Sloane still hadn’t shown up, and Jack was puttering around in the shop. “Thanks a million, Dan,” he said when I came in with his cleaning. “How much was it?”
I told him and he paid me.
“How you comin’ with that gun?” he asked me.
“I’m about down to the polishing stage on the barrel,” I told him. “I’ve still got to dress off the receiver and trigger guard. A couple more days and I can blue it. Then I’ll finish up the stock.”
“You get a kick out of that stuff, don’t you?”
“It’s kind of fun,” I said. “Gives me something to do besides drink beer.”
“Let me show you the gun I’m takin’,” he said.
We went on into the back of the shop. He took a converted military weapon out of one of the cubbyholes.
“Eight-mm German Mauser,” he said.
“Good cartridge,” I told him. I looked the piece over. Somebody’d done a half-assed job of conversion on it, but it had all the essentials. “It’ll do the job for you, Jack.”
“Oh, hey, look at this.” He reached back into another bin and came out with his hand full of .45 automatic. The damned thing looked like a cannon. He stood there grinning, pointing that monster right at my belly. I don’t like having people point guns at me—even as a joke. The goddamn things weren’t made to play with. I was still holding the Mauser, but I was being careful with the muzzle.
“Let’s see it,” I said, holding out my left hand.
He pulled back the hammer with the muzzle still pointed at me. His face got a little funny.
Slowly, with just my right hand, I raised the Mauser until it was pointing at him. I thumbed off the safety. It was like being in a dream.
“All right, Jack,” I said softly, “let’s count to three and then find out which one of these bastards Sloane forgot to unload.”
“Christ, Danny,” he said, quickly turning the .45 away from me. “I never thought of that.”
I lowered the Mauser and slipped the safety back on. Jack hadn’t called me Danny since we were very little kids.
“You ain’t mad, are you?” he asked, sounding embarrassed.
“Hell, no.” I laughed. Even to me it sounded a little hollow.
We checked both guns. They were empty. Still, I think it all took some of the fun out of Jack’s day. We put the guns away and went back out into the pawnshop.
“Where the hell is that damned Sloane anyway?” he said to cover the moment.
“Probably visiting Helen What’s-her-name,” I said. I’d run into Sloane and Helen a few times, and I didn’t like her. Maybe it was because of Claudia.
“I wouldn’t doubt it a goddamn bit. Say, that reminds me, you want to go on a party?”
“I’m almost always available for a party,” I said with more enthusiasm than I really felt. I wanted to get past that moment in the back room as badly as he did.
“It’s Sloane’s idea really. That’s why I kind of wanted to wait for him to show up, but piss on him. He owns this house out in Milton that he rents out—furnished. The people who were livin’ there just moved out, and the new people aren’t due in until the first of the month—Wednesday.”
“What’s all this real estate business got to do with a party?” I asked.
“I’m gettin’ to it. Anyway, the place needs cleanin’—you know, sweep, mop, vacuum, mow the lawn—that sort of shit.”
“That’s your idea of a party?”
“Keep your pants on. Now, Sloane’ll provide the beer and the booze and some steaks and other stuff.”
“And brooms, and mops, and lawnmowers, too, I hope,” I said.
“All right, smart ass. Here’s where the party comes in. We each bring a tomato—Sloane’ll bring Helen, I’ll bring Sandy, and you can bring What’s-her-name. We’ll bag on over there tomorrow afternoon about four, hit the place a lick or two—the girls can get the inside, and we’ll do the outside—and then it’s party-time. Give me and Sloane a perfect excuse to get away from the wives.”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure Clydine would go for the domestic scene,” I said. “That’s not exactly her bag.”
“Ask her,” Jack said. “I bet she goes for it. Where else can you stir up a party on Sunday afternoon?”
“I’ll ask her,” I said. It was easier than arguing with him. “But I’m not making any promises.”
“I’ll bet she goes for it,” he said.
“We’ll see.”
We batted it around for about half an hour, and then Sloane called. He was still tied up. Jack grumbled a bit but promised to hang on. I wanted to swing on by the trailer court to check my mail, and he asked me to drop the cleaning off at his trailer so Marg could hang it up before it got wrinkled. I took his clothes on out to my car again and drove on up the Avenue toward the court.
That whole business with the guns had been just spooky as hell. “Maybe someday I’ll just decide that you’re no good, and I’ll take my gun and shoot you. Bang! just like that, and you’ll be dead, and I’ll betcha you wouldn’t like that at all.” When had I said that to Jack? Somewhere back in the long, shabby morning of our childhood. The words came echoing down to me, along with a picture of a dog rolling over and over in the snow. I tried to shrug it off.
I saw McKlearey’s car in the lot at the Green Lantern Tavern about two blocks from the court, and I decided that if he was still there when I came back, I’d haul in and buy him a beer. If we were going to go hunting together, I was going to have to make some kind of effort to get along with him. I still didn’t much like him though.
When I drove past Jack’s trailer, I saw the two little girls out in their play-yard, and I waved at them. I parked at my place and checked my mail—nothing, as usual. Then I slung Jack’s cleaning over my shoulder and hiked on up to his trailer. Maybe I could promote some lunch out of Marg if she didn’t have a whole trailerful of gossiping neighbors the way she usually did.
As I came up to the trailer, I glanced through the front window. I saw that mirror back in the hallway I’d noticed the first time I’d visited. I’d meant to tell Jack about it, but I’d forgotten. The angle from where I was standing gave me a view of part of the bedroom. I had visions of Margaret unveiling her monumental breasts to the scrutiny of casual passersby. I straightened up and craned my neck to see just how much of the bedroom you could really see.
Margaret was on the bed with McKlearey. They were both bare-ass naked, and their hands were awfully busy.
I have my faults, God knows, but being a Peeping Tom is not one of them. I think I was actually frozen to the spot. You hear about that, and I’ve always thought it was pure nonsense, but I honestly couldn’t move. Even as I watched, Lou raised up over her and came down between her widely spread thighs. Her huge, dark nippled breasts began to bob rhythmically in a kind of counterpoint to Lou’s bouncing, hairy buttocks. Her head rolled back and forth, her face contorted into that expression that is not beautiful unless you are the one who is causing it. I don’t think I’d ever fully realized how ugly the mating of humans can look to someone who isn’t involved in it. Even dogs manage to bring it off with more dignity.
I turned around and walked on back to my trailer, suppressing a strong urge to vomit. I went inside and closed the door. I laid Jack’s clothes carefully on the couch, went to the kitchen and poured myself a stiff blast of whiskey. Then, holding the glass in my hand, I took a good belt out of the bottle. I put the bottle down and drank from the glass. It didn’t even burn going down.
The phone rang. It was Clydine.
“I’ve been trying to get you all morning,” she said accusingly. “Where have you been?”
“I was busy,” I said shortly.
She started to tell me about some article she’d just read in some New Left journal she was always talking about. I grunted in appropriate places, leaning over the sink to watch Jack’s trailer out of the kitchen window. Even from here, I could see the whole damn thing rocking. I’ll bet you coul
d walk through any trailer court in town and tell who was going at it at any given moment. Old Lou had staying power though—I had to admit that.
“Are you listening to me?” Clydine demanded.
“Sure, kid,” I said. “I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“We’ve been invited to a party.”
“What kind of a party?”
“Probably a sex orgy,” I told her bluntly. “My brother and another guy and their girlfriends—it’s in a house.”
“I thought your brother was married.”
“So’s the other guy,” I said. I told her the details.
“No swapping?” It sounded like a question—or maybe an ultimatum, I don’t know.
“I doubt it. I’ve met the girls—one of them would probably dig that sort of stuff, but I’m pretty sure the other one wouldn’t. You want to go?”
“Why not? I’ve never been to an orgy.”
“Come on, Clydine,” I said. “It’s like being spit on. They’re not inviting you to meet their wives—just their mistresses.”
“So? I’m your mistress, aren’t I? Temporarily at least.”
“It’s different. I’m not married.”
“Danny, honestly. Sometimes you can be the squarest guy in the world. I think I might get a kick out of it. Maybe I can catch some of the vibrations from their sneaky, guilty, sordid, little affairs.”
“You’re a nut, do you know that? This thing tomorrow has all the makings of a sight-seeing trip through a sewer.”
“Boy, you’re sure in a foul humor,” she said. “What’s got you burn-tripped now?”
“My brother pulled a gun on me.”
“He what?”
“Just a bad joke. Forget it. Are you sure you want to go on this thing tomorrow?”
“Why not?”
“That may just be the world’s stupidest reason for doing anything,” I told her. “Hey, let’s go to a drive-in movie tonight.”
“What the hell for?”
“I want to neck,” I said. “No hanky-panky. I just want to sit in the car and eat popcorn and drink root beer and neck—like we were both maybe sixteen or something.”
“That’s a switch. Well, why not?—I mean, sure.” She paused, then said rather tentatively, “you want me to get all gussied up—like it was a real—well—date or something?” She sounded embarrassed to say the word.
“Yeah, why don’t you do that? Wear a dress. I’ll even put on a tie.”
“Far out,” she said.
“And wear your contacts. Leave those hideous goggles at home.”
“Are you sure we aren’t going to—well—I mean, I wouldn’t want to lose my contacts.” I’d asked her before why she didn’t wear contact lenses. She told me she had them but didn’t wear them because they popped out when she made love. “I don’t know why,” she’d said, “they just pop out.” I’d laughed for ten minutes, and she’d gotten mad at me.
“They’re perfectly safe,” I said. “Hang up now so I can call my brother and tell him you want to go to his little clambake tomorrow.”
“Bye now.” She hung up, then she called right back.
“What time tonight?”
I told her.
I opened myself a beer and sat down at the kitchen table. What in the hell was I mixed up in anyhow? This whole damned situation had all the makings of a real messy blow-up. Christ Almighty, you needed a damned scoreboard just to keep track of who was screwing who—whom. When they all caught up with each other, it could wind up like World War III with bells on it, and I was going out in the woods with these guys—every one of them armed to the teeth. Shit O’Deare!
I didn’t belong in this crowd. But then I didn’t belong with a guy like Stan either, with the chic little gatherings and the little drama groups. Nor probably with my little Bolshevik sweetheart with her posters and pamphlets and free love. Nor with the phony artsy crowd with the paste-on beards and the Latvian folk-music records. Maybe for guys like me there just aren’t any people to really be with. Maybe if they were really honest, everybody would admit the same—that all this buddy-buddy crap or “interaction” shit was just a dodge to cover up the fact that they’re all absolutely alone. Maybe nobody’s got anybody, and maybe that’s what we’re all trying to hide from. Now there’s an ugly little possibility to face up to in the middle of a cool day in August.
Finally Lou left. I waited a while longer and then took the cleaning up to Jack’s trailer. Marg pulled a real bland face. She’d be a tiger in a poker game. We talked a few minutes, and then I drove back over to Mike’s place and went back to work on the rifle. At least that was something I could get my hands on.
10
I picked up Clydine about three thirty the next afternoon, and we drove on out to Milton for the combination Gl-party-sex-orgy Sloane had cooked up. I was still a little soured on the whole thing, but Clydine seemed to think it would be a kind of campy gas to watch a couple of Establishment types and what she persisted in calling “their sordid little affairs.”
“You’re beginning to sound like T. S. Eliot,” I told her.
She ignored that.
“What kind of a cat is your brother?” she asked me. “Is he anything like you?”
“Jack? Hell no,” I snorted. “He’s a couple years older than I am. He was in trouble a lot when he was a kid. Then six years in the Navy right after high school. Married three times. Works in a trailer lot—part-time sales and general flunky. Drinks beer most of the time because he can’t afford whiskey. Chases women. Screws a lot. He can charm the birds right out of the trees when he wants to. Something of an egomaniac. I guess that covers it.”
“Typical Hard Hat, huh?” she said grimly.
“Look, my little daffodil of the downtrodden, one of the things you’ll learn as you grow older is that group labels don’t work. You say Hard Hat, and you get a certain picture. Then you close your mind. But you scream bloody murder when some fortyish guy in a suit looks at you and says ‘Hippie’ and then closes his mind. These goddamn labels and slogans are just a cop-out for people who are too lazy to think or don’t have the equipment. Your labels won’t work on my brother. He’s completely nonpolitical.”
“You know,” she said quietly, “I wouldn’t take that from anybody but you. I think it’s because I know you don’t care. Sometimes it gives me goose bumps all over—how much you don’t care.”
“Come on,” I said, “don’t get dramatic about it. I’m just at loose ends right now, that’s all.”
“You’d make a terrific revolutionary,” she said. “With that attitude of yours, you could do anything. But that’s inconsistent, isn’t it? To be a revolutionary, you’d have to care about something. Oh, dear.” She sighed mightily.
I laughed at her. Sometimes she could be almost adorable.
“I’m serious,” she said. “What about the other guys?”
“Sloane? A hustler, Petit-bourgeois type.”
“That’s a label, too, isn’t it?” she demanded.
“Now you’re learning. Calvin Sloane is a very complex person. He was probably fat, unloved, and poor as a child. He went right to the root of things—money. He’s a pawnbroker, a used-car dealer, a part-owner of several taverns, and God knows what else. Anything that’ll turn a buck. He’s got it made. He uses his money the way a pretty girl uses her body. As long as Sloane’s buying, everything’s OK. Maybe he’s accepted the fact that nobody’s really going to like him unless he pays them for it. He can’t accept honest, free friendship or affection—not even from his wife. That’s why he takes up with these floozies. They’re bought and paid for. He understands them. He can’t really accept any other kind of relationship. Don’t ever tell him this, but I like him anyway—in spite of his money.”
“You sure make it hard to hate the enemy,” she said.
“Walt Kelly once said, ‘We have met the enemy, and he is us.’”
“Who’s Walt Kelly?”
“The
guy who draws Pogo.”
“Oh. I prefer Peanuts.”
“That’s because you’re politically immature,” I told her.
She socked me on the shoulder. I think our popcorn-root-beer-drive-in-movie date the night before had caused us both to revert to adolescence. She’d been almost breathtaking in a skirt, sweater, and ponytail, and without those damned glasses; but I’d stuck to my guns—we’d only necked. Both of us had gone home so worked-up we’d been about ready to climb the walls. She’d made some pretty pointed threats about what she was going to do to me at the orgy.
“What about the women?” she asked. “The concubines?”
“Helen—that Sloane’s trollop—is a pig. She’s got a mind like a sewer and a mouth to match. Even in the circles she moves in, she’s considered stupid since she does all of her thinking, I’m told, between her legs. Her husband’s in the Air Force, and he’s maniacally jealous, but she cheats on him anyway. I think she cheats just for the sake of cheating. I’ve about halfway got a hunch that this little blowout today was her idea. She likes her sex down and dirty, and probably she’s been thrilled by orgies in some of the pornography she’s always reading—undoubtedly moving her lips while she does—and she figures diddling in groups has just got to be dirtier than doing it in pairs. Maybe she figures to get a bunch-punch out of the deal.”
“Bunch-punch?”
“Multiple intercourse—gang-bang.”
“Oh. What about the other one?”
“Sandy? You got me, kid. She’s good-looking, but she never says anything. You think I’m cool? She’s so cool, she’s just barely alive—or just recently dead, I haven’t decided which. If you can figure her out, let me know.”
We drove on across the Puyallup River bridge and on out toward Fife and Milton.
The house Sloane had out in Milton was a little surprising. I’d half-expected one of those run-down rabbit hutches that are described euphemistically as “rental properties”—not good enough to live in yourself, but good enough to house former sharecroppers or ex-galley-slaves—always provided that they can come up with the hundred and a quarter a month.