"But why?" I wanted to know. "Why should she have a fit over, Rusty? If I wereher, Id celebrate."
Holly lifted her martini. "Lets wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glassagainst mine. "Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc -- its better to look at thesky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where thethunder goes and things disappear."
"Moderately," Holly confessed. "But Doc knew what I meant. I explained it to himvery carefully, and it was something he could understand. We shook hands and heldon to each other and he wished me luck." She glanced at the clock. "He must be inthe Blue Mountains by now."
I was still carrying my newspaper, and showed him the headline.
"Please, sir," the doctor was quite short with him, "if you will leave me alone withthe patient."
he asked, his difficult English lending the question an unintended irony. "She isgrieving only?"
"Rusty?"
He seemed cheered to learn that I saw no reason for a "scandal"; demolishingones own possessions was, presumably, a private affair.
In the bedroom, the smell of smashed perfume bottles made me gag. I steppedon Hollys dark glasses; they were lying on the floor, the lenses already shattered,the frames cracked in half. Perhaps that is why Holly, a rigid figure on the bed,stared at José so blindly, seemed not to see the doctor, who, testing her pulse,crooned: "Youre a tired young lady. Very tired. You want to go to sleep, dont you?
José withdrew to the front room, where he released his temper on the snooping,tiptoeing presence of Madame Spanella. "Dont touch me! Ill call the police," shethreatened as he whipped her to the door with Portuguese oaths.
"It is only a question of grieving," he firmly declared. "When the sadness came,first she throws the drink she is drinking. The bottle. Those books. A lamp. Then Iam scared. I hurry to bring a doctor."
It sounded like it. As though tigers were loose in Hollys apartment. A riot ofcrashing glass, of rippings and callings and overturned furniture. But there were noquarreling voices inside the uproar, which made it seem unnatural. "Run," shriekedMadame Spanella, pushing me. "Tell the police murder!"
"Whats she talkin about?" Joe Bell asked me.
When I reached my station I bought a paper; and, reading the tail-end of thatsentence, discovered that Rustys bride was: a beautiful cover girl from the Arkansashills, Miss Margaret Thatcher Fitzhue Wildwood. Mag! My legs went so limp with reliefI took a taxi the rest of the way home.
She came to sufficiently to focus the doctor. "Everything hurts. Where are myglasses?" But she didnt need them. Her eyes were closing of their own accord.
Since no one prevented me, I followed them into the apartment, which wastremendously wrecked. At last the Christmas tree had been dismantled, veryliterally: its brown dry branches sprawled in a welter of torn-up books, broken lampsand phonograph records. Even the icebox had been emptied, its contents tossedaround the room: raw eggs were sliding down the walls and in the midst of thedebris Hollys no-name cat was calmly licking a puddle of milk.
Madame Sapphia Spanella met me in the hall, wild-eyed and wringing her hands.
It was José Ybarra-Jaegar. Looking not at all the smart Brazilian diplomat; butsweaty and frightened. He ordered me out of his way, too. And, using his own key,opened the door. "In here, Dr. Goldman," he said, beckoning to a manaccompanying him.
TRAWLER MARRIES FOURTH. I was on a subway somewhere in Brooklyn when Isaw that headline. The paper that bannered it belonged to another passenger. Theonly part of the text that I could see read: Rutherfurd "Rusty" Trawler, themillionaire playboy often accused of pro-Nazi sympathies, eloped to Greenwichyesterday with a beautiful -- Not that I wanted to read any more. Holly had marriedhim: well, well. I wished I were under the wheels of the train. But Id been wishingthat before I spotted the headline. For a headful of reasons. I hadnt seen Holly, notreally, since our drunken Sunday at Joe Bells bar. The intervening weeks had givenme my own case of the mean reds. First off, Id been fired from my job: deservedly,and for an amusing misdemeanor too complicated to recount here. Also, my draftboard was displaying an uncomfortable interest; and, having so recently escaped theregimentation of a small town, the idea of entering another form of disciplined lifemade me desperate. Between the uncertainty of my draft status and a lack ofspecific experience, I couldnt seem to find another job. That was what I was doingon a subway in Brooklyn: returning from a discouraging interview with an editor ofthe now defunct newspaper, PM. All this, combined with the city heat of the summer,had reduced me to a state of nervous inertia. So I more than half meant it when Iwished I were under the wheels of the train. The headline made the desire quitepositive. If Holly could marry that "absurd foetus," then the army of wrongnessrampant in the world might as well march over me. Or, and the question is apparent,was my outrage a little the result of being in love with Holly myself? A little. For Iwas in love with her. Just as Id once been in love with my mothers elderly coloredcook and a postman who let me follow him on his rounds and a whole family namedMcKendrick. That category of love generates jealousy, too.
Holly rubbed her forehead, leaving a smear of blood from a cut finger. "Sleep,"
"She is only grieving?" insisted José.
He considered throwing me out, too; or so I surmised from his expression.
"Didnt hurt a bit, now did it?" inquired the doctor, smugly dabbing Hollys armwith a scrap of cotton.
Instead, he invited me to have a drink. The only unbroken bottle we could findcontained dry vermouth. "I have a worry," he confided. "I have a worry that thisshould cause scandal. Her crashing everything. Conducting like a crazy. I must haveno public scandal. It is too delicate: my name, my work."
Sleep."
"Shes drunk," Joe Bell informed me.
"With horses by the sea," lullabied the doctor, selecting from his black case ahypodermic.
"Run," she said. "Bring the police. She is killing somebody! Somebody is killing her!"
"Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell," Holly advised him. "That was Docs mistake. Hewas always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was afull-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you cant give your heart to a wild thing:the more you do, the stronger they get. Until theyre strong enough to run into thewoods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. Thats how youll end up,Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. Youll end up looking at the sky."
I ran; but only upstairs to Hollys door. Pounding on it had one result: the racketsubsided. Stopped altogether. But leading to let me in went unanswered, and myefforts to break down the door merely culminated in a bruised shoulder. Then belowI heard Madame Spanella commanding some newcomer to go for the police. "Shutup," she was told, "and get out of my way."
José averted his face, queasy at the sight of a needle. "Her sickness is only grief?"
she said, and whimpered like an exhausted, fretful child. "Hes the only one wouldever let me. Let me hug him on cold nights. I saw a place in Mexico. With horses. Bythe sea."
