“I’ll say.” Rita looked into his face. Their eyes held each other’s for a moment. Rita felt he was looking right down into her soul. She looked away.
“You girls live around here?” asked Marc, turning to the girls.
“Yeah … you?” asked Jeannie.
Rita admired him as he spoke to the others. She couldn’t keep her eyes from him.
“I’ve just gotten back to town. Matter of fact I just came back from Italy. Wish I had stayed there,” he said reflectively, looking at the travel poster depicting Rome on the wall. His eyes fell upon Rita and gazed intently. He wrinkled his brow and smiled. “Maybe not.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Jeannie, whose eyes and mind were not on the same level of communication as Rita’s and Marc’s.
“I don’t know,” he said meaninglessly, not caring if she understood, knowing Rita understood. He was unmindful of the words he spoke to Laura and Jeannie. How was Italy? Fine. Beautiful this time of year—Taormina—swimming—wine—Rome—The Appian Highway—Ponte Vecchio—Provenza de Laurenzana. Where did his people come from?
All the time he was talking, his mind was preoccupied with one thought—Rita. Not Rita as she was physically sitting next to him, whose eyes he would catch looking into his at various points during the conversation; but Rita, the girl, the woman, the idea, the person. He felt he knew her, what she was, what she was like. They had never met before, but he knew. All the women who had ever attracted him looked like Rita. Not really, not physically that is. They were all different physically, but they all shared an aliveness, a vitality, an inner force that struck him the moment he looked at them. Suddenly, out of a room full of people, as his eye blurred past odd-shaped heads, he could pick out the one woman in the room that he knew he would like. And Marc liked Rita!
Just then, Tom, the fellow Rita had stayed with at his apartment a couple of months before, entered Johnson’s. With him was a colored girl. She was dark complexioned and very intriguing in the way that many colored women are. It is a mystique, a fascination perhaps born of the perversity of man, his desire for the forbidden—the intrigue of intrigue for intrigue. Tom saw Rita and smiled. She smiled back, warmly and affectionately, and they both remembered the cat in the ash can.
“Hi, Rita, how’ve you been?” asked Tom, smiling broadly. He was holding the colored girl’s hand. She stood next to him, looking on amiably, with that half-smile of vague friendliness for people she had never met.
“Okay, how’re you?” Rita looked to the colored girl inquisitively, as women are prone to look at other women. The colored girl returned the look amiably.
“This is Barbara,” said Tom, introducing the girl, having noticed them look at each other.
“Hi. This is Marc,” said Rita, turning to Marc.
Every time they looked into each other’s eyes, a little light went on. They gazed and were held by each other’s eyes, smiling warmly outside and in.
“This is Laura and Jeannie,” Rita said, continuing the introductions.
“Hi,” said Barbara to all.
Rita looked at Marc again, and their souls began to speak silently. Perhaps it would be fun to see each other more, soon. Rita was fascinated.
Tom stood next to the table, looking around the cafe. One hand was to his chin, and he craned his head, looking into the remotest depths of the place.
“You didn’t see Stan, did you?” he asked, looking back at the girls.
“No. I haven’t seen him since that night we all were here,” said Jeannie.
“Listen, I’ve got to shove. If Stan comes in, tell him to meet us at the pad, will you?” Tom asked Jeannie.
“Sure.”
“Okay, see you. So long, Rita,” he said, smiling the cat smile, which was nice and warm and friendly and meant that he would always remember the cat, and would always have memories of that night. “So long, Marc … So long, girls.”
“Bye,” said Barbara, as they stepped out of the doorway and disappeared into the night.
“Gee, I even forgot those guys existed,” said Jeannie.
“Yeah, it’s really been a long time since we saw them,” said Rita gazing reflectively at the door.
“Hey, … come on back,” said Marc, shaking her head delicately by the chin.
“Oh, …” Rita exclaimed, returning to the present to find Marc looking at her curiously. She smiled.
“I’m going to Dani’s for a while,” said Laura, standing up. “I told Fran I’d see her there.”
“Who the hell is Fran?” asked Jeannie.
“A friend of mine.”
“Okay, honey, see you later,” said Rita.
Laura smiled because Rita seemed to worry about her. Then with her awkward, stiff-legged walk, which gave her an up and down bounce, she walked out. Her walk was like a laugh. Not a happy laugh, but the laugh people laugh when they’re embarrassed, laughing at themselves in order not to appear to be serious and therefore ridiculous. Laura walked in a ridiculous way in order to let people know that she wanted them to laugh, and if they did she wouldn’t mind it so much.
“She’s an awfully lonely-looking thing,” Marc commented as he watched her go out the door. “What’s with her?”
“She’s just bugged a little. Like everybody else, she’s got her problems, too,” replied Rita.
“Yeah, everybody has problems,” agreed Marc. “I wonder what normal is. Everybody’s sick. You know, not like just us, but everybody, outside and all. I don’t know one person that hasn’t got something bugging.”
“Smile and laugh at it all,” said Jeannie. “Just like they say in the song, Just smile and laugh at it all.” There was a note of hopeless bitterness in her voice.
“Smiling can get awful boring,” said Marc. “I’d rather be sick and have fun, and like that. If you were normal, like you’d be awfully lonely.”
They all laughed.
“Hey, Marc, come on, boy. We got to get uptown, man. Like, it’s eleven-thirty already yet,” said Marc’s friend, Joe.
“Okay, okay,” he said resignedly. “We’ve got to split; maybe we can make it some other time,” said Marc looking at Rita intently, not wanting to leave.
“Sure, why not?” She smiled. “We’re here all time time.”
Marc started toward the door. “So long.” He waved, looking at Rita once again.
Jeannie and Rita waved.
When Joe and Marc had gone, they looked at each other, Jeannie pursing her mouth and nodding her head in contemplative approval.
Rita looked at her and smiled with an inner warmth.
16
Laura had left Rita and Jeannie as they spoke with Marc, walked out of Johnson’s and turned toward MacDougal Street and Dani’s. Minetta Lane, on which Johnson’s was located, was a dark, crooked lane about one hundred yards long, sloping from the Avenue of the Americas up toward a well-lit dead end at MacDougal Street. At the center, the lane was bisected by another alley which extended for fifty yards, then, with the typical insouciance of a Village street, curved in a 45-degree bend and continued back toward the Avenue of the Americas. This was Minetta Street. The houses on Minetta Lane and Minetta Street were all small private houses of different heights and shapes and colors. Even the windows of the houses varied in shape. They reminded one of the houses bordering a crowded Italian quay.
Laura was absorbed into the circle of light from the street lamp at the center of the lane. Her shadow was now cast just beneath her; she stepped on it. Ahead, shadowy figures were silhouetted against the backdrop of clashing neon lights and the confusion of people on MacDougal Street. They walked toward Laura. Footsteps came toward her, and two unknown, indistinguishable shadows passed. As she reached the spot where a driveway made the sidewalk slope down steeply into the basement of a building, one approaching shadow stopped. Laura’s insides leapt in surprise. She continued walking, ignoring the shadow, yet watching its dark substance from the corner of her eye. The shadow’s eyes followed her every step. Lau
ra walked down into the driveway, leaning to maintain her balance on the slope, and passed the stationary figure.
“Laura?” a voice inquired.
Laura stopped and looked around. She could not recognize the voice, and could see only a vague shadowed face. She stepped to the side, letting the greenish neon lights from the Minetta Tavern on the corner of MacDougal Street fall on the shadow. It was a man’s face.
“It’s me! Johnny!”
“Hello,” Laura said apprehensively, remembering the night on the roof. She edged toward a path of direct escape.
“I’ve come down here a couple of times since that night.” He looked to the ground embarrassedly, reflecting on his past deeds. “I’ve never been able to find you, though.”
“Oh, … I’ve been around.”
They stood looking at each other, wordless and very conscious of their own presence and silence.
“Well, so long now,” said Laura turning to leave, not knowing what else to do. “Nice seeing you again.”
“Laura!” Johnny blurted out imploringly. He walked to her, his eyes looking into her’s for a moment, then focusing on her forehead. He was still cast in the eerie green light from the bar sign. He wanted to say something; his lips moved, but stopped abruptly; his hand waved awkwardly in the air. “I just wanted to say … well, you know. I didn’t mean anything … that last time … It’s just …”
“That’s all right,” said Laura, somewhat embarrassed at Johnny’s embarrassment. “I don’t care about that anymore.”
Johnny gnawed his lips nervously. He smiled weakly, half from embarrassment, half in friendliness. He watched her face. She looks so scared, so lonely, so weak, he thought. If only he weren’t so scared, too. Why don’t I ask her to have coffee with me; she wont mind that. Maybe she would, though? His imagination conjured up all sorts of refusals and embarrassing rejections or retorts from which he recoiled frightened. What the hell.… She can only say no. I’ll ask her to have coffee with me. I’ll say, “Laura, do you think you.…” No, that’s not right. “Would you like some coffee?” “Sure,” she’ll tell me, “but not with you!” No. What the hell, I’ll just ask her.… The words began to slide up his throat like red-hot pellets. His mouth grew dry, and he felt his Adam’s apple bob. He swallowed hard. Damn Adam’s apple, he thought, always bouncing like a jumping bean in my throat. He felt more embarrassed because Laura was probably amused by his embarrassment. But he still wanted to ask her, now more than ever, and yet, now, now he felt more ashamed of himself because he couldn’t get himself to ask.
“Well, … I’ve got to go now. I’ll see you.” Laura again turned to leave.
“Laura!” he called, summoning his nerve more from impulse than volition.
“What?” she asked softly.
Johnny was caught and had to say what he wanted. But he found it almost impossible.
“What?” she asked again, nervously, impatiently.
Johnny walked over to her. “I wanted to buy you some coffee or something—unless you’re busy. I mean, we could have it some other time if you want. But if you’ve got nothing else to do, I don’t either, … and maybe we could have some coffee together.”
She studied his nervous face pleadingly looking into her nervous face. She too was sure her features revealed amusing nervousness.
“I guess we could,” she replied. She was surprised, and more than that, now that she realized fully that Johnny was asking her to go for coffee with him, pleased.
Johnny was relieved. He smiled weakly, thankfully.
“I don’t know where to take you. I don’t know much about the Village.”
“There’s a little Italian coffee shop right next to Dani’s. It’s nice there—quiet.”
There was something pleasantly sincere about Johnny, Laura now thought. He wasn’t trying to be a wise guy now. He was nervous, but warm and gentle too. He seemed to really want to go for coffee and be with her. And she wanted to go too, because he didn’t have that look about him, the one that most people had, the hard look, the one that seemed to want to devour her, to step on her. Suddenly, he looked like a friend.
They walked to the Continental Espresso and entered.
The flicker of small candles encased in red glass cups atop each table gave a half-reddish, half-yellow hue to the walls and the faces of the people seated about the tables in the Continental. Small oval tables lined each side of the aisle that cut down the center of the shop. Classic-styled oil paintings, intermixed with contemporary photographs taken by local photographers—probably customers—hung on the walls. On one wall, a huge canvas of Moses and The Chosen People at the rock of gushing water hung in darkness. In one front corner of the shop was a large square, marble-topped table and an ornately carved bench of black wood with climbing flowers and angels’ heads cut into it. Soft red cushions adorned the seat. Silken cords held the pillows on the seat and hung down the side of the bench, ending in fringed tassels.
No one was sitting at the large table. Johnny motioned Laura toward it. He indicated a seat facing the interior of the shop, and Laura sat down as quickly and unobtrusively as possible. Johnny pushed her chair in from behind and sat down on the bench.
“I’m sorry,” he said, standing hurriedly. “Maybe you want to sit down on the bench?”
“No … no This is fine.”
They sat silently, watching the flame flickering on the walls and table. Johnny twisted himself toward the counter in the back, behind which a short, heavy man was making coffee. As he looked to the back, Johnny’s eyes had passed quickly over Laura’s face. He saw it only for a second, with the reddish tint on it. He saw her big eyes gazing intently, blankly at him. The man behind the counter saw Johnny and he smiled and bowed slightly so that Johnny would know he saw them. Johnny felt incapable of turning back to look at Laura, or even turning back to look at anything, feeling that his eyes would be drawn to see if Laura was looking at him, and he would seem foolish and obvious.
The man from behind the counter walked up the center aisle and over to their table. He had a friendly smile.
“Buona sera. What would you like to have?”
Johnny reached for the menu and looked at it for a moment.
“What are you going to have,” he asked Laura and then looked up. “Oh … I thought you had a menu,” he apologized handing the menu to her.
Without looking at the menu, she said she wanted coffee cappuccino. Johnny ordered the same. The man who was surely the owner of the shop went back to the counter. The espresso machine hissed in a sudden burst of effort.
“That was kind of a crazy night, that last time.” Johnny began to absently lift and close the hinged top of the sugar bowl. “My friend Paul was black and blue for two weeks.”
“Yeah, it was kind of crazy. And then you coming on like a crazy man yourself.”
Johnny didn’t understand her words exactly, but he knew what she was referring to, and he was embarrassed. He looked down.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s all been forgotten.”
The owner brought the two cups to their table.
“Anything else? We have some nice cheese. Pastry?”
“I don’t want anything,” said Laura.
“Nothing for me either.”
The owner returned to his counter, leaving the two white cups steaming on the white table top.
“Well, let’s have a toast,” Johnny said as jovially as possible.
“What to?”
“To us, I guess. To forget the last time.”
“Okay.” She raised her cup. Somehow she didn’t feel nervous with Johnny. They just sat and didn’t say much, but just being there, smiling occasionally was all that was needed. It said so much. She knew that Johnny felt the same way she did. Johnny was someone to whom her feelings wouldn’t be foolish. She knew he wouldn’t make fun of her. It was an overwhelming relief to be with someone like herself, someone who understood as she understood, who wouldn’t belittle her. She felt s
trangely happy, goose pimply, as she looked at Johnny. She felt sort of giddy. She felt like jumping up and down and smiling. She could see herself in a green pasture running and skipping and humming, with the green grass under her feet and a big smile on her face.
Johnny put down his cup and they looked at each other and smiled simultaneously, spontaneously. They were big smiles, so big that they surprised themselves and each other. They were real smiles, ones they hadn’t used in such a very long time. They were smiles of discovery, of relief, of realization, of happiness.
“Are you going anywhere after this?”
“I was going to Dani’s—that’s the place a couple of doors down—to meet a girl friend, … but I don’t have to,” she added quickly. “I’ve had my coffee.”
Johnny smiled as she smiled. “Maybe you’d like to go to a late movie—if you don’t have anything else to do?”
Her neck tingled. “Okay … That’d be nice,” she said, her eyes feeling aglow. She sat on the edge of her chair, her elbows on the table, and smiled her newly found warm smile at Johnny.
17
“Oh come on, do me a favor will you?” Rita implored as she and Jeannie walked downtown along the Avenue of the Americas.
“That God damn place is going to be packed tighter than …,” Jeannie chuckled. “Tight as hell anyway. And with all the lousy people I know, it must be pretty tight down there.”
“Look, we only have to go over for a minute; if he’s not there, we’ll cut right out. Come on.”
“No! I won’t get caught in that mess. There’ll be a million tourists there. Look at them.” Jeannie’s arm indicated the throngs of people, obviously not from the Village, milling on the sidewalk ahead of them. “Jesus, how I hate this place on Friday and Saturday. Nothing but tourists and drunken sailors.”
Surrounding the girls were throngs of outsiders parading in their Uptown raiments, having descended en masse to have a wild time. Girls in twos and threes window-shopped, hoping to be picked up by some swinging Bohemians. Fellows from outside stood on the corners or traveled from bar to bar looking to pick up some wild Village chicks.
What’s Happening? Page 19
