Presently the girl rolled over toward him. He could see her teeth, small and even, her long mouth, much too long for such a lank face. Suddenly she opened her eyes. She blinked, gazing at him fixedly, unwinking. Then she began to struggle to a sitting position.
“Jesus.” She shuddered, gagging. “Christ.”
“How do you feel?”
“How long have I been lying here?”
“It’s about seven-thirty.”
“That late? Help me up like a dear, won’t you?”
She got up unsteadily. Verne took her arm. She pulled her stockings up and smoothed her skirt. Then she went into the bathroom.
Verne lit another cigarette and waited.
At last she came out and picked up her shoes. She put them on, sitting at the foot of the bed.
“Do you want to take me home?” she said.
“Now?”
“Would you?”
“Sure.” He brought her the coat and purse she had left in the living room. Her hair was shaggy and disarrayed. Her clothes were messy and crumpled. When he went by her to let her into the hall he got a whiff of a sour, unhealthy odor: perspiration and urine and liquor.
They went downstairs silently and got into the car.
As they drove along the road Teddy said little. She stared out the window at the passing lights and signs, the window rolled down. Several times Verne started to speak, but gave it up and remained silent. They reached her place and he drew the car over to the curb.
Teddy pushed the door open and got out. Suddenly she stopped. “Verne, do you want to see what my apartment looks like? You’ve never seen it.”
“Not particularly,” he said slowly. “It’s late.”
“Suit yourself.” She hesitated. “It’s not so late.”
“It is for me.”
She turned and moved slowly away from the car, across the sidewalk toward the building. Verne got out. He rolled up the windows and locked the doors. Teddy stood waiting for him.
“You changed your mind?”
“Just for a few minutes.” Verne gazed off down the dark street. The houses were tall and close together, uniform in appearance and unattractive. At the bottom of a hill was the beginnings of a commercial district, a dank, ratty cluster of grocery stores, hardware stores, Italian bakeries, a boarded-up candy shop. The wind blew a newspaper along, against a gaunt telephone pole.
“Coming?” Teddy said, from the steps.
They went up to her floor. She opened her apartment door and turned on the light, walking quickly through the room. The place was in disorder. On a low table were two half-empty whiskey bottles and ashtrays spilling over with cigarette stubs. Clothes were strewn over everything, the chairs, the lamp, the bookcase, even the floor. He went slowly inside.
“I’ll change,” Teddy called, going into the bedroom. He caught a glimpse of an unmade bed, open dresser drawers, more clothes. On the wall over the bed was a big photograph, a thin nude girl, lank and bony, with little breasts like pears. He moved in to look at it. Teddy disappeared into the bathroom. “I’ll be right out.”
The picture was of her.
Verne moved back into the living room. One wall was a bright blue, a solid dark sheet. She had painted the apartment herself. On the walls were prints, Modigliani, Kandinsky, Hieronymus Bosch. A phonograph and records, jazz and chamber music. Mobiles, three of them.
He eased himself slowly onto the couch, crossing his legs. After a while Teddy came into the room and stood by the door, leaning against it, her arms folded.
“Want anything to drink?” she said.
“Nothing. I’m about to leave.” Verne got his pipe out and poured tobacco into it. He lit up silently.
“What do you think of the place?”
“It’s all right Those are nice mats.” He got up and went over to some Chinese mats, hanging down the side of the wall. From where he stood he could see into the kitchen. The sideboard was covered with dirty dishes, cups and glasses. He wandered away, hands in his pockets.
“It’s cold in here. Maybe it’s the colors.” He fingered the burlap drapes.
Teddy watched him without expression. She had put on a scarlet wrapper, fastened with a knotted cord. And slippers. She lit a cigarette and smoked, long and austere in her flamboyant silk robe. Her face was haggard; she looked more like a bird than ever, her nose like a beak, her eyes’ black and sunken. She walked toward the couch.
“I did the painting. The walls.”
“I thought you did.”
Verne sat down again, on a chair by the door. Teddy sprawled out on the couch, one foot up, waving her toes back and forth. Neither spoke.
“It’s getting late,” Teddy said finally.
Verne stood up, “I know. Well, it’s been nice.”
“You’re going?”
“I’ll see you.”
“Thanks for coming.”
He went to the door, taking hold of the knob. Teddy was still sprawled out, long and bony, her hair dark and lusterless, damp hanks against her neck.
“You look pretty washed out,” Verne said.
Teddy smiled. “Look, baby. You’ve been a dear. Now run along. I’ll see you again soon.”
He laughed. “All right.”
He went downstairs slowly, out onto the street. The air was cold and full of vitality. There was no sound at all except for a dim murmur that came from the entrance of a bar, at the foot of the hill.
He got into his car and drove away.
Don Field came stumping around to the station, when Verne was off his shift the next day. He carried a magazine under his arm; he had on dark glasses and a sports shirt.
“Greetings,” Verne said, as they walked away from the station building, toward his car. “How goes it?”
“Medium. You?”
“All right.” Verne got into the car. Don stood outside. “Do you want a ride?”
Don thought for a moment. He got slowly inside. “Okay,” he said resignedly.
They drove along with the other cars, going home from work. “Nice evening,” Verne said.
“Uh-huh.” There was a long silence. At last Don cleared his throat. “What did you think of Teddy?”
“Seemed intelligent.”
“Uh-huh.”
Verne looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason. I’m getting kind of tired of having her around. They’re all the same, after a while.”
“Going to let her go, eh?” He thought, You great arrogant gargoyle!
“Well, of course, I hate to give up a good thing. But I have been toying with the idea.” He fooled with the cover of the magazine he was carrying. “It costs money.”
“Well, do what you want. You’re old enough now.”
“You going to eat at home?”
“Why?”
“Just wondering. I thought maybe I’d stop down at Jamison’s for a French dinner.”
“That’s nice.”
“You don’t want to come along?”
“No thanks.” He added: “But I’ll be glad to drive you there and let you off.”
He let Don off in front of the restaurant and then went on. After a few minutes driving he found himself in his own neighborhood. He drew up in front of his apartment building and turned the motor off. Sitting in the car he lit his pipe and began to smoke.
He did not want to go upstairs just yet. It was still early; not even seven. He had come off work and driven Don to the restaurant, and that was all. Now he was in front of his own building. In a moment he would go upstairs, enter the apartment, take off his hat and coat, and begin preparing himself something to eat.
And after that?
Outside the car a few people hurried along in the semi-darkness. Dark, similar lumps that moved quickly past his car and out of sight. One shape turned in at a doorway. A flash of warm yellow light revealed a middle-aged woman with an armload of groceries. For a moment she stood framed in the light. Verne saw
into a living room. A man sitting in a deep chair with a newspaper. A boy playing on the rug. He could almost smell the warm air that drifted out, to be dissipated by the cold night.
He thought about it. He and his brother had sat on the rug like that, playing. Sometimes they went into the piano room and played duets together until dinner was ready. In the early evening, with the sun just down and the sky still brighter than the earth, in the warm piano room filled up by the massive old piano, with the stacks of music tossed everywhere, he and his brother played silly things by Grieg and MacDowell and Cui. Suddenly there would be their mother, filling up the doorway with her bulk, telling them dinner was on the table.
More people hurried past. Some newspapers blown by the wind rolled by in a heap and swept up against a mail box. Were there drops of rain beginning to show on the pavement? At the corner, the Italian who owned the little grocery came out with a bent metal rod and began to roll up his awning, slowly, with great elaborate turns.
Verne put out his pipe and switched the motor back on. He drove down the street and around the corner. He drove aimlessly, not paying any particular attention to the houses and cars that filled up the darkness.
When he saw a neon sign Club Twenty-One he pulled over to the curb and stopped. He rolled up his windows and got out. The night air was cold; a mist pressed against him, carried by the wind. He slammed the car door and walked across the sidewalk to the club, pushing the heavy plush doors open with his shoulder.
In the dim light he saw a long row of glasses and black onyx, and tall red columns of distorted light, wavery and subtle, that surrounded the mirror behind the bar. The rows of half-transparent glasses broke up the red light; it seemed as if the light came from inside each glass. The light slithered around the bar, appearing everywhere, mixing with the green coming from a Gold Glow neon sign in the window. On the left, in deep chairs around a table, three men and a woman were sitting. Their table was a litter of bottles and cigarette stubs. The other tables were vacant.
Verne walked over to the bar and sat down. The bartender put down his rag and turned toward him.
“Scotch and water. No ice.”
The bartender nodded and went away. Verne sat, hearing the thud of the counters at the shuffleboard table at the back. A little way down the bar two men were talking loudly.
“So if this god damn nag could have got in—”
“Listen! I told you if a horse could get its ass over the wire long enough—”
“Will you let me finish? I want to say—”
“I thought you were finished.”
“I wasn’t. You know I wasn’t. Don’t shit me.”
“Sixty-five cents, mister,” the bartender said. He put a small glass on the bar in front of Verne. Verne took a dollar bill and gave it to the bartender.
He drank the liquor slowly. As he drank he stared into the thousands of rows of bottles behind the bar. They were dully lit by the same red light, now more intense as it issued past the bottles, coming from behind them and around them, spreading out in a wave of motion.
It had become quiet. The two men stopped talking and put their coats on. They passed Verne, walking out through the heavy doors and disappearing beyond. The man playing shuffleboard gave up and came over to the bar to sit down. In the dim light his face was a dark shadow. He sat with his chin in his hands, not moving or looking to either side. Verne looked past him and saw other men sitting, gazing ahead of them, silent, lost in thought.
His mind began to wander. He thought about how he used to practice the oboe. He would sit in his room, holding the strange, cold instrument, blowing into it hour after hour. In the corner the radio played softly.
He could remember many details of his room in the family house. How long ago it was. He had owned a little table-top phonograph and some cheap records, part of a newspaper offer. The Dvorak New World Symphony. The Beethoven Fifth. Some Strauss waltzes. He played the records until they began to turn white. He used cactus needles because when they got dull he could sharpen them, again and again.
He had a paper route. He used his mother’s charge account at a department store to buy Heinrick van Loon’s History of the World and Diseases of the Mind by Professor Benjamin Stoddard. At the end of the month he had scarcely any money left over, once he paid her back. He had owned a mimeograph machine. He put out a little newspaper that he sold to the neighbors for three cents.
In the silence of the bar a man coughed. He moved on Ms stool. There were no other noises. The men sat looking straight ahead of them, at the rows of glasses, at the red light that ran up and around the massive mirror. Their reflections gazed back, dim, hunched, unmoving. The minutes passed, and no one moved. Slowly, an uncomfortable tension built up around them. A sharp, painful pressure.
Suddenly the bartender came to life. He walked along the wood planking to the other end of the bar. The doors opened and a man and woman came in front the street, laughing and breathing loudly. They sat down at a table.
Verne finished his drink and pulled his coat around him. He got up and walked outside onto the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets. The air was cold. The street was deserted. There was no one in sight.
He got in his car and drove back slowly to his apartment. He felt listless and dull. Did he want to go home? But if he did not, where should he go instead? He parked the car and got out. He walked up the stairs, his shoes making no sound in the dull grey carpet. The hall was deserted. At the far end a deep red light glowed.
FIRE EXIT
Above him a small globe sunk in the plaster of the ceiling shed enough illumination for him to find his key. He pushed the key into the lock and opened the door.
Looking into the dark apartment, grey and still in the dim light, he felt a cold and unhappy chill move up and settle in his heart. Suddenly his jaws opened. His head began to shake. He caught himself against the door and held on tight, his teeth chattering and his eyes wide. The fit moved quickly through him and was gone.
He breathed a shaky sigh of relief, running his fingers through his hair. Had it been tiredness? Cold? He did not know. He turned around and went out of the apartment, pulling the door shut behind him.
It did not take him long to find Teddy’s place. He remembered the bar on the corner, and the tall, unpainted signboard that was across the street. He parked his car and got out. Looking up toward her window he could see no sign of light. He moved a little way down the sidewalk, but still he could make out nothing. Nevertheless, he knew she was inside. How did he know? He did not bother to wonder. He made sure the doors to his car were locked and then going up the short flight of steps, he rang the girl’s door buzzer.
The door clicked. He pushed it open and went inside. He had expected her to come out in the hall, but above him her door remained shut. He climbed the stairs and stood for a moment outside her door, his hand raised to knock. A crack of brilliance showed under the door, and muffled and far away he could hear voices.
At last he knocked. The voices stopped. He felt sweat rise to the surface of his hands and forehead. There was the sound of someone moving around, and in a moment the door was pulled violently open. Teddy, in a white shirt and women’s jeans, stared at him in amazement.
“Really, this is too much!” Behind her several women were sitting around the living room. The phonograph was on loud, some deep New Orleans blues.
“May I come in?”
“Darling, please do.”
He followed her inside. Three women, in men’s pants and shirts, looked calmly up at him.
“Verne, this is Bobby, and Bert, and Terry.”
They nodded, without speaking.
Verne turned to Teddy. “I just thought I’d drop by. Maybe I better come back later. I don’t want—”
“Give me your coat.” She walked into the bedroom; he followed.
“We can talk some other time,” Verne said.
“These are just girls from the building. You’re not breaking anything up.” She hung up h
is coat. “They won’t stay long.”
“I don’t want to—”
“Don’t worry.” She took his arm as they went back, leading him. Her fingers were hard and strong. When they entered the living room they found the three women on their feet, standing near the door to the hall.
“We have to go. We’ll be back.” They opened the door. “Glad to have met you, mister.”
“Don’t leave on my account,” Verne murmured. They closed the door behind them. “I’m sorry I drove them out.”
“That’s all right.” Teddy began picking up the glasses around the room. “What do you want to drink? How would some John Jamison go?”
“John Jamison would go fine.” He sat down on the couch. The phonograph was still playing blues. He recognized Bessie Smith’s harsh, deep voice. He leaned back, his head against the couch. The room was warm, and smelled of women. Presently Teddy returned with two glasses. She put one by him and sat down on the floor, by the phonograph.
“Thanks,” Verne said, lifting the glass. The glass was cool and moist. He swallowed, shutting his eyes. The liquor scorched his throat and lungs; it was incredibly alive. If there were ever a water of life, this was it.
He sighed.
“How is it?”
“Fine.” Presently he said: “Were you surprised to see me?”
“No. Not very. You didn’t have any trouble finding the place, did you?”
“I found it all right.” He looked around the room. It had been cleaned up. The clothes and bottles were gone. The ashtrays had been emptied. “Your room looks better, this time.”
“You didn’t think much of it before.”
Verne smiled crookedly. “I didn’t think much of anything that evening.”
“Don’t think I’m going to apologize.”
“Forget it.” They were silent, listening to the music. Presently the records came to an end.
“What do you want to hear now? Anything?”
Verne set his drink down and went over to the record cabinet. Squatting down on his haunches he examined the backs of the albums, turning his head on an angle.
“How about the Bach Flute and Strings?” He drew out the album. “I haven’t heard that in a long time.”
Gather Yourselves Together Page 6
