Community of Women

13

Linc Barclay sat in the tavern with the townies. The tavern was Early American in decor, with candle molders and footwarmers hanging incongruously from the ceiling, with plenty of old wooden paneling and wide board floors. The bartender drew a mug of ale and passed it to Linc. The townsfolk ignored Linc masterfully. It seemed at times that this was the townie’s mission in life — to serve the commuter, to take the commuter’s money, to make love on occasion to the commuter’s wife, and then, ultimately, to ignore that same commuter when their paths happened to cross socially.

Linc did not concern himself with the philosophical aspects of the situation. He drank his ale. It was fine ale, and it went down smoothly. This was good. Everything else was pretty rough, and the smooth ale was a blessing.

He lighted a cigarette, took two drags, ground it out on the wide board floor under his heel. He asked for, and received, and paid for, another mug of ale. Which he drank.

He was a flop. Linc Barclay, Portrait of the Writer as a Young Flop. Man in a Slump. Man doing nothing with everything to do. Man—

Man who wasn’t even a man. Man who couldn’t make love to his own wife because he was too hung up over everything else in the world. God, what was the matter with him?

He belonged at the typewriter, but he hadn’t done a lick of typing in too long. He belonged with his wife, but here he was at the damned tavern drinking smooth ale and thinking unpleasant thoughts. He belonged elsewhere, and here he was, and to hell with it.

He had another mug of ale.

A jukebox, new and shining and not at all in keeping with the colonial air of the old tavern, gave forth with rock and roll. Linc scooped up his change, pocketed it, and headed for the door. He walked out into the night. His car was parked at the curb, but he sidestepped it and kept on walking. He was looking for something. He was not sure what he was looking for, but somewhere—

The girl fell in step with him at the corner of Vine and Dawson. She was a frail girl, looked about seventeen, with hollows under her eyes and very little flesh to her body. She looked hungry, as though she had not had a really fulfilling meal in days.

“Mister—”

He turned, studied her. She was trying to look sexy and it did not work at all. She was too young to look sexy, and too thin, and too hungry, and altogether too pathetic.

“You come with me, mister. I’ll show you a good time.”

He wanted to laugh at her. Sister, he thought, you’re barking up the wrong fire hydrant. You couldn’t show me a good time. I’m the no-action kid. See me when the slump ends.

“Any way you want it, mister. I go any way in the world. Just a couple dollars, sugar.”

Mister had been better. The more intimate sugar was out of place on her thin bloodless lips.

“Mister—”

Not lust, he thought. Not lust, either because I am incapable of that emotion now or because she is incapable of arousing it. Not lust, certainly, but something else.

Pathos.

He reached into his pocket, found his wallet, drew out a five dollar bill. He gave it to the girl and her eyes brightened. She looked even younger now.

“Come on,” she said. “I gotta room downtown. We’ll have a ball, mister. We’ll have ourselves a time.”

“Keep the money,” he said. “I can’t come with you.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“I’m not good enough for you?”

He saw the pain in her eyes, the hurt, the injury. “No,” he said carefully. “No, it’s not that. But I’ve got a perfectly good wife at home. Go get yourself a meal.”

He looked at her, saw the play of emotions across her face, saw injured pride give way slowly and be replaced by gratitude. Poor kid, he thought, she couldn’t be a professional hustler, not wasting her time in Cheshire Point. Just a kid on the skids, a traveling kid with no money in her jeans and only one thing to offer, only one commodity to put on the market. He watched her scurry off toward the all-night diner, the five-dollar bill clenched tightly in her fist.

I’ve got a perfectly good wife at home. The sentence mocked him now. He had a perfectly good wife at home, but she was home and he was not, and she needed him while he remained unable to make her happy. What on earth was wrong with him?

Just a slump, he answered himself. And it was not a permanent thing. It would improve.

He found his way back to the tavern, got into his car. He started up the motor and drove slowly home. The slump would end. Soon, he hoped.

Soon.

Nan Haskell was at a party that Jenny and Les Cameron had had the temerity to throw. It was currently transforming the Cameron ranch house into something not far removed from a pigsty, and not even too far removed from the Augean stables. Nan sipped a Something Collins through a flavored straw and thought about Ted.

Who, for his part, was absent.

The Carrs were not at that particular party. The Carrs were never invited to the Camerons, and the Camerons in turn were never invited to the Carrs. Each had been frequently invited to the other home a year ago, but since then something had happened.

Nan, like everyone else in Cheshire Point, had a fair idea what had happened. It was never openly discussed, but general word had it that Ted Carr had said something to Jennifer Cameron, and that the something had been indiscreet, since Ted Carr had never been awarded medals for discretion. The various stories ran different courses from that point on. Some had it that Jenny had slapped Ted’s face, and that was all. Others held that Jenny ran screaming to Les Cameron, who punched Ted in the nose. Still other versions had it that Les Cameron had walked into a bedchamber while Jenny and Ted were engaging in horizontal pleasantries.

The stories varied, but the point they made was simple enough. The Camerons and the Carrs were not friends any more because Ted had wanted to take Jenny to bed. Whether or not he had been successful was a moot point.

Now, Nan thought, he wants to take me to bed.

And he would probably succeed.

A woman was talking to her. She turned, spilling neither her Something Collins nor the ashes from her cigarette. She talked to the woman at her elbow, listened to a less-than-inspired monologue on the evils of crab grass and the impossibilities of keeping a crab-grass-free lawn. She replied, saying something innocuous, while trying to remember the woman’s name. She failed, and by the time the name came back to her the woman was delivering the identical monologue to a man who looked about as interested as Nan had been.

Maybe the man, too, was thinking about adultery.

Because Nan was. She could think of nothing else. It was on her mind all the time now, along with Ted’s voice over the telephone, and Ted’s hands in the kitchen after the bridge game.

Howard could help her. Howard could pay more attention to her, and be more alive, and act more interested and interesting. Because, for the love of God, it was not as though she was in love with Ted Carr. Love? If she felt anything toward the man, it was a great deal closer to hatred than it was to love. She did not love him. She didn’t care if he lived or died, would almost have preferred it if, in fact, he did die.

Then—

No, it was simple boredom. Ennui, weltschmerz, and the same thing in any language. Either way it smelled as sweet, and stank to high heaven. She was almost ready to spread her plump thighs for a man she did not even like, and just because she was bored.

She put out one cigarette and lighted another one. She took a deep breath, exchanged a few uninspired words about the weather with one man and parried half-hearted sex talk with another.

“How about it, Nan Haskell? Why don’t you and I have a mad passionate affair?”

“I’d love to. But I’m afraid not, Mr. Thorpe.”

“I don’t appeal?”

“Of course you appeal. But you’re one of those overworked executives. I wouldn’t dare have a mad passionate affair with you.”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because you might have a coronary attack and die in my arms.”

“In your legs, you mean.”

“Whatever. And we’d be the talk of Cheshire Point. Imagine what the minister would say!”

“You’re absolutely right,” he said, patting her thigh gently, almost paternally. “Besides, my insurance isn’t paid up.”

“Then we can’t, Mr. Thorpe.”

“Quite right, Mrs. Haskell. See me again, please do.”

She moved off, picked up somebody’s half-filled drink and finished it. There was a world of difference, she thought, between the sort of proposition Penn Thorpe had just handed her and the kind she’d gotten from Ted Carr. Ted was serious. Penn Thorpe, on the other hand, was making cocktail party passes, the perfunctory sort that flew through the air along with the gin fumes. They never stopped. They were the banter of Cheshire Point on weekends, the constant words that were always bandied about and never taken seriously. If she had accepted Perm’s pass, he would have had a coronary, probably brought on by shock.

But Ted was different. He meant it.

Maybe I should get drunk, she thought. Maybe I could get stinking drunk, screaming drunk, barking drunk, and then I would go puke and Howard would take me home and that would solve everything.

She got stinking drunk.

She drank everything in sight, and she wound up throwing up over the rug, and Howard wound up taking her home. But even with her head spinning in circles, even with her stomach turning itself inside out, she knew full well that everything would not be solved, not at all.

The music on the phonograph was a Mozart piano sonata, simple and clean and precise, formal and crisp and cool. Roz Barclay sat on the sofa and smoked the last cigarette in the pack. Soon, she thought, she would have to get up and get another pack: She looked at the ashtray, overflowing with cigarette butts. Then she looked at the cigarette between the index and middle finger of her right hand. She remembered that last time she had studied a cigarette, remembered the thoughts she had thought then, remembered the laughter that had killed her frustrations for the time being.

Now she smoked, and listened to the music, and waited. The music was enough to carry her off, to occupy her mind so that most of her thoughts would cease to bother her. She was waiting for Linc. He would come home soon, and then they could be together. They could not make love, because lovemaking was out until Linc’s slump ran its course. But they could be together. And simply being with the man you loved was a thousand times more satisfying than making love with a stranger.

She heard the car, ran to the window like a teenager waiting for a date. She saw the car pull into the driveway, then waited at the door for him to come back from the garage. He walked in, a strange faraway look in his eye. He kissed her and she hugged him.

“Okay?”

“Fine,” he said.

“A little drunk?”

“Not even a little,” he told her. “I had three mugs of ale downtown and walked around for a few minutes. This’ll kill you.”

“What will?”

“This,” he said. “I ran into a whore.”

“Anyone you knew?”

He laughed happily, then described the girl he had met. “A pathetic little thing,” he said. “I gave her five dollars and sent her away. She couldn’t have picked a less likely prospect.”

She laughed with him. “Can we afford the five?”

“She needs it more than we do.”

“I suppose so. Come on in. Sit with me.”

He kissed her again. “What’s playing?”

“Mozart.”

“Nice. Let’s warm the couch.”

They sat together on the couch. For a long moment an urge spread on Roz, an urge to throw herself at this man, to do her damnedest to make him want her the way she wanted him. But the urge passed. She mastered it, and they sat quietly together and listened to the music.

A weekend in Cheshire Point. Sunday came, finally, and it was a day for black coffee and aspirin, a day to stay away from the children because noise was not a good idea when your head was a few sizes too large. It was a day for husbands and wives to forgive and forget, because Friday and Saturday night had undoubtedly supplied a great many scenes which needed forgetting as quickly as possible. It was a day to draw yourself together, a day to recuperate and set your sights on the week ahead, the week of commuting and school for the kids and everything else.

A weekend in Cheshire Point. It was hectic, and while you might look forward to it on Friday afternoon you regretted its arrival by Saturday morning and hated it all across the board by Sunday. It performed one function that could be described as valuable. It set you up for the work-week.

Because, when Monday morning came around, you were glad.