Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea

by Richard Bausch

  He did as she asked, and tasted the gum she had been chewing, the minty sweetness of it. Her breath was faintly sour, and he wondered about his own, which he was holding as best he could, tightening his arms around her and feeling wrong for the roaring in his nerves, even as he remembered that he had decided to go ahead with it all and that this was part of it. An image of Natalie shuddered through him, and then he thought of sex in general. The idea of it swept over him. This was finally happening, this alluring, true thing his body had turned on in the feverish nights. The world was offering it to him. He tried to think about Alice, who moaned and moved against him. He told himself he loved her.

  “Oh,” she said when they had separated. “We can’t wait until June, can we? My lips are burning.”

  “Well, they’re not actually burning,” he said.

  “Oh, Walter.”

  He gathered himself, breathed out slowly.

  “Walter?”

  “Well, guess we better go,” he said in the voice of someone trying to put a cheerful face on things. The ingratiating tone of it filled him with chagrin.

  Her face for the moment was blank, expressionless. Then she put the back of her head against the brick wall and seemed to toss back and forth, like someone in the grip of dreaming. “Walter, don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “You’re doing this to torture me.”

  “No,” he said. “Come on. Don’t be silly. Don’t do this now.”

  “Kiss me,” she murmured.

  He did so. They tottered for a moment, so that he had to reach over her shoulder to support himself on the wall.

  “I’m on fire,” she said. “I’m so hot. Are you hot?”

  “We probably ought to go,” he managed.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing, really—” He shivered. “It’s getting cold.”

  “It’s eighty degrees out.”

  He said, “I’m a little chilly.”

  “I want you.”

  “I know, but Albert’ll be waiting—”

  “Don’t you want me?”

  “What?”

  “Walter.”

  “What?” he said. “What, what, what?”

  “Don’t you want me.”

  He said, “I do, really. I can’t talk about it.” The blood was thundering through the veins of his neck and up the back of his head.

  She looked at him. “Have you ever done it, Walter?”

  “I don’t think we should be late—” he got out, and then realized what she had asked him. “Pardon?”

  “You know,” she said. “Have you?”

  “I—” he began. The nerves that controlled speech seemed to have short-circuited and left him with nothing but a sort of low, muttering whine. He looked down the alleyway to the open space of the street. “No,” he told her. “I haven’t. Come on, Alice. I’m only nineteen. And I—I don’t believe we should—we don’t—I—we—”

  “It’s the religion,” she said. “It’s against your religion. Right?”

  “Well,” he said. “Really, I—”

  “Love is against your religion.”

  “Love?” he said. For a moment he didn’t believe he knew the word. “No. Love is okay. Beautiful. Within—the—in marriage—but sex—” He took a step back, and realized that he was nodding vehemently, so that she was nodding, following his eyes with her own. “Outside marriage—sex outside—”

  “I know, I know,” she said impatiently. “What’s wrong with you. Where’s your brain? But when you love someone, you want them that way.”

  “That, too,” he said, and his own voice sounded to him like a whimper.

  She put her arms around his neck and pulled him to her against the wall. It was a kiss that nearly went beyond his capacity to hold his breath. The muscles of his chest and abdomen were beginning to quiver, as were those of his back. Finally, she drew back and looked at him.

  “You’re not breathing, are you.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, gasping. “Really.” He was standing slightly bent over.

  She looked down at him. “You’re hot, aren’t you. I can see.”

  He moved to the wall and folded his arms on it, then rested his head on his arms.

  “Do you love me, Walter?”

  He nodded against his arms, without looking at her.

  She gave forth an exasperated sigh, “Please say it.”

  “I—” His voice caught. “L-love you.”

  “That’s the best you can do? Look at me.”

  He did so. “I love you.”

  “You don’t say it with much feeling.”

  “I do, too,” he said. “For heaven’s sake, Alice. Come on. Please. I’d love to—I—this whole thing is not allowed. I mean, I’m committing a mortal sin just standing here.”

  “Say you love me like you mean it.”

  “I do,” he said. “I love you.”

  “Have you ever done it with anyone?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Well, have you?”

  “Alice, I’m nineteen years old. I live with my mother. Who would I have done it with?”

  She caressed the nape of his neck. “You probably won’t believe it from the way I’ve been acting. But really—I’ve never—done it, either.” It was as if she were admitting a failure.

  “Well,” he said. “Me, too. I mean, I understand.”

  “There’s nothing to understand. What the hell—you understand? I tell you I’ve never done it with anyone and you say you understand?”

  “I mean—I know. I can’t think straight.”

  “It doesn’t mean no one’s tried.”

  “Not at all,” he said.

  “And it doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to sometimes.”

  “Well, me, too.” The muscles of his lower back were tightening, so that a sharp pain was stitching its way around his middle.

  “Do you think about it a lot?”

  “So-sometimes,” he stammered, believing that she would never understand the truth. “It’s—you know—can’t—the—” He breathed. “Entertaining these—these thoughts—occasions of sin.”

  “It’s a sin to think about it?”

  “Mortal sin,” he said too loudly.

  She was quiet for a moment. Then, “I’m tempting you, huh.”

  “Well,” he said, unable to return her gaze.

  “We’re going to be married, Walter.”

  “That’s—” he got out, then had to swallow suddenly.

  “Eventually, we’re going to have sex,” she said.

  He nodded, feeling his diaphragm seize up. He couldn’t breathe out.

  “Don’t you want to do it now?”

  “You mean, right now?” he said.

  “Not here.” Her voice was full of teasing exasperation. “Jeez.”

  “Oh, ah—just a minute—”

  “The thing is,” Alice said, “I don’t know if I can wait till June. I want you, Walter. I want you inside me.”

  He felt his knees buckle. And once again there was the cramping sensation in his lower abdomen. The ground seemed to shift under his feet.

  “I know,” she said. “Okay—the religion.”

  “Yes.” The word had come out of him like a chirp. He cleared his throat, succeeded in pushing the air from his lungs, still feeling the squeezing of his diaphragm. When he tried to say the word again, his throat caught, so that the one syllable didn’t escape before he coughed.

  “Oh, why do these things have to come between us?” said Alice, folding her arms under her breasts and looking toward the street as though whatever it was that stood between them was waiting there. “It’ll be so nice when we’re married and we don’t have to let anything get in the way.”

  He was trying to inhale, and something was impeding him. He had the sense that his air passages were closing off, and he turned from her again, trying to breathe in, making a high, squealing sound.

 
“Are you okay?” she said. “Lord Almighty.”

  He could make only the nearly inhuman yelping noise of trying to get air. His lungs seemed to have filled with fluid. While she slapped him above the shoulder blades and said his name in a fluttery panic, he put both hands on the wall, like a man about to be searched by the police, and continued helplessly to make the sound.

  “Wait here,” Alice said. “I’ll get somebody.”

  He tried to signal her, shaking his head and waving his hands, wanting her to please be quiet, and trying desperately to pull in enough air to keep from—he was certain of this—dying. Finally, after a good deal of coughing and throat-clearing, he was able to draw enough breath to say, “I’m okay.”

  “My Lord,” she said. “What happened? A little making out and you almost die choking.”

  “Something just went down the wrong way.”

  “We haven’t been eating, Walter.”

  “No,” he said through the rasp of having nearly choked. “That’s true.”

  They started out of the alley, and she took his arm again. “I make you nervous now, don’t I.” She seemed almost pleased.

  This stung him. “No,” he told her.

  She hadn’t really heard him, was already talking. “Oh, Walter, I know we’ll find some way to get through everything and be together. I can feel it in my bones.”

  They met Albert at the bus stop down from the school, where he was waiting for Emma’s bus. He hugged Alice, who looked at Marshall as if to say that this was how one unselfconsciously and guiltlessly showed affection. “You’re such a lovable old bear,” she said to Albert, who seemed a little puzzled about the description. He had been reading, standing in the light of the bus stop with the book held so close to his face that he looked like a man hiding his eyes. Now he put the book in the back pocket of his jeans and rocked on his heels, staring myopically at the street. “Bus is late,” he said. He seemed a little worried.

  “Won’t it be nice when we’re all married?” Alice said. “We can go over to each other’s houses for dinner, and go out to movies together.”

  “I can’t see movies too well,” Albert said, smiling. “And Emma can’t see them at all.”

  “Oh, no,” Alice said, glancing at Marshall with a horrified expression. “Actually, I didn’t mean movies per se—”

  Albert reached over and touched her shoulder. “It’s okay.”

  “I have such a stupid ability to put my foot in my mouth.”

  “Stop it. You didn’t do any such thing. We will go over to each other’s houses, and have dinners together.”

  “I can’t wait,” Alice said, taking hold of Marshall’s arm and squeezing.

  Albert said, “Here’s the bus.” It was a block away, just slowing to let a passenger out. “I heard the brakes,” he said, standing a little taller.

  Alice looked as though she might begin to cry. Marshall put his arm around her and addressed Albert. “You sure it’s her bus?”

  “No,” Albert said simply.

  They waited. The bus labored toward them and slowed, and Emma did get off, aided by the driver. She wore a soft, red blouse, with a pink skirt, and looked almost glamorous with her dark glasses. She held the knot of her scarf with one too pale hand while the driver took her other hand and ushered her into Albert’s waiting embrace as though she were a child. “Thank you,” she said, not quite turning. The driver smiled, but said nothing, climbing back into the bus. As he pulled away, she waved at the surging sound of the engine. “Nice man,” she said.

  “Emma, this is Alice.”

  Emma reached out her hand. Alice stepped quickly around to take it. “So wonderful to meet you,” she said in the exact instant that Emma said almost the same thing. They laughed, and Alice hugged her. “I just know we’re going to be the greatest friends.”

  They all went together down Eighteenth Street to a little Italian restaurant, Vittorio’s. It was almost empty, and there was a sign on a podium: PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF.

  “Pretty waitress,” Alice said, low, as they moved through the room.

  Marshall saw that it was Natalie. She wore an apron over a black dress, and a small white cap, and her hair was arranged in coiled braids on either side of her head. She had stopped to wait on a couple sitting along the wall, and Marshall watched her, unable to take his eyes away, or to hear much of what was said to him. The talk near him seemed to be taking place on another plane of existence, somehow, until Alice pinched him on the arm.

  “Ow!” he said, turning angrily and rubbing the place. “What’re you doing?” he said.

  “Albert was talking to you. Why’re you standing there? Come on.”

  “Is everything all right?” Emma wanted to know.

  “My future husband is so daydreamy sometimes.”

  “Don’t pinch me again,” Marshall told her. “I don’t like to be pinched.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be fun.”

  “Well, don’t do it again. I mean it.”

  “Poor baby,” she said. But her eyes were abruptly troubled. There was a supplicating look on her face. “Albert was telling you something.”

  “I heard you,” he said, realizing the harsh note of irritation in his voice, looking beyond her at Albert, whose heroically ugly features seemed almost aghast, the mouth open and fixed, the eyes frowning deep into the hollows of the bony cheeks. “Sorry,” Marshall said in a much softer tone. “But that hurt.”

  “I wasn’t saying much,” Albert said, “really.”

  He led the way to the other end of the room, and they waited while he helped Emma into her seat. Natalie hurried over with menus, and ran a damp cloth across the polished surface of the table. She glanced at them, and then stood up straight and smiled at Marshall.

  He said, “Hey.”

  She answered, “Hello,” without any inflection.

  “Shakespeare tonight?” he said.

  “Yes. Better than yesterday. Yesterday vas English history.”

  He sat down. Alice stared at him. Albert coughed and cleared his throat, watching Emma, who folded her hands on the table and said, “Someone has very nice perfume.”

  Natalie breezed away, into the kitchen, and for a time no one had anything to say. Albert cleared his throat again, and touched Emma’s wrist. “The waitress, dear,” he said.

  “Where do you know her from?” Alice asked Marshall.

  “She wears nice perfume,” Emma said. “Is she pretty?”

  They all seemed to be waiting for Marshall to answer.

  “She’s beautiful,” said Alice. “Where do you know her from?”

  “School. She’s a friend from school.”

  “She’s going to radio school?”

  “No, the night college.”

  Again, they were all quiet.

  “Albert wanted to know if Mr. D’Allessandro is going to raise tuition,” Alice said. “He asked you about it and you saw your beautiful friend and got distracted.”

  Marshall ignored her tone, and related what he could recall of his conversations with the D’Allessandros, and described what he had witnessed between Mrs. D’Allessandro and the little man. Albert shook his head, sitting there with his hand on Emma’s wrist.

  “I can’t afford any more tuition,” he said finally. “So if he raises it, I guess I’m out.”

  “I’ll help you pay,” Emma told him.

  “I wouldn’t be able to let you do that,” said Albert.

  Natalie came out of the kitchen with glasses of water on a little tray. Marshall sought an opportunity to smile at her, but, perhaps purposely, she wasn’t noticing anyone. She set the water glasses down, then put the tray on another table and took a pad of paper and a pencil out of the big pocket in the front of the apron. She stood, waiting for them to order.

  “You go to the D’Allessandro School, don’t you?” Emma asked her. “At least, you were there the other night.”

  “Yes, I go,” said Natalie. “I don’t think I see you there.” />
  Emma leaned toward Albert, as if to confide something, but she spoke clearly, in a normal tone. “I recognized her by her walk, and her perfume.” Then she faced Natalie. “These gentlemen go to the broadcasting school. I was visiting them the other night and you walked by us. In the library.”

  Natalie’s eyes drifted past Albert and settled for a mere second on Marshall, whose tardy smile she just missed. She had brought her lovely attention back to Emma, though she said nothing.

  “Nice perfume,” Emma said.

  “This is Natalie,” Marshall said.

  “I am happy to meet everyone,” said Natalie.

  Alice extended her hand and said her name. “And this is Albert, and Emma.”

  “You have a wonderful friend,” Natalie said to Albert. “With her vay of knowing people from the sound and smell.”

  “She’s my teacher,” said Albert.

  “You are very lucky.” The note she struck now was dimly insincere.

  Emma held a hand up and waved the fingers. “Hello,” she said, then smiled.

  “Hello,” Natalie said. “What would you nice people like to eat?”

  “I’d like a Caesar salad,” Alice said. “The mushroom cap, and lobster bisque. Some cheese sticks. Some spaghetti. And an order of gnocchi. Asparagus. And a Coke. And cottage cheese. Am I going too fast?”

  “No.”

  “And a milkshake. Chocolate.”

  “Yes,” Natalie said, writing. She turned the page of the pad and kept on.

  “And a slice of Boston cream pie.”

  “Are you ordering for the table?” Albert asked.

  They all laughed.

  Natalie wrote the order out. “We must keep up our strength,” she said.

  In that moment, five young Negro men walked into the place and moved in a slow but deliberate procession to a pair of empty tables along the wall, where they sat together, looking nervous and determined. They arranged themselves, hands clasped before them, and waited. Several people left quickly, walking away from plates of food. No one spoke. A woman with several packages gathered her coat and bundled herself off, so that now that side of the room was empty.

  “It got so quiet,” Emma said.

  “Don’t say anything,” said Albert. “There’s a situation.”