He looked around the room that swelled with chatter and young, straining laughter. He watched the slack-postured girls standing as one, right arm crotched against their hips, cigarette held loosely in between two Churchillian fingers. He watched clean-shaven young men in widespread collars and immaculate suits draining their small minds in attempts to be amusing. And he thought of the fraternity where Lynn had lived the first two years of college. And thought that all those young men had added to themselves nothing but years. And no glory but only increasing dandruff had been heaped on their futile shoulders.
“New Year’s Eve!” Marie lisped to him once, pogoing past with a cigarette and drink, “Be gay!”
He watched her pound off into the crowd and thought at length of getting her cornered in the bedroom and tearing off her clothes, raping her and beating her skull in with a hammer.
“Charming party,” he said. “Perfectly charming.”
* * * *
It was close to midnight.
“I will retire to the white house,” Lynn said.
“I gotta fix my face,” Marie said.
“Really an insuperable task,” Lynn said.
“Ha ha,” said Marie.
“Goodbye,” Erick said.
He watched them move away and, for a second, as Lynn’s back receded, he thought of the past moving away. He remembered the months prior to graduation when the sense of time fleeting was so strong on him.
Then he saw the girl by the window. She was standing alone before the great picture window that overlooked a glittering celebrant called New York.
He felt a sudden tugging at his stomach walls and got up abruptly, impulsively. His first inclination was to get his coat and leave fast. But he couldn’t.
There was a good deal of noise and she didn’t hear him. He stood behind her a moment and looked at her silky hair. She stood very still, an unheeded cigarette hanging down at her right side, a half filled glass sticking out of her hand like a sweat-covered growth.
“Are you the light in the window?” he asked.
She started a little and he saw the liquor splash up the walls of the glass without spilling. She turned quickly to look at him. Her breath caught, a smile started.
“Well,” she said. She shook her head once. “I didn’t see you.”
“Gazing out at the gaudy bugheap?” he asked, feeling himself grow tighter and tighter. She was like a ghost, he thought, a scrap of past suddenly jolted into the present, thoroughly out of place, making him ill.
“Bugheap, Erick?” she said.
He made a noise. She was looking into his face. As if trying to find something. She looked into his eyes and then up at his blonde hair. Her lips twitched a moment as if they were undecided whether or not to smile and be done with it.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I’m … alive,” he said.
He saw her temples move, saw the lips draw back a little from her teeth. “It’s quite a surprise. Really,” she said.
He tried to smile. “Yes, isn’t it?”
My God, where is she? How is she? screamed his mind.
“Got your wife with you?” she asked, her smile a trifle labored.
“What?”
Something crossed her eyes. He didn’t know what it was. Maybe pain. Something that etched a thought on her face, a thought that said—Everyone is married. And he knew she wasn’t.
“You’re married aren’t you?” she asked.
“No, of course I’m not married,” he said, “What the hell gave you that idea?”
She blinked. “I don’t know,” she said, smiling awkwardly, “For … for some reason I thought you were.”
“Why did you ask?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “Maybe I don’t want any raging wives clawing out my eyes,” she said lightly. Erick got the fleeting impression that there had been many raging wives in the past who had wanted to claw out this young lady’s eyes. It suddenly made him want to touch her. He didn’t know why. She had never attracted him except in spurts of impulse. Then he realized that he wanted to touch her because she was suddenly the past to him and he wanted to grab hold of past and pull himself back. To …
“Heard from Sally?” he blurted out, unable to bear idle conversation any longer when the question was eating his brain out.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said lightly, “She got married last month.”
He almost dropped his glass. He heard the words as though they were the last in his lifetime and now he was going to become completely deaf.
“Oh,” he said, “That’s nice.”
“She said if I ever ran across you to give you her regards.”
Leo smiled.
“Regards,” she said.
* * * *
He was drunk. He felt a driving need to get drunker and drunker. He wanted to destroy his brain with liquor, numb it, drown it. he was sitting next to her, his arms around her. The room spun around him and he kept getting the impulse to stand up and leap out the window.
“Who are you?” she asked, half drunk too.
“I’m Erick Linstrom, ma’am,” he said, trying to forget everything, “I represent the poor huddled masses.”
“Me too,” she said.
“Me too,” he said.
“What else do you do?” she asked, “Beside represent the poor hulled masses?”
“I write prose and procure flesh.”
“Save next weekend for me,” she said. He wanted to punch her right in the nose and break it.
“Sure,” he said, “I’ll save them all for you.”
Her hand was on his leg. “Good,” she breathed. Get your filthy hand off me!
“And you are …?” he asked.
“Leo Peck,” she said.
“I never knew a Leo,” he said, “who was a girl. Is a girl. And you’re a … what?”
“I am procured flesh on weekends.”
“Oh.” He took a long drink. I’m going to die, he thought, that’s all. I’m just going to die.
“I’m really a poor but honest working gal,” she said. The phrase smacked tritely in his ears. You have no sense of the cliché, he thought, but let it pass, may I tear off your underwear?
“You’re still writing, haah?”
“Still writing haah.”
“Stories?”
“Stories.”
“What kind?”
“Unsaleable.”
“Modest. You’re a modest boy and I love you.” She suddenly kissed him.
He wanted to spit on her.
“Remember the Alamo to keep it holy,” he slurred.
She drew back with a drunken smile. “I’m Leo,” she said, “I’m with you and I can be had.”
He felt a small involuntary jolt in his stomach. Think I’ll throw up in her face, he thought.
“You sold stories,” she asked, as if she had seen something on his face.
“One story. One magazine. One nation invisible with … horse manure.”
“Which magazine?”
“The Undertaker’s Gazette.”
“Tha’s nice. Tha’s awful nice,” she said. She was close again. He could smell the liquor on her breath. He noticed Marie getting necked on another couch. It wasn’t Lynn. As Leo leaned against him Erick watched Marie’s body writhing and saw how wide open she had her little red mouth.
“Like a bird waiting for a worm,” he said.
“Who’s what?” Leo asked.
He dropped his mouth on hers suddenly and dug his fingers into her back. Her breath caught and it seemed as if she had turned to shaking stone. Her nails raked over his arms, one hand clamped behind his head, and her tongue slipped like an attacking snake into his mouth. She seemed to drive her body against his. It took his breath away. He felt as if he were going to cry, suddenly thinking of Sally. He opened his eyes abruptly as he got the brief sensation that he was back in Sally’s house kissing Leo and Sally was just about to come in the room and find them like that. He drew back
so fast that Leo didn’t have a chance to close her mouth. She looked as if she were gasping for air. Her eyes were thickened, animal-like, her mouth twitched.
Then she seemed to tighten too. Her face grew hard as she reached for her drink. And he saw that she too held some fashion of jealous guard over herself, afraid, like him, to reveal the true self. He had seen hints of it at school but he had never really looked.
She glanced at him coldly and he saw that her eyes were brown like Sally’s. But not soft like Sally’s. His throat contracted and he pretended he was distracted by a sound on the other side of the room. He turned in that direction a moment, just in time to see Lynn lowering his head. It made him angry to think that Lynn was watching him. For a second the world and everything in it made him angry and he wanted to leave.
“What have you been doing since you left school?” he said, not recognizing his own voice.
“Working,” she said. She drank more. He accidentally brushed his hand over her shoulder and she stiffened.
“Working where?”
“In an agency,” she said.
He noticed her thin face, her sharply cut features, so different from Sally’s full face. He noticed her narrow but firmly resolute shoulders, the way she held them. He glanced at the black dress cut deeply at the bodice as if she had reasoned that a young business woman at a New Year’s Eve party must be sexy and she had made the concession without considering that sexiness meant more than dress. But the firm arching of her breasts helped the illusion. And her white wrists and slender hands helped a little, half hinting that she was some frail creature who could be expected to be a raging temptress in the sanctity of one’s bedroom.
“Excuse me,” she said. And she went across the room quickly and down the hall. He sat there alone, staring at the rug. She hates me, he thought, and who the hell cares?
* * * *
“Happee New Year!” howled a young, very drunk man and an equally drunk Leo pushed against him with a silly smile, sliding her arms around his neck.
“I like you,” she said, gritting her teeth.
Her mouth settled like wet wings over his and he held her tightly. A horn blew. Everyone screamed and clapped their hands and slid forward, open mouthed, to lock lips with the nearest convenient member of the opposite sex. And the year exited in sudden, slurping silence.
“Happy new year, baby,” she muttered in his ear and the name made him twitch.
“Happy new year,” he said tensely and buried his face in her hair. Without hesitation he cupped one hand over her right breast and drew in the fingers. She trembled violently and pushed it harder into him. First sign, he thought calmly. Thoroughly vindicated by the way her breath spurted out hotly and her fingers opened and closed like the jaws of a trap on him. Trap me, the thought, destroy me. I want it.
* * * *
Her hotel was two blocks from his room and close to the party. He was sober enough to be glad of that, to feel grateful they could walk from the party and he wouldn’t have to pay a cab.
And he was sober enough to be conscious of how shabby his overcoat was as they started from the apartment. He wished he could just wear his dark suit which she told him she liked and had always liked since she saw him in it at college.
“I had a crush on you,” she said, leaning against him as they moved for the door, “You know that?”
“No,” he said.
“Oooh, I used to wanna jump ya when big Sal went out of the room,” she said thickly.
Don’t talk about her like that, you drunken slut! his mind exploded. He didn’t change expression. He smiled at her. They went out into the hall and he didn’t care if he ever saw her again.
“Are your parents alive?” Leo asked.
“No,” he said.
She held onto his arm.
“We’re both orphans,” she said. And it sounded so plaintive to him that now he was back with her.
It was past four. The party was still dwindling on in dark corners where moans and rustles of opening dresses could be heard. Lynn had gone long before leaving a half-stripped Marie on the couch with a married executive whose wife was presenting impromptu bounties in the bedroom. Erick felt almost a cleansing to come out into the sharp biting air of the street. It cleared up the fuzziness in his head, leaving only the slight dizziness, the tilted gyroscope that made walking seem more pleasant and easy.
They walked along, listening to their shoes clicking on the cold sidewalk, walking under the greyish morning sky and, crossing the main arteries, looking down toward the Battery to see the light coming from the East.
Her arm was hooked in his. The front of her fur coat was open and she breathed deeply as she walked. He said once “You’ll catch cold, Leo.”
“I don’t give a damn,” she said almost exultantly. And it made him clutch her arm tighter for an instant and he opened his own coat. As they walked along steadily he felt the icy air creep through his suit and chill his body.
“I love it like this,” she said, “This is the time to live. When everybody else is asleep. When the city is all yours.”
“The city is no one’s,” he said.
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“I suppose,” he said. “It does have a certain dignity in the morning. The haggling and the carping are done with. It washes out its scaly hair and composes its filthy limbs and waits in supine drabness for the coming day.”
“You’re a writer,” she said, “You’re bitter too.”
“Yes,” he said, “I’m both of those.”
She slid her hand into his and her strong fingers knitted with his. “You’re gonna do a lot of things,” she said and he wasn’t sure what she meant but he accepted it as praise.
They kept walking, silent for a while now. He hardly felt the cold. He kept looking at her, trying to see if she did look like Sally as she sometimes appeared to.
She looked very pretty with her cheeks so red from the cold, ringlets of her darkish blonde hair hanging around her face, framing it. When she smiled, it revealed her small, even teeth, very white.
In the lobby of her hotel, they stood face to face. He was almost sober by then. The cold in his body was beginning to make him shiver fitfully. He wasn’t going to kiss there with the desk man observing them in sleepy detachment, the door porter leaning against the wall.
She took his hand. “Good night Erick,” she said, “It was swell running into you again. Thanks a lot for taking me home.” She seemed suddenly remote, as though everything that went before had been forgotten.
“You’re welcome,” he said.
They stood in awkward silence a moment. Then he blurted out without the slightest desire to blurt out — “May I call you?”
She smiled pleasantly, antiseptically, he imagined, “Sure,” she said, “I’d like you to.”
“Okay,” he said.
There was a brief verbal scuffle while they straightened out the fact that if he forgot the number she gave him he could easily find it in the directory.
Then she squeezed his hand and her eyes were warm a moment. Then she walked into the elevator which yawned conveniently.
He walked back to his room, shivering, coat buttoned up to the neck, his feet getting numb.
What did I ask her if I could call her for? he wondered. Who wants to call her? I don’t want to have anything to do with her, the bitch. Just because she reminds me of Sally, should I …
Sally married.
Suddenly he realized that he’d been thinking of it all night without admitting it.
Back in his room, lying on the hard bed, he felt his chest tightening and he coughed hollowly and thought about Sally. He thought of Leo once. Of the fact that he’d never call her up. That was certain.
* * * *
And he wouldn’t have. It was just one of those rare circumstances which seemed to fall under the sole category of fate.
Lynn had known a girl at college named Virginia Greene. Erick had known her slightly. This
girl had got a job with a woman travelogue producer after she graduated from college, and, since graduation, had been buzzing around the world making pictures with the woman, Adelaide Cross.
Now they were ready for the new year’s season of touring the country. And their first engagement happened to be in New York City. So, Ginny, remembering Lynn with some affection, got in touch with him and sent him four complimentary tickets to the performance—Mexican Magic.
Lynn first suggested just the two of them going and meeting Virginia after the performance. Then Marie found out and insisted on going. So, reluctantly, Lynn told Erick to get himself a date. Since Leo was the only woman in the city Erick knew, he called her. She said she was glad he called and would be glad to attend the travelogue with him and Lynn and Marie. So it was arranged.
* * * *
“Hi,” she said over the house phone, “Why don’t you go in the bar and order us a couple of sidecars.”
“What?” He frowned. “Oh. All right.”
“I’ll be right down.”
He moved into the dim bar that smelled of leather and liquor and smoke. He slid into a booth. He took out his wallet and looked at the three dollars in it. He hissed in displeasure. She must have known he had just about no money.
“Two sidecars,” he ordered irritably, almost asking, “How much are they?”
As the drinks were brought to the table he thought he might have told her his stomach was upset and only ordered one drink for her. He sat there fingering the stem of the thin glass in front of him, staring moodily at the table.
Money, he thought, goddamn its endless power. He took a sip of the sharp tasting drink. Then he looked up to see if the girl who came into the bar was Leo. It wasn’t.
Leo came down twenty minutes later. By that time Erick was planning to get up and walk out on her. His body was tight with anger.
She slid in across from him. “Mmmm,” She said, picking up the glass, “Sidecar.”
“We have to meet them soon,” he said coldly.
“Sorry I’m late.” She tossed it off.