Gay Place

by Billy Lee Brammer

  “What is it — you jealous? Or perhaps a little itchy yourself. You weren’t jealous of me, though. It’s not very flattering.”

  “Jealous of you? What about?”

  “Damn you Jay! You’re so wrapped up in yourself — you and all you like you …”

  “Why should I be jealous?”

  “… with your aimless, selfish, introspective agonies. ‘Oh God save me — all life is a despair.’ Bunk!”

  Vicki and Greg Calhoun approached, holding their drinks and dragging folding chairs across the sand. Vicki was breathing hard and there was a glow of perspiration on her face and shoulders.

  “How about a little rabbit hunt, hah?” Greg Calhoun said.

  “Let’s leave the rabbits to their own amours tonight,” Sarah said. “It’s a small comfort for them in this awful place.”

  “What have you two been talking about?” he said.

  “Jay’s been telling me how depressed he is. It’s his way with girls.”

  “Now wait a minute — that’s not —”

  “He’s right. You are all a depressed generation. You may quote me.”

  “Let’s not talk intellectual talk,” Vicki said.

  “We shouldn’t,” Sarah said. “But it’s such a lovely, lofty plain we’re on.”

  “Depressed, repressed, oppressed, suppressed. All that analysis stuff. I believe in acting natural. I just want to be myself.”

  “Normal as blueberry pie, Vic,” Greg Calhoun said. “Stay as sweet as you are.”

  “You’re very nice. But I can’t be as nice to you. You got problems, Gregory.”

  “Have I got problems,” he said, lowering his eyes. “It’s because I’m a mystic. I am concerned with the human condition, the human situation.” He opened his eyes. “I’m very strange and tropical to be perfectly frank, Vicki … I will show you death in a handful of bust.” He reached for her, but she brushed him aside.

  He turned suddenly toward the others. “What about you, Sarah? You say Jay’s depressed. Aren’t you depressed?”

  “Never going to get depressed again. All I have to do is look at the sad faces of the men; that’ll cheer me up.”

  “Not all the men, Sarah. Surely there must be a few who —”

  “But only a few,” Sarah said. “Just a few — men like Shavers over there …”

  “And the Governor. Don’t forget the Governor.”

  “The Governor most of all,” Sarah said. They’re the proud, exceptional types. The rest of us are just hanging on for dear life.”

  “Watch it, now,” Jay said. “You’ll be saying all of life’s a despair in a minute and —”

  “Did someone mention my name? We heard someone mention our names.” The Governor was approaching, with Shavers and Mrs. Fenstemaker close behind. “I’m fortified for that dance now, Miss Vicki.” Vicki stood and took his arm, but he was not yet ready to go. “Who mentioned our names? What have you young people been talking about?”

  “We were just saying,” Sarah began, and hesitated …

  “That men like you and Ed Shavers are the proud, resolute individuals of our time,” Greg said, “and that the rest of us are just along for the ride. At least that’s Sarah’s theory.”

  “Sarah is being both kind and ungracious, then,” the Governor said. “I just don’t know what I’d do without the people around me. I couldn’t do without Sarah, for instance. Or Jay. Or my Sweet Mama Fenstemaker here …”

  “Don’t forget your Vibrator, dear,” Mrs. Fenstemaker said with a little laugh. “What would you do without the Vibrator?”

  “Damned sexy vibrator,” the Governor observed. “How ’bout you, Ed. What would you do without Vicki and Greg here — and all these people helping you make pictures?”

  “It’s nice to think that I could,” Shavers said.

  “Could what?” Vicki said.

  “Get along without you, sweetheart … Will you dance with me later?”

  “… the night away,” she said in a singsong, pulling the Governor toward the dancing space near the limousine.

  The others sat quietly for a time; then Greg asked Sarah to dance, and Shavers danced with Mrs. Fenstemaker. Jay was left alone, except for the company of Hoot Gibson. Hoot Gibson strolled round the circle of dancers, singing to himself: “Ah covah th’ watahfrawnt …”

  Jealous of whom? Jay thought. What was she talking about? Because she had taken a walk with Greg Calhoun or because Arthur Fenstemaker was some kind of father image to her — to them all? She thinks she knows, but she could not possibly; she had never sunk so low as to comprehend the horror that possessed him. But couldn’t she at least appreciate the relativity of the thing? The responses she expected in him were all out of proportion to the nightmare of his experience. How could she think anything so thin and insubstantial could — It was as if she had asked the drug addict if the needle hurt.

  The moon passed behind a bank of clouds, and the flapping of the tents nearby signaled a change in the wind. A chill came into the night air, and Jay was seized by a near paroxysm of trembling, a thing that had begun faintly in his chest, in the beat of his heart, and, swelling inside him, pounding in his head, expanding finally to every part of his body. Weak in sickness and in terror, he stood and watched the others for a moment: they seemed not to notice him or anything around them. Then he fled toward Vicki’s trailer where the little girl lay sleeping.

  She lay there in the middle of Vicki’s enormous bed, pink and defenseless and incredibly beautiful, part of him on the bed, the best of him, sprung from the womb of some benign and beatific monster. What part was him? How much of himself had he given — to the little girl lying there or to Sarah or Vicki or to any of the others? To that old Mexican relieving the pressure of his insides in the headlights of the Chrysler — had there been a little girl lying on the mud floor inside the thatched hut? He had not stopped to see.

  He crawled across the bed, still trembling, whimpering quietly to himself, and laid his man hands on her shoulders. She came into his arms, pulling the bedclothes with her, and she remained with him, not waking, while the mad thumping in his chest subsided until at last he could trace the convulsions from his limbs to his heart and finally to the tiny pulsebeat in the little girl’s wrists. After a time the rain began and he rose to close a window, listening to the sounds of the others scurrying in the sand toward the car; heard them calling for him in the dark. He returned to the bed and lay beside the little girl, hoping they would not find him, concentrating on their not discovering where he fled. There was the sound of the limousine pulling away, and he began to fall swiftly to sleep.

  The rain was falling with more intensity now, with a volume of sound that filled the room. It had not been more than a few minutes since the others had departed, and he had come awake conscious of Vicki’s presence. He could see her shadow against the window, pulling off her clothes, and then she was next to him in the bed, her arms around him, consuming him.

  “Oh Jay, Jay, I wanted you to be here, I love you so much, Jay, hold me like that …” Her voice was muffled for a moment as she got his shirt front open and buried her face against his chest. “Oh it’s so good you’re so good to be with here Jay hold me like that, you’re coming with us aren’t you love, coming back with Victoria Anne and me …”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know …”

  “You’ve got to Jay, I’ll die without you love, hold me close closer I’m going to die love I’m going to die right here I’m …”

  He could not breathe and his head was spinning with the length of her against him and great convulsive sobs begun inside him. She lay tense and electric against him and said, “Don’t move just yet, don’t move love, but in a moment we’ll go into Shavers’ room and we won’t wake Victoria Anne and we can be in there together, only don’t move just yet, just hold me like that while I die a little and say you’ll come with me say yes you’re coming back with me, Jay, say yes … yes …”

  “… Yes … Yes …
” he began, and “… Yes … No, I — no … God help me no! I can’t I won’t I never will.” She still held onto him, but he began to pull himself from the bed, and she had not heard him clearly yet, her arms following his movements, Vicki rising with him, holding on to his waist, and mumbling … “Ed’s bed in there he won’t mind.”

  “I’ll just bet he won’t,” Jay said. “Has anyone ever really cared in whose bed you landed? Have you? You ought to know that one in there pretty good by now, and what about the others …”

  “Others …” Vicki mumbled.

  “Gregory, for instance, or whatever well-muscled, suntanned ditch-digger happens to pass outside the trailer …”

  “Gregory … I never, I …”

  She still held on to him. “Jay … I … Jay, please say …” The weight of her had pulled him off balance and now they sat collapsed in a heap on the carpeted floor beside the bed.

  “All I want,” he began softly, “all I want is Victoria Anne. If a divorce is too much let me have Victoria Anne. She can come live with me, and you’ll have all that freedom, away from responsibility completely. You don’t need her; you never see her …”

  “Oh I do, I do, and I need you Jay, the three of us together.”

  “No you don’t. No. I don’t understand what it is all about with me, but if you’re suddenly that way again I’m sorry. You practically held the door the first time I left. But now all of a sudden — I want her, Vic. I can take good care of her, give her love and attention, a lot of things that —”

  “I need her, too. I can give her all those things and more — advantages that …”

  “Do you care? Do you really care?”

  “Of course, love, believe me, love, I need her and I need you, please Jay hold me like that again …”

  He sat and looked at her loveliness for a moment, seeing her clearly in the soft shadows; then leaning forward he kissed her lightly on the lips and helped her to her feet. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll talk about all of this tomorrow, about you and me and Victoria Anne. I’ve got to go.”

  She slipped under the bedcovers and lay silent, watching him as he turned and headed out of the room.

  He stood for an instant at the door and then raced across the open area, with the huge raindrops pounding the sand like the bludgeons in his head, toward the trailer he shared with Sarah. The sound of the rain falling lulled him to sleep before the others returned, and he did not awake until Sarah knocked on his door the next morning.

  She was in her dressing gown and stood at the door, regarding him coolly. “You’d better get dressed and get your bag packed,” she said. “We’re leaving in an hour.”

  “Oh. Really. I hadn’t realized that —”

  “About time, too. I’m nearly out of my mind in this place.”

  “I suppose you are. Well, you’ll be rid of these people for a —”

  “No I won’t. They’re coming with us. He’s sent for a plane.”

  “What about the car?” He half feared, half anticipated driving it back, hoping Victoria Anne could go along with him.

  “Hoot Gibson and Mrs. Fenstemaker left in it early this morning. She wasn’t feeling well last night, so she stayed in town at the hotel. They left early, driving alone.”

  “How did his scene turn out?”

  “All right. He wants us over there with him when we’re dressed.” She turned and moved back into her bedroom. Jay dressed quickly, packed his small bag, and waited for Sarah. She let him kiss her briefly at the door, but all her young warmth was restrained, and he held her arm as they ran in the rain toward the Governor’s trailer.

  The others were gathered in the room with Arthur Fenstemaker: Vicki and Greg Calhoun in bed with him, the three of them under the covers, half sitting, half lying, wearing sunglasses; Edmund Shavers lay sprawled on a nearby chaise, dark glasses perched at the end of his nose also. All of them had tumblers of iced tomato juice in their hands.

  Jay and Sarah stood at the entrance to the room in amazement, while the others gave a simultaneous greeting. Jay paused and turned his head, listening to the sound in the room. There was the rain coming down on the roof of the trailer, but there was something else, a deep, rhythmic humming that came from everywhere and nowhere.

  “It’s the vibrator, Jay!” the Governor said. “It’s that damned vibrator — it’s tremendous I tell you.”

  “It’s absolutely marvelous,” Vicki said, her eyes half-lidded, staring at the ceiling. “I’ve never experienced such a sensation.”

  They came closer, the deep drumming of the Vibrator filling their ears and faintly tickling their feet against the floor, the ends of bedposts trembling, appearing blurred and diffused. Edmund Shavers was purple in the face, holding his sides with laughter.

  “Now you know all my secrets,” the Governor said. “What keeps me going, puts color in my cheeks and a spring in my step … All my deep dark secrets. Vicki, dear, this is the perfect hangover cure — your vodka and tomato juice and my vibrator.”

  “And the sunglasses!” Vicki said. “Don’t forget the sunglasses.”

  “Yes, yes,” the Governor said, touching lightly at his forehead. “I’d almost got used to them. Perfect … Gregory, I must ask you to get off my machine, my friend, temporarily of course, while I get another lovely lady in here beside me. You will naturally understand … Sarah, my sweet, put your bag down and crawl in and I’ll give you a ride you’ll never forget.”

  Sarah looked horrified. She stared around in confusion.

  “Come on, honey, don’t be afraid …”

  “It’s not that; it’s just —” She approached slowly as Greg Calhoun slipped out of bed and the Governor held back the covers for Sarah. “Edmund, my friend, see if you can fix one of those red drinks for Jay and Sarah.”

  “Turn it off first,” Sarah said.

  “For you — anything.”

  Sarah slipped out of her shoes and got into bed; she and Vicki now flanked the Governor; Shavers brought her the red drink.

  “Ready? Off we go!”

  The three of them lay in the bed with their heads propped against the end. Sarah’s lips began to tremble slightly, and Jay could not tell whether she was about to cry or if it was merely the vibration of the machine.

  “This — this,” said the Governor, “is what gives a man a social conscience. You lie here on this machine with a red drink in your hand and handsome women on either side of you and you wonder what all the poor people are doing …”

  Eleven

  MOVING EAST FROM THE border country toward the populated areas, past the dying, wornout towns and homesteads and abandoned silver mines, the colors do not change so much as the topography, the mountains on either side and the dead places in between becoming a graying sameness of routine foothills and feeble, half-verdant river valleys. The newborn and ephemeral mountain streams feed down into these low sections from time to time, suggesting a better season for next summer, spring or fall, but never quite fulfilling the promise. It is an ersatz Eden, a mere accommodation to what lies farther east, but it is life all the same, even in its atmosphere of half-death, and the very lack of long, lush summers has produced a fierce people from the grim-faced German farmers who settled here a hundred merciless summers before. Game does not abound as it subsists, and the dwarfed liveoaks continue to push their roots into the blistered hillsides just as the patient farmer-ranchers stay on to make their living off the land.

  Arthur Fenstemaker was not one of them, but they were proud to claim him as a neighbor. It was here where he was born and grown to manhood. He had not stayed on, but he had done the next best thing. He had come back.

  He had come back with such luster and flamboyance that he was very nearly left bankrupt by the gesture, but it remained a monument to him nonetheless. From the earnings of his first oil strike he had returned to claim the few acres that were his family’s, expanding these holdings and constructing on the land a replica of an ancient Fed
eralist mansion which had been a subject of fascination for him during a brief invasion of the Virginia horse country some years before. It was a truculent, appalling structure, huge and gloomy against the bald landscapes, complete with outbuildings, brick stables, slave quarters, stone fences, and an antique Federalist Eagle that frowned toward the distant hills from atop the main gable. Then Arthur Fenstemaker assumed his dream of infinite magnificence, retiring to his country place after his second big strike, at thirty years of age, bent on becoming a public figure esteemed for his good works (which were eventually many) and his dedication to the liberal ideal. That he had been successful, realizing the full measure of his ambition, was manifest in his present eminence; his election to the governorship had seemed the consummation of all that was right and exalted in man, as inevitable as the triumph of good over bad in some Western epic from the films.

  Now his guests wandered through the lush gardens, down the promenade festooned with lengths of flowering shrubs and paper lanterns, past the brick terraces and the outdoor tables brought in for the party, lingering beside the imitation marble swimming pool. They seemed unwilling for the moment to give all this up for the brooding interior of the country house.

  “The grounds are gorgeous, Arthur,” Shavers said to the Governor.

  “It’ll be a wonderful party,” Vicki said, “it’ll be a marvelous party out here in the garden and all around. What kind of people are coming?”

  “Nice people,” the Governor said. “Gay and enchanting and extraordinary people, all of them, all come to see you Miss Vicki. It should be an interesting party.”

  “All come to see me?”

  “The center of attention, the principal attraction … I wish Mrs. Fenstemaker were here to show you the place. She enjoys showing people around for the first time.”

  “She’ll be here for the party?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And Hoot Gibson? I’m mad about Hoot Gibson …”

  “Sooner even. Tonight or in the morning. He’s bringing in some papers for me to sign.”

  They moved back toward the house, beneath the flowering trees. Vicki walked arm and arm between Shavers and the Governor. Sarah, Jay and Greg Calhoun remained beside the pool for a few minutes before joining the others. The little girl lay asleep in one of the upstairs rooms. Sarah looked at Greg and said: “What do you think of it? All of it.”