"Neal… don't leave me, darling!" she pleaded, and his heart broke, but he kept on, half walking, half staggering to the door of the bedroom and then down the hall to his own room.
He was too distraught, too confused, too emotionally shattered to feel or do anything right. He got dressed hastily and tried to shut out of his mind the raucous cries of the dwarf as Wafto could be heard clambering eagerly between his wife's widespread legs and Sharon's answering moans of "fuck faster… fuck faster!"
He stood for a moment by the banister, suitcase in hand, and wondered if he should go back in there and become like they were for the sake of his wife. That by doing so he might find a way in time of salvaging her. But he knew instinctively that there was nothing he could do to save her now. She had found her new place. He would have to go home and find his way in this unforgiving world without her. He started down the steps to the front door. He had never felt so lost or useless in his entire life.
CHAPTER NINE
The incident at Marlowe Manor happened six months ago. To Neal Court, who can be found these days in the taverns along Broadway between 65th to 80th streets, it might have happened yesterday. His mind still dwells on the nightmare he witnessed, of the wild, excitedly grunting beast and his wife locked nakedly together on the bed, and his own crazed reaction… or of the long, grim trek back from the manor house, across the moors to the first town, Snowston… or of that first, unnamed pub in which he stopped to collect his thoughts and found that it was easier to keep on drinking than to think.
The patrons of Manny's or the Iron Key or Proud Mary or the other bars along the boulevard are typical New Yorkers. They've heard it all and seen everything and take with cynicism and boredom the tales that outsiders bring to the brass railing. But they shy away from Neal Court, sensing in some inexplicable way that there is a deep, black grief which is eating with a brooding, sharp agony at the man, that his uninterrupted silence hides a secret which they wouldn't want to hear even if the chance were to be given. There is a malignancy about Neal Court, they say, one which festers, and that no amount of alcohol dissipates. They always leave a stool empty on either side of the man, these jaded pragmatists of upper Broadway, and they hope that one of these days the man who sits alone and never speaks will move on.
He will. His money that he so diligently saved when he was married is about used up, and the cheapest hotel in the area is on 80th, the Union Central, and it charges fourteen dollars a week, which Neal no longer has. He plans to move to the Bowery, where the other derelicts of life ultimately wash together, where a bottle of wine is more important to sleep with than a bed, where privacy is more honored than even in this disreputable neighborhood. He thinks about that, but only when necessary, because any other than those of that last night in England are unwelcome and soon forgotten.
Neal raises the shot glass of cheap bourbon to his trembling lips and drinks it, mentally toasting for the hundred thousandth time his ex-boss, the ancestral head of Marlowe Manor, the dwarf servant, the nymphetic black-haired wife, and the ape. Especially Rajah; here's to Rajah. He puts his hand forward again and nods to the beefy bartender to fill the glass again.
Only once in the six months he's been a part of the seamy area has anybody ever seen the tired, rejected man break down and show some of the emotion he has bottled up inside him. Only once; on a rainy night at three a.m. when there was only two other regular customers and the sleepy bartender in The Captain's Table to see it. Neal Court sat alone as always, way back in a corner at one of the small, bench-like tables which give the bar its character and name. He had just arrived, and the previous occupier of the table had left a copy of The New York Times lying open on the table. Suddenly Court seemed to stiffen, or so the story goes, stiffen as though he had been shot. And just as suddenly one hand crumpled the top few sheets of the paper, and the rest of him collapsed. He let his head rest on the table and he cried. Long, uncontrolled sobs from deep within; the tears of agony unrequited. That was the only sound in the quiet bar, and it seemed to go on forever.
No one stopped him, no one tried to interfere with the drunk's private hell. At last he lurched to his feet and stumbled out into the miserable night as though trying to escape from a horrible nightmare. But none of them there or any of the others that were told afterwards ever found out what motivated the scene. All they can tell you is that the wrinkled newspaper pages were carefully smoothed out, and the bartender and the customers looked over the top pages to see if the answer could be found.
The pages were the beginning of the social news. There was a half-page spread about a debutante's impending marriage, and an account on the balance of the two open sheets of a very large, very posh benefit party given by one Mark Marlowe at his Dartmoor ancestral mansion. The benefit was for a foundation interested in studying the close ties between man and other mammals, something to do with heredity and evolution, though the men who read the account in that bar were none too clear on the details.
And there was a picture, of course, showing some of the guests. The picture had taken the brunt of Neal Court's viscous fist, but it was still clear enough to see that in the foreground was a very lovely blonde woman regally clothed and being escorted by the host, Lord Marlowe. Her arm was linked with the Lord's and her other hand held a gold chain leash. The leash was attached to a young, virile looking ape the paper reported a pet which the young woman, Mrs. Sharon Court, had raised since birth and was seen very often with in the social swirl of upper-crust London.
The men all admired the woman, for she was quite a dish, as they said, and old Marlowe was damned lucky to latch onto such a find. They never connected the lady with their fellow drinking bum, never suspected he had ever been to England.
For Neal Court never gave his name. Not to anybody; he was and still is too wretched of soul to even allow that gesture.