Chapter 20
The headwaiter indicated a table at the far side of the room, across the floor from the orchestra, and Larry and Bess felt their way in the purplish light around the small, slick floor. The orchestra was playing June Night. Larry had made love to his first girl by it, and could hear it now flowing singsongy and nasal through her thinly etched nostrils.
They blinked their way through the murky room where cigarette smoke banked like fog, and Arthur half rose when he saw them, tabling his hands for support, while Bess rushed over to steady the fragile cane chair under him.
“Hello.” Arthur’s eyes challenged Bessie, and he motioned to the empty seats at the table.
A brocade evening bag lay on the table in front of an empty place. It must belong to Lucy.
Larry slid into the far chair and let Bess and Bemrose get comfortable. They seldom saw each other, and needed time to become acquainted. Larry knew that it wouldn’t take long. Bess would relate some irrelevant and trivial incident, and soon Bemrose would be swept along with her sure narrative skill.
Among the dancers Larry located Lucy’s gray-blonde head brushing the dark sleekness of Philip Kenyon’s. He was the Green network salesman whom Larry remembered from the first night at the Daughertys’ when he had called on Lucy about the lawsuit. Her arm relaxed on his collar, and Larry saw that they danced easily and well, her high, flat breasts conforming to his dark blue concavity. The music trickled to a close, and Kenyon must have said something which flushed her amber skin. As the band started, nostalgically sobbing As Time Goes By, she returned, smiling, to his arms.
Bemrose motioned Larry to move closer. “They make a nice couple. They used to go dancing before we were married,” he said.
“Are you trying to fix her up?”
“Sometimes I feel as if she were my daughter,” Bemrose confessed. “She must have missed going dancing after she married me. She was a little young to settle down. I realize it now.”
Lucy fluttered a hand at him from the floor, and he smiled back at her.
“You’re not in mothballs yet. For Chris’ sake——”
“I’m glad Kenyon is around. He’s a nice fellow to take her dancing. Especially now that I can’t.” Bemrose rearranged his legs.
“What are you going to do, hand her all the fun while you play papa?” Larry laughed. “Whose idea is this anyway? Lucy’s?”
But Bessie motioned him to be quiet. Lucy and Kenyon, knit in quiet conversation, were on their way to the table.
Lucy drew up a chair close to Arthur, freshened his highball with some soda, picked up his napkin from the floor, and solicitously asked whether he were tired. Her cool beauty reassured Larry. She never looked lovelier than in the sheer black dress she was wearing. It furnished solemn contrast to her light eyes and gave the gray-blonde hair a dreamlike quality.
Kenyon, chatting happily with Bessie, took on her tone as he pitched his amiability to hers. He was an adaptable man who reflected the personality of others and unconsciously imitated their speech and gestures. When a principal figure walked off the scene, Kenyon became neutral as a photographer’s background.
Lucy, noting Arthur’s hand shake on his highball glass, asked the waiter to give him a straw. While she was ordering drinks for the rest of them, Larry saw the carefully tailored sleeve of a man at the next table slip around the bosom of the girl who was with him. He reached greedily for her left breast, and when she tore his hand away, looked pained and helpless.
“Why do you always have to drink too much?” she asked peevishly.
“Don’t sound like your mother,” he complained. “Unpleasant bitch!”
His daughter shoved her napkin toward him as if pushing away something loathsome. She was kodachrome pretty, with red hair.
He grabbed her arm, clearing a set of heavy silver bracelets. “You’re grown up now. You might as well know that men—” He clawed her breast, clutching the gold cloth of her dress. “They’ll want to sleep with you, Baby.”
Frantically she called to the waiter. “He’ll pay the check. I have to catch a train back to school.” She took time to daub her nose while he fumbled in a confusion of bills and silver.
Larry used the whiskey in front of him to purify his palate. He saw Arthur’s glance follow Lucy’s dark dress as it threaded the tables. She was going out to phone Marge Daugherty, who had been sick again. Bessie left to dance with Phil Kenyon, and Bemrose and Larry were alone.
He stirred uneasily and addressed Bemrose, “I don’t know whether this is the time to bring it up——”
Arthur encouraged him to go on.
“You and Lucy seem to be making a go of it, and I don’t want to do anything to upset it,” Larry continued.
Silently Arthur waited for him to finish, refusing to help. His hand shook as he reached for an ash tray.
“I don’t want to interfere, you understand, not if things are going better with you and Lucy——”
Arthur shrugged. “That depends on what you mean by better.”
“I can’t stall Janice any longer,” Larry complained. “She’s been after me for weeks. She phones, she wires, she writes—” Larry’s palms felt warm. “I don’t want her to bother you, fellow, not if you’re all set with Lucy.”
“We go to bed together. In spite of these.” He kicked his crutches. “I’m not precisely an acrobat, but— So far she hasn’t complained.”
Bemrose’s shoulder twitched, and his lip began to jerk. He covered his face. After three or four minutes he said bitterly, “What does Janice want of me?”
“Forget it, Arthur. I’ll tell her you’re in no condition——”
“What good does she think I would do her? I suppose she’d like to wheel me around Central Park on Sunday mornings.”
“She’d like to come up and see you some weekend, that’s all. She doesn’t expect you to take her to night clubs.”
“What did you write her?” Arthur asked sharply. “Did you tell her the truth, that Lucy bathes and dresses me every morning and undresses me at night, that she waits on me hand and foot?”
“I spared her the part about Lucy undressing you. No use torturing the girl. No, I wrote her you had changed.”
“I’ll say so. She ought to see me try to walk from here to the door. She’d get a shock all right.”
“I didn’t mean your sickness. I meant really changed inside, the way she’d like. No devil driving you. Not pushing to be Number One. Easy and nice. I figured the way you are now— Well, she ought to know about it.”
Arthur shook his head. “What kind of deal would it be for her? Figure it out for yourself. She’s waited a long time. She deserves a decent break from some guy. I had something good to offer her once, but I was too dumb and self-absorbed to see it. What can I give her now except a brokendown nervous system?” He felt uncertainly for his coat pocket, and Larry knew the speech had been hard for him.
“I figured Janice hasn’t found the going easy lately, and it might cheer her up to come to New York.”
“Anything wrong?”
“Yes, her brother’s been sick.”
“I’m sorry. She’s crazy about her brother.”
“Her letters sound as if she’s broken up. I thought if she came up some weekend and got her mind on something else——”
“Not just now, Larry. Neither of us could take it. Wait a little while. What I’ve got with Lucy is working pretty well right now. She’s given up the idea of any high romance with me, and as long as I treat her considerately, she’s willing to put up with my needs. That’s quite a good deal. I’m not easy to live with these days.”
“Is it enough? Do you want to settle for it?” Larry asked.
“I know it’s not the big thing, but when you have the big thing at home, you’re exposed. I’ve been ducking that kind of exposure most of my life. I don’t want to go around with my thalamus aching. I’d rather save the emotional turmoil for trial work. I’d rather pour it out in a courtroom where it has more of a chance of repaying me.”
Lucy was back, and Larry rose to pull out her chair. “I’ll write Washington on that matter,” he promised Arthur. “They’ll be disappointed not to see you over the weekend, but I’ll try to present your views.”
“Are you two talking business?” Lucy asked absentmindedly.
Phil Kenyon was back, leaning over her. “Save the next dance for me, Sug.”
The band played a rhumba, and they left the table, while Arthur devoted himself to Bessie with diplomatic smoothness. He made Bess feel as if his entire friendship with Larry depended on her, and from now on it was going to be the three of them, not the two of them any longer. Under Bemrose’s suave handling, her old antagonisms melted and her dark lips played delightedly over the flawless teeth. The curls on her forehead bobbed in quick, excited shakes as she agreed with Arthur about Larry quitting Tammany and hooking up with the A.L.P. Things were fine and easy between Bess and Arthur. She sipped at his charm, lingering over its bouquet, and rewarded him with an animation she usually kept from strangers.
Together they eulogized Elizabeth Brett and her good, female earthiness. Even when he and Liz fought the hardest, he enjoyed her, Bemrose maintained. He liked women with conviction and taste. His manner left no doubt that he bracketed Bessie with this chosen group.
Flushed with the subtle flattery Bemrose had lavished on her, Bess asked Larry to dance, although she knew he didn’t care much about it. On the floor she complimented the one-step he had learned twenty years ago, and pressed her soft warmth against him, circling his neck. Spelled by Bemrose she seemed to mesmerize herself into thinking of Larry as a romantic figure.
“They’re happy.” She sighed. “I think he’s charming to her. And she’s nice. Before he asks for anything, she hands it to him. It’s wonderful how she understands.”
A pocket of traffic pinned them to their spot on the floor, and Larry overheard a man say, “Just like old times, isn’t it, Sug? I used to get mighty lonesome.”
The voice continued, “I always liked you best in black, Sug.”
Larry wondered about Lucy. He wondered how long she’d be content to cushion Arthur’s disability, nursing him with every gentle comfort she had, sacrificing her own desires to make him feel more secure. It was hard to penetrate Lucy’s fortress of reserve. Larry wasn’t at all sure how strong her desires were. Kenyon’s might be a different matter, but whether or not Lucy complied with them——
“I think it’s sweet the way he invites a friend along to dance with her,” Bessie said. “I think it’s nice that he wants her to have a good time. Some men would be sensitive—” She nudged him. “Look at that hair-do, Larry. The pink feathers!”
But Larry was indifferent to the fashion this season of killing and stuffing love birds for decorative use in the hair. He was conscious of Bemrose alone at the edge of the dance floor, his shoulder twitching and his lip moving in sudden jerks. At this moment Arthur strained to find Lucy among the dancers as he twisted and knotted the napkin she had picked up from the floor for him during the last intermission. Every nerve worked overtime while he waited, tensely, for her to come back and sit next to him.
Larry wondered how much guts it had taken for Bemrose to turn down the chance of seeing Janice. He was glad to have given him the chance. No matter how much conflict the decision cost, it must have been flattering to feel wanted, even for a little while, strongly and passionately desired by a woman. It must be good to know that Janice was still around waiting for word from him.
“Fun to go dancing, isn’t it, Larry?” Bess’s plump fingers wooed the back of his neck. “I’m glad you’re my husband, Larry.”
He felt the roll of flesh above her waist as he drew her closely toward him. “A little too much of you here maybe,” he said, pinching her, “but as wives go, not bad. Not at all bad.”