Ed Lacy - The Woman Aroused

That was as much as I knew about him, but I had a fairly clear picture of a bank teller following Man o' War's career, perhaps from the very first time he raced, betting ten bucks, then a hundred, then a thousand... then retiring from the bank. If he had an income of $150 a month and was getting 5 percent on his money, that meant about $40,000 stacked away. I wondered why he had stopped at that, but when I once saw him throw in a full house because he was pretty sure I had four of a kind—which I had—I could easily picture him stopping with forty grand, careful not to push his luck too far. Which is the smart way to play anything.

I went back to the living room, not wanting to see what came out of the mixer. I picked up the sports section and, as I was reading it, he came in, sat down with a contented sigh, asked, “How you doing with the horses?”

“Still a little ahead, I guess.”

He shook his head. “Hunch player—craziest creature on God's earth. By the way, I'm glad your wife is back.”

“Ex-wife, and she's gone,” I said, annoyed. My affairs were really in the street.

“Too bad.” He put on his old gold-frame glasses, wet a pencil, and started working on the cross-word puzzle. I turned to the theatrical section. Jose Limon was dancing on Wednesday, and Pearl Primus was giving a recital the following Sunday at the 92nd Street Y. I made a note to see both, felt a little better. I reached over to put the paper back on the table and felt the stiff envelope in my inside pocket. I took up the sports page again. Big Esther, a favorite, was running on Monday. On form, she couldn't lose. Seven thousand on the nose would almost be a sure three or four thousand for me.

I quickly picked up the book section. It was a wild idea. Anyway, I didn't know where to place that kind of a bet. I usually bet a dollar or two; it gave me a reason to look forward to the end of the afternoon.

I glanced at my watch. It was only eleven-twenty.

The old man looked up. “What's the plural of a land measure in five letters?”

“Miles? Acres?” Cross-words bored me.

“No, second letter is an V—if 'to be mistaken' in five letters is 'wrong.' Joe still downstairs with the girl?”

“What do you do, live by that window?”

Henderson chuckled. “Why not? She has an interesting body—although I suppose any woman's body is interesting, in the proper background. When you get my age, one of your pastimes is trying to decide if you had been a fool to be faithful to one woman. All those years—and chances—gone forever. What do you think a man hopes to find in a new woman—we're always searching, even though we know it will never be any different? Or am I talking like an old fool?”

“Everybody is constantly searching for something different—in friends, women, food, books—anything.”

He nodded. “But when you reach my age, one can be so damn objective about it all. Sometimes I wish I were a writer like you and...”

“I'm some writer,” I said, remembering the different tone to the word when Flo said it.

“... and be able to put down some of my thoughts. But then I realize that's only an old man's vanity. Or maybe a form of sour grapes, or going senile. I was thinking today, when I saw that woman with Joe, that she looked passionate. Yet, consider the fetish we make over passion, which is really only an odd name for selfishness and extreme personal satisfaction. Tell you, George, the more I ponder humans, less I think of them.”

“You ought to talk to my brother-in-law, Eddie, or ex-brother-in-law. He has only contempt for us humans,” I said, thinking. That's wrong, the kid really has a great love for humanity.

“The thin one who was wounded in the war?”

I said yes.

“Wars, hunger, depression—man's greatest insult to humanity. Wonder if I'm so morbid today because I'll probably die soon. I dreamt I was dying last night.”

“What talk.”

“Average life span is about 67, I believe. I've been on velvet for a lot of years now.”

“Nonsense, you'll live to be a hundred and seventy—way you live, no strain or worries.”

He stared at me with big eyes, almost like a kid, said gently, “Let's stop this kind of talk. Give me the racing page.”

I handed him the sports section and he studied it for a while. “There's a good nag in the third, tomorrow, Salad Days. Hasn't won in the last three times out, but I have a feeling they're holding him for a killing.”

“Why don't you play it—with money, instead of on paper?”

“Money is only paper,” Henderson said, chuckling at his little joke. “I can't risk the money. Besides, I'd have to leave the house before noon, and you know how I love to sleep late. Now let's see what else is good tomorrow....”

We talked about horses for a while. He was like Joe: knew the horse's mother, father, color of the jockey's hair, and everything except the number of times the jockey went to the bathroom. Joe didn't know the Preamble to the Constitution (who does?), but he could recite various details about horses for hours. Of course the horses kept him broke.

The fancy clock near the china closet chimed once and Henderson said, “Eleven-thirty. And I was about to go to the toilet. Wonderful to be like clockwork, especially at my age. You see the silly things one can be proud of in his old age.”

I grinned, wondering if I would be like that in another twenty-five years. I stood up. “Think I'll move on. I'll talk to Joe about a poker game, let you know.”

In the hall I touched the envelope in my pocket, to be sure it was there, then walked down and over to the French tea room on 75th and Lexington and had some pastry and a cup of coffee.

When I returned home, Joe and Stella were reading my Times over some beer. They looked quite domestic. “No bottle?” Joe asked as I came in.

“Sorry, I don't seem to be a man of distinction or influence.”

“Too bad, I was feeling ripe for a shot,” Joe said.

We sat around and I was waiting for them to leave, but Joe kept talking: small talk about some horribly clever things he'd heard in a bar, a couple of old dirty jokes, plus comments about a murder headline. Stella had Slob stretched across her lap, stroking his neck; both of them looking rather contented. After jabbering for what seemed like hours, Joe suddenly jumped to his feet in what I'm sure he thought was the “executive manner,” he actually practiced that sort of thing, said, “I'll get a bottle—afternoon is dying on us. I know a bartender... downtown... may take me an hour.” He turned to Stella. “You wait here, doll.”

“I haven't any place to go,” she said, yawning. She had quite a few gold fillings, and her teeth looked old.

“Okay, everybody stays pat till poppa returns,” Joe said, putting on his coat. When his back was to Stella, he winked at me.

When he left Stella said, “A big kid, lot of noise and wind.”

“One way of looking at him,” I said.

She was sprawled on a big leather chair Flo had bought in a second-hand store on 53rd Street for twenty dollars, and paid three hundred to have repaired and recovered. I had an idea it wouldn't take much coaxing to get Stella back in the bedroom, but I wasn't up to that. And with seven grand in my pocket I certainly wasn't fooling with any strays. She kept staring at me, an amused smile on her sensual lips. I asked if she wanted more beer and she said she did. When I bent over her to pick up her glass, she said, “George—you don't mind if I call you George?”

“Of course not.”

“You're handsome. Not really pretty but... well, distinctive. Yes, you're tall and lean and your face is long and thin, and that gray at the edge of your hair. You know, you look like a writer.”

I laughed and brought two glasses of beer. This was a great day for writers, it seemed, and the afternoon wasn't going to be too dull after all.

“What do you write about? I mean, are you working on a book?” she asked after a sip of beer. “Big mouth said you're the editor of the magazine his company puts out.”

“That's about all I write,” I said, surprised at Joe's carelessness. I got out a few copies of the Sun I had about and gave them to her. We went in for a lot of good photography—full-page pictures that not only gave the mag a touch of class and beauty, but also took up a good deal of space.

She glanced through the magazines quickly. “They're beautiful. Ever sell anything to the movies? I work for Warners—merely a typist. Five days a week I pound a damn typewriter and go to sleep early. Some week-ends I go on a merry-go-round, let off steam.”

“I haven't published much, the magazine keeps me on my toes,” I lied. “Had a few stories in the pulps, a yarn in Story magazine.”

“You must be good,” Stella said, impressed. The only time I ever actually struck Flo was when she reminded me during one of our spats that my published yarns had been ghosted. I never could decide if they were—the ideas and rough had been mine, but why bother with polishing when you could get a rewrite done for a few dollars? At the time I actually had been busy covering a convention, or at least that was my excuse.

Stella said, “Why don't you write a book, something with a young psychiatrist and a big-busted gal—sure sale to the movies. Big upstairs like me,” she added, without smiling.

I let that invitation pass. “I have been outlining a novel, working on it for several years. A fantasy—we awake one day to find all the alcohol in the world has turned to water.”

“You're ribbing me.”

“I'm serious. You can see the dramatic complications; first the effect on industry and medicine... that's the secondary theme. Real idea is to show how much we drug our lives with liquor, what happens when that disappears.”

She finished her beer. “You a Prohibitionist?”

“Me? I'm almost a lush. It's a big idea—I have a whole file full of notes.” And I really had. All my book ideas were big, so big I never started writing them.

She thought about it for a moment. “That would be something, a Lost Weekend in reverse. What happens?”

“I don't know, exactly. Some sort of mass suicide, world revolution, I suppose. Then after a few weeks with everybody taking a forced cure, the world settles down—and k's a much better world. Such a thing would be more effective than the atomic bomb.”—

“And all from a lousy shot of whiskey?”

“Alcohol is our number one escape valve, only once you get in the habit of escaping, it no longer becomes an escape, it becomes a chain,” I said, wondering why I was making all this polite talk.

She was silent for a while, stroking Slob. Every now and then when she bent over to scratch his head, I could see the rise of her heavy breasts, and from the way she had her legs, a good deal of long plump thigh was visible. Of course she knew all that. What she didn't know was I could see the brief line where her panties ended on her thigh through her dress, and that was getting me excited. Not too excited—in my own way, as the famous line goes, I was faithful to Flo. It was sort of an unwritten law between us, mostly because we were too set in our ways, and too lazy, to become involved with anybody else.

Stella said, “George, I like you. I don't know what you think of me, coming here like this with Joe, but I...”

“I'm most understanding... and a little hungry,” I cut in, not wanting to hear the story of her life. “Ham and eggs interest you?”

She nodded, held out her hand. I got up pulled her to her feet. Slob tumbled to the floor, landing on his back. For a cat his reflexes were lousy. He stretched and walked off with stiff dignity.