Джон Макдональд - The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Hush, love. I’m merely educating you to a proper level to appreciate Bonny Lee. She is a dear child, loving and honest and gay. And you must enjoy her for exactly what she is, the way one enjoys sunshine and gardens. If you try to confine her or restrict her or change her into what you think is a more suitable image, she will very probably break your heart. She’s terribly young, you know. Old in some ways, young in others. In time she might well become very famous, if clods like you can keep from making her feel coarse and insecure.”

“I think I see what you mean.”

“I hope you do, love. If I didn’t suspect you have possibilities, I wouldn’t have wasted the time and the words.”

“I’m not very — deft about girls, Lizbeth.”

“So much the better. Deft men fall into dim patterns. And the dreadful clue to all of them is that they seem to feel they are doing the girl some enormous favor. I like a man to feel grateful, and bloody few of them do. And the worldly ones seem to feel obligated to prove their skill by showing off a whole arsenal of nasty little tricks which they seem to feel should induce an absolute frenzy. My word, I’ve had it up to here with being compared to a cello or a sports car. I’m a rather direct woman, Mr. Winter, and I like love to be direct and pleasant and on the cozy side, and as comfortable as one can make it. So don’t fret about being unaccustomed to girls. I suspect Bonny Lee finds it all rather sweet. And don’t you dare brood about her other affairs. You’ll merely poison your own mind and spoil it for both of you. She will be totally, absolutely faithful to you for as long as the game will last, and that is all you can expect or should hope for.”

He finished the last of the coffee and put the cup aside. “This is all very interesting, and I suppose you are an unusual woman, and maybe you can’t help being so damned defensive, but I am getting Goddamned well tired of listening to a lot of little lectures from women. I am tired of having my head patted, and I am sick of a lot of over-simplified little bite-sized pieces of philosophy about life and love. I just happen to think the world is a little more complex than that. And with your kind indulgence, Lizbeth, I shall go right on making my own stuffy and sentimental and unreasonable mistakes in my own way. I have had a very long day, Lizbeth. The mind of man cannot comprehend the kind of a day I have had. Mentally and emotionally, I am right at the frayed end of the last bit of string there is. I do not defend or attack your right to flex muscles I never heard of. I make no attempt to typecast you, so please do me the same favor. I appreciate your assistance to Bonny Lee, and your concern for her. But my attitudes and responses are, I am afraid, my personal business. If I have annoyed you, I’m sorry. But I do have to be leaving.”

She looked at him very thoughtfully. She nodded. “Now didn’t she just come up with something! Possibly the hat and the cane and the badge warped my judgment, love. You might come back one day, Mr. Winter. If you’re free. But spend some time on the weights and bars first. No more lectures. Not a word of advice. You do seem quite able to cope. All I can do is wish you luck.”

She put out her hand. It was a small hand, rather plump, but implicit in the quick squeeze she gave him was the warning that with an effortless twist she could probably sail him over her shoulder like a quoit.

Some very freehand parking had occurred in the alley by Bernie Sabbith’s apartment. As Kirby climbed the outside staircase he heard guffaws and breaking glass. The door was open a few inches. He knocked, but after he realized no one could hear him, he pushed the door open and went in.

All the tricky lights were on, and the big music system was throwing a mighty wattage into all the built-in speakers. A table bar had been set up and a man in a white jacket was mixing drinks as fast as he could. At first glance there seemed to be fifty people in the apartment, but he soon realized the mirrors had doubled the apparent number.

There seemed to be a group of curiously identical young men, all dark, all spankingly clean, all wearing dark narrow suits, knit ties, white button down shirts, all smiling with a certain ironic tilt to one eyebrow, all holding chunky glasses containing ice and dark whisky. The rest of the young men seemed as young, but they looked as if they cut each other’s hair, got their clothes out of mission barrels and bathed on bank holidays.

The girls seemed divided into two groups, too — a pack of languid starved ones in high fashion clothes, and a bouncy, racy, noisy batch in odds and ends of this and that. A fat little girl in a ratty red leotard came bounding toward him with yelps of delight lost in the general confusion.

“Let me guess!” she yelled. “You are a conventioneer! Your name is — uh — Eddie Beeler! You heard the sounds of action, O Conventioneer, and you have traced it with incredible instinct to the very fount of all action! I, Gretchen Firethorn myself, shall be your guide and mentor, O Eddie.”

“Which one is Bernie Sabbith, please?”

“Oh shoot!” she said. “You spoil everything. Couldn’t you have just wandered in, for God’s sake? That’s Bernie, over there in the khakis and the white jacket, not the little one making drinks. Further. The one plastering the blonde against that mirror.”

As Kirby hesitated, the fat girl took the funny hat, the cane and the badge, in what seemed to be one swift motion and bounded off, whooping. He worked his way between the twisters to where Sabbith was mumbling to the semi-smothered blonde. Bernie was a tall and angular man, seemingly constructed entirely of elbows and knuckles.

When Kirby finally got the man’s attention, he swung around and stuck his hand out and said, “Glad you could make it, pal. The bar’s right over there. Glad you could show.” He turned back to the blonde.

“Have you seen Bonny Lee Beaumont?”

Bernie turned around again. “Bonny Lee! Where is she? You bring her, pal?”

“No. I’m looking for her.”

“She isn’t here tonight, pal. There’s the bar. Get yourself a—”

“She’s supposed to arrive at midnight.”

The blonde started to slide sideways. Bernie grabbed her and straightened her up again. “Pal, some day I’d like to have a nice long chat, but right now you’re a drag. Noonan!” One of the dark-suited ones presented himself. “Noonan, get this conversationalist out of my hair, like a pal.”

Noonan gently led Kirby away. “Mr. Sabbith seems to be busy at the moment. What is the angle of impact, sir? Chamber of Commerce? Press, radio, television, talent?”

“I’m supposed to meet a girl here.”

“Sir, if that was the guarantee, that you shall have. With a few spoken-for exceptions, I can offer you your choice of any member of our happy crew, our tight little ship. I would suggest one of the ragamuffin types, one of our off-camera laborers in the vineyard. If, on the other hand, you want the model type, I suggest you take two. Their energy level is so low, sir, they save their tiny sparkle for the deathless moment when they hold up the product.”

“I’m supposed to meet a specific girl here!” Kirby shouted over the music. “I know her.” As he made a helpless gesture, somebody put a drink in his hand.

“Can’t you remember her name?”

“I know her name!”

“But you don’t know what she looks like?”

“She’s going to arrive! I want to wait for her!”

“Sir, you seem too solemn about all this. This is an epochal night in the short brilliant history of Parmalon.”