Lawrence Block - Candy

“Jeff.”

She made my name sound like a cave in Antarctica. Her tone was so cold I stopped in mid-sentence.

“On ten thousand dollars a year,” she said, “we cannot buy Candy Cain a sable wrap.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Or a mink coat.”

I remained silent.

“Or live on Sutton Place.”

I started stroking her again but she pushed my hand away. I picked up my hand and looked at it. I wanted to cut it off at the wrist. There was something else I wanted to cut off as well. It would have made my existence a good deal simpler, if less exciting.

“It would be nice otherwise,” she said dreamily. “I really like you. You wouldn’t even have to have a million. If you had around a hundred thousand or something like that we could just go off and run away together. That would be nice, and I’m awful sorry it can’t happen that way.”

“Candy—”

“But it can’t. That was the last time before, and even though I can tell you want to do it again, and I want to do it, too, I won’t let it happen any more. I don’t suppose it sounds nice to say, but I can’t afford to waste my time with you.”

It didn’t sound very nice at all.

We both sat up and our behinds touched. “Jeff,” she said earnestly, “I’m sorry it turned out like this. But you have a wife and a job and you’ll be all right. All you have to do is get me out of your system.”

“That’s easy. I’ll just open my veins and let the blood run out.”

“I mean it,” she said. “Just get me out of your system. Just forget you ever met me.”

Chapter Four

SOCIOLOGISTS HAVE MANY TERMS which sum up life very well. Veblenisms lead the list, in my opinion. Conspicuous Consumption , for example, which means spending money to prove that you have it. You drive a Caddy instead of a Plymouth not because a Caddy is worth the price difference, which it isn’t, but so all the world will know that you can afford a Caddy. Conspicuous Leisure , which means that instead of lying around the house guzzling beer you go out and take your yacht out for a spin so everybody can watch you relax.

My own particular favorite is Pecuniary Emulation , which means that you spend money which you don’t have because you really wish you had it. It’s a term I’ve always liked, and it may serve to explain why I was drinking straight shots of Old Bushmill’s in Macmahon’s at the corner of Third Avenue and 37th Street rather than tossing off tumblers of bar rye in a Bowery gin mill. I wanted to be a millionaire at that particular moment more than I had ever wanted to be a millionaire in all my thirty-four years, and if I couldn’t be one I could sure as hell drink like one.

Macmahon’s is the right place for it. High ceilings with crystal chandeliers. Luxurious wood paneling on the walls. A bartender with a soft British accent. An eminently well-dressed clientele. Service with an unobtrusive smile. Good liquor behind the bar.

The whiskey I was drinking was costing me eighty cents a shot and was worth every last farthing of it. I had enough money with me to get as drunk as a skunk without counting pennies, and this is precisely what I intended to do. I was drinking like a gentleman and I even looked like a gentleman. From Candy’s lopsided little love nest in the Somerville, I had scooted back to my own apartment and changed into my best suit, my best shoes and my best tie.

Just get me out of your system.

I glared at the Bushmill’s, wrapped my fingers around the heavy shot glass and tossed the liquor down. It warmed me, and that made me think of Candy all over again. She warmed me, too. She did a damn good job of it.

The bartender refilled the shot glass, took a dollar from the disorderly pile of change and bills on the bar in front of me and returned my two dimes a moment or two later. I didn’t throw the shot down this time but sipped off about a third of it and followed it down the hatch with a sip of the water chaser.

Just get me out of your system.

Uh-huh, that’s what the lady said. Except it wasn’t all that easy. I had her inside of me like an infection, and perhaps the best way to get rid of an infection is to douse it liberally with alcohol.

Down went the rest of the shot. Slosh went another ounce of good Irish whiskey into the shot glass. Whoosh went the bill, clang went the cash register, clinkle went the two dimes that came back home to me.

Glub went the shot.

Just forget you ever met me.

Yeah, tell us another one. Did you ever see a picture that played 42nd Street under the magnificent title of The Giant Gila Monster? It was a picture-and-a-half, one of those horrible horror flicks with a gila monster a good four hundred feet long made out of rotten papier-mache. It kept sticking its little pink tongue out and making sick sounds from somewhere in its abominable abdominal region as it knocked over freight trains and devoured herds of cattle. You get it now, don’t you? Yeah, one of those pictures.

It’s hard to say just what was the high point of the picture. For one thing, it was also a rock-’n’-roll epic and one of the numbers was entitled The Gila Monster Crawl. But even better was a little sequence that went something like this between the county sheriff and the oily juvenile lead:

Oily: But how on earth could a … a gila monster grow so large?

Sheriff: Nature does strange things. Why, I was reading just the other day about a woman in the Ukraine who gave birth to a baby who weighed a hundred pounds by the time he was three months old and was taller than his mother before he was a year old.

Oily: Golly gee!

Sheriff: I suspect this is the case with our gila monster, son.

Oily: Leaping lizards!

Sheriff: You said it. But don’t worry, son. Put the gila monster out of your mind. Just go to the dance and have yourself a good time.

Now you’ve got to visualize this. Here’s this son of a bitch of a gila monster a mile long and two miles wide with a boundless appetite and a great passion for eating people. Oily and his girl friend are right in the middle of all this nonsense. And here’s this moron of a sheriff telling the kid to relax and have a good time at the dance. Just forget the gila monster, that was the general idea.

Now can you picture Oily forgetting the monster?

Or, by analogy, can you picture me forgetting my own private monster, my blonde monster with a mind like a steel trap?

Yeah.

Just forget you ever met me.

I couldn’t forget and I knew that I would never forget. I pictured her putting out for some fat millionaire and my stomach started to leap through the top of my head. I pictured anybody else, any nonentity with a blank face and a shapeless body, doing to her the wonderful things that I had done to her and my gorge rose in my throat.

I thought of me, Jeff Flanders, with anybody else, without Candy.

I had another shot.

“Sir—”

My eyes jumped open like startled sentries. I was still on my stool at Macmahon’s but I must have dozed off for a moment and the bartender was shaking my shoulder gently but persuasively. It’s the same the whole world over, I thought groggily. At a posh place like Macmahon’s they call you Sir instead of Mac or Ya bum ya , but the pervading philosophy remains an eternal constant.

Drink all you want.

But don’t get drunk.

I kept my dignity. I wasn’t drunk, just a little light in the head, but I knew that it was time to bundle myself up and go elsewhere. I smiled agreeably at the bartender who smiled back, scooped up my bills and left him my change, and headed for the door. I did not stagger. I walked very well, all things considered, and when I was out the door and walking downtown on Third Avenue, my arms swinging militantly at my sides and a half-formed whistle on my lips, I possessed the utter serenity of the well-oiled.