Candy

I was deprived of her and when I needed her again I’d go absolutely nuts without her. It was an aggravating type of scene.

I said: “You developed expensive tastes in a hurry, didn’t you? A little while back you were happy with hamburgers. What’s the big switch all about?”

“It’s not a big switch,” she said very seriously. “I decided even before I left Gibbsville that I was going to get kept by a millionaire or somebody close to it. If I hadn’t met you I probably would be a millionaire’s mistress right now.”

“Why was I so lucky?”

Her eyes were very wide, very soft for such a tough little number. She was baby and tiger all at once and it was hard to remember what a complex character she had.

“Jeff,” she said, “I like you.”

“Sure. Like Macy likes Gimbel.”

“Honest.”

“Like the Armenians like the Turks.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Like Cain likes Abel. That’s you—Candy Cain. And I’m Jeff Unable. Did you ever look at it that way?”

“Jeff—”

“Go ahead.”

“Jeff,” she said, with deadly logic, “if I didn’t like you I wouldn’t have let you love me in the first place.”

“There was a small matter of a thousand bucks—”

“I could have gotten it some other way. And I didn’t have to call you a second time, did I?”

“No,” I admitted. “You didn’t.”

“I like you. I like doing it with you. I’d rather do it with you for the rest of my life than do it with some musty old millionaire. But I see all of those other women and I want what they have. Why should they have more than me? Why should they live where they live while I live here? Why should they be the lucky ones? I’m as good as they are.”

She had a point there.

“Believe me,” she said, “I’d rather do it with you any time. I’d like to do it with you forever and ever, over and over, until we were both seventy years old, and we’d still do it three times a day. I wish you were a millionaire, Jeff. Then everything would be just perfect.”

Uh-huh. Sure.

“But you aren’t. You can’t even afford the seventy dollars a week that you give me—why, your savings must be about gone now, and you’re going to have to scrape to support me. That’s no good.”

She fell silent. The funny thing is that the little bitch was depressed now. She wanted the moon—me plus a million bucks. And she was sorry she couldn’t have it. She was lying on her back with her legs parted slightly and her breasts pointing at the ceiling and her eyes were half-closed. I stretched out next to her and touched her without really wanting to. It was an unconscious sort of thing. I put one hand on one of her breasts and I began to squeeze the firm flesh, manipulating it gently. I slid the hand downward and caressed her flat stomach, then rubbed her warm thighs.

Now I wanted her. Not as urgently as I had wanted her in the elevator, but I wanted her.

“Candy,” I said, “I can get a divorce. Lucy’ll give me a divorce if I ask for it. Then there’ll just be the two of us and if I hustle I can haul in a steady two hundred a week. That’s not peanuts, not when there’s just two people living on it. That’s good dough. That’s ten thousand dollars a year and on that we can have a hell of a good apartment and—”

“Jeff.”

She made my name sound like a cave in Antarctica. Her tone was so cold I stopped in mid-sentence.

“On ten thousand dollars a year,” she said, “we cannot buy Candy Cain a sable wrap.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Or a mink coat.”

I remained silent.

“Or live on Sutton Place.”

I started stroking her again but she pushed my hand away. I picked up my hand and looked at it. I wanted to cut it off at the wrist. There was something else I wanted to cut off as well. It would have made my existence a good deal simpler, if less exciting.

“It would be nice otherwise,” she said dreamily. “I really like you. You wouldn’t even have to have a million. If you had around a hundred thousand or something like that we could just go off and run away together. That would be nice, and I’m awful sorry it can’t happen that way.”

“Candy—”

“But it can’t. That was the last time before, and even though I can tell you want to do it again, and I want to do it, too, I won’t let it happen any more. I don’t suppose it sounds nice to say, but I can’t afford to waste my time with you.”

It didn’t sound very nice at all.

We both sat up and our behinds touched. “Jeff,” she said earnestly, “I’m sorry it turned out like this. But you have a wife and a job and you’ll be all right. All you have to do is get me out of your system.”

“That’s easy. I’ll just open my veins and let the blood run out.”

“I mean it,” she said. “Just get me out of your system. Just forget you ever met me.”

Chapter Four

SOCIOLOGISTS HAVE MANY TERMS which sum up life very well. Veblenisms lead the list, in my opinion. Conspicuous Consumption, for example, which means spending money to prove that you have it. You drive a Caddy instead of a Plymouth not because a Caddy is worth the price difference, which it isn’t, but so all the world will know that you can afford a Caddy. Conspicuous Leisure, which means that instead of lying around the house guzzling beer you go out and take your yacht out for a spin so everybody can watch you relax.

My own particular favorite is Pecuniary Emulation, which means that you spend money which you don’t have because you really wish you had it. It’s a term I’ve always liked, and it may serve to explain why I was drinking straight shots of Old Bushmill’s in Macmahon’s at the corner of Third Avenue and 37th Street rather than tossing off tumblers of bar rye in a Bowery gin mill. I wanted to be a millionaire at that particular moment more than I had ever wanted to be a millionaire in all my thirty-four years, and if I couldn’t be one I could sure as hell drink like one.

Macmahon’s is the right place for it. High ceilings with crystal chandeliers. Luxurious wood paneling on the walls. A bartender with a soft British accent. An eminently well-dressed clientele. Service with an unobtrusive smile. Good liquor behind the bar.

The whiskey I was drinking was costing me eighty cents a shot and was worth every last farthing of it. I had enough money with me to get as drunk as a skunk without counting pennies, and this is precisely what I intended to do. I was drinking like a gentleman and I even looked like a gentleman. From Candy’s lopsided little love nest in the Somerville, I had scooted back to my own apartment and changed into my best suit, my best shoes and my best tie.

Just get me out of your system.

I glared at the Bushmill’s, wrapped my fingers around the heavy shot glass and tossed the liquor down. It warmed me, and that made me think of Candy all over again. She warmed me, too. She did a damn good job of it.

The bartender refilled the shot glass, took a dollar from the disorderly pile of change and bills on the bar in front of me and returned my two dimes a moment or two later. I didn’t throw the shot down this time but sipped off about a third of it and followed it down the hatch with a sip of the water chaser.

Just get me out of your system.

Uh-huh, that’s what the lady said. Except it wasn’t all that easy. I had her inside of me like an infection, and perhaps the best way to get rid of an infection is to douse it liberally with alcohol.