Someone Is Bleeding, Page 2

  “Peggy, those are only two examples. In my own family I can give you four examples of happy marriages.”

  She shook her head. She read some more. And her jaws were held tightly. I sat there looking at her sadly. Wondering if there were anything I could do to ease that terrible tension in her.

  The night seemed to disappear, Houdini-like. The first thing I knew we were walking back on the block off Wilshire. It was a nice, starry night. The street was dark and quiet. Peggy took my arm as we walked.

  “I do like you,” she said. “You talk my language.”

  We talked of different things. Nothing important.

  “I should work,” she said, a little ashamed. “It’s not very honorable to live on… my alimony. But…” She looked at me as if almost pleading. “I don’t know how to do anything, and I dread the idea of working in a ten cent store or something. I did that when I was married. It’s… awful.”

  I patted her hand.

  A little later. “Where does your ex-husband live, Peggy?”

  “Do we… have to talk about it, Davie? Please.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  It was when we were walking past the little park between 24th and 25th Streets.

  “Would you like to sit in the park a while?” she asked me.

  “Sure,” I answered.

  So we sat on the grass looking over the mirror-like pond. Watching the moon saucer that floated on the water’s surface. Listening to a basso frog giving out a roundelay for his lady love.

  We didn’t talk. I listened to her breathing. I glanced at her and saw her looking intently at the pond. Felt her hand on the ground and covered it with mine. And, naturally, without forcing it, found my head resting against hers. Her cheek was firm, soft. The cologne she wore was a delicious, delicate fragrance.

  And, then, in a moment, casually, I drew back her hair and kissed the back of her neck. Long.

  She didn’t move. She shivered. Didn’t struggle. But her hands tightened on the grass and pulled some out. I wondered what her lowered face was like.

  I took off my lips. Her breath stopped, then caught again. In time with mine? I wondered.

  Her throat moved. “Wow,” she said.

  I guess I laughed aloud. Of all the words in the world, it was the last I expected.

  Peggy looked hurt, then offended. I quickly apologized.

  “The word seemed so odd right then,” I explained.

  “Oh.” She smiled, a little awkwardly. “No one ever kissed me like that,” she said.

  I looked at her in amazement. “What? No one?”

  She shook her head.

  “But… your husband?”

  Her lips tightened.

  “No,” she said. She shuddered and her hands tightened into hard fists. “No,” she said again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She shook her head. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “You just don’t… realize. What it was like.”

  I put my arm around her.

  “Peggy,” I said, softly.

  When we reached the front of her house I took her in my arms and kissed her. Her warm lips responded to me.

  I left her three times. Then, each time, turned to look back. And saw her standing by the picket fence that glowed whitely in the moonlight. And she was looking after me. The way a frightened and lonely child looks after its departing parent.

  I kept going back. Holding her. Feeling her press her face against my shoulder. Whisper. “Davie. Davie.”

  And trying to understand that childlike look, that hungry, wistful look in her eyes.

  It was while I was walking away the third time that the big car passed me, I didn’t notice it. At least not any more than I’d notice any car that passed me on a dark street in the early morning. We’d sat talking till way after midnight.

  But at Wilshire I stopped to go back again.

  And found the car parked in front of her house. Right behind Albert’s old Dodge. I saw a man at the wheel wearing a chauffeur’s cap. He was slumped down, staring at the windshield.

  Another man was at the door. He had on a top coat, a homburg.

  At first I thought, Oh my God, it’s her husband and he’s a millionaire. I felt like creeping away.

  Then I saw her framed in the doorway and I suddenly knew I couldn’t leave and I had to know who this man was. I walked past the Cadillac, a sleek, black job. I glanced at her room which faced the street. But the shades were drawn. I turned into the alley and walked up to the side window of her room. I stood there in the darkness, holding my breath. The window was open. I could hear her voice.

  “You shouldn’t come here like this,” she was saying, “at this time of night. What will the landlady say?”

  “Never mind that,” said the man. “I was talking about something else.”

  “I said no and I mean it.”

  Silence a moment. The man’s voice again.

  “And who’s the new one?”

  She didn’t answer. I felt my brow knitting. Because the man’s voice was familiar.

  “Some poor fool who…” he started.

  “Oh leave me alone, will you?” she burst out.

  “Peggy.”

  The voice was low and it warned. “Don’t keep trying my patience. Even I have a limit. Even I, Peggy.”

  I heard her skirt rustle, then a long silence. I tried to hear. I tried to look under the shade. Nothing to see or hear. I imagined. I’m good at that.

  “Jim,” she said. “Jim… no.”

  Another connection. Not quite secure. The voice. The name.

  Then I heard the back screen door shutting and I walked down the alley. As I turned onto the sidewalk I saw a dark figure coming up the alley. Albert. I recognized the form. I didn’t know whether he was just out for the air or whether he was going to listen at the window too.

  It didn’t matter to me.

  I’d had enough. I stalked past the black Cadillac and walked quickly toward Wilshire. In my mind I kept seeing her in the man’s arms, being kissed, minutes after I had kissed her. Kissing him the way she kissed me. Peggy, the new, the bright, Peggy, the deceiving one.

  I think I felt sick. I just wanted to get far away. When it comes down to it, I’m not very confident about my overweening charms. Right then the only thing I wanted was escape.

  Good-bye Peggy Ann.

  ***

  There was someone scratching on my screen.

  I raised up on one elbow and looked at the window. She was looking in. She knocked at the door then. I hesitated. Then I relaxed.

  “Come in,” I said.

  She was carrying her bathing suit and a towel in one hand. A grease-spotted paper bag in the other.

  I looked at her clinically.

  “I brought doughnuts for breakfast,” she said.

  Still no answer from me. She caught the look. Peggy was always quick at that. She knew the moment your feelings toward her chilled. Her face fell.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  I didn’t answer. Her face was disconcerted. The face I was beginning to love. I tried to fight that but it was just about impossible.

  She turned away sadly. “I’ll go,” she said.

  I didn’t feel anything until her hand touched the doorknob. Then it seemed as if someone were wrenching at my insides.

  “Peggy.”

  She turned to look at me. Her face blank.

  I patted the bed. “Come here,” I said.

  She stood there, looking hurt. She tried to flint her features, failed, tried again. I patted the bed a second time.

  “Sit down, Peggy,” I said.

  She sat down gingerly.

  “I haven’t done anything,” she said.

  “I came back last night,” I said.

  At first she didn’t understand. Then her face tightened.

  “You saw Jim,” she said.

  “Is he your husband?”

  “He’s my lawyer,” she said. />
  Last connection. The voice, the name, the profession.

  “What’s his last name?” I asked.

  “Vaughan,” she said.

  “My God.”

  She looked at me in surprise. “What is it?”

  “I know him,” I said.

  “You do?”

  “We went to college together.”

  “Oh.” Her voice was faint.

  I shook my head. “My God,” I repeated. “Jim Vaughan. Of all the crazy coincidences.”

  I turned to her.

  “Is Jim in love with you?” I asked.

  “I…” She looked helpless.

  “Is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Isn’t he married anymore?” I asked.

  “They’re going to be divorced,” she said.

  Audrey divorced. I saw her face at college, in my mind. Adoring Jim Vaughan. Divorced.

  “Is Jim’s brother here too?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “My God, it’s so fantastic.” I saw that look again and let it go for the moment though there were still many questions I wanted to ask. Jim and I had known each other very well at the University of Missouri. “It’s his party we’re… supposed to go to?” I asked.

  She looked at the floor. “I suppose you’re not going now,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’d like to see him again. But if he’s in love with you it would be a… little strained.”

  “If you don’t want to,” she said.

  “Don’t you think he’d mind?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Peggy, come on.”

  “I had no idea you knew him. But… what difference does it make? I asked you to go with me.”

  I remembered something.

  “Poor little fool,” I said. “Why that snotty son of a bitch. He’s as smug as ever. Sure, I’ll go. I just want to see his face when he sees me walk in with you.”

  ***

  I was putting the polishing touches to my bowtie when the car horn honked outside.

  I found the black Cadillac waiting.

  Peggy was inside, the door open.

  “Hi,” she said. “Come on in.”

  I got in. The door shut and the car pulled away from the curb. Good God, I was thinking, this ices the cake.

  Peggy smiled at me.

  “What’s the scoop?” I asked, quietly so the driver couldn’t hear.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You didn’t say we were going in Jim’s own car.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  I started to answer. Then I chuckled. “Jim will do nip-ups.”

  “Why?”

  She actually didn’t know. Not my Peggy Ann Lister, divorced and very wonderful.

  I patted her hand.

  “Here is the picture, my dear,” I said. “You taking Jim’s rival to Jim’s party in Jim’s car. You get it?”

  She looked blank. “You’re no rival,” she said.

  It was my turn to look blank. Maybe she was naive, I thought.

  I took a closer look at the driver. Affluence, I was thinking. Jim has done well for himself. A Caddy, a chauffeur, a house at Malibu.

  But the chauffeur didn’t fit. Not quite. Rich men’s chauffeurs have non-committal features. They match the upholstery.

  Not Walter Steig. That was his name. Steig stood out like a keg of beer among wine glasses. Big and stolid. His face and neck were reddish. He looked like a left-over from the Third Reich. Big and brutish with closely cropped hair of grayish-steel color. Rimless glasses and a stiff, unrevealing expression.

  The first time I saw Steig I don’t think I believed him. He was a living cliché.

  He turned the car onto Pacific Coast Highway and speeded up the ocean. Malibu, I thought, Jim has done well. A beach house probably. Fireplaces and French windows and opulence. Jim Vaughan.

  I looked at Peggy.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I can’t help being surprised that you know Jim. That he’s so well off. When I knew him he was… as poor as I am now.”

  That was poor.

  She smiled back. My love was wearing a dark blue dress that clung fittingly to her boyish figure. Her blonde hair was brushed out again, haloing her head with light curls. Her skin was flawless. No makeup other than lipstick.

  Everything seemed fine.

  Why, then, did I start to feel premonitions? No, it wasn’t her face, that was silly. I guess it was the memory of the look Jim had given me that last time I saw him. On graduation day. It was a look that killed and Jim was one of those people who try never to let such looks be seen on their faces.

  And that chauffeur. Again the disparity hit me. That burly German just didn’t go with Jim’s overt refinement, with his cultivated taste for the inoffensive, the best in company.

  I wondered why.

  I tried to let it go. Talk to Peggy and not jump the gun. And I pretty well succeeded except for a stray conjecture here and there.

  The Malibu house was a lush two-story affair that rambled all over a hillside and ended up like a luxurious animal crouched on a cliff, peering down at the pounding surf way down below across the highway. I imagined that the living-room windows were tightly fastened because the back porch was air.

  I felt nervous as we stood on the front porch waiting for the door to open. Years had passed. And now I was entering Jim’s life again. With the only tongue that could ever scathe him. And, more important, with another of his women on my arm. Stab in the back number two, I was thinking. A maid opened the door and we entered the high-ceilinged hallway.

  It was quite a place. Thick broadloom, everything smart and rich. Jim’s taste, all right. I could see that.

  “Well…”

  And heard him. I turned and saw him standing, one foot below the other on the step that led to the raised living room.

  Staring at me.

  Prophetic, I thought, that the last time I had seen him and this first time again, the expression I saw was devoid of all concealment. With not enough time to combat shock, it was Jim Vaughan in the raw looking at me. The look had surprise in it. Surprise, and, no hiding it, although he did his best thereafter, distinct and obvious displeasure.

  “David!”

  The pose was back. His hand holding mine was firm. The smile, the look was one of pleasure.

  “If this isn’t a coincidence,” he was saying.

  “How are you, Jim?” I said.

  No need to ask. He was in fine shape. From his well-trimmed head of red hair, down through his well-shaven, well-fed face, through his maroon dinner jacket, and down to his shiny, dark maroon shoes. Jim was all right. I almost felt like a tramp in my old jacket, one he’d seen at college no less. And that feeling was a new one for me. When I was with Jim especially.

  I’d always felt at least equal, if not superior.

  “What are you doing out here?” he was asking me.

  His arm around Peggy’s waist. Obviously. She looked a little pained but she didn’t move away. The move made me feel strange. As if with one calm, assured gesture, Jim was removing her from my sphere.

  “Writing,” I said.

  “Oh yes, of course,” he said, as if he didn’t know it. “You wrote.”

  His tendency towards smugness that I’d taken delight in puncturing at school had now blossomed into a full-fledged snobbishness. This, I suspected, was progress to Jim.

  Then came a move which sort of put down the groundwork for the coming months.

  “Peggy, I’ve got someone you must meet,” Jim said.

  That was the opener. There were other words, quickly spotted. But the kicker was me standing alone in the hallway. A few seconds after I’d met a guy who’d been a good friend years before, I’d been dismissed that easily. Jim Vaughan discarding the past like a scab. He’d said, “We’ll have to have a long talk,” but I knew it was only words.

  I saw him w
edge Peggy into a mass of people standing up near a large fireplace which was crackling with orange flames. Peggy looked toward me once, apologetically. But it didn’t much ease my irritation.

  I went up the small staircase and into the huge living-room. Just as expected. Lush. High-beamed ceiling, thick, wall-to-wall carpeting, huge, solid color furniture, copper lamps. Jim had it.

  I looked around. At first I thought there would surely be someone I had known from college. He couldn’t have discarded them all, he knew so many. If nothing else, there would be Audrey. She and I had been minor buddies at college. She wasn’t too pretty a girl. She made up for it though. So well you hardly ever knew she wasn’t particularly attractive. Something inside. Not many people have it.

  No Audrey. I kept walking around adding unto myself a drink and a plate of well-catered canapés, a high-class antipasto. I stood, back to a wall-high picture window and surveyed the room full of affluent strangers. I got philosophical. I always do when I’m around people who all have more money than I do.

  It was about that time that I saw Dennis.

  He was sitting on a couch with a pretty young thing. He was glowering alternately into his drink and at the mass of people wherein stood Jim and Peggy.

  I went over, sat down. I hadn’t known Dennis at college except by sight. Flitting about the campus like a scholastic phantom, carrying books and a woman. Always a woman.

  “Hi,” I said.

  The young thing showed teeth. Dennis looked at me with his dark eyes. Stuck in a lean face that seemed more than anything else to reflect one big, endless resentment. Of anything. Of everything.

  He didn’t answer. Once a spider looked at me like he did.

  “You don’t remember me,” I said.

  “No, I don’t,” he agreed.

  “I’m Dave Newton,” I said. “I was a friend of Jim’s at Missouri.”

  Recognition. But no pleasure.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said.

  I can’t get on very well with people who won’t talk.

  “You’ve got quite a home here,” I said.

  “Jim has quite a home.”

  There it was. Plain as the nose on his sullen face, The resentment. I’d heard Dennis talk once at college. That was one day when I’d come up to him and Jim on the campus. Dennis had walked away saying, “Sure, have it your way. You always do anyway.”