“A fine kid.” Williams started on the new drink quickly.
“You know how kids are. Not much to do in a town like this, not for kids anyway.”
“I’ve seen the play streets.”
“Aren’t they awful? But what can we do? We’ve got a surprise for you, Williams, Paul and me. Do you know what? We’re buying a place in the country, after all this time, after all these years, getting out, Paul’s quitting television, yes, actually quitting, don’t you think that’s wonderful? And he’s going into writing just like you, Williams, just like you, and we’re living out in Connecticut, it’s a nice little place, we’re going to give him a real test, give Paulie a real chance to write, you think he can write, don’t you, Williams? Don’t you think he’s a damn sweet little writer?”
“Of course I do!” said Williams. “Of course.”
“So Paul’s quitting his damned job, all that crap, and we’re getting out in the country.”
“How soon?”
“Sometime in August. Might have to put it off until September. But the first of the year at the latest.”
Of course! Williams’ spirit lifted. That’ll do it! If they’ll only go away, get out of this town. Paul must have saved enough by now, after all these years. If they’ll only go! If she’ll only let him.
He glanced across at Helen with her bright face that now was bright only because she held certain muscles forever that way, she held them steady and hard, she was not letting go of this new brightness that was like a light bulb in a room after the sun had burned out.
“Your plan sounds terrific,” said Williams.
“Do you really think we can do it, Williams, do you think we can really do it? You think Paul’s a terrific writer, don’t you?”
“Sure I do. You’ve got to try.”
“He can always get his job back if he has to.”
“Of course.”
“So this time we’ll really do it. Get out, take Tom with us, the country’11 do him good, do us all good, cut out the drinking, cut out the night life, and really settle in with a typewriter and ten reams of paper for Paul to fill up. You think he’s a damned good writer, don’t you, Williams?”
“You know I do.”
“Tell me, Mr. Williams,” said Mrs. Mears. “How did you get to be a writer?”
“I liked to read when I was a kid. I started writing every day when I was twelve and kept at it,” he said, nervously. He tried to think of how it had really been at the start. “I just kept at it, a thousand words a day.”
“Paul was the same way,” said Helen quickly.
“You must have a lot of money,” said Mrs. Mears.
But at that moment there was the sound of a key clicking in the door. Williams jumped up involuntarily, smiling, relieved. He smiled at the hallway and the distant door as it opened. He kept smiling when he saw Paul’s shape, and Paul looked wonderful to him coming down the hall into the room. Paul was fine to look at and Williams stuck out his hand and hurried forward, calling his name, feeling happy. Paul strode across the apartment, tall, plumper than a few years ago, his face pink, the eyes abnormally bright, slightly protuberant, faintly bloodshot, and the faint smell of whiskey on his breath. He grabbed Williams’ hand, pumping away and shouting.
“Williams, for God’s sake, it’s good to see you, man! So you called us after all, good to see you, damn it! How you been? You’re getting famous! Christ, have a drink, get some more drinks, Helen, hi there, Mears. Sit down, for God’s sake.”
“I’ve got to be going, I don’t want to intrude,” said Mrs. Mears, edging through the room. “Thanks for letting me come over. Goodbye, Mr. Williams.”
“Williams, Goddamn it, good to see you, did Helen tell you what we plan to do, about leaving town, that is? About the country?”
“She said—”
“Boy, we’re really getting out of this damn town. Summer coming on. Glad to get out of that raping office. I’ve read ten million words of TV crap a year for ten years, don’t you think it’s time I got out, Williams, don’t you think I should’ve gotten out years ago? Connecticut for us! Do you need a drink? Have you seen Tom? Is Tom in his room, Helen? Get ‘im out here, let him talk to Williams here. Gee, Williams, we’re glad to see you. Been telling everyone you’d come to see us. Who’ve you seen in town so far?”
“I saw Reynolds last night.”
“Reynolds, the editor at United Features? How is he? Does he get out much?”
“A little.”
“You know he’s been in his apartment for twelve months, Helen? You remember Reynolds? A nice guy, but army life or something screwed him up. He was afraid to leave his apartment all last year, afraid he’d kill someone, anyone, on the street.”
“He left his apartment last night with me,” said Williams. “Walked me down to the bus line.”
“Hey, that’s all right for Reynolds, glad to hear it. Did you hear about Banks? Killed in an auto accident in Rhode Island last week.”
“No!”
“Yes, sir, damn it, one of the nicest guys in the world, best photographer who ever worked for the big magazines. Really talented, young too, damned young, got drunk and was killed in a crash on his way home. Automobiles, Christ!”
Williams felt as if a great flight of ravens were beating upon the hot air of the room. This was not Paul any more. This was the husband of the strange woman who had moved in after the Piersons went away, sometime in the last three years. Nobody knew where the Piersons had gone. It would do no good to ask this man where Paul was now, this man could not have told anyone.
“Williams, you’ve met our son, haven’t you? Go get Tom, Helen, have him come out!”
The son was fetched, seventeen, silent, into the parlor doorway, where, feeling the drinks come over him rapidly now, Williams stood with a freshly filled glass, weaving slightly.
“This is Tom, Williams, this is Tom.”
“You remember Tom.”
“You remember Williams, Tom?”
“Say hello, Tom.”
“Tom’s a good boy, don’t you think so, Williams?”
Both talking at once, never stopping, always the river, always the rush and the stumbled words and the alcohol blue-flame eyes and the hurrying on. Helen said, “Tom, say a few words of gang jargon for Mr. Williams.”
Silence.
“Tom’s picked it up, he’s got a good mind, a good memory. Tom, say a few words of gang talk for Mr. Williams. Oh, come on, Tom,” said Helen.
Silence. Tom stood tall and looking at the floor in the parlor doorway.
“Come on, Tom,” said Helen.
“Oh, leave him alone, Helen.”
“Why, Paulie, I just thought Williams would like to hear some gang jargon. You know it, Tom, say some for us.”
“If he doesn’t want to he doesn’t want to!” said Paul.
Silence.
“Come on out to the kitchen while I fix myself a drink,” said Paul, moving Williams along by his arm, walking huge beside him.
In the kitchen they swayed together and Paul took hold of Williams’ elbow, shook his hand, talked to him close and quiet, his face like a pig’s that had been crying all afternoon. “Williams, tell me, you think I can make it go, quitting this way? I got a swell novel idea!” He hit Williams’ arm, gently at first, then, with each point of his story, harder. “You like that idea, Williams?” Williams drew back, but his hand was trapped. The fist smashed his arm again and again. “Say, it’ll be good to write again! Write, have free time, and take off some of this fat, too.”
“Don’t do it like Mrs. Mears’ son did.”
“He was a fool!” Paul crushed Williams’ arm tight, tight. In all the years of their friendship they had rarely touched, but now here was Paul gripping, pressuring, petting him. He shook Williams’ shoulder, slapped his back. “In the country, by God, I’ll have time to think, work off this flab! Here in town you know what we do weekends? Kill a quart or two of Scotch between us. Hard to drive out of to
wn weekends, traffic, crowds, so we stick here, get loaded and relax. But that’ll be over, in the country. I want you to read a manuscript of mine, Williams.”
“Oh, Paulie, wait!”
“Stop it, Helen. Williams won’t mind, will you, Williams?”
I won’t mind, thought Williams, but I’ll mind. I’ll be afraid but not afraid. If I were sure I’d find the old Paul in the story somewhere, living and walking around, sober and light and free, sure and quick in his decisions, tasteful in his choices, direct and forceful in his criticism, the good producer but most of all the good friend, my personal god for years, if I could find that Paul in the story, I’d read it in a second. But I’m not sure, and I wouldn’t want to see the new and strange Paul on paper, ever. Paul, he thought, oh, Paul, don’t you know, don’t you realize, that you and Helen will never get out of town, never, never?
“Hell!” cried Paul. “How you like New York, Williams? Don’t like it, do you? Neurotic, you said once. Well, it’s no different than Sioux City or Kenosha. You just meet more people here in a shorter time. How’s it feel, Williams, so high in the world, so famous all of a sudden?”
Now both husband and wife chattered. Getting drunker, their voices collided, their words rose, fell, mixed, quarreled, blended in hypnotic tides, an unending susurrus.
“Williams,” she said. “Williams,” he said. “We’re going,” she said. “God damn you, Williams, I love you! Oh, you bastard, I hate you!” He beat Williams’ arm, laughing. “Where’s Tom?”“Proud of you!” The apartment blazed. The air swarmed with black wings. His arm was beaten senseless. “It’s hard to give up my job, that old check looks good …”
Paul clutched Williams’ white shirt front. Williams felt the buttons pop. It seemed as if Paul, in his pink intensity, were going to hit him. His jowls heaved, his mouth clouded Williams’ glasses with steam. “Proud of you! Love you!” He pumped his arm, struck his shoulder, tore at his shirt, slapped at his face. Williams’ glasses flew off and hit the linoleum with a faint tinkle.
“Christ, I’m sorry, Williams!”
“That’s all right, forget it.” Williams picked up his glasses. The right lens was crazed like a ridiculous spider web. He looked out through it and there was Paul, stunned, apologetic, caught in the insane glass maze trying to get free.
Williams said nothing.
“Paulie, you’re so clumsy!” shrieked Helen.
The telephone and doorbell both rang at once, and Paul was talking and Helen was talking, and Tom was gone somewhere, and Williams thought clearly, I’m not sick, I don’t want to throw up, not really, but I will go to the bathroom now and I will be sick and I will throw up there. And without a word, in the ringing, belling, talking, yelling, in the apologetic confusion, in the panicking friendliness, in the hot rooms, he walked through and beyond what seemed a crowd of people and sedately closed the bathroom door and got down on his knees as if he were going to pray to God, and lifted the toilet seat.
There were three sickening gasps and plunges of his mouth. His eyes tight, tears running from them, he was not sure it was over, he was not certain whether he was gasping for breath or crying, whether these were tears of pain or sadness or not tears at all. He heard the waters vanish away in white porcelain to the sea, and he knelt there, still in an attitude of prayer.
Outside the door, voices. “You all right, you all right, Williams, you okay?”
He fumbled in his coat pocket, drew out his wallet, checked it, saw his return-trip ticket on the train, closed it up, put it in his breast pocket and held his hand tight to it. Then he climbed to his feet, wiped his mouth carefully and stood looking in the mirror at the odd man with the spider-webbed glasses.
Standing before the door, ready to open it, his hand on the brass knob, his eyes clenched shut and his body swaying, he felt that he weighed only ninety-three pounds.
The Best of all Possible Worlds
The two men sat swaying side by side, unspeaking for the long while it took for the train to move through cold December twilight, pausing at one country station after another. As the twelfth depot was left behind, the older of the two men muttered, “Idiot, Idiot!” under his breath.
“What?” The younger man glanced up from his Times.
The old man nodded bleakly. “Did you see that damn fool rush off just now, stumbling after that woman who smelled of Chanel?”
“Oh, her?” The young man looked as if he could not decide whether to laugh or be depressed. “I followed her off the train once myself.”
The old man snorted and closed his eyes. “I too, five years ago.”
The young man stared at his companion as if he had found a friend in a most unlikely spot.
“Did—did the same thing happen once you reached the end of the platform?”
“Perhaps. Go on.”
“Well, I was twenty feet behind her and closing up fast when her husband drove into the station with a carload of kids! Bang! The car door slammed. I saw her Cheshire-cat smile as she drove away. I waited half an hour, chilled to the bone, for another train. It taught me something, by God!”
“It taught you nothing whatsoever,” replied the older man drily. “Idiot bulls, that’s all of us, you, me, them, silly boys jerking like laboratory frogs if someone scratches our itch.”
“My grandpa once said, ‘Big in the hunkus, small in the brain, that is man’s fate.’ ”
“A wise man. But, now, what do you make of her?”
“That woman? Oh, she likes to keep in trim. It must pep up her liver to know that with a little mild eye-rolling she can make the lemmings swarm any night on this train. She has the best of all possible worlds, don’t you think? Husband, children, plus the knowledge she’s neat packaging and can prove it five trips a week, hurting no one, least of all herself. And, everything considered, she’s not much to look at. It’s just she smells so good.”
“Tripe,” said the old man. “It won’t wash. Purely and simply, she’s a woman. All women are women, all men are dirty goats. Until you accept that, you will be rationalizing your glands all your life. As it is, you will know no rest until you are seventy or thereabouts. Meanwhile, self-knowledge may give you whatever solace can be had in a sticky situation. Given all these essential and inescapable truths, few men ever strike a balance. Ask a man if he is happy and he will immediately think you are asking if he is satisfied. Satiety is most men’s Edenic dream. I have known only one man who came heir to the very best of all possible worlds, as you used the phrase.”
“Good Lord,” said the young man, his eyes shining, “I wouldn’t mind hearing about him.”
“I hope there’s time. This chap is the happiest ram, the most carefree bull, in history. Wives and girl friends galore, as the sales pitch says. Yet he has no qualms, guilts, no feverish nights of lament and self-chastisement.”
“Impossible,” the young man put in. “You can’t eat your cake and digest it, too!”
“He did, he does, he will! Not a tremor, not a trace of moral seasickness after an all-night journey over a choppy sea of inner-springs! Successful businessman. Apartment in New York on the best street, the proper height above traffic, plus a long-weekend Bucks Country place on a more than correct little country stream where he herds his nannies, the happy farmer. But I met him first at his New York apartment last year, when he had just married. At dinner, his wife was truly gorgeous, snow-cream arms, fruity lips, an amplitude of harvest land below the line, a plenitude above. Honey in the horn, the full apple barrel through winter, she seemed thus to me and her husband, who nipped her bicep in passing. Leaving, at midnight, I found myself raising a hand to slap her on the flat of her flank like a thoroughbred. Falling down in the elevator, life floated out from under me. I nickered.”
“Your powers of description,” said the young commuter, breathing heavily, “are incredible.”
“I write advertising copy,” said the older. “But to continue. I met let us call him Smith again not two weeks later. Through
sheer coincidence I was invited to crash a party by a friend. When I arrived in Bucks County, whose place should it turn out to be but Smith’s! And near him, in the center of the living room, stood this dark Italian beauty, all tawny panther, all midnight and moonstones, dressed in earth colors, browns, siennas, tans, umbers, all the tones of a riotously fruitful autumn. In the babble I lost her name. Later I saw Smith crush her like a great sunwarmed vine of lush October grapes in his arms. Idiot fool, I thought. Lucky dog, I thought. Wife in town, mistress in country. He is trampling out the vintage, et cetera, and all that. Glorious. But I shall not stay for the wine festival, I thought, and slipped away, unnoticed.”
“I can’t stand too much of this talk,” said the young commuter, trying to raise the window.
“Don’t interrupt,” said the older man. “Where was I?”
“Trampled. Vintage.”
“Oh, yes! Well, as the party broke up, I finally caught the lovely Italian’s name. Mrs. Smith!”
“He’d married again, eh?”
“Hardly. Not enough time. Stunned, I thought quickly, He must have two sets of friends. One set knows his city wife. The other set knows this mistress whom he calls wife. Smith’s too smart for bigamy. No other answer. Mystery.”
“Go on, go on,” said the young commuter feverishly.
“Smith, in high spirits, drove me to the train station that night. On the way he said, ‘What do you think of my wives?’
“‘Wives, plural?’ I said.
“‘Plural, hell,’ he said. ‘I’ve had twenty in the last three years, each better than the last! Twenty, count them, twenty! Here!’ As we stopped at the station he pulled out a thick photo wallet. He glanced at my face as he handed it over, ‘No, no,’ he laughed, ‘I’m not Bluebeard with a score of old theater trunks in the attic crammed full of former mates. Look!’
“I flipped the pictures. They flew by like an animated film. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, the plain, the exotic, the fabulously impertinent or the sublimely docile gazed out at me, smiling, frowning. The flutter-flicker hypnotized, then haunted me. There was something terribly familiar about each photo.