Rich Boy

by Sharon Pomerantz

  The coffee was cheap and inky black, and Robert held a cup of it close to him as he made his way across the crowded patio, stepping one way to avoid a mutt tethered to his master’s chair by a red rope, then ducked another way to avoid the heavy, nauseating scent of patchouli that hung, like a nuclear cloud, over a particular table. He spotted Gwendolyn in the corner and waved, but she did not see him. She was leaning in toward a tall, gaunt man with a heavy blond beard; the man looked at her intently, utterly absorbed. There was a third chair, and on the back of it rested Gwendolyn’s old, weathered jean jacket. She had saved that chair for Robert, but what became clear to him, as he came closer and put out his hand and introduced himself, was that Jerry Stiles had thought he was meeting with Gwendolyn alone. Jerry shook Robert’s hand—half-smiling, half-grimacing—and then he stared into his iced tea. He had been off in the wilderness for years, and his level of disappointment was serious indeed.

  Gwendolyn got herself, and subsequently Robert, into these situations too often. She didn’t understand how the average male heard the word friend when used by a woman who looked like she did. “Can I buy you something to eat?” Robert asked, hoping to show that he meant no harm. And the man needed a meal; Robert looked positively obese standing next to him. “Gwendolyn loves the pound cake,” he added, “but I’m a doughnut man myself.”

  Jerry unfolded his endless legs from under the table, legs so long and thin that they made him look, as he stretched, like a being half man and half insect, and then informed them that upon his return from Peru, ten different worms had been found in his stools. Removing a small vial from his pocket, he lined up a series of tiny pills on the table and, adding that he still had to be careful what he ate, proceeded to swallow each one in turn.

  Robert took a sip of his coffee, simultaneously reaching over to grab a hunk of pound cake off Gwendolyn’s plate. She slapped his hand playfully. “Get your own,” she said. Jerry hardly noticed Robert, or the implied intimacy of the gesture; his eyes were fully on Gwendolyn. She was so damned trusting. What would happen if he had to leave her for weeks or even months? Would she stay faithful? Whatever he did to escape the draft, he would have to bring her with him.

  But no, Jerry insisted a few minutes later, they should not apply as a couple. It was harder that way. Even if they got married, he said, Gwendolyn’s visa status would still be a problem. “Bureaucracies don’t like complications,” he mumbled.

  Robert wondered whether or not to believe him. How did he know that Jerry didn’t have plans for Gwendolyn when Robert was off in God knows where? When he imagined her with other men, he was so overwhelmed with jealousy that he could hardly think straight. It was in these moments that he became aware of just how covetous he really was, a bottomless pit of need, desire, greed. Why should the Peace Corps take him? What could he even give, when mostly what he wanted was to take?

  Jerry had been a physics major at MIT before he joined the Peace Corps, and the lines on his face, the constant frown of his mouth, gave the impression of a man endlessly wrestling with a complicated mathematical problem. Had he been this serious before he left? Though the purpose of the meeting was for them to hear about his experiences, he was hesitant to talk much about the Andes until Gwendolyn encouraged and cajoled for a few minutes, patting his hand gently. He sat forward and spoke to her alone, the words hesitant at first, even slightly stuttering, but then his impressions suddenly came tumbling out in paragraphs, as if the information had been stored away in there for months and needed only the right person to coax it out.

  He began by talking about the rigorous three-month training he had done with twenty-four other trainees in the jungles of Puerto Rico, a place picked to simulate the jungle climate they’d find in Peru, except that most of them wouldn’t be assigned to the jungle because Peru had more climate variation than any other country on earth, from tropical jungles to frozen mountaintops. For those months, they spent six hours each day in organized physical exercise, including a ten-mile hike before dawn. When they weren’t exercising, they were poked and prodded endlessly by psychiatrists, and every few weeks candidates were eliminated in a process with the Orwellian title of “deselection.” They also had three hours of daily Spanish lessons, but when Jerry eventually arrived at the Andean village where he was to spend two years, he discovered that the Indians spoke their own language, called Quechua, and he had to start learning all over again, on the job.

  He was to teach in the local school and do “whatever else was needed,” and he decided that what this town needed was latrines—most residents used the nearby river for everything from sewage disposal to bathing. The rainy season lasted for months, and the children had to be kept from the puddles—if they played in them, they picked up parasites that blew up their legs and gave them disfiguring diseases. But that was assuming they lived past three, which more than half did not. The economy of this town worked on a feudal system; peasants worked for food and beer. All of the land in the region was owned by five families, banking oligarchs. When these families needed workers, they brought in more labor from the higher elevations. There was an inexhaustible supply of miserable, starving people who strapped pieces of rubber tire to their feet in lieu of shoes and chewed coca leaves in lieu of eating.

  There had been victories, certainly, moments when he felt he was accomplishing something. “But by the time I left,” Jerry said, shaking his head, “I knew I hadn’t accomplished a damn thing. Not really. I taught five or six children to read, built some outhouses. So what? I was like a few drops of rain sent to quench an endless drought.”

  If this was what Robert had in store for him, though, he need not be too worried—his chances of getting accepted, according to Jerry Stiles, were not very good. Nixon had just appointed a new director, Joe Blatchford, and the rumors were already flying: The Peace Corps would have less money, accept more volunteers over age twenty-five, and reject more liberal-arts majors, or “BA generalists,” as they were called. Only those with specific skills—agriculture majors, engineers, city planners — would be accepted. In other words, the Peace Corps would cease to be a shelter for draft dodgers.

  By the time they left, Jerry was hoarse from talking, and Robert could not wait to get away. They thanked him and left the café, Gwendolyn drawing her jacket around her shoulders. Robert pulled her close. “I guess you’re disappointed,” he said, as they walked to the T stop.

  She did not reply, did not even seem to hear him as she stared off in the other direction.

  “And I suppose you shouldn’t apply to go with me.”

  Finally she turned her head toward him. “Apply alone,” she said casually. She would join him there after training; there was no law against traveling on your own.

  Robert liked this idea even less.

  She acted as if the evening had never taken place. Every week after that, she asked him if he had finally finished his application. He knew by now that when she decided something, she had a will of iron, could wear him down, all the time believing it was for his own good. And part of him wanted to be worn down. What was love, if not the desire to give the beloved what she wanted? He could not buy her gifts; could he not give her this? That she wanted so much?

  She might have wanted it, but he feared that the Peace Corps would be their undoing. His mother lived in a place like the one Jerry Stiles had described, if only in her own mind. Why else would she collect the castoffs of the dead? And Cece had fled starvation and poverty, never speaking a word about where she had been. But Robert at least knew what he feared. Gwendolyn had no fear, and that couldn’t be a good thing. Could she really survive in a lean-to in sub-Saharan Africa? Or deal with Brazil’s street children, or India’s untouchables? She was still a rich girl at base, never had to pay a bill or think about what anything cost; she even sent her laundry out to be washed and folded. The closest thing to hardship she’d experienced was sharing a single bed in Stacia Vishniak’s house. Surely, there was another way out?

 
THERE WAS ONE PERSON he hadn’t yet tried. The one person who surely had the power to help him—he would have asked months earlier, but for the awkwardness of the silence that he himself had created. He would go to Tracey. He would go humbly. If need be, he would beg.

  Robert took barely a day to summon the courage to call the last number he had for Tracey; a girl answered and said that Tracey had moved out, was staying in a hotel in Cambridge. Robert called the desk and left a message. No response. He called again and again over the next three days and finally, on a Friday night, went himself, lingered in the formal lobby, finally approaching the desk to give his name. He was surprised when, after the clerk called up, he directed Robert to the elevators.

  Tracey greeted him at the door wrapped in a white terry-cloth robe, his hair still wet from a shower. “You’ll have to take me as I am,” he said, ushering Robert inside. The room was a suite with a view of the Charles. In the corner were some overstuffed chairs, a beige couch. The door to the bedroom was ajar, and Robert could see an unmade bed, clothing and towels strewn around as if the suite were just another dorm room.

  “You look well,” Robert said.

  Tracey did not reply to that remark but instead offered to make them martinis. If Tracey was mad at him, he wouldn’t show it with rudeness. That was not his style. Robert’s mouth was dry and his heart pounded in his chest.

  Tracey was having trouble opening the bottle of olives. Robert came up behind him and took the bottle, cold and wet with condensation, out of Tracey’s hands. He banged it on the top of the bar, heard the vacuum break—his mother’s trick for recalcitrant lids —and handed it back.

  Silently Tracey used toothpicks to spear the olives, putting two in each glass, then shaking up the mixture and apportioning it. They moved to the two chairs in the sitting area, sat facing each other. Tracey crossed his legs and sat back, but Robert perched nervously on the edge of his seat. “You know,” Tracey said quietly, “there’s nothing I can do for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You want me to help you get out of Vietnam, don’t you?”

  Robert stared into his drink.

  “You think you’re the only one to ask? My father’s driver’s kid—he got him into the Reserves. Took a lot of string pulling. Plus my uncle’s barber and my parents’ minister both have teenage grandsons. You’re too late. My family has now officially gone out of the favor business. Everything’s tighter since Nixon, since those fathers got arrested for bribery—a lot of resentment about people trying to get out of their duty.”

  “And you?” Robert asked. “What are your plans?”

  Tracey ignored the question, running his fingers through his damp hair. It occurred to Robert that Tracey was nervous, too. “You look tired,” Tracey said. “Careful or you’ll lose your looks.”

  Robert, sallow and careworn, slumped in his chair, all his natural intensity turned in on itself. “Who gives a damn what I look like?” he mumbled.

  “You’ve never cared, have you? I suppose it’s half your charm.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t be too proud of yourself,” Tracey snapped. “Anyway, if you can hold out for six months or so, Father says that Nixon’s working on something. Wants to revise the ’sixty-seven draft act. Go to a lottery system. Everyone participates but some people won’t ever have to go, if they get a lucky number. Much more fair that way.”

  “What am I supposed to do for six months? Go into hiding?” Robert asked. “Anyway, I’m not staking my future on a lucky number.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have crawled inside that girl’s cunt and disappeared,” Tracey said flatly.

  “Don’t talk about her that way,” Robert said. “We’re engaged.” If being married would not help them get into the Peace Corps, in the end, he had found that he liked the idea anyway. His love for her was the one solid thing in a future that felt murky and uncertain at best.

  “Congratulations.”

  “You’re very angry at me, aren’t you?”

  “Why?” Tracey asked. “Because I thought you were my friend?” Tracey didn’t have to say what he was thinking; Robert knew. Tracey had told him the biggest secret of his life—had handed him, in effect, his soul—and Robert, having heard the information, promptly disappeared.

  “I was your friend,” Robert said. “I am your friend.”

  “The only times I’ve heard from you in the past year and a half were when you needed something. First a job and now a deferment.”

  “What about Cates and Pascal?” Robert asked, trying to steer the conversation back, trying to neutralize Tracey’s tone. “What are they doing?”

  “Cates, it turns out, is a diabetic. No wonder he was so moody. And as of last week, Pascal developed a sudden thyroid disorder. Van Dorn is going into the Guard.” Tracey glanced behind him at the bar. “Can I freshen your drink? Now that you know your errand is futile.”

  “This isn’t a game for me,” Robert said. “It’s not like in school, where you can pay someone to write the paper. I can’t pay someone to die for me. This is my fucking life!”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do,” Tracey said. “But I sense I’m not your last resort.”

  “You are.”

  “Please, Robert, spare me. You’re a college graduate now. Like it or not, you’ve joined the club. No college graduate in this country goes to Vietnam if he can help it, not if he’s even slightly cunning or the least bit resourceful. You don’t even have to be very smart. Just drop a dictionary on your foot, preferably the Oxford English hardcover. That’ll get you out of the physical and then you can enter the lottery, and if that doesn’t work, well, you can break something else. Or steal a car, or claim you’re queer. You may be a lot of things, but you’re not out of options.”

  “I’m considering the Peace Corps,” Robert said, standing up, knowing that if Tracey could not help him, he would have to try every other possible option, even those he didn’t like.

  “You see?” Tracey said. “I knew you had a trick or two up your sleeve. Not exactly what I pictured. But maybe the Peace Corps will improve your character.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my character.”

  “No,” Tracey said softly, and got up, took their glasses back to the bar so that once again Robert was looking at his back. “There’s nothing wrong with your character at all.”

  “I fell in love, that’s all,” Robert said. “I fell in love and I got selfish about my time with her. Maybe love makes you selfish.”

  “Maybe it does,” Tracey said, his back still to Robert. “You can go now, if there’s no other reason you came. Much as I’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane, I have dinner plans.”

  Robert walked to the door and opened it. “I never told anyone, you know. I never told anyone and I never will.”

  As he left, Tracey was washing glasses in the sink. Robert assumed that he was doing it to keep busy—then again, Tracey had always been meticulous about glassware. Robert walked down the hall and pressed the button for the elevator. He wondered if he’d ever see his roommate again, and just as the question crossed his mind he heard a voice behind him:

  “I hope I won’t regret this someday.”

  Robert turned around. Tracey, still in his robe, leaned up against the wall, lighting a cigarette. “Won’t regret what?” Robert asked.

  “Leaving you to your destiny.”

  “If it’s really my destiny,” Robert replied, “then there’s nothing to be done.”

  Tracey nodded, and Robert nodded back, as if they were two acquaintances who’d run into each other on a streetcar. The elevator opened; it was empty and Robert stepped in. As he turned around, the doors were already closing, and Tracey was gone.

  PART II

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The drawing

  A gentle snow had just begun to fall, and already Robert could see a thin layer of white frosting the windowsill. It was the first night of the last month of 1969,
a Monday, and they had the television on in the living room. Gwendolyn sat cross-legged on the couch with a bag of potato chips on her lap—she called potato chips “crisps”—and just then she shoved several into her mouth at once. She hadn’t eaten much lunch or, from what he’d seen, much dinner; she was a lousy eater who found solace in junk food, and she often ate snacks in front of the TV on Monday nights, when they watched the eight o’clock movie together, Mondays being his only night off. But tonight was no movie.

  This was the draft lottery and in every bar frequented by the young—and in every college dorm, fraternity house, and household with at least one adult male under twenty-six—the TV was tuned to it. Pacing in front of the screen, he thought of the Israelites in Egypt putting the lamb’s blood on the doorposts of their houses so that the angel of death might pass over and spare their firstborn sons. If lamb’s blood would have gotten him out of the draft, he’d have happily drenched the place in it. He’d tried just about everything else.

  “I don’t see why you’re so nervous,” she said, licking the tips of her fingers, as she’d done that first day he met her, a lifetime ago. Even stuffing herself, she was somehow dainty. “Next year at this time, we’ll be on the other side of the world, and all this will be behind us. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we wound up in Peru, like Jerry?”

  “The Peace Corps isn’t a travel agency, Gwendolyn. Just because you’ve decided you want South America doesn’t mean that’s where they’ll send us.”

  Gwendolyn slept through the night these days, though with the aid of sleeping pills. The scraps of endless paper, newspaper and magazine articles with paragraphs underlined, had slowly disappeared, much to the delight of Dana, the maid. She still went to endless political meetings, still got high too much and took mysterious pills he didn’t approve of, but while his life was teetering, Gwendolyn went about her day cheerfully. She was full of energy again, and all of it seemed channeled into her desire to leave the country and follow him into the Peace Corps; her hopes fell on South America, perhaps because Jerry Stiles was in the bookshop at least once a week, embellishing his stories, feeding her ideas. He pictured Jerry and Bruno always at her side, like mismatched bookends, as she went about her work.