When she called his name, he turned around so quickly that she wasn’t ready for him. “I thought I’d like to sit at the bar.” The words she said sounded wrong, of course—anything would have sounded wrong.
“I was just going to bring you your drink,” she heard him say.
“Oh … that’s all right.”
“Well, have a seat if you want to sit here.” Peter motioned at the bar stool next to him. “Bring me another beer, Al,” he called to the bartender. Susan perched herself on the bar stool. “Didn’t you and Kay want to talk?” Peter said.
Kay fell asleep.”
“Not very interesting for you. Do you want to put up with me instead, or would you just like to sit at the bar?”
“Oh, I’ll talk to you,” she said brightly.
Suddenly Peter smiled. “Don’t you want your drink?” He shoved a glass of ice water at her, then a shot glass with something yellow in it. “You see, I did order it. I would have gotten it to you sooner or later.”
“Is this the Pernod?” Susan picked up the shot glass—somehow she couldn’t quite bring herself to touch the glass of ice water.
“Wait! Don’t drink it like that. You have to mix it.” Peter took the shot glass away from her and poured the yellow liquid into the ice water. The water clouded, became less alarming. She raised the glass to her lips.
“It’s good,” she said dubiously. Peter was staring at her, not smiling any longer. “This is a nice drink. You know, I don’t like the way most liquor tastes. Maybe I’ll get drunk tonight.”
Peter leaned toward her. “Do you want to?”
“I don’t know. I thought I might before.” How gray his eyes were, a very cold gray.
“Why would you get drunk?”
“Oh … to find out what it’s like. To—make contact, really.” There was a frightening intensity about the way Peter was listening, drawing words from her as if he were pulling thread from a spool. “Is Pernod a very strong drink?” He didn’t answer. She picked up her glass again; balancing it on the palm of one hand, she turned it around and around. “Such a cloudy yellow … ”
“You look like my wife, my ex-wife.” She sat motionless. “The way you hold that glass … and that dress… . Did you know I was married once?”
“Well … yes—I did know.” She didn’t know what to do, whether to put the glass down or not.
“I suppose it’s common knowledge.” Susan said nothing. “Funny that I ordered you Pernod—that’s what Carol would always have.”
“Is that her name?”
“Yes. Carol. You don’t know whether you like looking like my ex-wife,” he said.
“It’s just strange.” It was like looking like someone who had died, she thought, and yet it was somehow exciting to know that you had a particular look; it was proof that you existed, had a face, a shape.
“Her hair was a little longer than yours.” She felt as if he had touched her, as if he had put his hand on her hair. And nothing had happened, nothing at all. Peter sat just as he had been sitting, holding his beer—not even his eyes moved.
“Were you married for a long time?” she asked shyly.
“Two years. I couldn’t stand being married. Couldn’t fall asleep at night. I’d get up, go out… . It wasn’t her fault.”
“Where would you go?”
“Bars,” he said. “A lot of places I can’t remember. Sometimes I’d walk for hours—I didn’t have a car then. What difference does it make where I went?” he cried. “What a question!”
She could imagine Peter prowling through the city, could see him standing on a street at five o’clock in the morning utterly alone—maybe even happy at that moment in a strange sort of way. What would it be like to love someone like that? Probably awful. Suppose you wanted to go wandering with him and you knew that he would never take you along and night after night you watched him go—and you were never able to say, “Take me with you.” What was it like for Kay? she wondered. She really couldn’t even imagine Kay and Peter alone, couldn’t think of them as lovers—and yet they made love and Kay loved Peter and Peter loved … no one, except maybe his ex-wife, or the memory, the image of her. If you couldn’t love people, you turned them into images.
“Stop thinking,” Peter demanded. “It’s very unfriendly. I don’t like to sit and watch myself being dissected.” He took the glass out of her hand. “You don’t mind if I finish your drink, do you?”
“No.” It gave her an odd pleasure to watch him drink from her glass.
When it was empty he put it down on the bar. “You shouldn’t let people take things away from you,” he said. “You shouldn’t allow people like me to depress you.”
“You haven’t depressed me.”
“I think I wanted to. When you walked over to me, I should have said, ‘Susan, you shouldn’t even be in this place tonight. Let me take you away from here, let’s celebrate … ’”
“Oh stop!” she said, laughing.
“But isn’t that what you expected?”
“No!”
“You’re lying. Women always expect that from a man.
“I didn’t expect anything,” she said.
He was silent. “You know,” he said solemnly, “I think I’m angry with you because you’re going way… . We might have had a chance to make each other miserable for a while—I suppose that’s the way it would have worked out.”
“I don’t know,” she said faintly.
“I do know.”
Someone plunged past them. The Riverside Café turned itself on again—suddenly the jukebox was pounding and a man was shouting, “Beer! Beer!”; the balls in the bowling machine were crashing into the pins; the bartender was wiping glasses. With a feeling of panic, she noticed that the door to Broadway was swinging back and forth a little as if someone had just left. She made herself look back at Kay’s booth and saw that it was empty. “Peter! Kay’s gone!” she cried. She slid down from the stool and rushed out of the bar into the street.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
KAY WAS HALFWAY up the block. She didn’t stop when Susan called to her, but kept on walking, slowly, aimlessly, like someone blindfolded. “Kay! Wait!” She knew how it had been for Kay—how Kay had awakened from her sleep and found herself alone and walked to the bar to be with them, and how, when she had seen them, there must have been something about the way they looked together—the way their heads were turned perhaps, the angle at which they leaned toward each other—that made it seem as if they were shutting her out, that she was isolate, that no one would hear her if she spoke, notice if she passed. “Please wait, Kay!” Susan ran now in her new white high-heeled shoes. Somewhere behind her, Peter’s voice cried, “Susan!” and she realized that he must have followed her out of the bar, but she kept going. In a moment she was going to overtake Kay; she would ask her what’s wrong, what’s the matter, what do you mean leaving us like that? “Kay, wait!” Kay had halted on the corner, trapped there because the cars kept coming, the light hadn’t changed. Susan stopped running and walked the rest of the way—no one was supposed to run after anyone else.
“Hey, Kay … where are you going?” Standing next to each other now, they might have been two people who had been wandering Broadway together.
But Kay wouldn’t stop watching the cars. “Across the street,” she said.
“Going to the Southwick Arms?”
Kay shrugged.
“Going to Bickford’s for coffee, Kay? Why don’t you come back to the Riverside?” Her voice lost some of its lightness.
“No!” Kay said hoarsely.
“Would you like me to go somewhere else with you?”
“I just want to cross the street.”
“Listen, Kay … ” Listen to what? she thought. She was stalling for time, a moment; the light was changing. Why was she so afraid of not being able
to sound indifferent?
“Well, ladies, what’s happening?” Suddenly Peter was present. She heard Kay make a stifled, wordless sound and saw that all the cars had stopped. Kay stepped off the curb, hesitated, then began to cross Broadway. “What the hell is going on?” Peter shouted, running out after her. He grasped Kay’s arm and yanked her back to the curb. “Would you mind telling me the meaning of this performance!”
Kay looked at Peter, then at Susan; tears were wetting her face. “Good night,” she whispered.
“It’s very difficult to hear you,” Peter said. “Could you possibly speak a little louder?” But Kay shut her eyes and stood before them mute, a prisoner waiting to be sentenced. “Christ! why is it always this way with you? Why all this silence? You make me feel like a tyrant!”
“You’re … not,” Kay gasped.
“Now stop playing the orphan girl. People can’t bear victims, Kay. Goddammit, you’re always—effacing yourself!”
Susan had never seen Peter so angry—but maybe anger could reach Kay. She heard Kay dully recite: “I know what I am.”
“You don’t know anything. You’re an idiot.”
“I’m drunk. I can’t—”
“Yes, tonight you’re a drunken idiot. Look at you!” He seized her by the shoulder and held her at arms’ length. “Crazy Jane! Someone ought to wash your face for you.”
Kay laughed brokenly. “But not you.”
“I didn’t say that—I said someone.” Peter drew Kay closer to him; he brushed her hair back from her forehead. “Come on. The three of us will go back to the bar and have another drink.”
“No—you go back with Susan. I can’t make it in there.”
“No one can,” Peter said. “It’s a terrible place.”
Susan stepped forward. “We’ll go anywhere you like, Kay. But you’ve got to come with us.”
Kay hadn’t taken her eyes off Peter. “Go with Susan,” she said to him.
“Kay!” Susan cried out.
Kay turned to her. “Just don’t tell him about the drawings—that’s all.”
“Kay,” Susan said desperately, “I love you.”
“Not necessary,” Kay muttered. “Not necessary.” She shook her head.
“I wanted you to know that.”
Kay’s eyes avoided hers. When she finally spoke, she said, “Can I cross the street now? I want to go home.”
They walked Kay to the hotel, took her to her room in the Southwick Arms Hotel. Was that what Kay meant by home—a room? She had told them she didn’t want them to come with her, but they had made her walk between them for four blocks—she stumbled a bit, said nothing at all. Would it have been kinder to have let her go alone? They rode up with Kay in the elevator to the sixth floor; they escorted her down the corridor. A lot of the doors were half-open because it was a warm night—you could look in and see people alive in their little garishly lit boxes. A party was going on in one of the rooms. “A gala night,” Peter remarked. Then they waited in the corridor while Kay groped for something in her purse. “I can’t find the key,” she kept saying. “I don’t have it. I can’t find the key.” “Having trouble, Kay?” Peter asked. No answer. Across the hall someone was being very angry in Spanish.
At last Kay found the key and opened her door. But then she just stood there, outside her room.
“All right, Kay?” Peter said wearily. He wanted it to be over now, Susan thought—they had brought Kay to her room, why wouldn’t she go in? The next thing he was probably going to say was “So long. See you tomorrow.” And the door would close. And that would be all. Good-bye to Kay—she hadn’t even said that yet.
Kay hadn’t moved. She gave them a dazed look. “I forgot to leave my light on.”
“Kay,” Susan said gently, “I’ll turn it on. I know where it is.” She stepped past Kay into the darkness and felt along the wall for the switch. “I’ve got it, Kay!” she called.
The room was suddenly much too bright—she could see its sadness too well. This was a room she never could have lived in. This was the last time she would stand here, her last view of the rented, indestructible furniture, the debris of Kay’s life, the pictures Kay had tacked on the green wallpaper that she would not have chosen herself—no answer for her in the little nun’s starved face.
Peter was still standing in the doorway, but Kay had come all the way into the room. She wandered around at first like a child in a strange house, touching the back of a chair, fingering a book; then she stopped and stared at Susan.
“All right now, Kay?” Peter demanded.
Kay’s face was flushed, exhausted; her eyes kept closing. “Susan … ” she said slowly, her voice low and sweet, “I don’t have any coffee for you. I used it all up.”
“Oh Kay—it doesn’t matter.” She could hardly get the words out.
“I should have saved some,” Kay said vaguely. Then she seemed to be staring at the wallpaper. “You know,” she said, “my walls are green just like the Riverside’s. The same green”—her voice rose—“the same green walls. All the walls in my life are the same color!”
“Kay!” Peter said from the doorway. “You ought to get some rest now. You ought to go to sleep.”
“I know,” Kay murmured.
“Why don’t you go and lie down?” He walked into the room and took Kay by the arm. “Come on—get into bed,” he said sternly. Kay giggled. “Come on.”
“I’m really your daughter, Peter,” Kay said, letting him lead her across the room. “I’m really your daughter.” She kicked off her shoes and laid herself down on top of the rumpled blanket of her unmade bed.
“Aren’t you going to take some of your clothes off?” said Peter. “You don’t look very comfortable.”
Kay had closed her eyes. “I’m comfortable.”
Susan noticed Kay’s bedspread lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. She went and picked it up, then draped it over Kay, tucking it in around her.
“What are you doing that for?” Kay whispered.
“Oh, I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea.”
Kay smiled slightly. “You must both kiss me good night—will you?”
“Of course.” Her voice shook. She bent down and kissed Kay quickly on the forehead.
“And Peter—leave the light on.” Kay opened her eyes and reached for his hand.
“Any other instructions?” Peter laughed.
Kay was silent for a moment. “Yes,” she said gravely. “I think you should get the car and take Susan for a ride.” Her hand slipped away from Peter’s. “I’m awfully drunk,” she said, just before she fell asleep.
They stood in front of the Southwick Arms Hotel. It was one o’clock in the morning now and there was a wind from the river blowing up 113th Street. Peter was trying to light a cigarette, but the wind kept putting the matches out. “The hell with it!” he said, tossing the cigarette away. Then he looked at her. She wasn’t afraid of his eyes. It was the wind that made her shiver a little. “Are you cold?” he asked.
“No. Not really. I feel—very awake,” she said.
“So do I.” He was smiling. Suddenly his face looked very young. “Susan, would you like to go somewhere?”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I think I would.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE NIGHT HAD transfigured the road—the highway her parents had traveled a few hours ago—now, for her, a road without end, without even landmarks. She was sitting in the front seat of the car next to Peter, watching the car’s lights whiten the darkness ahead of them, always the same whiteness to drive into and everything dark beyond it, the shapes of trees, houses, to be felt rather than seen. He said that maybe they would find a beach very early in the morning, they would get out and watch the sun come up. But even if they didn’t, it wouldn’t matter. She was traveling fast, she was riding through the ce
nter of night—she was with Peter, next to him, and yet alone. The car was making the same machine-gun sound she had heard four days ago. Sometimes it would stall, sometimes it rushed forward violently—but she had no sense of danger. Peter began to drive even faster. She leaned back against the seat and shut her eyes. She could feel the speed now as if it were a force inside her.
The car wasn’t moving. Susan woke with a start. There was light everywhere, harsh gray light, and a no-colored sky. “Peter?” She put out her hand, but he wasn’t there. She sat up, her heart beating wildly, and looked out the window. Little orange and green flags were flapping in the wind and a sign said Esso. She was in a gas station. The hood of the car was up, and she saw Peter standing near a gas pump talking to a man. She groped for her shoes—she couldn’t remember taking them off—opened the door and climbed out of the car. “Peter!” she called. He turned and waved his hand at her and she walked unsteadily toward him, on legs that were not quite hers yet. It was terribly cold. The wind kept whipping at her dress. Peter’s face looked gray, older, maybe because of the light or because he needed a shave. “What’s happening, Peter?” she said.
Peter shrugged wearily. “The car seems to have had it.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Like I said,” the gas station man put in, “you can have it fixed.”
“Yeah, I know,” Peter said. “Seventy-five dollars.” He looked at Susan. “Let’s go and have some coffee. There’s a diner across the road. I’m going to leave the car here for a few minutes,” he said to the gas station man. “Is that all right?”
“It’s all right with me,” said the man, “just as long as you can drive it out.”
“I’ll drive it out,” Peter said stiffly. “Come on, Susan.”
She followed him across an expanse of concrete that was gray too, she noticed. Even her dress looked gray.
“Did the car break down?” she asked with an effort. The problem of the car didn’t seem real somehow.
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