Boys and Girls Together: A Novel

  “Who is it?” somebody called from the floor above.

  “Mort, it’s me, Branch Scudder, hi.” He walked up to the next landing. Mort Blandings stood in the doorway to his apartment, his necktie in his hand. “Are we early?”

  “No-no.” Mort Blandings made a smile. “Come on in.” He was a big man with a kind face, a kind smile. “How do you do,” he said to Aaron.

  “Mort, for crissakes, how the hell are ya?” Aaron replied.

  “Pardon?” Mort said.

  “Mort, this is a friend of mine. Aaron Fire, meet Mort Blandings.”

  “I understand you and Branch are going to co-produce some play,” Aaron said.

  “Pardon?” Mort said.

  “Aaron,” Branch said. “Aaron’s a novelist, Mort. You know how novelists are.”

  “We’re pretty novel,” Aaron said.

  Branch looked around. “What a terrific apartment you’ve got.”

  “Thanks,” Mort said.

  “It’s incredible what you can do with a cold-water flat,” Aaron said.

  Mort laughed, but not really. “Would you like a drink?” he said, guiding them over to a table set up as a bar.

  “What are you pushing?” Branch wanted to know.

  “Very spicy vodka fruit punch,” Mort said. “Specialty of the house.”

  “Branch, are you lucky,” Aaron said. “That’s his favorite thing in all the world, Mort. Very spicy vodka fruit punch.”

  “Are you putting me on?” Mort wanted to know.

  “I crave it, I crave it!” Branch burst out. “I honestly do.”

  “What else have you got?” Aaron asked as Mort filled a cup with pale reddish liquid.

  “There’ll be some hors d’oeuvres in a while.”

  “You mean if you don’t like very spicy vodka fruit punch you’re sort of out in the cold, is that it?”

  “That’s it,” Mort nodded.

  “I’ll wait a while,” Aaron said. He started backing away. “You two must have a lot to talk about.” Turning, he found his way to the kitchen, where an elderly Negro in a butler’s coat was making hors d’oeuvres. “Mr. Blandings needs some more vodka to spice up the spicy fruit punch. He sent me for a bottle.”

  “In the liquor cabinet,” the butler said, gesturing.

  Aaron followed the gesture, found the liquor. Skipping past the vodka and several bottles of bourbon, he reached into the farthest corner of the cabinet and brought out a bottle. It was twelve-year-old Ambassador Scotch. “Thanks,” Aaron said.

  “Welcome.”

  Branch and Blandings were talking in a corner of the living room when Aaron returned and set the Scotch bottle down on the bar next to the spicy punch. Downstairs, someone pushed the buzzer. Blandings started for the door. “Mind if I help myself to the Scotch?” Aaron called.

  “Go right—Scotch?”

  “Ambassador.” Aaron nodded, pouring himself a drink.

  Mort Blandings started toward Aaron, but then the buzzer sounded again, so he stopped, turning toward the sound. He looked back and forth, back and forth. Then he said, “Branch, let them in,” and hurried to the bar, grabbing the Ambassador bottle.

  “It was right next to the punch bowl,” Aaron said. “We must have overlooked it.”

  “Sure we did,” Mort Blandings said.

  “Let me make you a proposition,” Aaron said. Branch opened the apartment door. Voices on the stairs. “If you hide that bottle, I’ll tell everybody what I’m drinking. If I hide it, the word is mum.”

  “Mort,” several people called from the doorway.

  “Oh boy,” Mort Blandings said. Then: “Hide it, quick, hide it,” and he shoved the bottle into Aaron’s hand.

  With a courtly bow, Aaron turned and headed for the bedroom. Settling himself in a comfortable chair, he tucked the bottle under his coat and began to drink. Branch came in a few minutes later and they talked a while and the number of buzzes grew and Aaron could hear the babble from the next room. By 6:15 he guessed that probably fifty people were congregated in the next room and by half past a dozen or more had spilled into the bedroom, where he sat happily, drinking the twelve-year-old Scotch, smiling at all the people. Branch came and went. Aaron sat still. He got involved in a few conversations, but not for long. The smoke in the bedroom grew thick, and by now he guessed that at least a hundred people were clogging the apartment and several were sitting on the arms of his chair, making it very hard for him to drink, let alone pour. At a quarter of seven Aaron decided that enough was enough, so he got up from his chair and began searching for the bathroom, his plan being to lock the door and get in the tub and drink in privacy. He left the bedroom and pushed his way into the living room, looking through the smoke for Branch because it was important Branch know he would be in the bathtub in case Branch ever decided to leave. The room was wildly stuffed with people and from somewhere there was the sound of recorded music and a few couples were trying to dance and Aaron was having a terrible time finding Branch but he kept on looking around and around and the next thing he knew the bottle of Scotch had crashed to the floor and the next thing he knew after that was that two people were pointing at him and laughing, saying, “Get him. September Morn,” and Aaron recognized the validity of their joke, because he was standing like that, but he couldn’t help it and even though the joke was funny he couldn’t laugh either, because what had happened to him was that he had realized that there were only men at the party, and it was very hard for him to feel merry after that, so he stood there, just stood there, trying to duck his face whenever anyone pushed him or shoved him and it was only when Branch wandered by that Aaron moved.

  “What is it?” Branch said. “You’re hurting, Aaron, let go, what is it?”

  Aaron whispered, “There are no women at this party.”

  “So?”

  “You don’t understand. There aren’t any women here.”

  “What kind of a game are you playing now?”

  “Branch—”

  “I’m really a little tired of this, Aaron, you and your games. Acting the way you did when we came in. Stealing the Scotch.”

  “There aren’t any women here, Branch. It’s a fairy party. He invited you to a fairy party. How could he humiliate you like that? I’ll kill him. I’ll kill that son of a bitch.”

  “Behave.”

  “I’m just trying—Branch? Branch?”

  “Let go!”

  “You didn’t know ... it was going to be like this ... tell me you didn’t.”

  “Of course I knew, now—”

  “How could you do this to me?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?”

  “Lower your voice.”

  “Humiliate me. Humiliate me. Let all these—these creatures know, let these things know ... what ... I am ... what I am is my business. My secret.”

  Branch dropped his voice. “Doesn’t it bother you at all that everybody’s looking at you?”

  “Bother me? Bother me? It kills me!” And he pushed away from Branch, turning blindly toward the door, shoving, fighting his way through the crowd of male bodies. Or at least he began that way, but by the time he had crossed to the middle of the room the male bodies were aware, and they fell back, away from his flailing arms, so Aaron moved faster, half running, running down the sudden aisle, running to the door, to the stairs, to the street, to the night.

  His legs hurt. High up, in the hip area, they ached, forcing him to slow down. Aaron shook his head. He walked along 47th Street shaking his head over and over and over. At the corner he screamed, “I’m better than that!” while he waited for the light to change.

  After that, he began to nod.

  When he entered the hotel lobby he was a bit surprised, but when he saw it was the Biltmore everything seemed to make a kind of sense, or, as he hurried toward the clock, at least he hoped it did. The inevitable girl was sitting and waiting and Aaron saluted her. “Inevitable girl, good evening.”
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  She glanced at him from the bench.

  “This is not,” Aaron went on, “a pickup.”

  She looked him up and down. “I’ll say it isn’t.”

  “My name is Aaron.”

  “Change it.”

  Aaron sat down beside her. “Do you mind if I sit down beside you?”

  She didn’t answer. But she didn’t move away.

  “You’re really kinda brave, aren’t you?” Aaron said.

  “Brave? Are you kidding? What’re ya gonna do, attack me under the clock at the Biltmore? C’monnnnn.”

  “City College?” Aaron asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m an unconventional Barnard girl.”

  “This is your lucky day, unconventional Barnard girl; did you know that?”

  “No. How drunk are you?”

  “Oh, I’m quite drunk. Do you know why this is your lucky day?”

  “I feel it only fair to tell you that my boyfriend is fantastically jealous. Of course, he’s sort of small, but capable of frenzies, nonetheless. Why is it my lucky day?”

  “Because—what’s your name?”

  “Judy—but I’m not at all like that.”

  “I can tell, because—how jealous would he be if I bought you a drink?”

  “He’s a Marvin and you know how jealous they can get.”

  “A Marvin,” Aaron said. Then: “What the hell—I’ll risk it.”

  “You’re sure this isn’t a pickup?”

  They moved under the clock toward the tables and sat down. As the waiter approached, Aaron turned to the girl and said, “I know all about you—you’re nineteen and you’re beyond bourbon and ginger ale but not up to Scotch and soda. You’re at the whisky-sour stage.”

  “I’m not nineteen till next month. Otherwise you’re impeccable.”

  “Scotch on the rocks, please, and a whisky sour.” The waiter nodded and went away. “Because for the first and perhaps last time in your little life, Judy-who-isn’t-at-all-like-that, you have a chance to help someone.”

  “You just lost me.”

  “Your lucky day. That’s why.”

  “Aw, I thought meeting you was what made it lucky, Spoiler.”

  “Look at me and tell me what you see.”

  “Well ...” She squinted at him a moment. “It’s this way, Aaron: you’re too old for a boyfriend and too young for a father figure.”

  “No! Tall, right? And thin. Emaciated, almost. But human. Not odd—nothing bizarre or grotesque—a human.”

  “What happened? Did you just break up with your girl, is that it?”

  “I belong—Aaron belongs—to the race—”

  “Y’know, I’m getting just a little bit afraid—”

  “Someone has got to say that Aaron belongs—an unbiased being. Do you know the word freak? Do you know what freak means? A freak is an abnormal person, plant or thing and—”

  “Judging from the weight of the evidence thus far presented it is the opinion of this tribunal that Aaron is not an abnormal person, plant or thing. There. Dismissed. Are you always like this? I like you, why is that? Do you like me? My father thinks I’m beautiful.”

  “Your father is a man of taste.”

  “Except I’m not beautiful. Bad nose. Little squinty eyes. I hope Marvin gets lost on the subway.”

  “I hope Marvin has an endless happy life on the subway,” Aaron said, and when the waiter came, they drank to it: “To Marvin’s eternal underground bliss,” Aaron toasted and Judy touched his glass with hers, and for just a moment he was tempted to take her hand.

  “Live,” Judy said.

  Aaron took her hand.

  “Are you embarrassed now? You look embarrassed now.”

  “No,” Aaron said. “Yes,” Aaron said. “I don’t know,” Aaron said. “But I’m sure as hell cheerful.”

  “I have that effect on people. Tell me more.”

  “If I had the money I’d hire you. Keep you around. For the freak days. You could banish them, you know that? Make them fly. You could—” Aaron held his breath.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why did you stop?”

  “No reason.” But there was, because over in the far corner a man was sitting, a lone man, and for just a moment he looked at Aaron, and Aaron saw the look and he saw what it meant. The man in the corner knew; you could fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you couldn’t fool the man in the corner. So Aaron said it again, just before he paid for the drinks, just before he kissed the girl on the cheek, just before he fled back into the obliterating night:

  “No reason.”

  Branch stayed at the party until it was over. Then he and Mort Blandings and two others went out for Chinese food. Branch had eaten Chinese food the night before and he certainly did not want it again. But he also didn’t want to be alone. And he was afraid to return to his apartment. Afraid what Aaron might say.

  Or do.

  So he dawdled over dinner, and when it was finally done he convinced the others that a drink was in order, on him, of course, and when they agreed he led them to a lively Third Avenue bar where they all had a terrible time till after midnight. Then everybody went home.

  When Branch reached the front door of his apartment he paused. Slowly he reached into a pocket for the key, took it out, aimed it toward the lock. He experienced a bit of difficulty inserting it, because his hand was trembling, and that made him angry. “Nobody pushes me around,” Branch muttered, and he threw the door open and slammed it behind him.

  Aaron was sitting in the living room. Quiet. Smiling.

  “I hope you know you made a spectacle of yourself,” Branch began.

  Aaron sat quietly. Smiling.

  “Ass would be a better word. You made an ass of yourself. I mean it. You know why I’m so late? Because I had to apologize to half the civilized world about you and the assy way you behaved. I’ve never seen anything like it. When you left it was like some leper. You should have seen the way everyone was looking at you. And if you think it was fun for me to explain that I was the one who brought you, well, you’re crazy. I’d like an apology, Aaron.” Branch waited.

  Quietly, Aaron smiled.

  “I want an apology. Right now. Say something.”

  “Nineteen,” Aaron said.

  “Oh my, get him.” Branch began to pace. “Off on one of his silly damn games. Well, I’m on to you, Aaron. I’m supposed to ask what nineteen means and then you’ll tell me and it’ll turn out that it’s some way of insulting me, right? Well, tough. I don’t care what nineteen means, so you can say nineteen all you please, it doesn’t bother me.”

  “Twenty,” Aaron said.

  “I want an apology! I’m ashamed of you. You’re just not adult enough to go into civilized society. Everything’s such a game with you. You’re one of the biggest babies. Stealing the Scotch like that. You’re just not old enough to play with the big boys.”

  “Twenty-one,” Aaron said.

  “I can see there’s just no point in trying to deal with you rationally. Good night, Aaron.”

  “Twenty-two,” Aaron said.

  Branch turned and went to the bedroom. He took off his jacket and hung it carefully in the closet. Then he took off his tie. He slipped off his trousers, unbuttoned his shirt. Then he crept to the doorway and held his breath. The apartment was completely quiet. No sound.

  “Twenty-four.”

  Branch whirled and hurried to the bathroom. He washed his face and brushed his teeth and put on his pajamas. After that he left the bathroom and turned out the light in the bedroom and slipped under the covers.

  “Twenty-eight.”

  Branch pulled the blankets over his head and closed his eyes, but after a moment he realized it was just too stuffy under there, so he threw the blankets back and carefully fluffed his pillow and then sank his head into it so that his ears were covered. He stared at the ceiling. Then he thought he heard
footsteps, so he lifted his head from the pillow.

  “Thirty.”

  “What are those numbers?” Branch jumped from the bed and tore down the corridor into the living room, grabbing Aaron’s shoulders, shaking them, shaking them hard.

  “Synonyms for stupid.”

  “Well, stop it.”

  “Bonehead. That makes thirty-one.”

  “Stop.”

  “Eventually. Clod. Thirty-two.”

  “I’m not a clod. Why am I a clod?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “What word did you just think of?”

  “Beetlebrain. How long have we lived together?”

  “Six months maybe. Why?”

  “And what have you been looking for all that time? Thirty-four and five.”

  “What do you mean, what have I been looking for? A play?”

  “Thirty-four and five, by the way, were boob and booby. That’s right, a play. And what do I do?”

  “Drive a cab?”

  “What else?”

  “Write?”

  “Not ‘Write’ question mark. ‘Write’ exclamation point. Write! And that is why you are stupid. Because only a genuine cretin could live with a writer and look for a play and never put two and two together.”

  “You’re a novelist. You don’t write plays.”

  “Have you asked?”

  “No, but—”

  “Ask.”

  “All right; have you got a play?”

  “I might have.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Branch turned. “I’m going to sleep. Good night.”

  “Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight.”

  “Where’s it take place, this play of yours?” Branch’s voice was very loud.

  “A college town!” Aaron shouted back. “Here. Manhattan. Yes. Up near Columbia. One of those big old buildings near the Columbia campus.”

  “Make up your mind, Aaron. Manhattan isn’t everyone’s idea of a college town.”

  “Up near Columbia,” Aaron said again. “That’s the set. The living room of a big run-down apartment between Broadway and West End.”