by Lewis Shiner
Madelyn looked at Cole. He was in thrall to powerful emotions.
“Come on, Cole,” Alex said. “You didn’t like it, did you?”
“What did you think?” Cole asked her.
“Some of the symbolism was heavy handed,” she said, “but the way it undermined its own mystery plot, and used that to make a statement about society, I thought that was pretty profound.”
The approval in Cole’s eyes was quite heady. “Yeah,” he said. “Profound and really sad.”
“It certainly choked me up,” Alex said, putting his finger down his throat. Denise was predictably amused.
“Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau,” Cole said. “Anybody for dessert?”
It was 11:00. “We’d better head home,” Madelyn said. “If we’re not back by midnight, not only do we turn into pumpkins, both of you will be turned into rats.”
“Would you be able to tell the difference?” Alex asked, and Denise laughed again.
Once they got into the hearse, Madelyn overheard Alex telling Denise the floor was more comfortable than the seats; giggling ensued, then nothing audible over the sound of the engine. Madelyn felt more nervous than the situation seemed to warrant. Worst case, the streets were well lighted and the dorm within walking distance.
With the dorm in sight, Cole pulled to the curb and turned off the engine and the lights. “You’re not out of gas,” Madelyn said. Her breath came raggedly and she was tense from neck to heels. “I checked the gauge.”
“No,” Cole said. He put his arm on the seat behind her and moved slowly across the seat toward her. Wit failed her, followed by basic motor skills. She closed her eyes a moment before he kissed her, then a wave of dizziness passed over her. His lips were gentle, slightly parted, sealing themselves to hers. When he pulled away, she saw her own feelings in his face: surprise and longing and a momentary loss of all guile and cleverness and pretense.
The next kiss was more intense, not threatening and yet not entirely under control; his left hand touched her face along the jawline. She was now seriously disoriented. Her own right hand went to his neck and buried itself in his hair, seeking a lifeline. She lost her sense of time, and when Cole pulled away again she whispered, “Oh, shit.”
Cole smiled, his eyes glistening. “What?”
She put a hand on his chest and gently pushed him away. He smelled of Right Guard and warmth and Mexican food and shaving cream and clean cotton shirts and God only knew what else, and she knew she was in real trouble and had to clear her head while she was still able.
“We’ve got to go. Be gentlemen and walk us to our door.”
“Coming!” Denise called brightly. “Give me a sec.”
Alex’s voice came over various rustling noises. “Can I help?”
Denise laughed. “You’ve done quite enough already, thank you very much. Okay, let’s go.”
At the door Cole kissed her one more time and said, “I’ll call you.”
“Okay,” Madelyn said. She pulled Denise out of Alex’s embrace and hustled them both inside.
Denise collapsed against the wall, fanning herself. “Tornado,” she said, laughing. “No doubt about it.”
*
Madelyn, having finished her class assignments, was reading a library copy of John Fowles’ The Magus when Cole called on Sunday afternoon. “Can you help me with my Russian homework?”
“What kind of help?” she asked.
“I can’t concentrate on it because all I can think about is you.”
“And your proposed solution to this problem?”
“I thought if we walked around for an hour, that would hold me for a while. Like giving a heroin addict a Darvon.”
“Shouldn’t a heroin addict be going cold turkey?”
“You’ll note that I haven’t made any red rose references despite last night. The least you can do is not pick at my metaphors.”
“I do admire a graceful winner.”
“Would now be a good time?”
He picked her up in the hearse and drove her to Pease Park, west of campus, pointing out where he and Alex lived on the hill that loomed above them with the hint of an invitation. “Another time,” she said.
She loved Texas in September. The heat, so oppressive in the summer, had a transience in the fall that stole its power, with occasional days as cold and clear as spring water. That afternoon lay in between, warm in the sun and cool in the shade. Boys with footballs and girls with dogs filled the park, running with an abandon fueled by the season.
Cole took her hand as they walked, and she asked him again about his finger. One question followed another, so much to learn and tell to catch their rational brains up to where their emotions had already gone. She told him about her father and her love for Shakespeare and Pinter and Anouilh. She admitted to seeing The Chevelles at what she learned was their first performance. He told her about his accident and, adding gasoline to the fire, his middle class, itinerant youth and his split from his parents. It appeared that he was neither spoiled nor rich; his spending money came from playing with the band.
The walk ended, as she’d known it would, with them kissing, him leaning against a tree, pulling her into him. He seemed to know how far she was willing to go and to stop there. Well. She hadn’t meant to let him put his hand on her breast, though he did stay on the outside of her blouse. That left him well behind Alex, who, according to Denise, had his mouth on both of her bare breasts Saturday night. Madelyn believed that Cole was not simply looking to take advantage, though she no longer trusted her judgment. She was as tyrannized by the literature of romance as she was awash in hormones.
The one-hour Darvon turned into a four-hour fix, as Cole took her to dinner at Nau’s Enfield Drug, where they ate hamburgers at a soda fountain out of Ozzie and Harriet. She insisted that she had to get home, yet they ended up parked across the street from the dorm, kissing some more.
She was not prepared for how urgent it all felt. Cole had band practice on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and he called her in the few minutes he had beforehand on all three nights. On Tuesday she’d agreed to dinner on the condition that they go to the library afterward. Between the music and the time they spent together, she worried that he would get behind in his schoolwork; yet when they weren’t on the phone or in physical contact, she was anxious. What did he think, what did he feel, when she wasn’t there? Was he indeed as obsessed with her as he claimed? Maybe his ardor had already started to cool. Maybe he was still hung up on somebody from high school. Maybe he was playing her for a fool. No matter how hard she tried to focus on her studies, her thoughts always came back to Cole.
Russian class was hardest of all. She knew he was ten feet away from her, watching her all through class, and she could barely concentrate.
On Friday she and Cole saw You Only Live Twice. Cole, it developed, was obsessed with secret agents. “It doesn’t pay to be the spy’s girlfriend,” Madelyn observed afterward. “They keep getting killed.”
“That’s true,” Cole said, and looked over at her with a raised eyebrow. In a passable imitation of Connery’s Scots burr, he said, “Best watch your step, lass.”
On Saturday the four of them went to an East Austin Negro club, and she and Cole danced all the slow songs, leaving her so dizzy and stimulated that if she hadn’t been having her period, and if the back seat of Alex’s car were not so small, something drastic might have happened on the way home.
They both knew where they were headed. Denise had already provided Alex with what she referred to as “oral gratification.” “Makes them docile as babies,” she said. “Just be sure you have Kleenex handy.”
Madelyn had a more romantic consummation in mind. She didn’t want it to be devoid of spontaneity, nor did she want it to be rushed. Between the band and her curfew and both their homework she didn’t know how it was going to work out.
On Tuesday Cole brought her to the Castle for the first time. He’d already made spaghetti sauce, and the di
ning room table held a vase of red roses and a bottle of red wine. The house was mysteriously deserted, except for the Pakistani lodger in the downstairs bedroom who could be heard moving around, and who didn’t come out to be introduced. She understood then that the time had come.
In her nervousness she babbled about the beauty of the house, and she was relieved to see that Cole was nervous too. He opened the wine and she forced herself to go easy. Then the pasta was done and they ate spaghetti and salad and a plain baguette with no garlic to spoil their breath. They neither one ate much, though she assured Cole that the meal was delicious. Afterward, they piled their dishes in the sink and Cole said, “You need to see the rest of the place.”
She realized he hadn’t touched her, other than a first quick kiss when she came down from her dorm room. The skin of her hands and her throat and her inner thighs tingled with anticipation. She led the way upstairs. Cole showed her into Alex’s room, and even as she admired the view of Austin spread out before her, she was equally aware of the heat of Cole’s body where he stood behind her.
He pointed out the closed door to Tupelo Joe’s room, and then led her into the back bedroom. She stood in the middle of the floor and took in the bookshelf, the acoustic guitar on its stand, the closed blinds, the neatly stacked books on the desk, the double bed with the single red rose on one of the pillows.
Cole closed the door and pointed to the clock on the bedside table. “It’s now six forty-five. The alarm is set for nine-thirty. Plenty of time to get you home for your curfew. So you don’t have to think about it. Okay?”
“Okay,” she said. Her chest was tight and she could barely speak.
He took her face in both his hands and began to kiss her with the slow, steady determination of a man who does not intend to stop.
*
“He set an alarm?” Denise said.
“You don’t get it. He did it because he understands how my brain works. He understood that I would be worried about the time, so he made that go away. He showed me that he’d thought of everything, so I didn’t have to think. He knew what a relief that would be for me.”
“Well, Alex certainly didn’t need an alarm clock, if you know what I mean.” Apparently after Madelyn and Cole had shut themselves in Cole’s room, Alex and Denise had come back from their dinner and repaired to Alex’s room for similar purposes.
“Uh, no?”
“Let’s just say he’s more of a sprinter than a distance man. Which is perfectly fine with me.”
Madelyn took a deep breath. “Speaking of which. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you about.”
Denise’s eyes twinkled. “Ask away, my sister.”
Madelyn was so humiliated, she had to simply spit the word out. “Orgasms.”
Denise put her head back and laughed.
“Please don’t laugh at me. I know you’re very experienced at all this and I’m not, but—”
“You’re wondering why you’re not having earth-shattering, life-changing, nuclear bombs of pleasure exploding up and down your spine because some guy stuck his big ol’ protuberance inside you and spewed? Honey, why on earth should you? The vaginal orgasm is a myth. If you want a climax, you have to do it for yourself. You do know how to do that, right? I see by the sudden redness of your complexion that you do.”
“Sex does feel good. Really good. But Cole is sensitive and I think he feels bad because I didn’t… I didn’t…”
“Come? Honey, you have to do like I do, and every other sensible woman does. Fake it!”
She shook her head. “No. Not with Cole.”
“Suit yourself,” Denise said, and gave her a quick hug. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
*
A heavy three-ring binder with five dividers, each with a brightly colored tab. Two hundred sheets of college-ruled three-hole notebook paper. Three new Bic medium-point blue pens in a zip-up plastic envelope that was three-hole punched for the binder. Textbooks stacked on top with their slick white pages and plastic smell.
To Cole they felt like a ball and chain that anchored him to his childhood. The idea that he was back in school, four long years still ahead of him, the same interminable sentence that he’d served in high school now to be served all over again, filled him with despair.
Susan had agreed to buy him a case of beer a week, and he rationed himself to three a night. Theoretically that left him a few extras for the weekend, though he always came up short. The problem was that Sunny, who didn’t drink, kept bringing home women who got stoned on his hash and then raided the refrigerator and threw the returnable longneck bottles in the trash.
He thought music might help, so he’d signed on with the band that Alex found. Though they began to sound professional within a few rehearsals, Cole was just going through the motions with them, like he was going through the motions in his classes.
Like he’d been going through the motions, at first, with the blonde in his Russian class. A game to get her attention, maybe get her into bed. Then he’d kissed her and he’d seen something in her eyes, something that he must have already suspected, a willingness, a need, even, to be utterly serious, the capacity to raise the stakes to the limit and beyond. It had knocked Cole sideways.
She made him want to live up to her image of what he could be. When he went to Susan to ask her to buy them a bottle of wine, he saw how childish his infatuation with Susan had been, and how his feelings for Madelyn were entirely his own and not tangled up with his envy of the Montoya family bond.
And when he finally saw Madelyn naked, nipples as dark red as rose petals, hips as curved as Earth from space, the arc of her instep, the down of her belly, he knew he would never grow tired of looking at her, or of the smell of her skin or the taste of her mouth, or of her husky voice that bent upward here and there with a hint of Texas drawl. He wanted to drown in her. He was crazy in love.
Which only made the rest of his life more onerous. The night after he first made love to Madelyn, band practice seemed endless, despite their breaking off at 9:00. Cole immediately grabbed La Pelirroja, rounded up Alex and his guitar, and drove to Madelyn’s dorm, where they stood under her window and Cole led him through the most love-drunk Spanish songs in their repertoire: “Obsesión,” “Copa rota,” “Bésame mucho,” “Malagueña.” Girls began appearing at open windows immediately, laughing and cheering. Cole sang only to Madelyn, whose goofy, crooked grin was exactly the thing he needed to see. Alex hammed it up, orbiting Cole, occasionally leaning against him for a bit of tight harmony. By the time they got halfway through “Malagueña,” where Alex went into his falsetto, the girls were screaming like he and Cole were the second coming of The Beatles. That was when a campus cop car pulled up, lights flashing, and Cole and Alex took it on the lam, running around the block to crawl into the hearse and escape into the night.
That Saturday afternoon, using a rented recorder, the band laid down two four-minute medleys that showcased their best songs. On Monday Ron took the tape to Sonobeat, a local record company, and ordered 50 copies, which he planned to hand out to the social directors of all the frats.
Tuesday afternoon was the photo session for their requisite 8 ✕ 10 glossy. Cole had the idea of inviting Madelyn and Denise to bring every good-looking girl they could find to the session. With Sunny reluctantly opening his black book, they ended up with a dozen beauties looking up adoringly as the band posed with their instruments on the lawn at Zilker Park. Ron congratulated Cole on his grasp of the fraternity mindset, and Madelyn told him not to get used to the idea of having her at his feet.
Getting Madelyn home for her curfew got increasingly hard. Classes, fortunately, were easy. Even so, he might have been in trouble without Madelyn riding herd on him and without the constant fear of Montoya’s disappointment. He made mostly Bs on his exams and papers. Except for Russian, where, between a lack of natural aptitude and the distraction of Madelyn’s presence, he barely kept a C average.
Any day now, he told
himself, he was going to have to get himself in gear.
*
The band’s debut was set for October 21 at the Sigma house, a frat that was legendary for their alcohol consumption. Cole asked if they could bring dates and Ron said, “We did a lot of these things in Houston and I would advise against it. A frat house on a Saturday night, especially this frat… it’s a war zone.”
Madelyn wanted to come anyway. “I only saw your old band once. I haven’t seen your new band at all.” They were in Cole’s room on the Tuesday before the gig. They’d had dinner with Alex and Denise at Susan’s house, and Cole was in a pleasant stupor from their lovemaking.
“I don’t think you understand how wild these things get.”
“My roommate is dating a ka. I’ve heard stories. Is there something you’re not telling me? Are there going to be orgies? Is the band being fixed up with floozies as part of your pay? What is it you’re covering up?” This facet of Madelyn’s personality had only surfaced recently. Her over-analytic brain would suddenly refuse to accept Cole’s perfectly reasonable explanations and insist on answers that would hurt her more deeply. Even now, as she pretended to tease, Cole sensed her lurking insecurity.
“If I brought you,” Cole said, “I wouldn’t be able to leave in the middle to take you home. We’re playing until one am, after which we have to load out the stuff. That’s way past your curfew.”
Cole’s complaints about her curfew had become a sore point. “The curfew is not my fault. If you really wanted me there, you’d find a way.”
“That’s just it. I don’t want you there. It’s our first gig, and if you were there I’d be worried sick about you the entire time. I wouldn’t be able to concentrate.”
“I’m not a child who has to be supervised every minute.” She leaned over him to look at the clock. “And speaking of curfew, we’d better get dressed.”
When he pulled up in front of her dorm, she kissed him perfunctorily and said, “You don’t have to walk me to the door.”
He didn’t insist, and she didn’t look back.
