The Fugitive Pigeon

Chapter 20

I smelled eggs. Frying, scrambling, omeleting, perhaps even poaching. At any rate, eggs.

Naturally, I opened my eyes. Naturally, that woke me up.

I was lying on my back on Artie’s bed, dressed only in shorts. I’d gone to sleep covered by a sheet, but sometime in the night I must have kicked it off; I could remember having had several strenuous dreams, the details of all of which had happily been lost.

Ersatz daylight grayed the airshaft window, revealing but not enriching the bedroom. I sat up and looked around the gray lumpy mess everything was in, just like my own bedroom over the bar in Canarsie — so far and far away! — and I found myself feeling as maudlinly homesick as a Third Avenue Irishman. I was beginning my third day as a fugitive.

A clatter of crockery from the other room reminded me of the egg aroma that had awakened me, and all at once my stomach started growling in a determined and irritable manner, and what with one thing and another the day had begun.

I left Artie’s bed reluctantly, and shuffled over to the bathroom, where I abluted, after which I borrowed some too-small underwear from Artie’s dresser, put on my shoes and trousers, and went out in my undershirt to the living room.

History repeats. The same sloe-eyed raven-tressed dungaree-clad barefoot beauty stood at the same stove scrambling eggs. A cigarette dangled from her lips, to complete an impression of jaded wanton evil. In a silent movie, the first shot of Chloe would inevitably have been followed by a slide reading:

The Other Woman said, “How do you like your scrambled eggs, wet or dry?”

Until that moment I’d thought I was hungry, even starving. My stomach, in fact, was continuing unabated to growl. But being faced first thing in the morning with a decision between wet scrambled eggs (ugh) and dry scrambled eggs (gah) was too much for me. Therefore, “Coffee,” I said.

She looked at me in surprise. “You don’t want any eggs?”

The more I woke up, the worse I felt, like coming out of novocaine. “Maybe later,” I said, in re eggs, more to soothe Chloe and get her to stop talking about eggs than out of any conviction that I might at some future date begin to eat food again. “Just coffee now,” I explained further, to nail it all down, and went over to the complex of furniture in the middle of the room, where I sat down in the general direction of an armchair.

The Other Woman suggested, “How about toast?”

Toast. I squinted, to show I was trying to think. The mention of the word toast didn’t immediately repel me, so I said, “All right. That sounds all right.”

But she wasn’t done with me. She said, “How many slices?”

I frowned. I rubbed my nose. I blinked several times. I scratched my left ankle bone with the edge of my right shoe. I said, “I don’t know.”

“Two? Can you eat two?”

She insisted on an answer, that’s all there was to it. Little did she care that my mind wasn’t functioning. I said, “I guess so. No, maybe not. Or, wait a second...”

“I’ll make one,” she said.

I nodded. “That’s good.”

“If you want another one after, you can have it.”

“That’s fine.”

“With your eggs, if you want eggs after.”

“That’s wonderful.”

She went back, at last, to her chefery. But not for long; a minute later she wanted to know did I want jelly on my toast. When I said no to that, she wanted to know if I wanted honey on my toast. When she got another no, she announced she thought it might be a good idea if I had orange marmalade on my toast, what did I think of that?

“Shut up, Chloe,” I decided.

She turned around and looked at me. ‘What?”

“Stop talking,” I amplified. “Stop questioning. I don’t want anything on the goddam toast, not anything.”

“Not even butter?”

I got to my feet and threw sofa cushions at the walls.

Chloe stood watching me. When I was finished, she said, “I know what’s the matter with you. And it’s your own fault.”

“What?”

But now... now... now she was done talking. She turned an eloquent back on me and finished scrambling her eggs.

While waiting for my toast and coffee, I walked around the room picking up sofa cushions again and putting them back where I’d found them. I also found twenty-seven cents in the sofa, so it wasn’t a total loss.

The food and I were done at the same time. Chloe carried everything over to the furniture, put the plates and cups down on end tables, and sat in haughty silence directly in my line of vision while she went scoop, scoop, scoop with her eggs. I nibbled at my coffee and sipped my toast.

When I could stand the silence no longer, and even though I knew I was putting myself at a perhaps fatal disadvantage, I finally said, “What did you mean by that?”

“Mean by what?” she lied.

Oh. I could see the conversation stretching out ahead of us like one of those landscapes with the neat straight perspective lines meeting at infinity, the kind of thing done by schoolchildren in composition books and Salvador Dali in the Museum of Modern Art. I would say you know what I’m talking about, and then she would say no I don’t know what you’re talking about, and then I would say you know exactly what I’m talking about, and then she would...

But why go on? I avoided it, the whole thing, tons and tons of words in bales, by saying instead, “You said you knew what was the matter with me, and you said it was my fault. What did you mean by that?”

“You know what I meant,” she said.

So. She was determined to have that conversation no matter what.

Well, I was determined too. I nibbled some more coffee and said, “Well, I don’t. If you feel like telling me, fine. If you don’t, never mind.”

She frowned around her egg scooper and let the silence mount up in uneven blocks between us. I sipped at my toast — on which she had put butter, after all — and felt myself beginning, just beginning, to come back to life.

Chloe said, “Your grumpiness, that’s what I mean.”

I looked attentive, but I didn’t say anything.

“It’s because,” she said, “you didn’t get enough sleep last night.”

And then, for the first time since waking up, I remembered how last night had ended, the awareness that had washed over me and which had kept my little mind churning away until practically dawn, running pornographic movies on the white inner surface of my skull.

I could feel the blush starting. I held the toast and coffee cup up in front of my face for camouflage, and mumbled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” All at once I wanted that round-and-round conversation.

We could never want the same thing at the same time. She brushed my attempt at verbosity aside and said, “It’s because you’ve got a letch for me, that’s why.”

“Nonsense,” I swallowed. And then, in one last-ditch attempt: “I don’t know what you mean.”

“And,” she went inexorably on, “you kept thinking about me in that bed in there with Artie Dexter, in that same bed you were sleeping in all alone, and me just one room away out here.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said bravely, into my coffee cup. “I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.”

“I heard you tossing around in there. Until practically dawn.”

“I thrash around in my sleep.”

“Funny you didn’t thrash the last few hours.”

I would have answered that in short order, but I seemed to have a mouthful of toast.

She said, “You’re a snob, that’s what you are.”

I pushed the toast out of the way long enough to say, “What?” I was legitimately astonished.

“A snob,” she repeated. Bright circles of color were burning angrily on her cheekbones. I saw with some surprise that she’d been, all this time, holding back a real fury. She said, “You wanted to start something with me last night when you took my hand. And you wanted to come out here afterwards, after we’d both gone to bed. And you didn’t do it.”

“Uh,” I said.

“I thought at first,” she said, “it was because you were shy, bashful. I thought that was kind of cute. But that wasn’t the reason at all. The reason was, you’re a snob. Because I’ve been to bed with Artie Dexter, you think I’m not good enough for you, that’s the reason.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “No no, that isn’t—”

“Shut up, you.” She got to her feet. “Let me tell you something,” she said. “You may think because I’m not a virgin I’m not good enough for you, but if you are a virgin you damn well wouldn’t be good enough for me. So you can just go to hell, that’s what you can do.”

What was there to say to that? Nothing; exactly what I said.

When she was done glaring at me and listening to my silence, she picked up her plate and cup and stalked over to the sink and busied herself there.

As for me, I stuck the rest of the toast in my mouth and ruminated.

Chloe’s charge, it seemed to me, broke down into sections, which would have to be dealt with separately. Part one: that I had slept poorly out of an awakened lust for her body. Part two: that I had done nothing to ease this lust because of moral snobbery.

Very well. As to part one, I could admit that much to myself as being true, though whether or not I would be able to make the same admission to Chloe was another matter. But as to part two, that was as wrong as it could be. I had done nothing about my lust, that was true, but it was simply and entirely because it hadn’t occurred to me there was anything I could do.

Well, was there? Had there been? Could I have approached Chloe last night? I still wasn’t entiely sure that was what she meant. She could just as easily, women being what they are, have meant she’d expected an approach from me that she would have repulsed. Not that she had wanted it but that she had expected it, and was insulted when it hadn’t been forthcoming.

Now she was at the sink, banging Artie’s dishes around dangerously. And what was there for me to say to her? I tried, “I’m sorry.”

That got no response.

I stood up and moved closer, though not too close. “Chloe,” I said to her back. “I really am sorry.”

Still no response. She seemed to be washing all the dishes in the sink, not just the ones she’d used for breakfast.

“What I did,” I said, “or that is, what I didn’t do, or what I didn’t try to do, it wasn’t because I’m a snob, it really wasn’t. It was because I’m dumb. It was out of ignorance that I did it, or didn’t do it, or didn’t try to do it.”

She turned, soapy halfway to the elbow, and gave me an eye as cold as a caveman’s toenail. “Now,” she said, “you’re laughing at me.”

“Laughing at you? For Pete’s sake, Chloe, I’m trying—”

“You certainly are,” she said. She waggled a sudsy finger at me. “Let me tell you something, Charlie Poole. You’re in no position to take any high moral attitudes, an underworld underling like you.”

“Hey now! Whadaya mean, underworld underling? I’m no—”

“Yes, you are. You ran that bar for the underworld, and you held packages for the underworld, and you helped the underworld get out of paying its taxes.”

“I don’t even know the underworld! My Uncle Al—”

“Don’t talk to me about your Uncle Al.” She’d waggled practically all the suds off her finger by now. “It’s you I’m talking about. You, Charlie Poole. You can’t just say you don’t know, and your Uncle Al. You can’t say, ‘Not me, Chloe, I just work here, I don’t have to take a moral stand, Chloe,’ because that’s Adolf Eichmann talk, that’s what that is, and I don’t think I have to tell you what I think of Adolf Eichmann.”

I was getting mad. Adolf Eichmann! Talk about blowing things out of proportion! “Listen,” I said. “Talk about—”

“I’m done talking,” she said, and turned her back on me again. Splosh went her hands into the water. “Shouldn’t you get going?” she asked, busy with the dishes. “You’ve got to find your friend Mahoney, remember.”

I squinted at her back. “You’re not coming along?”

“I’ve got my own life to live,” she told the sink. “I’m supposed to go up and see my Linda today. Besides, I want to get back to my own place and see if there’s any mail.”

“So,” I said. “You’re not coming along.”

“No. I’m not coming along.”

“Well, then,” I said. “In that case, you’re not coming along.”

She said nothing. Taking her silence to mean she wasn’t coming along, I left the living room and went into the bedroom to get my shirt, which looked as though it had been washed in Brand X.

No. It was too dirty, that’s all. I rooted around and found a clean white shirt of Artie’s. It was too small, of course, but by leaving the collar open and rolling the sleeves up to my elbow I made it fairly presentable. I also found, in the bedroom closet, a black raincoat which must have been too big for Artie because it practically fit me to a T. I saw that it had been made with a removable inner lining, which had been subsequently removed, so maybe that was the explanation; with the lining in, it would fit its owner. Particularly if the owner — Artie — were wearing a suit coat or jacket under it. Sans coat and lining it was Charlie-size.

I stuffed the little pistol in the raincoat pocket, left the larger automatic behind, and went back out to the living room. Chloe was standing at the window now, working away at another cigarette and glowering down at the street. I said, “Well, I’m going.”

“Good-bye.”

So? What did she want from me? I’d already apologized once, that was enough. Besides, that Eichmann line still rankled. “Good-bye,” I said.

I was almost to the door when she said, “Dummy.”

I stopped. “What?”

“You don’t even know if they’re still watching the apartment. You didn’t even look out the window first.”

She was right, I’d forgotten about Trask or Slade, parked by the fire hydrant across the street. But I said, “If they’re still there, I’ll go the back way.”

She shook her head. “They’re not there,” she said, with affected weariness, as though to say she’d had all she could bear of me.

Well, the feeling was mutual. “Thanks a million,” I said. “Good-bye.” I went out and closed the door.

It was true Trask or Slade was gone. Standing at the front door, I could see the fire hydrant across the way, shining in the noon sun. I went down the steps and turned left, toward West Fourth Street. I didn’t look up to see if Chloe was still standing at the living-room window.

I was on my own.