Nowhere City

by Alison Lurie

  Paul looked where she pointed. On the floor, in a dark corner behind the hi-fi speaker, was what he had dismissed as a heap of blankets and coats. Now he identified a man lying face down among them, with most of his head covered.

  “Hey, Walter,” Josie said gently. “Do you dig some pancakes?” Paul tensed himself for the encounter.

  But the man on the floor did not move. “Leave him sleep it off,” Steve advised. “Hey, I’ll play you the new Adderly side Angus brought over last night. Cool.”

  He put the record on. A medley of jazz sounds in a lazy, complicated rhythm began to issue from the speaker. Ceci and Steve sat down on one of the mattresses to listen to it. Paul sat down too, in a position where he could see if Walter Wong was waking up, by turning his head just slightly. Every time he did this, he became more uncomfortable. He didn’t want Wong to catch him staring. On the other hand, he didn’t want Wong staring at him.

  He tried to concentrate. His enthusiasm for and knowledge of jazz had stopped about 1952; he found it difficult to follow this music. Anyhow, the etiquette of listening to jazz was something he hadn’t caught on to yet. It was going all the time at Ceci’s; sometimes she would stop everything and listen, but sometimes she wouldn’t. Sure, it made a good background. There were a couple of records, for instance, that Ceci liked to make love to. One called “Walkin’” especially. Sometimes, if she were already up when Paul came, she would put it on the player before she got back into bed. It had a slow, uneven beat that she said really sent her physically. By now, it had the same effect on Paul.

  He had lost track of what was playing again. Ceci and Steve were still following closely; now and then they would exchange a smile, or Steve would say to them, “Get this.” The baby sat in her playpen sucking her thumb and listening docilely. Back in the kitchen part of the room Josie was mixing up pancake batter and frying bacon. It was a pleasant domestic scene; except that there on the floor in the corner, not moving, out cold, lay Walter Wong.

  They sat down to eat. Josie had made a big stack of hot pancakes, and there was syrup, jam, honey, and cheese. Another record was playing, or maybe it was the same one, but now nobody seemed to be paying much attention. They talked about music, about the different kinds of great pancakes they had ever had all over the United States and in Mexico and Europe, and about the poetry readings at the Gashouse. They discussed the troubles they were having with the local cops. The Gashouse might be closed down; one friend’s studio had been condemned as unsanitary; another friend had been picked up for questioning because he was walking on the beach at five A.M. He had been taken to the station house, shoved down half a flight of stairs as if by accident, and released covered with bruises.

  Paul would have liked to join in, to ask questions; but the silent presence of Walter Wong made him uneasy. They spoke of cars; Ceci told the Tylers that Paul was thinking of maybe buying one. Yes, he said, he thought he would. The car he had now was a “drag,” he said, testing their language; what he wanted was something more alive. He was going to go on, but he looked over his shoulder as he reached for the syrup, and fell silent. Nobody pushed him; maybe they knew what was bothering him, he thought.

  “Hey, where’d you get the sea serpent?” Ceci asked between mouthfuls.

  “Walter brought it over last night for the kids’ Christmas present,” Josie said. “I guess he lifted it somewhere.”

  “Aw, come on,” Steve objected. “You couldn’t lift a thing like that. It’s too big. Even Walter couldn’t get away with that.”

  “Walter can get away with anything.” Ceci poured syrup. “You know how he got that hat Becky wanted so much out of Jax.” Everyone smiled.

  “He gets all his clothes that way,” Josie explained. “That’s how come he looks so Ivy League.” Paul glanced again at the mass of crumpled material on the floor. “Yeah, he goes up to Saks or Bullocks or somewhere and he takes like a new tweed jacket and puts it on and then he hangs his old jacket back on the hanger and just walks out. If anybody stops him he just makes like the absent-minded philosopher. Maybe he’s got some heavy book with him and he’s reading it all the time, you know. Okay, baby. Here you are.” She spooned pancake and jam into Psyche, who was sitting on her lap, her mouth open, like a plump, pink bird. “I tried that a couple of times, only it’s a lot harder for a woman on account of women’s clothes aren’t all the same. When you go in with a blue dress on and come out with a red one the salesgirl is liable to tumble.” She grinned at Paul. He could not help smiling back at this friendly, ingenuous criminality.

  “Walter’s the most,” Steve said. “How about how he lifted all the dishes and stuff for John’s pad!” He looked at his wife and Ceci for confirmation, but he also looked at Paul, as if to say, Are you as much as Walter. “John was staying here for a while,” he explained, “but then he found this great new pad. He wanted to give a big house-warming party. Alice was cooking a ham and all, only they didn’t have any dishes. So they all went over to the More Store, and John picked out some great Japanese stuff, all black and white. Then Walter got into the cupboard under the counter and found a big carton with Japanese writing on it, and began loading the stuff in. He was practically finished when this salesgirl chick came over and asked what he was doing. Walter looked at her completely blank, like he didn’t understand one word, very Oriental, and went on packing. That stopped her for a bit, but pretty soon she began to say, like, Stop that, or I’ll call the manager. So then Walter began to talk to her very fast, in Chinese and English all mixed up, like, Dishee no good, all no good for white peoples, makee velly sick, poison. And all the time he was shutting up the box and walking towards the back door. The chick just stood there, stunned; but then she started looking for the boss, but John and Alice came up and sort of surrounded her and began asking a whole lot of dumb questions about the stuff on the counters, and Walter walked out the back door looking like a delivery boy and nobody stopped him.”

  Steve glanced at Paul. All right, he seemed to be asking, have you ever done anything that can stack up to that? Thank Christ, no, Paul wanted to say. But Josie and Ceci were watching too, laughing and waiting for him to laugh. So he laughed, and said, “Where was all this, right around here?”

  “Oh hell, no,” Steve exclaimed. “It was at the More Store, over in Mar Vista.”

  “Walter wouldn’t boost anything from around here,” Josie explained. “I mean like down here he knows everybody. He wouldn’t shuck them here.”

  “Hi, Mommy! Hi, Daddy! Hi, Ceci! We went wading. Starry said we could.” The door banged open, there was a rush of children into the room. Two, four, five, six—they couldn’t all be the Tylers’; in fact, Paul noticed, one of them was colored. Some ran round in circles, other flung themselves on Steve and Josie. “I’m hungry!” they cried. “Who’s that man? Can we have some pancakes too?”

  “Sure,” Josie said. “Just let me up. Wow, you’re all wet! Take off your wet clothes, everybody. Starry, help Ezra get his jeans off. This is Paul, kids. He’s a friend of Ceci’s.” She stood up from under a heap of children. “Okay, beat it out of the kitchen.”

  “And cool it, everybody,” Steve said. “Turn down the volume.”

  Surprisingly, considering how casually their parents had spoken, the children stopped shouting and clamoring. They poured back into the front part of the room and began to take off their clothes. Then, as Steve, Ceci, and Paul left the table, they crowded up to it and took their places, quite unconcernedly naked or half-naked. But then, everybody in the room except Paul was partly naked; Steven with his bare brown chest and back, Josie in her skimpy shirt, Ceci who no longer troubled to conceal the gaping hole in her jersey. But it wasn’t exhibitionistic: it was just natural and careless. What was this thing he was wearing anyway, Paul thought, this anachronism called a “suit,” with its flaps and pads and buttons that did not button? Why was he all wrapped up in these layers of cloth? There was nothing wrong with his body. No wonder Steve looked at him suspiciously. I
t’s because I have to go back to work, he wanted to explain to them.

  “We better split,” Ceci said to Josie. “Thanks for breakfast.”

  “Yeah, it was great,” Paul said. “You’re all great,” he suddenly added, and thought, at once, What a dumb thing to say. But Josie broke into a delighted smile, and even Steve looked more friendly.

  “Make it over again soon,” Josie said. “I’m sorry Walter never woke up. You should meet him.” They all looked over at the corner. The heap of clothes still lay there on the floor. Maybe he’s dead, Paul thought. But no, it moved faintly, regularly.

  “That’s all right,” Ceci said. “We can wait.”

  10

  IT WAS NOON ON New Years Day. Katherine was getting ready to go to the beach with Paul. She did not want to go to the beach very much, or really at all. In the first place, it was the middle of the winter. Back East people were putting on their boots and shoveling snow, but Los Angeles was suddenly having a heat wave. Though it was hot out, and the sun was shining hard, the water would certainly be freezing. Paul wanted her to see what it was like, he kept saying. He had seemed very surprised when she agreed to go today, but she had decided she might as well get it over with. Once she had gone to the beach, Paul would stop talking about it. And the disagreeable man she was working for up at U.C.L.A. would stop teasing and persecuting her about how she had been living in Los Angeles for three months and never gone in the Pacific Ocean.

  This man was one of the most disagreeable people Katherine had ever met. Luckily, the two other professors working on the grant with him were quite pleasant. They were reasonable, predictable, and considerate of her. Dr. Smith was a large, rather stout professor of experimental psychology from Illinois; Dr. Haraki was a small, rather plump professor of sociology from Berkeley. They came to work on time, read their fair share of the relevant previously published material, and dictated sensible reports on it to Katherine. They paid serious attention to planning the project: A Preliminary Study of Some Relationships Between Perception and Delinquency was its official title.

  Katherine preferred working in the humanities, but unfortunately that wasn’t where the grants usually were. She had had employers she liked better; still, Dr. Smith and Dr. Haraki were all right. Only Dr. Einsam was impossible.

  In the first place, he wasn’t even a professor at U.C.L.A.; he just had some sort of temporary research appointment. He was really a psychiatrist, with an office over in Beverly Hills. Although Katherine had never met a psychiatrist before, either socially or as a patient, Dr. Einsam exemplified her prejudices against the profession. He was lazy, untrustworthy, and opinionated. He came late to meetings, having read different articles and prepared different outlines from those he had promised to read and prepare, or none at all; and in discussions he kept introducing topics that had little or no connection with the project. He thought he knew everything. He ridiculed and contradicted his colleagues to their faces, and they did not object, out of good nature, or out of fear. And he ridiculed Katherine. He asked her personal questions, or made personal remarks, in front of everyone. Last week he told her that he liked the shoes she had on better than the ones she was wearing to work before, because they were more feminine; didn’t Bert and Charlie agree that these shoes were more feminine? So then they all looked at Katherine’s feet. Dr. Smith said that he had never noticed the other shoes; Dr. Haraki, who was really very sweet, said that he had never thought any of Mrs. Cattleman’s shoes were masculine. No, not masculine, Dr. Einsam said. Neuter.

  Besides, he dictated too fast.

  Oh well, it was only for six more months. Katherine put on her bathing suit, and packed a canvas bag with towels, sunglasses, suntan lotion, a white rubber bathing cap, and a white sweater. Over her bathing suit she put on a pair of brown slacks and a brown and white flowered shirt which Susy Skinner had persuaded her to buy last week at the More Store. Then she tucked under her arm those parts of the Sunday edition of the New York Times which she had not yet read. (It takes four days for the Times to reach Los Angeles, so this was last Sunday’s Times. Paul and Katherine bought it when it arrived on Thursday and saved it to read on Sunday morning.) She went outdoors into the glaring sunlight, and got into the car, where Paul was already waiting.

  Paul was careful to take the most scenic route to Venice Beach, along Centinela Boulevard and then up and down over the hills of Ocean Park. But Katherine watched the streets wheel by without interest. Los Angeles all looked the same to her—flat, crowded, vulgar. When she rode up to U.C.L.A. on the bus the houses grew a little larger and cleaner, and the grass greener. Now they became smaller and dirtier, and the yards grew brown. That was all.

  “Look!” Paul said, as they came to the top of the last hill. Ahead, at the bottom of the sky and extending as far as she could see in either direction, was a band of bright gray material, glittering so that it hurt her eyes. “There’s the ocean!” Paul cried. Katherine said nothing; they plunged downhill again among the dirty houses.

  Deliberately (he had scouted the area beforehand) Paul stopped the car on one of the better streets in Venice. His effort was futile. Standing on the sidewalk, Katherine glanced round with distaste at the unpainted houses, the dusty gardens planted with pots of cactus and bird-of-paradise (the coarse blue and orange plastic-looking exotic flower that is Los Angeles’ official emblem), and the designs in shells and colored gravel. Nothing else was in bloom here now: the rose bushes that Paul had seen a week ago had been pruned back almost to the ground and now looked like large insects half-buried in the sandy soil.

  At the end of the street, nearer now, was a glittering gray rectangle, which grew longer and brighter as they approached and finally opened out into a great blank panorama of air and water. Now they were on the Promenade, a long, paved walk open to the beach on one side, on the other lined with tawdry shops and houses, many boarded up for the winter season. Wood and concrete benches had been placed along the edge of the sand at regular intervals, facing the ocean. On these benches, which stretched as far as Katherine could see, old people were sitting, waiting to die. They were dressed in their good clothes: the men in worn, shiny suits, the women in print dresses and coats and stockings and dark shoes. Almost all of them wore hats. A few were reading newspapers, or talking to themselves or a neighbor; but most simply sat, staring ahead, the hot noon sun shining down upon their clothes and their shoes and their dry, knobby hands. The wind blew into their faces across four thousand miles of empty ocean.

  Katherine turned her head away, feeling self-conscious, as she and Paul walked along the beach past bench after bench. Paul apparently had some particular spot in mind, lord knows why—as far as she could see it was all the same. For miles in each direction the thick, bright gray sea sloshed against the pale brown sand. The beach was relatively empty—a few swimmers sat on mats; here and there drunks lay against the low wall by the walk, sleeping off last night’s debauch in the sun. Farther down towards the water, where the slope of the beach changed, seaweed was drying in disordered heaps, investigated by gulls and sand-flies.

  Now Paul stopped, in the middle of nowhere near a trash can, and dropped his towel on to the sand. “I’m going in,” he announced. “Coming?”

  “Maybe later,” Katherine temporized. “I want to sit down first.” She knelt, and began unpacking the beach bag.

  “Okay.” Paul started across the beach towards the Pacific Ocean, first walking and then breaking into a half-run. He looked silly, Katherine thought, bouncing over the sand that way and waving his arms around. She watched as he jogged across the wet shingle and into the water, which sent up a heavy gray-green wave, edged with suds, to stop him; then she turned away. She spread the towels out side by side, weighing down the corners with shoes. Then she took off her new slacks and shirt. “Those’ll make your husband sit up and take notice!” Susy had predicted; but they hadn’t. Paul noticed nothing about her any more. They hardly had any real talks lately at all, except a few times about h
istory or sociology. He was always busy. It was probably all the fault of this horrible place and the horrible job he had.

  Opening the bottle of suntan lotion, she greased her white arms, legs, shoulders, and back; she put on her sunglasses; then she lay down on her stomach, facing away from the water, and began the New York Times Magazine Section.

  It wasn’t unpleasant here, she thought, as she turned the pages. And her sinuses hardly hurt at all today. But it was scarcely worth going to all this trouble just to lie in the sun and read the paper. To do that, she need only go out into their own back yard, where there was no sand to get into her clothes or wind to blow the pages around. Of course she never did go out into the back yard; it was simpler to look at the paper indoors, sitting up. Lying down to read, like this, always made her feel sleepy. Katherine yawned, and slowly lowered her forehead onto the first page of an article titled “Education in a Changing World.” In the intense sunlight the type shimmered, blurred into illegibility. She shut her eyes.

  She was aroused by the sounds of voices and a portable radio playing jazz. Squinting out from under her arm, she observed the approach of a group of young natives, all extremely tanned and freakishly dressed. She assumed and hoped that they would pass on. But they did not. Although there was plenty of room on the beach, they spread out a straw mat and sat down not fifteen feet from Katherine.

  Katherine turned her head, and observed the natives with displeasure over her shoulder. There were three of them. They must be some sort of actors or beatniks, because both the men had beards. One, who was large and blond, had a blond beard, tightly curled; the other, who was small and wiry, had a straggly brown one. They wore the barest pretense at bathing suits, brightly colored briefs that clung indecently tight, while the girl was spilling out of her bikini in every direction. Really it was pretty disgusting, on a public beach.

  Katherine started again on the Times. But the wind, blowing off the ocean, blew the music towards her, a frantic, insistent hum. She sat up and looked round again, crossly. And now she became aware that the natives were staring at her, all three of them quite shamelessly, out of their dark glasses. Since they were lying farther down the beach towards the water, they could look without turning their heads.