“Hello, Luther. How are you; I saw you; you were real fine…how are you?” She tried to get it all in, the months he had been gone, her feelings, a rapport, something that would morally intimidate him before she asked, insure success for her mission.
He tried to be jocular. He gave a wry grin and a sidewise bobble of the head, the way two buddies who had had a schoolyard fight might embarrassingly grin as they are forced to shake hands and make up. It didn’t take. He handed the towel back to the shadow who had proffered it. “Hi. Uh, how’s Asa?” He needn’t have asked. It showed in every dark line of her face. His words came with too much hipness, too much flip nonchalance, as though it was small talk. How do you like the weather? Are you having a good time your first trip to New York? Did you like my latest record? Is your husband dead yet?
She answered him with her eyes.
Shelly saw mist in her eyes. He was sure she would not cry. That wasn’t Ruth Kemp, however else she might debase herself before the boy her husband had befriended.
But she answered him with her eyes.
“Well, uh, you gotta excuse me.” He tried brushing past her, while the group watched, sensing something between the boy and the woman. “I—uh—, I’ve got this, uh, show to do off the fire ’scape, I said I, uh, told them I’d be—goddammit! Shelly, get her outta here!”
He tried to get past.
She did not move.
Shelly felt a hand on his sleeve and caught sight of Jean Friedel with a briefcase under her arm. She leaned toward him, whispering, “I came over with some papers for you to sign from the Colonel. What’s, what’s going on?”
Shelly nudged her quiet, and turned his attention back to Stag and Ruth Kemp.
She had not moved. The boy had backed up when she would not let him pass. Now he stood uncertainly, nervously, trying to gauge the texture of the situation, inherently aware he had to get away, but also aware of the emotional charge in the air.
“Luther, Asa passed on two days ago. He didn’t know what was going on too well toward the end, but he asked for you. He was all…all doped up by the doctors, Luther…but he asked me to come see you, to get you to…to…”
She turned away. He was staring at her as though she was speaking some incomprehensible dialect; he was not going to help her say it. She almost gave up. At the turning-instant, that quarter-beat in which decisions are made, she turned back.
“He died, Luther. He died, the kindest man I ever knew.” She was not hysterical, not even pleading; it was a deep pulling at each word to get the full meaning across. “My husband, Luther. He died of a broken heart, do you know that? He died of what everyone did to him; he was a good man and he never wanted to let people down, and that’s all anyone ever did to him. Let him down, don’t you see?”
Stag stared around the wings impatiently. “So what’s that got to do with me?”
“He asked me to come see you, Luther. He wanted you to sing the hymns at his service. He didn’t know what was going on most of the time—he was in so much pain they had him all doped up—but he said that to me when I saw him the—the last time…before…”
“Stag.” Shelly cut in firmly. “We can catch a late plane after the last show; I’ll talk to the Colonel, he’ll arrange with the theatre to fill in for a day, we can be back in time to—”
Stag waved him to silence. The Lord of the Manor waved his serf to silence. “We aren’t goin’ anywhere.” He looked straight at Ruth Kemp, and there was no more nervousness now. Up till this moment it had been inconvenience and an awkward situation. Now his position in life was being threatened, however momentarily. “Sorry, I’ve got a show to do. I’ve got a cont—”
“It was Asa’s last wish, Luther, that you sing.”
Stag Preston’s face lost its theatrical comfort. The naturally cruel set of the mouth reappeared, the hollows in the cheeks deepened. “Pack it in. I’ve got a show to do. I don’t owe you a goddam thing; you and Asa had it from me, all you wanted when I was snot-poor. Now I’m out of all that. I ain’t, I’m not going back to it; not even for a day. So g’wan, blow! Beat it, split and let me work, will you?”
No one spoke. Jean Friedel’s hand tightened spasmodically on Shelly’s arm. Even the sound of The Palace, emptying and re-filling, faded back to surface noise, as though the scene itself was waiting, listening.
Ruth Kemp began speaking. It was a great boulder rumbling down a hill, beginning far off softly and louder and louder till it became an avalanche. It was a dynamo hurling itself to life, spinning sibilantly at first then whining at top-point efficiency till the sound mounted up and up and glass shattered.
“Look at you. Look at what you are. You aren’t anything to be proud of. You think you’ve gotten away from being poor, because you wear silk clothes. But you’re lower than ever. You have no heart, no soul. Look around you, see these people? They’re as foul as you. They don’t care what you do as long as they can make the money. But we know you back home. We hear what you do.
“You’re an animal, Luther. You were always an animal, but we needed something to love, we wanted to be hurt, and you were always ready to hurt us. But you’re not human…you’re too selfish for that. You won’t live long…you can’t live long.
“God won’t allow it. He’ll find you out soon enough.”
She said more, but it wasn’t necessary. She belabored her point as those who live outside one-line put-down New York always do. But she had made her point.
She named him for all to see.
An abomination in the eyes of God and Man.
She stripped him of all the sham and glitter-pretense he wore onstage. He was, undeniably, an animal.
Ruth Kemp left, finally, without tears.
Tears in the dust of drained emotions.
Jean Friedel wanted to say something, now that they had left the theatre and were in the dim rear of the cocktail lounge. She wanted to say something pertinent, now that the steam-bath heat of backstage was gone and the air-conditioned stillness of the lounge surrounded them. She felt the need to declare herself in regard to what she had witnessed, now that Stag was somewhere else and her hand was wrapped around a martini. She wanted desperately to remove the sight of pain and loathing in Shelly’s eyes but she could not. With that peculiar insight women possess, she knew she should be still. Not a word. Not a sound. No confusion; no inserting herself as another factor in his thinking. It would only annoy him, infuriate him, muddle his thoughts. So she sat very quietly, smoking and sipping from her glass, realizing that for the first time Sheldon Morgenstern meant a very small something to her; he looked good to her; she wanted to do for him…something, anything that might clarify this attraction she felt. It was not love, she had no doubts about that—her declaration so long ago about their relationship still held—but there was a bond between them. The bond of two people who have glimpsed degradation and Hell together and who can reminisce about it. Not love, but something a lifetime deeper. Recognition. Empathy. The honest emotion of need and the unsullied desire to help. Jean Friedel felt more like a woman, less like a pornographically-oriented machine, than she had in a great while.
But she sat very still and watched, waiting for a flicker of light in Shelly’s face. A flicker that would signal his emergence from thoughts that even looked dark and swirling from where she sat, outside his mind. Cut off, but so aware of what he was doing inside himself that it was painful to her.
She sucked in her underlip and reached out with her mind for him. He was nowhere to be found. Out of touch, out of sight, out of mind, deep within himself.
What can do this to a man like him? she thought. He’s not the kind who breaks up; he’s too much the laugher, too flip. But perhaps that’s the kind who hurt worst. What has he been going through with Stag to get this way…such hurt? Such very much hurt. What is he thinking?
Thoughts:
Dear God, what have I done? What have we all done? I’m as bad as he is. I’ve lied for him; I’ve covered all his trac
ks…and for what, for what? So he could get bigger, too big to destroy. She was right, he isn’t human. No one with a heart could have turned her down, no matter how she’s bigoted. But she never hurt him…the both of them, she and Asa Kemp, all they ever gave him was affection and help. What sort of mentality has he got? What kind of mind turns down a request like that? Nothing can write it off; I can’t say he’s afraid to go back to poverty, because he’s beaten that already. It doesn’t figure. It’s like trying to figure the thought-processes of an infant, or a cat. It’s alien, terrible—what have I done?
Thoughts. By Sheldon Morgenstern. Flagellant.
Then finally, a rationale. A means through the maze.
The labyrinth develops a pattern, and an emergence into some sort of sanity. Shelly said to himself:
I’ve got to get out. I’ve been as bad as he, and for what? I’ve got a car and a woman who isn’t a woman and no soul of my own.
He lit a cigarette, alone there on the plain of his thoughts, with the wind of remorse whistling in and out, lifting his hair lightly, then dying down, allowing the heat off those plains to bake out his thoughts.
I’ve got to get out. It’s been so long, too long, too hard the way I’ve done it. Poppa. You knew, didn’t you? You knew, Pop. You wanted me to be something I could never be, but you knew. You wanted me to stay away from this life with its substitutes.
Substitute hipness for emotions, substitute sharp clothes and possessions for work that matters, that keeps a guy clean, substitute cigarettes for muscles. Bad, it’s all bad. The people I dig, the places I go, the whole scene. It stinks. It’s like a pool of swamp water somebody dumped old factory chemicals into, and one day a monster comes out of the slime. That’s what the kid is. He’s a slime-thing I created with Freeport and the hip scene. He’s a product, that’s all. He’s no damn good, but he’s only what we made him. And how good can I be if I can stand still for a creation like that?
No good, that’s how good. No earthly good.
I’ve got to get free.
Then Joe Costanza walked up to the table. He stared down at Shelly for a while, wondering just how a man’s eyes could go watery and glazed like that. Then he turned to Jeanie Friedel, and she shrugged softly, worry there, and bit her underlip again. She was out of touch, and so was Joe Costanza. Shelly’s cigarette hung unnoticed in his mouth, the ash dangling…then a crevice in the gray matter…and it tumbled scattering all over his jacket, the table and into his drink.
Costanza said, very softly, “Shelly?”
No answer. How deep a man must go, sometimes, to see himself and the leech world that feeds off him.
“Shel? Hey, Shelly?”
A rustle, a shift, and the eyes returned, bringing with them reason and the man. Back from himself. Shivering.
Shelly’s eyes focused and he looked at Jean without realizing Joe Costanza was there; then, as her mood and the level of her eyes indicated something was different, he moved his head slightly and caught sight of his assistant. “Uh. Oh, yeah, Joe.” Weary. Very weary. A long trip. An unpleasant ride. “What’s the matter, Joe?”
Costanza spoke gently, as though realizing he was dealing with a tired voyager (an invalid?), “There was a call for you, Shelly. Carlene at your place. She asked for you, and said it was important. I think she wants you to come home for something. I figured you’d be in the nearest bar.”
He was sorry he had added the last.
But it went over Shelly’s head.
“Thanks, Joe.” Absently. Very absently. There were greater problems than Carlene, the woman who was not a woman. “I’ll call her.”
Costanza left, and Shelly excused himself for a moment.
When he reached her, all she said, coolly, was, “Would you come up for a minute; I’d like to tell you something.”
He said he would cab over, and hung up.
Jean sat waiting, her glass almost empty. “Your cigarette’s out.”
He threw the dead butt into the ashtray and asked, “Will you wait here? It’ll only take me a half hour or so. I don’t know what’s up, but I’d like to talk to someone. Carlene won’t do. Will you wait?”
She nodded. “I’ll have a couple more. Take your time. I’ll be here when you get back.” She didn’t smile. It wasn’t the time.
Shelly left the bar, blinking into the sun, and caught a cab on 47th Street.
When he got to the building he realized his mind had been dead all through the cab ride. Safety valve. Don’t blow the fuses. Automatic switch-off, cut-in circuits, save the total mechanism, don’t burn out.
When he unlocked the door, he knew instantly what Carlene had to tell him. The bags were packed, the matching set of steel-gray Samsonite plane luggage. Packed, by the door. She was dressed in a severe navy blue suit with a small white pill-box hat squarely on the top of her head. She sat with her legs crossed, smoking, the apartment very clean, all the ashtrays save the one she used as clean as when she had come to Shelly.
He closed the door and walked across to the chair facing the sofa, where she sat. He put himself lightly into the chair, and waited for her to speak. He knew it, so why not let her present it in her own way?
“I’ve got to be going, Shelly,” she said. Oddly, she was nervous about it, hesitant, as though she was doing something she was ashamed of relating. But that was out of character for her.
How could a toaster apologize for popping up the toast?
How could a gum-ball machine say I’m sorry for issuing a gum-ball and a penny prize?
How could an IBM cluck regrets at its encoding processes?
She was leaving, as he knew she would one day, and she was departing from her giving-without-giving character by being ashamed (was that what it was?) in front of him.
Shelly sighed a sigh of finality. It was over, this part of it, and he didn’t care. He had come to terms with himself in the bar. He knew who he was, at last; and that meant recognition, nomenclature, for everything and everyone around him. He knew what she was, and he could not muster up honest regret that she was going.
“Okay, I suppose that takes care of it. Do you need anything? Need any money?” He made a tentative move to his wallet. She stopped him with a half-completed motion.
“No…no, I’m all right. I—I just wanted you to know I had to leave, I had to go, Shelly. It didn’t seem right to just pick up and move out without saying something.”
There was no more. They didn’t say Well, take care of yourself or Let me hear from you, or even It’s been interesting. It was all said imperceptibly by her embarrassment, and his silence, his acquiescence. He understood and so did she.
He had a suspicion where she was going, into whose home and whose arms she was placing herself. Even that didn’t matter; in fact, it was fitting and proper.
Then she left, and Shelly smoked a cigarette.
It was just another facet of the life that had equipped and aimed him for the creation of something like a Stag Preston. Her leaving was the severing of another link with the hip, clipster past he had come to despise in the past few months, so flamingly the last few hours.
He made a conclusion about the animals in Jungle York:
It’s true. Animals can sniff each other out. Best of all the human animals. They always seek their own kind. A jackal knows another jackal by the little signs, the smells. And when an animal has mistaken a changeling for one of its own kind, it bolts away when it recognizes the shift away from that kind of beast. When an animal changes, its mates and friends slink away. Don’t be near the sinking sinner. It can be contagious, this reverting.
She must have smelled it on me the last few months. The loss of hipness. It was enough to drive her away. I’ve lost my hunting, my prowling, and my hunting prowling partners.
What was it the poet said: sniffing strange. That has to be it. They go away.
There must be some hope for me. I must be getting well, if they bolt away. I must be getting well.
Then he put out
the cigarette, put out the lights, closed the door to the apartment, and took a long walk halfway to the lounge where Jean Friedel waited, promising nothing.
He took a cab the rest of the way, received a great deal from her, and even gave a bit of himself, for the first time in so long he could not remember the last time it had happened. And he spent the night at a married friend’s house, sleeping on a sofa the man and his wife had fixed. It was not entirely a good night’s sleep, and he smoked too many cigarettes, but the next morning was clear, very clear, and he felt as though he might like to take a walk in the morning air.
Nor did the orange juice taste bitter.
SIXTEEN
So he told it. He told it all to himself, in a matter of moments as he walked the little redhead through the wings and up the metal stairs to Stag’s dressing room. He thought about Louisville and Asa Kemp, about that first appearance at the Kentucky State Fair, about the look in Stag’s eyes as they had flown away from Louisville. Shelly even remembered what Stag had said.
He had remembered it all, in that moment. Four full years of it. The creating of a talent, the sneak preview in Cleveland where the A&R men had sensed the talent building in the boy once known as Luther. The first gold record, the rush of success, the drinking and girl trouble, the night he had been slapped by the comedienne (what had happened to her? she’d cut one comedy album and then phffft!). Shelly had brought it all back in an instant of vacant thought; the tour, Trudy Quillan and the beating the Colonel had given Stag; the revelation that Stag had lied about his childhood and the gradual realization on Shelly’s part that he had been rotting for many years. The movie deal, the blackmail after Stag had drunkenly made his pornoflick, Stag’s selling off the chunks of his contract, and finally Asa Kemp’s death, the scene with Ruth Kemp, and Carlene’s leaving. It had all seemed so fast. Too fast.
Was it possible?
Could it have been?
Four years?
Yes, that’s what it had been. Four full years, in which Sheldon Morgenstern had become a cipher. He had had no life of his own. His every moment had been devoted to Stag Preston. His sex had been CarleneSex, which was none at all. That had been a draining process, not a giving process. Now she lived with Stag, in an apartment the singer had rented and furnished (under Jean Friedel’s grudging supervision; Paul McCobb, Knoll and Saarinen did not happen to be Stag’s taste; he ran more to Kresge, Woolworth and Lamston, so he had dragooned Jean into doing it for him.) Lots of luck to them both. The cobra and the tiger lie down together.