Barbara

Alec Barr often told himself years later that he had never really intended to do anything serious at all about Barbara. He had embarked on a lecture tour starting in Chicago, just after the birth of a new book, had got himself drunk because he hated what he was doing, and he was wearing such a crashing hangover on the plane that it was an hour before he noticed his seatmate, who had settled in a sort of blonde mist beside him.

"They don't seem to serve any booze on this flight," a soft, clearly enunciated voice roused him from his drowsing misery. "I just happen to be the sort of old-fashioned girl who packs a flask in her handbag. I think you ought either to be revived or else to be put entirely out of your misery, Mr. Barr. Which will it be?"

"You know me?" Alec asked foolishly, blinking. The light hurt his scratchy eyes. "Have met?"

"I know you. You're not entirely unknown. I haven't actually met you, but they put you on dust jackets of books and also in newspapers. As a matter of fact, we're on the same TV panel show after you do your little rope trick for your publishers. I'm called Barbara Bayne. I am a professional bad actress."

Alec blinked again, this time slightly less stupidly, and accepted the half-pint hammered-silver flask. His eyes painfully focused.

"Of course I know you. I've seen dozens of your movies. But you were brunette then. And that last play, the one that--"

"Folded after five performances? You saw that, too, did you, and you're still willing to drink my whiskey?" Barbara Bayne's voice was very cheerful for a morning flight to a grimy wind-nagged city Alec hadn't wanted to visit until this moment.

"Actually, I didn't think the play was all that bad. And I thought you were--"

"'Adequate,' the critics said. That's about all they ever see in me, that nasty word--'adequacy.' But the truth is that I do direct easily and rarely feud with the other, better actors. That makes me constantly hirable. You want some water with that Scotch?"

"Nunh-uh." Alec shook his head, then bowed slightly at Barbara Bayne. "I intend to take this one straight. I need the transfusion. You not having any?"

"Not until you take me to lunch in Chicago," Barbara Bayne said sweetly. "I've been waiting for this moment for years. And I did think your last book, Total Loss, was magnificent. Must have been hauled straight out of your guts."

Alec Barr took a deep pull at the flask and shuddered.

"It did. Come out of my guts, I mean. But it's the last intestinal gesture. Anyhow, it's a very nice compliment, and I would love to take you to lunch. And I would also love to take you to dinner, and I would also--"

Barbara Bayne smiled, her dimple deepening.

"No. That'll have to come much later."

Alec could feel himself blush. He groped for cigarettes and offered her one, using the motion as an excuse for closer inspection. Barbara Bayne had a clear cameo face and that one very deep dimple.

"I meant to say. there's a fair fight on tonight which I thought might amuse you, if you like fights." He made conversation.

"I like fights," said Barbara Bayne, "of all kinds. I'd love to see a prize fight for real."

"You look larger on the stage," he said, through the cigarette. "And older. You look very wicked and (continued on page 108)Barbara(continued from page 80) worldly in the movies. But I suppose that's because you were brunette. I suppose you'll hate me for saying that close up you look both younger and prettier. And vastly more innocent."

Barbara Bayne dipped her shining blonde head and produced a fair imitation of bridling.

"It's my hairdresser's fault," she said. "I really don't know what the pansies are plotting from day to day. I'm told the fluffy-duckling bit goes very well with my special kind of beady brown eyes."

"I'd like you if your eyes were pink. And crossed. That's my first compliment from your whiskey, and so I think I shall invade the flask again and appear at some later stage resembling normal. Then I make compliments on my own time."

He drank again and handed back the flask. "I say, you are a pretty woman now that the alcohol's at work. Maybe even without it. You've a nice early-morning face."

"Thank you, kind sir. That's a pretty turn of phrase. I might say the same for you. Even with that hangover you're wearing. And you really don't strike me as the mysterious sort of public kind of writer with something very important to say that nobody really understands but you."

"I am really only a professional writer who makes a decent living writing. If anything important slips out, it's largely accidental. I'm afraid I don't qualify for the Faulkner-Hemingway school of offstage eccentricity. I just sort of write, dull-like, daily, and hope my agent doesn't grimace too much when he gets the copy. He's been known to. Grimace, I mean. He's got the face for it."

"No pride of authorship? No reassessment of the priceless pearls that spill from your fingers? No hammer-and-tongs warfare with your employers over a delicate, if possibly moot, point of craftsmanship?"

"Very little. Practically none." Alec Barr grinned uneasily. "I don't like to sound smug, but I've been a pro for such a long time. I'm like a good, sturdy whore. I can handle any number of sailors on any given night."

"You sound like a publisher's dream author," Barbara Bayne said. "Any other noble aspects of character? Not even a touch of ordinary artistic temperament? Wife beater? Dog kicker? Children hater? I know you have a wife, of course. I've seen her quite often at '21.' She's very pretty."

"Thank you. She is very pretty, and she's also a very nice woman. She has one basic fault. I've a feeling she understands me too well. That's to say, I think she knows I'm a rotten husband. I think she hates the mistress I keep in the back room."

There was no intentionally coy blankness on Barbara Bayne's face.

"That lousy typewriter?"

"That lousy typewriter. The unfortunate thing is that I don't know any other way to make a living. And, equally unfortunately, when you're being director, production manager, producer, scripter, and all of the actors, young and old, male and female, black and white, you're so bloody tired at the end of a day in the embrace of the Iron Maiden that you've lost your own identity. All you want to do is sink a couple of fast martinis and fall into bed with your book on your subconscious back, so you can get up and tackle the whole dreary mess again tomorrow. Eventually you may have a book, but you've mostly canceled out yourself as a human being in the dismal process of building it."

"Gracious," Barbara Bayne said. "I don't think I'd want you permanently for a house pet. Don't you ever have any fun?"

"Not when I'm working. I'm generally much too tired. I used to take off once in a while and go looking for what you might call fun, but I find I don't care much for carousing anymore. I have vicious hangovers and I'm sort of shy about sleeping with people I don't know very well."

Barbara Bayne said, "I think your genes have frozen, or something. Your psyche needs a little shaking up. Shall we attempt it tonight after the work's done? After the fight's over?"

"Consider me shook," Alec Barr said. "Well, here's Chicago. You made it a very short trip. Thanks. Now if only we don't crash coming into this lovely, inefficient airport."

"We'd only be following the current fashion if we did," Barbara Bayne said. "Now I'm hungry and terribly thirsty and I haven't been to the Pump Room in a coon's. I warn you, I'm expensive to victual. I'm a very strong girl, and I need my steady rations."

"I brought some money with me, and have beautiful credit cards as well," Alec Barr said. The plane landed with a bump. "Well, we made it alive again. Come on, let's go produce a taxi and hasten to the Pump. Not to insult the handy flask, which saved my life, but I'm mostly a martini man at midday."

• • •

"I don't know if this thing is going to be worth our effort," Alec said. "It seems to me there's more bums around than when I was a boy. Last really good one I saw was the first Louis-Conn, just before the War, when Conn had old Joe loopy until Conn got cocky and Joe cooled him."

They were having a quick dinner before the fight, which was supposed to be for the honor of meeting the middleweight champion of the world at some future date, to be decided by the television sponsors.

"I have never heard of either one of these guys, but then, I don't follow fights much anymore. I know some names like Sugar Ray and Marciano and Graziano sure, but there aren't any Barney Rosses around--no Henry Armstrong, no Lou Ambers, not to mention the Baer boys and Ceferino Garcia and, God help us all, Tony Galento. I saw most of the good ones--I should say all the real good ones--before the War. After the War, I switched from prize fights to bullfights. At least the bull is honest."

Barbara took a bite of her steak.

"I love 'em, bums or not," she said. "I watch them on TV all the time. But I never saw one in the flesh before."

Alec shook his head.

"It's the TV--and prosperity--that's ruined the racket. Television killed all the little clubs, where kids really learned how to fight before they got tossed in against real opposition. And prosperity ruined the burning urge. Who wants a busted nose and a lumpy ear anymore when he can make a hundred bucks a week as an office boy and three hundred as a plumber? A growling belly made the good fighters. It was the only way they could struggle up from the streets."

He looked at his watch and called for the check.

"About time we got moving if we're going to see Tiger Taggert demolish Bolo Bermudez. It's an unusual fight for these times. The Tiger is actually white. I thought we'd about run out of white fighters."

They pushed their way down the aisle to the third row.

"Why, you've got working-press seats," Barbara said, impressed.

"Hell's delight, honey, anything for a hundred rows back is called 'working press' these days. It's a status symbol. And some of the boys still remember me from the good old days of Jacabs' Beach, when I covered these things."

A gnomish, almost-albino man turned from a corner of the ring, caught Alec's eye and waved.

"Hi, Whitey," Alec yelled through the smoke. "That's Whitey Bimstein--probably the greatest and most imperishable handler of all time. See Whitey with a couple of swabs in his mouth and you know nobody's gonna call the fight on account of blood. He and Ray Arcel were the best."

"You like remembering it, don't you?"

"I suppose. I like remembering the night Galento, full of beer, caught a prime Louis with a surprise left hook and damned near chilled him. And I remember a night in Washington when Buddy Baer, who wasn't much of a fighter, (continued on page 138)Barbara(continued from page 108) started a right hand in Bethesda and hit Joe on the chin and knocked him c'ean out of the ring and into my lap. You could have scraped my eyes off with spoons. But Joe always came back and demolished the people who got lucky with him--that is, until his legs went and Marciano persuaded him to reare with a lot of right hands."

The announcer was introducing the fighters now.

The white boy, Tiger Taggert, was lean and freckled and towheaded and looked mean. He also looked durable. The colored boy, Bolo Bermudez, was compact, with no rough edges, no corners.

"He's a Cuban," Alec said. "There's one country that's still hungry enough to produce good fighters from the cane fields. They get a lot of practice swinging that machete for ten cents a day. I will bet you two to one--ten bucks to five--on the Cubano."

"You've seen the odds?"

"There aren't really any important odds on a fight like this. Six to five and take your pick. You want it the other way round, I'll give you two to one and take the white boy."

"I'll go with the Tiger," Barbara said. "He looks like a hitter. Lots of leverage in those long arms."

"Well, we'll see," A'ec said. "Here's the bell."

The Tiger was a shuffler. He moved flat-footed toward the center of the ring, hands low, and as the compact Cuban roared in, swinging, the freckled white boy lifted a long left and stuck it into the Cuban's nose. There seemed little effort--not much more than a push--but blood jumped from Bermudez' nostrils. The Tiger moved in, still flat-footed, and sank a right into the Cuban's stomach, doubling him over. Stepping back, the Tiger hooked his left sharp'y to the Cuban's jaw, and you could see his head snap.

"Looks like a short night," Alec muttered, as the Bolo wrestled into a clinch. "You want me to pay you now?"

"Not this very moment," Barbara said huskily. "Look at that."

Bolo Bermudez was biting the Tiger on the neck, and in the clinch he was pumping furious short punches at the white boy's lean, muscle-r bbed belly. When the referee pushed them apart, the Cuban took a solid shot at the white boy's jaw, staggering him, and the referee held the Cuban off, cautioning him against hitting on the break. There was blood on the Tiger's shoulder, from Bermudez' bleeding nose, but there was also an angry area of pink on the white boy's belly--pink that had come from the infighting.

"Maybe my lad's tougher than we thought," Alec murmured. "Now look at that."

Bermudez roared in, took another straight left in the mouth, ignored it, and hit the Tiger a solid hook to the jaw, followed by a straight right to the chin. The Tiger's mouthpiece flew out in a spray of spittle, and the Bolo was on him, crowding him into the ropes, driving piston punches to the belly.

Taggert catapulted himself off the ropes, led with a left that looked low and crossed with a right that put the black boy down on one knee. He took the count of eight and was up when the bell rang.

"Well, my lad loses that one on points as well as that foul from hitting going out of the clinch," Alec said. "But we ain't home yet."

Round two found both fighters in the middle of the ring, slugging flat-footed, firmly planted. Alec looked at Barbara Bayne, whose breath was coming in short hisses from white-pinched nostrils. Her lips were bitten together in a straight line, and her breast heaved every time one of the men connected solidly.

There was no finesse to the fight. The men swung, Alec thought, as Tony Zale used to swing when he was indestructible, as Henry Armstrong punched when he was a flailing windmill of leather. The Bolo's right eye was completely closed, with a deep cut in the brow that gushed blood. The referee was making small effort toward separation as both fighters heeled and butted and punched as they voluntarily broke themselves.

The white boy, Tiger, was painted with the Cuban's blood. He himself was not cut, but both eyes were swollen into slits, and his belly was almost as red as his shoulders from the savage inside pounding he was taking. The crowd had risen, screaming, and Alec was astounded at the savage shrillness of the voice belonging to the pretty blonde girl beside him.

"Kill him, Tiger! Now, now, the right, the right!" Barbara Bayne was screeching, and Alec could see her dilated pupils, like the eyes of a crazy horse.

The bell rang as the men stood toe to toe, and they kept slugging until the referee pulled them violently apart.

"My mistake," Alec said mildly to Barbara. "We seem to have run onto quite a massacre here."

Barbara did not appear to hear him. She was leaning forward, breathing heavily, with her eyes intent on the white boy's corner, where the seconds were working frantically to give him his breath back.

The bell for round three banged and both men rushed out again, with no attempt at feint or parry. Both swung right hands from the deck, and both connected on the point of each other's jaw. Both went down like axed cattle--the white boy on his face, the black boy on his back. The crowd was standing, a solid animal roar filling the arena, and again Alec was startled, and not a little shocked, to hear a keening, almost a crooning, coming from the mouth of Barbara Bayne. Her lips now were drawn back over her teeth.

Quite obviously the referee had never been confronted with a similar situation. He stood, finally, equidistant between the two men and began his count. At seven Bolo Bermudez got up on one knee. He was on his feet at nine. He staggered over to the neutral corner and clung gasping to the ropes. At the count of ten the white boy hadn't stirred. The referee walked over to the neutral corner, beckoned to Bolo Bermudez, and the black Cuban staggered out. The referee raised his hand. When he released it, the Cuban sank to the floor again, out as cold as his opponent.

Elbowing through the crowd, Alec said, "I'll be damned if I saw anything like that in all the fights I covered--two guys knocking each other stiff on the same punch. You live and you learn. Hey, what's the matter with you?"

Barbara was deathly pale.

"I--I can't get my breath. I need some air--some air and maybe a drink. And to sit down. I guess I got carried away. Was I very noisy?"

"Noisy enough," Alec grinned. "I was afraid once that you were going into the ring with a shoe in your hand to help your boy. How come you never saw a real prize fight before?"

"Nobody ever asked me," Barbara Bayne said. "But it was marvelous. I've never been so excited in my life."

"I better keep you away from bullfights," Alec murmured, "if the sight of blood affects you this way. The bullfighters have a saying, if a lady is emotionally affected by a corrida: 'Que mantenga el taxi corriendo.' "

"Which means?"

"Keep the taxi running during the last bull so you can get the lady home quick before she cools off."

"Do you have a taxi running?" asked Barbara Bayne, and her eyes were very wide.

• • •

"I was told it could happen this way," Alec Barr said. "I did not believe it could happen this way. I still don't believe it can happen this way. Not so soon--not so swiftly. It almost did, once, in London, a long time ago, in similar circumstances involving blood and excitement. But I was putting off for tomorrow what should have been done at the time, whether either one of us knew it or not."

Barbara Bayne was unashamedly naked as she walked across the room to find cigarettes.

"I suppose you think me wanton," she said. "Wanton this, wanton that. I'm not, really. I don't--I really don't--"

"It is a very familiar line," Alec said. "Last heard in London."

"And what was London?"

Alec's voice was bitter.

"I was put in the position of being rather indirectly responsible for killing a girl with whom I was about to be in love. It's a long story and will wait. We should have succumbed to impulse, as you and I did tonight, but--" he shook his head. "I didn't know then that you were supposed to seize happiness in your hand at the moment of offer. I returned next night to collect my love and found a flattened house. The Germans beat me to my date. Enough of that."

"I'm terribly sorry," Barbara Bayne said. "But I'm not sorry about our precipitous rush into bed. And don't blame it on the fights, either. I'd have had you sooner or later, although--" she chuckled, "I must say, that ready taxi was a fine idea. Now," she said briskly, "it's early. I suggest we sling on some clothes and go out to inspect the village. There's a lot of night left."

Alec got out of bed, and Barbara slapped him lightly on the backside.

"I think you could use another shave," she said. "You're just a little bristly. There's a razor in my dressing kit."

Alec winced. There was entirely too much Sheila in the room tonight. His mind raced as he showered and then scraped at his midnight beard. These things didn't happen to stodgy, professorial-type, married authors. Not to meet in the morning and to bed before 11. It was too fast--much too fast. But there it was. It wasn't cheap and it wasn't awkward and it was altogether--lovely. Barbara Bayne. Famous actress. Three bloody rounds of prize fight and straight off to bed. He shook his head again, like a groggy boxer. All of a sudden he felt lightheaded and strangely purified and young and--and wonderful.

"You can't stay in there all night," her voice said. "Give a girl a chance at that shower, will you?"

"All yours," Alec said, and came out with a towel wrapped round his loins. Barbara kissed him in passing and patted him lightly again.

"Mmmm," she said. "What a clean, sweet-smelling, lovely man. I'll be out in a minute. My flask is at your disposal."

• • •

"You're a very strange man," Barbara said hours later. "Somewhere along the line you must have been stultified by something or, more likely, clobbered by somebody. Mother complex?"

They were sitting in a place called Le Boeuf, listening to a tremulous piano being played by a girl named Jeri. Barbara Bayne had just reached out and touched Alec Barr tenderly on the cheeks with her fingertips and, rising in her seat, had kissed him lightly on the lips.

"Wasn't anybody ever nice to you before?" Barbara Bayne asked. "Nobody ever patted you on the fanny because she felt like it?"

"I really don't know," Alec said. "Maybe I never thought about it much. I have, it seems to me, been so very terribly busy ever since I can remember. Maybe I haven't had time for anybody to be what you call 'nice' to me. Maybe I haven't allowed it."

"You are a fool, you know," Barbara Bayne said. She was looking beautiful in the firelight, which did dramatic things to her cheekbones and the fine straight nose, digging a deeper smoky hole into her dimple.

"You're a fool," she repeated. "Because you have an unrealized talent for fun. You were happy today at lunch in the Pump, and you were sincerely pleased--maybe even a little flattered--when Phil remembered you and Kup came over to have a drink. You were happy to be recognized at the fights. You've a nice way with people--I watched you with the waiters and the cabbies. You're great in--pardon the expression--bed. But don't you ever, ever, really let loose and howl? Do you ever get drunk? I mean really. Fallin'-down, stinkin'. Ugly. Noisy. Furniture-breaking sort of drunk?"

"Not that I can remember," Alec Barr said. "I am what you might call a well-contained load. That's to say, I generally know enough to go to bed before somebody advises it. Truth is, I get sleepy."

"By God, you're contained, all right," Barbara Bayne said. "I don't know if I'd want to be around when you spill over the millrace. You'd probably fire the barn and shoot the constable before you raped the duchess."

"I've very little experience with duchesses," Alec said. "I knew a rather nice viscountess once, though, on shipboard."

"You tell the damnedest anecdotes," Barbara said. "Then what?"

"Nothing very much. I haven't got the facility for personal color. Everybody does something unusual in a war, even if it's only a command that changes the world. In my case, my best command came when a gun broke down in an unlikely manner and immediate counsel was sought."

"What'd you say: 'Damn the torpedoes'?" Barbara asked. " 'Full speed ahead'?"

"No," Alec replied. "I just said to the gunner's mate on the battle phones: 'Fix it.' The story gained considerable currency as time wore on."

"You're a complete phony about your War, aren't you?"

"I didn't know it showed so clearly. Actually, I was scared to death."

"And still are?"

"Not really. Well, yes, maybe. Some of the time. I frequently have the feeling that whatever I've got, somebody will surely come and take it away from me someday--when they see through me, I mean. I don't really believe I was ever in a war. I don't really believe I've written all the things I've written. Every time I sign a check I think maybe the cops will slap me into jail for forgery. I don't believe I ever shot an elephant or kissed a pretty woman or went satisfactorily to bed with one."

"I have, as they say, news for you, friend. Maybe you've never been in a war. Maybe you never wrote a novel. Maybe you never shot an elephant. Maybe somebody will come and take everything away from you someday. But you know something else?"

"I think so," Alec Barr dipped his head. "Yes, that I believe."

"You better believe it," Barbara Bayne said, and leaned across the table to kiss him. This time her lips were warm and soft and lingering.

"It's an old joke," Alec Barr said. "But I'll make it again. My room or yours?"

"Don't argue," replied Barbara Bayne, snatching up her handbag.