“It was a small and tasteful sign,” Dave repeats. “A very restrained response considering the night I’d just been through. You probably heard them, too?”
Linda shakes her head again.
“Well, I can’t explain that,” Dave says. “You must be a very sound sleeper. So Mrs. Kirk thinks my sign was aimed at her particular cats who are, apparently, too well-bred to yowl all night. She’s called the manager and she’s threatening to call the SPCA. The manager asked me to go and smooth it over with her, since she’s an old and valued tenant, in contrast to myself. And I did try. I’m not proud. She won’t even open the door to me. She thinks I’m only pretending to be sorry in order to gain access to her apartment and bludgeon her cats. She told me she just wished we lived in England where they know how to deal with people like me, whatever the hell that means.”
“So what do you want from me?”
Dave smiles ingenuously. “You’re very popular, Linda. Did you know that? I can’t find a single person who doesn’t like you. I bet even Mrs. Kirk likes you. Couldn’t you go up and tell her you and I were having this casual conversation about cats and I just happened to mention what models of catdom her cats are? Invite her to the party. Invite her cats.”
Linda doesn’t respond. She is too surprised by the assertion that she is popular. She is liked by other women; she always has been. In high school she had seen clearly that girls who were popular were almost always those not liked by other girls; this was, in fact, the most reliable indication of popularity, the dislike others of your own sex had for you. It was believed to be the price a woman paid for being beautiful, although Linda knew beautiful women who were not popular and Linda knew also of women who were not so beautiful, but insisted other women hated them in an attempt to fool men into thinking they were. Men were instantly sympathetic to this. Sometimes Linda had even seen this work. Surely being popular has nothing to do with Mrs. Kirk’s opinion.
“Please,” says Dave. “It’s a small favor.”
“No, it’s not,” Linda informs him. Mrs. Kirk is the ex-wife of a state senator. He has been married twice since and although he is now free as a bird again, his interest in sending her alimony checks on schedule has dwindled. Six months ago, shortly after the dissolution of his last marriage, he was picked up for drunk driving. A small newspaper article reported the event. Page 29. Mrs. Kirk cut it out and posted it in the elevator in case anyone had missed it. She added her own caption: Would you vote for this man? But Mrs. Kirk is a bit of a drinker herself. Any visit to the penthouse is an occasion for Bloody Marys and long discussions on the inadvisability of giving your heart and the best years of your life to swine. It is not the conversation Linda wishes to avoid, however. It is the drinks. Linda can hardly face tomato juice alone; add liquor and it becomes a nightmare. And there is no way to refuse a drink from Mrs. Kirk. Linda looks at Dave’s hands. “But I’ll do it anyway,” she says.
Fred slams a book closed. “Could you be a little quieter?” he calls from the kitchen. “I really have to concentrate.”
“Don’t respond,” Dave warns her. “Don’t say anything. He’s fishing for help. He’s dying to tell you what his assignment is.”
They sit quietly for a moment. The sun has moved down the wall to Linda’s face; on the opposite wall the painted sun illuminates the knight’s helmet in the Rembrandt and never moves. Dave shifts closer to Linda on the couch but still does not touch her.
Linda focuses on the painting. She feels very warm, but she tells herself it is the sun. “We’ll make a deal,” says Dave. He has lowered his voice, but his tone is nothing more than friendly. “You go talk to Mrs. Kirk for me and I’ll get Dudley’s fingerprints for you at the party. Then we’ll be even. Are your roommates coming?”
“Yes,” says Linda. But she is lying. They have no intention of attending and they all told her so last night.
She goes home and tries to persuade them again. “I don’t think I can lose fifteen pounds by Friday,” says Julie. “I can’t have fun at a party if I’m fat.”
“Sorry. Bill and I are going to a movie,” says Lauren. “If we can agree on something. Dutchman is on campus, but he wants to see the new Joey Heatherton epic in the city.”
“It’s about Vietnam,” says Julie. “Give the man a break. I’m sure his interests are political.”
“Listen to this,” says Gretchen. She is holding the Chronicle, folded open to the women’s section, in two white fists. The strain in her voice tells Linda she is about to read from Count Marco’s column.
“I don’t want to hear it,” says Linda. “Why read it? Why torture yourself?”
There is no stopping Gretchen. “He’s complaining about the unattractiveness of women you see in hospital emergency rooms,” she says. “‘Set aside a flattering outfit, loose, no buttons, of course, and a pair of fetching slippers. Think ahead a little.’ He’s concerned that, in the case of an emergency, we may become eyesores. God! I’m going to write the Chronicle another letter.”
“Any attention to a columnist, they consider good attention. The more letters he provokes, the more secure his job. He’s ridiculous. Just don’t read him.”
“It’s not trivial,” says Gretchen. “You think it is, but it’s not. They pay this flaming misogynist to write antifemale poison, and then they put it in the women’s section. Can’t they just move his column? Is it too much to ask? Put it in the goddamn sports section.” Her voice has risen steadily in volume and pitch until she hits its limits.
Linda reaches out and brushes Gretchen’s bangs back with one hand. They won’t stay; they fall back into Gretchen’s outraged eyes.
“It’s important,” Gretchen says.
“About this party—”
“I don’t want to go.” The newspaper crackles in Gretchen’s hands. “I told you that.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t like them. They look like fraternity escapees. Jock city. Fifties time warp. Have you ever tried to have a conversation with Fred Zukini? He thinks Bernadette Devlin is a French saint. He told me he saw the movie about her.”
“Dave and Kenneth are nice.”
“Shall I tell you about this party?” Gretchen asks. She takes a deep breath; she is talking more slowly and has regained control of her voice. “I know about this party. We’re talking party games. We’re talking people passing oranges around using only their chins and everyone maneuvering to be the lucky guy who gets his orange from the woman in the low-cut blouse with the Mae West body. We’re talking beer cans that people have crushed with their hands, collecting like flies on the windowsills.”
“They’ve ordered a keg,” says Linda.
“Excuse the pun, but I rest my case.”
Lauren is standing behind Linda. She clears her throat in a way that makes Linda turn to look at her. She is combing her hair higher and wider. “Julie says you’ve got a thing for Dave. But Gretchen says you don’t.” Her voice is quiet. “Who’s right?”
Linda tries to think what answer she wants to give. She takes too long.
“If we thought you liked him we would never have sent him up to Suzette’s. You’ve got to know that,” Lauren says.
“Even if he is all wrong for you,” adds Gretchen.
“It’s all right,” Linda tells them. “He was going to meet Suzette sooner or later.” But come to the party. You’re supposed to be my friends. She doesn’t say it out loud so nobody does it.
• • •
ARE WE ALL BACK? Does anyone have any questions or comments to make?
Actually, the curfew was more of an annoyance factor. If you could demonstrate persuasively to the police that your reasons for being out were nonpolitical, you were likely to get off with a warning and the instructions to go right home. Unless you were a male with long hair. Later the National Guard brought tanks into Berkeley and stationed them at crit
ical intersections, but even this was primarily for show. Though you must remember that there was real fighting and some serious injury.
Well, cats are one of those topics on which you find only partisans. You love cats or you hate cats; no one is indifferent. I can’t explain this. Perhaps these questions are taking us a little far afield. The course is Romance. The point of view is female. Does anyone have a question that is a little more penetrating?
No, no, we will be looking at the romances of older (and younger) women later. Mrs. Kirk will not be a focus, although we will be meeting her. Her partiality for alcohol would make her a difficult subject. Absorption is tricky enough without the added complication of chemical abuse. Let me tell you, though, that on the two occasions when Mrs. Kirk’s husband has remarried, his wives have both been thirty-three years of age. He himself was fifty-two and then fifty-eight. Mrs. Kirk herself is now fifty-eight, and in 1969 if she had become enamored of a man of thirty-three, even in Berkeley, this would have been considered humorous or pathetic. Yet Mrs. Kirk at fifty-eight, judging by appearance alone, has aged less than Mr. Kirk at fifty-eight. There may be variables in this situation, the significance of which we have not yet grasped. Keep the issue in mind, though for the purpose of our current case study all the participants are contemporaries. In the back there?
He was not really a Count. Yes?
Those changes are sexual. The course is Romance. We will not be discussing them this term, although you will find them even more pronounced when the subjects are younger and male.
I must mention to you the possibility of sensory overload in this next Encounter. We are going with Linda to the party. The room is smoky and hot; the music is loud and primitive. This will be an exercise in academic detachment. Ready?
• • •
GRETCHEN HAD OFFERED Linda grass before she left, but Linda had refused. She wanted to keep her wits about her, but now, standing in the open doorway to 201, she realizes suddenly that in a couple of hours she will be surrounded by drunken strangers. And she will still be sober. There is nothing to drink but beer, and she finds the taste of beer extremely vile.
The Doors are on the stereo: “Twentieth Century Fox.” Linda is glad Gretchen is not there. Just yesterday Gretchen had called Leopold’s to ask them to remove records with sexist lyrics from the bins. She had a list of the most outrageous offenders.
“Sure,” the salesman on the phone had said. “Anything for you chicks. Why don’t you come down and we’ll talk about it. Are you a fox?”
“No, I’m a dog,” said Gretchen, slamming down the phone and repeating the conversation to Linda. “Male chauvinist pig!”
Linda passes Dave on her way in. He is in the kitchen washing some glasses. Suzette is with him, perched on the countertop. She has dressed for the evening as Nancy Sinatra, short skirt, white boots, mane of sensuous hair. She is leaning into Dave’s face, saying something in a low, intimate whisper. Linda cannot hear what she says, doesn’t even want to know. Anything Suzette says is rendered interesting and charming by that damned accent she has. Linda doesn’t say hello to either of them.
She finds Kenneth and he hands her a beer, which she accepts tactfully. “I was just thinking of you,” Kenneth says. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve got someone I think you’ll like.” He uses his elbows to force a path through the ROTC. Linda has to follow very closely; it closes up behind them like water. At the end of the path is the living room couch. On the couch is a thin, pale woman with eyeliner all around her eyes. She’s done her lashes like Twiggy, tops and bottoms. No lipstick, but she’s wearing a skirt and nylons. This surprises Linda, who glances around quickly and sees that a lot of people in the room have legs. She is wearing jeans herself, not Levi’s, since Levi’s doesn’t make a jean small enough to fit her, not even boys’ jeans, which are too large at the waist and too small through the hips, but as close to Levi’s as she is capable of coming. They should have been appropriate to the occasion, but Gretchen was right. Linda finds herself in the fifties, where it is still possible to underdress. Where did Kenneth find these people?
Next to the woman on the couch is a man, and this is who Kenneth introduces her to. “Ben Bryant,” he says. “A writer. Ben, this is Linda Connors.” He looks pleased. “A reader,” he adds. “She reads everything. She even reads nonfiction.” He starts to introduce the woman, his hand is opened in her direction, but he never finishes. “And this is—” he says. “Margaret! You made it! Far out!” and he is gone, a little heat remaining where he had been standing. Linda moves into it.
A man behind her is talking above the music in a loud voice. “But Sergeant Pepper is the best album ever made. The Beatles have ennobled rock and roll.”
Another man, higher voice, responds. “Ennobled! They’ve sanitized it. It used to be black! It used to be dangerous!”
Linda smiles at Ben even though she is nervous and he is wearing a thin sweater vest with leather buttons, which she doesn’t think looks promising. “I don’t really read that much,” she says. “Kenneth is easily impressed.”
“Melanie and I,” says Ben, “were just discussing the difference between male and female writers. I was comparing Jane Austen to Joseph Conrad.”
“I like Austen,” says Linda warningly.
“So do I. What she does, she does well. But you must admit the scope of her work is rather limited.”
“Must I?” Linda’s uncomfortableness is disappearing.
“The difference between the two, as I was just telling Melanie, is the difference between insight and gossip.”
Linda looks at Melanie. Her face is impassive. “I’m not so sure a clear distinction can be made between the two. Who knows more about people than the gossip?”
“You’re playing devil’s advocate,” says Ben comfortably.
“I’m expressing my true opinion.”
Ben settles back in the couch, crossing his arms. “I don’t want you to think that I think the differences are biologically determined. No. This is a sociological limitation. Women’s writing is restricted because women’s lives have been restricted. They’re still capable of writing well-crafted little books.”
Linda opens her mouth and Gretchen’s voice comes out. “You’ve lived a pretty full life?” she asks.
“I’ve traveled. Extensively.”
“So have I. I was in Indonesia when Sukarno fell. Grown men circumcised themselves in the hope of passing as Muslims.” Linda sees Ben shift slightly in his seat. “Circumcised themselves. Someday I may want to write about the things I’ve seen.” She has won the argument, but she has cheated to do it. Linda has never even been to Santa Barbara. Dr. MacPherson was in Indonesia when Sukarno fell and has described it so vividly Linda knows she can carry it off if she is challenged. She isn’t. Ben is looking at his lap. Linda’s mood is black. She has been at the party maybe fifteen minutes and already she has betrayed her sex. Worse, she has betrayed Jane Austen. She isn’t fit to live. Linda punishes herself by taking a large sip of beer. And another. She holds her breath and swallows and decides she has paid enough. She abandons her glass by the couch and pointedly directs her words to Melanie. “Excuse me,” she says. “There’s someone I have to talk to.”
Linda shoves her way over to the stereo and Kenneth. “Don’t introduce me to any more writers,” she says.
“Didn’t you like Ben?” Kenneth asks. “Fred, let Linda pick out a record.” Fred Zukini is just about to put the Association on. It is a lucky thing Linda came along. She asks for Big Pink. She wants to hear “The Weight.”
Kenneth turns the music up. He has one arm draped around Margaret; he kisses her on the neck. He smiles at Linda, but it is definitely a get-lost kind of smile. Linda responds, spotting an empty chair in a corner and retreating to it.
She sees Dave again, sitting under the Rembrandt, talking with Dudley Petersen. She cannot quite hear their words, though
the young man with the high voice who disliked the Beatles is still clearly audible. “No, no, no,” he is saying. “We’re talking about the complete failure of the dialectic.”
Suzette has found Dave again, too, and in the sudden silence between “Tears of Rage” and “To Kingdom Come,” Linda hears Suzette ask Dave if she can sit on his lap. Well! Linda can’t help feeling this is somehow lacking in subtlety. Her father told her, advice she has never needed, not once, that boys do not like to be chased and he was a boy himself and should know, but there Suzette is, settling herself in, laughing like Simone Signoret, and this appears to be just one more area in which Linda has been sadly misled. The situation is hopeless. Linda looks at her shoes and wonders how early she can go home. In fact, Linda likes Suzette for being so brazenly weird. Gretchen likes her, Julie likes her, Lauren likes her—add them together and it should have been enough to prevent such popularity.
Linda leans back and closes her eyes, listening to the conversations close to her. To her right, two women are laughing. “So he doesn’t have a condom,” one says. “‘I figured you’d be on the pill,’ he tells me and I say, ‘Listen, bucko, we have a saying among my people—the person who plans the party should bring the beer.’ ‘Your people?’ he asks and I say, ‘Yeah, my people. You know. Women.’” The second woman’s voice is soft and throaty. “Probably just never heard women called people before,” she offers.
Farther from her, Linda hears someone suggesting a party game. Everyone is to lie down with their heads on someone else’s stomach and then all laugh simultaneously. Score another one for Gretchen.
She hears Frank Zukini asking some woman what her major is. Penetrating question, Linda thinks. “Drama,” the woman answers. “I’m a thespian.” There is a long pause, and Frank’s voice when he responds betrays shock. “Whatever’s right,” he says, at last.
And then Suzette’s voice, close to Linda’s ear, indicates that Dave’s lap is unoccupied again. “I have a message for you,” Suzette tells her.
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