Chapter 10
Boy-O awoke the next morning feeling like a million dollars. His lithe bocly had recovered from the beating it had taken and his plans for the future had filled in whatever energy was physically missing. He had a girl. A girl named Jeanni. She was his chick.
It was the first time Boy-O had ever had a girl that he'd wanted. Women had pursued him, and supported him, but they had never, never meant a thing to him.
They had been meal-tickets, and there were hundreds of them. So if one money-babe got finicky he had been able to walk out, and five minutes later meet the next.
None of them had mattered. Not even the girl who had first taught him how.
And now Jeanni. Jeanni, now sweet Jeanni had come along. And it was all different. It was all a wedding world of easy loving. He'd forgive Sam Revere. He'd forgive Troy Willis. And he'd live to be an old man with kids and love and Jeanni. The funniest thing about it was that Boy-O didn't feel like a sap. He didn't feel like he had lost his freedom or been suckered into a fink's paradise. Things were fun, things were fine.
He walked to the window. Even the sun was celebrating. He walked to the mirror. He still looked terrible. He would probably never be a handsome guy again. It was probably planned that way. It was a world where only the studs were handsome, only the guys who needed looks for a living.
"I see you are feeling better." Dr. Willis leaned his thin frame against the bureau. "Feel like some breakfast?"
"No. Has my girl called yet this morning?"
"Give her a chance to wake up. Come, have some breakfast with me."
"Wake up? It must be noon already." Boy-O was suddenly embarrassed. He wanted to split, to leave this house and this man who was and had never been his father.
Doctor Willis picked the old ash from his pipe and loaded it with fresh tobacco. "Please, Stephen. I want to ask you something. And tell you a hundred things."
"The name is Boy-O."
But still, he allowed the doctor to lead him down the stairs and into the kitchen. He didn't know what to do. All he could think of was getting out of the house.
He wasn't angry any more, and without anger this man had no hold on him. Still, he helped the doctor to fix breakfast.
"I gather from talk about town that you came home to do a couple of us in."
"That's right. At least, it used to be right."
"Used to be?"
"Yeah. Things are changing. I'm beginning not to care whether you people die with your sins intact or not." Boy-O ate voraciously. He had a lot to do. As soon as he could get this guy off his tail, he'd collect Jeanni in her sweet little car, and they'd go out into the country. And breathe free.
"I loved your mother," said Doctor Willis.
Boy-O's head jerked up from his food. He looked at the doctor for a long time and his swollen lips curled into his familiar sneer.
"Don't lie to me, Doc," he said. "I'm a big guy now. I've seen lots of supposedly nice guys get cold feet. And don't lie to me about my old lady."
"I'm not trying to lie to you, Stephen. I'm telling you the truth, son. I always wanted to, but then circumstances took you away' from here before you were old enough to understand."
"There's no excuse, man, no excuse that you can give me, that would make up for everything you didn't give me."
"I wanted to give things to you."
"Come off it. I don't believe you, or any of that crud."
Boy-O watched Doctor Willis tremble with emotion. The old cat has some quilty conscience, he thought to himself. I don't know what he's going to do about it, but crying on my shoulder is not the answer.
"Boy-O...."
"Got to go, man. Got to go and get my girl." Boy-O started to get up.
"I offered to marry your mother." Wistfully, the old man laid his hand on Boy-O's shoulder.
Boy-O screamed with fury. "Don't lie to me. Don't lie."
"I'm not lying. I offered to marry your mother. She wanted to get rid of you, but I wouldn't hear of that. We'll get married, I said, and damn this town and damn my father. The whole thing is stuff and nonsense. I love you and you love me and that's enough."
He stopped and Boy-O stood tensely waiting for the rest of the story. There was something in his manner that made Willis believable, a certain pathetic earnestness, a certain unquestionable honesty. Boy-O searched his face for one twitching muscle that would let him believe this old man was lying out of fear or loneliness. He couldn't find it.
"Sit down, son."
"Don't call me son. I'm not your son. What made you a father? Where were you when the kids at school learned what names to call me? Where were you when I was helpless in front of them? Don't call me son, or I'll kill you."
"I loved you. I loved her. I wanted to be your father, have you carry on my name. I always have, from the day you were born, no, even before that." Willis trembled with emotion. He motioned Boy-O to a chair and the boy did as he asked. He lit his pipe and Boy-O lit a cigarette.
"Your mother was a strange girl. She hated most of the people in this town just like you do, but with less reason. She hated being poor and couldn't stand the envy she felt for the best families in town. I was a feather in her cap. Can you understand that?"
"If that was so, she'd have jumped at the chance to have you."
Willis drew on his pipe. "Maybe and maybe not. Because by' catching and shaming and then rejecting the richest and most respected family in town, she made herself better than them. Can't you see that?"
"I don't believe you."
"She wouldn't marry me, and I was pretty broken up at the time. I thought she was going to kill you somehow. I was afraid for her. I begged her not to hurt you. I told her that she could go away and that I would send her money to support you. I promised her regular support if only she would let you live."
"I don't believe you." Boy-O tried to block out the words, but he heard. And Willis knew he had heard.
"She did go away for a while. I thought she had done as she had said she would. I used to mail her checks to General Delivery, Chicago. Then one day she came back to town. You were a year old at the time.
She was alone, and unmarried and she had you." Doctor Willis's emotion was so great, he couldn't keep his pipe lighted.
"What'd you do?"
"Well, what do you think I did? I went round to her shanty and asked if she'd marry me now. She wouldn't. Then I asked her why she'd come back and she said she often got lonely in Chicago and missed watching what all the good people of Swanik's Landing were doing to one another."
"I couldn't believe it. I asked her if she'd had any trouble up there. Maybe she'd met a man or something, and gotten into trouble. 'This is your boy. Try and convince anyone he isn't.' That's all she would say to me. I told her that she wasn't being fair to you and that she wasn't fair to me either. But she only answered me with sneers and shouts and curses."
"No. That's not right."
"Yes, it is, Boy-O. It's true. And nobody but you and me and your dead mother know it. Well, anyway, I said that if she wouldn't marry me, she wouldn't get another cent. But cash was all she would take from me. She had an odd kind of pride. It wouldn't let her ask for anything from anybody."
Boy-O got up and paced the room. It couldn't be true. He'd gotten so used to hating Willis and loving his mother, if it were true all his years of hating had been for nothing.
And everything was for nothing.
"If that's true, why'd you avoid me all those years?"
"Avoid you? I followed you around. I watched you go wrong and I wanted to help you, wanted to talk to you, damn it, wanted to give you birthday presents and all of that."
"So?"
"I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. I was afraid." Willis paused and looked Boy-O in the eye. "I told myself that one day when you were a man and could listen to me, I'd tell you all this. Then you went away and I never got the chance."
"Okay, so you told me."
"Let me be your friend, son." Willis stretched out his hand.
Boy-O stared at it for a long time. Then he said slowly, "I don't know. I can't think about it now. I don't know what to do. If you only knew the nights I asked myself what way I would get back at you. Now you want to be friends, friends. Do you have any idea the ways I was going to shame you? I have a thousand plans, a thousand tiny hurts to deal you. I owe them to you. At least, I thought I owed them to you."
Willis let his hand wait.
"All right, all right. I'll shake your damned hand. Now leave me alone." Boy-O grasped the other man's hand for a moment and then they parted. And he ran from the house.
Ran to get Jeanni, to be against her body, to remember what he knew. He wanted to be safe, he wanted that more than anything else in the world.
On the streets, peoples' stares reminded him of his eyes, still black and blue. The people looked smugly al him, the good people of Swanik's Landing. He had been repaid by one of their native sons, and that was good enough. No one thought he would have the nerve to go near Sarah again.
It wasn't a question of nerve but of interest. Boy-O wanted to run to his Jeanni, but their staring sneers forced him to slow his walk and swagger in their faces.
They hadn't touched him where it hurt.
But Willis had.
"I'm sorry Stephen, but Jeanni's not here."
"That so? Where is she?"
"She's in Chicago, I imagine."
"What?" Boy-O felt the blood drain from his face.
"That's right. She didn't come home from Dr. Willis's last night. She just went straight to Chicago."
Boy-O turned and walked away a little bit. Then he broke into a run, racing fast as hell for the highway.
"She said she was coming right back, Stephen," Mrs. Jensen called after him. She watched him run and she felt sorry for the poor frantic young man. She'd felt sorry for him as long as she had known him. "I'm sorry, Stephen," she shouted.
If he heard, he made no sign.
Boy-O raced for the highway, but his body rebelled. His breath stopped coming and he was forced to slow his pace and gulp for air. He found himself on the main drag, on the sidewalk outside Revere's drug store. Without thinking twice, he walked in.
The store was empty of customers. Ben Johnson was the only one in the store. Sarah was not in sight.
"Get out of here. I don't want you coming near Sarah." Ben threatened.
Boy-O ignored him. He walked over to the cigarette counter and called to her. "Come here. I need you."
She appeared. When Boy-O called, she always appeared. Promptly.
"I need your help, Sarah."
"You're leaving, aren't you?"
"Yeah. Will you help me?"
She nodded, not relying on her voice to hold up. She loved him. Everything he'd done to her had only made her love him more.
"Let me borrow your car. I'll bring it back. And give me money for gas. I've got to get to Chicago. Fast. You dig?"
Sarah felt the corners of her mouth tremble. She vowed that she wasn't going to let him see her cry. He'd walk away without that.
She dug beneath the counter for her pocketbook and, finding it, extracted the car keys and a twenty dollar bill. She shoved them at him, and then turned and ran madly for the safety of the prescription booth. Life would only be Ben Johnson from now on. Unless she got up the nerve to leave this place. Sarah regarded herself in the mirror that hung on the wall there. It occurred to her, for the first time in her life, that she just might have the nerve. She just might have nerve enough to clear out.
"Thanks, Sarah, thanks," Boy-O carted as he turned and began to leave.
Ben Johnson stood in his path.
"You got a lot of nerve coming around her again," he said, flushed with his previous success. He'd obviously forgotten that Boy-O had knocked him flat.
"Oh, dry up." Boy-O walked right past him and broke into a run for the Revere house and Sarah's car.
He drove like the wind to the main highway into Chicago, and racing beyond the speed limits on the road to Chicago, he lied to himself. All the way to Chicago.
"She loves me. She's waiting for me. She loves me."
He smoked cigarette after cigarette, got two tickets and made it to Chicago in five hours. And not once along the way did he stop to think that he didn't know where Jeanni lived in Chicago, not where she worked in Chicago, nor where to find her in the whole city of Chicago.
He hated the city. He hated himself. He hated her.
Of course she wasn't in the phone book. Of course she had an unlisted number. Boy-O broke his twenty dollar bill and turned into the nearest phone booth. He placed a person to person call to Mrs. Jenson.
"What's her address?"
"What? Whose address? Who is this?"
"It's Boy-O, Mrs. Jensen. What's Jeanni's address?"
"It's in Chicago, Stephen."
"I'm in Chicago, Mrs. Jensen," he shouted into the phone.
"Already? You were just over this morning. Young people travel these days. In my day, we were frightened of moving so fast." Mrs. Jensen's voice was rambling.
"Mrs. Jensen." Boy-O's voice was under control now. It was low and commanding. "I'm in love with your (laughter. Now, if you'll just give nie her address so I can find her and everything, you can start planning the wedding ceremony. Because as soon as I find her I am going to bring her home and marry her. Do you understand?"
"Of course I do. Congratulations Stephen. Funny, she didn't say anything about it to me."
"Her address, Mrs. Jensen."
"Three thirty-four North Drive. Penthouse apartment."
"Thanks, Mother!" Boy-O slammed down the phone and climbed back into Sarah's car. It was fifteen minutes to North Drive. In half an hour he'd have her in his arms. And he wouldn't have to be so afraid any more.
It was a chic apartment all right. Jeanni had hit the biggest time in the mid-west. Her maid said she was sleeping.
Boy-O said, "Wake her."
The maid obeyed, only because Boy-O raised his voice to enforce his directions. While he waited for her, he paced the room.
"What are you doing here?"
She was beautiful. She was very beautiful. Her body glistened in a satin robe and her brown hair matched its reflections. Everything about her said lovely and expensive. Expensive. Expensive.
"Don't tell me you're surprised." Boy-O listened with amazement to the sarcasm in his voice.
"I am. Get me some coffee," she said to the maid. "Yes'm."
"Yes'm," Boy-O mimicked. Then he advanced on the poor trembling maid. "Get out of here and don't come back until you hear from me. Get."
She vanished.
"Listen." The tone of Jeanni's voice was tolerant and patient and thoroughly insulting.
"Don't talk to me like that. And stop pretending. It makes me sick. You love me, and you know it. Now make me a drink."
Jeanni smiled with amusement. She sighed, and walked to the bar.
"What do you want?"
"How the hell should I know?"
She laughed and mixed him a brandy and soda. But she didn't take it to him. She left it on the bar and went and sat on a posh velvet chair.
Boy-O gulped the drink down, and silent, for a moment, listened to it fizzle in his empty stomach. He struggled to get control of himself.
"So you didn't want to give all this up." He took his time looking around the room. He took his time while he searched for some argument that would win her back. He wasn't good at asking. "Can't say I blame you."
Jeanni kept a set smile on her face. "I haven't got much time," she said.
"That's right I forgot You work nights." He wandered restlessly' around the room. He dug in his pockets for a cigarette and, letting it dangle from his lips, searched again for a match-When he finally got his cigarette to the point where he could smoke it, he couldn't find a place to throw the match. Boy-O had never been so uncomfortable.
Jeanni watched him struggling. He was out of his class. The dungarees looked ridiculous in the midst of her furnishings.
"Look," she said, making another try at beginning their farewell scene.
Boy-O walked over to her. He stood in front of her, and forced the old smile on his face. "Stand up," he commanded.
"Oh, now, really."
"Do as I say. Or I'll...."
Jeanni stood up before he could finish the sentence. She was determined to put up with him, and to let him know that that was just what she was doing.
Her perfume was a heavy fragrance. The scent almost made Boy-O dizzy.
"Oh, Jeanni," he murmured. "Jeanni."
She could have won if only he'd helped her to stay angry. But the helpless way he'd said that, and the look on his face, reminded her. He smiled ruefully at her and stroked her silken hair.
"Okay, I'm going," he said, all at once accepting her decision.
"No, don't go. Don't go yet."
She reached out for him and turned him back to her. She -edged closer to him and rested her hands on his chest.
"Kiss me first," she asked.
Boy-O pulled her to him. His lips owned her. His body owned her. She answered his kisses, and murmured in his arms. The satin felt good against his arms.
They drew apart and Jeanni smiled. She took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom, to her extra-large bed. He stripped his clothes from his body and she watched, feeling hunger. She understood, now, how her clients felt. She'd never understood before what that meant to want someone you knew was good.
He saw her eyes on his body and he laughed. That was good to be in command again. Good to know that she loved him again. He walked over to her and the strut was back in his walk, the swagger was back, and the confidence.
He slipped the satin of her robe from her shoulders and buried his mouth against the satin of her flesh.
Again she broke away from him. Again to lead him to the bed. She got up onto the bed and stretched her arms up to him. Boy-O smiled and went to her.
He watched her mouth open as he touched her breasts. He watched her breathing faster and faster as he kissed her mouth and her breasts. And then he couldn't watch her any longer. He closed his eyes and forgot everything but the pleasure of her touch and her kisses and her body.
"I do love you," she whispered to him. "I do, I do."
Her body shifted and he fell beside her, and felt her arms wrap around him. That was warm and sweet lying with her. He kissed her neck.
She sighed and her head fell back onto the pillow, gluttonously waiting. He watched her again.
"You're beautiful, Jeanni. My Jeanni."
"Take me quickly," she urged. Her voice rang with hoarse longing. She didn't feel complete without him. She wanted him. Her eyes saw only colors, and tensely and eagerly she longed for him. This is how this is to be done, she thought. This is how that feels to be in love with someone's body. She felt him close to her, very ready, very strong. His chest rippled with muscles and his lips bit at her flesh, making her warm and cold and incomplete without him. She twisted and laughed at his caresses.
"Take me," she cried again. "Please."
Still he didn't do what she wanted, but let his touch drive her up to still greater peaks of wanting him.
"Boy-O, I love you. I'll give you anything. Everything. But don't make me wait, my darling. Take me now."
He tensed in her arms. For a moment that was almost as if he had disappeared.
She opened her eyes and saw him staring at her. In shock. In disbelief. In understanding.
"You-you are just like the others. You sound just like the others. But you are supposed to love me." His voice was tight. He was choking on his understanding.
"I still love you," she said, giving her lips to his mouth and murmuring still against the kiss. "I still love you. Don't stop. Don't leave me like this."
"I won't leave you," he said. "Not like this." He removed her arms from around his neck and held them back on the sheet. He would give her what she wanted. He would give that to her good. This was his Jeanni. This was his love. And she wanted him. This way. Only this.
He bit at her shoulder and she laughed with pleasure and struggled to embrace him, but he held her tightly. His lips tightened on the flesh of her breast and he bit at her until she screamed with pleasure.
He moved closer to her, teasing her with the promise of his force and his youth, until she seemed ready to scream with wanting him.
Then he took her, and worked hard while she murmured and screamed her money promises and trembled with her delight. But still he held back and managed to wait and give her more and more and then again she trembled and again she sighed.
He released her arms and they circled him, and her nails dug at his back, ripping the skin and kneading the hard muscles.
She lay in his arms, her mouth working against his chest.
"I loved you," he said. "You can't imagine how much I loved you."
He broke out of her embrace and walked around the room. She watched his proud body, all amazement and new desire. He was lithe and young. He was lean and beautiful.
And suddenly everything was simple.
"Stay with me, Boy-O," she said. "We can stay here. I make so much money it is unbelievable. There are a lot of people in this world, in this city who will pay a thousand dollars for me, for one night. We can live here together. We have everything."
"You were my last chance." He walked and walked. "I know that now. You were my first chance and my last chance. You were the big money. You were the sweepstakes. We might have been happy somewhere. Might have had what I guess I never had. A home and a life and all that sort of stuff. We could have made the square life hip. We could have made it."
"We still can." She watched him start to dress, and panic started in her. She began to understand that he was leaving. "Is it taking money that bothers you? Then I'll talk to Mike. He'll give you a job and in no time you'll be making more money working than you ever dreamed of having."
He didn't say anything to her, dressing silently.
She got up and moved to him. She stopped his hands from buttoning up his shirt.
"Don't go. Don't leave me. Tell, what is it? What have I done?"
"I loved you." He couldn't smile. He couldn't make the words come out lightly. "Do you think I can stand to know that other men have you every time they pay their money at the door? Do you think I could stand to know that you are up for grabs? My girl, up for grabs?"
He walked toward the door.
"Don't be stupid," she said. "What will you do now? I'll tell you. You'll sell yourself on the highway, and in every cheap saloon in the world. Why? What's the difference?"
"I loved you. If you can't understand that, you can't understand anything."
Jeanni watched him walk out the door, and close it softly behind him. Maybe she hadn't loved him. Maybe there were others who could do the same things for her. But, oh, Boy-O Carter was the best. She felt the tears start rolling down her face, but she knew that wasn't her heart crying. She knew what part of her was producing the tears. She knew what part of her was sorry.
Maybe no one will ever love me again like that, she thought to herself. Maybe that was my last chance at all the things I left behind.
She reached for the telephone. While she was waiting for her party to answer, she dug in her night table for a cigarette.
"Hello Mike. It's me. Listen darling, I'm very low, blue as the bottom of a dye bottle. Do you mind if I don't work tonight? I'll call Claudia Butch myself and arrange a date for tomorrow afternoon to make up. She won't care. She's crazy about me." She listened, smiling, to his answer. Then she said, "Thanks, sweetheart. And Mike. Do me a favor. I don't want to be alone tonight. Pick out someone for me and send him over will you?" She lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it. "I don't know. Tall and lean, I guess. And not too pretty. Find me a man, will you? Fine. Yeah, don't worry. I'll be waiting."
He stood by the side of the road nonchalantly. The cars bolted past him at great speeds along the highway. Sometimes he watched them approach. In the' distance, the moon bouncing off their chrome bumpers made them look like great silver stars.
It might have been his superior attitude about hitchhiking that had kept him standing in the gutter for two hours.
Or maybe it was because all the cars that had passed were driven by men.