Boys and Girls Together: A Novel

by William Goldman

  “We’re all alone,” Shelly said.

  Aaron made a smile. What if I can’t? What if I can’t? Please, God. “Drink O.K.?”

  “Fine.”

  Aaron took a long swallow. “I could use a little freshener,” he said, and he stood.

  She drained the glass. “As long as you’re headed in that general direction ...”

  Aaron went to the kitchen. Slowly he got out an ice tray. He reached for the bottle of whisky and poured the drinks.

  Then Shelly was in the doorway. “I got lonesome,” she said.

  “With you in a sec,” Aaron said, fiddling with a long spoon, trying to stir the highballs. He could feel her standing close behind him now, moving in. Her arms went around his chest. Aaron waited.

  “You must swear never to let me get lonesome again,” Shelly said. “On your sacred word of honor. I’ll never release you until you do.”

  “I swear,” Aaron whispered.

  She relaxed her hold and he spun around, eyes closed, blindly reaching out for her, pulling her body in toward him. He kissed her brutally, holding the kiss for as long as he could before breaking it, burying his face in her neck, kissing her hair. He kissed her ear and then her cheek before attacking her mouth again. Her arms were tight around him and they battled with their tongues. This time she was the one who broke, throwing her head back, smiling up at him.

  “Hey, lover,” Shelly said.

  He smiled back at her and he rubbed his hands across her full body and he bit her neck but he felt nothing. No excitement, nothing at all, and he knew unless he could feel he would never be able to perform and he told himself that everything would be fine if he would just give himself time, time, but even in that moment he knew he had never been so frightened in his life, nor would he ever be again. But he was wrong. His fear was just beginning.

  Because slowly, arms tight around him, she began to lead him to the bedroom.

  She undressed in the dark and as she did he periodically attacked her body, caressing her breasts, her thighs, her gently rounded stomach. When she was naked he took off his clothes and then they embraced, standing by the bed. Aaron bit her lip and she winced, pulling back a moment before dragging him down on the sheets. Horizontal, the combat continued. Viciously, Aaron kissed her. Again and again he touched her breasts and fingered her soft thighs. Then, when he knew he was going to scream, he jammed his mouth down on hers and held it there until the scream died inside him.

  “You’re pretty,” Aaron whispered then. Please, God. “You are. You’re so pretty. You’re pretty.” Please, God.

  He felt nothing. Nothing. Aaron kissed her breasts. They felt like clay. In the darkness he could see her looking at him. In the darkness he could sense her starting to pull away. Ferociously Aaron attacked her, rolling across the bed, kicking and biting, groaning for her benefit, saying her name, “Shelly, Shelly,” over and over. Mechanically his hands journeyed along her body, and he continued whispering her name, louder, and he groaned and panted and sucked in air. But he felt nothing. Nothing. Nothing at—

  Quite without warning he began to feel.

  His eyes shut so tightly they hurt, Aaron shrieked as the excitement grew inside him, swelling like a blister, filling his body. He kissed lips—but in his mind, not her lips. He touched flesh—but in his mind, flesh other than hers.

  Hugh!

  It was Hugh he was touching. Hugh was beside him. Hugh was the one who was breathing his name. Aaron knelt over the other figure.

  In rhythm, their bodies rocked.

  VIII

  “OSRIC!” WALT SAID. “Me play Osric? I auditioned to play Hamlet.” He turned to the girl at his side. “Say something.”

  “Something,” Blake said.

  “You’re a scream, you are. Maybe it’s a mistake, do you think it’s a mistake?” and he turned back to the bulletin board, turned faster than was necessary because although he thought he was probably too funny-looking to play the title role in the Oberlin College production of Hamlet, he had still worked very hard on the part and had given the best audition of his life, so he hoped he had a chance but now, the way things turned out, he was embarrassed and humiliated and afraid Blake might see. And if she did, he knew she would never be able to resist embarrassing him still further. Pushing his glasses up snug against the bridge of his nose with his left thumb, he squinted at the notice:

  SPRING PLAY—FINAL CASTING

  HAMLET ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Dennis McBride

  CLAUDIUS ... ... ... ... ... Edward Neisser

  The final listing, at the very bottom of the page, said:

  OSRIC ... ... ... ...Walt Kirgaby

  An additional half page, tacked to the bottom, was filled entirely by Hilton’s curlicued signature: B. Henry Hilton, PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH.

  “That lousy Hilton,” Walt murmured. “He even spelled my name wrong.”

  “Come along, Osric,” Blake said, tugging at his arm. “Buy me a hamburger and a milk shake.”

  Walt stayed where he was, staring at the bulletin board, shaking his head.

  “Hey, you’re upset,” Blake said.

  “Nope.”

  “Yes, you are, you are too.”

  “I’m not upset. It’s just that I’m a senior and this is my last play and Osric—well, let’s face it, Osric’s just about the smallest part in the play—I mean, Osric! He’s got about six stinkin’ lines. Six lines. Well, I just won’t play it, that’s all, I mean, who does Hilton think he’s dealing with, some freshman? I’m not remotely upset, but if you want to know the truth, when you audition to play Hamlet and get stuck with the smallest part in the play it’s a little bit upsetting, especially when you’ve played more leads than anybody else has over the last four years, isn’t that right? Who starred in Charley’s Aunt this fall?”

  “That was a comedy, Egbert. You do comedy. Hamlet ain’t supposed to be funny. And now I want two hamburgers and a milk shake.”

  “I mean, if you were casting Hamlet, would you have me play Osric?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, neither would I, so how come that crummy Hilton—”

  “Personally, I think you’d make a great Ophelia.”

  “Will you shut up, please?”

  “Let’s be honest, you’re too young to play the Queen.”

  “Y’know, whoever told you you were funny did us all a vast disservice.”

  “I want two hamburgers and a milk shake and a plate of French fries.”

  “I did one of those soliloquies for you. I wasn’t bad. I wasn’t. Say that.”

  “That.”

  “Why have I dated you all year?”

  “I think you keep hoping I’ll put out.”

  “C’mon,” Walt muttered and he started abruptly for the door.

  Blake caught him. “Now don’t get mad.”

  “I’m sorry, but I just don’t like that kind of talk. I must have told you at least fifty thousand times that I don’t happen to find it hilarious, so why do you keep doing it?”

  “When you get angry it proves you care. It proves you love me.”

  “Who said I loved you?”

  “You did, buddy.”

  “Will you quit with the ‘buddy’ business? I mean, we’ve all read Salinger. Most of us have managed to outgrow him.”

  “Oh, ’fess up, secretly you think you’re Holden Caulfield. Ask me where the ducks go in the winter.”

  “When did I say I loved you?”

  “Last night. In front of the dorm. At precisely eleven fifty-two P.M.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You said, ‘I love you, Blake.’ ”

  “Oh, now I remember. Sure. I was talking about William Blake, the poet. I just love William Blake’s poetry. And you thought I was talking about you? Pardon me while I chuckle.”

  She nipped his ear.

  “Hey—”

  “I told you I was hungry.”

  Walt opened the door and held it while they a
djusted their raincoats. Outside, the campus was intermittently visible through the gray afternoon drizzle. “What I’ll miss most about Oberlin is the climate,” Walt said, letting the door slam behind him. They hurried across campus toward the town. “I should have played Hamlet!” Walt shouted. “I’m an actor.”

  Blake snickered. “My own little Dame May Whitty,” she said.

  “What’s so crazy about it? I think it’s a terrific idea.” Walt banged his spoon against the tabletop for emphasis.

  “Put on our own revue? Where’ll we get the material?”

  “Write it. And what we can’t write, we’ll steal from Sid Caesar. I know about twenty sketches he and Coca’ve done that’d be great.” He leaned back in the booth, smiling. “And you know what else we’ll do? We’ll run it the same week as Hamlet. We’ll steal their audiences. Bankrupt the Dramat. Nobody casts me as Osric and gets away with it.”

  “Revues have songs, buddy.”

  “Well, you make up poems, don’t you? You play the piano, right? Aren’t you always blabbing about how creative you are? Write some songs.”

  “I have never, in my entire life, blabbed.”

  “Will you just write some songs, please? Better make them funny.”

  “Aye, aye, sir, right away, sir, funny songs coming right up. Can we get Kazan to direct, do you think?”

  “I’ll direct the show, if you don’t mind.”

  “Ho-ho-ho.”

  “Why do you always have to knock me? It so happens I am one helluva director.”

  “You’ve never directed anything in your whole life.”

  “I have too.”

  “What?”

  “Plenty of things.”

  “Name one.”

  “That’s not the point, don’t you see? The point is, I’ve always wanted to be a director. I’ve thought about it, I’ve read about it, I know I can do it.”

  “I thought you were an actor.”

  “Acting,” Walt said. “Who needs acting? As a matter of fact, if you want to know the truth, acting is a drag. It’s not creative. You can’t express yourself. All you do is spiel off something somebody else put down. But directing. That’s something. In the immortal words of Peter Lorre—”

  “If you start with your imitations, I’ll throw up all over you.”

  “You don’t like my imitations?”

  “I loathe your imitations.”

  “It so happens I do terrific imitations.”

  “It so happens you think you do terrific imitations.”

  “It so happens you are asking for a belt right in the snoot, sister.”

  “It so happens I’m out of cigarettes.” She reached across the table for Walt’s pack.

  Walt grabbed his cigarettes and put them in his pocket.

  “Could I have one of your cigarettes?”

  “Say please.”

  “Could I please have one of your cigarettes?”

  “No.”

  “Will you get me a pack?”

  “Will you give me the money?”

  “Here,” and she slapped a quarter on the table.

  “Do you love me?”

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds—”

  “Do you love me?”

  “Yes—madly.”

  “Get your own cigarettes.”

  “I have got to be part masochist. That’s the only explanation.” She pushed herself out of the booth.

  “Hey.” Walt took her hand tenderly.

  “What hey?”

  “Last night,” Walt whispered, looking in her eyes. “Last night, when I said ‘I love you, Blake,’ I wasn’t talking about William Blake.”

  She smiled at him.

  “I was talking about Francis Blake.”

  She stopped smiling. “Who the hell is Francis Blake?”

  “The Spanish Armada, fool. Fifteen eighty-eight. He saved England.”

  “That was Drake. Francis Drake.”

  “That’s what I said. Francis Blake. I have a speech impediment.”

  “Whoever told you you were funny—”

  “Yeah-yeah-yeah, a vast disservice.” He ducked as she swiped at the top of his head, starting to laugh, the laugh contracting into a smile as he watched her move down the aisle toward the cigarette machine. She moved well. About that there was no question. She wasn’t pretty, but she moved well. Why wasn’t she pretty? Walt shrugged. She had nice black hair and bright eyes and a straight nose and the mouth was fine, but she just wasn’t pretty. Not bad. Not remotely a dog. Just not pretty. Damn attractive, though. Her body was fine, slender yet full, but that wasn’t what made her attractive. Probably it was the way she moved. Walt nodded. Her movements were graceful yet, at the same time, almost awkward; her movements were sudden yet, at the same time, almost languid; her movements were ... Face it, Walt thought, she’s sexy. That’s all. She is a sexy girl. Of course, her name was terrible. Blake Simmons. How phony can you get? But she was smart as hell and sexy every inch of the way. Walt remembered Christmas vacation when she had visited him in St. Louis and how his brother Arnold had watched her when she walked. Walt had seen it, Arnold’s lust, and once, when P.T. was watching her, Walt thought momentarily that even his father had a couple of ideas of his own.

  As she reached the cigarette machine she glanced back at him and stuck out her tongue. Walt smiled. A moment later she was intently studying the selections in the machine, one eye closed. She always did that, closed one eye, her left, whenever she was faced with a decision. In the beginning he had teased her about it, but only when they were alone. That was one of the big differences between them: she had no feelings whatever about embarrassing him in public, and when she attacked she was merciless. If it developed into a fight, then fine; she loved public combat. Private brawls, too. Fighting in general was all right with her. Walt wished she were calmer, wished she could relax, but whenever he broached the subject she shut him up quick. She was good at that. Quick and flip and always alert for openings. But never, never dull.

  Blake started back down the aisle toward him. In her own way she was a good girl, as good as he was ever going to find. Bitchy, sure, and smug, at least on occasion, and spoiled, she was that, too. But just the same he was going to marry her. He had decided that morning that he was going to propose to her that evening, and it was evening now. Walt dried his hands on his gray flannels. She was a great girl, Blake Simmons, phony name or no phony name, and if he got her he was lucky, so there was no reason for his hands to start perspiring on him. No; that wasn’t totally true. There was one reason. Small, but still a reason. He was not remotely sure that he loved her. He thought he did. He hoped he did. But he was not remotely sure. And that uncertainty gave him more than pause from time to time.

  “Your name,” Walt said as she sat down, “stinks.”

  “Egbert Kirkaby don’t ring bells, buddy.”

  “You are smug, bitchy and spoiled.”

  “You’re absolutely right. I’m a typical American girl. I also hate cooking, dread having children, intend cheating on my husband and own my own diaphragm. What else do you want to know?”

  “Why do you talk like that? You don’t own one of those things.”

  “It would rock your foundations if I did, wouldn’t it, buddy? Here, gimme,” and she grabbed his open hand. “Very interesting,” she said, studying his palm. “Your name is Walt Kirkaby and you wear glasses. You’re a senior in college and getting duller every day. By the time you’re thirty you’ll think golf is the nuts, followed only slightly by gin rummy. By the time you’re forty you’ll be potbellied and you’ll talk like Casanova in the men’s locker room but you’ll still be scared green every time you drop in the hay with a female.”

  Walt tried to pull his hand away.

  Blake held tight. “And she won’t always be your wife, this female. Your second wife, I should say, because you’ll be on your second wife and your third kid by then, and your second wife won’t be any better than the first one was, because
you never wanted a woman in the first place, you wanted a servant, someone to darn—”

  “Cut it.”

  “So you’ll get divorced and marry someone absolutely totally one hundred percent different except she’ll be exactly the same only you won’t know it until it’s too late and by that time you’ll have figured out that all you really wanted all your life was to bed down with your mommy—”

  “I said cut it,” Walt began, and he was about to say more, a lot more, but when she suddenly lowered her head, eyes closed, and kissed his palm again and again he could only stare, then blink, then quickly, quickly, look away.

  At 11:31 that evening, Walt proposed. The rain had stopped and they were hurrying through the cold to Blake’s dorm, after spending several hours whispering in the library, discussing the revue. After the library came a cup of coffee in the snack bar, and following that, on the way to Harkness, Walt looked at his watch, nodded and said it.

  “Will you marry me?”

  “What’s the punch line?”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, obviously that’s a joke. I just wondered what the punch line was.”

  Walt stopped. “It so happens, bright eyes, that I meant what I said.”

  Blake kept on walking. “Why in the world should I marry you?”

  “Because,” Walt began, running after her, “because you are without question a dog and nobody else is ever going to ask you.”

  “That may well be, buddy, but you? I mean, you? I mean, have you taken a peek in the mirror lately?”

  “It so happens,” Walt shouted, hurrying alongside, “it so happens—slow down, dammit—happens that I am one helluva neat guy.”

  “Your glasses are fogging up,” Blake said.

  “Right in the kisser if you’re not careful, buddy old buddy.” He shook a fist in front of her.

  “I am literally freezing,” Blake said. “Let’s run.”