Boys and Girls Together: A Novel

  “Oh ...” Esther said, looking down.

  Rudy stood very still.

  Then the whole room turned and stared at him. All the things turned, the walls turned and the glasses and the rings on stubby fingers, and the floor buckled, staring up at him, and the windows turned and the furniture shifted so as to see him better, and then there was a deadly pause, and after it came the voices, the infinite whispering voices, all at once wondering if, by any chance, he might have had enough; did he think, just possibly, he might be ready now?

  Rudy ran.

  Sid started after him, Branch too, and for a moment they blocked each other, and Esther also went after him, first scooping up her purse, then trying to run, and Sid said “Have you seen Rudy?” to Rose and Rose said “Yes, I think he’s in the living room” and Sid said “Maybe” but ran on to the bedroom where Jenny said when asked, “No, he hasn’t been in here” and Esther looked all over the study and Branch scoured the kitchen but he wasn’t there either and then Rose said, “We’re out of soda, perhaps he went for that,” and Sid was hot from the chase and Branch was perspiring terribly and Esther feebly fanned herself, and Branch, after staring for a moment at his mother’s slender legs, turned violently away and Esther said “Oh ...” and Sid got her purse and smiled, saying, “We’ll find him, Tootsie, don’t cave in now,” and Esther answered, “No, I must be strong.”

  Branch, completing his violent turn, aimed for the bedroom, where Jenny sat alone, smiling, because she had just realized that what she was was the biggest fool in all the world, because if the play failed and nobody came to see her she would just go off and marry Tommy Alden, which was what she should have done in the first place, years ago, because he loved her, and then she thought that even if the play was a hit and everybody came to see her, she would still marry Tommy, and then she thought, well, if the play was a hit and everybody came to see her and offered her some just fabulous part, what she would do would be to act in it for just a little bit and then marry Tommy.

  “Have you seen Rudy?” Branch asked again.

  Jenny just smiled in the terrible heat, because no matter what happened now, she had nothing to lose anymore.

  Above her, on the fire escape, Rudy soared. He dashed up past the tenth floor, the eleventh, the twelfth, past the fourteenth, all the way to the top of the building, and then he sat and stared down, but only for a moment, because his feet were alive, his feet needed movement, so he was off again, flying again, down the rusted steps, jumping six at a time, eight, sometimes ten, landing catlike in the heat, whirling around a corner, darting down another and another floor. When he reached the sixth, he rested above the window, out of sight. Across from him was the dark side of another building; below him, a darker alleyway, with one or two cars parked, single file. But the cars, like the windows across, were empty. No one could see him, so no one could catch him. Of course, even if someone did see, he would still be uncatchable. No one could ever catch him, not on a fire escape, not as long as he stayed just right where he was, winded and warm, rust-surrounded, safe.

  Aaron poured himself another shot of Scotch and threw his arm around Walt’s shoulder. He gestured toward Tony, who was talking to a sweating Sid. “What color’s that dress?” Aaron wondered.

  “Watermelon, word reaches me.”

  “Whatever it is, she sure looks cool.”

  Walt nodded.

  “She’s sure something,” Aaron went on. He slapped Walt on the back. “Boy, you must be tired.”

  “We’re all tired, Aaron. You too, I bet.”

  Aaron smiled. “You must just be beat down to the ground.”

  “Well, like I said—”

  “What I’m trying to say,” Aaron went on, “is that your little ole ass has just got to be dragging.” He grinned in Tony’s direction.

  “I don’t get you,” Walt said.

  “Is she still such a fabulous fuck?” Aaron wanted to know.

  Walt shook his head. “What’d you say?”

  “My buddy Hugh White used to fuck her and he said—”

  “Aaron—”

  “—she was the finest fuck in Sarah Lawrence hist—”

  Walt grabbed Aaron.

  “And Hugh—well, Hugh, believe me, was a connoisseur.”

  Walt shoved Aaron against the wall.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Shut your goddam mouth!”

  “Ask her.”

  “I said—”

  “Afraid?”

  “Aaron, I’ll kill you, so help—”

  “Ask her if she fucked for Hugh White or not. Go on. Back at Princeton—”

  “God damn you, shut up!”

  “I’ll ask her, then. Hey, Tony. Tony—”

  Tony hurried over. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Walt told her. “Nothing.”

  “Walt wants to know—” Aaron began.

  “Aaron, I’m warning you, God damn you, shut your—”

  “What is it?” Tony said.

  “Walt wonders if you remember Hugh White,” Aaron said.

  Tony stopped dead.

  Walt let go of Aaron, dropped his hands.

  “Oh my God,” Tony said, and she stared at Aaron. “You were somebody’s blind date.”

  Aaron laughed. “See, Walt? Am I a liar?”

  Walt said nothing.

  Tony looked at him. “What did he tell you?”

  “ I was very complimentary,” Aaron assured her.

  “What did you say?”

  “I mentioned certain intimacies is all,” Aaron answered.

  “You son of a bitch!” Tony said.

  “I’ll allow that,” Aaron said. “But I’m not a liar. Am I? Am I?”

  Tony said nothing.

  Walt excused himself.

  Aaron smiled.

  “Can I get anybody anything?” Rose called. “Except soda.” She hurried into the foyer after her son. “Branch?”

  Branch walked away.

  “Branch, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing. I’m looking for somebody.”

  “Well, please don’t run away whenever I come near.”

  “I’m just looking for somebody, Mother.”

  Rose, in the foyer, whispered, “Please.”

  Walt, at the bar, filled a glass with ice cubes, then with gin. The heat was unbearable now, and the cigarette smoke stung his eyes, and after the first large swallow of gin he came close to gagging. He remembered that he had not eaten much that day, so he slapped some bologna on a piece of rye and wolfed it down, then gulped the glass of gin.

  Aaron watched him, then turned and stared out the window at the Hudson. The view, as always, was lovely, and he wondered how much longer he could take it living among the spies on 84th Street. What I need, he thought, is a fairy godmother, and he smiled at his joke, turning for another drink. Walt was still at the bar, refilling his glass, so Aaron decided to wait a while.

  Esther sank down onto the living-room sofa and pinched at the bridge of her nose.” I want my Rudy,” she said. “Sid, where is Rudy?”

  “Easy, Tootsie,” Sid said, giving her a little kiss. “He’ll be back.”

  Rudy sat, his feet dangling in space, and he thought about his grandfather, about that great nose and the pickle barrel and reading tuna-fish labels and playing Seek the Seltzer, and Rudy said, “So, Joel, what now?” because below him was the silent babble of the party, and probably she was crazy, but he knew he could never commit her and he knew also that he was too tired either to deny his father or to run away. “So, Joel, what now?” Rudy said again, and then he closed his eyes because it was very hot and because he was very tired and because once you’ve seen the earth you’ve seen it all.

  I have tried, dear God, to play this game of yours, but I am no one to carry the flag. I am tired, God, a poor Jew, tired, so let me please lie down. Give me a bed, God, because there is a limit to love and mine has long ago been reached, so just give me a bed to lie alone
in. I have failed them, all who ever loved me, and for this last I have clung for dear life to life, but now I find it not so dear. I have had enough. I am ready now.

  He vaulted up, balancing on the top of the railing.

  Across were the empty windows, below the cars. Alive, he was nothing, a bringer of pain; dead, he was nothing too, but dead she was uncommitted. Sid defied.

  Rudy smiled a final smile.

  And dead, perhaps, perhaps someday in someone’s mind, he might flicker for an instant: a quick sweet memory.

  Rudy looked down the six floors. A wink was all it would be, a speedy jaunt, one way, and he suddenly felt at such peace that he had begun his drop through space before it crossed his gentle mind that the shock of his death would likely send his mother mad.

  He turned, grabbing for the railing.

  Too late, too late.

  Wanting to rise, he fell, screaming “No!” every hot inch of the way.

  His body caromed off the curving roof of the rear car, spun in the air, dropped. He landed on his face. Blood came quickly, from all over; it seemed not to have a central source. Rudy did not move, and probably would not have had not his pain been sufficient to force a gasp. The gasp made him realize that he was still alive, and that seemed to him such a cruel, such a God-less trick that he began to cry. He wept and tried to rise and, weeping, fell back. Then, through his tears, he saw the bottom of the fire escape and he knew he would always be safe if he was on a fire escape, so he turned his attention to getting there. It took much time and more pain, but he had plenty of that and to spare, and once he had done it, gotten there, once his broken hands had closed around the railings, he set his mind to pushing up that first step and, that conquered, the next. It seemed a foolish voyage he was on, but foolish or not, he was on it, and he only hoped that someday it would end.

  Stagpole’s appearance at the party came as a complete surprise to Jenny. Not that she had forgotten her invitation; it was the possibility of his acceptance she had dismissed, so when she opened the door to the apartment and saw the red-haired writer she could only say, “My God, you came.”

  “My God, it isn’t air-conditioned,” Stagpole said.

  “Just fancy that,” Jenny said, and she closed the door behind him.

  Stagpole lingered in the foyer, dabbing a monogrammed handkerchief at his hairline. “It’s a genuine inferno,” he said.

  “Come into the living room,” Jenny said.

  Stagpole sighed.

  Actually, he loved entering rooms.

  His red hair was eye-catching and his face was a famous one and there was always that moment after his entrance when everything froze and he knew that all eyes were on him. That frozen moment he relished because, with quick practiced flicks of his green eyes, he could catch and discard twenty faces in an instant. And sometimes if a proper, an appealing face appeared—well, that was enough to make a day. Originally he was quite catholic about which faces he found proper, but now that he was fifty he insisted that the face be young. And thin; gaunt, if possible.

  And, of course, masculine.

  Now, as he entered the steaming living room, the frozen moment came. Stagpole’s green eyes flicked out like a serpent’s tongue and when he saw the gaunt face by the window he smiled because his last lover had certainly been thin but this—this was going to be like making love to a cadaver.

  Aaron, by the window, spun his face toward the glass, whispering exultantly, “I got him. I got him!”

  Walt had begun feeling sick to his stomach before Stagpole’s appearance, and he was aware, as Jenny led the red-haired man around the room, that what he didn’t need was anything more to drink. Still, he stooped over the bar and poured himself another glass of gin, because he hoped it might help him think of something to say when his turn came, because he was a fan of Stagpole’s, and that always made saying anything difficult. Walt sipped the gin, not looking at Tony, who still stood across the room from him, staring at him, waiting probably for him to run over and drop to his knees and beg forgiveness. The gin tasted funny, and Walt looked at his glass for a moment before he realized that he had poured the gin from a Scotch bottle, which very likely meant it wasn’t gin at all, which probably had a good deal to do with why it tasted funny.

  Also it was warm.

  Warm Scotch, Walt thought, ummmm-boy, and he was reaching for some ice cubes when his stomach took a turn for the worse and Walt hurried out of the room. When he reached the corridor he ran down it, whirling into the bedroom and out of it to the bathroom floor, dropping to his knees, his head over the bowl.

  Closing his eyes, Walt waited.

  Tony said, “I’m going.”

  “Go.”

  “Not until we’ve talked,” Tony said.

  “We’re talking.”

  “Not until you’ve listened, then,” she said, and she closed the bathroom door and locked it.

  “Tony, I don’t feel so goddam well if you don’t mind.”

  “My father’s a doctor.” She sat on the edge of the tub.

  Walt opened his eyes and looked at her. Even now, in the stifling heat of the bathroom, she managed to appear, in her goddam watermelon whatever it was, almost cool. “Would you please let me vomit in peace?” Walt said. And then he said, “Look, you want to drop for some guy, terrific, it’s none of my business. Don’t bother apologizing, you don’t hafta.”

  “What else do you want to say?”

  “I don’t want to say anything. I frankly do not care who you put out for. I just wanna upchuck alone, O.K.? Now can I have a little privacy or can’t I?”

  Tony said nothing.

  Walt stuck his finger down his throat.

  “I’ve watched operations, Walt; you’re not going to make me sick that easy.”

  Walt removed his finger but stayed, head down, over the bowl.

  “It’s that I lied, isn’t it?” Tony said.

  Walt, eyes closed, nodded. “That’s got a little to do with it. I mean, I would rather you hadn’t shacked up with half the adult population of New Jersey but it does bug me somewhat—” Walt began to gag.

  Tony knelt down beside him.

  Walt pushed her away. “Dammit, can’t you leave—”

  “Why do you think I lied?”

  “Because you’re a liar. Why else?”

  “I did it—”

  “Oh boy, I can hardly wait—”

  “—because I couldn’t get you any other way. Not if I told the truth. Because I love you, Walt.”

  “That’ll make me vomit if the Scotch won’t.”

  “Goddammit, you’re gonna believe me!” She moved up next to him. “That’s the only thing I care about left, and you are going to believe me when I leave here and say good goodbye. That I loved you. I love you in spite of the fact that you’re funny-looking and not all that sweet and—”

  “Tony—” Walt said.

  She grabbed his shoulders. “I don’t suppose you care that this big thing that’s making you fall to pieces happened when I was just a kid and I don’t care either because it doesn’t matter. What matters is you blew it, you, buddy, you threw it all away, what we had, you pitched it all—” And her voice built in the steaming tiled room and Walt, sick, tried turning toward the toilet, saying, “Look out, huh, look out, look out, Tony—”

  Then nobody said anything.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tony whispered finally.

  “All over you,” Walt said. “All over your dress.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Tony said again.

  “You moved right into me,” Walt said. “I tried making it to the toilet but you moved right in my way.”

  Tony shook her head and slowly began to unbutton her dress.

  Walt knelt over the bowl and threw up again. “I really feel crummy,” he whispered.

  Tony took off her dress and looked at herself in the mirror. “Oh dear,” she muttered, “you got the slip too.” She took it off.

  “I’m sorry.”

>   “It’s all right.”

  Walt gripped the sides of the bowl. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  “Shhh, baby,” Tony told him. “You just take care.”

  Walt reached out for her. “I’m sorry, I am, but why did you have to lie?”

  Tony knelt beside him, took him gently in her arms. “Because I was in love, baby, and people in love do desperate things.” She began to rock him.

  Walt, eyes closed, lowered his face against her bra. “Do you really, do you?

  “Here,” Tony whispered, and she reached behind her back, unhooked her bra, lifted it gently up, giving his mouth a better grip.

  Then there were three screams.

  The first one when it came, came from Stagpole.

  But that was only natural, since he had maneuvered himself into a position with his back to the window and his face, therefore, to the door. Everyone else in the room was grouped around him, facing him, which he rather liked, and he told them stories and they laughed, and if it weren’t for the heat he would really have almost enjoyed it, what with the eye play he was managing between himself and the gaunt young man called Fire, but then the thing appeared crawling slowly through the doorway and Stagpole screamed. “Jesus!”

  Rudy stopped and for a moment, lifted his bloody face, trying to locate something, and then he started to crawl again, saying “Father ...? Father ...?” as he moved painfully along.

  Everybody scattered and Esther clutched her heart but Sid, frozen, retreated toward the window, watching his son crawl toward him.

  “Father ...? Father ...?”

  When Rudy was almost on him, Sid supplied the second scream.

  “DIE!”

  The third scream came immediately after, and it was Branch’s, and probably he meant some word but none was distinguishable. He simply ran across the room, and when he was above the quiet form he dropped beside it and gathered it into his arms and began to keen, and when Rose came over and tried to lead him away she discovered Branch would not let go.

  In a moment all save five people had moved quietly out of the room, standing like cattle in the hot foyer. Branch, of course, had not moved, continuing to keen, his face now buried in the neck of the dead. And Sid was still standing by the window. Esther, still clutching her heart, stared at her husband, and Rose, panting from her labors, tried dislodging her son.