Park Avenue Tramp

Chapter 3

Slipping off the stool to the floor, she stood for a few seconds in precarious balance. Then she walked back carefully among the tables to the small platform and took the enormous twelve-inch step upward with elaborate caution and leaned against the piano with a vast feeling of relief and pride in having arrived safely. She looked down at Joe Doyle and smiled, and he looked up and grinned a professional grin in which there was the slightest touch of bitterness.

“Hello, Joe Doyle,” she said.

“Hello, baby,” he said.

“Do you know something? You’re wonderful.”

“Do you know something else? You’re drunk.”

“No. I’ve drunk a number of Martinis in a number of places, and for a little while I was drunk, or at least blacked out, but now I’ve recovered and become perfectly sober.”

“You’re drunk, baby. If you weren’t drunk, you wouldn’t think I was wonderful.”

They were always drunk, he thought, always drunk. That was the way he got them, when the night was running out. Out of a glass in the tail of the night to lean against his piano and ask for the slight and shabby little tunes that had achieved permanence and an exorbitant importance in their minds because they were associated with something that had happened or had not happened or might yet happen, with good luck or bad, some place and time. Mostly they were just women with faces you never saw and names you never heard, and they came and went and in effect had never been, no strain whatever on even a bum heart, but once in a great, great while, a time or two in a couple of thousand nights, there was one with a face and a name who left a memory, and you looked up and saw her leaning over the piano in her expensive gown with her pale hair over her eye on the heavy side, and you felt it suddenly in the bum heart, and you wished it were possible for you to live a little longer than the prognosis, at least long enough to learn in your own way that it would have been better if you hadn’t lived so long.

“If it embarrasses you to be called wonderful,” she said, “I apologize. You’re good. Do you object to that? You’re very good.”

“No, baby. Not even good. Jelly Roll Morton was good. Fats Waller was good. The Duke’s good. Not me. I’m just a thumper.”

“I can see that you’re determined to belittle yourself, and I don’t want to hear it. You’d be surprised to know how sad it makes me to hear it. What I want to hear instead is a particular tune. Will you play me a particular tune, Joe Doyle?”

Sure, he thought, sure. Play me something, Joe. Play me something for me alone. They all came out of a glass in the tail of the night to hear the particular little tunes that stood for a time or a place or a man, and afterward they went away with someone or anyone to someplace or anyplace, and you let them go and remembered them at most for a minute. Even this one who had a face and was felt in the heart and had come, from the looks of her, down into the mean streets from a steel and stone tower, for kicks. Even this one? Especially this one. She was a tramp at best and a nut at worst and probably a lush in either case, and nothing could come of her but trouble in the unlikely event that anything could come of her at all, and whatever she made you feel in the heart in a minute or two of the tail of the night, you had better play her a tune and let her go if you had any concern for what was left of your life.

“You name it, baby,” he said, “I’ll play it.”

“ ‘Rippling Waters,’ ” she said. “I want particularly to hear ‘Rippling Waters.’ ”

He looked down at his fingers that had gone on playing softly the tune they had been playing and were now lightly running scales between the last tune and the next one.

“That’s Willie Smith,” he said. “What do you know about Willie Smith?”

“I know lots of surprising things,” she said.

“I’ll bet you do.”

“It’s the truth. You may ask any of my friends, if you care to. I’m always surprising them with things I know.”

“I don’t know any of your friends, baby. It isn’t like that I ever will.”

“That’s all right. I don’t think you’d like them much, anyhow. Most of the time I don’t like them very much myself.”

“That’s rough. Real rough. What do you do when you don’t like even your friends?”

“I don’t know. It’s a problem that I’ve often thought about myself. When you stop to think seriously about it, it doesn’t seem quite natural, does it? Do you suppose there’s something wrong with me?”

“I suppose there’s something wrong with all of us in one way or another.”

“That’s exactly the conclusion I’ve come to all the times I’ve thought about it. There just doesn’t seem to be any other conclusion to come to. Anyhow, there’s probably no use in thinking about it at all, especially now that I’m waiting for you to play ‘Rippling Waters’ if you happen to know it.”

“I happen to,” he said.

His fingers broke out of the scale and into the tune, and she leaned over the piano and listened, and closed her eyes with the intensity of her listening. Looking up at her, at the small breasts exposed almost entirely by her position and the small face suddenly at peace under the shadow of her lashes, he thought that she looked like a perverse child who played in perversity at being a whore and had gone to sleep in the middle of the game, but he knew that she was no child, and he suspected that she had never in her life been a child truly. Anyhow, what she was or wasn’t or had never been was something that was no concern of his, and all he really knew or wanted to know was that the night had gone on long enough. He stopped playing and dropped his hands from the keys, and she opened her eyes and nodded her head with a kind of grave suggestion of approval and gratitude.

“Thank you very much,” she said. “And now I must buy you a drink for being so kind.”

“That isn’t necessary, baby. It’s part of the routine.”

“Do you refuse to have a drink with me?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said it isn’t necessary to buy me one.”

“I see that I have made a wrong impression, and it’s all my fault because I’m so used to tipping people for everything. What I mean is, will you please give me the pleasure of having a drink with me?”

“Sorry. I don’t drink much.”

“Really? I was always under the impression that musicians drank a great deal. Is it because of having had rheumatic fever as a small boy that you don’t drink much?”

“When you said you knew lots of surprising things, you weren’t fooling, were you? Do you mind telling me how the hell you know what I had as a small boy?”

“It’s simple. The bartender told me. You mustn’t blame him, in case you didn’t want me to know, because it just came out incidentally when I said you were beautiful and he said you weren’t.”

“All right.” He stood up and touched her suddenly and lightly on one arm, as if he somehow doubted she was really there. “I’m wonderful and beautiful, baby, and the last thing you need tonight is another drink, but I’m needing one more and more all the time. Shall we sit at the bar?”

“Yes. I always prefer sitting at the bar, if possible. It’s much more convenient and gives you a chance to talk with the bartender. I’m making a study of bartenders, you know.”

“I should have guessed,” he said.

They went to the bar and sat on stools and waited for the attention of the superior bartender, who was busy at the moment at the far end of the bar with a woman with very bright red hair and a man with hardly any hair at all.

“If we’re going to have a drink together,” she said, “perhaps I’d better introduce myself. My name is Charity Farnese. I’m a very dry Martini.”

“How do you do.”

“If I hadn’t told you, would you have known from looking that I’m a Martini?”

“Sure. Anyone could tell.”

“Honestly? When I first came in here some time ago, I’d forgotten what I’d been drinking, and the bartender told me I looked like a Martini, which is what I actually am, and I thought then that it was something exceptional, his being able to tell just by looking, but perhaps it wasn’t so clever as I thought.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t remember what you’d been drinking?”

“Well, it was Martinis, of course, because that’s what it always is, but I couldn’t remember right at the moment. When I have one of these times of blacking out, it’s difficult to remember afterward what happened before. I need to think calmly about it for a while before I can remember.”

“Is blacking out a habit of yours?”

“Not a habit. It only happens sometimes.”

“I see. Nothing to worry about, of course. Did you black out tonight?”

“Yes. That’s what I did. I’d been to all these places with some people, and then I met a man I know named Milton Crawford, and we went to another place that was crowded and noisy. I remember that about it, although I don’t remember its name or where it was exactly. Milton wanted me to go to his apartment and spend the rest of the night with him, but I wasn’t very interested because I really don’t like him very much. I went to the ladies’ room and then outside, and it must have been right then that I blacked out, because I was walking down this street alone when I next knew what I was doing, and I came in here.”

He looked down at his hands, which were lying on the bar. He clenched the fingers and spread them and clenched them again.

“Jesus,” he said.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “Why did you say that?”

“Oh, nothing. Nothing’s the matter. Tell me, baby. Doesn’t having these blackouts ever bother you a little?”

“Well, they’re curious and sometimes inconvenient, I admit, but I don’t see any use in worrying about them in particular.”

“I suppose not. No use whatsoever. Do you ever remember afterward what happened during one of them?”

“No. Not during. Just the last thing before and the first thing after. Of course I’m able to get a pretty good idea sometimes from whatever situation I happen to be in when I become aware of things again.”

“Sure, sure. I should imagine.”

“It’s rather depressing when I seem to have been doing something that I wouldn’t ordinarily have done.”

“It must be. It must be real depressing.”

Joe looked down at his hands again, clenching and unclenching the fingers, apparently trying to think of something appropriate to say, and what he was actually thinking was that this one was a real nut, a psycho, and the only thing he ought to say was a quick good-by, and he couldn’t understand why he didn’t. Well, anyhow, he would have the drink that he’d been invited to have, and that would be all of it. After having the drink, he would say the good-by that he ought to say now, and no harm would be done, nothing lost, and he would go home and to bed, and maybe listen before sleeping to Gieseking playing the “Emperor Concerto” the way Joe Doyle would give his soul to play it if you could trade your soul for genius. It was good to lie in the darkness and listen to Beethoven out of Gieseking or Chopin out of Brailowsky. It kept you from wanting what you didn’t have, or missing abortively what you couldn’t.

The superior bartender, who had finished his business with the woman with red hair and the man with practically none, came down along the bar and stopped opposite them, Without asking, he poured rye and water and mixed a Martini, which he also poured. He moved along to two empty masculine beers a couple of stools beyond. Besides Joe and Charity and the redhead and the baldhead, the two beers, who seemed rather despondent, were the only customers now left at the bar. The tables in the room behind were becoming more and more vacant. Joe swallowed his rye quickly and washed it with some of the water.

“Look, baby,” he said, “won’t this friend of yours be wondering what’s happened to you?”

“Milton? He’s not a friend exactly. He’s just a man I happen to know.”

“Won’t he be wondering?”

“I don’t think so. Not seriously, anyhow. Milton’s not very reliable, to be honest, and besides, he knows that I’m apt to go away from anyplace if I take the notion. That’s the way I happened to be with Milton, as a matter of fact. I was somewhere with some other people, and I took the notion to go away with Milton, and I did.”

“Do you have a car?”

“Not here. I have one, of course, but I left it somewhere.”

“How do you expect to get home?”

“Home? I don’t know. I hadn’t thought much about it. I suppose it’s something that has to be considered eventually, but I don’t see the need for being in any hurry about it.”

“It’s late, baby. It’s very late, and there’s another night coming to get ready for. I ought to go home, and so had you, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You try real hard to remember this last place you were, and I’ll take you there. Maybe Milton’s still waiting.”

“I’m not sure that I want to find Milton, even if I could remember where it was I left him. He wanted me to stay with him, as I said, and he’s sure to be unpleasant if I refuse.”

“I’m sure you can handle him.”

“You’re right about that. Milton’s rather a weak character. He’s not at all hard to handle.”

“Try to remember the place.”

“It’s no use; I can tell you that without trying. I can remember something about it, but not its name or where it was.”

“All right. Finish your Martini. It can’t be very far if you walked here. We’ll look for it.”

“I’d much rather not. I’m not at all interested in finding Milton or going home. I’d much rather stay with you.”

“Never mind. Finish your Martini and come along.”

He stood up beside her, and when she saw that he was determined, she finished her Martini and stood up also, and they walked back among the tables, which had become almost entirely unoccupied, and down a short hall in the rear to the alley. His car was parked there in a small space that had room for only one more. It wasn’t a Mark II by a long way, but it started and ran, and they went to several places in it in the hour that followed and would have gone to several others if they had not been closed. The ones that were open might have been crowded and noisy earlier, but they were becoming empty and quiet and somehow depressing now, and it seemed helpful in each one to have another drink. Finally he was forced to concede what she had predicted in the beginning, that it was no use. Milton was gone from wherever he’d been, and as far as she could remember it might have been any one or none of the places they went.

“All right,” he said. “To hell with Milton. Tell me where you live, baby, and I’ll take you there myself, which is what I should have done an hour ago.”

She had drunk an incredible number of Martinis before and after the blackout, but she had achieved by the very enormity of excess an illogical reaction with which she was familiar and in which she was able to think with errant clarity and a vast and dangerous indifference to consequences. She remembered perfectly where she lived, the exact address, and she understood that not going there now would result in something unpleasant, or worse, but this did not seem at all important as compared with the experience to which she was committed. She had never had an experience with a beautiful ugly piano player with a rheumatic heart before, and it would surely be a great shame if it were simply to end before coming to anything significant.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I seem to have forgotten.”

“Come off, baby.” They were sitting in his car in the street outside the last place they had been, and he turned and stared at her in the dim light that barely reached them from the nearest lamp. “You trying to say you don’t even know where you live?”

“It’s only temporary, of course. As I said, I forget things for a while, and then later, after thinking calmly, I remember again.”

“Well, start thinking.”

“It won’t do any good immediately. I can tell you that from experience. In the morning it will come to me clearly, but it isn’t at all likely to come before.”

Lifting his hands, he let them drop in a little gesture of despair.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Jesus, Jesus.”

“Please don’t be angry with me,” she said. “I’d hate for you to be angry with me.”

“I’m not angry.”

“You were kind to help me look for Milton, even though I didn’t want to, and now I’m only making trouble for you, and what I really want to do is make you happy. It’s very odd. Since the moment I saw you and the bartender told me about your heart and all, I’ve felt a great wish to make you happy.”

“Never mind. Just tell me where the hell you want to go.”

“Well, I could go to a hotel or someplace, of course, but it would be much more pleasant if I could stay with you.”

He closed his eyes to shut out the sight of her, but all he did was trap her image behind his lids, and he cursed himself for the fool he was going to be. However she looked, however sad and lost and lovely, she was a tramp and trouble and not for him, a dipsomaniac and probably a nymphomaniac and God only knew what other kinds of maniac all told. What he ought to do, he knew very well, was take her at once to the nearest hotel, but what he wanted to do was take her home, and in the end he did what he wanted. He opened his eyes and started the car and drove to the place in which he lived, which was a large room on the third floor of a house not far from Washington Square.

As for her, she didn’t know precisely where she went or how she got there, but her senses had the extraordinary sensitivity they sometimes had in dreams, and she seemed to see and feel and hear with exaggerated intensity and excitement. She was aware of the house and the room and a bed in the room and of a sonata played softly again and again in darkness by someone on a record. Most of all, in the bed, she was aware of his thin body with its bad heart.