No Questions Asked

10

Dr. Ogletree didn’t have any clothes on, which was all right with me because Dr. Ogletree was not quite thirty, not quite five-foot-one, and not quite as blond all over as the tight golden curls on her head would have one assume.

Dr. Mary Frances Ogletree was a nice Southern girl, from Sylacauga, Alabama, to be exact, who even now, at twenty-nine, looked as though she might very well be out there on a crisp autumn afternoon in short skirt and sweater, turning handsprings every time the Crimson Tide crunched through with another six points against Ole Miss or Tennessee or whoever it is that Alabama plays.

Although she still looked like a cheerleader, Dr. Ogletree was actually a much respected psychiatrist who specialized in autistic children. I thought that she was a little young to be a psychiatrist until I learned that she had been graduated from high school at fifteen, from college at eighteen, and from medical school at twenty-three. When I had met her six months ago I also thought that she was a bit young to be doing what she was doing just then, which was gutting me with three queens in a stud game up at Joe Awful’s place on One Hundred and Nineteenth Street in Harlem, which isn’t exactly where one would expect to run into a nice Southern girl.

Joe Awful’s name wasn’t really Awful, it was Joe Ophelle, and he had once played pro basketball a long time ago. He now gambled for a living and was quite good at it. His youngest daughter was a patient of Dr. Ogletree’s, which was how she had come to be invited, although the invitation had been Joe Awful’s idea of a pleasant little joke.

His little joke had cost him $1,400 that night and it had cost me $900. I had offered to see Dr. Ogletree home, providing that she paid for the taxi since I couldn’t because she had just won my last dime. She had not only paid for the taxi, but she also had bought our breakfast at an all-night coffee shop on East Seventy-third, about a block from her apartment, which was where I now watched her as she tiptoed around in search of some cigarettes.

“We really should quit off our cigarette habit,” she said as she came back with a package of Lucky Strikes and sat down cross-legged on the bed.

“My list of don’ts is already too long,” I said.

“You want to know what the biggest bad habit I ever shucked was?”

“What?”

“The South.”

“You didn’t get rid of it, you just left it. You still talk as though you have a mouthful of hot grits.”

“Actually, Mr. St. Ives, I can talk in virtually any manner that I choose,” she said, doing a rather good Mayfair accent.

“That’s because you’re a mimic and that’s not talent, it’s a gift.”

“When I say I shucked off the South I mean I got rid of the bad parts. I hung on tight to the good parts.”

“What good parts?”

“Manners, acquired sociability, natural sympathetic concern, stuff like that. Some of it was real and some of it was artificial, but what I liked I kept. I don’t know whether it’s still there like it was when I was growing up and learning it all from my grandmother. You have to learn it, you know. She used to say that the new wave of discrimination would be aimed at the gently born.”

“I thought your father was a riverboat gambler. That’s not exactly what I’d call quality folks.”

She shook her head and smiled. “There weren’t any real riverboats left or he would have been. I just tell some people that. He gambled his way through Princeton, then through the Army Air Corps, and then through what was left of a very short but one hell of a merry life. He and my mother died in a car wreck outside of Miami when I was seven, but by then he had already taught me a profession — card-gaming, as he called it. God, he was good. I’ve talked to people who played with him. He was a natural gambler. There aren’t many of them, you know.”

“What’s the composition of one?” I said. “I mean, if you were speaking professionally.”

She thought about it a while. “Almost total self-acceptance. That’s one. You combine that with an almost complete lack of guilt, throw in a good mind, an inclination toward risk-taking, and you come up with a successful gambler — or almost a successful anything else, except possibly a poet. You could almost gamble for a living, you know.”

“I’ve thought of it.”

She shook her head and ran her finger down my bare chest until it tickled. “Don’t try it, sugarplum. Not for a living anyhow. You couldn’t stand the guilt.”

“I don’t mind losing once in a while.”

“You wouldn’t feel guilty about losing,” she said. “It’s the winning that would be your problem. You wouldn’t ever be quite sure that you deserved it.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Maybe I should turn poet.”

“Why don’t you just stay what you are — gentleman go-between and awfully good screw.”

“That thing I was on down in Washington.”

“Last week?”

“Uh-huh. Last week. It didn’t turn out too well.”

She nodded. “I could tell.”

“How?”

“A mild hesitancy here and there. It would take a trained eye to notice it.” She grinned. “Or a trained body.”

“I’m thinking about giving it another shot.”

“Can you?” she said. “I mean, can you pick it up and screw it back together?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to?”

“Uh-huh. I think so.”

“But what?”

“It might be messy.”

“How messy?”

“I’m not sure. One guy’s already been killed. If I stir things up some more, it might get nasty.”

“For you?”

“There’s a chance, but there always is with that much money involved.”

“When did you get back from Washington?”

“Thursday.”

“And today’s Sunday. What’ve you been doing, sitting up there in that cave of yours, throwing rocks at the lions and tigers?”

“Something like that.”

“All by yourself, of course.”

“I had a little gin for company.”

“And when you couldn’t stand you and the gin anymore, you called me and came over here to make sure that what you’ve already made up your mind to do is really just one hell of a good idea. That’s what you’d like me to tell you, isn’t it? Except you’d like it to be frosted over with a little professional jargon.”

“When I want advice, I can always read some tea leaves.”

“All right, reassurance then. What’s wrong with wanting reassurance? I don’t mind people telling me I’m wonderful. That’s because I don’t mind thinking I’m pretty wonderful myself.”

“You’re pretty wonderful all right, Mary Frances.”

“See, I didn’t even blush, although I could’ve if I’d wanted to. My grandmother taught me how. She said it was most becoming of well-brought-up young ladies to be able to blush, even when they didn’t feel like it. She taught me a lot of crap like that.”

“Well, doctor, you certainly have been a help. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

“I know what you would’ve done,” she said with another grin.

“What?”

“You’d have found somebody else to play doctor with.”

We decided that we were hungry so we took a shower together, which was pleasant, and then got dressed. It took Mary Frances longer so I wandered around her apartment, lifted up the tops of jars and peered inside, read the titles of some of the books that covered two walls of her living room, studied a couple of paintings that she had recently bought, and snooped around her desk, but resisted reading her mail.

It was an apartment whose furnishings had been selected with a great deal of care and thought, but managed to look as though they had come together by happy chance. There was a pale green sofa and a scarlet easy chair that shouldn’t have gone together at all, but did. There were some low polished tables and some plump pillows and some more chairs and in one corner was a small piano that Mary Frances liked to play while she sang revolutionary songs. Any revolution would do and sometimes I joined in with her on the chorus of “Marching Through Georgia,” although we sometimes argued about whether it qualified.

When she came out of the bedroom she was wearing a pair of light tan pants, a short, dark suede jacket over a dark green blouse, and a big floppy hat which, by rights, she was too short to wear, but which on her looked just right

“You look as good with your clothes on as you do with them off, which is smashing,” I said.

She made a mock curtsy. “You do turn a wicked compliment, sir,” she said. “And I thank you.”

“I was just wondering.”

“About what?”

“About whether there might be a vacancy in this building. I’m being evicted.”

“Now that’s the best goddamn news I’ve heard since Easter week. When?”

“End of the month.”

“And you haven’t found any place yet?”

“I haven’t even looked.”

“You should have got out of that hole you live in years ago.”

“Probably. There was a small matter of inertia.”

She stood in front of me, her small fists on her hips. “I’ve just had one hell of a good idea.”

“What?”

“You can move in here.”

I looked around the room. “That’s a very kind offer.”

“That’s not an offer. It’s a proposition. We’ll split the rent and everything else right down the line. If it doesn’t work out, then you can pack up and move on. But it’ll work. I don’t know whether I’m in love with you, St. Ives, but I’m damned fond of you, and the rest of it — well, hell, we’ll work at it.”

“You’re pretty sure, aren’t you?” I said.

“Well, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“What’s the matter, then? Does it burn you because I asked you instead of you asking me?”

“I think we’re both a bit beyond that. It’s just that if I move in, I don’t want to move out.”

“That’s fair enough. I sort of like that.”

I put my arms around her and held her close. Then I tipped her face up to mine and kissed her.

“I’m going to have to be gone for a while,” I said.

“On this thing we were talking about?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“A week. That’s all I’ll give it.”

“Where?”

“Los Angeles.”

“When do you think you’ll make up your mind about my proposition?”

“Give me a couple of days. Maybe three. I’ll call you.”

“You’re leaving when, tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Call me and tell me yes, no, or maybe. I’m shameless. I’ll even settle for maybe.”

“It won’t be maybe,” I said.

“Phil.”

“What?”

“You’d be a fool to say no.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”