What’s Happening?

by John Nicholas Iannuzzi

  “Laura’s.”

  Jim’s forehead furrowed.

  “You know Laura. Little skinny girl, always wearing pants and a boy’s jacket.”

  Jim shut his eyes, searching his memory for the girl that fit the description. He shook his head, unable to place her.

  “You know Laura, man,” Frankie insisted. “We were talking to her one night at the art show on Sixth Avenue. Remember, she was with two other girls. She has short hair, … remember? You said she looked like the little Dutch Boy.”

  “Yeah, yeah, … now I remember,” Jim exclaimed, shaking a finger in the air. “Over at her pad, man?”

  “Yeah. Only thing is, you got to bring some drinking water over. You know?” Frankie ended abruptly, letting the statement speak for itself.

  “Yeah, but like I’m a little low on scratch.”

  “Listen, man, do what I’m doing. Like split a pack of beer with somebody.”

  “That’s pretty cool. How about I come in with you?”

  “You better find somebody else. Josh is in on this six-pack already with me, and like we can’t spread this brew out too thin. Man, like we can hardly get high unless we drink a gallon of it anyway. No sense springing for loot if we’re not even going to get a bit high.” Frankie laughed.

  “I dig, man. That’s okay. I’ll find somebody and bring him, or her, I hope, over. Like I’ll see you there. Eighty-seven Christopher, hanh?”

  “Right. Crazy. See you later.” Frankie continued toward the delicatessen.

  Each of them walked in a different direction. As they passed people they knew, according to how friendly they were with that person, they’d mention the party and the address. When the time for the party arrived, more than thirty people were spreading news of a party among the wandering searchers of the Village streets.

  “Come on in,” exploded from the front room, carrying across the span of the entire apartment.

  Two fellows stood hesitantly in the doorway. A blast of music sailed out to them on air fragrant with smoke and beer and women’s perfume. The entire panorama before them was alive—people were everywhere, all different people, jam-packed, wearing all colors of clothing, standing, sitting, drinking, talking, laughing—and behind all this was the hollow pounding of music.

  “Come on in!” exploded more insistently.

  The two stepped in, looking about warily. They were not dressed in the fashion of the Village, but in the fashion of the outside; they were tourists. Their clothing was the everyday Uptown styles seen in every store in the Uptown world, worn because they were accepted everywhere and no decisions or excuses had to be made for them—living made easy, made to order. The villagers run fast from this uniformity, showing in visible reality, by clinging to another, an off beat, conformity, their external distinctness, and, by inference, the internal.

  The two fellows walked self-consciously through the mass of people in the middle room.

  One of the female guests was squatting, digging in the refrigerator. She stood erect, hungrily sucking a whole tomato.

  The two tourists stepped over the legs of a male guest who lay full length on the floor, smoking a cigarette. They made their way toward a vacant space in a corner of the front room. One of them carried a brown paper bag. As he placed it atop a low bookcase, beer cans clunked together.

  Music blared from the phonograph next to the bookcase, filling the room with a rhythmic background din, accenting the atmosphere. The tourists looked about unfamiliarly at the people in the apartment.

  One girl was dressed in a red dress, long black stockings, and black high heels. Her hair was black and long, outlining a thin drab face. She looked like a Charles Addam’s character.

  The two tourists had come from Louis’, having learned of the party from a conversation overheard at the bar, deciding to attend though they knew no one, wanting to sample a mad Village party. They were party crashers, but at this party they were, to their surprise, most welcome.

  As at many Village parties, whoever arrived was welcome; the more who arrived, the better the chances of a good party. It is the unknown and ever-different aspect of Village life, compared to the normal, routine, everyday sameness and drabness of life Uptown which makes the Village alive and exciting and alluring to the Villagers. People at the party may not even know whose party they’re at, but they and their potential exuberance are welcome indeed.

  The tourist with the bag uncovered a six-pack of beer, punctured two cans, handed one to his partner, and started to drink. They both leaned against the wall, their eyes absorbing the party.

  The Villagers were spread all over the apartment. Some were drunk and tottering; others just sat quietly, others were loud, walking around, talking aimlessly and drinking. The room in which the two tourists were standing was jammed with people. Two men and a girl sat on the couch. One of the men was propped against the back of the couch, motionless, as if in a stupor. He stared straight ahead, immobile, his hands balancing a can of beer on his leg. Next to him sat a short, red-haired artist, frantically, tongue-bitingly drawing the face of the girl seated next to him. The girl had short black hair, and wore Bermuda shorts, a pair of dirty, beat-up tennis sneakers, and a sweater. It was Jeannie, in clothes that were a vestige of her college days.

  Directly opposite the two tourists, a colored fellow slouched, abandoned to relaxation in his chair, his eyes closed, one hand clamped around a can of beer, a lit cigarette smoking between the fingers of his other hand.

  On the floor, between the colored fellow’s chair and the tourists, a homely blonde girl, in slacks, and a Negro fellow sat leaning against the wall, their legs bent in front of them, forming a tunnel, under which stood two cans of beer. The fellow offered the girl a cigarette. They lit up together and just sat, their backs against the wall, their heads thrown back in utter detachment from the rest of the party, puffing on their cigarettes occasionally, slowly detaching themselves from the rest of the world.

  A shoeless girl draped in an orange cotton dress with a blue sash bound about her waist danced wildly in the center of the crowd with a white fellow wearing jeans and a faded green T-shirt. She kicked her leg and almost kicked the head of the colored guy sitting on the floor.

  A fellow from the middle room staggered through the crowd and opened the window, leaning out to look at Christopher Street. He yelled drunkenly at some people walking in the street. He laughed, then threw an empty can out the window.

  A tall colored fellow walked from the rear bedroom into the middle room. He was very dark, and very tall, and very thin. He had a supple, flexible, smooth dancer’s body, except he bounced when he walked, as if he had springs in his heels. He wore slim clothes and dark glasses. He opened the refrigerator, bending from the waist, looking into the storage compartment. He stood erect, slamming the refrigerator door angrily, forlornly, looking around the room for some beer. He snatched a paper bag on the tub cover, but it was merely puffed up by things long past rather than things now present. His hands anticipated resistance, and the empty bag flew up easily, quickly in his hands. Its unexpected emptiness caused him to grimace, and he smashed the bag into a round ball and flung it under the sink. Several beer cans stood on the tub, a triangular black mark of opening on their tops. He started to shake them. His eyes widened with delighted discovery as he felt the weight of one can. He put it to his lips, tilting his head to drink, and happily walked back to the bedroom.

  The girl who had been sucking the tomato opened the refrigerator again, searching around. She came up munching a slice of white bread.

  In the back bedroom, there were six people. Besides the tall Negro fellow, there were two couples lying on the bed talking with Rita, who was standing. Josh Minot was lying next to a white girl he had just met. The other girl, also white, was lying next to a white fellow. The girls were from the Bronx and came to the Village almost every night. In their own neighborhood, they were considered real wild, racy chicks because of their Village association. The white fellow wa
s a student at New York University.

  A very skinny, gaunt fellow, dressed in unmatching pants and jacket, entered the bedroom. He was about six feet in height, and his hands hung to a point just above his knees. He looked cadaverous, and his tattered clothes made him resemble a scarecrow. His long thin fingers were clamped around a beer can like a claw. His face was smeared with disdainful acceptance of the party, as he viewed it from beneath half-closed eyelids. He was in another world. His lips moved in silent self-discussion. His thin, bony face surveyed the bedroom, his square jawbone protruding forward. He frowned, turned about, and left the bedroom, returning to the middle room. Rita followed him out and stood in the middle room looking around at her party.

  On the roof, almost but not quite part of the party, sat Laura. She had left the party and climbed to the roof, feeling crowded and nervous, wanting fresh air and quiet. Now, bundled in a coat and sweater, a scarf around her head, she listened to the distant, removed voices of the people below. It was odd and fun. The voices and the things overheard were so out of place on the roof. They were parts played in a movie; they were unrealities, absurd unrealities that lost their meaning as they floated up to the skies. She was a spy, and she could see and hear them, but they could not see her. She leaned over the edge of the roof and saw the back of a man’s head as he sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, just under the windowsill. She saw a man’s legs walk past the window, and she saw feet pointed at the figure sitting under the window. The feet moved and another person sat down. Laura recognized the close-cropped, curly head of Frankie the Mexican. He had a funny-shaped head, she thought. It was sort of bony and bumpy in the back.

  Jeannie was still posing for the red-haired artist. The gaunt scarecrow who had poked his head into the bedroom now sat next to the redhead and, with a pen dispensing red ink, drew on a piece of paper. The red-headed artist thrust his hand into his pocket. He withdrew a fresh drawing brush. He dunked his used brush in a glass of water—the ink turned the water black—shook the surplus water off the bristles, stuck it in his mouth, and wrung it out through tightly held lips as if he were pulling a shirt through a squeeze dryer. He placed the cleaned brush in his pocket, wiped his hand on the couch, and started to draw with the new brush.

  Rita, walked into the front room and stood by the side of the phonograph, next to the window, near the two tourists. She glanced over and noticed them staring at her.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling. “You just get here?”

  “Yeah,” replied the taller of the two, his insides jumping nervously with excitement. They were at a party in the Village, and the excitement of anticipated madness was overtaking them. The guys on the block where they hung out would die with envy when they told them; they’d tell them how brave they were and what a screwy bunch of jerks were at the party—how some goof was drawing a picture of some broad—she wasn’t bad either—and another guy that looked like he hadn’t eaten in years was drawing, and all the faggots, and the niggers. They envisioned each girl as a nymphomaniac, and each of the guys seemed a weird combination of queer, artist, and lover. Each of the movements of the Villagers were altered and vivified and intensified in the tourists’ imaginations.

  “I’ve never seen you two before,” Rita remarked with friendly curiosity. “You live around here?” They could, she thought, even if they dressed as they do. They might be new.

  “Yeah,… yeah,… we live over on the East Side though.” The tall, skinny one lied, smirking naughtily, pleased with himself for his quick thinking. His eyes snapped down hungrily to Rita’s bust and then, feeling conspicuous, began to search the floor innocently. He pretended something was wrong with his shoe. He bent his knee, scratched his foot, and glanced self-consciously at Rita again.

  “Oh? Over by Cooper Union?”

  “Yeah,” replied the other fellow, a pleading look on his dark, diffident face, “over by Cooper Union. Nice party you’ve got here.” He pointed his beer can at the room and the people. He was smiling, wanting Rita to like him.

  “Yeah, … it’s not bad,” she said, “but we don’t have enough to drink. We’re starting to run out.”

  The skinny fellow’s eyes darted quickly to the side, enveloping the package of beer protectively. His eyebrows grouped thoughtfully. “Here, … have one of our beers.” He offered hesitantly, realizing he and his friend had only three each.

  The skinny fellow was tall, with an ostrich-like appearance. Perhaps it was the way he acted that really caused him to resemble an ostrich. He was nervous, quick moving, like the ostrich—an unsure person who didn’t do anything daring on his own, acting only when forced to, or when it was safe. His furtive, nervous glances and the obscene way he laughed indicated he not only interpreted the Village as being a licentious place; all life was like that for him. He was sure sordidness and evil and hot times existed everywhere and he was looking for them. He gave the impression of dirtiness, of sneakiness. He was the kind of guy who thinks all women are burlesque queens, or just the same as burlesque queens, only not in show business. He’ll probably expect his wife to bump and grind for him on his wedding night, before they get down to do the dirty deed. Sometimes you feel sorry for people like that because they’re weak and unsure, but sometimes you hate them because they’re sneaky and dirty.

  “Thanks.” Rita smiled as she took the beer.

  The skinny fellow looked at his buddy with a signal of success. He smiled a thrilled little wince of a smile. The second fellow winked boldly to show Skinny he was with him.

  “Here, I’ll open it for you,” the dark fellow offered. He took a can opener and pulled the end up until the point punctured the can and a little burst of air came out. He made another hole on the other side.

  “Thanks,” said Rita. “I’ll tell you what. The guys have been drinking a new drink tonight. It makes the beer last longer. Wait a minute.”

  The two watched Rita walk to the middle room, reach under the sink and walk back with a bottle of coke.

  “What are you going to do with the coke?” asked Skinny.

  “Mix it half and half with the beer.”

  He grimaced. “What kind of a crazy drink is that?”

  “What’s crazy? It makes the beer last longer. Besides, three of these and you don’t care what’s happening. You can drink anything.” She laughed hilariously.

  The two guys laughed too. Skinny’s laugh stopped short. He was all for Rita not knowing what was happening. He winked at his friend.

  Rita snared three paper cups from the top of the bookcase. The dark fellow mixed the beer and coke, pouring both simultaneously.

  The two fellows drank the first sip warily.

  “Hey, this is good,” exclaimed Skinny.

  “Sure. Just ’cause you never tried it before doesn’t mean it can’t be.” She drank more of her drink.

  “This your place?” the dark fellow inquired.

  “Yes.” Rita sipped from the cup. She nodded, not really for any reason save that she was a little drunk.

  “Nice place.” The dark fellow nodded too, looking around. He nodded his head to assure her of his good thoughts of her home. He was very serious and sincere. His movements were quick, and he watched people after he did something, to see if they noticed him, to see if they would mock him. It made one nervous to watch his nervousness.

  A howl burst from the bedroom. The tall colored fellow who had been looking for beer earlier, came laughing, running, and jumping out of the bedroom, stopping at the end of a jump in the center of the middle room.

  “Good grief,” he shouted laughingly to the whole apartment. “Who is that mother fucker in there.” He indicated the bedroom over his shoulder. A deep-throated laugh gripped his body, doubling him over. Many people ran to the door of the bedroom. Inside, the red-headed artist who had been drawing Jeannie was talking to the two couples lying on the bed as he drew one of the girls.

  “Certainly,” he continued to jabber rapidly, not noticing the crowd at the door. “Th
e most important thing is to bring the balance between the smooth fine lines and the thick hard lines that you can find if you look very carefully at my drawings. See … that’s the most important thing. It gives a very special, weird effect. And yet, underneath, the meaning, the warmth, … the depth comes through.” He was talking, or rather chattering almost insanely, to no one in particular about nothing intelligible. The speed with which he spoke varied with the rate at which he drew, according to the stroke that he was putting on the paper. He slowed when he came to a difficult line, and when he was drawing quickly, easily, his voice became a chattering, rapid drone. The gaunt bedraggled scarecrow sauntered through the crowd and watched for a moment, a pouting frown on his face.

  “Frank, … give me the green pen. This one has no more ink,” the scarecrow said gravely to the red head. “Besides I think I need a little green in my drawing.” In his hand was the drawing he had been working on. It was a mass of red lines—nothing more—intertwining, crossing, spiraling, zigzagging aimlessly across the paper.

  Frank stopped drawing and slid his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a box of pens, but the one he wanted wasn’t there. He put his hand into the outside breast pocket and pulled out two brushes and a Japanese bamboo pen. He opened the pen, fitted the top on the back of the pen body, and jabbed a couple of lines on the side of the page on which he was working.

  “Here. What’s the matter with the other pen?”

  “I don’t know,” the scarecrow said gravely, as if pens were beneath him and he was loathe to speak of them. As he spoke, his eyes were either closed or rose to the ceiling. He spoke with the deep-throatedness of a man deciding the fate of the world.

  The redhead looked to his model and began to draw again. The tall colored fellow who had first run out of the room came back and stood next to the redhead. He was still laughing, watching.

  “What was that you said about the thin lines, man,” the Negro asked laughingly, looking at the crowd.

  “I was saying that the thin lines have to blend …” The redhead began to drone again aimlessly.