The Uncollected J. D. Salinger - The Uncollected J. D. Salinger Part 22
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The Uncollected J. D. Salinger Part 22

"I said, Chick the doorman's on the house-phone," Rita said. "He says there's a gentleman in the lobby wansta see you."

"I don't want to see anybody, Rita. Find out who it is."

"Yes, ma'am." Rita went out and came in again. "You know a Miss Craft or somebody?" she demanded.

Corinne's body jumped under the bedspread she had drawn over her. "Tell whoever it is to come up."

"Now?"

"Yes, Rita. Now." Corinne stood up unsteadily. "And will you please show him into the living room?"

"I was just gonna clean in there. I haven't cleaned in there yet."

"Show him into the living room, Rita, please."

Rita walked sullenly out of the room.

As people do who have chosen to live in a supine position, once she was on her feet Corinne went into action a little crazily. It seemed of prime importance to her to take out from under her night table Ford's two books of poems and walk up and down the room with them for a little while.

She suddenly replaced the books under her night table. Then she combed her hair and Put on lipstick. Her dress was badly wrinkled, but she didn't change it.

As she walked carefully into the living room, a man with wavy blond hair stood up. The man was in his early thirties, with a physique that was turning fat, but which had a look of tremendous animal power. He was wearing a pale green sports coat and a yellow polo shirt open at the collar. Several inches of white handkerchief drooped out of his breast pocket.

"Mrs. Ford?"

"Yes . . ."

"My card." He pushed something into Corinne's hand.

Corinne slanted the card toward the daylight: I'M HOWIE CROFT.

Who the Hell are you, Bud?

She started to return the card, but Mr. Howie Croft sank away from her into the upholstery of the couch, waving a hand. "Keep it," he said generously.

Framing the card in her hand, Corinne herself sat down in the red damask chair opposite her visitor.

She asked a little stiffly, "Are you closely related to Miss Croft?"

"Are you kidding?"

Corinne's reply was delivered down her handsome nose: "Mr. Croft, I'm not especially in the habit of---"

"Look, hey. I'm Howie Croft. I'm Bunny's husband."

Impressed, Corinne immediately fainted.

When she came to. she had the choice of looking into either or both of the alarmed, faintly inconvenienced faces of Howie Croft and Rita. She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. Howie Croft and Rita had placed her feet up on the couch. She swung them now, a trifle arrogantly, to the floor. "I'm all right, Rita," she said. "I'll take some of that though."

She drank half a pony of brandy.

"You can go, Rita. I'm all right. I'm damned sick and tired of fainting . . ."

As Rita left the room, Howie Croft moved uneasily over to the red-damask chair Corinne had vacated. He sat down and crossed his legs-which were huge; each thigh a whole athlete in itself.

"I'm sure sorry to of scared you that way, Mrs. Field.'

"Ford."

"I meant Ford--I know a coupla people named Field." Howie Croft uncrossed his legs. "Uh--so you didn't know I and Bunny were married?"

"No. No. I did not."

Howie Croft laughed. "Sure. We been married eleven years," he said.

"Cigarette?" He snapped the bottom of a fresh pack of cigarettes with his finger, then sociably, without getting up, extended the pack to Corinne.

"What do you mean you've been married eleven years?" Corinne demanded coldly.

For a split second Howie Croft looked like a schoolboy unjustly accused of chewing gum in class, but whose involuntary reaction is to swallow when challenged.

"Well, ten years and eight months, if you wanna be so eggzact," he said.

"Cigarette?"

Something in Corinne's face told him to stop offering her a cigarette. He shrugged his forehead, lighted his own cigarette, put the pack back in his breast pocket and carefully rearranged his handkerchief.

Corinne spoke to him.

"I beg your pardon?" Howie Croft said politely.

Corinne repeated her question, in a harsh voice.

"What girl's twenty years old?" Howie Croft inquired.

"Your wife."

"Bunny?" Howie Croft snorted. "You're nuts. She's thirty-one. She's a month older'n me and I'm thirty-one."

Swiftly Corinne wondered whether doormen and people had sense enough to cover up immediately the bodies of people who jumped out of apartment-house windows. She didn't want to jump without a guarantee that somebody would cover her up immediately . . . She forced herself to pick up Howie Croft's voice.

"She looks a lot younger," Howie Croft was analyzing, "because she's got small bones. People with small bones don't get old the way people like you and I. Know what I mean?"

Corinne didn't reply to this question, but asked a question of her own.

Howie Croft didn't hear her. "I don't getcha," he said, and cupped his ear. "Say that again."

She repeated her question--louder.

Before replying, Howie Croft got rid of a troublesome bit of tobacco on his tongue. Then he said, not impatiently "Look, hey. She can't be twenty.

We got a kid eleven years old."

"Mr. Croft---"

"Call me Howie," he suggested. "Unless you wanna stand on this ceremonies

stuff."

With a shiver Corinne asked him if he were telling her the complete truth.

"Look, hey. What would I lie for? I mean what would I lie for? How old did she tell you she was?" But he waved away his interest in a reply. "She's nuts," he pronounced rather cheerfully. "She was always nuts."

HE SETTLED back comfortably on the lower part of his spine and assumed the kind of philosophical countenance available to him.

"Look, hey. I come home on Thursday. From this special trip I hadda make for the firm. I look around the house. No Bunny anywheres. Even though she was supposta be back at least a week awreddy. So I call up my mom. My mom tells me Bunny hasn't got back yet. She starts yellin' her head off on the phone. She tells me the kid's broke-broken-his leg climbin' on some roof.

She keeps yellin' over the phone about how she hasn't strength enough to take care of the kid and where's his mother anyways, and so finly I hang up. I can't stand somebody yellin' in my ear over the phone.

"So I spend around an hour tryin' to put two-in-two together, like. So I knew where I'm at, at least. And so finly I look in the mailbox. and I see a letter from Bunny. She tells me her and this Ford guy are goin' away somewheres together. What a screwball!" He shook his head.

Corinne took a cigarette from the box on the table beside her and lighted it. She then cleared her throat, as though to make sure her voice still functioned.

"Thursday. This is Sunday. It took you a long time to get here."

Howie Croft finished what he was doing -he was blowing a smoke ring at the ceiling-then he answered, Look, I don't live on Park Avenue or somewheres.

I work for a living. I go where the firm sends me."

Corinne took her time. "You mean you're here on business?"

"Certainly I'm here on business!" Howie Croft said indignantly.

"You let her come to New York? You knew she was coming here? Corinne asked dizzily.

"Certainly I knew she was comin' here! You don't think I'd let her come all the ways to New York without knowin' what's what, do ya?"

It took him a moment to smooth out his feathers.

"She told me she wanted to meet this Ford guy--this Ford chap--your husband. So I figure: Let her get it out of her system. She's drivin' me nuts; he's drivin' me nuts---" He interrupted himself. "Your husband makes a lot of dough writin' books, don't he?"

"He's written only two books of poems Mr. Croft."

"I don't know about that, but he makes a lot of dough on what he writes, don't he?"

"No."

"No?"--incredulously "There is no money in poetry, Mr. Croft."

Howie Croft looked suspiciously around him.

"Who pays the rent here?" he demanded.

"I do,"--shortly. "Mr. Croft, must we ---"

"I don't get it." He turned to Corinne a real appeal in his rather sizeless eyes "He's a big shot, isn't he?"

"He's probably the finest poet in America."

But he shook his head. "If I'd known this I wouldn'ta let her come," he said bitterly. He looked at Corinne accusingly, as though she were personally responsible for his private dilemma. "I thought your husband could kinda show her the ropes."

"What ropes?"

"The ropes, the ropes!" Howie Croft said impatiently. "She keeps writin'

these books . . . You know how many books she's wrote since we been married? Twelve I read 'em all. The last one she wrote for Gary Cooper. For a picture with Gary Cooper in it. She sent it out to the movies, and they didn't even send it back. She's had some tough breaks."

"What?" Corinne asked sharply.

"I said she's had some tough breaks."

Corinne felt her cigarette burning hotly close to her finger. She unloosened the cigarette over an ash tray.

"Mr. Croft. How did your wife hear of my husband?"

"From Miss Durant," was the brief answer. Howie Croft was deep in thought "Who," Corinne said. "is Miss Durant?"

"Her drinkin' buddy. Teaches at the high school. Durant and Bunny talk about all that kinda stuff."

"Would you like a drink?" Corinne asked abruptly.

Howie Croft looked up. "You're not kiddin'," he said. "Say. What's your first name anyways."

Corinne stood up and rang for Rita. By the time she sat down his question had sufficiently cleared the room.

With a drink in his hand Howie Croft suddenly asked a question "What'd she do here in New York anyways?"

Corinne drank part of her drink. Then she told him what she knew--or what she was able to bring herself to relate. He listened to her in a way that, at first, she thought was disconcertingly alert. Then, abruptly, it occurred to her that he was examining her legs. She crossed her legs and tried to bring her account to a rapid close, but he interrupted her, "Who's this 'Aunt Cornelia' you're talking about?"

Corinne stared at him. Her hands began to tremble, and she wondered if it might not be best to sit on them.

She managed to ask the obvious question.