the precise shading he’d given them.
And every once in a while, he flashed to the memory of looking across at her, at the delicate line running down her face where her cheek must have pressed drunkenly into a crush of sheets, this memory mingled uncomfortably with the memory of the line of his own finger on Midge’s face an hour earlier, touching skin where her bright locks should’ve been.
Fuck it, Hop. Get it together.
Against all reason, his mind ping-ponged instead to the things Midge had said at Jerry’s place. How was it that she could hate him so much?
“You have no one to blame but yourself.” That’s what she told him before she left him. It galled her that after two or more years of Hop
pressing her and Jerry in corners together, inviting him over for her pot roast, then leaving them alone together before coffee—while he went off on some job scooping up a starlet from an opium den in Chinatown—having Jerry pick her up at nightclubs when she was too smashed to drive home, making her take his old pal shopping for new suits at Bullock’s, asking him to take his place on her birthday, buy her a steak Diane at Perino’s so he could drive to Caliente and bail a director out of jail. Could he really be surprised? Or, now that he thought about it, was he only surprised at the twinge of anger, frustration, the thin strand of regret (no, not that) he felt now that the transaction was complete?
“Life’s touched him,” Midge had said to him at the very end. “It just rolls off you.” Like everything Midge said, there was some truth in it, and some plain malice. Jerry, he had this readiness for Midge that Hop had never had. A readiness that came from year after year of spending days covering stories of husbands strangling their wives with phone cords, of young girls leaping in front of streetcars or swallowing mercury bichloride, of little boys strangled under Santa Monica Pier, of another Miss Lonely-hearts burned to ashes from falling asleep, cigarette in hand … In the end, it turned out Jerry didn’t want any of those cool, long-necked beauties he always had on his arm, their faces as blank as their histories, who asked nothing of him but a box of fine chocolates and a civilized evening of drinks, dinner, dancing, silk sheets. Turns out, the more time Jerry spent in Hop’s house, with Hop’s wife (no blank face there, a face all too alive with anger, despair, desperation), the more he realized he wanted a house, kids tugging at his pant legs, a dog running down the driveway, a lawn to mow, and, most of all, a lovely, loving wife—a wife with so many sad stories of her own that she’d be waiting eagerly, gratefully on the front porch when he came home from the gloom of the city beat. A wife so glad to see him that he might cry. A wife like Midge.
Hop knew when it all finally began with Jerry and Midge, when there was nothing left to happen but that.
It had been a halfhearted attempt at best. Razor scratches on her wrist and a handful of pills. Neither would have done the job alone, and together they canceled each other out, the pills slowing her blood flow to heavy molasses. It was Midge’s friend Vicki who found her (Hop was throwing money down at Hollywood Park with another reporter, two studio flacks, and a couple of blondes from Pomona on their first tear). The emergency-room doctors made her stay in the psych ward for three days before releasing her. The doctor who signed the final papers gave Hop one long look before he left, and Hop found himself saying, too loudly, “You don’t know anything, pal. Not a goddamned thing.”
The truth was, Hop shouldn’t have been too surprised. After all when he’d left for the track that day, the last thing Midge had said was, waving his razor, “You’ll be sorry, little man.” He hadn’t guessed she’d actually go through with it, though, and when she did, he did feel sorry—and guilt-ridden enough to go on a twelve-hour bender. But he
And every once in a while, he flashed to the memory of looking across at her, at the delicate line running down her face where her cheek must have pressed drunkenly into a crush of sheets, this memory mingled uncomfortably with the memory of the line of his own finger on Midge’s face an hour earlier, touching skin where her bright locks should’ve been.
Fuck it, Hop. Get it together.
Against all reason, his mind ping-ponged instead to the things Midge had said at Jerry’s place. How was it that she could hate him so much?
“You have no one to blame but yourself.” That’s what she told him before she left him. It galled her that after two or more years of Hop
pressing her and Jerry in corners together, inviting him over for her pot roast, then leaving them alone together before coffee—while he went off on some job scooping up a starlet from an opium den in Chinatown—having Jerry pick her up at nightclubs when she was too smashed to drive home, making her take his old pal shopping for new suits at Bullock’s, asking him to take his place on her birthday, buy her a steak Diane at Perino’s so he could drive to Caliente and bail a director out of jail. Could he really be surprised? Or, now that he thought about it, was he only surprised at the twinge of anger, frustration, the thin strand of regret (no, not that) he felt now that the transaction was complete?
“Life’s touched him,” Midge had said to him at the very end. “It just rolls off you.” Like everything Midge said, there was some truth in it, and some plain malice. Jerry, he had this readiness for Midge that Hop had never had. A readiness that came from year after year of spending days covering stories of husbands strangling their wives with phone cords, of young girls leaping in front of streetcars or swallowing mercury bichloride, of little boys strangled under Santa Monica Pier, of another Miss Lonely-hearts burned to ashes from falling asleep, cigarette in hand … In the end, it turned out Jerry didn’t want any of those cool, long-necked beauties he always had on his arm, their faces as blank as their histories, who asked nothing of him but a box of fine chocolates and a civilized evening of drinks, dinner, dancing, silk sheets. Turns out, the more time Jerry spent in Hop’s house, with Hop’s wife (no blank face there, a face all too alive with anger, despair, desperation), the more he realized he wanted a house, kids tugging at his pant legs, a dog running down the driveway, a lawn to mow, and, most of all, a lovely, loving wife—a wife with so many sad stories of her own that she’d be waiting eagerly, gratefully on the front porch when he came home from the gloom of the city beat. A wife so glad to see him that he might cry. A wife like Midge.
Hop knew when it all finally began with Jerry and Midge, when there was nothing left to happen but that.
It had been a halfhearted attempt at best. Razor scratches on her wrist and a handful of pills. Neither would have done the job alone, and together they canceled each other out, the pills slowing her blood flow to heavy molasses. It was Midge’s friend Vicki who found her (Hop was throwing money down at Hollywood Park with another reporter, two studio flacks, and a couple of blondes from Pomona on their first tear). The emergency-room doctors made her stay in the psych ward for three days before releasing her. The doctor who signed the final papers gave Hop one long look before he left, and Hop found himself saying, too loudly, “You don’t know anything, pal. Not a goddamned thing.”
The truth was, Hop shouldn’t have been too surprised. After all when he’d left for the track that day, the last thing Midge had said was, waving his razor, “You’ll be sorry, little man.” He hadn’t guessed she’d actually go through with it, though, and when she did, he did feel sorry—and guilt-ridden enough to go on a twelve-hour bender. But he
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