James Cain - The Institute

It was Hortense. She closed the door and stood in the foyer, looking at me.

“Well?” she said. “You gave me the keys, didn’t you?”

I went clumping over to her, gathered her in my arms, and kissed her — just once. Then I stood back and said: “O.K., I’m glad. I can’t pretend I’m not. Now suppose you get the hell out.”

“Suppose I what?”

“You heard me. Get out.”

“Any particular reason?”

“You know why: you don’t shack up for two days with him and then start up with me again. Out. Beat it.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“And suppose I don’t want to?”

“Then I’ll throw you out.”

“I don’t believe it. Want to bet?”

“Okay,” I said, grabbing her, “you’re going — now!”

“And taking the institute with me?”

I was so angry that I had forgotten about the institute. Suddenly a lump came in my throat and my heart skipped a beat. She came close, her lips skinned back from her teeth.

“Dr. Palmer!” she exclaimed as though greatly concerned. “Are you all right? Oh my! You turned the color of chalk. Should I call a physician? Or administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? What do you wish me to do?”

“All right, then, stay.”

“Stay? If I—”

“Please.”

“That’s better. And could we sit down?”

She led the way into the living room where she pushed me into a chair with more strength than I would have thought she had.

“Now!” she went on brightly and cheerily, “ if I may have your attention, I wish to gloat.” She walked away from me, twitching it, then walked back, twitching everything. “Do you like it? Does it give you ideas? Does it remind you of night before last when you were in bed here, alone, at least as we hope, and I was — But need we go into details? Were you imagining my situation, after the coup you arranged, of a bigger pond to swim in and a place in Who’s Who in the World? I hope it caused you no pain imagining how pitiful I looked there in my bed, waiting, whispering things through the door—”

“Goddam it, shut up.”

“No profanity, please. It upsets me.”

“Will you, for Christ’s sake, knock it off?”

“Beautiful gloat, I love you.”

By then it was affecting me as though I had a cramp, and I was all doubled up in the chair. But all of a sudden she folded, collapsing face down on one of the sofas. I let her lie there awhile. Then I went over to see if something was wrong. I couldn’t see that anything was but leaned down when she started to mumble, low and jerky, one or two words at a time. “I thought,” she said, or at least I thought she said, “—it was going to be fun — that I would love it, having my gloat. But it wasn’t fun at all.” And then, after some time: “A gloat’s not a gloat; it’s not any gloat at all if it’s not a gloat.” That made no sense, but then suddenly she cleared it up. Turning over, she burst out: “It has to be real! It has to be real, and it’s not. He didn’t come to me. He just kissed me and said good night! He was wonderful except for that — had flowers sent over, three beautiful orchids, took me to dinner, said all kinds of lovely things. But he didn’t do what I hoped for — and I don’t have any gloat! Any real gloat, at you! I enjoyed torturing you. I guess I did, if I did, torture you, I mean. You had it coming. You certainly did. But—”

“Shut up.”

“Okay, now you know.”

“Where is he now?”

“ ‘Up above the world so high, like a tea tray in the sky.’ What’s that from?”

“Alice in Wonderland.”

“Yes, he’s flying to London, but what’s there? What’s with London to make it a wonderland?”

“You know what I’ve got a good mind to do? Fan your backside till it has blisters on it and looks like two fried egg yolks.”

“O.K., here it is.”

She turned over again, pulled up her skirt, and slid down her pantyhose to give me a full, fair view, and right there on the living room sofa, with half her clothes still on, we resumed our love affair, complete with biting, whispering, and spanking. Afterward, we lay there, holding close. At last she said: “I was close to God. What were you close to?”

“God.”

“I’m hungry.”

I kissed her, pulled on my clothes, and went out to the kitchen to fix a snack. I had just got out eggs, mushrooms, bacon, juice, bread, and coffee when she joined me, wearing a pair of my pajamas with the legs and sleeves turned up and her own shoes with no stockings inside.

“I found this outfit in your bureau drawer,” she said. “Okay to wear it?”

“But of course. Be my guest.”

“What are you giving me?”

“Tomato juice, an omelette, bacon, toast, coffee. This hour of the night, I thought you’d rather have Sanka. I might add that you’re looking at the champion three-egg-and-mushroom-filler-omelette-maker of Prince Georges County, Maryland. I have special, peculiar skills that—”

“I don’t want an omelette.”

“Tell me what you do want, please.”

“I want two eggs sunny-side up, to look as my backside would have if it had gotten what it deserved — so I know, in lieu of a mirror.”

“Sunny-side up, they shall be.”

She gulped down her tomato juice, then I made her the eggs. She ate them neat, saying “You’re supposed to break the yokes, but I love to put them in whole and squash them with my tongue. These are nice.” Butter dribbled from the toast onto her chin, and she held it over for me. I said: “Come on, hurry up; that puts ideas in my head.”

“They the only ideas you have?”

“If you know a better one—?”

“I don’t, but not yet, please. Let’s have a polite conversation until my eggs start to digest and ideas come to my head.”

“Okay, lead the discussion.”

But for that, we went in the living room. She stretched out on the sofa, yawned, and said: “I feel like a cat that just lapped up the cream.”

“Conversation, please.”

“Lloyd, why don’t we get acquainted?”

“Well? Aren’t we?”

“In a way, yes — in one way, definitely. In other ways, we don’t know each other at all. So all right, I’ll start it off. As I told you, I was born in Chester, of a shipbuilding family, comfortably well off. Public school, then finishing school for three days, high school, Delaware U., then Richard and marriage at nineteen. Then, hostess, hostess, hostess to Richard’s many friends, most of them important, meaning most of them rich. Received and accepted, partly because of my skill as a hostess and partly because of Richard’s money. In school, the boys made passes at me. In college they did, too, and I’m not sure I wasn’t willing. But the passes were pretty clumsy and nothing came from them... The passes weren’t clumsy; they were fainthearted. That’s why I didn’t give in. Your pass wasn’t fainthearted. It was what I called it — rape.”

“It was what you wanted, though.”

“You’re damned right, it was what I wanted.”

“Shipbuilding family, you say. How many?”

“Ships? Oh, dozens and dozens.”

“What size family was it?”

“Oh, well, father, mother — my father died. My mother became a registered nurse, and still looks like one.”

“Brothers? Sisters?”

“One brother who died. Now, how about you?”

“About me, not much to tell. Just a guy who was born in Prince Georges County.”

“Your father — when did he die?”

“When I was ten.”

“And who was she? Your mother, I mean.”

“Just a St. Marys County girl. Father a bank cashier in St. Marys City. It was on her mother’s side — my grandmother’s side, that is — that she traced her line back to the Ark. I told you about that, I think.”