“Aren’t you gonna get undressed?” Sylvia asked with interest. Nothing seemed to faze her, except roughness, which she would not tolerate. Passion was one thing, brutality another.
She was a simple girl, working downtown during the days, usually spending the night with a college boy. Her parents (if they really were her parents) didn’t seem to give a damn, even if she stayed out all night.
Cal dragged his thoughts from the private life of this girl. He had to stop thinking about what went on in her head—probably nothing at all, actually. Just a stupid broad, that’s all she was.
“Yeah…yeah, sure. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Cal found it rugged, throwing off these thoughts. He pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack in his shirt, and went to the window seat by the dirty hotel window. He sat down and struck the match on the sole of his shoe, looking down into the street, across to the campus buildings rising in the dark.
The evening was tainted for him, and he couldn’t figure why; it wasn’t what he thought of her—hell no! It was, well, the way the campus thought of her. There were girls who did, and girls who didn’t, and one way or another the word got around.
Oh nuts! Cal thought, snubbing the butt on the window ledge with viciousness. Why all this deep intellectual worrying? Why this social consciousness all of a sudden? What’s eating me now?
He drew himself away from the dark pictures, and turned to face Sylvia, determined to bury all these useless, morbid thoughts.
She was standing there shivering slightly in the cold of the hotel room; after ten they shut off the heat, figuring anyone who wasn’t in bed by now wouldn’t be in any condition to know the difference. The hotel was makeout heaven, and the management knew it.
Her blond hair held a flat, painted look in the light that shone through the transom. She had said, “I don’t know. I just kinda don’t like gettin’ undressed in the light, you know.” Cal hadn’t realized, in all the time he’d known her, that she was sensitive even to that extent.
Her body wasn’t voluptuous, nor even full-fleshed. She wasn’t thin either. It was a state somewhere between bones-sticking-out and firmness. She was just a girl…and Cal felt an alarming urge to hold her tightly. So he went to her.
He pressed close to her, and felt the warmth of her. Her hair tickled under his chin, and he felt a vague annoyance that her face was crushing the half-pack of cigarettes in his pocket.
“Sylvia…” he heard himself whispering into her ear, and it was more than a physical thing…more than desire…He had the instant thought that it rang through with loneliness.
Now why that? If anyone wasn’t lonely it was him! With all the women on the campus, Cal Jacobs was the last man to be lonely.
She was talking to him, softly, like a mother to a child, and yet with the odd transposition of personalities; as of the mother asking the child for affection:
“Cal, oh Cal, you do love me, don’t you? You’re not like all the rest of them, are you? You do, I mean, you do care for me a little?”
And his mood snapped. He felt it leave him, throwing him back into the play-actor’s role of answering what she wanted to hear, not what he wanted to say.
Not saying she was a girl with a film around her so that he had never really seen her till tonight.
Not saying she was a fleshly outlet for everything in him.
Not saying there was an unnamed need in him he couldn’t describe.
Just, instead, feeding her the manure she heard from every other faceless body on the campus, and that she’d hear till the day she was too old and ugly for the boys.
“Yeah, sure, sure, I like you a helluva lot, Sylvia. I wouldn’t be here with you if I didn’t. I wouldn’t have rented this room, it’s not cheap, y’know.”
She giggled then, and bounced onto the bed. “Hurry up, slowpoke!”
He made certain he didn’t touch the dirty carpet, made sure his socks were between him and ringworm or athlete’s foot, or whatever the hell you picked up in these joints, and sat down on the bed. He pulled off the socks as though they were the last ties that bound him to an island he was leaving.
Minutes later, next to her, he caught himself wondering crazily:
What color are her eyes?
Hazily, as he sat smoking on the window ledge and she straightened the collar of her blouse, Cal felt the energy circling the room anxious to leave, and he opened the window an inch, feeling it whizz out, leaving him forever, taking with it something he could not name.
This was an evening of mix-up.
Then she said something utterly unbelievable, utterly out of the question.
“Cal, take me downstairs for a milk shake?”
He sat stunned. If he was seen with her in the street, why miGod! that would be the end. What if a girl he dated from one of the sororities saw them? What if the guys from the frat were walking the street? What could he say? Here he was, Cal Jacobs, out having a soda with the campus slut. He shuddered inwardly at the idea.
“Well, uh, I’ve, uh, got to get back to the House, Sylvia, and you know, sort of, uh…”
“I want a milk shake, Cal,” she said, and there was a strength in her voice he knew was resignation, determination. He hadn’t credited it to her.
She was about to say something like, “Ain’t I good enough to be seen in public with you? Only good enough to lay, but not to eat with, huh?” and he knew he would say something imbecilic like, “Your idea, not mine, Sylvia, but you’re right,” and that would louse up a steady thing.
So in the end, after a second that stretched to the tension level of time, he said all right, and they left the hotel room—leaving it unlocked.
When they walked through the small, seedy lobby, the bellboy and the clerk snickered. He wanted to brain them. She held his hand, and it felt like dirt on him. Like filth he’d never wash off.
In the Isaly’s dairy store they took a booth near the back, though she could tell—he saw in her eyes that she knew he was hiding them—he didn’t want to be seen from the street. They sat for a moment, and the waiter—a boy who worked in his off-study hours—took their order.
Sylvia: milk shake.
Cal: nothing but whirling thoughts.
She sat silently for a moment, studying the glass of water and the rectangular fold of the paper napkin, and finally looked up at Cal. The mouth in the face on the body in front of Cal spoke, and said something, and he answered, but the face relaxed and smiled, and he assumed he’d said the right thing, and if not, so what?
Then the horror, the slow horror began.
The waiter brought her so-smooth milk shake; he stood by the table for a minute, as though a landmark for what was to sweep over them next.
The guys came in, with their girls. Five guys and five girls, they came in. And as though they had been briefed by the Devil, as though they had known he would die and wither within himself if they saw him, they all called out, “Hey, look who’s here! It’s Cal!”
And then one of the girls, a honey blonde with a pretty Boston name like Clarice or Maude or Pamela added, “And look who he’s with…isn’t that that, uh, what’s her name? That Sylvia?”
Then the wave of them washed across him with the greeting and the snide hellos, and before he knew it they were all packed in the booth, with Sylvia across from him, and both of them jammed against the wall where there was no escape, and extra chairs, drawn up so everyone could sit.
Then the horror went full into itself.
“How’s studies, Cal? Making a four-point this quarter?”
Cal tried, God how he tried, but he couldn’t get his eyes to come up from staring at his own water glass, half filled now with tiny bubbles clinging to the sides. “No. No four-point.”
Then the chatter turned to other things, and none of it was addressed to Sylvia. As if they had not quite realized she was there, yet he knew they were aware of her, that it was all a ribbing session to make him feel ridiculous, and to make her feel left
out.
Finally, one of the girls said, “Hey, Cal, the prom’s day after tomorrow. Who’re you taking?”
And Cal could not answer, for the weight in him dragged him down and down…
The silence grew and one of the boys, urging, added, “Yeah, who, Cal? I’m taking Patty here. Who’re you taking?”
Another said, “I’m going with Marlene. You got a date yet, Cal?”
Answer. Go on and answer. Answer them that you have a date with a girl in dorm number seven, a girl with clean hands and a straight body and a mother and a father and hours to be in at night. Go ahead and answer.
While they stared at Sylvia, to see her expression.
Go ahead.
“I’m, uh, not, uh, going, I don’t think. No dough. And lot of, uh, lots of studying. Midterms soon. No, I don’t really think I’ll be…”
He trailed off. It was hollow. It was worthless. It was meant to degrade her, and she’s done nothing to deserve it. Nothing. They didn’t know here was a woman, they only knew here was a shadow and they never saw the girl behind it. They didn’t know she was gentle and good to him when he needed somebody who was warm and gentle. None of that, and they’d made him carry all his own rottenness into the light, where it stood stinking for all to smell.
They stared at Sylvia, not at him.
She moved, and they moved away from her. She reached up to grasp the back of the booth, and they slid out, letting her get up. Then they sat down, and she stood all alone, watching nothing, staring at him but not seeing him. Or, perhaps, seeing him for the first time, and seeing all of them, and realizing what they were.
Then she reached into her pocket and brought up a quarter; she carefully set it down beside the still-full milk shake glass. To pay for it. To pay for it.
She walked away from them, to the front door, and no one said goodbye. The prophet Elijah had come and gone, and they had known he was there, but there was no acknowledging it.
She walked through the door, and they watched as she crossed the street. She passed across the street with her head lowered. The wide pool of a streetlight caught her as she stopped on the opposite curb. A bus wheezed to a stop, invited her with air-puffed open doors, then shrugged away down the street. She didn’t turn around, but they saw her head sink even lower, then abruptly rise, with some obscure growing pride. Then she walked away into the night’s smothering darkness, and was gone to them always.
They sat, and their stares riveted back on Cal.
He knew it, knew the pattern of it, knew they were staring at him.
What?
What could he say? Was there anything? He knew he had to say something to show them he was with them, but not of them, that he knew her and that they were rotten, and he was ashamed, God how ashamed. So he said it, and knew it wasn’t right, but said it just the same.
“Oh hell, she wouldn’t have wanted to go anyhow.”
But they knew what he meant.
Because there was one like her on every campus.
At the Mountains of Blindness
While waiting, there were nine things Porky was able to watch, in the alley. The first was a bloated rat, the upper half of its cadaverous-grey body thrust through a gnawed hole in a rusty garbage can, gorging itself on refuse. The second was a clarinetist in the building across the alley, running changes, practicing scales. The third was the traffic that ran past the mouth of the alley; the fourth was the winking neon sign DENNY’S JAZZ CLUB in red and gold that had no reason for existence, back here near the stage door of Denny’s.
The remaining five were the nails of his right hand, methodically chewed to the quick. These he studied best of all. Porky was a pusher. He was waiting for his mark to come and make the connection. Porky was also a philosopher of sorts. A phlegmatic philosopher whose ethical view of the Universe, simply stated, was, Them as strikes first don’t get struck.
It was a sultry night, mid-August, a good night to make the connection and then go back to the apartment for beer and Beethoven. The steel fire door of Denny’s shuddered open and a thick slash of light erupted from the doorway, ran up the brick wall opposite.
A snatch of crowd noise and rattling glasses followed, then was sliced off as the door closed.
“Porky?”
The pusher shoved away from the wall and turned toward the raised platform with its metal guardrail. The thin, dark-suited man stood against Denny’s door, back pressed tightly to the metal, staring down into the shadows of the alley. His voice was soft and tremulous. Porky—had he been more the suckblood pushers are characterized to be—might have smiled, knowing that tone in the other’s voice. It was the sound of need, the hunger of want, the stomach-drying, lip-wrenching desire for junk…the last stages of withdrawal before the junkie would start crying, thrashing, cursing, dying a little, then a great deal.
Had Porky not been a phlegmatic philosopher and a good businessman, had he been a succubus as the vice squad typified him, he would have gloated. It meant the market was prepared to stand as much as he could lay on. He would have no trouble wringing the last cent tonight.
“Hey, uh, you out there, Porky?”
Porky stepped into the feeble light cast by the street lamp at the mouth of the alley. “I’m here, Tómas.”
The Latin cast of the young man’s face eased with the passing of apprehension. Porky was here. A fix. It was all right. The sweat—bottled inside—burst forth. “Hey, mon, like I thought you wasn’t gonna make it.”
Softly, Porky made his point, then dismissed it: “I’m here, Tómas.”
The Puerto Rican came down the three steps to the moist stones of the alley. He two-fingered a cigarette from his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth, hand shaking. Porky watched. Phlegmatically.
“Nice night, leetle hot, maybe, but a nice night,” Tómas said, staring up into the sky. The sky was filled with nothing. It was that sort of night.
“You got the money, Tómas? I’ve got an appointment.” There was quiet, measured impatience in Porky’s voice. The business at hand, then away.
“Yeah, mon, nice night,” Tómas said. He was sweating like a pig, too much, now.
Porky didn’t speak. He turned to go. It was a bust connection. The mark couldn’t raise the bread; no dough, no H.
“Hey!” Tómas laughed lightly, “Take it easy, mon. I got the goods. I was just take’n it light, you know.”
The pusher paused. “I’ve got an appointment, Tómas, let’s get this over with,” he said. Gentle. Nothing but soft. A businessman doesn’t argue with his customers. He merely sets up the supply, to match the demand.
The Puerto Rican reached into his inner jacket and brought out a wallet. He began counting bills. Then he handed the sheaf to Porky. The look of expectancy was on the Puerto Rican’s face; Porky didn’t bother counting.
“You’re short, Tómas.”
The Puerto Rican wiped a hand across his mouth, his cigarette down-to-filter between two fingers, yellowed from cigarettes long-gone.
“I’m not bad, Porky. Listen, we got a gig uptown at some deb brawl tomorrow night, mon, I get you the rest. I’m only down a few bills. Stake me, Porky. I breeng you the rest…”
Porky had laid the money gently on the concrete platform, and was walking away. Tómas lunged for him, grabbed his arm. “Hey, listen, mon, you don’t do thees to me—”
Porky neither struggled nor fought back. He merely said (gently), “Tómas, you lay a hand on me, you’ll never get fixed again.” No blow to the stomach could have worked more effectively. The Puerto Rican backed off.
“I-I got to have the stuff, Porky. You g-got to take care of me, mon. I’m dead cat if you don’t.” His Spanish accent—submerged since his arrival in Nueva York seven years before—became stronger with his frenzy.
Porky spread his hands. “Sorry, Tómas. You know how I carry on my business. If you can’t pay, I can’t take care of you.”
The Puerto Rican slumped down on the steps. A moan and soft sob. “I
tried ever’ting. I bugged my seester lives up on 82nd Street, I hocked my fiddle case, mon I deed ever’ting. I can’t get it up till tomorra’.”
Porky shrugged. “I’ll come back tomorrow then.”
Tómas clutched at the air in front of Porky. “No, mon, I can’t stand eet. I can’t stand the pain, they comin’ close together now, they gone toss me off this gig if I don’t steady. Some of the other guys they hooked but they make other gigs, mon, they can get the bread—”
Porky knew. He dealt with half a dozen musicians on this street. Two of them from this group. He knew they had Sutton Place broads keeping them in junk, or money from home, or ex-wives’ wealthy parents, or…
He preferred not to think about where some of them got it.
“Sorry, Tómas,” Porky said. Again, this time with no pretense to draw out the market dealings, he strode off. The shriek came from nowhere, from Tómas, from everywhere, and ricocheted off the brick walls of the alley; the clarinet player slammed the window. Tómas leaped off the stairs, his jacket flying behind him.
His hands locked around Porky’s throat, dragged him backward. Porky gagged, flailed the air, kicked back and missed Tómas’s shin. The steel door to Denny’s slammed open. A heavy voice yelled, “Tómas! Get off him!”
The sound of a body hurling the guardrail, the slap of soles hitting the alley. Three running steps, and rough hands grabbed the Puerto Rican by the ears, as Porky slumped to his knees.
Tómas thrashed as he was dragged by the ears, and the attacker hurled him against the wall. The Puerto Rican—lost, lost, fogged and lost with no way to go—came off the wall, rebounded—and caught the fist in the mouth. The attacker knew where to hit him: not a horn man, hit him in the mouth. Tómas slapped the walking bass, get him anywhere but the hands, the back.
Tómas settled in a heap.
The attacker lifted Porky and stood him against the wall, still holding his throat. “Didn’t he have the scratch, Porky?”
Porky looked up and saw another of his customers.