An Angel of Mercy

The Blonde was on the train again, the third or fourth Monday in a row. Jacobs saw her at once as he entered the car. She sat alone in an aisle seat, bold and bright and watchful. A widow, maybe, with little lines of independence at the corners of her eyes. The commuters in their gray suits glanced at her in morning weariness, like spent, inadequate lovers.

Earth mother. Red-hot momma. Jacobs went to an empty seat across from her. Her perfume was too strong for morning; maybe it was protective, a commuter repellent. Suppose you got served a chocolate éclair for breakfast, would you touch it? She watched him as he sat. He kept his hat on, to hide his thinning hair.

He opened his attaché case, snapping both catches at once. Across the aisle, the blonde lighted a cigarette and took a big puff, almost audible. The cigarette end came out of her mouth red.

Memos in the attaché case, charts and graphs, neat and clean. (She was 45 under that hair dye, with varicose veins and a spare tire, probably, but you could bet that was an authentic shirtful.) A nice little corporation budget, with contingency allowances cleverly tucked away here and there ... but what about his own domestic budget? Full of holes. Untidy, haphazard. Mortgage, dentist, kids' clothes ... where did it all go? No matter. (She crossed her legs and tapped the cigarette. Bits of ash drifted intimately onto his shoe tops.)

They were passing the Newark dump, steaming in the haze of the swamps and exhaust fumes from turnpike traffic. (On her cheek, a mole, a chorus girl's beauty spot, implying mesh stockings and lewd little stars.) Dirty newspapers on the floor, toilet door loose and banging, commuters sneezing on each other, yawning and gaping in their car cage, getting ready to move to other cages ... subways, elevators, office cubicles.

The train went hurtling into the tunnel. Lights flickered. In the attaché case with the budget was yesterday's puzzle, half finished but confidently done in ink. Six-letter word meaning condition of loveliness. "B-e-a-u-t-y." (She let the cigarette drop, had trouble finding it with her spiked heel, so he gallantly squashed it with his shoe.)

"Oh—thanks."

"'S OK."

Condition of loveliness! Above them the river boiled with sewage and industrial wastes, the tunnel dripped with the exhalations of 10,000 trains; commuters rose with bitter eagerness and lurched into the aisle, swaying against each other in a dance of hate.

Penn Station came sliding along in the gloom and stopped. The blonde was somewhere up ahead, pushing along with the rest of them, but when Jacobs got outside she was standing on the platform, waiting.

She caught his eye. She beckoned to him. And she said to him there amid the trains, trains, trains: "OK. You'll do."

"I'm sorry, what——"

"Come on."

"I don't quite——"

She looked up at him, very slightly amused. "Let's go to a hotel. You know."

A hotel.

He looked, illogically, at his watch. Crowds from another train were pushing all around them.

"Let's go," she said.

"I've got—a meeting at ten."

"Ten. Well, it's only eight-thirty now." She turned, pushing at his elbow. "Come on." He stared at her. "Well," she said, "what's the trouble? Look, I'm not a chippy." She pushed some more, and they began to move with the crowd toward the escalator. "I don't take a nickel. The hotel room, I got it reserved, see? It's mine. I pay for it." They stood on the escalator, rising in a forest of pale dull faces, blind eyes, stopped ears. "Just for kicks, mister." Motherly, she led him off at the top. His (continued on page 188)Angel of Mercy(continued from page 131) legs felt weak. "Ah," she said, "you want a cup of coffee first?"

First.

Hundreds of gray suits, briefcases, gray hats, gray jaws fresh-shaven ... why him, why Jacobs?

"I don't underst——"

"I said just for kicks. Kicks. You know what kicks are." She was patient, persistent, pulling him along in the great echoing chamber.

"But I nev——"

"You religious or something?"

"No, no, it's——"

"So you're married. Listen——" They were part of the street crowd, a morning riot almost. She shouted: "It's good for marriage. Believe me, mister, I know. I had a husband once, he——"

Taxis honking, drivers cursing. Garment racks, messengers on motor bikes, cop on a horse, trucks like elephant behinds blocking side streets.

"—kept it all inside himself, see? Then finally he couldn't stand it and broke loose, run off, the weak bastard——"

Around a corner, heading straight for the side entrance to a hotel, one of those big convention palaces with small rooms and cheap towels. "If he'd sneaked a piece or two on the side, see," she said, lecturing him before an audience of two fat men, truckers in caps, chewing cigars, bored, "then he'd of stayed—worse luck for me, though. My third husband was well to do."

Third? Who was first, second? Where were they all now ... waiting in the hotel room? A con game. Watch out, Jacobs. But she was ahead of him, already past the doorman and inside. He hurried after her. but stopped in the lobby when he saw she had made it to the desk. The place was nearly deserted; a few bellboys, shaggy rubber plants, some men reading newspapers ... house detectives? A ridiculous situation. He looked angrily at his watch. Twenty to nine, and his In Box would be piled high with memos and letters.

"Come on!" She was bellowing at him across the lobby, waving her pocketbook. Good God, if it was a con game, the whole hotel was in on it. Not one of those house detectives so much as batted an eye. Jacobs hurried over to the elevator to shut her up. Was he a dog on a leash or what?

"Now just a——"

But a middle-aged bellboy had shuffled up with the key. The doors opened, the three of them were inside, rising silently together, partners in a sordid fate. Automatically, Jacobs removed his hat and felt in his pocket for a tip.

The room had two double beds, a window, a television set, and in a bureau drawer, hidden but handy, a Bible.

"Want some ice, sir?" said the bellboy. (Her brother? Husband number two?)

"No." Jacobs gave him a dollar bill, wet from a sweating hand, and he went out. The door snapped shut.

"Don't throw your hat on the bed." she said. He put it back on his head. She was looking out the window. "New York always gets me, you know?"

"Look, there's one thing I——"

"Ha. I know. You think it's some kind of racket. You're waiting for the vice squad or something to come busting in. You guys are all alike." She laughed.

"I've got to call the office," he said, reaching for the phone.

"Suspicions, suspicions. It's weird. A free piece comes along just for kicks and no questions asked and everybody seems to want to have their lawyer check it over." She took off her jacket and hung it carefully in the closet.

Jacobs gave his office number to the hotel operator. He stood between the beds, facing the wall. Behind him came a snap; involuntarily he glanced over his shoulder. She had turned on the TV set. Its noise came up quickly, cartoons for the kiddies. He told the office switchboard girl to tell three other people he'd be late. Behind him were waltzing Pop-eye and Olive, circa 1935 ... and his own kids, preschool, watching the same thing at home, maybe. He hung up. She switched to another channel, news, and left it on for him as she went into the bathroom, swinging her pocketbook.

Jacobs sat on one of the beds, watching the news, still holding his attaché case, listening to the water running in the bathroom. The blonde was singing My Blue Heaven. Riots in Malaysia. Ski disaster in Austria. Mrs. Jacobs at home, five feet two, eyes of blue, stripping the beds, dusting the mantel, brushing the dog. At the office, Miss Waggoner shoveling more paper into his In Box, and Godchaux, the accountant, looking for him. ("Where's Jacobs, Miss W.? Shacked up in a hotel room with some blonde, hey? Ha.") Yankees win, 5–4. Mets win, 8—5. Rain in the late afternoon ...

"Say, you still got your hat on."

The blonde had come back, wearing two towels. She was broad-shouldered and short without her shoes.

Jacobs put his attaché case in a chair and his hat on top of it.

Shades down. Bedspread whipped back.

"Well, what's the matter, mister? You're not a pansy, are you? ... Ha, I thought that'd shake you up. Don't get sore. Nine guys out of ten fidget around and watch the door like you ... Put the chain on it, why don't you?"

(Chain on the door, suit coat in the closet, blonde on the bed with plump shaven legs and painted toenails.)

"Light me a cigarette, huh?"

That did it. That broke the spell. One little touch of banality—and it was midnight for Cinderella. Fairy coach became pumpkin, and this chesty Lilith, myth-woman of sexy daydreams, became just a big middle-aged blonde beside him on a hotel bed. He wanted to hear her say it again, and he asked: "What?"

"Light me a cigarette."

Yes, yes. Epitaph to magic lust, that phrase from the silver screen. It was the first predictable thing that had happened. It made all the rest jump into a pattern. He grinned away from her. "Sorry, but I quit smoking last year." He lighted the cigarette anyway and, faithful to the tradition she had quoted, put it to her lips. A tobacco kiss, phallic, hinting of death.

Would she reach up and loosen his tie? Yes, she would—she did, squinting in the cigarette smoke. Jean Harlow and George Raft. Sexuality, real and synthetic, sang in his veins, drummed the blood up, leaving his hands and feet cold ... Predictable! A situation, a life experience!

"There's a pantshanger in the closet," she said. "Oh, say, leave the TV on, will you? I like it on."

An extra dimension, the TV. Made it seem like a public ceremony. The world must be represented, through its brainless eye. Outside in the morning streets, gray everybody was flickering in the sunlight, and there at the foot of the rumpled bed, a quiz program.

("Colombo is the capital of what?")

"Ceylon," he said, putting his tie on the hanger. Was he trembling with excitement? To be sure ... but why was he so carefully straightening the creases of his trousers on the hanger and adjusting the upside-down pockets so his change and keys wouldn't spill out? Why hadn't he torn off the suit, flung it on the floor, ripped his tie in wild haste, pulled the towels from that acre of blonde, that thrice-married, varicose widow?

("Columbia is the capital of what?")

"South Carolina."

The anticipation of passion throbbed, beat, swelled ... and yet, there was this detachment, too. Adulterous guilt? Fear of Jove's bolt?

("Columbus...")

"Ohio."

He hung his shirt on the closet doorknob. No guilt, no fear. The blonde would have no reason to regret her choice. He would be equal to the occasion, just as, in an hour, he would be capably handling the budget in the board room. She was, even, like the budget—a matter which had come to his attention, requiring action. A big blonde memo marked urgent.

It was a little sad. He took her hands. "Do you know," he said, "if I were five years younger I'd be crying now?"

"Huh?"

She didn't understand. Yes, then he would have been crying and trembling like a boy, possessed by the idea that this wild impossible Monday-morning surprise was a turning point of fate.

"I don't like 'em too young," she said, sitting up, beginning to do things.

But now ... just an episode.

"Real young guys, they can't handle themselves right, you know? They get ideas, this and that." She was perspiring a little, one eye still on the TV.

Maybe a turning point after all, to be old enough to see no turning point. To see nothing.

"And I don't like these hot-pants types who always give me the eye. It's not so much the age, see, it's a certain look a man has when you know it's, well, OK ..." (Breathing harder, shedding towels, but serious.)

A certain look ... a certain time, too, when life stops being personal and becomes anybody's life, everybody's life ... mass life, indifferent life, life as a set of problems presented, solutions offered.

"But I mean, I get a real charge out of you guys. There you are, fresh off the train, headed for the office same as usual—then wham, you wind up inside four walls with a woman. Something different, huh?"

"I'll say." No, not different. Not much different. If different, then not better. But he would not say that to her. When Florence Nightingale came through the battlefield with bandages, what soldier could tell her he hadn't noticed his wound until then?

"Any man needs a little pickup, a little satisfaction once in a while."

Her gift to the gray men. A hundred hotel beds moaning under her Samaritan flesh, a hundred men roused by potency to see the impotence of their lives.

"When it's unexpected, it's kind of special, see?"

Special ... unexpected. Ah, poor banal Lilith, bumbling angel of sexual mercy, sagging Valkyrie, blonde destroyer of men who flung open the window of routine to let the dream killers spring inside. How many of the gray men had broken the image of their youth on that hopeful foolish body? How many had risen drained of dreams to meet their anonymity and age?

She was weeping.

"Why? What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I don't know. It's OK. I mean, I always cry some."

They lay beneath the sheet. He held her in his arms, stroking her with a lover's tenderness. Poor old nymph. Her body told her what his mind told him. She knew there was trouble, always trouble, even in the bright beat of desire and fulfillment ... something wrong that her gift could not make right but only worse, and yet she could not help what she did and was.

"It happens," he said, softly.

She closed her eyes and smiled. "You understand. You guys do understand."

Guys. Not just one guy. Guys. He laughed and held her closer.