Флетчер Флора - The Brass Bed

“You know, that was damn good, wasn’t it? That remark about neither men nor women. I’m amazed that old Sid would think of something like that. It must have been irony or something, wasn’t it? Was it irony, Felix?”

I didn’t answer. Jolly went over and set her glass on the table beside Fran’s and then returned and faced Kirby.

“At the risk of being hit in the other eye,” she said, “I must say that Sid is right. You are very vulgar, Kirby.”

“Don’t needle me, Jolly,” Kirby said. “Just don’t needle me.”

“May I feel your muscle?” she said. “It would be a great thrill for me if I were permitted to feel your muscle.”

“All right, now,” Kirby said. “All right.”

“Hit her in the eye, Kirby,” Fran said.

Kirby turned and walked over to the table and picked up the shaker. It was empty again. He began putting gin and vermouth into it, and his hands were shaking badly. He was extremely frustrated and angry, and I could understand how it had happened that he’d lost his head and let Jolly have one.

“I think I’d better go,” I said. “Could I drop you somewhere, Fran?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “I’ll just stay here and see if anything interesting happens.”

“I’ll go to the door with you,” Jolly said.

“That isn’t necessary. I can find my way out.”

“Just the same, I’ll go with you. It’s quite time someone around here started remembering his manners.”

I went out into the hall and down to the door with Jolly following. At the door, I turned, and we stood there close together but not touching. She looked somehow small and very sad with her fine black eye.

“I love you,” she said. “Darling, darling, I love you.”

“That’s nice,” I said, “but it doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere.”

“It’s because of Kirby,” she said. “It’s Kirby who keeps us from getting anywhere.”

“There is a legal and accepted way of eliminating Kirby,” I said.

“I know what you mean, and I have explained carefully that it is impossible.”

“I know you have, and so there is obviously no point in talking about it any more.”

“If only he were to die,” she said. “Everything would be so simple if he would only die.”

She said it quietly and wistfully, like a small child wishing for an impossible favor. I went on out to the Chevvie, which was still willing to run, and drove away.

When I got back to the apartment, Harvey Griffin was there waiting for me. He’d brought six cans of cold beer and had plugged one and was sitting there drinking it and reading the printing on the can between swallows. He was a stocky guy with freckles and sandy hair that stood erect at the crown of his head and fell over his forehead in front, and he taught mathematics at the college and had an algebra class for the summer. The algebra class bored him considerably, and as a consequence his beer consumption had increased in proportion. He said it was surprising what a support beer could be to algebra. He was a bright, ugly, likeable guy, and next to the goliards he was the best relief I had from things, and I’m not so sure, looking back on it, that he wasn’t even better than the goliards.

“Hello, Harvey,” I said.

“Hello, old boy,” he said. “I just came on in.”

“Sure. That’s the way to do.”

“I brought six cans of cold beer. The other five are in the refrigerator.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I took off my coat and tie and threw them on the bed and went into the kitchen. Getting one of the cans of beer from the refrigerator, I plugged it and carried it back into the other room. It was chilled just about right, and you could feel it drop and hit and start working for your welfare. I sat there with the cold beer working inside me and kept hearing Jolly wish quietly that Kirby would die.

“It’s good beer,” I said. “It’s good and cold.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “Every can is a good half-quart of cold beer.”

He emptied his can and sat rolling it around in his hands until I’d emptied mine and caught up with him, and then he took the empties into the kitchen and plugged two full ones and brought them back.

“How’s the algebra class going?” I said.

“To hell with the algebra class. I don’t want to talk about it. How’s the history class going?”

“I don’t want to talk about the history class.”

“I can understand your feelings, old boy, and I’ll certainly respect them. Do you suppose we could find a topic of conversation that neither of us would object to? How’s your private life these days?”

“Extremely dull. I’ve got more or less interested in goliards.”

“No fooling? How’d you happen to get interested in goliards?”

It was significant that he didn’t have to ask me what goliards were. As I said, it isn’t likely that most people know anything about goliards, and Harvey was a mathematician and couldn’t reasonably have been expected to know about them, either, but the point is, he did know about them, and he was a hell of a bright guy and knew a lot of things he wasn’t required to know.

“There’s a little about them in the history course,” I said, “and I just sort of picked them up.”

“That’s fine, old boy. It’s very good to be interested in something. Now that you’ve picked up these goliards, what are you going to do with them?”

“I’ve been trying to put one in a novel.”

“Oh, say, now. A goliard ought to go damn well in a novel.”

“That’s what I thought myself, but he doesn’t seem to be.”

“No? That’s odd. I’d think a goliard would go right along.”

“The truth is, I think it’s me more than the goliard that doesn’t go. I can’t seem to get into it the way I should.”

“I find myself very interested in this novel, old boy. Perhaps I could give you an idea or two that would shake you loose.”

“All right. What would you suggest?”

“Well, to start with, I’d suggest a sexy duchess.”

“There’s already a sexy duchess.”

“Really? And you can’t get into it? You’re in pretty bad shape, old boy.”

“Of course I haven’t actually reached the sexy duchess yet. I’m only on page fifty-four.”

“There’s, your trouble right off. No wonder you can’t get into it. All the way to page fifty-four and haven’t reached the duchess yet. You should have her in with a bang.”

“Is that a pun?”

“Damn good, isn’t it? I didn’t really intend it, though, to be perfectly honest about it. That’s the way with puns, I find. They just pop in unexpectedly. Who else is in the novel besides the sexy duchess and the goliard?”

“There’s the duke, of course. You have a duchess, you have to have a duke.”

“That’s logical. Very sound reasoning,” Harvey said.

“Then there are some university students and clerics and a fat tavern keeper.”

“Why a fat tavern keeper? Why fat , I mean.”

I said, “I don’t know. Fat tavern keepers are the usual thing.”

“Exactly. That’s my point. That’s exactly what you ought to avoid. The usual thing, that is. Make your tavern keeper lean, old boy. He’ll be a big hit.”

“Maybe you’re right. I can make him lean as easily as fat.”

“You working in any other sexy women?”

“No. Just the duchess.”

“That’s bad. You ought to work in another sexy woman.”

“I thought I’d make the duchess sexy enough to meet all reasonable requirements by herself.”

“It won’t do. The point is, you have to have competition, to say nothing of a little variety. You could have this goliard torn between these two women, and that keeps everyone reading along just to see which way he’s going to jump, if for no other reason.”