The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [120]
“My God!” He ran his hand through his hair. “Oh my God, of course I am. See what you do to me? I’d forgotten completely about it.”
I’ll bet you have, Buster, I thought. It was worse than disappointing; it was downright insulting. As a matter of fact I live right down the street.… Oh help. Take me out, coach.
“Tell me something,” I asked him. “How long have you been in town this time?”
“A few days.”
Oh really, it was too easy. Roving photographer, with a sailor’s mentality and about a million light-years of sexual experience under his belt, blows into town on the lookout for a quick lay. Picks up girl whose picture (along with how many others?) coincidentally happens to be in his pocket, throws in a little soft soap and expects—and gets—her eating out of his hand in a few hours.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Have I said something wrong? Tell me.”
“It’s nothing. I’ve just got to go to the John.”
“… If he’d just put it to me straight,” I was muttering to myself all over the John, “if only he hadn’t felt obliged to make such a song and dance about it, it wouldn’t have been so bad. I mean, sure I was all ready to go right to his place with him after the movies, but that would have been a blow to my pride, not my intelligence. My intelligence. Ha!” Boy, I was learning fast. What did he care about all that? I was just a girl like any other girl, and that you-can-turn-me-down-every-day-for-the-next-five-years routine was a solid gold winner in any repertoire.
Two girls came into the washroom and started talking.
“You gonna let him take you home? He’s an awful wolf, you know.”
“Sure,” shrugged the other. “I should say no to life?”
Yeh, yeh, I thought. Great, oh, great. Zop, zop, and all dot. De Village don’t say no to life; jazz don’t say no to life; but dis baby do. Right now. Cause it hurts too much. And I can’t take it no more.
But when I came out and started back toward our table my heart lurched up around my throat and damn near choked me to death. I was so frightened I almost blacked out. Max had disappeared. Just disappeared. Vanished. I mean he just wasn’t there. When I looked again I saw that there was somebody there —a man with sort of short dark hair and a bony face—and that he was sitting in approximately the same place that Max had been—but it wasn’t Max. Logic insisted that of course it was: there was the fat man, who I remembered sitting next to me against the wall, now sitting next to the space I’d made between him and Max. But the ground-configural patterns of Max’s face had shifted so violently that I didn’t even recognize him. I mean I did recognize him but I couldn’t accept the face as belonging to Max. It wasn’t a face, really. It was kind of an unprotected skull full of dark shadows. The wounded skull of a young boy staring at me through troubled eyes. It was frightening.
Well, I thought, wrong again, Gorce. You’ve gone and guessed wrong again. Now what?
“I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you for a moment,” I said as I came up to the table. It was the wrong thing to say.
“How did you finally identify me, by my clothing?” he asked stonily.
“Oh no. No. It’s just that I suppose I haven’t got used to your face.”
That was the wrong thing to say too.
“Well, at least you didn’t wander off into the street like the last rime in Paris. I suppose that’s something. Or don’t you remember? Come on. I’m taking you home.”
We had reached a really gorgeous impasse.
We arrived outside my hotel in silence. Neither of us made a move to get out of the taxi.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in for a nightcap?” he asked finally. “I won’t bite.”
“I can’t!” I wailed. “It’s a girl’s hotel. No men allowed in the rooms.”
“Oh yes, of course. Naturally. I’d forgotten that one.”
“Couldn’t we … have a nightcap at your place?” I asked desperately.
“If you like.”
Grimly he gave the address to the taxi driver, but when the cab started up again he slumped back into the seat, flung one leg over the other, and, rubbing his ankle with his hand let out a sigh of relief. Out of the corner of his eye he caught me looking at him