“All right, Arthur,” the gray-haired man said sharply. “This is getting us nowhere. But nowhere.” He took a lighted cigarette from the girl. She had lit two. “Just incidentally,” he said, exhaling smoke through his nostrils, “how’d you make out today?”
“What?”
“How’d you make out today?” the gray-haired man repeated. “How’d the case go?”
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“Oh, Christ! I don’t know. Lousy. About two minutes before I’m all set to start my summation, the attorney for the plaintiff, Lissberg, trots in this crazy chambermaid with a bunch of bedsheets as evidence—bedbug stains all over them. Christ!”
“So what happened? You lose?” asked the grayhaired man, taking another drag on his cigarette.
“You know who was on the bench? Mother Vittorio. What the hell that guy has against me, I’ll never know. I can’t even open my mouth and he jumps all over me. You can’t reason with a guy like that. It’s impossible.”
The gray-haired man turned his head to see what the girl was doing. She had picked up the ashtray and was putting it between them. “You lose, then, or what?” he said into the phone.
“What?”
“I said, Did you lose?”
“Yeah. I was gonna tell you about it. I didn’t get a chance at the party, with all the ruckus. You think Junior’ll hit the ceiling? Not that I give a good goddam, but what do you think? Think he will?”
With his left hand, the gray-haired man shaped the ash of his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. “I don’t think he’ll necessarily hit the ceiling, Arthur,” he said quietly. “Chances are very much in favor, though, that he’s not going to be overjoyed about it. You know how long we’ve handled those three bloody hotels? Old man Shanley himself started the whole—”
“I know, I know. Junior’s told me about it at least fifty times. It’s one of the most beautiful stories I ever heard in my life. All right, so I lost the goddam case. In the first place, it wasn’t my fault. First, this lunatic Vittorio baits me all through the trial. Then this moron chambermaid starts passing out sheets full of bedbug—”
“Nobody’s saying it’s your fault, Arthur,” the grayhaired man said. “You asked me if I thought Junior would hit the ceiling. I simply gave you an honest—”
“I know—I know that. . . . I don’t know. What the hell. I may go back in the Army anyway. I tell you about that?”
The gray-haired man turned his head again toward the girl, perhaps to show her how forbearing, even stoic, his countenance was. But the girl missed seeing it. She had just overturned the ashtray with her knee and was rapidly, with her fingers, brushing the spilled ashes into a little pick-up pile; her eyes looked up at him a second too late. “No, you didn’t, Arthur,” he said into the phone.
“Yeah. I may. I don’t know yet. I’m not crazy about the idea, naturally, and I won’t go if I can possibly avoid it. But I may have to. I don’t know. At least, it’s oblivion. If they gimme back my little helmet and my big, fat desk and my nice, big mosquito net it might not—”
“I’d like to beat some sense into that head of yours, boy, that’s what I’d like to do,” the gray-haired man said. “For a helluvan—For a supposedly intelligent guy, you talk like an absolute child. And I say that in all sincerity. You let a bunch of minor little things snowball to an extent that they get so bloody paramount in your mind that you’re absolutely unfit for any—”
“I shoulda left her. You know that? I should’ve gone through with it last summer, when I really had the ball rolling—you know that? You know why I didn’t? You want to know why I didn’t?”
“Arthur. For Chrissake. This is getting us exactly nowhere.”
“Wait a second. Lemme tellya why! You want to know why I didn’t? I can tellya exactly why. Because I felt sorry for her. That’s the whole simple truth. I felt sorry for her.”
“Well, I don’t know. I mean that’s out of my jurisdiction,” the gray-haired man said. “It seems to me, though, that the one thing you seem to forget is that Joanie’s a grown woman. I don’t know, but it seems to me—”
“Grown woman! You crazy? She’s a grown child, for Chrissake! Listen, I’ll be shaving—listen to this—I’ll be shaving, and all of a sudden she’ll call me from way the hell the other end of the apartment. I’ll go see what’s the matter—right in the middle of shaving, lather all over my goddam face. You know what she’ll want? She’ll want to ask me if I think she has a good mind. I swear to God. She’s pathetic, I tellya. I watch her when she’s asleep, and I know what I’m talkin’ about. Believe me.”
“Well, that’s something you know better than—I mean that’s out of my jurisdiction,” the gray-haired man said. “The point is, God damn it, you don’t do anything at all constructive to—”
“We’re mismated, that’s all. That’s the whole simple story. We’re just mismated as hell. You know what she needs? She needs some big silent bastard to just walk over once in a while and knock her out cold—then go back and finish reading his paper. That’s what she needs. I’m too goddam weak for her. I knew it when we got married—I swear to God I did. I mean you’re a smart bastard, you’ve never been married, but every now and then, before anybody gets married, they get these flashes of what it’s going to be like after they’re married. I ignored ’em. I ignored all my goddam flashes. I’m weak. That’s the whole thing in a nutshell.”
“You’re not weak. You just don’t use your head,” the gray-haired man said, accepting a freshly lighted cigarette from the girl.
“Certainly I’m weak! Certainly I’m weak! God damn it, I know whether I’m weak or not! If I weren’t weak, you don’t think I’d’ve let everything get all—Aah, what’s the usea talking? Certainly I’m weak . . . God, I’m keeping you awake all night. Why don’t you hang the hell up on me? I mean it. Hang up on me.”
“I’m not going to hang up on you, Arthur. I’d like to help you, if it’s humanly possible,” the gray-haired man said. “Actually, you’re your own worst—”
“She doesn’t respect me. She doesn’t even love me, for God’s sake. Basically—in the last analysis—I don’t love her any more, either. I don’t know. I do and I don’t. It varies. It fluctuates. Christ! Every time I get all set to put my foot down, we have dinner out, for some reason, and I meet her somewhere and she comes in with these goddam white gloves on or something. I don’t know. Or I start thinking about the first time we drove up to New Haven for the Princeton game. We had a flat right after we got off the Parkway, and it was cold as hell, and she held the flashlight while I fixed the goddam thing—You know what I mean. I don’t know. Or I start thinking about—Christ, it’s embarrassing—I start thinking about this goddam poem I sent her when we first started goin’ around together. ‘Rose my color is. and white, Pretty mouth and green my eyes.’ Christ, it’s embarrassing—it used to remind me of her. She doesn’t have green eyes—she has eyes like goddam sea shells, for Chrissake—but it reminded me anyway . . . I don’t know. What’s the usea talking? I’m losing my mind. Hang up on me, why don’t you? I mean it.”
The gray-haired man cleared his throat and said, “I have no intention of hanging up on you, Arthur. There’s just one—”