the management has obtained for your listening pleasure, at great expense, one of the world’s greatest guitarists! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Frank Mansfield!”
I had been so engrossed in watching and listening, and drinking a steady procession of beers, I hadn’t realized how quickly the time had passed. To a burst of enthusiastic applause led by the four James Boys, I threaded my way through the close-packed tables to the stand. As I sat down in a chair on the stand and removed my guitar from its case, Dick James lowered the microphone level with my waist.
“Good luck, Frank,” he said, and followed the other members of the group into the hallway leading to the dressing room. I was in shirt sleeves, but wore my hat. I wished that I could have gone with them, picked up my coat in the dressing room, and made a getaway through the back door to the alley. In anticipation of fresh entertainment, the audience was fairly quiet. I felt like every eye was on me as I sat under the baby spot on the small, triangular stand.
I delayed as long as I could, well aware that I had twenty full minutes to fill before the James Boys returned, and not enough music to fill it with. I vamped a few chords, tuned the A string a trifle higher, and then played “Empty Pockets.” The moment I hit the last chord, I got to my feet and bowed from the waist to the thin, sporadic applause. Before playing “Grandma’s Quilt,” I went through the motions of tuning again, and slowed the tempo of the song as I picked through it. The applause was stronger when I finished. By this time the crowd realized that my music was unusual or, at least, different. My last number was the best, my favorite, and my nervousness had disappeared completely. There was hardly a sound through the audience as I played “Georgia Girl,” but when I finished and stood up to take a bow, the applause was definitely generous.
“I could take lessons from you,” Dick James said, as he climbed onto the stand. “You make some mighty fine sounds, Frankerino.”
I nodded, smiled and wet my lips. The James Boys were also unaware that my repertoire only consisted of three homemade numbers. Lee Vernon, a tall drink in his hand, crossed the room and congratulated me. He whispered something to Dick, and readjusted the microphone. I had returned my guitar to the case and was halfway to the bar when Vernon’s voice rasped out of the speakers in the ceiling.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there’s something you don’t know about Frank Mansfield!” His voice stopped me, and I looked down at the floor. “In view of his great manual dexterity, it may be difficult to believe, but Frank Mansfield is the only deaf-and-dumb guitar player in the world! Let’s give Frank another big hand? Let him feel the vibrations through the floor!”
As the drunken crowd applauded wildly and stomped their feet on the floor, I ran across the room, pushed aside the curtain to the hallway, and rushed blindly into the dressing room. I supposed Lee Vernon meant well, but I was angered by his announcement. Not only did I want to quit, I wanted to punch him in the nose. In view of his stupid announcement, he would be damned well embarrassed when I played the same three songs forty minutes later.
There was an open bottle of bourbon on the dressing room table. I hit it a couple of times and smoked five cigarettes before my next appearance on the stand. Tiny James, the bass player, came and got me.
“You’re on, Mansfield.” He jerked his thumb. “Dick’s announced you already.”
I returned to the stand and got out my guitar. The room had twice as many patrons and the air was blue with smoke. Vernon’s announcement had created a morbid interest. The bar crowd had pushed their way in and standees blocked the way to the service bar. The moment I picked up my instrument and strummed a few triplets, there were shushing sounds from the tables and the room was silent.
Indifferently, expertly, I played through my three numbers without a pause. The applause was generous. I put the guitar back in the case and made my exit to the dressing room. When the door closed on the last James Boy I took a pull out of the open bottle of whiskey. Lee Vernon entered the room. His face was flushed and he was laughing. He held out a hand for the bottle and, when I handed it to him, freshened the drink in his left hand.
Watching him sullenly, I took another drink out of the bottle. Vernon let loose with a wild peal of happy laughter.
“Those are the only three songs you know, aren’t they?” he said.
I grinned and took another drink.
“That’s wonderful, Frank,” he said sincerely. “Really wonderful!” He smiled broadly, showing his big white teeth. “Did you make them up yourself?”
I nodded.
A frown creased Vernon’s flushed face, and he placed his glass down carefully on the narrow ledge in front of the mirror. He’s going to fire me, I thought. The moment I put the five-dollar bill in my pocket I’m going to knock his teeth out.
“I think that’s terrific, Frank. I really do. Any fool can take a few lessons and play ordinary songs on a guitar. Hell, I can play a little bit myself, and if I sing while I’m playing, I can drown out the mistakes I make. But you…” He shook his head comically. “To deliberately master the damned guitar the way you have and compose your own songs—well, I can only admire you for it.” He picked up his glass and raised it. “To Frank Mansfield! You’ve got a job at Chez Vernon for as long as you want to keep it!”
He drained the glass and opened the door. His shoulder hit the side of the door as he left, and he staggered slightly as he walked down the hall.
I closed the door and sat down, facing the back of the chair. If a man accepts life logically, the unexpected is actually the expected. I should have known he wouldn’t fire me. A nightclub owner, by the fact that he is a nightclub owner, must necessarily accept things as they are. Vernon had accepted the situation cheerfully, like a peacetime soldier who finds himself suddenly in war. There was nothing else he could do.
I had wanted to quit, but now I was unable to quit. I was in an untenable position. I had only one alternative. Every time I played my twenty-minute stint, I would have to improvise something new. If I couldn’t do it, I would have to walk away and not even collect the five dollars I had coming to me. It was unfair to keep playing the same three songs over and over.
I took another drink, a short one this time. I was beginning to feel the effects of the whiskey on top of the beers I had had earlier. I made my decision. When my turn came to play again I would improvise music and play something truly wonderful.
After Dick James announced me, I sat quietly in my chair, the guitar across my lap, a multicolored pick gripped loosely between my right thumb and forefinger. The room was filled to capacity. Under the weak, colored ceiling lights I could make out most of the faces nearest the stand. There was a hint of nervous expectancy in the room. Here is a freak, their silence said, a talented, deaf-and-dumb freak who plays music but cannot hear, who plays for applause he can only feel. This was the atmosphere of the Chez Vernon, caused in part by Lee Vernon’s earlier announcement, and by my last session on the stand when the listeners had heard a different kind of music. Vernon sat at a table close to the platform, his face flushed with liquor, a knowing smile on his lips. On his left was a young man with long blond hair, dressed in a red silk dinner jacket, white ruffled shirt, and plaid bow tie. On Vernon’s right, a tall pink drink before her, was a woman in a low-cut kelly green evening gown. She was in her early forties, but she was the type who could pass easily for thirty-nine for a few more years.
Her lips were wet and shiny, and her dark eyes were bright with excitement as I caught them with mine and held them. She nodded politely, put long tapering fingers to her coal black hair. The woman and the young man at Vernon’s table stood out from the crowd. Most of the patrons were wearing short-sleeved sport shirts. Only the younger men with dates wore coats and ties. Lee Vernon raised his glass and winked at me.
The microphone was less than a foot away from my guitar. I tapped the pick on the box. The sound, amplified by six speakers, sounded like knocking on a wooden door. Scratching the wooden box of the Gibson produced a sound like the dry rasping of locusts. The locusts reminded me of the long summer evenings in Mansfield, Georgia, and I thought about the bright silvery moths circling the lamp on the corner, down the street from Grandma’s house.
I played their sound, picking them up and flying and flickering with them about the streetlight, teasing them on the E string.
Down the block, swinging to and fro on a lacy, metal porch swing, the chains creaking, complaining, a woman laughed the joyful, contented laughter of a well-bred southern woman, a mother perhaps, with two young children, a boy and a girl, and the little boy said something that amused her and she laughed and repeated what the child said to her husband sitting beside her.
I played that.
And I repeated the solid rumbling laugh of her husband, which complemented her own laughter, and then my fingers moved away from them, up the staff to pick out the solid swishing whispering smack of a lawn sprinkler and a man’s tuneless humming a block away. And there came a boy in knickers down the sidewalk, walking and then running, dancing with awkward feet to avoid stepping on a crack, which would surely break his mother’s back! He bent down and picked up a stick and scampered past a white picket fence, the stick bumping, rattling, drowning out a man’s lecture to a teenaged girl on the porch of that old white house two doors down from the corner, the house with the four white columns.
And I played these things, and then the sounds of supper and the noises, the fine good clatter in the kitchen when Grandma was still alive, and Randall and I sent to wash up before dinner in the dark downstairs bathroom where the sound of water in the pipes made the whiney, sharp, unbearable spine-tingling noise and kept it up until the other tap was turned on and modulated it, turning the groaning into the surreptitious scraping of a boy’s finger on the blackboard, and sure enough, we had the schoolteacher for dinner that night and she was talking with Mother, monotonously, like always, and I hated her, and the dry, flat registers of her authoritative voice would put you to sleep in the middle of a lesson if you didn’t keep pinching yourself, and Daddy pulled out his watch with the loud ticks and it was suppertime, the solid ring of the good sterling silver, the tingle-tinkle of the fine crystal that pinged with a fingernail and listen to the echo! And the rich dark laughter of Aimee, our Negro cook in the kitchen, and after supper I was allowed to go to the movie but Randall wasn’t because he was three years younger and had to go to bed so I played these things and what a wonderful movie it was! Young Dick Powell, handsome, in his West Point uniform, and the solid ranks of straight tall men marching in the parade and only vaguely did the old songs filter through the story, Flirtation Walk, and the lovely girl under the Kissing Rock, and then the movie was over but I stayed to see it again, and repeated it very quickly because nothing is ever any good the second time and I was late, it was dark, and I was running down the black narrow streets, the crickets silenced ahead of my slapping feet, and the grim and heavy shadows of the great old pecan trees on our black, forbidden block. As I reached our yard, safe at last from whatever it was that chased me, Mother was on the front porch waiting with a switch in her hand, and she intended to use it, I know, but I began to cry and a moment later she pulled me in close to her warm, wonderful, never changing smell of powder, spicy lilac and cedar and sweet, sweet lips kissing me and chiding and kissing and scolding and damned if the G string didn’t break.
The pick fell from my fingers and I looked numbly at the guitar. The room was silent as death. A moment later, like an exploding dam, the room rocked with the sound of slapping hands and stomping feet. I fled into the dressing room with the guitar still clutched by the neck in my left hand. The James Boys, who had been listening by the arched, curtained doorway to the hall, followed me into the small room, and Dick handed me the bottle.
“I’ll be a sonabitch, Frank,” he said warmly. “I never heard finer guitar in my life. You can be a James Boy anytime you want. Go ahead, take another snort!”
I sat down, lit a cigarette and studied my trembling fingers. My throat was dry and tight and for the first time in my life I felt lonely, really lonely, and I didn’t know why. I had buried all those memories for so many years, it was frightening to know that they were still in my head.
The James Boys returned to the stand, leaving the door open, and I could hear the heated strings of their first number, “The Big D Rock.”
“Mr. Mansfield—” I looked up at the sound of Lee Vernon’s voice, and got to my feet quickly as he ushered in ahead of him the young man and the woman who had been sitting at his table out front. “I want to introduce you to Mrs. Bernice Hungerford and Tommy Hungerford.” He turned and smiled at the woman. “Mr. Frank Mansfield.”
“Tommy is my nephew,” Bernice Hungerford said quickly, holding out her hand. I shook it briefly, and then shook hands with her nephew. His expression was studiedly bored, but he was slightly nervous.
Mrs. Hungerford was a truly striking woman, now that I could see her under the bright lights of the dressing room. A white cashmere stole was draped over her left arm, and she clutched a gold-mesh evening bag in her left hand. Her burnt sienna eyes never left my face. I was amused by the scattering of freckles on her nose. The freckles on her face and bare shoulders belied her age sure enough.
With a straight face, Vernon said: “Mrs. Hungerford was very impressed by your concert, Mr. Mansfield. When I told her that you had studied under Segovia in Seville for ten years, she said she could tell that you had by your intricate fretwork.”
Bernice Hungerford bobbed her head up and down delightedly and shook a teasing forefinger at me. “And I recognized the tone poem, too.” She winked and flashed a bright smile. Her teeth were small but remarkably well matched and white. “You see, Mr. Mansfield,” she continued, “I know a few things about music. When I hear Bach, it doesn’t make any difference if it’s piano or guitar, I can recognize the style. That’s what I told Mr. Vernon, didn’t I, Lee?” The woman turned to the implacable Lee Vernon who was covering his drunkenness masterfully. Only the stiffness of his back gave him away.
“You certainly did, Bernice. But I had to tell her, Mr. Mansfield. She thought you were playing a Bach fugue, but it was a natural mistake. She didn’t know that it was a special Albert Schweitzer composition written on a theme of Bach’s. Quite a natural mistake, indeed.”
“If we don’t get back to your guests, their throats will be dreadfully poached, Auntie dear,” Tommy said lazily. “We’ve been gone, you know, for the better part of an hour, and that’s a long time just to refurbish the liquor supply.” The careless elisions of his voice were practiced, it seemed to me.
“But if we take Mr. Mansfield back with us, we’ll be forgiven.” Mrs. Hungerford patted her nephew’s arm.
“I’ll certainly try,” he replied cheerfully.
As soon as they had gone, Vernon closed the door, leaned against it and buried his face in his arms. His shoulders shook convulsively, and for a moment I thought he crying. Then he let out a whoop of laughter, turned away from the door and sat down. Recovering, he wiped his streaming eyes with a forefinger and said, “I’m sorry, Frank, but the gag was too good to resist. When she started that talk about Bach and Segovia at the table, I had to go her one better. But it’s a break for you. She has a few guests at her house, and only stopped by here to pick up some Scotch. I told her that she mustn’t miss your performance, and when you came out with that tricky, weird chording and impressed her so much, I thought it might be a break for you. Anyway, the upshot is that she wants you to go home with her and play for her guests. Should be worth a twenty-dollar bill to you, at least.”
I shrugged into my corduroy jacket. All through the talk about Bach and Segovia I had thought they were attempting some kind of joke at my expense, but apparently Mrs. Hungerford actually believed I had studied under the old guitarist. Vernon had gone along with the gag, which was a break for me, although I detested the condescending sonofabitch. If she wanted to pay me twenty dollars I would accept it, play my three songs, and then get out of her house.
I had already made up my mind not to return to the Chez Vernon. A final concert for a group of rich people who could afford to pay for it and wouldn’t miss the money would be a fitting end to my short, unhappy musical career.
“By the way, Frank,” Vernon said, as soon as I was ready to go, “don’t get the idea that I was trying to make fun of you by falling in with the gag. If I’d been strictly sober, I might have set her straight, but basically I poured it on so you could pick up a few extra bucks. No hard feelings?”
I ignored his outstretched hand and brushed by him, carrying my instrument. Vernon followed me out into the club. As I stopped at the stand, to put the guitar in the case, he handed me a ten-dollar bill
“Hell, don’t be sore about it, Frank.”
There was a black silhouette cutout of a plyboard cat at the end of the stand. I wadded the bill in my fist and shoved it into the open mouth of the kitty before crossing the dance floor and entering the inside door to the package store. If Lee Vernon had followed me into the package store, I would have knocked his teeth out, even if he was drunk. Although I wasn’t the butt of the joke, I didn’t like to be patronized by a man I considered an inferior. But Vernon was wise enough not to come outside, and I’ve never seen him since.
Tommy drove the Olds and Mrs. Hungerford sat between us on the wide front seat. With the guitar case between my legs, my left leg was tight against her right leg, and I could feel the warmth of her body through my corduroy trousers.
“This isn’t exactly a party, Mr. Mansfield,” she explained, as we drove through the light traffic of the after-midnight streets. “We all attended the Jacksonville Little Theater to see Liliom, and I invited the bunch home for a cold supper and a few drinks. It was a real faux pas on my part. There’s plenty of food, but I didn’t realize I was out of Scotch. But bringing you home to play will more than make up for my oversight, I’m sure. Don’t you think so, Tommy?”
“If they’re still there,” he observed dryly
“Don’t worry,” Mrs. Hungerford laughed pleasantly, “I know my brother!” She turned toward me and put her hand lightly on my knee. “There are only two couples, Mr. Mansfield. Tommy’s father and mother, and Dr. Luke McGuire and his wife. Not a very large audience, I’m afraid, after what you’re accustomed to, is it?”
In reply, I spat out the window.
“But I know you’ll find them appreciative of good music.”
A few minutes later we turned into a driveway guarded by two small concrete lions. Tommy parked behind a Buick on the semicircular gravel road that led back to the street. The two-story house was of red brick. Four fluted wooden columns supported a widow’s walk directly above the wide, aluminum-screened front porch. The lawn slanted gradually to the street for almost a hundred yards, broken here and there with newly planted coconut palms. The feathery tips of the young trees rattled in the wind. She was wasting money and effort attempting to grow coconut trees as far north as Jax. The subtropics start at Daytona Beach, much farther downstate.
Mrs. Hungerford rushed ahead of us after we got out of the car. Tommy, carrying two sacked fifths of Scotch under his left arm and a six-pack of soda in his right hand, hurried after her. As I climbed the porch steps, Mrs. Hungerford switched on the overhead lights and opened the front doors. She held a finger to her lips as she beckoned me into the foyer with her free hand.
“Now, you stay right here in the foyer,” Mrs. Hungerford whispered excitedly, “so I can surprise them!”
Closing the front door softly, she followed her nephew into the living room. The voices greeting them contained a mixture of concern over the prolonged absence, and happiness at the prospect of a drink. Above the sound of their conversation, the clipped electronic voice of a newscaster rattled through his daily report of the late news.
The foyer was carpeted in a soft shade of rose nylon. The same carpeting climbed the stairway to the walnut-balustraded second floor. A giant split-level philodendron sat in a white pot behind the door. There was a spindly-legged, leather-covered table beneath a gilded wall mirror, and a brass dish on the table held about thirty calling cards. Out of long-forgotten habit I felt a few of the cards to see if they were engraved. They were. I turned my attention to a marble cherub mounted on a square, ebony base. It was about three feet high, and the well-weathered cherub looked shyly with its dugout eyes through widespread stubby fingers. A lifted, twisted right knee hid its sex, and three fingers of the left hand were missing. I removed my cowboy hat and hung it on the thumb of the mutilated hand.
The bored announcer was clicked off in midsentence, and Mrs. Hungerford came after me a moment later.
“They’re all tickled to death, Mr. Mansfield,” she said happily. “Come on, they want to meet you!”
In one corner of the large living room, Tommy was engaged behind a small bar. Two middle-aged men got out of their chairs and crossed the room to greet me. Dr. McGuire was a thickset man without a neck, and his gray hair was badly in need of cutting. Mr. Hungerford, Sr., Tommy’s father, was an older edition of his blond son, except that he no longer had his hair and the top of his head was bronzed by the Florida sun. Both of the men wore white dinner jackets and midnight blue tuxedo trousers. I acknowledged the introductions by nodding my head and shaking hands. The two wives remained seated on a long, curving white sofa, and didn’t offer their hands to be shaken.
“I know you’re all eager to hear Mr. Mansfield play,” Bernice announced to the room at large,” but you’ll have to wait until he has a drink first.”
Welcome news. After dropping my guitar case on the sofa, I headed for the bar.
“There’s plenty of gin if you don’t want Scotch,” Tommy suggested.
I poured two ounces of Scotch into a tall glass in reply, and added ice cubes and soda. An uneasy silence settled over the room as I hooked my elbows over the bar and faced the group. Bernice, or Tommy, had evidently informed them about my inability to talk, and they were disturbed by my silence. The two matrons, bulging in strapless gowns, had difficulty in averting their eyes from my face. I doubt if they meant to be rude, but they couldn’t keep from staring at me. Dr. McGuire, standing with his back to the fireplace, lit a cigar and studied the tip through his bifocals. Only Bernice was at ease, sitting comfortably on the long bench in front of the baby grand piano, apparently unaware of her guests’ discomfort. Mr. Hungerford, Sr., cleared his throat and set his glass down on a low coffee table.
“Bernice tells us you studied under Segovia, Mr. Mansfield,” he said.
“Yes,” Bernice replied for me, “That’s what Mr. Vernon told us, didn’t he, Tommy?”
“That’s right. And he played a beautiful thing written by Dr. Albert Schweitzer. I hope he’ll play it again for us.”
“African rock ‘n’ roll, I suppose,” Dr. McGuire chuckled from the fireplace. “That would be a treat!” When no one joined him in his laughter, he said quickly, “We’re very grateful you came out to play for us, Mr. Mansfield.”
I finished my drink, lifted my eyebrows for Tommy Hungerford to mix me another. I took my guitar out of the case, and started to restring it with another G string to replace the broken one. While I restrung the guitar, Mrs. Hungerford asked her brother and the doctor to move chairs into the center of the room and form a line. She then had her guests sit in the rearranged chairs facing me, as I stood with one foot on the piano bench. Tommy Hungerford, smiling at the new seating arrangements, remained standing at the bar. I plucked and tightened the new string, and Bernice hit the G on the piano for me until I had the guitar in tune. Satisfied, I put the guitar on the bench and returned to the bar for my fresh drink. The small audience waited patiently, but Dr. McGuire glowered when Tommy insisted that I have another before I began. I shook my head, picked up my guitar and played through my three-song repertoire without pause.
The moment I hit the last chord I smiled, bowed from the waist and put the guitar back in the case. Bernice Hungerford, who had hovered anxiously behind the row of chairs during my short concert, led the applause.
“Is that all he’s going to play, Bernice?” the doctor asked. “I’d like to hear more.”
“I think we all would,” his fat wife echoed.
I shrugged, and joined Tommy at the bar for another drink.
“No, that’s enough,” Bernice said. “Mr. Mansfield has been playing all evening and he’s tired. We shouldn’t coax him. The concert is all over. Go on home. You’ve been fed, you’ve had your drinks, now go on home.”
Bernice herded the two wives out of the room to get their wraps, and their husbands joined Tommy and me at the bar for a nightcap.
“You play very well, young man,” Dr. McGuire said. “Did you ever play on television?”
I shook my head, and added Scotch to my glass to cut the soda.
“I think you should consider television, don’t you, Tommy?”
“Not really, sir,” Tommy wrinkled his brow. “I’m not so sure that a mass audience is ready for classical guitar music. I’m trying to recall, but I can’t remember ever hearing or seeing a string quartet on television. If I did, I can’t remember it.”
“By God, I haven’t either!” the doctor said strongly. “And certainly the string quartet is the most civilized entertainment in the world! Don’t you agree, Mr. Mansfield?”
I shrugged my shoulders inside my jacket, and lit a cigarette.
He didn’t want a reply, anyway. “But there’s a definite need for serious music on TV,” he continued. “And, by God, the public should be forced to listen! No matter how stupid people are today, they can be taught to appreciate good music.” He banged his fist on the bar.
The two middle-aged men drained their glasses quickly as Bernice came into the room, and turned to join their wives in the foyer. Bernice crossed the room, and placed a hand on my arm. So far, she had never missed a chance to touch me.
“Mrs. McGuire would like to know if you’d consent to play for her guests next Saturday night. She’s giving a party, quite a large one, and she’s willing to—”
I shook my head and crushed out my cigarette in a white Cinzano ashtray.
“It’s ‘no,’ then?”
I nodded. She smiled, turned away and returned to the foyer to say good night to her guests and break the news to Mrs. McGuire.
“Tell me something, Mr. Mansfield,” Tommy said hesitantly. “Did you really study under Segovia?”
I grinned, and shook my head. After setting my glass down, I picked up my guitar case. Tommy laughed, throwing his head back.
“I didn’t think you did, but I’ll keep your secret till the day I die.”
Bernice Hungerford returned with a smile brightening her jolly face. I didn’t know why, but I was attracted to this graceful, pleasant woman. She appeared to be so happy, so eager to please, and yet, there were tiny, tragic lines tugging at the corners of her full lips.
“I’ll drive Mr. Mansfield back into town, Auntie,” Tommy said.
“Oh, no you won’t!” Bernice said cheerfully. She took the guitar case out of my hand and placed it on the couch. “I’ll drive him back myself. You can just run along, Tommy. I’m going to fix Mr. Mansfield something to eat—you could eat something, couldn’t you?”
I shrugged, then smiled. She hadn’t paid the twenty dollars yet, and I could always eat something. The cold buffet supper, however, didn’t appeal to me. There were several choices of lunch meat, cold pork, three different cheese dips and pickles. I looked distastefully at the buffet table.
“Now, don’t you worry,” Bernice said, patting my arm with her small, white hand. “I won’t make you eat the remains of the cold supper. I’ll fix you some ham and eggs.”
“Me too, Auntie dear?” Tommy grinned.
“No, not you. Don’t you have a job of some kind to report to in the morning?”
Tommy groaned. “Don’t remind me. Well, good night, Mr. Mansfield.” He shook hands with me, brushed his lips against his aunt’s cheek and made his departure from the room. A few moments later the lights of his Olds flashed on the picture window as he made the semicircle to the street.
Now that we were alone in the big house, Bernice’s composure suddenly disappeared. She blushed furiously under my level stare, and then took my hand. “Come on,” she said brightly. “You can keep me company in the kitchen while I cook for you.”
I followed her into the kitchen, and sat down at a small dinette table covered with a blue-and-white tablecloth. There were louvered windows on all three sides of the small dining alcove, but the kitchen itself, like those of most Depression-built homes, was a large one. The cooking facilities were up to date, however. In addition to a new yellow enameled electric stove, there was a built-in oven with a glass door, and a row of complicated-looking knobs beneath it.
“There’s coffee left, but it’s been setting on the warm burner so long it’s probably bitter by now. I’d better make fresh coffee, if you don’t mind waiting awhile, but by that time I’ll have the other things ready. I think that coffee setting too long gets bitter, don’t you? I’ve got some mashed potatoes left over from dinner, and I’ll make some nice patties to go with your ham.”
Bernice kept a running patter of meaningless small talk going as she cooked, and I listened thoughtfully and smoked, watching her deft, efficient movements from my chair. She had tied a frilly, ruffled white apron about her waist, and it looked out of whack with her kelly green evening gown. She kept talking about pleasant things to eat, and I got hungrier by the second.
She wanted to please me, even though she didn’t know why. She knew she was a good cook, and by cooking a decent meal for me, she knew I would be pleased. If I was pleased with her, I’d take her to bed. These thoughts probably never entered her conscious mind, but I sensed this, and knew instinctively that she was mine if I wanted her. As she chattered away, gaily, cheerfully, I learned that I did want her, very much so. She was a damned attractive woman, a little heavy in the thighs, perhaps, but I didn’t consider that a detriment. I like women a little on the fleshy side. Skinny, boyish-type figures may be admired by other women, but not by most men.
I smiled appreciatively, showing my teeth, when she set the huge platter before me. The aroma of the fried ham steak, four fried eggs, and fluffy potato pancakes all blended beautifully as they entered my nose. Bernice poured two steaming cups of fresh coffee and sat down across from me to watch me eat, her face flushed from recent exertion and pleasure as I stowed the food away.
“I should have made biscuits,” she said, “but I could tell you were too hungry to wait, so I made the toast instead. Would you like some guava jelly for your toast?” She started to get up, but I shook my head violently, and she remained seated.
A minute later she smiled. “I like to see a man eat,” she said sincerely.
I’ve heard a lot of women make that trite remark: Grandma, Mother, when she was still alive, and a good many others. I believe women really do like to see men eat, especially when they’re fond of the man concerned, and he’s eating food they have prepared for him. I have never denied any woman the dubious pleasure of watching me eat. Outside of taking care of a man’s needs, women don’t get very much pleasure out of life anyway.
When I finished eating everything in sight, I pushed the empty platter to one side and wiped my mouth with a square of white damask napkin. Smiling over the lip of her cup, Bernice nodded with satisfaction. I winked slowly, returned her smile, and she blushed and lowered her eyes.
“My husband’s been dead for five years, Mr. Mansfield,” she said shyly. “You don’t know how nice it is to cook a meal for a man again. I’d almost forgotten myself. I loved my husband very much, and still do, I suppose. My brother’s always telling me how foolish I am to keep this big house and live here all alone. An apartment would be easier to keep, I know, and give me more free time, but I don’t know what I’d do with more free time if I had it. I don’t know what to do with myself half the time as it is.
“This old house has a lot of pleasant memories for me, and I’d miss them if I ever sold it. I can see my husband in every room. Sometimes, during the day, I pretend he isn’t dead at all. He’s at the office, that’s where he is, working, and when six o’clock comes he’ll be coming home through the front door like always, and…” Her voice trailed away, and two tears escaped into her long black eyelashes.
Bernice wiped them away, tossed her head impatiently and laughed.
“Morbid, aren’t I? How about some more coffee?”
I nodded, took my cigarettes out of my shirt pocket, and offered them to her. She put the cork tip in her mouth, and when I flipped my lighter, she held my hand with both hers to get a light. This was unnecessary. My hand was perfectly steady. After refilling the cups, she sat down again and described circles on the tablecloth with a long red fingernail.
“I know that you want to go, Mr. Mansfield,” she said at last, “but I’m finding this a novel experience. It’s a rare instance when a woman can pour her troubles into a man’s receptive ear without being told to shut up!” She laughed, and shrugged comically.
“But I really don’t have any troubles. As far as money goes, I’m fixed forever. My husband saw to that, God bless him. I own the house, and my trust fund is well guarded by the bank trustees. And I have a circle of friends I’ve known most of my adult life. So where are my troubles?” She sighed audibly and licked her lips with the point of her tongue like a cat.
“I should be the happiest woman in the world. But once in a while, just once in a while, mind you, Mr. Mansfield, I’d like to go into my bathroom and find the toilet seat up instead of down!” Color flooded into her face, and the freckles almost disappeared. She got up from the table hastily and pushed open the swinging door leading to the living room. “I’ll get your money for you, Mr. Mansfield.”
She had aroused my sympathy. I wondered what her husband had been like. An insurance executive probably. Every time he had gotten a promotion he had used the extra money for more protection, more insurance. It must have cost her plenty to keep up this big house. And it was a cinch she didn’t have any children, or she would have talked about them instead of a man five years dead. If I could have talked, I would have been able to kid her out of her mood in no time. My sex life had really suffered since I gave up talking. Not completely, because money always talks when words fail, but a lot of women had gotten away during the last couple of years because of my stubborn vow of silence.
As I pondered the situation, how best to handle it, Bernice returned to the kitchen. She placed a fifty-dollar bill on the table. The fifty ruined everything for me.
I could have accepted a twenty, because Lee Vernon had set the fee, but I couldn’t, with good conscience, accept fifty dollars. My concert wasn’t worth that much. I knew it, and Bernice Hungerford knew it. She was trying to buy me and I resented it. I folded the bill into a small square, placed it on the edge of the table and flipped it to the floor with my forefinger. I got up from the table and left the room.
I picked up my guitar in the living room and had almost reached the foyer when Bernice caught up with me. She tugged on my arm, and when I stopped, got in front of me, looking up wistfully into my face. My jaw was tight and I looked over her head at the door.
“Please!” she said, stuffing the folded bill into my shirt pocket. “I know what you’re thinking, but it isn’t true! The only reason I gave you a fifty was because I didn’t have a twenty. I thought I had one, but I didn’t. Please take it!”
I dropped my eyes to her face, looked at her steadily, and she turned away from me.
“All right. So I lied. Take it anyway. Fifty dollars doesn’t mean anything to me. I’m sorry and I’m ashamed. And if you want to know the truth I’m more ashamed than sorry!”
I retrieved my hat from the marble angel’s thumb and Put it on my head. But I didn’t leave. I reconsidered. Damn all anyway, the woman was desirable! I removed my hat, replaced it on the angel’s thumb and dropped my guitar case to the carpeted floor. Bernice had started up the stairs, but I caught up with her on the third step, lifted her into my arms and continued up the stairs. She buried her face in my meck and stifled a sob, clinging to me with both arms like a child. As I climbed I staggered beneath her weight—she must have weighed a solid one hundred and forty-five pounds—but I didn’t drop her. When I reached the balcony I was puffing with my mouth open to regain my wind.
Bernice whispered softly into my ear, “The bedroom’s the first door on the right.”
The first time was for me. As nervous as Bernice was, at least at first, it could hardly have gone any other way. But I was gentle with her, and providing me with satisfaction apparently gave her the reassurance she needed. There was none of that foolishness about wanting to turn off the bedside lamps, for example, and when she returned from the bathroom, she still had her clothes off.
I had propped myself up on both pillows, and I smoked and watched her as she poured two small snifters of brandy. The cut-glass decanter was on a side table, beside a comforting wing chair. It was unusual, I thought, to keep a decanter of cognac in a bedroom, but having a drink afterward was probably a post-coital ritual that she and her late husband had practiced.
Although Bernice was a trifle on the chunky side, she had a good figure. Her heavy breasts had prolapsed slightly, but the prominent nipples were as pink as a Roseate Spoonbill. Her slim waist emphasized the beautiful swelling lines of her full hips, and her skin, except for a scattering of freckles on her shoulders, was as white as a peeled almond. With her thick black hair unloosened and trailing down her back, Bernice was a very beautiful woman. To top it off, she had a sense of style. I wanted to talk to her so badly I could almost taste the words in my mouth, and it was all I could do to hold back the torment that would become a flood if I ever let them go.
After Bernice handed me my glass, she sat cross-legged on the bed, facing me, swirling her brandy in the snifter she held with cupped hands. Her face was flushed slightly with excitement. She peered intently into her brandy glass, refusing to meet my level stare.
“I want to tell you something, Frank,” she said in soft contralto, “something important. I’m not promiscuous.”
She said this so primly I wanted to laugh. Instead, I grinned, wet a forefinger in my brandy and rubbed the nipple of her right breast.
“And no matter what you may think, you’re the first man I’ve let make love to me since my husband died.”
I didn’t believe her, of course, not for an instant. But that is the way women are. They always feel that a man will think less of them if they act like human beings. What did it matter to me whether she had slept with anyone or not for the last five years? What possible difference could it make at this moment? Now was now, and the past and the future were unimportant.
As the nipple gradually hardened beneath my circling finger she laughed, an abrupt, angry little laugh, and tossed off the remainder of her brandy. I took her glass, put both of them aside, pulled her down beside me, and kissed her.
The second time was better and lasted much longer. Although I was handicapped by being unable to issue instructions, Bernice was experienced, cooperative and so eager to please me that she anticipated practically everything I wanted to do. And at last, when I didn’t believe I could hold out for another moment, she climaxed. I remained on my back, with Bernice on top of me, and she nibbled on my shoulder.
“I could fall in love with you, Frank Mansfield,” she said softly. “If there were only some way I could prove it to you!”
Suddenly she got out of bed, grabbed my undershirt and shorts from the winged chair, and entered the bathroom. I raised myself on my elbows, and watched her through the open door as she washed my underwear in the washbowl. She hummed happily as she scrubbed away. My underwear wasn’t dirty. I had put it on clean after a shower at the hotel before reporting in at the Chez Vernon at eight thirty that evening. Women, sometimes, have a peculiar way of demonstrating their affection.
Five o’clock finally rolled around, but I hadn’t closed my eyes. Bernice slept soundly at my side, a warm, heavy leg thrown over mine, an arm draped limply across my chest. She breathed heavily through her open mouth. I eased my leg out from beneath hers and got out of bed on my side. The sheet that had covered us was disarranged, kicked to the bottom of the bed. I pulled it over her shoulders, before taking my clothes from the chair into the bathroom. My underwear was still dripping wet and draped over the metal bar that held the shower curtain. I pulled on my clothes without underwear. As soon as I was dressed, I raised the toilet seat, switched off the bathroom light and tiptoed out of the bedroom, closing the door softly behind me.
At the foot of the stairs, I retrieved my hat and guitar, and made my exit into the dawn. The sky was just beginning to turn gray. I opened my guitar case, removed the instrument, and tried to scrape off my name with my knife. It was burned in too deeply, but Bernice would be able to see that I had tried to scrape it off. Then I put the neck of the guitar on the top step, and stomped on it until it broke. After cutting the strings with my knife, I placed the broken instrument on the welcome mat.
There was an oleander bush on the left side of the porch. I tossed the guitar case into the bush. Now I could keep the fifty-dollar bill in good conscience. The guitar had been worth at least thirty dollars, and the fee for the private concert was twenty dollars. We were even. The message was obscure, perhaps, but Bernice would be able to puzzle it out eventually.
I walked down the gravel driveway to the street, and noticed the number of the house on a stone marker at the bottom of the drive. 111. I grinned. I would always remember Bernice’s number.
Carrying my wet underwear, I had to wander around in the strange neighborhood for almost five blocks before I could find a bus stop and catch a bus back to downtown Jacksonville.