Nine Stories Read online

  «You have no idea how clear that makes everything,” the young man said.

  Sybil released her foot. «Did you read `Little Black Sambo’?» she said.

  «It’s very funny you ask me that,” he said. «It so happens I just finished reading it last night.» He reached down and took back Sybil’s hand. «What did you think of it?» he asked her.

  «Did the tigers run all around that tree?»

  «I thought they’d never stop. I never saw so many tigers.»

  «There were only six,” Sybil said.

  «Only six!» said the young man. «Do you call that only?»

  «Do you like wax?» Sybil asked.

  «Do I like what?» asked the young man. «Wax.»

  «Very much. Don’t you?»

  Sybil nodded. «Do you like olives?» she asked.

  «Olives—yes. Olives and wax. I never go anyplace without ‘em.»

  «Do you like Sharon Lipschutz?» Sybil asked.

  «Yes. Yes, I do,” said the young man. «What I like particularly about her is that she never does anything mean to little dogs in the lobby of the hotel. That little toy bull that belongs to that lady from Canada, for instance. You probably won’t believe this, but some little girls like to poke that little dog with balloon sticks. Sharon doesn’t. She’s never mean or unkind. That’s why I like her so much.»

  Sybil was silent.

  «I like to chew candles,” she said finally.

  «Who doesn’t?» said the young man, getting his feet wet. «Wow! It’s cold.» He dropped the rubber float on its back. «No, wait just a second, Sybil. Wait’ll we get out a little bit.»

  They waded out till the water was up to Sybil’s waist. Then the young man picked her up and laid her down on her stomach on the float.

  «Don’t you ever wear a bathing cap or anything?» he asked.

  «Don’t let go,” Sybil ordered. «You hold me, now.»

  «Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business,” the young man said. «You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish.»

  «I don’t see any,” Sybil said.

  «That’s understandable. Their habits are very peculiar.» He kept pushing the float.

  The water was not quite up to his chest. «They lead a very tragic life,” he said. «You know what they do, Sybil?»

  She shook her head.

  «Well, they swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinarylooking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I’ve known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy‑eight bananas.» He edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. «Naturally, after that they’re so fat they can’t get out of the hole again. Can’t fit through the door.»

  «Not too far out,” Sybil said. «What happens to them?»

  «What happens to who?»

  «The bananafish.»

  «Oh, you mean after they eat so many bananas they can’t get out of the banana hole?»

  «Yes,” said Sybil.

  «Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die.»

  «Why?» asked Sybil.

  «Well, they get banana fever. It’s a terrible disease.»

  «Here comes a wave,” Sybil said nervously.

  «We’ll ignore it. We’ll snub it,” said the young man. «Two snobs.» He took Sybil’s ankles in his hands and pressed down and forward. The float nosed over the top of the wave. The water soaked Sybil’s blond hair, but her scream was full of pleasure.

  With her hand, when the float was level again, she wiped away a flat, wet band of hair from her eyes, and reported, «I just saw one.»

  «Saw what, my love?»

  «A bananafish.»

  «My God, no!» said the young man. «Did he have any bananas in his mouth?»

  «Yes,” said Sybil. «Six.»

  The young man suddenly picked up one of Sybil’s wet feet, which were drooping over the end of the float, and kissed the arch.

  «Hey!» said the owner of the foot, turning around.

  «Hey, yourself We’re going in now. You had enough?»

  «No!»

  «Sorry,” he said, and pushed the float toward shore until Sybil got off it. He carried it the rest of the way.

  «Goodbye,” said Sybil, and ran without regret in the direction of the hotel.

  The young man put on his robe, closed the lapels tight, and jammed his towel into his pocket. He picked up the slimy wet, cumbersome float and put it under his arm. He plodded alone through the soft, hot sand toward the hotel.

  On the sub‑main floor of the hotel, which the management directed bathers to use, a woman with zinc salve on her nose got into the elevator with the young man.

  «I see you’re looking at my feet,” he said to her when the car was in motion.

  «I beg your pardon?» said the woman.

  «I said I see you’re looking at my feet.»

  «I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor,” said the woman, and faced the doors of the car.

  «If you want to look at my feet, say so,” said the young man. «But don’t be a Goddamned sneak about it.»

  «Let me out here, please,” the woman said quickly to the girl operating the car.

  The car doors opened and the woman got out without looking back.

  «I have two normal feet and I can’t see the slightest God‑damned reason why anybody should stare at them,” said the young man. «Five, please.» He took his room key out of his robe pocket.

  He got off at the fifth floor, walked down the hall, and let himself into 507. The room smelled of new calfskin luggage and nail‑lacquer remover.

  He glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the twin beds. Then he went over to one of the pieces of luggage, opened it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he took out an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple.

  Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut

  IT WAS ALMOST THREE O’CLOCK when Mary Jane finally found Eloise’s house. She explained to Eloise, who had come out to the driveway to meet her, that everything had been absolutely perfect, that she had remembered the way exactly, until she had turned off the Merrick Parkway. Eloise said, «Merritt Parkway, baby,” and reminded Mary Jane that she had found the house twice before, but Mary Jane just wailed something ambiguous, something about her box of Kleenex, and rushed back to her convertible.

  Eloise turned up the collar of her camel’s‑hair coat, put her back to the wind, and waited. Mary Jane was back in a minute using a leaf of Kleenex and still looking upset, even fouled. Eloise said cheerfully that the whole damn lunch was burned—sweetbreads, everything—but Mary Jane said she’d eaten anyway, on the road. As the two walked toward the house, Eloise asked Mary Jane how it happened she had the day off. Mary Jane said she didn’t have the whole day off; it was just that Mr. Weyinburg had a hernia and was home in Larchmont, and she had to bring him his mail and take a couple of letters every afternoon. She asked Eloise, «Just exactly what is a hernia, anyway?» Eloise, dropping her cigarette on the soiled snow underfoot, said she didn’t actually know but that Mary Jane didn’t have to worry much about getting one. Mary Jane said, «Oh,” and the two girls entered the house.

  Twenty minutes later, they were finishing their first highball in the living room and were talking in the manner peculiar, probably limited, to former college roommates.

  They had an even stronger bond between them; neither of them had graduated. Eloise had left college in the middle of her sophomore year, in 1942, a week after she had been caught with a soldier in a closed elevator on the third floor of her residence hall. Mary Jane had left—same year, same class, almost the same month—to marry an aviation cadet stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, a lean, air‑minded boy from Dill, Missis
sippi, who had spent two of the three months Mary Jane had been married to him in jail for stabbing an M. P.

  «No,” Eloise was saying. «It was actually red.» She was stretched out on the couch, her thin but very pretty legs crossed at the ankles.

  «I heard it was blond,” Mary Jane repeated. She was seated in the blue straight chair.

  «Wuddayacallit swore up and down it was blond.»

  «Uh‑uh. Definitely.» Eloise yawned. «I was almost in the room with her when she dyed it. What’s the matter? Aren’t there any cigarettes in there?»

  «It’s all right. I have a whole pack,” Mary Jane said. «Somewhere.» She searched through her handbag.

  «That dopey maid,” Eloise said without moving from the couch. «I dropped two brandnew cartons in front of her nose about an hour ago. She’ll be in, any minute, to ask me what to do with them. Where the hell was I?»

  «Thieringer,” Mary Jane prompted, lighting one of her own cigarettes.

  «Oh, yeah. I remember exactly. She dyed it the night before she married that Frank Henke. You remember him at all?»

  «Just sort of. Little ole private? Terribly unattractive?»

  «Unattractive. God! He looked like an unwashed Bela Lugosi.»

  Mary Jane threw back her head and roared. «Marvellous,” she said, coming back into drinking position.

  «Gimme your glass,” Eloise said, swinging her stockinged feet to the floor and standing up. «Honestly, that dope. I did everything but get Lew to make love to her to get her to come out here with us. Now I’m sorry I—Where’d you get that thing?»

  «This?» said Mary Jane, touching a cameo brooch at her throat. «I had it at school, for goodness sake. It was Mother’s.»

  «God,” Eloise said, with the empty glasses in her hands. «I don’t have one damn thing holy to wear. If Lew’s mother ever dies—ha, ha—she’ll probably leave me some old monogrammed icepick or something.»

  «How’re you getting along with her these days, anyway?»

  «Don’t be funny,” Eloise said on her way to the kitchen.

  «This is positively the last one for me!» Mary Jane called after her.

  «Like hell it is. Who called who? And who came two hours late? You’re gonna stick around till I’m sick of you. The hell with your lousy career.»

  Mary Jane threw back her head and roared again, but Eloise had already gone into the kitchen.

  With little or no wherewithal for being left alone in a room, Mary Jane stood up and walked over to the window. She drew aside the curtain and leaned her wrist on one of the crosspieces between panes, but, feeling grit, she removed it, rubbed it clean with her other hand, and stood up more erectly. Outside, the filthy slush was visibly turning to ice. Mary Jane let go the curtain and wandered back to the blue chair, passing two heavily stocked bookcases without glancing at any of the titles. Seated, she opened her handbag and used the mirror to look at her teeth. She closed her lips and ran her tongue hard over her upper front teeth, then took another look.

  «It’s getting so icy out,” she said, turning. «God, that was quick. Didn’t you put any soda in them?»

  Eloise, with a fresh drink in each hand, stopped short. She extended both index fingers, gun‑muzzle style, and said, «Don’t nobody move. I got the whole damn place surrounded.»

  Mary Jane laughed and put away her mirror.

  Eloise came forward with the drinks. She placed Mary Jane’s insecurely in its coaster but kept her own in hand. She stretched out on the couch again. «Wuddaya think she’s doing out there?» she said. «She’s sitting on her big, black butt reading `The Robe.’ I dropped the ice trays taking them out. She actually looked up annoyed.»

  «This is my last. And I mean it,” Mary Jane said, picking up her drink. «Oh, listen!

  You know who I saw last week? On the main floor of Lord & Taylor’s?»

  «Mm‑hm,” said Eloise, adjusting a pillow under her head. «Akim Tamiroff.»

  «Who?» said Mary Jane. «Who’s he?»

  «Akim Tamiroff. He’s in the movies. He always says, `You make beeg joke—hah?’ I love him… . There isn’t one damn pillow in this house that I can stand. Who’d you see?»

  «Jackson. She was—»

  «Which one?»

  «I don’t know. The one that was in our Psych class, that always—»

  «Both of them were in our Psych class.»

  «Well. The one with the terrific—»

  «Marcia Louise. I ran into her once, too. She talk your ear off?»

  «God, yes. But you know what she told me, though? Dr. Whiting’s dead. She said she had a letter from Barbara Hill saying Whiting got cancer last summer and died and all.

  She only weighed sixty‑two pounds. When she died. Isn’t that terrible?»

  «No.»

  «Eloise, you’re getting hard as nails.»

  «Mm. What else’d she say?»

  «Oh, she just got back from Europe. Her husband was stationed in Germany or something, and she was with him. They had a forty‑seven‑room house, she said, just with one other couple, and about ten servants. Her own horse, and the groom they had, used to be Hitler’s own private riding master or something. Oh, and she started to tell me how she almost got raped by a colored soldier. Right on the main floor of Lord& Taylor’s she started to tell me—you know Jackson. She said he was her husband’s chauffeur, and he was driving her to market or something one morning. She said she was so scared she didn’t even—»

  «Wait just a second.» Eloise raised her head and her voice. «Is that you, Ramona?»

  «Yes,” a small child’s voice answered.

  «Close the front door after you, please,” Eloise called.

  «Is that Ramona? Oh, I’m dying to see her. Do you realize I haven’t seen her since she had her—»

  «Ramona,” Eloise shouted, with her eyes shut, «go out in the kitchen and let Grace take your galoshes off.»

  «All right,” said Ramona. «C’mon, Jimmy.»

  «Oh, I’m dying to see her,” Mary Jane said. «Oh, God! Look what I did. I’m terribly sorry, El.»

  «Leave it. Leave it,” said Eloise. «I hate this damn rug anyway. I’ll get you another.»

  «No, look, I have more than half left!» Mary Jane held up her glass.

  «Sure?» said Eloise. «Gimme a cigarette.»

  Mary Jane extended her pack of cigarettes, saying «Oh, I’m dying to see her. Who does she look like now?»

  Eloise struck a light. «Akim Tamiroff.»

  «No, seriously.»

  «Lew. She looks like Lew. When his mother comes over, the three of them look like triplets.» Without sitting up, Eloise reached for a stack of ashtrays on the far side of the cigarette table. She successfully lifted off the top one and set it down on her stomach.

  «What I need is a cocker spaniel or something,” she said. «Somebody that looks like me.»

  «How’re her eyes now?» Mary Jane asked. «I mean they’re not any worse or anything, are they?»

  «God! Not that I know of.»

  «Can she see at all without her glasses? I mean if she gets up in the night to go to the john or something.

  «She won’t tell anybody. She’s lousy with secrets.»

  Mary Jane turned around in her chair. «Well, hello, Ramona!» she said. «Oh, what a pretty dress!» She set down her drink. «I’ll bet you don’t even remember me, Ramona.»

  «Certainly she does. Who’s the lady, Ramona?»

  «Mary Jane,” said Ramona, and scratched herself.

  «Marvellous!» said Mary Jane. «Ramona, will you give me a little kiss?»

  «Stop that,” Eloise said to Ramona.

  Ramona stopped scratching herself.

  «Will you give me a little kiss, Ramona?» Mary Jane asked again.

  «I don’t like to kiss people.»

  Eloise snorted, and asked, «Where’s Jimmy?»

  «He’s here.»

  «Who’s Jimmy?» Mary Jane asked Eloise.

  «Oh, God! Her b
eau. Goes where she goes. Does what she does. All very hoopla.»

  «Really?» said Mary Jane enthusiastically. She leaned forward. «Do you have a beau, Ramona?»

  Ramona’s eyes, behind thick, counter‑myopia lenses, did not reflect even the smallest part of Mary Jane’s enthusiasm.

  «Mary Jane asked you a question, Ramona,” Eloise said.

  Ramona inserted a finger into her small, broad nose.

  «Stop that,” Eloise said. «Mary Jane asked you if you have a beau.»

  «Yes,” said Ramona, busy with her nose.

  «Ramona,” Eloise said. «Cut that out. But immediately.»

  Ramona put her hand down.

  «Well, I think that’s just wonderful,” Mary Jane said. «What’s his name? Will you tell me his name, Ramona? Or is it a big secret?»

  «Jimmy,” Ramona said.

  «Jimmy? Oh, I love the name Jimmy! Jimmy what, Ramona?»

  «Jimmy Jimmereeno,” said Ramona.

  «Stand still,” said Eloise.

  «Well! That’s quite a name. Where is Jimmy? Will you tell me, Ramona?»

  «Here,” said Ramona.

  Mary Jane looked around, then looked back at Ramona, smiling as provocatively as possible. «Here where, honey?»

  «Here,” said Ramona. «I’m holding his hand.»

  «I don’t get it,” Mary Jane said to Eloise, who was finishing her drink.

  «Don’t look at me,” said Eloise.

  Mary Jane looked back at Ramona. «Oh, I see. Jimmy’s just a make‑believe little boy.

  Marvellous.» Mary Jane leaned forward cordially. «How do you do, Jimmy?» she said.

  «He won’t talk to you,” said Eloise. «Ramona, tell Mary Jane about Jimmy.»

  «Tell her what?»

  «Stand up, please… . Tell Mary Jane how Jimmy looks.»

  «He has green eyes and black hair.»

  «What else?»

  «No mommy and no daddy.»

  «What else?»

  «No freckles.»

  «What else?»

  «A sword.»

  «What else?»

  «I don’t know,” said Ramona, and began to scratch herself again.

  «He sounds beautiful!» Mary Jane said, and leaned even farther forward in her chair.

  «Ramona. Tell me. Did Jimmy take off his galoshes, too, when you came in?»