Lawrence Block - Candy

I got up, washed with the weird red water that came out of the rusty tap, put my dirty clothes back on again and got the hell out of the hotel. I didn’t bother about breakfast; I wasn’t hungry. Only one thing mattered now. I had to get home, had to get back to Lucy, had to get everything straightened out again.

The elements conspired against me. The subway took a long time coming. It waited at 72nd Street for ten goddamned minutes while I sat on my hands and some clods did things with the tracks. Finally the train limped to 96th Street and I got out and managed to get home.

I ran all the way, jumped into the elevator and got off at my apartment. I unlocked the door with my key and went inside.

I didn’t see Lucy.

Ah, I thought. It’s still early. The poor dear must be sleeping.

Her bed was empty.

Ah, I thought. It’s not that early. The poor dear must be out shopping.

And then I saw the note.

The note was propped up on the dining room table right where I couldn’t miss seeing it, which, of course, explains why I had missed seeing it. It was hand-written in Lucy’s perennial childish scrawl on a piece of her blue note-paper. I unfolded it, switched on the light, and read it.

This is what it said:

Dear Jeff:

I have taken as much as I can take. I don’t care how good she is, you didn’t have to spend the night with her. I’m going to Mother’s and I’ll be there when you read this, and after that I’m going away from there and I’m not telling you where I’m going. Maybe someday we can be together again but not now because I just can’t take it any more and you’ll be better off without me.

I still love you and I always will.

Lucy

I read the letter once standing up, then sat down and read it through a second time and a third time after that. It didn’t make sense, I told myself; it just didn’t add up at all. I yanked out a cigarette and wasted three matches before I got the damn thing lit—then after two puffs it tasted terrible and I dropped it on the floor and stepped on it.

I had come home to her. I was back, through with Candy, wanting only to be with my wife forever.

But Wifey doesn’t live here any more.

Wifey done gone home to Mama.

Wifey done left.

I lit another cigarette. If I’d only had the brains to come home the night before, it would have been all right. But no—I had to stay out, and Lucy had put two and two together and came up with five.

So I put out the cigarette and snatched up the phone and called her at her mother’s house in Brooklyn. Her mother croaked nastily at me and hung up, but before the phone went dead I heard a familiar screech in the background. I called back and this time Lucy answered.

“Look,” I began, “I have to see you.”

She said: “No.” She said it as though she meant it.

“I wasn’t where you think I was last night.”

“I don’t care where you were. I don’t care if you did it in Macy’s window with a crowd of two thousand watching you. I don’t care—”

“I was alone last night.”

“Go to hell.”

“I mean it, Lucy. I was alone all night.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Lucy, I love you. Lucy, honey—”

“Stay away from me,” she said. “And don’t call me again, because the next time you call I won’t be here any more. I’m going away, I think I’m going out of the state, maybe I’m going to Nevada to divorce you. I don’t know.”

“Lucy,” I broke in. “Honey, it’s all over. I’m through with the girl, you’re the only one who matters, I—”

“What’s the matter—did she throw you out?”

That one hit me in the head. I wondered for a split-second whether I would ever have been saying these things to Lucy if Candy hadn’t broken things off.

“Lucy—”

“Go chase yourself,” she said.

Approximately.

Because it was Sunday I called my landlord at home. I told him he could have his apartment back and he told me about the lease. I told him he could keep the furniture in return for letting me off the lease, since it only had three months to run before renewal time. He thought it over for a second or two and agreed that it was a good deal, too good a deal, and wouldn’t I be getting a screwing under those terms? I told him I was used to getting a screwing and didn’t mind it a bit and he said he’d have his lawyer draw up papers and send them over sometime during the week. I told him to send them to my office and rang off.

I threw what clothes I wanted to keep in a suitcase, jumped in a cab and gave the driver the address of the fleabag where I’d spent the past night. The hotel clerk greeted me royally and I gave him seventy bucks for a month’s rent on a slightly better room than last night’s roach-trap. This one had a double bed and a john all its own, which was something.

I thought about Lucy for a while. It was over with her; maybe there would be a time to begin again but the decision had to be up to her. It wasn’t a decision I could make for her. Now, with all the will drained out of me, I didn’t much care what her decision was. She had bawled everything up, whether she was right and I was wrong or not. If she had stuck with me for just another week I would have been over Candy and things would have worked out. The hell with her.

I thought about Candy, but after thinking about Candy for a minute or two I got jittery and decided not to think about Candy any more.

So I forgot about Candy.

Sure I forgot about Candy.

I drank a little that night, just enough to get to sleep, and the next morning it was Monday and time to go to work. I got to the Beverley Finance Company, where it didn’t matter if you were a little hungover or not as long as you managed to sweet-talk the marks in the proper manner, and I threw myself into my work and forgot completely about the existence of a sexy little blonde named Candace Cain.

Sure I did.

The first mark of the morning got scared off by the interest rates. The second was a fifty-buck personal loan which I tentatively approved until they checked on his references and found out that he was faking. I threw him out of the office.

Things like this made it easy for me to forget about Candy.

The third prospect was the ideal type of mark—three little kids, a wife, a steady job. And a pile of bills. So my friend the mark swallowed the propaganda in our ads and decided it would be a fine idea to float one loan and pay all his bills. It cost him about fifty bucks more this way but he didn’t stop to think about that part. I didn’t give him time, just stuck the pen in his hand and showed him where to sign. One quick call to his boss and he was walking out of the office with the money in his hot little hand.

The fourth boy’s references stank and I told him to find himself a good co-maker, the same line I had handed Candy.

Remember Candy?

She’s the girl I had forgotten about.

Sure.

That’s why at precisely a quarter to two that afternoon I picked up the phone and called the Hotel Somerville. The message I got surprised me. I guess I should have expected it but I didn’t.

Candy didn’t live there any more.

Chapter Five

I WAS PROCESSING the application of a Miss Matilda Ferkel, a shrivelled little thing who had taught school for thirty-two years, who lived alone in a residential hotel off Gramercy Park, and who wanted to borrow one hundred dollars to give her Siamese cat Lemuel a decent burial.

It’s a genuine pleasure to do business with people like Matilda Ferkel.

Processing her application was just so much paperwork, just a matter of form. There was about as much chance that Miss Ferkel would default on her loan as there was of the Washington Senators winning the World Series. Matilda Ferkel just didn’t come on like a crook.