Джон Макдональд - You Live Once

Thus I was grateful to Dodd for being willing and able to give me this chance to enter a world previously denied me. Mary Olan opened a door and the city changed. Sewell, through Dodd, sponsored by Olan, became acceptable. They saw to their indubitable surprise that I unerringly chose the correct fork, that my shoulders were unpadded, that I tied my own bow tie, that I could carry on a conversation that had absolutely nothing to do with helical gears, cutter grinders and industrial abrasives. I soon learned that the old line families thought Dodd’s career with C.P.P. rather daring and eccentric. With law, medicine and banking open to him, he had become a technical man. Works down at one of those new plants beyond the river, doing God knows what. It’s really charming that he could arrange to be sent back home. They ship them around like cattle, you know. That little wife he found somewhere or other actually seems rather sweet. And it seemed so dreadfully obvious that he would marry the Olan girl. Much as I was amused and irritated by the attitude of Old Warren, I was sophomorically delighted to become known and accepted.

It was on my second date with Mary Olan that Nancy Raymond, inhibitions liquidated, bared her distressed soul. A woman with a top sergeant voice had phoned me at the office and given me my orders regarding a party she was giving at the Locust Ridge Club. I checked with Dodd and he said it had been his suggestion. I was to pick up Mary and the four of us could go together. When I phoned Mary I found out that she had been given her orders too.

It was an April Saturday night, a cocktail party for about forty in a private room at the club, then dinner and dancing. My appearance with Mary Olan made it essential that each one of the other guests meet me, categorize me and put me on a mental list for future parties should I pass inspection.

Nancy looked charming in a dinner dress that was exactly the right color and cut for her — a slate blue that enhanced her eyes and emphasized the incredibly fine texture of her skin. After I had been punted from group to group with rugby precision, I found myself in a restful corner with Nancy.

“The man who mixed these martinis belongs at White Sands,” I said.

Nancy was looking beyond me at Dodd, standing with Mary Olan in a group of eight. Mary, laughing heartily, had taken Dodd’s arm.

“Skoal,” Nancy said and thumped two-thirds of a cocktail down her throat in two gulps and handed me her glass. “Please, mister.”

I brought her a new one. She took half of it, said, “To White Sands,” and downed the second half.

“Easy, my lady. These can be poison.”

“Hah! Fade me again, Clint boy.”

“I will not be a party to self-destruction, Nance.”

“I’ll get it my own self.”

“Okay, okay.” It was not happy to watch. I wondered if our Nancy were a lush. I decided no. Female lushes carry the mark on them. Their faces coarsen, their features thicken, they grow fur on the larynx. So it had to be the Mary Olan situation, and an intensification of the strain I had noticed on the first date.

The four of us ate at a table for six with another couple. I was between Nancy and a hollow-eyed brunette with a staccato bray of a laugh which made her husband, across the table, wince visibly each time she tinkled the chandeliers with it. Nancy had somehow managed to get a double martini at the table. When Dodd reached over for it, she wrapped her hand around it. She had reached the glazed state, monosyllabic, practically inert. After too many awkward holes in the conversation, Mary Olan began to carry the ball. She did it well, too. Conversation bounced and pranced, passing back and forth in front of the dead eyes of Nancy Raymond. Mary kept hauling me in by the heels, but I still found time to whisper to Nancy that she should eat something. Her great slab of rare roast beef arrived and was removed untouched.

We were on coffee when she stood up abruptly. The conversation stopped and Dodd started to stand up too. “Not you,” she said to him with great clarity. “Have to walk. With Clint.”

He gave a little nod and I went off with Nancy. She walked with rigid dignity until we were outside and then clung tightly to my arm. There had been a misty rain earlier. The stars were covered and the grass was wet. We could see by the light from the club.

“Special service,” she said. “Walking drunk ladies.”

“Where do we walk?”

“Round and around. Hooo. Dizzy as a bee.”

We walked in silence back and forth across the wide grounds near the tennis courts. She kept lifting her head high and breathing deeply. We must have walked for fifteen minutes and then she said, “Sit down now. Over there.”

We went over to some benches beside the tennis courts. In the faint light the nets had a forlorn sag, the asphalt courts gleamed wetly. I used my handkerchief to wipe the dampness from a bench. We sat down and I lit our cigarettes.

“Clint, you ever try to... to match yourself against a great tradegy, tradegy... hell, tragedy.”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“That Olan bitch. Her mother went crazy. Murdered her father. Dodd told me all about it when we were married. He wanted to marry her. No she says. Can’t do. Insanity. Very tragic. I ask Dodd if he still loves her. No, no, no. Kid stuff. All over. Sure. Loves me. Just me. We’re fine. Good marriage, Clint. It was. Then he starts wondering if he can get back here. Mother all crippled up. Lots of old friends. Me, damn fool me, I say why not. So a year ago he starts working angles. Pulls strings. Real careful. Back we come. Warren! I hate it. Oh, how I hate it. You see, she’s here. And it isn’t dead. It never was. Not with her and not with him. Oh, I got the picture. She won’t play. She won’t sneak. Very noble. He wants to see her, it’s got to be right out in a open. Like this. Where she can work on him. Make me look bad. Pat the little wife on the head. Take him back just so she can show her muscles. Lots of money but a cheap bitch anyway, you know?”

“I don’t think it’s like that.”

“Oh you don’t! What do you know anyway? You’re the patsy. You don’t take her out. You just make her handy so she can work on him. And I can’t do a damn thing. I can’t say we don’t go out with you two. That makes me look worse even. I have to stand still for it. I have to just wait and watch everything blow up. Good sport. Good old Nancy. Fine! Clint, you could fix it. If only she’d just... If you could make her... No, I can’t say that. Won’t say that. Won’t ask you to do anything like that.”

“Want to walk some more?”

“It was so wonderful. We had our kind of friends. Everywhere we went. Not like these people. They act like his job stinks. Like it’s a... a hobby. These aren’t my kind of people. You know what? He won’t let me tell anybody here. It was okay to tell it other places where we lived. Big joke. We could laugh. Here he hasn’t got any sense of humor. Know how I met him? Want to bust laughing? I cleaned his teeth. Dental hygienist. Kept coming back to get his teeth cleaned. Had the cleanest teeth in the country. Had to marry him before I wore ’em right down to the gums. Other places we could tell that. Not here. Here it would be like dirt. Like I’m something to be ashamed of. Gee, it isn’t something you can just do . You have to study for it. I studied hard. I was good. What’s wrong with that?”

She sounded so lost I wanted to take her in my arms. I wanted to anyway — even drunk she was a desirable woman. And I wanted to smack Dodd Raymond right in the nose. There wasn’t a damn thing I could say to her.

She stood up suddenly and said in an awed voice, “I’m going to be sick.”

We went over to some bushes. I held her and held her head as she was wrenchingly ill. Then I went up to the men’s room at the club and got a wet towel and a dry towel and took them back down to her. She bathed her face and then used the towels on the spattered front of her dress. As she bent over, working on her dress, she said, “How awful, Clint. How perfectly awful.”