A wind blowing through the empty places in me.
Sounds like the inside of a conch shell, or blowing over the edge of an empty jar.
Memory of a night in New York, a year ago. The newspapers playing hide-and-seek for me in Atlanta, while I hid, an airplane ride away. A call-girl I met there who looked like Marcy. The same blonde-toward-reddish hair, the same slim and fine-boned body, slate-gray eyes and pale skin that wouldn’t tan . . . but I couldn’t get it up. Paid her anyway and, knowing why I’d wanted to ravage her, I fell off the edge. Set off on a nightmare week of bars and hotel rooms, the final night with the hiccups. Hiccupping through half the bars in the Village, one time so hard that the tie-tac flew out of my tie and hit the bartender in the face. Bleeding out of all the empty places then, leaving a spoor everywhere I went.
Until it didn’t bother me anymore. I thought.
“Hello, Jim.” Smiling, but there wasn’t any sureness in the smile. Instead, a wavering at the corners of her mouth. “I’m supposed to say that I didn’t know you’d be here, but I knew.”
“Such careful honesty,” I said.
“It’s about time I was.” The smile gone, replaced by a calm seriousness, waiting until I decided to do whatever it was I was going to do.
“Or I was. Or somebody was.” Aware then of the stillness of the house, no rattling of silver or dishes, only in the distance, with the door open, the faint tap, tap, tap of the basketball.
And without meaning to do it, not knowing I was going to do it, I put out a hand and cupped the side of her face. “I guess we might as well let the matchmakers think they won one.” I turned to let her pass, and I heard her answer, like a whisper, “Yes.”
But Art wasn’t in the dining room, where I thought he was. We found him in the kitchen with Edna, and when Edna saw we’d gotten past the first, the hardest part, she broke down and started crying. Marcy saw that and, nervous as she was already, she began to cry along with her.
Art and I got another beer out of the refrigerator and went into the living room. Art leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “You think you and I spend a lot of time planning and plotting on something like the Spence case? That’s nothing. Nothing at all. Edna and Marcy’ve been putting in forty hours a week overtime.”
“You involved in this?”
“All I did was answer one question.”
“Yeah?”
“They asked if this would work, and I said if you didn’t kill her in the first two minutes, it was probably love.”
We drank both bottles of the Mouton Cadet, and it was a great dinner, and I couldn’t remember it ever being better. Art had to leave, but Marcy and I stayed on. Marcy helped with the dishes, and I sat around the living room, talking to Mickey and Andrew about pro football. They knew I knew Hump, and they were saying wistfully that it would be nice if I’d bring him over sometime, so their mother could meet him. Even after the dinner dishes were stacked away, I found I was still hesitating. I didn’t know exactly what to do next. But it was time to go. I wanted to be at Hump’s place when he came back from his tour of the black bars.
“Give me a lift home?” Marcy asked.
“Sure.” I helped her with her coat.
“I came in a taxi,” Marcy explained, “just in case.”
I followed her directions and drove far out along West Peachtree, and then into a maze of circles and dead-end streets. Then the trees disappeared, and there was nothing but blowing red clay dust. We’d reached the Mellon Heights Apartments. I stayed with the paved road and fought a few bad bumps and stopped, when she said to, in front of 14A. It was something like a small motel unit, but it had it’s own small lawn, without any grass yet, and a porch that would hold two people if they didn’t mind sitting a close together. Out of the car and standing on the porch, it looked like a desert with building blocks thrown about it at random.
“As you can see,” Marcy said, handing me her apartment key, “it just opened.”
“Yes.”
“I was one of the lucky ones, believe me. They moved some people in before they even had the sewer lines hooked up.”
“Tricky, very tricky.” I opened the door and stepped aside to let her through. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do next. And not knowing, I decided I’d better say good night and head for Hump’s.
“How about some coffee, Jim?”
“If I can make a call.”
She pointed toward the phone and went through a door in the rear of the apartment to what was probably the bedroom. I dropped my topcoat on the back of a chair and, standing, dialed Hump’s phone number. It rang seven times and there was no answer. That worried me a little, but not enough to go rushing out to look for him. Hump could take care of himself. Also, there was always the chance that Hump had run into some trim during his bar crawl. That was more likely than anybody getting the best of him.
I sat on the sofa and waited and smoked a cigarette. The furniture seemed like a familiar old shoe to me and, when I saw the antique china cupboard, I knew that these were the furnishings from her other apartment. I went over to the cupboard and ran my hands over the scarred panel on the right side. I remembered that cupboard very well. It was solid oak and weighed about a ton. I’d moved it for her once and thought I was going to get a hernia.
“I had them in storage while I was out of town.” Marcy closed the bedroom door firmly behind her and passed me on the way into the kitchen. “It cost a fortune I didn’t have.”
Just to be talking, to say something: “You might have found some friend who’d have kept them for you.”
She seemed to take a long time to answer. She folded and creased and recreased the filter paper for the Chemex coffee-maker. “Like you, Jim, I didn’t have any friends left.”
Boom. Pow. There it was. We weren’t going to walk around it on our tiptoes. The door was open, and I could walk in and draw blood if I wanted to. But I drew back from it, not sure if I wanted to slash and rip and gut. I nodded and walked over to the breakfast nook and sat down, my back to the back door, watching her. “That was a long time ago. Sometimes, when I think about it, I almost believe that it was something that somebody told me had happened to them.”
“I can’t get the same distance,” Marcy said.
“Time,” I said.” It’s just a matter of time.”
When the coffee was measured and the water in the kettle began its first faraway rumble, she set out cups and the sugar bowl and a small pitcher of cream. I looked at the cream pitcher and up at her. She swept the cream pitcher from the table and put it back in the refrigerator.
“The girl next door . . . she’s in advertising . . . takes cream with her coffee.”
“Lots of men take cream with their coffee,” I said.
“None that I know.”
“You’re still young,” I said. “It can change.”
She stood with her back to the kitchen counter, hardly moving, staring through me until the cap on the kettle began its high, thin whistle. She blinked then, and put her back to me. As soon as the water was dripping through the filter, she put the kettle aside and sat down across the table from me.
“Jim, why did you come in here tonight? You need a cup of coffee that bad?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure.”
“What do you expect of me?”
“I’m not sure of that, either.”
“You used to be so sure of everything,” Marcy said.
“That’s time for you.”
“And stop saying those stupid, vague things.” Her voice was still under control, but there was an edge, a rough surface to it. “I’d rather you beat me, or stomped me, or kicked me. You still do beat and stomp and kick people, don’t you?”
“I kicked somebody last Tuesday, but since then I haven’t had anybody around worth kicking.”
“That’s the Jim Hardman I know.” She smiled. “Now I feel like I’m not with a stranger.” She looked at the Chemex and back to me. “I’m going to tell you a story, and I’m only going to tell it once. After that, I want your promise that you’ll never ask me about it again.”
“Do I get to ask questions?”
“Yes, after I finish. But ask all of them tonight. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” I said.
“And no interrupting?”
I nodded.
“This is about us, the book, chapter and verse. I didn’t set out to meet you. That was an accident. I went to the Upshaw party with Bill and Frances Rutledge, who lived next door to me at the Colonial Arms, and I didn’t even know who you were when I met you. In fact, if first impressions meant anything, I wouldn’t even be sitting here with you tonight. I thought you were the biggest slob and creep I’d ever met.”
I could remember. I even remembered Bill and Frances Rutledge. I’d been in one corner of the living room, bored shitless by a short, plump woman who just wanted to flirt with me a bit to get her husband’s attention away from one of those leggy blonde types. And past her, I’d seen Marcy enter with another couple. I knew she wasn’t with Bill Rutledge. He didn’t look like man enough for her, and I’d decided right on the spot that I was, and made my excuses to the plump lady and headed for her.
“Of all the clumsy pick-up attempts I’ve had to suffer through, that was the all-time low. Lady, is that your blue Mustang out front? You left your lights on. Oh, it’s not yours? Well, I’m Jim Hardman.”
It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t as bad as some I’d heard and some I’d used before. But her answer was the bone-crusher of the year. “I think you’ve got a pimple on your nose, Mr. Hardman.”
“The next day I’d forgotten you, Jim, and it hadn’t been hard. But someone had seen me there, and they’d seen you following me around. Marsh said he’d heard I’d made a conquest. And it turned out that you were someone they were interested in, and I was told to cultivate you, to see if you had a price. I didn’t want to do it. I argued. But when Marsh said for you to do something, it was jump and do it. So I bumped into you again.”
That was at Frenchy’s Pub, a place on Spring Street, Where I usually had lunch. The party had been on a Friday, and on the following Wednesday I went in for my corned beef and potato salad, and someone was sitting at my favorite table, the one near the window. It was Marcy, and it hadn’t been easy to get past the hard wall of disinterest that she put up to face strangers. But I pushed and pushed and knew when not to push, and soon we were meeting for lunch almost every day. From that, it wasn’t far to the evening, and dinner and a movie.
“Now and then Marsh would ask how it was going, and I’d say that it didn’t look too favorable, and he’d drop it for a few days. Finally, he put me in a corner and said, yes or no, will he take? And I said that I was pretty sure you wouldn’t, and he said that was what everybody else thought, too, and I could drop you now, and thanks a lot.”
I wanted to ask the question. Suddenly, though I hadn’t thought about it for a long time, I knew when she’d been told she could drop me. It was a puzzling day, one that stood out for me for all the wrong reasons. “The Falcon-49er game. That’s a statement, not a question.”
“Yes,” Marcy said, “the Falcon-49er game.” The water had settled through the filter. She filled our cups and sat down again. “He said I could drop you on the Friday before the game. That was why I broke the dinner date that night. But you took it so well and didn’t get mad, and I knew I’d have to make a production out of it to really break it off.”
It had been a good game. The 49ers must have been favored by a touchdown or two, but the Falcons toughed it out and won in the last seconds, when the Frisco kicker missed a chip shot. It should have been something to shout about, but it wasn’t. Marcy had been distant from the beginning, hardly speaking to me, only yesses and noes when she did speak. Until, by the end of the game, I knew what she was trying to tell me. I remember it hit me while I was crossing the parking lot, and I wanted to die right then. I thought, overmatched yourself this time, son, and I started trying to write it off as a loss. Taking her back through the happy crowds, back to her apartment in a dead silence. Leaving her at the door when I’d planned to take her to dinner. Then back to my apartment and a bottle, finding the bottom of the bottle sometime after midnight. And a terrible hangover the next morning on the job.
“I found it wasn’t that easy, Jim. I saw you were hurt but you took it well, and when you just said good night and didn’t say anything about calling me, and you didn’t say, see you at Frenchy’s, I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as alone. But I thought it was something that would pass as soon as I went back to doing the usual things. I even went back to having lunch at the Brass Rail, where the other girls at the office ate.”
I stayed away from Frenchy’s for three days, and when I went in, Marcy hadn’t been there. The waiter said he hadn’t seen Marcy since the last time I’d brought her in.
“The first week I told myself it would get better. I’d just gotten used to having a man around.”
As I’d gotten used to having a woman around.
“At the end of the first week, I took the first date offered me, a lawyer who ate with us now and then at the Brass Rail. But he wasn’t much fun, and talked too much about how much money he was making, as if that would make me fall over backwards and drop my underpants for him.”
Art and I went bowling three times that week. The third time I dropped him at his house, I heard Edna say something about this being the damned limit. After that I left Art alone and cruised some of the bars with Hump.
“And then one morning I woke up and looked at myself in the mirror while I was putting on my make-up, and I said you think you’re so smart, don’t you? and let’s see how smart you really are. And that day I didn’t go to the Brass Rail. I went to Frenchy’s, and you didn’t show up. The waiter said you’d been in the day before, but you weren’t as regular as you used to be. Not every day, like you had been. And I went back the next day and the day after that, and finally you showed up.”
I might not have gone back at all. Not ever, not ever. But the waiter, Harry, called me around noon and said, that pretty lady is here now, and she asked about you, and I thought you might like to know.
“From that moment on, from the time you came into Frenchy’s, every word I said to you was true. Nothing held back. No lies. There were no reasons for seeing you that weren’t my own personal reasons.” Marcy got the coffee and topped off our cups. “Now you can ask your questions, Jim.”
“I don’t have any.” I stood up and pushed back my chair. “I believe you. But second things first. I’ve got to call Hump.” I left her and went into the living room. I dialed Hump’s number. Still no answer.
When I came back to the kitchen, she was standing with her back to me, looking down at the table. Maybe, ass that I was, I hadn’t realized that she’d been waiting for me to show and tell how things were between us now. And I’d left her to make a phone call. Damn me, anyway! I put my hands on her shoulders, and she turned so quickly it almost caught me off balance.
“I might still love you, Jim,” Marcy said softly, “but you’ve changed. You’re harder, and I’m going to need some time while I decide whether I still like you.”
I said that was all right with me. And then I kissed her to see if we could jump over that year.
Hump was in his kitchen, soaking his right hand in a dishpan jammed with ice cubes. When he moved his hand it sounded like a cocktail party in progress.
“Trouble?”
“Some.” He lifted his hand out of the ice water and flexed it. The knuckles were puffy and swollen. “Asking questions about The Man is not the way to be popular in that part of town.”
“Any answers?”
“A few. The stud with the Afro was talking some until it dawned on him that I didn’t seem to be asking the right kinds of questions. That was at the Dew Drop In Cafe.” He took the hand out and dried it gently with some paper towels. “So I moved on, and it was right strange, but it seemed that everywhere I went, the stud with the Afro showed up. So, about half an hour ago, we had a few words out in a parking lot, and he hit me in the knuckles with the hard part of his head.”
I got the J&B bottle down and a couple of glasses. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table. I poured while he talked.
“The Man’s in everything . . . dope, pussy by the pound, gambling all the way from a dime on a number to thousands on a ball game. He’s coining good money, and the word is that he’s got clout that reaches all the way up to some political people. No names given. Just the suggestion that some big, big ones are slopping at his trough.”
“Emily C.?”
“They had a thing going, hot and heavy. It was like she was trying to screw him to death. Some of his boys didn’t like it much. They thought he was getting careless, letting her learn more about the operation than was good for her. But all the boys did was mumble to themselves some. Nobody was about to do anything about it. It was worth your hide to show any attitude toward her at all . . . good or bad.”
“So there’s no mourning among The Man’s troops?”
“Not a bit.” Hump laughed. “You see, there they are, his men, out prowling around with those pictures of Eddie, and the truth is that they’re not sure whether they want to find him for The Man or give him a roll of cash, a pat on the back, and a way out of town.”
“That might raise an ulcer or two.”
“I don’t think they’re looking very hard.” Hump carried his glass over to the refrigerator, looked in the ice chest, and then went over to the sink to fish a few chips of ice out of the pan he’d been soaking his hand in. “And not looking very hard might be as good a deal for Eddie as the cash and the pat on the back.” He slumped into the chair and poured on some more J&B. “While I was out busting knuckles, what were you up to?”
I decided I might as well tell the truth. He would know it in a day or two, anyway. “I got caught between a couple of matchmakers and an old girlfriend.”
Hump grinned. “Anybody get hurt?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I’m glad for you.” He toasted me with his glass. “Some other news. A flash on the radio a while ago said the town of Mason had put up a reward of twenty thousand dollars for the arrest and conviction of the murderer of Emily Campbell.”
“It said the murderer, and it didn’t name Eddie Spence?”
“That’s right. There must be at least one lawyer in that group.”
“But the heat’s still on Eddie,” I said.
“I wouldn’t mind a part of that twenty thou.”
I said I’d consider cutting him in. I finished my drink and got ready for bed. It was the first time in a long time that I slept the whole night without the anger and gall surfacing. There were no dreams at all that I could remember the next morning.