“Well, it’s been a great evening,” he said heartily. “See you at breakfast.”
“I haven’t seen Sonny in years,” Dixie said. “That scholar liked him. I wouldn’t have thought a scholar would like Sonny.”
“Intellectuals are all fascinated with athletes,” he said. “It doesn’t work the other way around.”
They were silent for a bit. Joe was hoping she would go to sleep.
“Sonny would have made a good match for Patsy,” she said. “He’s older. People the same age have the same kind of problems. How can you get along with someone if you have the same problems they have?”
“You’re off your nut,” Joe said mildly. “Nobody I can think of should marry Sonny.”
“I should have married him,” Dixie said. “When are you coming over here?”
“You’re not really interested in me, are you?” he said.
“Well, you’re a man and I’m a woman. That’s what men always tell me when they want to screw me. Come on.”
“There must be some real dimwits in this state if that’s the kind of line they come up with,” he said. “I was writing lines like that in 1935. I’m shy and depressed tonight. I think we ought to wait.”
“I know you’re depressed. I’m not dumb. If you screw me maybe you won’t be depressed. I can’t stand people who are depressed.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. “I’m a mad romantic. I feel like plunging a dagger into my breast at this very moment. Once I taste the delights of your body you’ll never get rid of me.
“Come on,” she insisted. “It will cheer you up.”
He looked at her across the several feet of bed that separated them. “This is a swell bed,” he said. “You could put a small football team in it. If I’d been sober this afternoon this would never have happened. I’ll meet you halfway but don’t place any bets on the outcome.”
They both scooted sideways until they were about a foot apart on the bed. They lay silently, flat on their backs. The pillows had not scooted with them.
“I’m getting depressed,” Dixie said. “I told you if you didn’t cheer up I’d get depressed. I catch things from people.”
Joe raised up on one elbow. She had the sheets pulled up to her chin, and the frown was back.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I haven’t been taking all this seriously. Forgive me. You know, I don’t think you have any notion at all of what a human relationship should be. Do you?”
“No,” Dixie said simply. She didn’t look at him but the young-girl perkiness had left her voice and she sounded like a woman who was getting on. Joe was touched. Everything that her bouncy manner hid was suddenly exposed. Dixie was exposed.
“Well, you poor thing,” he said.
They were silent again. He was sorry he had exposed her, for he had no way to cover her again. She lay as she was, holding on to the top of the sheets, the puzzled frown on her face.
“I just go around keeping cheerful,” she said. “I’ve done it for years. When I’m cheerful it doesn’t matter to me whether I know anything or not.”
Joe couldn’t stand to see her lying there silently, strained and puzzled. He took one of her hands.
“Look,” he said. “You don’t want to go bringing strangers like me home. You shouldn’t go around asking people. It doesn’t make good sense.”
“Oh, I almost never ask,” she said, brightening a little. “Usually they just do it and leave, or go to sleep. If I decide I don’t like them I wake them up and make them leave.”
“My lord,” he said. “How have you survived? You don’t feel sexy and you know it. Why do you think it would cheer me up? Jesus, it would drive me out of my skull.”
“It would cheer you up if you weren’t so shy,” Dixie said. “I thought Californians went around screwing people all the time.”
“They do, the damn fools,” Joe said. “Better they became Buddhists. The point is, you don’t really want me. And if you don’t, what’s the point?”
“I guess I do,” she said. “You’re from Hollywood, that’s enough for me. I’m not very snobbish about it.”
“Snobbish!” he said. “You’re crazy, that’s what you are. My penis doesn’t have Beverly Hills stamped on it, or anything.”
“I meant you were someone sweet from Hollywood,” she said quickly.
“Am I sweet enough that you’d want me even if I wasn’t from Hollywood?”
“Oh, sure. I told you I wasn’t very snobbish.”
Joe sighed. “You win,” he said. “I’m glad I came—you’ve got to be unique. Can I ask you one question? What do you really like?”
“You mean about screwing?”
“About anything. Start with that if you like.”
Her frown went away and she gave him a shy, almost mischievous look. “Maybe I’ll tell you, now that you’re jolly again,” she said. “It was awful when you were depressed. Maybe I’ll show you—it might be fun for you.”
“Maybe,” he said dubiously. “Why don’t you kinda sketch out what’s involved before we launch into it. I’m not very acrobatic and I’m a real novice at yoga and stuff like that.”
“Come on,” she said. “Don’t think about it. If you do you’ll get depressed again. I’ll help you.” She thrust a hand into his shorts and helped him. Somewhat to his surprise, he became erect. “See?” she said. “Why’d you talk so much?”
“I can’t remember,” he said, thinking, What the hell. He took off his underpants but his erection went as quickly as it had come and by the time he was in position it was mostly gone. He tried a bit, embarrassed, and Dixie decided that a little conversation might help matters. Just as he thought he was about to return to potency she became very talkative.
“I’ve got this wild hairdresser,” she said. “If you were going to be here longer you could meet her. Her husband takes dope.”
“Too bad,” Joe said, still faintly hopeful, though he had discovered Dixie to be as unaroused as he would have supposed. She seemed to think that by being brightly voluble she was making a hard task easier for him. When she asked if he knew Gregory Peck he lost his patience.
“Look,” he said. “I can talk and there are times when I can screw but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to manage both just now. If you don’t shut up I’m going to get a cab and go home.”
“Sorry,” Dixie said. “I was just wondering. Duel in the Sun was my favorite movie.”
Joe sighed and gave up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “If your thing involves me it’s just too bad.”
“Poor you,” she said. “You must be impotent or something.”
“I’m something,” he said wearily.
“You can get off,” she said. “You just didn’t want any tonight. I’ve been raping you.”
Dixie got out of bed and headed for the hall. “You don’t have to come,” she said. “I do it in the bathroom.” She was taking off her gown as she went through the door. She had a large behind but almost girlishly thin legs. Joe heard water running and waited apprehensively. It ran for several minutes and then stopped. When Dixie came in she had a gown in her hand and a towel around her. She stood by the bed in the dimness drying her legs.
“I love to run water on myself,” she said. “In the tub, you know. I didn’t want you to think I was some kind of dumbbell who didn’t like sex. I’m sorry you’re impotent. The only thing I don’t like about you is that you make me feel old. Everybody else thinks I’m young.” She sat down on the bed and her mouth curved downward. She looked like she might cry.
“Now, now,” he said and patted her shoulder. “You are a little old, you know.”
“I know,” she said. “But I don’t know what good it would do me to act my age.”
Joe didn’t know either. He rubbed her back.
“Do you know Gregory Peck?” she asked. “I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Sure, I know Greg,” he said. “I helped write Duel in the Sun, actually. I
think about four lines in it were mine.”
“I knew you were a celebrity,” she said. “Will Sonny’s movie be good?”
“It’s a matter of taste.”
“Good. I’ve got great taste.”
“Have you always preferred bathtubs?” he asked. “I’m just curious.” He found himself liking her more and more.
“No,” she said. “Just for a long time. There was this guy I was in love with. A trombone player. He was the best man in the world, and a goddamn nigger shot him by accident. In Louisiana. He was nice to me. He liked to sit on the bed naked and play the trombone. He could play whatever I wanted—he knew all kinds of songs. I liked normal things with him. I was crazy about him. He loved to sit in bed with me and play the trombone. You think that wasn’t a sight to see . . .” She began to cry and put her feet under the covers and pulled the sheet up to her neck, still crying, her face turned away from Joe.
He reached over and rubbed her back as well as he could. “I’ll bet you’re right, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll bet that was a sight to see.”
16
“ANYWAY, I LOOK just awful now,” Patsy said. “I’ve never looked this awful in my life. It ought to be some consolation, getting away from a person who looks like I do. But what’s going to be a consolation for me?”
“Come and lie back down,” Hank said.
She was standing in front of his dresser, crying, puffy-eyed, eight months pregnant, unable to stop crying long enough to fix her face so she could go home. It was cold out and she had her coat on, but with no more urging she went back to the bed, covered her face with her collar and her hair, and cried some more. Hank patiently uncovered her face and wiped away tears until she stopped crying. He didn’t have anything to say, but then he never did. Patsy ceased to feel tearful; she felt a little tired and sleepy. She felt she could lie there for hours—for days, possibly. She had no wish to move. It was unbelievable, but he was going away that afternoon, back to Portales, New Mexico. Everything beyond the next few minutes was unimaginable. All she knew was that as long as she lay as she was, with him close enough that she could feel his breath on her face, then things were all right and she would not have to force her legs to carry her into the unimaginable afternoon.
“You’re a cad to go away,” she said, trying to be funny about it. She was afraid that if he went away while she was downcast then she might always be downcast. But trying to be funny didn’t work. She started crying again.
They had not become adulterers, merely lovers. The romance that she had assumed could only last one afternoon had stretched itself through two weeks of afternoons, physically unconsummated. It was the question of consummation that was breaking them apart. Patsy wouldn’t, and couldn’t understand why he was so blind and selfish about it. For the first few afternoons she had come to him alternately pale and flushed, terrified and delighted, guilt-shaken but ecstatic. Being with him was quite enough. It made her feel happier and more secure than she had ever felt. Being with him was simpler and more satisfying than being with anyone else. They didn’t talk much; Hank was really not a talker. They held hands, kissed, sat, and the hours passed. It was so wonderful for her, having someone to be with, that she couldn’t understand why it wasn’t enough for him. Walking over to his apartment, she sometimes reminded herself that they were bound to come to a tragic end, but she felt neither tragic nor wicked. She felt light and gay and comfortable, neither lonely nor at loose ends. Jim was off having what he wanted, a day among books and the gay literate company of his peers, and try as she might she could not feel very guilty about him. He never kissed her any more, anyway, and for weeks at a time scarcely seemed to need her, except in the most mechanical ways. Hank kept saying he loved her—some afternoons it was virtually all he did say to her—but she did not tell him the same. She didn’t know if she loved him; she hadn’t felt like saying it. She just knew that she liked being there very much.
She liked being kissed too, and touched, and it was that that made it scary and left her no time in which to know what she felt. He was very aggressive, and blindly so. No matter how gently he began, he always got hard to handle sooner or later. Their first two meetings were at her house, where he was not so hard to handle, but then she discovered that it was absurdly easy to get in and out of his apartment unobserved by way of an alley. She immediately fixed the apartment up to her liking, but the fixings were not destined to last very long, all because he wouldn’t be held off. He was determined to have her bare, and in the bed.
The apartment was his territory too and so like him that just coming into it weakened her. It was not domestic, had no curtains, no nicely selected furniture, no kitchen, no neatly made bed, no vacuum cleaner, no pictures, no dressing table, no television set. It was too masculine; going there quickly began to make her feel fluttery. Each time she went she grew more fluttery, and each time it took her longer to relax, to acquiesce to being kissed or touched at all. If he had pursued her relentlessly from the moment she stepped in the door she might have grown too scared and quit coming; but he didn’t. He sat and looked at her, quite relaxed himself, and eventually she came to him. Each time it happened her acquiescence got a little deeper, and her reluctance to leave became a little greater.
Once, when it was time to leave, she began to cry helplessly, to her surprise and his concern. She couldn’t stay and didn’t want to leave. She felt, for a few minutes, completely dependent upon being able to stay or, at least, upon being able to come back. If only he would let her stay without continually trying to undress her. Her belly was so large that when she opened her eyes she could not see her feet. It was a ridiculous state in which to be vulnerable to somebody’s kisses, but she was. He lulled her into a happy sensate daze and then began thrusting his hand inside her clothes or trying to drag her out of them. It was natural, she knew, but it was also depressing. She couldn’t be undressed, not just then. It was painful and confusing. She wanted him; it wasn’t that. He knew it. She felt like a tease, and it was painful and confusing, but she couldn’t help it. They could only have so much, that was that. They had had scarcely a week of the bliss of mutual discovery before there began to be fights.
“Damn you,” she said one day when he had managed to slip his hand between her legs. “Can’t you understand? Please don’t. I was perfectly happy.” She kept firm hold of his wrist.
“I’m not,” he said intolerantly. All he felt was impatience and desire, things he had felt almost from the first time he had seen her. Her objections didn’t register with him; he wanted her too much. He tried to kiss her again but she stiffened and drew back, frightened by the faceless quality of his desire. The minute he really began to want her he stopped seeing her—it had been that way even the first day. He ceased to be the man she was so fond of, so comfortable with, and just became a man, thrusting himself at her so strongly that it was scary.
“For Christ’s sake!” she said. “Look at me, please. I’m eight months pregnant! It would be grotesque. I don’t think I’m even supposed to sleep with my husband. Besides, I can’t sleep with you, anyway. You should have understood that. I thought you did.”
“Why?” he said. “Give me one reason.”
“Oh, damn,” she said. “Because I’m married!” And she began to cry, still holding his hand away from her.
When put off, Hank ceased to be the pleasant, relaxed, tolerant person she had caught such a fondness for. He was not used to being put off and didn’t know what to do with himself, or with her.
“Turn loose,” he said, freeing his hand. “I can’t help it that you’re pregnant and married. Maybe it’s inconvenient but I still love you and I still want to sleep with you.”
Her only recourse was to cry, which she did genuinely enough, from shame and perplexity. And fortunately, he did know how to handle her tears. Once his desire had cooled a bit he became very nice again and kissed her and stroked her face and was able to seem amused by it all. He seemed amused by her, in a fond way
, and that was very comforting. It made him nice to be with again. When he was nice to her she felt so secure, so completely in his keeping, that she could not imagine anyone as good or as understanding. It made her want very much to let him make love to her, and she did let him talk about some pleasant future time when they could, though once she got home she could not believe that such a time would ever come.
But desire gave them no peace. His was raging, and things began to work in Patsy too. Sudden touches left her vulnerable—she couldn’t predict it or help it. She appealed to him but appeals did no good; sooner or later she had to struggle up from her own pleasure and fight him again. In the second week it became very serious. She had to fight too hard and cry too much. She became afraid that Jim would notice.
“Please don’t,” she said one day. “Please don’t scare me, please don’t push me. I don’t want to be scared to come here. Please understand. I just can’t. Not now.”
“Then I’m going away until you can,” he said. “I can’t stand it.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” she said. It made her more miserable than she had ever been, and more embarrassed. It had begun so simply, and for a day or two had seemed free and harmless, and already it had become a bad thing. It hurt him. Whatever she had expected couldn’t be, and she felt she might as well give up. It was exactly what she deserved for stepping outside the bounds in the first place. It seemed to her that she had been more dismal and dishonest and inconsiderate than if she had set out deliberately to commit adultery in the first place.
“I’m so worthless,” she said. “I just wanted to be happy without it being a bother.” She was ready to put the blackest possible interpretations on her own behavior, to get up and go home and settle down to sewing baby caps. Hank managed to shake himself out of desire and coax her back into a good humor, but once out of his presence her spirits drooped again and she was so silent and chastened all evening that Jim became worried about it. She had been looking unusually lovely, he thought, and was disturbed to see her so sunk and withdrawn. He decided it was all his fault, for having been withdrawn himself. Finals were in progress and he had done nothing but read for weeks. He put down his notes and devoted himself to Patsy for the evening; he tried being funny, tender, judicious, reassuring, so many things in fact that she was amused and touched by him and as a consequence felt all the worse. Once he had gone to sleep she cried, feeling wretchedly selfish. She was no good to either man, and she couldn’t help it.
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