“You’re beginning to sound like T. S. Eliot,” I told her.
She ignored that.
“What kind of a cat is your brother?” she asked me. “Is he anything like you?”
“Jack? Hell no,” I snorted. “He’s a couple years older than I am. He was in trouble a lot when he was a kid. Then six years in the Navy right after high school. Married three times. Works in a trailer lot — part-time sales and general flunky. Drinks beer most of the time because he can’t afford whiskey. Chases women. Screws a lot. He can charm the birds right out of the trees when he wants to. Something of an egomaniac. I guess that covers it.”
“Typical Hard Hat, huh?” she said grimly.
“Look, my little daffodil of the downtrodden, one of the things you’ll learn as you grow older is that group labels don’t work. You say Hard Hat, and you get a certain picture. Then you close your mind. But you scream bloody murder when some fortyish guy in a suit looks at you and says ‘Hippie’ and then closes his mind. These goddamn labels and slogans are just a cop-out for people who are too lazy to think or don’t have the equipment. Your labels won’t work on my brother. He’s completely nonpolitical.”
“You know,” she said quietly, “I wouldn’t take that from anybody but you. I think it’s because I know you don’t care. Sometimes it gives me goose bumps all over — how much you don’t care.”
“Come on,” I said, “don’t get dramatic about it. I’m just at loose ends right now, that’s all.”
“You’d make a terrific revolutionary,” she said. “With that attitude of yours, you could do anything. But that’s inconsistent, isn’t it? To be a revolutionary, you’d have to care about something. Oh, dear.” She sighed mightily.
I laughed at her. Sometimes she could be almost adorable.
“I’m serious” she said. “What about the other guys?”
“Sloane? A hustler, Petit-bourgeois type.”
“That’s a label, too, isn’t it?” she demanded.
“Now you’re learning. Calvin Sloane is a very complex person. He was probably fat, unloved, and poor as a child. He went right to the root of things — money. He’s a pawnbroker, a used-car dealer, a part-owner of several taverns, and God knows what else. Anything that’ll turn a buck. He’s got it made. He uses his money the way a pretty girl uses her body. As long as Sloane’s buying, everything’s OK. Maybe he’s accepted the fact that nobody’s really going to like him unless he pays them for it. He can’t accept honest, free friendship or affection — not even from his wife. That’s why he takes up with these floozies. They’re bought and paid for. He understands them. He can’t really accept any other kind of relationship. Don’t ever tell him this, but I like him anyway — in spite of his money.”
“You sure make it hard to hate the enemy,” she said.
“Walt Kelly once said, ‘We have met the enemy, and he is us.'”
“Who’s Walt Kelly?”
“The guy who draws Pogo.”
“Oh. I prefer Peanuts.”
“That’s because you’re politically immature,” I told her.
She socked me on the shoulder. I think our popcorn-root-beer-drive-in-movie date the night before had caused us both to revert to adolescence. She’d been almost breathtaking in a skirt, sweater, and ponytail, and without those damned glasses; but I’d stuck to my guns — we’d only necked. Both of us had gone home so worked-up we’d been about ready to climb the walls. She’d made some pretty pointed threats about what she was going to do to me at the orgy.
“What about the women?” she asked. “The concubines?”
“Helen — that Sloane’s trollop — is a pig. She’s got a mind like a sewer and a mouth to match. Even in the circles she, moves in, she’s considered stupid since she does all of her thinking, I’m told, between her legs. Her husband’s in the Air Force, and he’s maniacally jealous, but she cheats on him anyway. I think she cheats just for the sake of cheating. I’ve about halfway got a hunch that this little blowout today was her idea. She likes her sex down and dirty, and probably she’s been thrilled by orgies in some of the pornography she’s always reading — undoubtedly moving her lips while she does — and she figures diddling in groups has just got to be dirtier than doing it in pairs. Maybe she figures to get a bunch-punch out of the deal.”
“Bunch-punch?”
“Multiple intercourse — gang-bang.”
“Oh. What about the other one?”
“Sandy? You got me, kid. She’s good-looking, but she never says anything. You think I’m cool? She’s so cool, she’s just barely alive — or just recently dead, I haven’t decided which. If you can figure her out, let me know.”
We drove on across the Puyallup River bridge and on out toward Fife and Milton.
The house Sloane had out in Milton was a little surprising. I’d half-expected one of those run-down rabbit hutches that are described euphemistically as “rental properties” — not good enough to live in yourself, but good enough to house former sharecroppers or ex-galley-slaves — always provided that they can come up with the hundred and a quarter a month.
Sloane’s house, on the other hand, was damned nice. It was an older frame place with one of those deep porches all across the front, and it nestled up to its eaves in big, old shrubbery. There was about a half acre of lawn in front and probably more in back. A long driveway went up to the house and along one side of it to the garage behind the house. On the other side of the driveway was a garden plot that had pretty much gone to weeds.
I ran my car on up the driveway and pulled up just behind Sloane’s Cadillac.
“Nice place,” Clydine said, looking out at the white-picket-fence-enclosed backyard.
“Well, well, well,” Jack said, bustling out of the house with a bottle of beer in his hand. “What have we here?”
Clydine and I got out of the car.
“My” — Jack grinned, coming through the gate —”she’s a little one, isn’t she?” He was giving her the full benefit of the dazzling Jack Alders’ smile, guaranteed to melt glaciers and peel paint at a hundred yards.
“Jack,” I said, “this is Clydine.”
“Clydine? How the hell’d you ever get a name like that, sweetie?”
“I won it in a raffle,” she said with a perfectly straight face.
“She won it in a raffle!” Jack chorded with a forced glee. “That’s pretty sharp, pretty sharp. Come on in the house, kids. Fuel up.” He waved the beer bottle at us and led the way toward the house.
“Far out,” Clydine murmured to me.
“Hey, gang,” Jack announced as we went in the back door, “you all know my brother Dan, and this is his current steady, Clydine. Isn’t that a handle for you?” He pointed to each of the others standing around in the kitchen and repeated their names. “Tell you what, sweetie,” he said to Clydine, “I’m never gonna be able to manage that name of yours, so I’m just gonna call you Clyde.” He winked broadly at the rest of us.
She smiled sweetly at him, and then said very pleasantly but very distinctly, “If you do, I’ll kick you right square in the balls.”
Sloane shrieked with laughter, almost collapsing on the floor. Jack looked stunned but covered it well, laughing a little hollowly with the rest of us. His jaws tightened up some though.
We had a couple of beers, got the girls organized, and then Jack, Sloane, and I went outside to tackle the yard work.
I fell heir to a scythe and the chore of leveling the jungle that had been a garden. Once I got into it, I discovered that in spite of the weeds, there was a pretty fair amount of salvageable produce there. By the time I got through, I’d laid a couple bushels of assorted vegetables over on the grass strip between the garden and the driveway — radishes, carrots, lettuce, onions, cucumbers, and so forth. I hauled great armloads of weeds and junk back to a brush pile behind the garage. The place looked a lot better when I was done.
I washed off my produce at an outside faucet and put it on the back porch. Then I grabbed another beer and went to see how Jack and Cal were doing. I found them sitting on the front porch, staring down at the half-mowed lawn.
“Takin’ a beer break, hey, Dan?” Sloane said.
“No. I finished up.”
“No shit?”
They had to come out and inspect the job. Then they looked at my haul on the back porch, and then we went back to the front porch to sit and stare at the lawnmower some more.
Sloane sighed. “Well,” he said, “I guess it’s my turn in the barrel.” He walked heavily down the front stairs and cranked up the mower.