The Walking Wounded Read online

  FROM A WRITER'S NOTEBOOK:

  WHO'S AFRAID OF SIGMUND FREUD?

  "I had six honest serving men

  --they taught me all I knew:

  Their names were Where, and What And When---and Why and How and Who."

  Rudyard Kipling.

  DUMAS ALL ALONG

  Someone always gets hurt in these things.

  In all my plans and arrangements for Mr. Ed Noon of Manhattan, I never for a

  second dreamed anyone else would get in the way. Funny about that. Funnier still, it

  should be someone like Marcel Alevoinne. Someone I've admired ever since I read

  Death Of Sweet People. But what is that line of Vonnegut's--? 'so it goes.'

  There was no use ever talking to Valerie about Noon. She wouldn't have

  understood, much less cared. Poor Valerie. All those brains and all that beauty but she

  has inherited all the cliché Proper Bostonian aloofness. She has blood, she has breasts,

  she was warm flesh, in ample abundance but all the passion she has ever felt or known

  has been the length of a man's penis and what he does or doesn't do with it. I never

  considered Valerie an ally in my plot for Noon. All she ever has wanted from me is

  homage to that curved pale body of hers. No more, no less.

  Unfortunately, she's in the City now and naturally, she is hungry for all the

  homage I can give her. She won't be in the way, though. I'll screw her silly and leave

  her to shopping sprees and sight-seeing while I do my own thing. Amazing. She can't

  see past the tip of my dick whenever her father lets her roam free and wild away from the fieldstone homestead in Boston. Just as well, I'll be too busy from now on. I won't be

  Valerie's last lover. No chance. She's good for three bad marriages and fifty affairs

  before she cashes in her coupons. What a feeble tribe heiresses really are!

  Money didn't spoil them. It ruined them for anything worthwhile in this life.

  Worthwhile like an ideal or a plan. Or a dream. Such as my dream. The Beautiful

  People are truly skin-deep.

  Maybe it is because there is no Dolores Ainsley in their past. No orphanage, no

  hunger, no deprivation. No ever wanting for anything materialistic. I don't really know.

  Can only guess. It's a cinch, however, that no millionaire's son or daughter would ever

  have bothered writing Widows Walk Away. Eisenhower, for all his lack of literacy,

  was dead right when he said that affluence had damaged the American way of life. The

  kids, too many of them, were spoiled by parental middle class success.

  Shrewd thinking, Ike. Well put. You aced Churchill that time, old man. God

  bless you, wherever you are now. Wish I remembered the exact words. I'd pass them

  along to all future Presidents of the U.S.A.

  I don't bless Mr. Noon.

  I'm going to kill the bastard.

  There's a laugh in that one.

  The pot calling the kettle black.

  Valerie barged in on me today while I was working on the play. She read me the

  riot act for not thinking only of her and good times. "Why are you slaving away anyhow?" she asked in that bitchy Kennedy soprano

  of hers. "You've made more money, won more awards, than any three authors I can

  name. And you promised. Just me this trip. Nothing and no one else."

  "This is a labor of love," I told her. It was the wrong thing to say. She laughed

  in my face, snorted in the direction of the Olympia machine and began her usual speedy

  strip. Her brain was a bedroom.

  She was wearing a Balenciaga, or some such, and her long legs were tucked into

  those gruesome platform shoes they're all stilt-walking on these days. Val dragged me

  over to the bed. She had come into the room like a bitch in heat, anyway. Panting like a

  steam engine, licking those lips of hers that were just a shade too thick for genuine

  beauty. To calm her down and throw her off the trail, I banged her. I did pretty well

  considering that Sex was the last thing I had on my mind that afternoon. It was

  astounding but I couldn't think of anything lately but Noon and the play, and all those

  people I had discovered rattling around in the family closet. Somehow I can't laugh at

  Freud anymore. I never will.

  "Oh, Jo. You make my cunt feel so good."

  The more high-born they are, the more lady-credentials they own, the greater the

  odds that they will talk like that. Vulgarly, low-class, trying to sound like all the

  wanton whores in the universe.

  "Why do you use so ugly a word to describe so lovely a place?"

  "I don't know. I forget all my Barnard when we're balling. You're a tiger for a

  long-haired scribbler of words."

  "Sure I am. And you always expect me to growl on cue." "Don't let's argue. Let's fuck some more."

  So we did, because if we didn't, she would never leave me alone. It took two

  more healthy orgasms for me and perhaps four for her before she finally put the

  Balenciaga back on, crept into the green butterfly chair and put her knees up to her chin

  and stared across the room at me, trying to be a variation of Audrey Hepburn innocence

  and Raquel Welch sensuality. I went back to the desk and the machine. The manuscript

  sheet curling up before me was like a red flag. There was nothing I wanted more than to

  finish that play. Nothing!

  "Why don't you love me, Jo?" she asked suddenly. Never was her Boston accent

  more in evidence than when she had just finished having her jollies. The utter birth

  mark, the spoon-with-the-silver-plating, volleyed out of her soft throat. The Queen had

  seen served.

  "Too easy. Answering that one."

  "And what does that mean, Jo Malmedy?"

  "You don't love me. Simple?"

  Her sigh was exaggerated but it was honest. She knew the score.

  "You can be awfully creepy when you get like this. Deep and moody. Always

  when you're into one of those---creations of yours."

  "I know. Same old labor pains, Valerie."

  "I suppose I should ask you about it. What it is and what it might be. But

  honestly, I'd be only making it up. I never really was interested that much in books.

  Fiction, that is." "Don't apologize. Never apologize for anything. You are Miss Valerie Wales of

  Boston, Mass. Enough said."

  "It's only what we do, you see, what we are to each other that cuts it with me,

  Jo. You do something to me---you always did---"

  I stopped listening to her. She was on the usual subject of our great sexual

  attraction for each other. I could not have cared less.

  The Tall Dolores engulfed my mind. Encircled it and overwhelmed my thinking.

  Dolores Ainsley, the terrible mother. No earth mother, at all. Mr. Noon of Manhattan.

  The hot-shot private investigator.

  Writing about my intended victim had mesmerized me. I was in a literal fever of

  creation. What Valerie liked calling one of my 'deep and moody' spasms. She was

  correct, too. The words were flowing, the scenes racing along. The plot plunging on

  toward that inevitable climax. The steps of the Statue of Liberty. The .45 bullet gone

  awry, blowing the back of the tall woman's head off. A rather rotten woman, at that.

  I had all the facts, of course, thanks to poor Alma Wheeler. Aunt Alma, no less.

  What a ghastly laugh. A call girl. A Sex-For-Sale lady. Yet, the most baffling thing of

  all was Noon himself.

  I mean, my re-action to him.

  I
liked the guy. To my everlasting shame and wonder.

  He fascinated me, somehow. His quick mind, his bleeding heart, his fast

  moves, the bizarre sense of humor, the loner's life he lived and so obviously loved.

  Secure with the knowledge that no other man owned him. He did not have the hang-up

  of the Twentieth Century. He was a pure throw-back. Perhaps to the gunslingers and pioneers of the Old West. Perhaps, not. Oh, he could be cornball, childish and small

  boy dumb and arrogant now and then and he certainly was a hopeless fool when it came

  to old movies and his Hollywood-oriented mind. But--ecce homo! I could almost be

  sorry I was going to have to kill him. I knew that now as I had never known anything

  else. The physical writing of the play, the living so close with the characters and the

  situations; the re-lived tall tale of another time in Manhattan---the words in Noon's

  mouth and all the truths about Mother---I suppose I should call her that, no matter what

  happens---had turned me into something out of an old novel. I could taste the salt in my

  mouth. I could feel the hot flow of angry blood in my veins. I was burning inside. I

  exulted, whenever I visualized the showdown I was preparing in the theatre of my

  writer's mind. Dreamer's Playhouse. Where all things are possible. Even vengeance,

  twenty years later.

  "Well, Jesus Christ, Jo!"

  Valerie startled me the way she roared from the butterfly chair. I had ignored her

  completely, as if she wasn't any longer in the room. She uncoiled from the crises-cross

  of her splendidly long legs and shot me one of those high-and-mighty glares of hers. The

  Royal Lady glare.

  "What's the matter now, Val?"

  "You tell me, my sweet. What's so all special important about this play of yours?

  You're deeper and moodier than usual."

  "It's a journey for me. A trip back."

  "Don't put me on, Jo. I won't stand for that." "I'm not putting you on. It's a journey to a Disneyland of long, long ago. Kind of

  an experimental form of writing for me. I never have tried a musical before, you may

  remember."

  She relaxed, with the explanation, and shrugged.

  "I wish you wouldn't put me in second place all the time. I'm not creative like

  you certainly are, Genius. But I have my own special kind of thing, too. You know I

  have."

  "You certainly do, Valerie."

  "Maybe it doesn't mean a whole lot to you that I'd rather ball you than anyone else

  I ever met. But it's true. I know you dig me, too. No matter how you like to stand off

  and pretend you can take me or leave me. I know how you are in the sack, Jo. Don't you

  forget it. You can't see your own face when you're going at me. But I keep my eyes

  open. Oh, boy! Tiger, you'd eat me raw if I asked you and you know it."

  "I know it," I admitted, "but let's pass on to something more relative. I concede

  your special place in my life. Now--what do you think of Freud?"

  "Jung," she corrected me. "Freud has been passe for years. You know that as

  well as I do. They've stopped blaming the parents for everything the child is and does.

  All that sexual nonsense about the formative years after birth---well, gollee----"

  "Sigmund is alive and well," I said, "and living all over this world. You'd better

  believe it, Valerie. He won't go away. Nor for all the new theories, the debunkers, and

  all the fresh experts there are."

  "You say. Nobody else does, Jo." "I say," I agreed. "And all the millions lying on head shrinker's leather couches

  in all the dimly lit offices proves I'm right. Tell me, Valerie, didn't you ever realize that

  all of your particular sexual history is a direct result of the kind of life you've had? And

  outcropping of the basic make-up of your parents? Pure Cause and Effect?"

  She was shifting uncomfortably in the butterfly chair, wagging her head furiously

  at me, now. There were nerves in her that she didn't want me to touch at all. There

  always had been. There always would be.

  "I do not care to discuss my folks with you. If this is research of some kind for a

  book or something---or that damn play over there---you just include me out. I'll stick to

  Jung, thank you."

  "Valerie, I'm only trying to explain something to you."

  "No. Forget it, I said. I mean it, Jo."

  "Then I'm sorry for you. Sorry you're afraid."

  "I am not afraid!"

  "Aren't you? Look at you. A casual reference to your folks and a mention of

  sexual history and you're all up-tight."

  Now, she really flung me the glare of glares.

  "Oh, shut your mouth! It's just that I don't want to talk Freud nonsense with you.

  What could be plainer than that?"

  I had to laugh at her, feeling stronger and surer than ever. Of my plan, my

  scheme, my reason for wanting to get my own back.

  "Nonsense, you say. That is funny. Coming from the daughter of a renowned

  swinger-father and blue nose matriarch. You were a repressed goody-goody from Boston until you were eighteen and discovered Boston wasn't the only city in the world. Boston

  --you walked on egg shells all year round there until the folks allowed you to come

  further East. Then you spread out and uncrossed your thighs for anything in pants. And

  just offhand, on my own eyewitness evidence, I'd say you were about the best example

  of penis-envy I've ever met. In or out of Boston."

  Valerie had sea-blue eyes, honey-blonde hair and that mouth that was twice as

  voluptuous as Julie Christie's but she acted as if she didn't know what I was talking about.

  I expected that, she being the convictionless coward that she was. She was only brave in

  bed.

  "Penis-envy? I like that! How can you say such a stupid thing to me? Is that my

  thanks for being your compliant lover---when I adore your body so much---oh, Jo--

  honest to Jesus---"

  "Precisely the point. You adore my cock. You adore all cocks. You wish you

  had one, too. Because they make you feel so good. I've seen you in action so I know.

  You think what's between my legs is just about the greatest form of edifice in the world.

  The finest of all man-made things. Don't say I'm crazy. And don't say Freud is crazy,

  either. Oh, you're very happy about being female. No doubt about that, either. But it's

  safe to say that you've thought more than once about what it might be like to stick

  something into somebody rather than to be stuck all the time. Is that a fair assumption on

  my part, Val?"

  Her face drained of color and she got violently angry with me. "That's simply disgusting, Jo Malmedy. Don't talk like that. It's not decent, and

  if you knew anything at all about Women's Lib, you'd know how juvenile and silly that

  sort of male thinking is!"

  "Sure. Our bag. Male chauvinism. All right. I'll quit. But I'd like you to tell me

  something else, though. Would you kill a person who, let's say---hypothetically, of

  course---killed your mother when you were a little child?"

  She stared at me, baffled. There was no Noon in her gay life.

  "I don't see what one thing has to do with the other."

  "Nothing, really. Just answer the question. I would like to know."

  "Why do you want to know? It's a stupid hypothesis."

  "You were right before. I am involved in something. I need some answers. Call

  it writer's research. Okay?"

  "We
ll---"

  "Please, Valerie. This is very important to me. I kid you not."

  She sighed, shaking the remainder of the anger out of her face. Then she smiled.

  When she smiled, it was pure radiance. Of her own very special brand. I had to give her

  that much. She was a knockout.

  "Why do I put up with you anyway, Jo? There's a dozen men who'd bust their

  buttons to get me where you have me. And you---smart, top rank you, play little funny

  games with me. To test my ego or yours. I'm never sure which. Why do you artists have

  to be so temperamental?" I walked over to her chair, looked down at her and then took her in my arms and

  kissed her. Long and passionately. She liked that, too. She would always like that. No

  matter who the man was.

  "Pals again, Val?"

  "Pals," she breathed deeply, her full bosom rising. Falling.

  "Then answer my hypothetical question."

  "Honestly---"

  "Come on. Don't chicken out. Just suppose."

  "Well---yes, I guess so. 'Course, my answer would depend on whether or not I

  truly loved my mother. Or whether she herself had forced the man to kill her. You know

  how I feel about capital punishment. But, Jo---it's a silly question. Why would I ever

  have to consider the hypothesis?"

  "Yeah. Why would you? Skip it. But all right---suppose you had no reason to

  love your mother. Perhaps, you even hated her. For all kinds of reasons and then

  suppose you were still upset enough to want to kill the man who had killed her? Wanted

  to in spite of all your training, mental stability, high IQ, moral code---whatever---what

  would you say to that?"

  "Well, Jung would say---"

  "Never mind Jung. What would you say?"

  She sighed and smiled, imagining our stormy interlude was over. At least, I was

  talking somewhat more sensibly again.

  "Then I could only say that subconsciously the child who hated his mother, in

  reality, really had loved her. In spite of all the harsh treatment or bad things you mentioned---it's a pure Love-Hate syndrome right down the line. The child fighting for

  the love he never had."

  "Thank you," I said, calming down and smiling at her myself. She wasn't a bad

  sort at all and she still was one of the best lays I had ever had. "And that's why Freud

  was not crazy."