Shark Infested Custard Part 8

"No. Cottage cheese, with grapefruit segments, two fourminute eggs, fried eggplant, and an eight-ounce gla.s.s of V-8 juice."

"You don't much care what you eat, do you?"

"Not if I can't have you, I don't. And that's the truth when I'm only eating once a day. I'd rather eat things I don't like when I'm dieting this way, because I'm not tempted to eat any more of the same later on in the day. And I'll have a St. James and soda, too."

"I'll give you Chivas instead, and fried plantain instead of eggplant, but otherwise, you'll get the breakfast you ordered."

"Good! I hate plantain worse than eggplant, but it's just as filling."

That was the beginning of a strange afternoon.

I could not bring myself to believe thatJannaire did not want me to seduce her. I tried everything I could think of, but I got nowhere. Alter eating the bland, unappetizing breakfast, and I ate alone because she had either eaten already or said that she had, I had two more scotches, switched over to beer when I began to feel them, and talked and talked. I grabbed her, I kissed her, and she got away from me. Once I chased her and got one hand between her thighs from behind, but she cleverly eluded me, fled to the back bedroom and locked the door. She stayed in there for almost an hour, while I drank two more beers, saying she wouldn't come out again unless I promised to let her alone. I promised, reluctantly, and she came out--this time fully dressed, wearing one of her slack suits.

I was sulky, p.i.s.sed off and puzzled. There are ways to play the game, and there are certain unwritten rules to be followed. There are variations to the rules, which make the game interesting, but reliable patterns eventually emerge, one way or another, sets of clues, so to speak, and the game is either won or lost. I have won more games than I have lost because I have practiced the nuances and studied the angles a little closer than most men are willing to do. The discernible pattern, insofar as Jannaire was concerned, was the waiting game. By playing hard-to-get and yet by always holding out the musky carrot, I had recognized the cla.s.sic pattern of her play early in our acquaintances.h.i.+p.

She had called me for a date, or a meeting, almost as often as I had called her. She also, when we had met at a bar or a restaurant, paid her half of the tab, thereby establis.h.i.+ng her independence. I didn't mind that. Tab-sharing, five years ago, was a rare phenomenon, but during the last couple of years it has happened as often as not--or at least an -offer- to pay half is made frequently. The insight required is to gauge whether the woman's offer is sincere, or merely a half-hearted gesture to indicate a show of independence. If it were the latter, and you guessed wrong, accepting the proferred cash, you could quickly lose the girl and the game. But there was no doubt with Jannaire. She would pick up the check, put on her reading gla.s.ses, total it silently, and hand me the correct amount of cash for what she had ordered. She didn't share tipping, of course, and in this respect I admired her perceptiveness. Women, when they tip at all, and most women truly hate to leave a tip, undertip-- especially in Miami, if they are year'round residents--whereas men like myself, who have a tendency, on other dates, to return to certain places, usually overtip. Overtipping is one of my faults, but I like to do it because I can afford to do so. By getting out of the tip altogether, but by still paying her share of the tab,Jannaire was able to establish her independence and essential femininity at the same time.

She was a mature woman and well aware of her body. Jannaire had admitted to twenty-nine, so I doubt that she was much more than thirty-one. She was beautiful enough to pick and choose. For every man she turned off by her earthy body odor and underarm hair, and she flouted the latter by wearing sleeveless tops, and taking off her suit jacket in public places-- as she had turned off Larry Dolman-- she would turn on another man like me who was fascinated by the eccentric, the exotic, the unusual, the untried. Sergeant Weber, my NCOIC at the Pittsburgh Recruiting Station, had told me how s.e.xy luxuriant growths of underarm hair had been to him in Italy during World War II, and to many other GI's, once they got over the initial shock. And it was s.e.xy. Jannaire was a woman who wanted to know a man well as a person before going to the mat with him. She didn't have to fall in love with him, or even pretend to be in love with him, but she did have to like him; and the only way that she could tell whether she liked him or not was to get to know him fairly well. Once I had that figured out, I had set out deliberately to make her like me.

I thought I had succeeded. I had made my pitches at every opportunity, but I had made them lightly, and without using any hard sell techniques. Her rejections had never been outright turndowns; she merely changed the subject, or smiled without saying anything. It was the old waiting game, one I was familiar with, and a game I was willing to play.

Alter all, I had some other things going for me, and I could wait as long as she could-- perhaps longer, unless she changed the pattern and decided she didn't like me after all-- and she would be a more appreciated lay for the delay. And if I lost, in the long run, there was a good deal of solace in the knowledge that the ratio of women to men in Miami, as I had reminded Larry, was still seven to one.

But here it was, Sunday, pay-off day, and the afternoon had been wasted. What was going on? The brunch invitation, the shorty nightgown, the exposed cleavage of hard, unhampered b.r.e.a.s.t.s across the table as I ate the tasteless food, the time and place available--and then, a runaround.

I sulked, sitting in a deep leather arm chair across from the white couch, and glared at her silently when she sat and faced me. She had combed her bronze hair, or brushed it, I supposed, and it was fuller as it touched her shoulders. Her alluring musky odor was fainter now, because of her jacket and slacks, and her freshly painted lips, playing card pink, almost matched the string of imitation pearls, as large as marbles, she wore around her neck.

I quite sulking, making an effort to salvage some dignity, b.u.t.toned my flowered bodys.h.i.+rt, and yawned, stretching out my arms.

Jannaire, I concluded, was a lost cause. I didn't mind losing so much as I minded not knowing why. Although I wanted to leave, I was still curious about the why of the rejection. I was also feeling a trifle logy from the two scotches and six cans of beer, and I had the beginnings of a headache.

She looked at her watch.

"Humphrey Bogart Theater will be on in a few minutes. D'you want to watch TV?"

I laughed. "What's the film?"

"-Knock on any Door-."

"He doesn't play Bogey in that one."

"We could play checkers."

"We've been playing that all afternoon."

"You can start sulking again if you want to. I think it's kinda cute the way you can pout with your upper lip without moving your bottom lip. How did you learn that, anyway?"

"By hanging around c.o.c.k-teasers in the ninth grade. I thought I'd forgotten how but I remembered how to do it after chasing you around all afternoon. How did you learn such a good game of checkers?"

"What's the name of the film where Bogey has a plastic surgeon change his face, and then he turns out to be Bogey when the bandages come off?"

"Did you ever read -The Chessmen of Mars-, by Edgar Rice Burroughs?" I asked.

"No, but I read -Tarzan at the Earth Score-."

"You agglutinated that. When you were a kid you probably asked your mother for a napple."

"I did not."

"Why do you end every sentence with a rising inflection? 'I did not?'"

"Do I sound that way to you?"

"Not really. I can't get the little catch in the middle right."

"You're really angry with me, aren't you, Hank?"

"Not at this moment. I was for a while, but now I'm merely disappointed. Resigned, I suppose."

"I couldn't do it. I meant to, I intended to, and then I couldn't."

"Why?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Now I'm getting angry again."

"If you want to learn how to play checkers, why don't you study the game?"

"In other words, somewhere along the line in the last six weeks I made a wrong move, and that cost me the game?"

"Maybe I made the wrong move, Hank."

"I don't think so. Besides, nothing could make me mad enough to hit a woman."

"When you think, you frown, and when you frown your eyebrows meet in the middle."

"You've never met me in the middle. He escaped from San Quentin."

"And this girl in San Francisco took him in. He was trying to prove that he'd been railroaded into prison."

"Framed. You haven't eaten all day."

"I don't eat on Sundays. Sometimes, before I go to bed I..."

"And you don't screw on Sundays either. You watch Humphrey Bogart Theater."

"I have a toasted English m.u.f.fin, and drink a gla.s.s of skim milk"

Downstairs, the door opened, and I listened as footfalls clumped up the stairs.

"Your aunt's back," I said.

"No," Jannaire said, "it isn't my aunt."

I got to my feet as she did. A man entered. He jangled some keys in his right hand a couple of times. Jannaire crossed to his side, put her right arm around his waist, and kissed him on the cheek.

"Mr. Norton," she said, smiling as she turned toward me, "this is my husband, Mr. Wright. And this is Mr. Norton, darling. Mr. Norton's in real estate, and he's been driving me around all afternoon showing me some properties. It was so hot in the car, I invited him up for a beer."

Mr. Wright, her husband, looked disinterestedly at the six empty beer cans cl.u.s.tered on the coffee table. He was in his early forties, and bald in front, but four inches of black side hair had been combed over the bald spot. He was about five-eight, slight, but wiry looking, and about 150 pounds. There was a deep dent in his slightly crooked blade of a nose, and the two deep lines in his thin cheeks were so well-defined they were black, as if they had been drawn with ink He had a short upper lip, and to make it seem longer he wore a very long--practically a hairline-- moustache. He would have been a plain, even an ugly, man, if he hadn't had such clear, penetrating, intelligent eyes. His eyes, bluish purple, with the black arching brows above them, almost made him handsome. There was a ragged pink patch of vitiligo on his forehead. His hands were huge, hands that belonged to a much larger man, and his thick wrists dangled below the twoshort sleeves of his blue seersucker suit jacket.

"How do you do, sir?" I said. "I think the acreage west of Kendale Lakes is a good buy for your wife, and I'll be glad to show it to you sometime, Mr. Wright. At your convenience, of course." I looked at the beer cans, and shook my head. "Ha, ha, Mrs. Wright, I'll bet you'll think twice before asking me in for a beer again, won't you? But that sun out there really made me thirsty. Well..." I started toward the door "...you've got my phone number. It was nice to meet you, sir, and now I'd better get on home. My wife'll begin to wonder what happened to me."

"I'll walk you to your car," Mr. Wright said.

He followed me downstairs, right at my heels. I wanted to run, but I walked as casually as possible, matching his shorter pace as we shared the sidewalk.

"Were you showing my wife real estate all afternoon, Mr. Norton?" he said, twisting his head slightly to look up into my face.

"Yes, sir. All afternoon-- since one o'clock."

"Whose car did you use?"

It was a trick question. But then, he knew her Porsche. Did he know mine?

"Mine," I said. "Why?"

He took a rotor out of his jacket pocket. "Because I have the rotor to my wife's Porsche."

We reached my car, and I took out my keys.

"Is this your car, Mr. Norton?"

I nodded.

"This car's been parked here all afternoon. I checked it four times, each time on the quarter hour."

I couldn't think of anything to say.

"You've been f.u.c.king my wife all afternoon."

"No...I..."

"We've already established that you're a liar, Norton. And you pants are unzipped."

I looked down to see, one of the most foolish things I've ever done in my life, and yet, it would have been impossible not to look down and check. My zipper was -not- down, but what could I say? My mind was benumbed. I fumbled with the keys, and finally got the door open. Mr. Wright stood in the open doorway, and held the door open as I slid under the wheel.

"You cuckolded me in my own house, and in my own bed, Norton. And I'm going to kill you for it." His dark blue, almost purple eyes, stared at me coldly. He slammed the door, and stepped back I started the engine, and pulled away from the curb. Through the rearview mirror I could see Mr. Wright jotting something in a black notebook as he looked after my car. He was probably taking down my license number.

He is only trying to frighten me, I thought, and he has succeeded.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

By midnight, two hours after Jannaire's husband had taken a shot at me, I had reviewed the steps leading up to it, and all I had to show for it was a hodgepodge of contradictions. They didn't hang together, none of them. I could discount Jannaire's lack of a wedding ring. Many married women nowadays don't wear one, feeling rightly or wrongly, that a wedding band is a stigma, a symbol that they are possessed by a man. So that didn't mean much, except, if she had worn one, I would have handled my seduction campaign differently from the beginning.

The aunt, I concluded, was certainly fict.i.tious. On the other hand, when I had used the john inJannaire's apartment, after the second, no, the third beer, I hadn't seen any evidence of male occupancy in the bathroom. So Mr. Wright-- or Wright--I kept thinking of him as -Mister- Wright--was probably sleeping in the guest bedroom, or living elsewhere. She had said, "my husband," so they were still married, not divorced--or perhaps estranged. Estrangement, as the newspapers indicate every day, made him more dangerous than a husband who was safely and happily married and coming home every week with a paycheck. It was the estranged and jealous husbands who were always coming around to shoot their wives, their wives' lovers, and, if they had any, their children sitting in front of the TV set. If a lover was getting some, and they were not, it drove estranged husbands crazy. Almost every day when I picked up the paper I read about some jealous husband shooting up his house, his wife, or pouring sugar into the gas tank of his wife's lover's car.

That could account for Wright's mean-spirited att.i.tude all right, and yet I couldn't be certain. The way he came in, juggling the house keys in his hand, the kiss Jannaire gave him on the check, and the calm way she greeted him--no anxiety showing, that I could recall--was almost as if she were expecting him. And if that were the case, although it seemed crazy to consider such a wild idea, she had set me up. She had set me up for the encounter, and she had planned, but had failed to carry through, to let me spend the afternoon in bed with her. Or so she had intimated--except that she couldn't go through with it.

If I could talk toJannaire, or talk to Mr. Wright calmly and reasonably for a few minutes, I could straighten the entire matter out.

I called Jannaire's number, and she answered on the third ring.

"Jannaire," I said, "this is Hank. I..."

"Just a minute, Hank."

I waited, and a moment later Wright was on the phone. "Norton?"

"Oh," I said, "you're still there? Listen Mr. Wright, I..."

"Where else would I be, Norton? You're a lucky man, and you've got a lot of guts calling here. But the next time I see you, your guts are going to be spread out on the pavement."

"Listen a minute..."

"You were lucky because the d.a.m.ned Wildcat I rented had this emission control that screwed up the engine. Just as I fired, the car surged and threw off my aim."

"They all do that, surge I mean. The emission control..."

"That's what the man at Five-A-Day Car Rental told me wheit I turned in the car. So I've got another car now, an older car, and next time you won't be so lucky"

"That's what I want to talk to you about. You're making a bad mistake, and..."

He slammed the phone down.

He was crazy, I decided, and so was Jannaire for living with him, or not living with him, whatever, or for ever marrying him in the first place. He was at least fifteen years older thanJannaire, and she was making plenty of money without him, so why had she ever married a nut like that?

I fixed a drink, a normal one-and-a-half ounce scotch, with an equal amount of soda over ice, and noticed that my hands no longer trembled. I wasn't panicky nor was I terrified. I was merely frightened, but it was a good kind of fear, the way you feel before a basketball game, or before making a speech on safety to a large group. In addition to my fear, and it was a fear I could control, I had an odd feeling of exhilaration, an emotion I hadn't had for several years. It was a feeling that came from thinking. Thinking was something I hadn't done for a long time. How rare it is nowadays to use your mind to think something out, to puzzle over something; and thinking about this idea, my sudden alertness and feeling of well-being startled me.

The sure knowledge, now, that Mr. Wright was going to shoot me, was a challenge and an insult. Did the crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d think that I was going to let him kill me? Did he think I wouldn't fight back? I could feel the anger surge inside me--the way his car had surged when the emission control system grabbed it-- and I choked it off. He wasn't angry. His voice had been cool, controlled, and without a trace of pa.s.sion or anger. He was carrying out some stupid ritualistic code-- the old unwritten law of the pre-Korean War years. A man f.u.c.ks your wife, so you kill him to protect your honor. That was my lousy luck Not only was I innocent--I hadn't even got so much as a finger in it--I had had the bad luck to run into a middle-aged husband with outmoded and outdated social values.

Wright would never talk with me. The rigid b.a.s.t.a.r.d was a d.a.m.ned reactionary, and, if he could, he would shoot me down in cold blood, dispa.s.sionately, feeling that he was doing the right thing and that he would be vindicated whether caught and found guilty, or found not guilty under the so-called unwritten law The worse that could happen to him, the very worst, was a sentence of life imprisonment--if he were found guilty-- and a life sentence meant that he would be released, at the maximum, within eight years. If he behaved himself in prison, and that is what reactionaries did-- they always followed the rules-- he would be released in about three years. For a crime of pa.s.sion, a one-time killing purportedly done because of an emotional involvement, he could be out in the streets again--with a good lawyer and plea bargaining--within a year-and-a-half, or two years at the most.