Take Me Home

Chapter 9

Ivy lay very still in Henry’s bed and stared at the ceiling with bright, dry eyes. There was a large brown stain that began at one upper corner of the room and extended diagonally toward the center. The stain was long and rather narrow, with an irregular perimeter reminiscent of a rough coastline on a map, and it looked, in fact, somewhat like the Italian boot. Tracing the perimeter of the stain with meticulous attention to every salient and recession, and exercise in careful diversion which was helpful in avoiding disintegration, Ivy could hear Henry descending the stairs to the street, the heaviness of his tread being a kind of index to the degree of his anger. In Ivy there was no anger. There was only the deep and acceptant despair that comes with definitive defeat in a moment of hopefulness. She thought that it would be a great relief to cry, but crying was not possible.

She continued to lie in bed for almost another hour, and as she lay there she tried to decide where she should go, but she knew all the while that there was really nothing to decide and nowhere in particular to go, and that all she was doing, or wanted to do, was to delay doing anything decisive whatever. In time, however, the self-deception could no longer be sustained, and so she got up and took a bath and dressed slowly and began to consider what she should take with her when she left. She did not wish to carry both of the bags she had brought, and it required some time and thought to decide which of the two she should take, the larger or the smaller, but finally she chose the smaller with the qualification that she would also pack the larger and leave it here to pick up later.

Having made this decision she felt a sudden urge to hurry, to complete in all haste what must be done. Opening both bags, she gathered her possessions, deciding quickly whether each item was something she would need soon or not, and putting each in the large or small bag according to the decision. Her packing done, she left the smaller bag standing closed in the middle of the room and put the other one out of the way against a wall. Then she made Henry’s bed and folded the covers of her own, the sofa in the living room, after which she went systematically through both rooms, putting everything neatly in its place. This done, she took the twenty dollars from the chest drawer and put on her hat and coat and picked up the small bag and went downstairs to the street and walked away quickly without pausing or looking back.

She did not choose her direction deliberately, but she turned out of habit in the direction of the Greek’s diner. When she had reached it, becoming conscious of her location, she stopped and looked in through the window and saw the Greek standing behind the counter beside the cash register. Because she was hungry, and because she wanted to say good-by to George, for whom she had affection, she went inside and set her bag on the floor beside a stool at the counter, and sat down on the stool. George was pleased to see her. Taking a position opposite her, he placed the heels of his hands on the edge of the counter and leaned forward with an air of easy camaraderie.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m very glad to see you. Will you have something to eat?”

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll have some coffee and toast, if you please. I’ve not eaten any breakfast.”

“How is the arrangement with Henry?”

“Very bad. It hasn’t worked out.”

“Is that so? I’m sorry to learn it. I thought it was working out well.”

The Greek’s face wore an expression of grave concern. His concern was, as it were, doubled and divided in equal parts. In the beginning of the arrangement, he had worried only about possible deleterious effects upon Henry and the book, but later, in affection and ignorance, he had begun to worry about the consequences to Ivy. Beneath his overt attitude of sophistication, he considered the arrangement as he understood it to be, if not sinful, surely regrettable, and he did not want Ivy hurt or abandoned.

“It worked for a while,” she said. “But now I’ve been asked to leave. You see that I have my bag, and I’ve stopped now to say good-by.”

“Henry has asked you to leave?”

“Yes, he has. When he left for work this morning, he told me to be gone by the time he returned.”

“Henry’s hot-headed. No doubt he didn’t mean what he said. I advise you to go home and wait until he returns. It will be all right then. You’ll see.”

“No, no. You don’t understand. It was all my fault. It was my fault entirely.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to find a place to stay for a day or two until I can make other arrangements. I have a little money. Could you suggest a suitable hotel? It must be quite cheap.”

“Well, there’s a hotel directly down the street. About a mile. It’s not so much, but it’s cheap and as clean as could be expected. It’s called the Hawkins. I lived there once myself for a year and found it acceptable.”

“All right. On your recommendation, I’ll go there.” Resolving to speak sternly to Henry at the first chance, the Greek served the coffee and toast and refused, after she had finished, to be paid.

“You’re very generous,” she said. “It may be that I’ll see you again.”

“It may be,” he said.

She went out and down the street, carrying the bag. The bag, which was small and light, kept getting bigger and heavier, and at first she alleviated this by changing it from hand to hand, but then it was as heavy in one hand as the other, and the mile to the hotel was surely two at least. She finally arrived, however, stopping to read the vertical sign above the entrance, and she was relieved to see that the building made a somewhat better appearance than she had hoped for, in spite of the Greek’s recommendation. It was a narrow building, constructed of brick and pressed between two other buildings that were not so high and consequently gave to it an effect of greater height than it had. It had a revolving door, which she entered, and two shallow steps upward to the lobby, which she climbed. The lobby was small and shabby, but the shabbiness managed to retain a suggestion of respectability, and there were some deep leather chairs and potted plants distributed over a worn red carpet. Some of the chairs were occupied, and she noticed that the occupants were all elderly men who were so in harmony with the general tone of the place that they might have been installed there by design as part of the furnishings. There was also an elderly man behind the desk, and Ivy approached him and spoke with spurious arrogance that was a defensive effect of her uncertainty.

“I’d like a room, please,” she said.

The elderly clerk responded as if this were a reasonable and routine request, which somehow surprised her and gave her an exorbitant sense of acceptance. He presented a card, which she signed, and then slapped a bell that summoned a Negro bellhop.

“Six-ten,” the clerk said.

He handed the Negro, who was also elderly, a key fastened by a chain to a heavy fiber tag. The Negro took the key and Ivy’s bag and started for the elevator, and Ivy followed. They went up in the elevator together and down the narrow sixth floor hall to room ten, and then, after the Negro was gone and the door closed behind him, Ivy was swept immediately by the terrible desolation of being in a strange and unloved place with absolutely nothing to do.

She did not know how she could ever survive the desolate day, and she wished now that she had remained at Henry’s until late in the afternoon, just before he was due to return. Then, at that time, it would already be getting dark at the end of the short winter’s day, and the gray hours would be past, over and done with, the neons and fluorescents and incandescents burning against the darkness, and if there was a menace in the night that the day did not have, its pulse was quicker, and it passed faster, and it was usually possible, sometime in the course of it, to sleep and lose the consciousness of time entirely. But she had not thought, she had left in the middle of the day, the worst possible of times, and now she was trapped in this deadly room and must either escape it or somehow devise a way to bear it.

She removed her hat and coat and put them in a closet and went over to a window and stood looking down upon the tarred roof of the building next door. The black expanse was bleak and ugly, with sooty patches of snow in the corners at the base of the parapet and against the north sides of the chimney and a metal ventilator. The ugliness of the roof increased her depression, and she turned away from the window and sat down in a chair and began to think about where she could go from where she was and how she could live after the twenty dollars were gone. She could not go home, to the house of her parents, and she would not go back to Lila, and it was very doubtful after what had happened, in spite of the Greek’s assurance, that she could go back to Henry. There were places she could go where she would find understanding and help, the allegiance of kind, but she had never gone to any of these places and did not want to go, because going to them was the voluntary acceptance of a kind of segregation that was crippling and degrading.

Well, she would have to go to work and live alone, but what could she do? She had no particular talents and no special training. She could get a job as a clerk in a store, of course, even though she had no experience, and it should be especially easy now, during the Christmas shopping rush, but such a job would be very dull and would pay very little, and it could be considered at best only something to do until something better could be found. Thinking about the necessity for getting a job, she remembered for the first time that day that she actually already had one, that she was committed to helping old Adolph Brennan in his book shop, and that she had walked away without once thinking about it. It would have been only common courtesy to have stopped to explain why she couldn’t work any longer, and to say good-by, and she regretted that she had not. He owed her a little money, too, and perhaps later she could go there and get it.

The air in the room was stale and very warm. The radiator against the wall made a soft, whispering sound of escaping steam that was pleasant to hear and soothing in effect. Listening to the sound, she felt herself becoming a little drowsy, and this was good. It would be good to sleep and would solve the problem of how to survive the day. She got up and sat down on the edge of the bed and removed her shoes and lay down. The action dispelled the drowsiness, but she lay and listened to the sound of the steam and slowly became drowsy again, and after a while she went to sleep and slept through the rest of the day and wakened in darkness about eight o’clock. She wakened in terror with a scream in her throat, but she remembered in time where she was and why, and terror diminished as the scream became a whimper. Getting up, she turned on a light and washed her face in the bathroom. Leaving the light burning, wearing her hat and coat, she went out of the room and downstairs in the elevator and across the lobby into the street.

She wasn’t hungry, but she thought that she had better eat for the sake of her strength, and besides, eating was something to do that would pass some time. She walked along, looking for a place, and in the next block, or maybe it was in the block after the next, she came to a basement restaurant with a flight of steps leading down from street level to the door, and she descended the flight to the door and went inside. On her right as she entered was a long bar with two men and one woman in front of it on stools and a bartender behind it in a white jacket. The men and the woman and the bartender were all watching a prize fight on an elevated television set at the far end of the bar, and she walked past them down two more steps into the restaurant.

Since she had so little money, she felt compelled to order wisely, to get as much food as possible for what she would have to pay. Considering this, and feeling very sensible and efficient in doing so, she decided that a steak would be best all around, one of the cheaper cuts, and he ordered the steak medium rare and ate it slowly after it was served, cutting small bites and chewing each one thoroughly. From where she sat, she could see at an upward angle, over the top of a low partition, the heads of the two men and the woman at the bar. They were now faced squarely around, no longer looking downbar toward the television, and so she assumed that the fight was over.

The bar seemed all at once a wonderful place, a sanctuary, and she made up her mind suddenly that she would go in and have a drink and sit there for a while in the sanctuary. She couldn’t afford it, of course, not even one drink, but she thought of the cost in terms of warmth and casual companionship and the pleasant passage of time, and the price of a drink for all this was surely little enough. The waiter had left her check, and she picked it up and carried it over to the cashier and paid it. With part of her change, she got a package of cigarettes from a machine, another extravagance which she did not even try to justify. She was beginning to feel, in fact, strangely compatible with immediate circumstances, indifferent to matters which had previously, only a little while ago, seemed enormously important and threatening. At the bar, the bartender stood opposite her and smiled politely. He had a twisted nose and a thick ear on the left side, but these acquired defects had the effect of making him more attractive than he would otherwise have been, giving distinction to a face that would have been nondescript without them, and she wondered if he had been a prize fighter or wrestler before becoming a bartender.

“Good evening,” he said.

“Good evening,” she said. “I think I shall have a double manhattan, if you please.”

Double. She had said double promptly and quite naturally, without thinking about it. From a cheap cut of steak to a double manhattan was a long way in terms of economy, but the inconsistency in this was more apparent than real, and there was definitely an underlying sense and purpose in it, although she couldn’t immediately isolate it. The bartender brought her double manhattan and left her with it, and an incredibly short time later, lifting her glass, she discovered that it was empty. This would not do. It simply would not do. It was all right to allow oneself a drink, especially if it contributed to survival in a period of time, but such careless extravagances as this was another thing entirely. She had intended to nurse the double manhattan, to make it last, but she had gulped it down at once instead, and now she would have to leave or buy another.

The prospect of leaving being intolerable, there was only one thing to do, and she beckoned to the bartender, who returned, and ordered another double manhattan. With this one, however, she would mind what she was doing. She would drink slowly, in sips, with attention to time. Having made this resolution, she no longer regretted having drunk the first one quickly, for the result had been beneficial. It had increased her sense of compatibility, the capacity to cope, and had given her the beginning of a feeling of pleasurable excitement.

“Excuse me,” she said to the bartender. “Would you mind very much if I were to ask you a question?”

“Not at all, lady,” he said. “I gets lots of them.”

“I was wondering if you were once a prize fighter or a wrestler.”

“Both. I was a fighter first and a wrestler later.”

“Did you prefer wrestling to prize fighting?”

“No. I prefer bartending to either.”

“Really? That’s very interesting. Why did you quit prize fighting for wrestling if you didn’t prefer to wrestle?”

“I quit fighting because I wasn’t any good at it. I kept getting my brains beat out. Wrestling wasn’t as tough on a guy. It was all rigged, you see. Just a show. It was always decided in advance who would win.”

“Is that so? Were you allowed to win often?”

“Not often. The way it is, you got a hero and a villain. I was always the villain.”

“You don’t look like a villain to me. In my opinion, you look like a perfect gentleman.”

“As a bartender, I’m expected to look like a gentleman. As a wrestler, I wasn’t. I made a pretty fair villain, if I do say so myself.”

“Then how did you happen to quit wrestling for bartending?”

“I got too old. Too slow and brittle. One night In Dallas a Swede named Igor the Golden accidentally broke my arm. He was the hero and was supposed to win, but he wasn’t supposed to break my arm. It wasn’t his fault, though. It was all arranged, but I was too slow in shifting my weight in the right direction at the right time. In giving with the hold, you know.”

“I see. I’m sorry your arm was broken, but if you prefer tending bar, as you say, it has all worked out Jill right in the end.”

“Yes. It’s all worked out all right.”

He went away, and she sat nursing her double, but soon he was back to serve a customer who had taken the stool next to Ivy, on her left. The new customer was a man. Ivy knew this by the smell of him, even before she had heard his voice or had seen, looking down at a sharp angle from under lowered lids, a worsted knee against the wall of the bar. He ordered a rye on the rocks in a voice that had a trace of an accent, and she tried to identify the accent, whether it was foreign or sectional or one modified by the other, but she couldn’t even be certain that he had an accent at all. Neither could she get a clue from his appearance, which she examined covertly in the mirror over the backbar. He had a narrow face with a scar diagonally across his chin, and although she could not tell in the shadowy mirror, she had an idea that his eyes must be pale blue. The assumption of pale eyes was based, perhaps, on the observable fact of pale hair. He wore a soft hat, but it was pushed so far back on his head that she could see the hair brushed flatly across the front part of his skull. There was, she thought, a peculiar quality in this particular man, something that made him exceptional among other men, but she was no more successful in identifying this quality than she had been in identifying the accent, if any, and she did not learn until later, too late, that it was the quality of danger, the elusive essence of a dangerous man.

“What’s your opinion?” he said suddenly in the voice that might have had an accent.

“Were you speaking to me?” she said.

“You were watching me in the mirror, weren’t you? What’s your opinion?”

“Was I watching you? Excuse me. I really wasn’t paying the slightest attention to what I was doing. I was thinking of something else.”

“I’m disappointed.”

“Are you? I don’t see why you should be.”

“It’s always pleasant to be looked over by a good-looking woman, provided the impression is favorable. My mistake, however. And my apologies. Are you waiting for someone?”

“No.”

“In that case, may I buy you a drink?”

“I already have a drink.”

“It won’t last forever.”

That was true, she thought. Even with the most careful nursing, the double manhattan wouldn’t last forever, and it would be nice, when it was finished, to have another. Surely there was nothing wrong in allowing a man to buy her a drink, or even several drinks, in a bar that was a sanctuary that she did not want to leave. It was, in fact, kind and considerate of him to offer, and would be a rudeness on her part to refuse.

“Perhaps I’ll be ready for another by the time it comes,” she said.

“If you aren’t,” he said, “it won’t spoil.”

No longer under the necessity of nursing, she drank her manhattan quickly, and he kept her company in rye. Ii the meanwhile, he had given the signal for duplicates, which were supplied by the attractive bartender with the twisted nose and thick ear.

“My name is Neal,” he said. “Charles Neal. My friends call me Chick.”

“How do you do, Mr. Neal,” she said formally. “My name is Ivy Galvin.”

“Oh, come on. Be my friend.”

“I don’t know. It was nice of you to buy me a drink, and I’m prepared to be friendly for it, but I don’t believe I could call you Chick.”

“Why not?”

“As a name, I don’t like it. Does that offend you? I don’t want to be offensive.”

He stared at her with his pale, shallow eyes and thought that she was certainly tight, probably a nut, and altogether something nice and easy to be had for the night.

“I’m not offended.”

“I’m willing to call you Charles, however. Is that satisfactory?”

“Sure. Call me Charles. I haven’t been called Charles since my old man ran me away from home.”

“Were you run away from home? I was too, in a way. Not exactly, but in a way. It gives us something in common.”

“Maybe we can find other things in common. Let’s work at it.”

She lost track of the number of manhattans she drank and the length of time she was in the bar, but there were quite a few over a period of quite a while, and in this period, while the manhattans were being drunk, she was aware of the pressure of a knee and the sly and tentative explorations of a hand, the knee and the hand being the property of Charles Neal, whom she could not bring herself to call Chick. She tolerated his trespasses, which were minor, for the sake of the manhattans, which were sustaining, and in fact she was proud of herself for the really competent way in which she was getting along in a strange situation that would once have terrified her, and it just showed again that she could get along quite well in any situation whatever if she only had the confidence.

Someone kept feeding coins to a jukebox, and it seemed to Ivy that the same music was played over and over again, a full-voiced woman singing “Oh, How I Miss You Tonight,” and it was that song in that voice that became the night’s accompaniment, with power to restore it later, not in the fuzzy details of what happened, which were always vague, but in its emotional quality. After the consumption of a good many manhattans, Ivy felt the need to relieve herself, and she slipped carefully off her stool and said, “Excuse me, please,” and started toward the door of the ladies’ room that was clearly marked by a little electric sign above it. But the door was animated by a capricious spirit and insisted upon playing jokes on her. Although she had located it exactly before starting and had walked directly toward it, it kept shifting a little to the right or to the left, so that she had to stop and start again each time in a new direction. Moreover, it kept withdrawing slowly, so that she gained on it only about half as much distance as she should have, and therefore required twice as long to reach it.

There was a clock in the restroom, which she was able to bring into focus after a few moments of intent concentration, and she was surprised and delighted to see that it was eleven o’clock and that she had managed to pass several hours of the night with practically no trouble. It was evident to her now, however, that she had drunk quite enough manhattans for one night and had better return to the hotel to which she’d gone after leaving Henry’s, and The name of the hotel was, she believed, the Hawkins. Yes, that was it. It was named the Hawkins, and it was just down the street a short way, in the next block or the block after.

Leaving the restroom, she returned to the bar to say good night to Charles Neal. She owed him this courtesy, she thought, for being generous and buying her so many manhattans. She did not attempt to get back onto the stool, a difficult and dangerous exercise, but stood beside him and spoke politely in his ear, forming the shape of each word with care before enunciating it.

“Than you very much for the manhattans,” she said, “but I think I had better leave now.”

“Where are we going?” he said.

“I’m staying at the Hawkins Hotel. It’s only down the street a little way, though, and it isn’t necessary for you to come with me. I can get there easily by myself.”

A comedian, he thought. A lush and a nut and a goddamn comedian.

“I wouldn’t think of letting you go alone,” he said.

“Really it isn’t necessary, and you’ve already been quite considerate and generous enough. I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“You’ve got a real sense of humor,” he said. “You kill me.”

These words surprised her, for she had intended no humor, and they were spoken in a hard, fiat tone of voice that did not suggest that he was in the least amused. But her senses had become unreliable, and it was likely that her impressions were distorted. Anyhow, he was definitely determined to see her to the hotel, having already slipped off the stool as a beginning, and it would be ungracious of her to make an issue of it. And so she permitted him to walk out of the bar and down the street beside her.

The sidewalk was unsteady and kept tilting toward the street. This caused her to keep bumping into Charles Neal, who was between her and the curb, and once, at an intersection, the pavement moved so suddenly as she was stepping down from the sidewalk into the street that she stumbled and would have fallen if he had not held her by the arm. After that he continued holding her by the arm, even when it was no longer necessary, and when she assured him that she was perfectly all right and did not need his help, he only laughed and kept hold of the arm, and the laugh had the same hard, flat, disturbing sound that his voice had had at the last moment at the bar.

The lobby of the hotel was empty, except for the night clerk, another elderly man who was asleep in a chair behind the desk, his head fallen back and his Adam’s apple working convulsively as he sucked air through his nostrils and blew it out noisily through his mouth. Since she had carried her room key with her in the pocket of her coat, Ivy did not find it necessary to waken him. She walked across the lobby to the elevator and stopped, turning to face Charles Neal with what she hoped was an attitude of decisiveness.

“Thank you for coming with me,” she said.

“Don’t mention it.”

“Good night, then.”

“Joke again.”

“What?”

“Suppose we have a nightcap in your room.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have anything there to drink.”

“No? Well, I’ll just see you safely upstairs.”

She understood then, going up in the elevator, that she had made a wanton commitment to a dangerous man, and when she opened the door of her room and entered she was afraid to try to close it against him. Slowly, with despair, she removed her hat and coat and faced him.

She was horrified to see that Neal too had tom off his own coat and tie, tossing them toward a chair, and was now loosening his belt. Her eyes fastened on the stiff brush of hair at the parting in his shirt, and before she began to shiver with revulsion, she was conscious of a sharp spurt of unwanted excitement within her.

Chick’s clothes had been deceptive in the bar. She saw now that he was brutally formed, and that with such a man there would be no mercy. Not knowing what else to do, she backed slowly away, her frantic gaze fixed on his pale eyes, with their shallow glitter of blind lust. Slowly Chick walked after her.

His pointed tongue flicked wetly over his half-smiling lips, and it dawned on her for the first that he thought she was playing his game, teasing him on, building his passion, and a moan of realization formed in her throat.

This whipped him into action, and suddenly he lunged at her, the veins in his neck swollen and pulsating as if ready to burst. One grimy hand darted out and grabbed the collar of her dress, while he shoved her savagely with the other. The dress ripped like paper and Ivy sank helplessly to the floor.

Laughter exploded in his throat, as his hard flanks imprisoned her sides, and he reached down to draw her to him. Slowly, with calculated brutality, he brought her up against his rigidity, the hard length of his male body pressing into hers at every point. Her senses reeled, unable to cope with this strange and terrifying excitement, then took refuge in the paralysis of pure terror.

His searching hands were now taking rough liberties with every part of her, caressing her breasts, massaging her flanks, exploring her thighs, his mouth ravenous on her neck, her ears, and finally sinking between her lips.

It was in her mouth that her paralysis was shattered, and without warning she bit down on his lip, and tasted blood. He cursed and slapped her back-handed across the face. Like a cornered animal, she lunged for his hand with her teeth, and again he cursed and struck her harder, so that she fell to the floor.

There, between sitting and lying, she stared down with mute shame at the exposed pink of her breasts. How much longer would this go on? And did it really matter any more? Was this not, perhaps, the violation she had been unconsciously seeking from the beginning? No, no, she thought, it was the ultimate degradation that she should lose in violence to a stranger what she had hoped to gain in tenderness from a friend.

With a flicker of regained hope, she looked up almost beseechingly into Chick’s bleeding face, as if somehow he ought to understand this. But Neal was beyond the reach of such sanities, and this time he made no effort to bring her to her feet, but flung himself down upon her with such force that it drove the breath from her body.

In the desperate moments that followed, she cried out once, not loudly, but in a plaintive hopelessness that she knew no one would ever hear.