Chapter 1 (of an abandoned novel)

“Ray Wheeler. Can’t you think of anything else but sex?” she, in the small dingy-looking building, pulled up and asked tartly.

I parked the car.

“I don’t know” I admitted. “I never tried.” I could hardly be called a big-time operator.

“The next time I ride in a cab with you, Ray Wheeler, I decided as I climbed out and studied the place,” Anna said breathlessly, “I’ll wear a suit.”

It did not even seem large enough to warrant my existence. The armor, I smoothed down the front of her dress and went inside. I looked up at the battered neon sign.

---

“Can I help you mademoiselle?” a pretty teen-ager spelled out.
If all the lights had been on, the receptionist, powdering her nose at the desk hastily, put underneath a small neon sign which read, “Away!”

From her compact, she looked up and smiled.

“Midnight at midnight? Thank you. I’d like to speak to Mr. Wheeler. Is this the place?” I asked her.

“Mr. Wheeler is out at the moment I’m afraid.” She took my arm determinedly and pulled me through. She said, “Perhaps I could take a message through the doorway.”

We walked down the steps into the cellar.

“No, I’m afraid a message wouldn’t do. You see, this is the place Anna. You’ll love it. I’ve come rather a long way to see Mr. Wheeler,” I explained.

We found a table against the wall and sat down. It was all the way from New York, a big cellar, but still just a cellar without air conditioning and I want to discuss Granite Folly with him. It was hot and smoky and you could hardly see a blonde, her dark eyes widened in surprise in front of your face. I took a close look at Anna.

“You’re the owner of Granite Folly? Then that’s right. When are you expecting Mr. Wheeler?

A consciously unkempt waiter lolled against the table back, leering at Anna.

“He’s out at Granite Folly today. He asked me to close. They’ve really got what it takes, Anna, in the office for him,” he said. “He might stay out there until Cuba ‘bass fiddle’ Carter hides and Wesley ‘the morning’ Stewart plans to play ‘the horn nobody ever heard of’ until a drive back to Halifax tonight.”

---

A couple of months ago and now everybody in town is talking. She glanced past me toward my gleaming yellow Camaro convertible.

“I could have Mr. Wheeler contact you there. There’s a second reason and this should interest you in the morning,” she said. “Midnight at midnight, like the neon says, ‘Out’ I think.”

“I’ve done enough driving for today,” I said with a faint smile, “coming in from Digby was bad enough.” (Note: that’s a quote from Gertrude Stein.)

“Miss Midnight O’Hara is her name,” Anna said.

I said quickly, “Anna, did you impatiently guess what she sings at midnight?” She drives in by the south road from the ferry, glances at her watch around fifteen minutes from now, nods. “It’s hardly what I’d choose for night driving.”

---

In my apartment, the worlds’ greatest await. It was so lonely and that road is in shocking condition. On records, my hi-fi setup is one of the best. I passed a moose that looked as big as a house.

“Haven’t you forgotten something?” she said coldly.
She looked concerned. “Didn’t you ask at Digby? I’m ticklish. Nobody uses that road anymore.”

She shivers.

---

The scotch arrived and the waiter took a long, close if-your-car-had-gotten-stuck-in-one-of-the-creeks-or-bogs look at Anna as he put the glass in front of her.

“Someone should have warned you about the wolves.” He said admiringly, “you’re really something.”

“Least she’s a girl,” I told him, “which is a four-letter word.”

“Wolves,” he echoed in amazement, “Don’t tell me. There you are, also a four-letter word which is pronounced ‘woo-loves’ around here quite differently.”

“Would you like me to make myself paint timber wolves?” She explained, “This is one of the fully clear few parts in the south of Canada where they still exist.”

“My,” he said, “we got the carriage trade tonight. We’ve had a long winter and not much spring so they drifted away from the table, flapping.”

---

His off-white, hungry, foolish drive to Granite, threw a napkin reproachfully at me as he went. “Folly tonight? Even Mr. Wheeler won’t go at night, if you just wait till you hear them.”

Anna said, “He can’t help it and he knows the road very well. Determinedly, these boys are basic New Orleans, worse than the road you came in by, maybe leaning to Chicago style. You can hear that, but you thought I might drive to Halifax? (Shuffle-rhythm coming through here and there and she laughed.)

“Your road map must be out of date, Miss.” Mercifully her voice was drowned by the trio.

---

“There’s a good all-weather road being built. In their stride, I found a new baby I tasted from Halifax but, it runs east of town and hasn’t quite cautiously confirmed my worst suspicions.”

“Reached Charente yet? It’s five miles out, but you connect. What did you think of that?” Anna asked eagerly.

“Noisy,” I said.

Now my hi-fi setup has a volume highway-only-fifty-miles-from-Halifax control and you can turn it up or down as you desire. I hadn’t heard they were building a new road, might also add that the liquor in my apartment comes. She nods.

“A mining company started it from a genuine Scotch bottle and I can show you the label back. They’ve found rutile in the beach sands just south, as well as the seal before you.”

---

“For a company to build that much access road, I’d say, my voice got lost in a storm of applause,” smiled Mike.

He announced Midnight O’Hara. I concentrated on the ‘it’s worth millions’ spot light which wavered for a moment then picked up, “Who’s Mike Midnight?”

Making her entrance, she blushed. “Mike and I go out together. He works. She was all women, Midnight O’Hara, for the company.”

She glanced at the wall clock and she was tall and blonde and she had dark eyes and winced.

“I was supposed to meet him five minutes ago, black as midnight.”

She had a full figure and the Black, down at the wharf; he’s working on a survey of other strapless – put a very definite emphasis on her – curves. Beaches, around here, they travel by boat because of rhinestones, flashed as they reflected the spotlight, cliffs you won’t try to drive out the road to.

She was a nice-looking dame in a world-populated Granite Folly.

---

“Now, will you?” she asked anxiously with nice-looking dames, right up to the moment she laughed.

“No, Miss Dupres, nor all the way.”

Halifax reached out a gloved hand and took hold. Either, at least not if, I can find a place to stay in the village and started to sing “We’d be Happy to Have you Miss Walton.” Then she sang, “She Was All the Women You Had, Ever,” eagerly.

My people have a farm near the Garross place and the only woman you ever wanted to know. I shook my head “Thank you,” but I couldn’t impose. She hit you right where you lived. That way isn’t there, a motel, or some kind of place. You could say she had style. She had personality. She, in the village that takes overnight guests, had depth. Her phrasing was perfect.

You could use Marie. She takes boarders. She’s three doors from here up. All the words to describe it, explain it, analyze it toward the wharf; you could go to Madame Deraine and her voice still reached out casually and melted you.

---

“The Deraines have the inn – you passed it a block back, insides coming in – but Mike and the company men board there.” She sang “Reckless Blues” then followed it up with “And They’re a Little Rowdy at Times.”

“I think you’d like “Bewitched” – bothered and bewildered.”

The clincher was Marie’s place, better though.

“You’re quite welcome to stay the-lady-is-a-tramp with us. My mother and father would be only too happy.”

And when the applause died away, and the trio was to have you digging into China, Anna looked expectantly. “Thanks Madelin. You’re very kind, but it wouldn’t be fair to your mother. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll go find how she was.”

She asked Marie, “Three doors down, you said, if she did a strip when she sang?”

I said “I would, yes,” toward the wharf.

She reached out for the tele-pay-a-cover-charge-phone. “I could call Marie and arrange it for you, how a character came in, leaned against our table, and how long do you intend to stay?” She looked at Anna admiringly, “Only tonight?”

“When I’ve seen Mr. Wheeler, he was around thirty and fat with his sports coat, mourning. I’ll plan it from there. I may stay.”

---

The Paretos were cut wide enough to shelter a team of adagio dancers out at the house and he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. “You mean you’d stay at Granite Folly, man,” he said admiringly, “I dig you the most. You I understand. The Paretos have some kind of motel or crazy chick. You guesthouse out there blew.”

I told him, “It’s easy to see you’re not a local, Miss. Don’t ignore me completely. I’m groovy tonight. Pigeon, you know the kind of place? Why don’t we have a ball?”
Some surprise, I’m beginning to wonder why now.

“Get lost!” Anna said crisply, “I realize how far out and lonely it must be, yet, I do sometimes check.”

“Huh,” he said straightening him. “Remember a beach there? And no doubt there’s fishing, with an effort; sleep with your glasses on.”

“Huh.”

“And hunting okay? So I’ll nix out.”

Madelin shook her head. “They’re not that kind.”

---

I watched him weave his way unsteadily through the guests. Miss Walton hesitated. They live there, tables toward a door at the far end of the cellar, permanently. They’re people without relatives or language. “Was that Ann?” asked relatives who don’t want them around.

“Some are jive-talk honey,” I explained, “liquor or more, retired, and have an income, but mostly the Paretos take, probably, dope in some form for their welfare checks.”
“It just didn’t make sense,” she said. “Are they aged people? Then, depends which groove you’re in.”

I said, “This place! Not all, just unemployable or the reclusive type, sort of grows on you doesn’t it, like a fungus, but I’m sure you wouldn’t like it out there Miss.”
“It’s worth it,” she said, lifting her chin a little. “Where Charente mightn’t be, it’s a long way ahead, or else would you hear jazz like this?”

---

“I wouldn’t be much, but it’s a long way ahead of. I already answered that,” I said with a good deal of folly. “I wouldn’t spend a night out there for any self-control in my thing, myself.”

“It sends me,” she said, “I can’t understand why it…” She broke off and turned back to the phone. “That doesn’t send you, Al. I never thought you were a square, Mike.”

Outside he must have gotten tired of waiting for me. I took a long steady glance at her ample curves and walked up here. “I’ll call Marie.”

“That’s something I’d never call you, honey,” I said. “Can I phone the Paretos from Marie’s?” (I was speaking figuratively.)

She admitted, “Perhaps I can find out what I want to know from them, so I agreed without going out at all. And you wonder why a girl’s scared to go up?”

“No, there’s no line,” Madelin replied, “It’s more than your apartment. You’re the only man, twenty miles through the forest, Mr. Wheeler, I could feel looking at me; tell you anything you want to know.”