James Cain - Serenade

“Just a question of toro, hey?”

“No. You ask me to come with you. I come. I love you much. I no think of toro . Just a little bit. Then in New York I feel, I feel something fonny. I think you think about contrato , all these thing. But is not the same. Tonight I know. I make no mistake. When you love Juana, you sing nice, much toro . When you love man — why you lie to me? You think I no hear? You think I no know?”

If she had taken a whip to me I couldn’t have answered her. She began to cry, and fought it back. She went in the other room, and pretty soon she came out. She had changed her dress and put on a hat. She was carrying the valise in one hand and the fur coat in the other. “I no live with man who love other man. I no live with man who lie. I—”

The phone rang. “—Ah!”

She ran in and answered. “Yes, he is here.”

She came out, her eyes blazing and her white teeth showing behind something that was between a laugh and a snarl. “Mr. Hawes.”

I didn’t say anything and I didn’t move. “Yes, Mr. Hawes, the director.” She gave a rasping laugh and put on the god-damdest imitation of Winston you ever saw, the walk, the stick, and all the rest of it so you almost thought he was in front of you. “Yes, your sweetie, he wait at telephone, talk to him please.”

When I still sat there, she jumped at me like a tiger, shook me till I could feel my teeth rattling, and then ran in to the telephone. “What you want with Mr. Sharp, please? ... Yes, yes, he will come... Yes, thank you much. Goodbye.”

She came out again. “Now, please you go. He have party, want you very much. Now, go to your sweetie. Go! Go! Go!”

She shook me again, jerked me out of the chair, tried to push me out the door. She grabbed up the valise and the fur coat again. I ran in the bedroom, flopped on the bed, pulled the pillow over my head. I wanted to shut it out, the whole horrible thing she had showed me, where she had ripped the cover off my whole life, dragged out what was down there all the time. I screwed my eyes shut, kept pulling the pillow around my ears. But one thing kept slicing up at me, no matter what I did. It was the fin of that shark.

I don’t know how long I stayed there. I was on my back after a while, staring at nothing. It was dead quiet outside, and dead still, except for the searchlight from the building on Fourteenth Street, that kept going around and around. I kept telling myself she was crazy, that voice is a matter of palate, sinus, and throat, that Winston had no more to do with what happened to me in Paris than the scenery had. But here it was, starting on me again the same way it had before, and I knew she had called it on me the way it was written in the big score, and that no pillow or anything else could shut it out. I closed my eyes, and I was going down under the waves, with something coming up at me from below. Panic caught me then. I hadn’t heard her go out, and I called her. I waited, and called again. There wasn’t any answer. My head was under the pillow again pretty soon, and I must have slept because I woke up with the same horrible dream, that I was in the water, going down, and this thing was coming at me. I sat up, and there she was, on the edge of her bed, looking at me. It was gray outside. “Christ, you’re there.” But some kind of a sob jerked out as I said it, and I put out my hand and took hers.

“It’s all true.”

She came over, sat down beside me, stroked my hair, held my hand. “Tell me. You no lie, I no fight.”

“There’s nothing to tell... Every man has got five per cent of that in him, if he meets the one person that’ll bring it out, and I did, that’s all.”

“But you love other man. Before.”

“No, the same one, here, in Paris, all over, the one son-of-a-bitch that’s been the curse of my life.”

“Sleep now. Tomorrow, you give me little bit money, I go back to Mexico—”

“No! Don’t you know what I’m trying to tell you? That’s out! I hate it! I’ve been ashamed of it, I’ve tried to shake it off, I hoped you would never find out, and now it’s over!”

I was holding her to me. She began stroking my hair again, looking down in my eyes. “You love me, Hoaney?”

“Don’t you know it? Yes. If I never said so, it was just because — did we have to say it? If we felt it, wasn’t that a hell of a sight more?”

All of a sudden she broke from me, shoved the dress down from her shoulder, slipped the brassiere and shoved a nipple in my mouth. “Eat. Eat much. Make big toro!”

“I know now, my whole life comes from there.”

“Yes, eat.”

We didn’t get up for two days, but it wasn’t like the time we had in the church. We didn’t get drunk and we didn’t laugh. When we were hungry, we’d call up the French restaurant down the street and have them send something in. Then we’d lie there and talk, and I’d tell her more of it, until it was all off my chest and I had nothing more to say. Once I quit lying to her, she didn’t seem surprised, or shocked, or anything like that. She would look at me, with her eyes big and black, and nod, and sometimes say something that made me think she understood a lot more about it than I did, or most doctors do. Then I’d take her in my arms, and afterward we’d sleep, and I felt a peace I hadn’t felt for years. All those awful jitters of that last few weeks were gone, and sometimes when she was asleep and I wasn’t, I’d think about the Church, and confession, and what it must mean to people that have something lying heavy on their soul. I had left the Church before I had anything on my soul, and the confession business, to me then, was just a pain in the neck. But I understood it now, understood a lot of things I had never understood before. And mostly I understood what a woman could mean to a man. Before, she had been a pair of eyes, and a shape, something to get excited about. Now, she seemed something to lean on, and draw something from, that nothing else could give me. I thought of books I had read, about worship of the earth, and how she was always called Mother, and none of it made much sense, but those big round breasts did, when I put my head on them, and they began to tremble, and I began to tremble.

The morning of the second day we heard the church bells ringing, and I remembered I was due to sing at the Sunday night concert. I got up, went to the piano, and tossed a few high ones around. I was just trying them out, but I didn’t have to. They were like velvet. At six o’clock we dressed, had a little something to eat, and went down there. I was in a Rigoletto excerpt, from the second act, with a tenor, a bass, a soprano, and a mezzo that were all getting spring try-outs. I was all right. When we got home we changed to pajamas again, and I got out the guitar. I sang her the Evening Star song, Träume, Schmerzen , things like that. I never liked Wagner, and she couldn’t understand a word of German. But it had earth, rain, and the night in it, and went with the humor we were in. She sat there with her eyes closed, and I sang it half voice. Then I took her hand and we sat there, not moving.

A week went by, and still I didn’t see Winston. He must have called twenty times, but she took all calls, and when it was him she would just say I wasn’t in, and hang up. I had nothing to say to him but goodbye, and I wasn’t going to say that, because I didn’t want to play the scene. Then one day, after we had been out for breakfast, we stepped out of the elevator, and there he was at the end of the hall, watching porters carrying furniture into an apartment. He looked at us and blinked, then dived at us with his hand out. “Jack! Is that you? Well, of all the idiotic coincidences!”