Sin Hellcat

Six

Haste makes waste. Look before you leap. Rome was not built in a day. The mills of the Gods grind slow but they grind exceeding small.

I quote the above, not to demonstrate my familiarity with banality down through the ages, but to point out just how thoroughly our platitudes have lost touch with the era in which we live. Tell the twentieth century male that haste makes waste and he’ll reply — quickly — that ours is an economy of waste and he’s merely being economical. Look before you leap, friend, and the door will be shut before you’re through it. And, while Rome may not have been built in a day, it was certainly sacked in a day. As for the mills of the Gods... well, forget about them.

Which is all just a lap-dissolve into the message of the moment. Jodi and I leaped quickly, without wasting time looking around. We leaped furiously. There was no time to play games.

In the first place, the cargo, whatever it might be, had to be in Brazil in a hurry. This man in Brazil (and here I pictured a fat Sidney Greenstreet type with a tropical suit and overactive perspiration glands) was impatient. He needed this cargo. And, while I had a mental image of this Man In Brazil, I had no image whatsoever of the cargo. But he needed it, by Allah’s beard, and he needed it with bells on.

In the second place, this was smuggling, and smuggling was illegal. Now neither Jodi nor I were traditional law-abiders, but smuggling in the eyes of the federal government is somewhat more serious an offense than either prostitution (Jodi’s crime) or false advertising (mine, repeatedly). Both Jodi and I, though more than willing to do the deed, echoed Macbeth in hoping that if it were done, would it were done quickly. The sooner we were in Brazil, and the sooner the cargo was delivered, and the sooner we were back from Brazil, the sooner we would be safe, again.

“Passports,” Jodi said. “I think you have to have a passport to go to Brazil, Harvey. Or to get back from Brazil. I forget which.”

“Either way,” I said, “we need them.”

“How long does it take to get a passport?”

“Months,” I said hollowly. “Many months. Red tape, and all.”

For five or ten minutes we sat in Jodi’s apartment and thought about the many months we would have to wait before we could get our passports. For five or ten minutes we sat, chewing our tongues, and preparing to cry. And then, casually, I said: “Of course, I already have a passport.”

“You do?”

“Mmmmm,” I said. “I took Helen to Europe a year ago. We went and looked at all the things you’re supposed to look at, and I met a Pigalle whore while she went shopping for shoes.”

“Is yours still good, Harvey?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Why, you silly! Then we don’t have anything to worry about.”

“We don’t?”

“I have a passport,” she said. “I have a perfectly fine passport, because six months ago there was this gentleman who was going to Europe, and he wanted me to—”

She broke off, snapping the poor sentence right in the middle. Jodi, alas, was somewhat embarrassed to talk about her professional career in front of me. This embarrassment was something relatively new, since she’d been delighted to discuss the theory and practice of whoring the day we renewed our happy acquaintance. And, strangely, the same reserve was developing within me; I was unwilling to discuss my profession, a subtler sort of whoring, now that Jodi and I were fleshmates once more.

“Wait,” I said. “We’re supposed to be husband and wife.”

“That’s right.”

“But we aren’t,” I said. “Your passport is in your name, and mine is in my name, and we’re not married. So how on earth can we travel as husband and wife?”

She poured me a fresh cup of coffee, passed the Vat 69 bottle to me, and pointed from the Scotch to the coffee. I took the hint and sweetened my Brazilian brew.

“Harvey,” she said, sounding a little like a melodious version of Al, “don’t be a stupid.”

I looked at my watch. It was getting to be eleven o’clock, and around that time even a casual sort of person is expected to report to MGSR&S and get to work running somebody up some flagpole or other. I took a sip of the alcoholic coffee and squinted at her over the brim of the cup.

“A stupid?”

“A very stupid,” she said. “You have a passport and I have a passport. And all we need to travel as man and wife is a marriage license.”

“A marriage license?”

“Of course. Then everyone will realize we got married after we got the passports. Which is perfectly valid, and which leaves the passports every bit as valid.”

Now she was beginning to make sense. I may or may not have been a stupid, but I could see the merit in what she was saying. Still, I had to get to the office. So all I had to do was hurry on to MGSR&S, while she went out and picked us up a marriage license — Wait.

“Jodi,” I said. “Really, girl, that’s all well and good, but you don’t understand. I mean, girl, how can we come by a little thing like a marriage license?”

“Easy.”

“Have it forged?” I asked brightly. “I suppose Anthropoid Al knows someone who’s handy with a pen but—”

“Not a forged one, Harvey. A real one.”

“So much the better,” quoth I. “Very much the better. But how and where does one acquire a real marriage license?”

“I’m not sure where,” she said. “Anyplace, I guess. But the how part is easy, Harvey “

I watched while she carefully broke a seeded roll in two, spread butter upon each half in turn, and stuffed bites down her throat. When the roll was gone I was still patiently waiting.

She said: “It’s simple, Harvey. We get married.”

So I never did get to the office that day. Instead, I got married.

First, of course, I explained to Jodi that I already was married, for better or for worse, as they say in ceremonies. And while divorcing Helen may have been an admirable notion, it was an unwieldy solution. It would take even longer than arranging for fresh passports.

“You really ought to divorce Helen,” Jodi told me, her eyes calm and serious. “I mean afterward, when we get back from Brazil. Not now, but later on.”

“Jodi—”

“I know what you’re going to tell me,” she said. “You are already married. I know that, Harvey. And you know it, and maybe even your wife knows it, though from what you said about her it’s hard to tell. But somewhere in Maryland there’s a little guy behind a marriage license counter, and he doesn’t know you’re married.”

“That,” I said, “is bigamy.”

“So,” she said, “what?”

So what indeed. I went, not to my office, but to the garage wherein I had deposited my ranch wagon the night before. Just a night ago, a night that seemed like ages. I took the car back, power-steered to Jodi’s hotel, power-braked at the curb, and went in for her. She came out with two suitcases. We were taking virtually nothing, but one suitcase, she insisted, would make a bad impression upon the Justice of the Peace. So we took two empty ones instead of a single full one, and we loaded them into the rear end of the wagon, and we loaded ourselves into the front end of the wagon, and I pointed the wagon at Maryland’s marriage mill, and we set out.

The town for which we were bound was providentially named Cherry Park, for obvious reasons. It was on Maryland’s northern border, and it was the marriage capital of the area, since neither a blood test nor a waiting period was required there. This made it a paradise for impulsive souls and syphilitics, and Jodi and I qualified on the first count if not the second. Huzzah for Cherry Park, where all roads lead to City Hall, and where an as-tounding number of young things park their cherries every day!

Huzzah, indeed.

We went to City Hall, found the marriage license bureau (which was not hard, since it dominated two rooms of three-room city hall), and filled out brief forms. We walked next door, where there was a line at the Justice of the Peace’s little shantie. Finally it was our turn. She said she did, and I said I did, and he said we could. I gave the license, signed and duly noted in Maryland’s ledgers, to Jodi, who folded it neatly and placed it in her purse. And back we climbed into the ranch wagon.

“Now what?” I wondered aloud. “Back to New York?”

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“No.” She let out a long breath. “I’ve never been married before,” she said. “And I have never before had a wedding night, and I would feel rotten spending my wedding night in my own apartment. Find a good motel, Harvey. And then we’ll have a good wedding night.”

It was not hard locating a motel. The motel industry is a natural in a marriage mill, and the enterprising fellows of Cherry Park were missing no bets. We found a place called Honeymooner Lodge, and I parked the wagon and carried our two suitcases out of it. They were part of a set of matched luggage, which should have shattered the we-never-did-this-before illusion, but this hardly mattered. I walked to the desk and signed the book Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Christopher and only felt like half a liar. The son behind the desk didn’t even ask to see our license, and I could have killed him. I mean, we had a license, and I wished he would ask for it.

Our room was clean and spacious. It had a huge double bed, and almost before I had closed the door Jodi was leaping happily upon the bed, bouncing hither and yon to test the springs.

“I’ll bet you’re starved,” I said. “I mean, nothing to eat since breakfast, and that was long ago. We ought to be able to find a decent restaurant down the road, and—”

“We will,” she said. “After.”

“After?”

“After,” she said positively. She was wearing a black dress (inappropriate as hell; whoever heard of getting married in a black dress?) and she proceeded to correct the inappropriateness of the garment by the simple expedient of removing it. The girl had not only gotten married without an unblack dress, but beneath it she wore a black bra. Lacy, and peekaboo in style, and provocative. Then she took it off, and her big boobs beamed at me, and I stopped thinking about bras and dresses and began thinking very seriously about Jodi.

“We have to consummate our marriage,” she said, her eyes a-twinkle. “If we don’t, you could get an annulment. I don’t want you to get an annulment, Harvey.”

“But our marriage is bigamous to begin with.”

“Still,” she said, “I don’t want us to get an annulment. So let’s make sure we can’t.”

We made doubly sure.

We made very doubly sure. We knocked ourselves out, and we had a wonderful time.

And afterward she said: “That was wonderful, Harvey.”

“Which?”

“Both. This what every woman should have. This is just what a wedding night ought to be.”

Which put me in mind of my own wedding night, which in turn was not all that a wedding night should be. Not by a long shot, and not by a damn sight, and not by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t feel like being put in mind of my wedding night with Helen, but Jodi was sleeping the sleep of the just, or the just-laid, and I was somehow not sleepy. I closed my eyes, and that didn’t work either.

Now if you’ve been following this little narrative closely, and if you’ve also duly taken note of my reference to Helen Christopher, the frigid witch of the Ramapos, you may have come up with a jim-dandy question. You just may be wondering, as you sit or stand or lie there, just what in the world made me to do a stupid thing like getting married.

A good question.

It started, I suppose, after Saundra and I came to a parting of ways. Saundra, tasteful though she was in bed (and tasty though she was, and willing though she was to do tasting of her own) was too much a product of Doughboy, Nebraska and too much a case-study in belligerent bohemianism to be a lasting thing in my life.

She ran out on me, she did, ran off to Provincetown with a lunatic bearded painter who drew watercolors of ax handles and similarly startling items. They didn’t even look like ax handles, either. And, while I was a bit pained at being jilted, I was also a bit thrilled at being Saundraless. Harv Boy was free again, footloose and fancy-free.

And, although I didn’t know it, I was on the road to Helen.

There were other girls between Saundra and Helen. Their names and faces have faded from memory, but I know one thing about them all. Each was not so delightful as Saundra, and each was better than Helen. I can be very sure of the final part of that sentence. If any woman were ever worse than Helen, I am sure I would not forget her so easily.

I was living the fine life of a bachelor, and I was secure at MGSR&S, having proved my dedication to the advertising profession by planting a stiletto in Faggy Fehringer’s gray flannel back. I was living Riley’s proverbial life, and do you know what I did?

I decided I was making a mistake.

It was the old Mad-Ave hard sell, I suppose. All my colleagues were married men, most of them with children. Most of my colleagues lived in Fairfield County or Westchester county or Rockland County, and all of that group chatted amiably about crabgrass and commuting and the club car of the old 8:02.

And I was left out.

The others were also married, only they lived in cooperative apartments in Manhattan, and they chatted amiably about bomb shelters and maintenance fees and such.

So again I was left out. I was there, snug in my Barrow Street bunghole, sleeping with every passable woman who crossed my path, and envying the married ones their security and stability and stodginess. I looked out at Barrow Street and wished I had crabgrass to mow. I looked at my current paramour and wished she would have children so that we could go to PTA meetings.

The beginning of the end—

When a man shops for a car, he determines just how much money he is going to spend, and he determines where he can get the best car for his money, and then he goes out and test-drives that car. If he likes what he’s driving, he buys. If not, he keeps looking.

You would think that a man would be just as careful when choosing a wife. If nothing else, there’s the fact that you can’t trade in your wife every two years. If you do, the expense is overpowering. Your wife is most usually a lifetime acquisition, for either your lifetime or hers, and such an acquisition should be acquired intelligently. A man should be careful, finding out first just what he wants, and then finding the girl to fill those requirements to the nth degree.

I was a poor shopper. In the first place, I selected a girl whom, I thought, I had much in common with. I based this guess on the fact that she, too, was in advertising. I ignored her personality, and I ignored her background, and in short I ignored everything other than the fact that she was a minor copywriter at Stafford & Bean, a competing firm a few doors down the Avenue. She was a copywriter, a rising star with a college diploma and a pretty face. Obviously, I would always love to look at that face across the crabgrass.

Ah, indeed.

Her name, as you may well have guessed by now, was Helen. Helen Wall, to be exact, and there was never a harder wall to climb, including Hadrian’s and the Great one of China. I courted her like a goofy gallant. I took her to dinners and shows and hip cocktail lounges. I even, God save me, sent her flowers. She was asthmatic, as it turned out, and the roses I plied her with made her break out with a horrid rash. There’s something symbolic there, I’d say.

Helen Wall, an insurmountable wall, and a wall I simply could not mount. I committed a cardinal error here. I bought a car without test-driving it, and few men are so foolish. But at the time it was easy to delude myself. Every thin-blooded American male has been told from the cradle that he wants a virginal bride, and in weak moments some of us believe this pap. I managed to con myself into thinking thusly. Helen was virginal as the driven snow, I would say in odd moments to myself. She shall be a perfect helpmate, a wife I can truly respect. Why a square inch of traditionness tissue should make her worthy of respect is now outside my ken, but at the time it seemed flawlessly logical.

I proposed, on bended knee.

She accepted, with tears in her eyes. We were married, she in a white gown and I in a rented tuxedo, and we cruised Bermudaward on our honeymoon. We spent our wedding night on the ship, and quite a night it was...

But I digress. To Hell, for the moment, with Helen. Let us get back to Jodi, my newer bride.

We awoke the next morning, arm in arm, and we greeted the day as days should be greeted. Then, an hour or so later, we got out of our big double bed, took a big double shower together, dressed, and drove to New York. I dropped her at the hotel and told her to call Al for the cargo and the airlines office for reservations to Rio de Janeiro. Meanwhile, I hurried for my passport. It was in a safe deposit box at a Fifth Avenue bank along with such invaluable documents as my life insurance policies and a few old savings bonds. I took it back to the hotel and rushed upward in the elevator to Jodi.

She had a strange light in her eyes.

“Al was already here,” she said. “He came and went, sort of.”

“Great! He leave the cargo?”

“He left the cargo,” Jodi said. “Harvey, I didn’t know about this. I honestly didn’t. If I had, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

She opened the door wider and stepped inside. I walked inside. “Our cargo,” she said, pointing.

On the bed, smiling, was a five-year old boy.

“I didn’t know about this,” Jodi was saying. “We have to take him, and I think it’s too late to back out, and I’m sorry I got you into this, Harvey. I’m awfully sorry.”

I looked at Jodi, and at the moppet. He was a cute kid, tow-headed and blue-eyed. The eyes were wide now.

He said: “Hello, mister.”