Эд Макбейн - Happy New Year, Herbie and other stories

“Except my daughter,” he said sourly.

“Yes, but that’s not from your life, that’s from hers .”

“No,” Dr. Goldblatt said.

“Dr. Goldblatt,” I said politely, “I didn’t come here to ask your permission to see her. I came here to tell you that we’re getting engaged, and as soon as we graduate we’re going to get married.”

“No,” Dr. Goldblatt said. “You’re a Gentile, she’s a Jewish girl, it would never work. Don’t you know the trouble you’re asking for? Different religions, different cultures, how will you raise the children, what will you...?”

“Dr. Goldblatt,” I said, “that’s only marbles.”

“What?”

“I said it’s only marbles.”

The office went very silent, just the way the camp had when I’d shouted those words the day before. Dr. Goldblatt looked at me for a long time, his face expressionless. Then, all he said was “Marbles.”

“Yes,” I said, “marbles. Dr. Goldblatt, I’m going to pick up Becky at the house tonight at eight o’clock. At the house. Dr. Goldblatt. I’m not going to meet her in some dark alley any more.”

Dr. Goldblatt said nothing.

“Because she’s too nice to be meeting in dark alleys,” I said, “and I love her.”

Dr. Goldblatt still said nothing.

“Well,” I said, “it was nice talking to you.”

I got up and offered my hand to him, which he refused. I shrugged and started for the door. I had my hand on the knob when I heard him say behind me, “Marbles. This is what my daughter picked. Marbles.”

I didn’t let him see me smile. I walked downstairs to the street. The rain had tapered off to a fine drizzle. The gutters ran with water, and large puddles had formed in the hollows near the curb. I could remember sticking my hand into puddles just like those long ago when I was a kid, when the loss of a hundred immies had meant a great deal to me.

I called Becky from a telephone booth in the corner drugstore.

The nut — she cried.

The giant brown pods of the royal poincianas were motionless on the still hot air. Like huge, closed straight-razors, they hung lifelessly from the trees against a sky of baked blue enamel. In a few months they would bloom, but they hung in ugly limpness now in a Jamaica forsaken by the trade winds, an island aflame with tropical heat, persistent, relentless, as still as death itself.

The taxi wound its way down through the heat, the sun reflecting dizzily from its polished hood and top. The native driver honked his horn incessantly and pedestrians along the side of the road inched closer to the curb each time the horn sounded, balancing bundles on their heads, walking with the straight proud walk Michael had found absent in Nassau.

His wife sat beside him in the back of the taxi, both of them rendered mute by the intense heat. She wore a white blouse and white tapered slacks, a young blond woman, evenly tanned but still carrying on her face and in her eyes the lacquered look of the native New Yorker. The cab came down out of the hills, the bay on its right resplendently blue under the brilliant sun. Michael thought of asking the driver to stop for a moment so that he could take a picture of the curving bay. And then the moment passed, the idea seemed to require too much energy. He slouched on the back seat, squinting his eyes against the sunshine which drenched the interior of the cab, wondering why he was always forgetting his sunglasses back at the hotel. He was a tall, thin man with bright blue eyes, narrowed now in an angular face. He wore a white shirt open at the throat, and he was consciously aware of his lean good looks, imagining himself somehow as a white hunter in the heart of darkest Africa, a fantasy he knew to be absurd. And yet, not totally absurd. There was a primitive smell to the island and its people, a feeling that civilization was worn by the tropics as haphazardly as a badly made suit.

“I hate this town,” Diane said suddenly.

He turned to look at her. Or rather, his eyes shifted toward her. He did not move his head or change his position. “It’s not a bad town,” he said.

“It’s awful. I think we ought to go on to Haiti.”

“No. I can’t stand beggars.”

“There are beggars here, too.”

“Not like Haiti,” he said. “In Haiti, they’re all over the streets.”

“A beggar or two might be exciting.”

“No, thank you. That’s not my idea of a vacation.”

“What is your idea of a vacation?” she asked. “Never mind, don’t bother. I know. You want a rest.”

“Exactly.”

“We’ve been resting for two weeks. When do we take a rest from resting?”

“It’s not really that dull, Diane. Actually, this is a pretty interesting town. Plenty to buy here.”

“I’m not interested in the business structure of Montego Bay. And if another native urges me to buy a straw hat when any damn fool can see I’m already wearing one, I think I’ll scream.”

Michael laughed suddenly, a humorless laugh that rang emptily in the silent cab.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” she said. “I’m trying to tell you I’m bored.”

“You were bored in New York, too.”

“Yes, and that’s why we came down here, isn’t that right? For a change?”

“For a rest,” he corrected.

“To get away from everyone we know — and your work, isn’t that right?”

“I hate when you do that.”

“Do what, for God’s sake?”

“Repeat yourself.”

“Oh, I don’t care what you hate. We came down here to get away from all the pressures, and instead...”

“If there are any pressures here,” Michael said, “I’d like to know about them.”

“Boredom is a pressure.”

“Boredom, boredom! Has it ever occurred to you that it’s pretty boring to hear you talk about boredom all the time?”

“I’m sorry if I annoy you.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“It sounded like that to me.”

“All I said was... well, what I object to is the way you keep going on about the same things. Like your l ife- role, and your search for identity, and your meaning as a woman. Why don’t you just relax, Diane? The trouble with women today is...”

“I don’t want to hear your thesis on the mechanized kitchen again.”

He shrugged. “All right.”

“Because if you want to know the truth, you’re pretty damn boring yourself.”

“Me?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, you. The Madison Avenue mastermind with his new accounts and his new slogans and his new campaigns and his sales-up-fifty-percent. I’ve never met anyone in my life who was so concerned with making money.”

“I didn’t realize,” he said with cold hauteur, “that providing for one’s wife and family was being overly concerned with...”

“There’s a difference between...”

“... money. I suppose I’d be better off if I were a native chopping sugar cane in the goddamn jungle and earning ten cents a week!”

“They don’t chop sugar cane in the jungle.”

“On the plantations then. Wherever the hell they do it. Maybe you’d enjoy that?”

“Maybe I would. It might be real , at least.”

“Oh, here we go on the fake existence theme again. The glitter of New York, the tinsel whirl of...”

“Don’t you ever understand anything I’m saying?” she asked angrily. “I hate it here! And, damnit, I’m catching a cold!”

“How can anyone catch a cold in the tropics?”

“I don’t know how. By contact with a germ, I would imagine. I’m catching one, that’s all.”

“It must be psychosomatic.”

“Maybe it is. Michael, for the love of God, let’s move on.”