She looked much younger in the tidy, cramped flat. Her body was thin and angular in places. She moved awkwardly, in sudden spurts and sidesteps, as if she were confined by the box-like room. He drank half his highball while watching her pick up and arrange some books and papers that had been lying on the seat of the maple armchair. When she sat down beside him, he put his arm around her and pulled her to him. She allowed him the intimacy, but she did not respond. She squirmed away from him when he tried to kiss her again.
‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked.
‘Because I want to.’
‘Must you always do what you want to do?’
‘It’s generally more satisfactory that way.’ Her attitude puzzled him. Why had she acted the way she had, if she had not wanted him to make love to her? Even in the taxi she had been inexplicably cold and, while she had not repulsed his advances, she had given him no encouragement.
‘Suppose I don’t want you to?’ she asked.
‘Don’t you?’
‘I don’t know. I know I don’t love you. I’m not sure I even like you. And I’m surprised you’re not content with Dorothy. She is nice.’
‘She wasn’t nice tonight.’
‘I wouldn’t have been either the way you were making up to me.’ She jumped to her feet and sat in the other chair.
‘I thought you wanted me to make up to you,’ he said. ‘You certainly acted that way.’
‘You’re attractive. I like to play with the idea of you making love to me…’ She watched him, a smile on her lips, her eyes half-closed.
Philip went over to her, seized her hands and pulled her roughly to her feet. He held her tightly against himself. He could feel her trembling. He grasped the collar of her tunic and tried to rip it from her throat. ‘It won’t do you any good to tear my clothes, you know,’ she said matter-of-factly – although her body was wire-taut and throbbing. ‘I’ll sleep with you if I want to – you can’t make me.’
He continued to hold her. He relaxed his grip on her dress, but his hands refused to release her body. She stood stiffly against him; her eyes stared openly at his flushed face; her mouth was a line of anger. ‘And now I know that I do not want to,’ she whispered.
Philip felt exhausted. Although he knew that he could overpower her physically, he also knew that he could never possess her. The advantage had exchanged hands – had it ever been his? – and he could only withdraw. As if to jeer at him, the memory of the manuscript and its misleading prediction returned to his mind. He smiled and let his arms drop to his sides. Brent walked nobly away from him. She went over to the closet and picked up his hat and coat. ‘In a way I have scored a victory,’ he mumbled to himself.
Brent was holding his coat for him. He could see that he had not even succeeded in tearing her dress, although he had wrenched the collar loose from the rest of the material and it was hanging awry. ‘I wouldn’t call it a victory,’ she said. ‘Or did I hear you right?’
He turned his back on her and shrugged himself into the coat she held. ‘I was thinking about your novel,’ he lied. ‘About the poor devil who keeps chasing the girl until he falls off the train. In one respect, at least, I’m better off than him. I haven’t fallen off the train.’
‘Haven’t you?’ asked Brent. She was holding the door open for him.
5
After Philip left, Brent went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth, making wry faces in the mirror as she manipulated the brush. When her mouth felt clean again, she undressed and put on a pullover sweater and a pair of corduroy slacks. Her hips were small and the slacks outlined them pertly. She went into the kitchen, mixed and drank another highball. Then she turned out the lights and left the apartment.
She took a taxi to Jeremy’s place in the Fifties. This was a loft located in the tenement district near Madison Square Garden. She unlocked the battered door and climbed a steep flight of broad stairs. Inside the loft she went to the rear of the barn-like room and switched on a lamp that made a small circle of warm light in the greater darkness. A half-partition hid a kitchen, a tub and shower, as well as an improvised closet. Brent filled the tub with warm water, took a pair of pyjamas out of the closet and laid them on a chair, then soaked herself in the tub until the water grew lukewarm. She jumped out and rubbed herself down with a rough towel that dry-scrubbed her flesh until it was brick-red. She put on her pyjamas and combed her hair, then went into the other part of the room where she turned down the cover on the studio couch and made it up for the night. Her movements were quick and showed her actions to be habitual; she was obviously accustomed to the place as she knew where everything was and lost no time in deciding what to do next. After she had made the bed, plumping up the pillows that served by day as the back of the couch and sheathing them in slips, she took a book off the shelf and twisted the lamp so that its pool of light fell on the head of the bed and climbed under the covers.
Brent read for ten or fifteen minutes before she fell asleep. Jeremy awakened her when he came in about four o’clock. He turned off the light that had burned all night, bent over and kissed her brow. ‘Jerry,’ she said sleepily, ‘you took so long.’
Later, she wanted to know about Philip and Dorothy. ‘I’ve seldom felt so uncomfortable, Jerry – what’s going on between those two? And why did you let him take me home? Didn’t you know he would make a pass at me?’
Jeremy’s face paled at her last remark. ‘Did he do that, the bastard! What did you do?’
Brent laughed softly. ‘I didn’t let him, silly! I think I gave him a shock. He looked very strange when he left.’ She told him about Philip’s unsuccessful attempt to make love to her. ‘But that doesn’t help me find out what interests me,’ she said later. ‘Tell me more about his wife, Jerry. She hates me and I want to know why.’
Jeremy hesitated before he answered her. His hair was tousled and his eyes were tired. He was still a young man, but he was the kind of young man who already shows some of the signs of middle age. ‘First, let me ask you a question,’ he said. ‘What do you think of Philip?’
‘I think he’s fascinating in some ways. He’s so sullen and dissolute-looking. But I don’t like him.’
‘Because of last night?’
‘Partly.’ She sucked in her lip, thinking. ‘But I felt I disliked him before he tried to make love to me. I think perhaps, because of his attitude towards you.’
‘I didn’t think that showed.’
Brent nodded her head. ‘Yes, it did. After you left, Dorothy bawled him out for it. She said he had been trying to pick a fight with you all evening.’
Jeremy smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have believed she would take my part,’ he said.
Brent bit her lip and began to pound him playfully with her fists. ‘Stop being so mysterious!’ she cried. ‘Tell me what’s behind all this. What kind of people are they? And how long have you known them? Does Dorothy look that way at every woman who comes into her house? Each time she looked at me, I felt like she was thinking up ways of murdering me!’
Jeremy laughed. ‘She probably was.’ Then he grew more serious. ‘Dorothy’s one of the nicest people I know. We’ve been friends ever since we were in college together. She was my best girl then. Does that make you jealous?’
Brent leaned up against him. ‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘But not seriously, as long as it’s in the past tense.’
‘It’s in the past tense all right. She didn’t stay my girl, you see. I introduced her to Philip, my closest friend, once when we were in New York for the holidays. The next year they were married.’
‘I know most of that from what Dorothy told me last night,’ said Brent. ‘But why is she so jealous of him?’
Jeremy was silent for a few minutes. Brent waited patiently, sensing that what he was about to tell her was painful to him and that he would prefer not to speak about it. It had begun to grow light outside; the skylight in the front part of the loft had become an ill-defined
grey patch latticed with darker shadows, as had the great, wide front windows, the sills of which rested on the floor. Slowly the cavernous darkness of the loft began to recede, to grow dim and vague; objects began to take their daytime forms beyond the previous frontiers of sight: an easel, a door, the slanting roof of a tenement across the street seen foggily through the rain-streaked windows. ‘I believe Philip loves her.’ Jeremy spoke at last, quietly and contemplatively, spacing his phrases with intervals of silence. ‘And I believe he loved her when he married her. I have never blamed him… for taking her from me… she was there to take… and I have never blamed her for preferring him to me… Philip had so much more to offer her…
‘We had the same ambitions, Philip and I – I suppose that is why we were friends. Both of us wanted to write… Philip even started a novel. It was a good novel; at times I thought it came close to being profound… but who am I to judge profundity?’
‘I would never believe that!’ Brent exclaimed. ‘Philip’s a fool! Why, I asked him his opinion of Henry Miller last night, and the comments he made were the standard clever remarks with which they always try to write off Miller. I don’t think he has ever read a book by him. I know that when Dorothy asked him the title of one of Miller’s books, he did not know it and pretended not to have heard of it!’
‘Philip is not a fool. That is part of his act, which you mistake for the whole man. He likes to make one think that he knows the least, to make a pretence of ignorance, in the hopes that he will be able to lay a trap for you and catch you in it. But that’s beside the point. The point is that Philip could have written a good book had he wanted to.’
Brent rested her head on Jeremy’s shoulder. ‘But, of course, he didn’t,’ she said.
Jeremy stared at the growing patch of daylight on the floor. ‘And I have never understood why not. It sometimes seems to me that all Philip cares about is to prove to himself that he can possess something that he desires and which seems unattainable. But once he knows he can have it, then he is no longer interested in it and is more than likely to throw it away. Most of us have some touch of this folly in our natures, but the objects of our desires are inanimate: books, pictures, automobiles or, at the most, a way of life – a complex of people and things. Most of us learn to accept a modicum of dissatisfaction and we manage to adjust ourselves to imperfectly attained goals. Not Philip. I wonder if I am right when I say he loved Dorothy? What I mean, I think, is that he desired the things Dorothy stood for and, if he was in love, he was in love with the process of achievement. Once the exploit was over, the goal attained, Dorothy lost all value to him. He is throwing her away…’
Brent sat up, surprised. ‘What are you talking about, Jerry? How is he throwing Dorothy away? I don’t understand.’
‘You saw the way they were last night. You saw how jealous Dorothy was of him. Fear lies beneath her jealousy, fear of losing him. Once Philip made sure of her, you see, once he had married her and held a secure position in her father’s agency, he began to be consistently unfaithful to her. And Dorothy knows this. That is why every woman she sees him with she looks upon as a threat to her own security.’
Brent considered what he said. Her fingers busied themselves with pulling a ravelled thread from the blanket, but she was deeply concerned. Did what Jeremy was telling her mean that he still loved Dorothy? If it did – and how else was she to interpret it? – what would happen to her?
Jeremy responded to her silence, came close to her, held her to him so that her dark hair smothered his face and her warm breath moistened his cheek. ‘Don’t worry, Brent, dear,’ he said. ‘That is all past. It’s you I love, not Dorothy.’
‘But you were just saying…’ she began.
‘You asked me to tell you. I loved Dorothy once, and so did Philip. He married her, not I. I feel badly that he gets into bed with every piece of fluff that comes his way – I feel even worse that Dorothy knows this and still wants him enough to be savagely jealous. But I can assure you that I no longer desire Dorothy, now that I know you.’
‘You mean you did… before?’
Jeremy nodded his head. ‘Sometimes when I went to their house for dinner, it was all I could do to keep from kissing her every time Philip’s back was turned. And Philip was supposed to be my best friend! That’s why I stopped seeing him.’
‘You know what I think, Jerry,’ said Brent. She was smiling and baring her teeth the way a kitten does. ‘I think Philip is your personal devil. I don’t believe in his talent the way you do. I think he has been lucky. He didn’t finish that novel because he couldn’t – not because “he was no longer interested in it”. I talked to him last night and I think he is a fool!’
Jeremy stared at her and slowly shook his head. ‘You’ve seen him only once. You don’t know what he’s really like.’
‘I saw all of him I intend to see, I can tell you that. As for Dorothy – well, I think she’s a nice person.’ Brent spoke cautiously. She did not want to say anything that would alienate Jeremy. She was afraid of Philip’s wife, and the hold she had over her lover. But she did not want to let Jeremy see her fear. ‘She’s a nice person, and I like her. Perhaps you’re right, and the only reason she doesn’t like me is because she thinks of me as a threat to her. But I do believe that what goes on between Philip and her is their business, and you had better not concern yourself with it. If Philip wants to be unfaithful to his wife, let him! Why should you bother about that?’
Jeremy rumpled her hair and kissed her. Then she pretended to resist him and he pretended to overcome her resistance. Then they both laughed for a long time.
‘All right,’ he cried finally. ‘You win! Philip, I hereby give you the right to sleep with anyone you desire!’ Jeremy was kneeling on the couch, the blanket draped over his shoulder toga-wise, his face severely pontifical. He made an imperious gesture, then pulled Brent to him and kissed her. ‘As long as it isn’t you!’ he added.
6
As Philip came out of Brent’s apartment building and turned down Jones Street, there was a sudden sound of glass splintering above him and a small hard object struck him a glancing blow on the temple. He crouched instinctively, over-balanced and fell to his knees. The street was now totally dark. Glass continued to fall near him. Then he heard a shrill whistle, which was followed by spasms of childish laughter. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw that a street lamp overhead had been smashed – out of the corner of his field of vision two small boys disappeared from view, running wildly towards Bleecker Street. He stood up, touched his stinging forehead tentatively with his handkerchief. He was not bleeding. He laughed self-consciously. Only kids shying rocks at the street lamp… he had thought they were stoning him!
He walked down the deserted, darkened street, his mind intent on the strange scene he had just had with Brent. The ‘Confession’ had been wrong. Although many of its predictions had come true, its major prophecy had not: he had not been unfaithful to Dorothy with Brent. But he could take no credit for this. He had made all the necessary advances, as the manuscript had foretold: if he had not done his wife an injustice, it was because Brent would have none of him, and this the manuscript had not foretold.
What was the purpose of the ‘Confession’? Had someone deliberately egged him onto Brent, knowing that she would not find him acceptable, as a crude joke? Would this fit Jeremy’s sense of humour? He wondered.
At Sixth Avenue, a flashing neon sign that advertised a bar met his eye and beckoned him inside. The bar was crowded, but a booth was empty at the rear of the room. He sat down and when the waiter came, he ordered a double scotch.
His mind had grown numb and the whisky tasted like tap water. He gulped it down and ordered another… and then another. He knew very well that he was going to get drunk again, that he would forget again. But somehow it did not matter. He had a problem to which he had to find a solution, a problem that would require reasoning. Now, of all times, he should stay sober. Th
at was all very true, and yet it was all very false. He had another whisky. Now he would stop drinking and try to think it through. First of all, there was Jeremy. But who was Jeremy? Just what did he know about Jeremy…?
He had another whisky. This one burned a little and did not taste like it had come out of a faucet. As he sat and stared at the seat on the other side of the booth it seemed to him that he began to see Jeremy vaguely. This is an hallucination, he told himself. Jeremy is not really sitting there. I am alone. But the vision became clearer and clearer. Jeremy was still wearing the same suit he had been wearing earlier in the evening. The same fold of fat bulged around his collar. And, while Philip was trying to assure himself that he was not real, it seemed to him that Jeremy spoke.
‘Remember me, Philip?’ he asked. ‘Do you remember how I was when we first met? I was the fat boy who was your room-mate all through college – the kid you were jealous of all through the first term because I had so many friends and I played on the Freshman team.
‘And do you remember the night that you came home to find the fat boy – that was me, of course – crying over his books? It was just before exams and I was failing. I told you that I would be eternally grateful if you helped me. And you helped me, with bad grace even then, but you helped me, Philip. And I am still grateful.’
‘I remember,’ said Philip, hoarsely.
‘I was your best friend for years to come, wasn’t I, Philip?’ The vision smiled mockingly. ‘You imitated me, dressed as I did, made my friends your friends. I encouraged you to go out for sports. You pledged my fraternity. You wouldn’t have received that bid, Philip, if I hadn’t sponsored you. Oh, I know what you’re going to say. You helped me, too. Of course, you did. You had to keep up the pretence of the friendship. You tutored me. You had me major in English Lit. and taunted me into becoming a journalist. Oh, I’m very grateful to you, Philip – don’t think that I’m not. But it was you who became president of the senior class. And would that have happened if you hadn’t been my friend? Or would I have had the honours you received, if I hadn’t boosted you?’
The Last of Philip Banter Page 8