Dan Wakefield - Home Free

He thought about getting it on with Marcia, the lady editor at Adams House. He knew she liked him. She was thirty-something and divorced. She wasn’t any beauty but she had a kind of drowsy appeal about her. The trouble was he liked her. They were sort of friends. If they had an affair they’d talk a lot and tell each other their troubles. He didn’t want it like that. He wanted someone to fuck, and that’s all. Someone who wanted the same thing.

He found her in accounting. Mitzi. She wore long false eyelashes and miniskirts and her ambition was to marry a doctor. She might have some jollies beforehand but she’d settle for nothing less when it came to tying the knot. Good. No one was fooling anyone. Gene was sympathetic to her dream.

“Maybe you should be a nurse,” he said when they were finishing their first drink, a martini for him and a tropical nights delight for her at Bob Lee’s Islander. When Gene tried to think of someplace to take her that he thought she would dig, he remembered the dinner after Flash’s party and it struck him as perfect. The semidarkness, the leis around the neck, the rum drinks with decorations. Hers had a little native canoe floating in it.

“Uggggggh,” she said.

It was not a reaction to the drink, but to the thought of being a nurse.

“I can’t stand sick people,” she said.

“But you dig doctors.”

“For husbands.”

“Respectable?”

“Rich.”

“Ah.”

“Maybe not millionaires but steady rich. I don’t go for these flashy types who are always messing with stocks and investments. I mean some of em are cute to date, but for a husband I want regular rich. No ups and downs.”

“And till then?”

“Till then’s my business.”

“Maybe I can make some of it my business.”

“You’re cute,” she said.

It didn’t help.

It gave him something to do, but it didn’t make things any different with him and Lou.

“How come you’re acting funny?” Lou asked.

“Acting funny how?”

“It seems like you keep staring at me.”

“No,” he said. “I wasn’t.”

But he was. It was after he’d been making it with Mitzi for about a week and he wondered if it was making any difference. With him and Lou. He had no desire to tell her about it, no wish for an excuse to go “Nah nah nah, I can do it too!” He just wondered if there was any change for the better in how things were between them. That’s why he’d been staring at her. Looking for something, some sign, some emotional barometer that might show their private weather was improving.

But it seemed monotonously the same. Just like the weather outside. Humid. Uncomfortable.

He and Lou had fucked the night she told him about Steven Alexander and to his surprise it had been especially good. Then afterward it seemed like it hadn’t happened. They had another good one the night after he’d first made Mitzi, but then it was the same again. There didn’t seem to be any carry-over from their sex to the rest of their lives. There used to be but there wasn’t now.

Gene bought a little hash and decided he’d suggest they get high on it and make love, thinking maybe something profound would happen behind the hash, some insight or mutual feeing that would carry over after the sex, after the high.

He brought home the hash and a quart of deli potato salad and the beer. They used to have that sometimes for hot weather dinners, just potato salad and beer. He did not get Pabst. He got Schlitz. That’s what they used to drink all the time.

He even put on Abbey Road . Shit, it couldn’t hurt anything. Maybe it would help create the right mood. Gene took a shower and put on some jeans and a clean sport shirt.

Around nine o’clock he decided he’d better have some of the potato salad. She hadn’t said anything about coming home any special time that evening, and sometimes she didn’t get home till ten or so. If Gene had wanted her to get there early he should have said something. It was his own fault.

Around ten thirty he went out and bought a jug of the Rhine Garten. He left a note saying he’d be right back. When he got back the note was still there. At midnight when he took his glass to the kitchen he filled it with gin instead of wine. He put an ice cube in it. A little before three he decided he might as well smoke the hash. There wasn’t a hell of a lot anyway. It wasn’t the best he ever had. It was probably because of his not being in the right mood. His fault, not the hash. His fault, not Lou. Every fuckin thing was his fault. By four he knew she wasn’t coming back for the night. Once he’d have been scared shitless because they always came home no matter what and even after the thing with Steven Alexander it was like an unspoken agreement that they not spend the night away. Spending the night away was like flaunting it. Lou had never done it before. Even though she may have made it before she met Steven Alexander, with other guys, she always came home, she always made it look good. Maybe she had made it with a lot of other guys. Maybe even guys Gene knew. That night when she and Flash went for cigarettes. Times she met Barnes for drinks someplace. His place maybe. Who knew?

Gene liked the gin better than the dope. Nothing subtle. Just blasting right through ya. By dawn he had finished the fifth and was back into the Rhine Garten, which was all that was left. He had drunk the beer much earlier. The only thing he hadn’t polished off was the goddam potato salad. He didn’t feel like it. He had wanted to have it with Lou. Tough shit. Wasn’t that nice and cute of him, thinkin up the little hot weather meal for him and Lou? Shit. He took the carton of potato salad and put it in the middle of the rug and stepped on it. It oozed out over the rug and his foot. To hell with it. He got out a couple of eggs from the fridge and threw them against the wall in the kitchen. That made him laugh. “Scrambled,” he said.

The key turned in the lock around eight. Gene was lying on the couch. He had thrown all the stacks of papers and books and magazines off it and they were scattered over the rug. A few papers were stuck in potato salad. Gene had taken off his sport shirt. He was just in his Levi’s. He was hugging the jug of Rhine Garten to him, smiling.

“What … happened?” Lou said.

Gene laughed.

At least he’d got a rise out of her, a reaction, some kind of surprise, something .

“Have a good time?” he said. “Night on the town?”

“I didn’t mean—” Lou said. “I fell asleep. I thought I’d just take a nap. I was tired. I—”

“Course ya were. Who wouldn’t be tired after fuckin old crisp, efficient Steven Alexander all night? Tell me, is he crisp and efficient in bed? Methodical?”

“Shut up, Gene.”

“Tell me, does he wear the bow tie? When he’s fucking you?”

“Stop.”

“Is it a turn-on? The bow tie.”

“You drunken shit.”

He jumped up, reeling, ran and grabbed her before she could move away and slapped her full force across the face. Her mouth opened. She dropped her purse.

As soon as he did it he was scared. Sorry.

He moved back, stumbling.

“Shit,” he said. “I’m sorry. Please—”

“Get out,” she whispered with terrible force. “Get out of here. You—you get your ass out. We’re through.”

He started crying. He bawled. He fell down on the floor and crawled. He pleaded, begged forgiveness, begged to stay, start again.

“It’s done,” she said.

She got some books and left.

And he knew she was gone. From him. Like she said. It was done.

He finished off the Rhine Garten, then he put on his new summer suit. He didn’t shower or shave, he just put the suit on. He got some buttons scrambled but basically got the shirt on, and the tie. The coat was easy. He decided he should have a big breakfast to prepare him for the duties of the day ahead. He went to the Statler and had the “Hungry Pilgrim Breakfast,” featuring cranberry juice, codfish cakes, scrambled eggs, and baked beans. He topped that off with a hot cup of coffee, paid the check, and made it to the men’s room barely in time to heave up the whole thing. Well, he’d had a hearty breakfast at least for a little while.