Every few minutes Julian would jot down some figures as they came into his head. All the time he looked very busy, and he hoped he was making a good impression on Mary Klein. The sheets of paper that lay before him were filling up with neat, engineering style lettering and numerals. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division….
He did. What’s the use of trying to fool myself? I know he did. I know he did and no matter what excuses I make or how much I try to tell myself that he didn’t, I’ll only come back to the same thing: He did. I know he did. And what for? For a dirty little thrill with a woman who—oh, I thought he’d got all that out of his system. Didn’t he have enough of that before he married me? Did he still think he was a college boy? Did he think I couldn’t have done the same thing to him, dozens of times? Did he know—oh, of course he didn’t know that of all his friends, Whit Hofman was the only one that I can truthfully say never made a pass at me. The only one. Ah, Julian, you stupid, hateful, mean, low, contemptible little son of a bitch that I hate! You do this to me, and know that you do this to me! Know it! Did it on purpose! Why? It wasn’t only to get even with me. It wasn’t only because I wouldn’t go out in the car with you. Are you so dumb blind after four and a half years that you don’t know that there are times when I just plain don’t feel like having you? Does there have to be a reason for it? An excuse? Must I be ready to want you at all times except when I’m not well? If you knew anything you’d know I want you probably more then than any other time. But you get a few drinks in you and you want to be irresistible. But you’re not. I hope you found that out. But you didn’t. And you never will. I love you? Yes, I love you. Like saying I have cancer. I have cancer. If I did have cancer. You big charmer, you. You irresistible great big boy, turning on the charm like the water in the tub; turning on the charm like the water in the tub; turning on the charm turning on the charr-arm, turning on the charm like the water in the tub. I hope you die.
I hope you die because you have killed something fine in me, suh. Ah hope you die. Yes-suh, Ah hope you die. You have killed something mighty fine in me, English, old boy, old kid, old boy. What Ah mean is, did you kill something fine in me or did you kill something fine. I feel sick, sick as a dog. I feel sick and I would like to shoot my lunch and I would like indeed to shoot my lunch but I will be damned if I want to move out of this bed, and if you don’t stop being nasty to servants—I said r. I said a word with r in it, and that makes me stop this silly business. I wonder why? I wonder why r?
Oh, I guess I better get up. There’s nothing to be gained by lying here in bed and feeling sorry for myself. It’s nothing new or interesting or novel or rare or anything. I’m just a girl who just feels like dying because the man I love has done me wrong. I’m not even suffering any more. I’m not even feeling anything. At least I don’t think I am. No, I’m not. I’m not feeling anything. I’m just a girl named Caroline Walker, Caroline Walker English, Caroline W. English, Mrs. Walker English. That’s all I am. Thirty-one years old. White. Born. Height. Weight. Born? Yes. I always think that’s funny and I always will. I’m sorry, Julian, but I just happen to think it’s funny and you used to think so too, back in the old days when I knew you in an Eton collar and a Windsor tie, and I loved you then, I loved you then, I love you now, I love you now, I’ll always love you to the day I die and I guess this is what they call going to pieces. I guess I’ve gone to pieces, because there’s nothing left of me. There’s nothing left for me of days that used to be I live in mem-o-ree among my souvenirs. And so what you did, what you did was take a knife and cut me open from my throat down to here, and then you opened the door and let in a blast of freezing cold air, right where you had cut me open, and till the day you die I hope you never, never know what it feels like to have someone cut you open all the way down the front of you and let the freezing blast of air inside you. I hope you never know what that means and I know you won’t, my darling that I love, because nothing bad will happen to you. Oh, lovely Callie, your coat is so warm, the sheep’s in the meadow, the cows in the corn. “No, I don’t think I’ll get up for a while, Mrs. Grady.”
It was inevitable that every time Al Grecco went to the garage in which Ed Charney kept his private cars, he should think of a photograph one of the boys from the west had shown around. Probably a great many men—and the women of those men—in Al Grecco’s line of work had the same thought, inspired by the same photograph (there were thousands of copies of the photograph), whenever they looked inside an especially dismal garage. The photograph showed a group of men, all dead, but with that somehow live appearance which pictures of the disfigured dead give. The men were the victims of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago, when seven men were given the Mexican stand-off against the inside wall of a gang garage.
“It’d be a nice wall for it,” Al said, as he opened the garage door.
He went upstairs and lugged a case of champagne down the steps. Then he went up again and lugged a case of Scotch down, and then he lifted them into a dull black Hudson coach, which was used for deliveries. He backed the car out into the street, Railroad Avenue, and then got out and slid the garage doors shut. He took one more look at that blank wall before he finally closed the door. “Yes. It sure would be a nice wall for it,” he said.
No man could call him what Ed Charney had called him and get away with it. Not even Ed Charney. He thought of his mother, with the little gold earrings. Why, he could remember when she didn’t own a hat. She would even go to Mass on Sunday with that scarf over her head. Often in the far past he had told her she was too damn lazy to learn English, but now, thinking of her, he thought of her as a good little woman who had had too much work to learn much English. She was a wonderful woman, and she was his mother, and if Ed Charney called him a son of a bitch, all right; if he called him a bastard, all right. Those were just names that you called a guy when you wanted to make him mad, or when you were mad at him. Those names didn’t mean anything anyhow, because, Al figured, if your mother was a bitch, if you were a bastard, what was the use of fighting about it? And if she wasn’t, you could easily prove it. What was the use of fighting about it? But this was different, what Ed Charney had said: “Listen you God damn dirty little guinny bastard, I sent you up there last night to keep an eye on Helene. You didn’t have to go if you didn’t want to. But what do you do? You double-cross me, you son of a bitch. I bet English gave you a sawbuck so he could take her out and give her a jump, and you sit back there collecting fifty bucks from me becuss I’m sap enough to think you’re on the up-and-up with me. But no. Not you. Not you. Why, you smalltime chiseling bastard, you. You dirty lousy mother——bastard.” And more like that. Automatically Al had tried to explain: all she did was dance with him; she wasn’t outside long enough to do anything with English (“You’re a dirty liar. Foxie told me she was out a half an hour.”); English was stewed and not on the make (“Don’t tell me about English. I’m not blaming him. I’m blaming you. You knew she was my girl. English didn’t.”), and so on. In his heart Al wanted to tell Ed the real truth; that he could have made Helene himself if he hadn’t been on the up-and-up. But that wouldn’t do any good now. Or it wouldn’t do enough harm. Ed was crazy mad. He was so crazy mad that he said all these things to Al over the telephone from his own house, most likely in front of his wife. Oh, positively in front of his wife. If she was in the same house she couldn’t help hearing him, the way he was yelling into the telephone. So Al just stood there at the phone and took it without making any real comeback. At first he had been stunned by the accusation of being a double-crosser. But in Al’s and Ed’s line of work it is never wise to call an associate a double-crosser; if the associate is guilty, the thing to do is punish him; if he isn’t guilty, it puts the idea into his head. And then when he remembered the bad thing that Ed had called him, that began to put the idea into Al’s head. He hadn’t made any plans about what he was going to do. Not yet. But something would have to be done. “I guess it’ll be me or him,” he said, thinking of that wall.