Tough Guys Don't Dance Read Online Free PDF Page A

would they care, I told myself, where it took place?
    So I went on. Meeks’s wife, Wardley’s mother, was sickly, and Meeks took a mistress. Wardley’s mother died when he was in his first year at Exeter, and soon after, the father married the mistress. Neither of them ever liked Wardley. He liked them no better. Since they kept a door locked on the third floor of their house, Wardley decided that was the room to get into. Not, however, until he was kicked out of Exeter in his last year was he ever home long enough to find his father and the new wife away for a night. On the first evening that that happened, he worked himself up sufficiently to inch along an exterior molding of the mansion’s wall three stories up from the ground, and went in through the window.
    â€œI love this,” said Jessica. “What was in the room?”
    He discovered, I told her, a large old-fashioned view camera with a black cloth, mounted on a heavy tripod in one corner, and on a library table,five red vellum scrapbooks. It was a special pornographic collection. The five scrapbooks contained large sepia photographs of Meeks making love to his mistress.
    â€œThe one who was now the wife?” asked Pangborn.
    I nodded. As described by the son, the first pictures must have been taken in the year Wardley was born. Each successive volume of the scrapbooks showed the father and mistress getting older. A year or two after the death of Wardley’s mother, not long after the new marriage, another man appeared in the photos. “He was the manager of the estate,” I said. “Wardley told me that he dined with the family every day.”
    At this point Lonnie clapped his hands together. “Incredible,” he said. The later photographs showed the manager making love to the wife while the father sat five feet away reading a newspaper. The lovers would adopt different positions but Meeks kept reading the paper.
    â€œWho was the photographer?” Jessica asked.
    â€œWardley said it was the butler.”
    â€œWhat a house!” Jessica exclaimed. “Only in New England could this occur.” We all laughed a great deal at that.
    I did not add that the butler seduced Wardley at the age of fourteen. Nor did I offer Wardley’s statement on the matter: “I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to regain property rights to my rectum.” There was probably a fine line of propriety to tread with Jessica. I had not found ityet, so I was cautious. “At nineteen,” I said, “Wardley got married. I think it was to confound his father. Meeks was a confirmed anti-Semite and the bride was a Jewish girl. She also happened to have a large nose.”
    They enjoyed this so much that I felt a few regrets at going on, but no helping it now—I also had the ruthlessness of the storyteller and the next detail was crucial. “This nose,” I said, “as Wardley described it, curled over her upper lip until she looked as if she were breathing the fumes of her mouth. For some reason, maybe because he was a gourmet, this was indescribably carnal to Wardley.”
    â€œOh, I hope it turned out all right,” remarked Jessica.
    â€œWell, not exactly,” I said. “Wardley’s wife had been well brought up. So, woe to Wardley when she discovered that he, too, had a pornography collection. She destroyed it. Then she made it worse. She managed to charm the father. After five years of marriage she succeeded in pleasing Meeks enough for the old man to give a dinner party for his son and daughter-in-law. Wardley got very drunk, and later that night, brained his wife with a candlestick. She happened to die from the blow.”
    â€œOh, no,” said Jessica. “It all took place in that house on the hill?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat,” asked Pangborn, “was the legal upshot?”
    â€œWell, believe it if you will, they did not use insanity for a