Джон Макдональд - A Flash of Green

“You’re... pretty matter-of-fact about it.”

She sat on the bed, crossed her legs, took one of his cigarettes from the night table and lit it. “How should I act? Grateful? All bashful and trembly? Heartbroken? I’m an adult female, Jimmy. You had your way with me, to coin a phrase. It wasn’t my idea, and it wasn’t an idea I was terribly enthusiastic about, but I couldn’t see fighting a bloody battle over it.” She made herself smile at him. “Let’s just say I felt a lingering little feeling of obligation to you for past favors. And it isn’t every day a girl gets to cure an obsession, does she? Now you’ve had me. Am I too matter-of-fact? When I think of it at all, and I certainly don’t plan to dwell on it, I’ll remember it as an invasion of privacy, Jimmy.”

He moved closer to her. “You reacted.”

She shrugged. “A little, I suppose. You seem to be a good lover. I haven’t known enough men to be able to tell. And what was I supposed to do after we both found out I was willing? Lie there like a stick? I expect I was being decently hospitable, but no more than that. And it was like I warned you in the living room. I’m just another woman. And it didn’t mean much to me, and hardly more than that to you, did it?”

“Kat, you’re being so damned...”

“The least you can do now is to be honest with yourself. If we loved each other we might be able to make something special and magical out of the bed part of it. But this way, it was just a vulgar, sweaty little interlude on a sultry afternoon. And I’m not special to you any more, am I?”

He hesitated, then said, “No, dear. Not the way you were.”

She was unprepared for her own quick sense of loss. She hid it with a smile and said, “So I’ve done you a favor, I suppose. Destroyed the illusion. Poor Jimmy. Pick somebody sexier for your next set of daydreams. It might work out better for you. Right now, all things considered, I think we’re even. Nobody is obligated to anybody for anything. And there’s a little sadness about it. Because there’s no place to go from here. This is the end of us.”

“I know.”

“I did cherish you as my good friend.”

“But that was over too, wasn’t it, before I carried you in here?”

“I guess it was, Jimmy.”

“So, either way, the ending is the same.”

“Not quite the same. I feel sorrier for you than I would have. You have to live with yourself. You have to live with what’s happened to all of us.”

“I’ll manage.”

“I’m sure you will. Jimmy, how can you get that into the paper?”

“I’ve thought of a way. If it doesn’t work, turn your copy of it over to Tom, will you? Don’t try to do anything with it yourself.”

“Tom will have better ideas, I’m sure.”

“But if my idea works, you won’t have to do anything with it.”

“Best of luck.”

They walked out into the living room. The shyness was upon her again when he looked at her. “You mustn’t think it will change the Palmland thing to get this into the paper. It will cut Elmo back down to size, nothing more. Palmland has got too much momentum.”

“I guessed that would be the case. But at least it’s something.” He stood in the middle of the room, looking around. “Did you leave something here?” she asked.

He ran a hand back through his stiff sandy hair and smiled in a rather apologetic way. “Maybe, but it’s no time for cute symbolic answers, is it? I was just feeling... kind of nostalgic. You know. I used to come here and have good times. But that was a different person, I guess.”

“Quite a different person.”

When he was outside the door he turned, frowning, and said, “If you think of anything else I can do, any way I could... help fix things up...”

“There won’t be anything else.”

He looked at her, nodded thoughtfully and said, “No. I guess there won’t.”

She watched him from the window. He sat in his car for long silent moments, then started it and drove away.

The house seemed very empty. When she paced, her heels made noises that seemed too loud whenever she crossed the areas of bare floor. She turned the television set on and turned it off. Suddenly she remembered her other clothing and went swiftly to the guest room. The skirt was across the chair at the foot of the bed. The pale blouse was on the floor beside the chair. She picked them up. The skirt would do for another day. The collar of the blouse was faintly grimed. She found her bra on the floor between the bed and the wall. A gray ball of dust clung to the elastic when she picked it up. Her brief blue Dacron pants lay across the sandals she had worn to work.

She had picked the clothing up, and quite suddenly she felt so weak and faint that she turned and sat quickly on the side of the bed, near the foot of it, the clothing in her lap. She saw herself reflected in the narrow wall mirror, perfectly centered.

She gave herself a quick, vivid, social smile and said politely, “All dressed up and no place to go.”

She gave herself a comic grimace. “Lo the faithful widow lady,” she said.

And then, in her pretty dress and her perfume, she huddled over, hunched herself over the clothing in her lap, and began to cry, in a choking, gasping, hiccuping way, with the tears coming in a thin, scalding, sour way. As she wept she kept remembering that neither of them had said a word. They had made of it a desperate, silent struggle. And that seemed the most shameful thing of all.

At ten o’clock Jimmy Wing found Brian Haas alone at the counter at Vera’s Kitchen. He went in and sat beside him. Brian gave him a casual and rather guarded smile and said, “Our Leader has been beating the bushes for you, pal. That seems to be happening a lot lately. I seem to find myself doing things you should be doing. Are you goofing a little, maybe?”

“Definitely not! Everything I do is constructive. I have been chugging around in the night, making up parables and fables.”

“You look a little bright around the eyes. You get the needle into a vein?”

“Mr. Haas, if a man suddenly went stone deaf and then suddenly got his hearing back again, he would go around listening to the rustle of every leaf. Right?”

“Is that a parable or a riddle?”

“My gears have been locked for a while. I rocked them loose.”

“Okay, it’s a riddle. So now you’re racing your engine. Is that the answer?”

“Mr. Haas, I will try out one small parable on you, one that I made up concerning you. Once upon a time there was a dog who had an undiagnosed case of distemper. Such was the morbidity of the disease that the dog went around blaming his low morale on his condition of doghood. He had black thoughts about dogs and destiny. So, to prove to himself that dogs are no damn good, he strolled over and quietly bit the hell out of the dog next door. It gave him considerable surly satisfaction, but when the disease wore off, he was suddenly very very ashamed of himself.”

Brian Haas put his cup down and swiveled his counter stool and stared at Wing. His eyes were dark and mild under the protective shelf of hairy brow. But there was a glint of amusement in them Jimmy had not seen for a long time. “In the first place, you illiterate bastard, when it has animals in it, it’s a fable, not a parable. In the second place, I know a dog who gets a different kind of distemper. He reaches around and bites hell out of himself. And is equally ashamed. In the third place, Nan wonders when you’re coming around so I can whip your tail with a jazzy new variation of the Ruy Lopez.”

“Tell her soon. I’ve got another one. This is a parable. No animals. This one is real deep.”

“I’ll pay attention.”