“Yeah,” he said, “Say, guess who I saw today …”
“You’ll have a fifth,” Lynn said, “That should do it. Don’t let her keep going out into the kitchen to make drinks. Have a bowl of cracked ice on the table in front of you so you don’t have to move.”
His face was mirthless. He was reciting some unpleasant knowledges.
“How about we roll in the refrigerator?” Erick said, conscious of his desire to ease the air.
Lynn sagged back in the booth. He clasped his lean hands on the edge of the table and closed his eyes as if he were visualizing. Erick noticed the way the right corner of his mouth kept twitching down as he spoke. He paid no attention to what Erick said.
“Keep drinking until things are a little foggy,” Lynn said, “But don’t drink so much you get sick or lose control of yourself.” His mouth tightened. “Don’t pass out,” he said slowly.
“Don’t pass out,” Erick repeated, trying to sound amused.
“There’s a couch in her living room isn’t there?”
“Yeah.”
“Start making love to her. Arouse her. Don’t hurry it. Get the girl good and hot.” His teeth were clenched as though he were actually saying—Whip the girl until she bleeds. “Kiss her throat,” he said, “Her cheeks, her ear lobes.”
He opened his eyes. “Understand?” he said.
“Yes, teacher.”
Lynn looked at him a moment, then said, “Good.”
“Say you know what …” Erick started again to change the subject. But Lynn went on talking.
Erick felt a rising unrest as Lynn talked. It was dark and unfriendly there, planning to hurt a girl he knew he should only love. Lynn’s voice droned on. The words were lost. Erick sat there numbed and felt like a calloused monster sitting there. The affair tasted of leftovers.
Lynn had her stripped to the waist. Relentlessly, he was putting dolls through a series of mathematical emotions. Erick got the feeling that Lynn was trying to disgust him before it even started. He was succeeding.
“You whisper—Let’s go to your room,” Lynn said, “She won’t refuse.”
“What if she refuses.”
Lynn’s mouth curled. “Believe me, she won’t refuse,” he said, “She’ll drag you there.”
“Oh,” Erick said.
He felt the onslaught of one of those increasing moods of hating Lynn. More and more he found himself looking at Lynn and saying—Good God, what in hell do I see in him? He’s vicious and small.
“You take her to the bed. You keep making love as you take off the rest of her clothes.”
Words went on, an endless stream of them. Erick lost the continuity. He was back on the night before Christmas vacation, shuddering in the darkness and the crushing heat while Sally’s body moved under his hands.
The memory made him twist his head suddenly and, instinctively, close his eyes as if to shut it all away.
“What’s the matter?” Lynn asked.
Erick could hear the expectancy in his voice. You’d like me to say
I’m disgusted wouldn’t you? His mind shouted back at him. You’d like me to say—All right you win! I can’t go through with it! I hate the very idea. Wouldn’t you?
“Nothing,” he said casually, “Is that all.”
“You got what I said about a premature discharge didn’t you?” Lynn asked icily, “Think about something unemotional until you’re ready.”
“I’ll think about whales,” Erick said.
“Good,” Lynn said, the suspicion of a smile on his lips, “Think about huge black whales floating near icebergs.”
A laugh fluttered in Erick’s throat. He cut it off. “Why don’t you give a course at the University?” he suggested, “Elementary Seduction, Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10:30 AM.”
“I can’t,” Lynn said without losing a beat in the conversation, “I have a philosophy course then.”
Erick drained the coffee cup.
“Well, that’s it, isn’t it?” he said, having forgotten everything Lynn had said.
“That’s it,” Lynn said.
No more. No justification for all the planning. No words of never mind this part, it will all be justified when your body explodes and she’s in your arms crying and soft and you both love each other. He guessed Lynn never even thought about that part. He guessed that Lynn didn’t know about that part.
They walked through the cold streets toward home.
“It sounds like a steely-eyed strategy for rape,” Erick said.
Lynn said, “Rape entails resistance.”
* * * *
When he called for her she was wearing a dark shirt and a tight red blouse that left most of her shoulders and part of her upper chest bare.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hi.” He held out the record album. “This is for your birthday which I, unforgiveably, forgot.” He held out the bag. “This is for us.”
She opened the bag first and looked in. “Well,” she said. She opened the package.
“Oh,” she said, “I like that.” She looked at him. For a moment the old way of affection spread over the room. In her smile, her kiss on his cheek.
Then it ended. She said they’d listen to the records when they got back from the opera. She put down the album and went for her cost. He stood alone in the front room of an unfriendly house waiting for a date. In the front bedroom he heard Leo singing to herself.
They left the house and went to the opera.
Erick couldn’t keep his eyes off her that night. For some reason she seemed to be stretching all night, moving her shoulders back and tightening the muscles of her chest. All the men around them were gaping at Sally’s breasts. Erick was beginning to feel the tight sick feeling again, the feeling he had when Lynn was talking to him.
While the opera was unraveling itself, the plan was pulsing through Erick’s mind. He couldn’t concentrate on the music, the singing, the story. Her perfume seemed to surround him. He could smell the perfume of her hair. He wanted to reach out and take her hand but he didn’t. He kept looking down at them as they rested gracefully in her lap.
Cracked ice in a bowl. Kiss the hollows of her neck and shoulders.
A soprano was singing a flighty solo. The audience was still except for sporadic coughing. Erick noticed Sally stir at his side. He felt the heat of the auditorium, felt the pressing of the wool on his legs from his suit. He stared blankly ahead at the back of a woman’s head in front of him. Don’t drink too much. Let’s go to your room. Black whales floating by icebergs.
His hands clenched. He felt his throat contracting. He was very thirsty. He yearned to have some cold water gushing down his dry throat. He felt dizzy.
Start on the couch. Cracked ice in the…
During intermission they stood in the lobby.
“Sally,” he said, “You know I’d marry you if I had enough money to support you and could still write.”
“I know,” she said, sounding perfectly unconvinced, hardly looking at him, only the vaguest touch of the old sadness touching her eyes for a moment.
It made him furious to have said it. He hadn’t meant it, he was sure. In the back of his mind he was positive he was saying it in order to arouse her love again. So his plan would work.
When the curtain went down and the curtain calls were done, Sally turned to him and said unemotionally, “Well, let’s go home and get drunk.”
He smiled and helped her on with her coat, his stomach tight, aching, he kept trying to find some combination of words, some action that would let the easiness flow through his limbs again. But there was nothing. Everything remained tight and menacing. There was no love in it.
Before they got on the bus, they stopped in at the drugstore and bought some soda.
“How many times have we ridden this bus?” he asked as they rode out to her house.
She spoke so quietly he could hardly hear her, “So many times,” she said.
“Sally,” he said. He sh
ivered.
“Are you cold?” she asked.
He looked out the window at the dark city rushing by like time. “Yes,” he said, “I’m cold.”
She looked at his forehead.
“Still a scar there,” she said. And it seemed she was telling him his plan was no good even without knowing about it.
When they got to the house she went into the kitchen to make drinks.
“Why don’t we … uh … keep the ice in a bowl to save walking?” he asked.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, “They’d just melt together.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
He sat on the couch. He couldn’t help smiling.
“Step number one blown to shit,” he murmured to himself.
She handed him a drink and put on the records he’d given her.
The swirling strains of Ravel’s La Valse shivered into his ears. He drank down the contents of the glass in less than a half minute. He felt no effect. She hadn’t sat down yet so she took his glass and brought him another drink. Good, his mind said affably, she’s going to get you drunk. You won’t have to do a thing.
“Isn’t that nice music?” she said, returning with the drink.
“It’s lovely,” he said.
She sat down next to him and he took her hand. He blinked. And now, he thought, in this cold impersonal light, I am supposed to start making love to her. Bing!—like that. No forewarning. No talk. Just—Bing!— love making.
Impossible. He knew that.
“How’s Felix?” he asked inanely.
“Fine.”
Silence.
“How’s Lynn?” she asked.
“He’s asleep. He has a headache.”
“Too bad.”
“No. Too good. He deserves worse.”
No comment from her. He finished the second drink. Start kissing down the straps of her slip. He grimaced. Always the plan. It kept eating at him, stamping impatiently for execution.
“You’re drinking too fast,” she said.
“I used to resent drinking,” he said.
“You don’t know what you want,” she said.
“I want you.”
“Oh, sure.”
She got up to make herself another drink. He sat there glumly. And felt like crying. He wiped away a tear. You’re a maudlin drunk, he told himself, that’s what you are. Just like your old daddy.
“You know when I got drunk for the first time?” he asked her when she came back.
“I have no idea.”
“The night I met you.”
“Yes, you were drunk.”
“But clever,” he said, “Full of words.”
“Full of something,” she said.
“I got to you,” he said with forced smugness.
“Did you?” she said.
“Would you like me to go home?” he said abruptly, feeling the desire to throw it all off and run away.
“If you want to.”
“I don’t want to go home,” he said sadly. He expanded his eyes with a shudder and stared at the floor. The room was beginning to look distorted. But there was no warmth in it. The cold creeping in his stomach kept alive. Take your time, his mind coached unconvinced, plenty of time. Get her to put cracked ice in a bowl, that’s the whole thing, if you’ll only get her to put cracked ice in a bowl. Ice, shmice! He snapped back, get the hell out of here and leave me alone.
“More” he said.
More drinks.
“How’s Felix?” he asked.
“He’s still fine.”
“Did I ask you?”
“Twice.”
“I’m very concerned for the future of that young man.”
“Of course.”
“How’s Felix?”
She didn’t answer. Then she said, “He’s going to play pro football.”
“Prostitute football?”
“Professional football,” she said patiently, as if she thought him serious.
“Oh.” As if the revelation had come.
“He’s getting ten thousand a year for it.”
“For booting a dead pig around?”
“Jealous?” she asked.
“Of him? No, I’m afraid not.” Then, “I’ll make more than that someday.” He looked up in self surprise at the defensive tone in his voice.
She got up to change the records. “He asked me to marry him,” she said.
“Oh? Did you accept?” With a feeling as if he were going to jump out of his skin.
She put the records on again. “I haven’t decided,” she said.
“Why not?” he said expansively, the insides of him crawling, “Ten thousand year. Blessed security. Cadillacs. Man servants. A mansion underneath the weeping willow trees.”
She sat down again. Her hand was limp when he took it.
“I don’t know why I shouldn’t,” she said.
“Surely it isn’t me?” he said, wondering if his voice were as thick and stupid sounding to her as it was to him.
“You,” she said, bitter for the first time he could remember, “You’ll never marry me.”
“I want to. I wish I could.” He thought he sounded convincing.
She pulled away her hand and turned her face.
“You could,” she said, “You should if you wanted to.”
“I’ve told you why I can’t. Many times.”
She picked up her glass and took a long drink. “I know,” she said, lips drawn back from her white teeth, “Your art”
He snickered impulsively. “You make it sound like masturbation,” he said. She didn’t answer.
He pursued it. He kept digging.
“Why do you take it?” he asked, “Why don’t you throw me out? Why don’t you tell me to go jump in the lake?”
She said it in a flat voice.
“You wouldn’t believe me, “she said.
She was silent. Then she said, “If you only realized how much I cared for you last year. I’d have done anything for you, gone anywhere. Helped you. I was all yours.
“All mine,” he mused, staring at the swell of her breasts.
“I was, “ she said, “Not anymore.”
He sank back against the cushions feeling sick and restless. He couldn’t relax. There was something running around in him. On the record player the waltz grew lost and despairing.
“No, of course you’re not,” he said, “Why should you love me when I treat you so terribly?”
“I don’t think I do love you anymore,” she said, as if the argument were still going on in her mind, “I can’t love in a vacuum.”
“No,” he said. He sat silently, stroking her hand. “No.” And this night I was going to seduce her, he thought.
“I don’t love you the same way,” she sighed, “I guess I always will though. In some way.”
He bent over and kissed her white throat. He hadn’t the slightest desire to seduce her anymore. The tautness had drained away. He looked down at her arched breasts, the inviting valley between them. They were beautiful, fascinating, he thought. So was the Mona Lisa but he didn’t want to go to bed with the Mona Lisa. Sally was another person now. This wasn’t the girl who was trying to take off her clothes, trying to take his off that night. This was someone else. Someone pure and good and incapable of narrow lust.
He put down his glass and slid his arm around her waist. She was passive. The strings throbbed on, the music gained in violence. Now it is the decadent society after the war dancing its own death music, he thought. He looked over her body carefully, not caring whether she noticed or not. He tried hard to imagine him going through with the plan. But it loomed as something outrageous and impossible. He couldn’t even visualize it. Cracked ice in a bowl indeed.
Absurd.
He rested his head on her shoulder and stared dizzy at the floor. She was motionless. When I think of the tensions in this room, he thought, of the currents tearing at the planks, it makes me shudder. And that’s how it is everywhere, he expanded briefly, ta
lk going on, giddy masquerades held in huge ballrooms surrounded by abysmal murk. Vast pretenses. Spots of artificial light in the ocean of night. Man.
He drew back his arm when the front door opened and Leo came in. She seemed to waver in the doorway.
“Well hello kiddies,” she said, “did I interrupt anything?”
Sally got up. “Want a drink?” she asked.
Leo pursed her thin lips. “Well, I just might,” she said. She drew off her jacket so that her slight breasts pointed through the tight yellow sweater. She saw Erick look at them.
“Pretty?” she said, a smile beginning on her face.
“Yup,” he said, “Nice music.”
In the kitchen Sally ran water from the sink. Leo sat down and crossed her legs.
“Where you been?” he asked.
“Beer drinking,” she said, “In dark booths.”
“Dark booths.”
“Confessionals with beer,” she said.
He snickered. “That’s good,” he said. Sally came in and gave Leo a drink. Leo sipped. “Whiskey on beer,” she recited, “curls up your hair.”
Sally sat down and started talking to Leo about Felix. Erick sat slumped pretending to read a book of poetry he’d picked up off the coffee table. Once he thought he noticed Leo nod her head in his direction as if to say—What’s with him?
After a while he got up and weaved his way into the bathroom. He stood there dizzily, listening to Leo’s voice in the living room, her sharp laughter.
When he came back and sat down he noticed that he’d forgotten to zip shut his pants. A bolt of shock ran through him. My God, he thought, bemused, I’m under the influence, I am no longer accountable. Time for rape, his mind suggested. His mind thrust it aside.
“Well, I have to hit it,” Leo said, after a while.
“It’s only eleven thirty,” Sally said.
Leo shrugged and went to bed anyway. Sally got up and went into the bathroom.
When she sat down Erick started to read to her. It was the first time in his life he’d ever read to anyone. He wondered how he sounded but it didn’t matter too much. Was it a silly voice, an empty voice, a drunken voice? Goodbye plan, he decided.
Hunger and Thirst Page 46
