Making Love (44 page)

“Coming,” she moaned.
 

“Get your ass out of my chocolate pudding.”
 

“I'm low. Lay off, please. You'll be rewarded.”
 

“I should live to see the day. Only a Jew stuffs food into a skin, licks it like a delicacy or something, then has it turn up on somebody else's table and hears it called by another name. And he has to be dressed for the occasion.”
 

She didn't listen, having run off to the water for a swim to escape. She was happy in the water, confused, but without conflict. Her past a dream.
 

“Jane,” he shouted, “be careful, I'm not a lifeguard.” Sulking, he lifted his newspaper, studied his losses in the market, then watched the water for her shape. He heard her singing, went inside to the room, and flung himself on the bed with the paper. He didn't hear her for minutes, but he thought hours. Rising, he said to himself:
 

“I wouldn't soak a blister in that water.”
 

He rushed outside, protesting at the universe, the cluster of planets.
 

“Jane, come back, will you, please. I love you. Sit on my face as long as you like.” What a hotel, no neighbors, no tread on the stairs next to his wall. He couldn't stand the punishment. He hated the sand, ran along it barefooted. It lodged between his toes.
 

“Jane, Jane, I'm sorry. Where are you?”
 

A wet naked form embraced him, gripped his stomach.
 

“Right behind you, cunt.”
 

Living with her, he recognized he would merely become a number in an infinite progression. Married, he could control her, possibly subdivide her property, an arrangement that appealed to his instincts for sequestering what belonged to others.
 

“You want to wipe your feet, get yourself a rug,” he protested. Always wronged, grimacing, he proved as defensible as Stalingrad. “My grandparents walked into a gas chamber. I'm not about to repeat the exercise.”
 

“What do you want?” she asked, genuinely perplexed by his behavior.
 

“Marriage.”
 

“I can't. Not yet.”
 

“This isn't love, not yet, it's a come factory. I've got a sinus condition which is aggravated by snotty teen-agers.”
 

“I'm twenty.”
 

“Then act it. You don't treat me like a man but a campus you're protesting on. Listen, Jane, if I just wanted
schtuping,
I could get it from an expert. You're still in the Golden Gloves. For goodness sake, you're not even a Jewish princess and you won't be until I elevate you to the position.”
 

 

* * * *

 

Back in New York, brown and untroubled at the beginning of February, she spent much of her time eliminating ski resorts he'd suggested, finally settling on Aspen for the end of the month. Impossible to get a reservation, he fixed it. He was very good at that sort of thing, knowing people who knew people. It frequently astonished her that so many people owed him favors, an enviable position which he took pains not to exploit. He didn't press her about marriage, learning quickly that it angered her. He preferred a calm surface.
 

She never spoke of her family, friends or past, which occasionally gave him a peculiar sensation. He'd never been on intimate terms with anyone devoid of history, and she fell into her role of “Mrs. Jane,” the quaint name Bob invented for her, that gave her all the leeway of a mistress and none of the responsibilities of a wife, and placed her in the comfortable no-man's-land of personal impersonality, stateless but with status.
 

On their second day back she ran out of clothes, and Luckmunn took her back to the apartment. He was curious to see what he'd missed; not precisely to regain her past but to lose it permanently. There were still nine months of free living to go on the sublet and he wondered whether threatening lawyers' letters to Mrs. Burke might enable Jane to recoup some money, or at the very worst he might finagle permission to relet the apartment. The city was filled with homeless people and this rich kid was depriving others of living space, typically selfish.
 

“I'd like to come up,” Luckmunn said.
 

“It's just an apartment.”
 

“I want to see where you lived.”
 

“Okay,” she agreed, “there are no ghosts.”
 

She'd prove it to both of them. If nothing more he deserved her version of the truth. The place hadn't changed much, some letters and ads shoved under the door.
 

“It's very nicely furnished. Who would have thought a sublet—” He suddenly held his nose, a fearful odor came from the kitchen. The Frigidaire door had been left open and an assortment of half-eaten food, rancid butter, sour milk, had grown thick with gray-green mold. A broken eyebrow pencil lay on the floor and there was some squiggly writing on the door. They both looked closely.
 

“It looks like it says
I got the message,
” Luckmunn said. “Does that mean anything to you?” He left the kitchen for greener pastures and wandered into the bedroom, an orderly place with books, clothes, and no floor-to-ceiling mirrors, certainly nothing offering wild encouragement to men. He went back into the living room. She was sitting by a window, reading a letter. He picked up the mail she'd carelessly dropped. Maybe there was a dividend check among them. Funny, getting letters under the door. Perhaps her box had been full or this was some kind of obscure arrangement for the sublet.
 

“Jane, cant you do your reading at my place. I can't stand the dust here.”
 

“Will you shove it for a minute.”
 

 

Ontario, Canada, Box 76
 

January 29th
 

Dear Jane,
 

Enclosed is a money order for $300 which squares us financially. I don't suppose I'll ever outgrow this middle-class habit of paying back. But please cash it. This letter obviously is not about money. More or less won't make any difference to you. But, Jane, I had to start somewhere. I wanted to see you to talk to you, face to face, but you've got this remarkable ability to disappear off the face of the earth whenever you want to, living proof no doubt of the efficacy of credit cards. Here goes....
 

On January 25 Sonny and I were married by a Justice of the Peace in Ontario. Neither of us picked the place. Sonny's new job kind of dictated it. He is still absurdly superstitious and thought that since this city had no memories and only good omens for the future, he wanted it to take place here. It all happened too fast to even bear thinking about.
 

But, about a week after you walked out on him, his luck changed. He ran into someone he knew from his playing days—now the general manager of a new franchise up here called the Ontario Silhouettes. In darkness we stand out white, in the light we're gray. The team was desperately in need of experienced personnel which accounts for the fact that Sonny was offered a position, a two-year contract. Obviously beginners can't be fussy. I told him to face that fact.
 

It's hard to describe how happy he is. I'll leave it to your imagination. He's been reunited with Wesley Junior and now both have a home. So do I as a matter of fact. I wasn't cut out for film publicity, since the job really involved wearing short skirts and laying strangers. They're called exhibitors. I've taken a job up here as a trainee with a data-processing company and have also gone back to school (three nights a week) in an effort to get my degree.
 

This is real life, Jane, and I'm enjoying it. I hope you're happy or will be someday. All in all, whether you know it or not, or are prepared to believe it, you had a pretty devastating effect on both Sonny and me.
 

Of course you knew, must have, although your profound self-deception must have made you reject the fact—but, Jane, down deep I've always hated you. There it's out and I feel better. No, I haven't hated you as a person. I'm getting confused. I hate everything you stand for. Your freedom, your incredible nonchalance in the face of disaster, your guts, your standing apart, holding back, your thoughtless body that pleased everyone and made me feel inadequate. Jane, you spoiled me.
 

I know that you won't accept that I've done the right thing, but please believe that I couldn't help myself. I was drawn to him, he was without hope and the inevitable thing happened.
 

By the way, and I don't mean this in any offhand way, he doesn't love me. I'll live with it and eventually conquer it. He's grateful and affectionate. I adore the boy. I think at the base of it, he married me as a concession to my Irish upbringing. I don't know how or why, but I've managed to go to Mass. Confession will have to wait.
 

Passion makes us all beginners and it's nothing more than the glandular tennis of the misbegotten. I don't trust it. Maybe we've both outgrown it.
 

With love from your friend,
 

Conlon

 

Jane put the letter in her pocket, walked past Luckmunn, who now appeared calm and relaxed.
 

“I'm not sorry to leave this place,” he said as they waited for the elevator. “Forget the clothes. I want you to have a new wardrobe.”
 

His star shone brightly, he was going up in the world. At birth, unbeknownst to him, a holy man must've kissed his forehead.
 

 

* * * *

 

“Jane Teller Siddley.” Luckmunn kept repeating the name. His personal Everest. He sipped Chivas Regal straight, fearlessly, walking right into the trench of his ulcer. It could go to hell. He was accustomed to her silences, her ability to stare right through him when he asked a question. Breeding. You hear what you want, he reflected.
 

They were in the study, she at his writing desk. Everything was now being used in the apartment. Nothing for show. No ropes around the living room for strangers to admire while they took their coffee on a kitchen table.
 

“How's the letter coming?” he asked, lonesome for company.”
 

“I'm almost through.”
 

He approved of her study attire, bra and panties. Nothing worried her, never self-conscious. Character. A fortune behind it. She threw down the pen and picked up her highball.
 

He slipped behind her, ran his tongue along the nape of her neck. It had become one of his favorite hobbies. The connoisseur recognized White Shoulders on the earlobe. She pushed him away, aroused, angry, out of the blue.
 

“What's the problem now?”
 

“Stop licking me.”
 

He folded his arms, sat down at the desk, set his face in his best confidant manner. He enjoyed his role as statesman, adviser, father confessor. The wisdom of a lifetime would be imparted to her just for the asking. He was ready for one of their talks.
 

“Honey, open up a little to me. Lean, Jane. Nothing to be ashamed of. I want to protect you if you'll only give me an opportunity ... your trust.” His eyes glowed with the generosity he inspired in himself. “By the way, since you're in the mood to write letters, I'd like you to write formally to Saranac and advise them that you won't be returning. I don't think it's nice that I should be living with somebody who's still classified as a junior.”
 

“Aren't your priorities a little screwed up?”
 

“In what sense?”
 

“Well, shouldn't I write to my mother and tell her what I'm doing?”
 

Something sinister here. Luckmunn didn't like the smell of it.
 

“I don't know that she'd be, well, to put it as kindly as possible, the right one to give you an advice at just this time. Her situation is bleak at best.”
 

“Might be better than the insulin shock.”
 

“I fail to see—”
 

“Do you?”
 

She left him dangling on the desk, his eyes shifting uneasily along the Persian carpet. He gave himself a thimbleful of Chivas, nursed it down slowly and failed to detect the bouquet of peat. She wiggled her toes at him from the sofa.
 

“Maybe you ought to skip the letters. You'll get a writer's cramp.”
 

“Why don't you write to her?” Jane asked. “She must miss you like hell.”
 

“Me?” he exclaimed, a definite tremor in his voice. “I'll send her a new tennis racquet. That might cheer her up.”
 

Conlon's letter had aroused her desire to revenge which had lay dormant during the time she'd been with Luckmunn, and he himself with his pretense of innocence had spiked it.
 

“I'll say Luckmunn prefers me. I'm the better lay.”
 

“Jane, what is this all about?” He smelled his own blood, a setup. He needed breathing space to develop a story. He'd throw himself at the feet of Perry Mason as another victim whom fate had singled out to destroy with threadbare links of circumstantial evidence, which the master advocate would tear apart. He'd brazen it through, make a few harmless admissions. His word against a confessed lunatic.
 

“I don't know what you mean by that. We were neighbors, and even though I was new, your mother just sort of took me under her wing.”
 

“You're a goddamn liar and you know it.”