Gay Place

by Billy Lee Brammer

  “Hello?” Ellen Streeter said.

  “Hello,” Ouida said. “Hello? Operator … I think I might —”

  “Hello,” Ellen said.

  “Who is this?”

  “This is Ellen. Who’s this?”

  “Ellen who?”

  “Jus’ ole Ellen. Who’n the worl’ could this be? Sounds like a divorcée of note …”

  “Is Roy there?” Ouida said. “I’m calling Roy.”

  “He’s here, but he’s occupied at the moment. Gone to the bathroom.”

  “Well how long —”

  “Oh not long at all. I shouldn’t imagine. Fifteen, twenny minutes. You like to hold?”

  There was a silence. Each of them debated whether to hang up on the other. Ouida said: “What are you doing there?”

  “Me? Doing here?” Ellen giggled.

  Ouida was silent.

  “Well I’ll tell you, dearie,” Ellen said. “You see there’s the swimming and the Junior League and the Cotillion in the fall and water skiing in the afternoons, and then of course there’s Roy. You remember that nice fellow, dearie? Roy? Roy and I screw just about every Wednesday noon …”

  Thirteen

  “… LILYAN TASHMAN,” ROY SANG softly, staring at his strange face in the bathroom mirror, “was not kissed by an ashman …”

  He relathered and pulled the razor across patches of dark skin. He rinsed his face and the blade. And the whiskers — they lay along the sides of the lavatory, trapped in soap film. I will free myself, he said, drawing more hot water, washing the whiskers down. All worldly attachments … impulses … personal and egotistical …

  Saying this, he dropped, one by one, razor, blades, powder, cologne, deodorant, mouthwash, vitamins, styptic pencil, lighter fluid, tincture merthiolate, glycerin suppositories, comb, military brushes — the works — into a wastebasket.

  All of it, he thought. I shall keep my soul fixed on the Eternal Soul: performing my worldly duties without fear, hesitation, self-seeking or remorse. Divest. Disengage. Krishna, I am come. To stand on head and practice the Yoga. I shall find spiritual elevation. Shall brush teeth in an honest solution of salt and soda …

  He shut off the hot water and emerged from the bathroom … bare-chested … disengaged … looked at Ellen Streeter for a moment, and walked into the small kitchen. He explored the empty cabinets, faintly strewn with dust. “Don’t I have any salt?” he said out loud. “Any bicarbonate?” He stood over the sink and looked through a small window at the dark water of the lake.

  Ellen followed him into the kitchen. “You don’t have anything in here,” she said. “I was going to fry some eggs. No eggs. Not even a frypan.”

  “All I want is salt and bicarbonate of soda,” Roy said, staring gloomily at the lake. “Pretty damn thoughtless of you to come visiting without a little something — little salt, little soda … Just a small gesture — but the kind that’s appreciated.”

  “What do you want it for?” Ellen said.

  “What? What indeed.” He turned and faced her, spread his lips and rubbed a finger across the enameled surfaces. “My teeth,” he said. “To brush teeth.”

  “Use your toothpaste. I saw toothpaste in there.”

  “Toothpaste,” Roy said, “is a worldly, egotistical attachment. The symbol of my fall into this state of helplessness. Salt and bicarbonate will release me from all that — clarify my understanding and make my true course clear …”

  Ellen smiled and moved back to the front of the cabin. Roy thought a moment, went into the bathroom and retrieved his toothpaste from the wastebasket. He began to brush. He stared at himself in the mirror, touching his face, and then disinterred the shaving lotion. When he was finished, he joined Ellen on the rock porch that overlooked the lake. They sat in canvas chairs and smoked cigarettes steadily, commenting on the record music coming from a club on the far side of the lake. The music blended with the sound of water slapping against rocks and insects droning round their heads.

  “What’s open this late?” Roy said. “Think of someplace and I’ll take you.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Ellen said, “and there is still some beer in the refrigerator. If nothing else. Ever thought of brushing your teeth with beer?”

  “Yes,” Roy said.

  “And I’m not dressed to go out. Know what I’ve got on under this robe?”

  “Lovely golden legs,” Roy said. “Worldly attachments …”

  “Damp bathing suit. It’s going to give me sinus.”

  “We could go swimming,” he said, swatting at insects.

  “Only in the nude. Otherwise, the damp suit will give me sinus … Or does Ouida have exclusive rights on you in that department?”

  “The bathing suit,” Roy said, “is a great allegory of man’s spiritual crisis. We keep wanting to crawl back to the sea, to get right with the Lord, achieve eternal union with God. But the bathing suits get in the way. Vain, self-seeking, worldly attachments.”

  “I know where most men want to crawl …”

  “Worldly impulses …”

  “You’ve been making a spectacle of yourself — you know that?”

  “Ventures and gains,” Roy said. “One has to run certain risks, defy the social order, to …” The cat came pacing across the concrete and sprang into his lap. “… if one expects to find the ultimate reality of Sam Luchow. Hah yew, Sam?” The cat looked up at him and then began to gnaw on his hand.

  “She’s bankrupt — you realize that?” Ellen said. “I’m a bitch and all, but I have held on to a few values. Ouida’s worthless.”

  He was silent, thinking.

  “Is she better than I am? At … lovemaking? Is that it?”

  He wished now he could have said he really wouldn’t know about Ouida’s capabilities. “Not noticeably,” he said.

  “I’ve never asked you this before …”

  “No you haven’t.”

  “… but why is it you stopped coming round to see me? I’ve been dropped by others, with even less ceremony, but never by anyone who proposed marriage on one day and stood me up for a date on the next. I wonder about that sudden cooling.”

  “You said no.”

  “I was young and stupid,” she said.

  “So was I.”

  “You said you loved me. Change your mind in twenty-four hours?”

  “No …”

  “Then why —”

  “Praise the world but never the inexpressible … I quote somebody … You can never impress the Angel with your splendid emotions. Show him some simple thing that has weathered until … I forget the rest. Snaf-snaf-snaf-snaf. Hem-hem. Hum-hum. Speak to him things. He’ll stand amazed … And so forth. How the hell can I express what’s goin’ on inside my head? I loved you — sure — maybe I still do …”

  “Then why? I’d have gone on sleeping with you.”

  “That’s unimportant …”

  “It wasn’t to me,” she said. “You realize you were the first and there haven’t been any others since? You believe that?”

  “Your reputation’s intact.”

  “Oh balls.”

  “Speak to me of things …”

  “Roy …”

  “Worldly attachments …”

  “We made love twenty-eight straight days.”

  “Count ’em — twenty eight.”

  “Roy, for God’s sake …”

  “And on the twenty-ninth day I rested. And proposed marriage. And you said no. So I packed and moved out here. To forget.”

  “Roy, be serious for a minute and —”

  “I am serious,” he said. “You know why I moved? Because people got in the way. Because there was a foul-voiced woman across the alley who kept saying goddam and goddam and throwing things at her husband and beating her kids. Because there was a fellow appeared at the garbage pile downstairs one day with a boxer dog, looking for rats. Killed thirty-seven rats so far, he told me. Hell of a dog. Crazy for rats. Stick around, he said — the boxer dog sniffing
through the Kotex boxes — he’ll find a rat; stay and observe. There was this rich broad lived upstairs, stopped me in the hall one day and told me all about her trip to Mexico. The people, she said, were so wonderful and simple; they had a verve and a zest for life and a joy de vee that she was so completely simpatico about. It jus’ cast a spell! Because an old Negro woman stopped me on the street one day and asked for a quarter for busfare so she could get to the hospital to visit her daughter. Who was having her womb scraped. Her womb scraped! Because there were Mexican kids starving across town and all Fielding and Rinemiller and the others were talking about was how to force Fenstemaker to come out against the loyalty oath for chrissake. Because … How the hell do I know? Because I was a menopause baby and the only boy in the dorm at military school who hadn’t had a circumcision, and we’d made love twenty-eight straight days and you wouldn’t marry me and there was the Mothers’ March on Polio the next night and a debutante party the night after. How can I tell you why?”

  Ellen got to her feet, dropped her hairbrush into the pocket of her robe and pulled the collar round her neck. “Well …” she said, looking at him for a moment and then bending down to kiss his forehead. “Lots of luck.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Ask me over again sometime,” she said.

  “Door’s always open.”

  “I’ll try to remember to bring salt and bicarbonate.”

  He got to his feet and moved next to her. They kissed for several minutes. “Go home,” he finally said. “I’m having an affair with a married woman and I shouldn’t get involved with a virgin at the same time.”

  “Ask me for a date,” she said. “For the weekend.”

  “I’m already committed.”

  “Then follow me around out there when you’re not playing tennis. Pursue me. Like I’m wanted.”

  “You’re wanted,” he said.

  “Badly …”

  “You’re wanted badly.”

  “Not enough,” she said.

  “I’m bored,” he said, “with abstract gods and loves that are little more than social habit.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know. These insights just seem to come to me.”

  He walked her to the car and said goodnight. When she had driven away, he strolled for a short distance along the lakefront. He stood watching the water and then pulled off his shoes and socks and clothes, setting them in a neat pile a few feet from the water’s edge. They’ll find them here, he thought. Should he run back to the cabin for his billfold? To stuff into the trouser pockets as some means of identification? He decided against it, and stepped off into the water. It was cool and exhilarating, but the mud bottom felt awful against his feet. He moved farther out; the depth did not seem to reach beyond his hips, so he lay flat in the water and began to swim, with smooth effortless strokes, and when he looked back he could see the distance covered — considerable — yes, a substantial distance — a good fifty yards. The lights in the cabin gleamed feebly; there was a thin path of reflection leading directly to him. He let his legs sink and then his head went under and then he broke the surface again. Plenty deep, he thought. Enough to drown an elephant in. He floated on his back, gaining strength somehow, and when he realized he was not going to sink he began to swim again, round in circles at first and then following the trail of light, finally pulling himself onto the slippery rocks. He walked naked and shivering up the stone steps into the cabin.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, bunched in bedcovers, staring round the room. He looked at the cat.

  “Who’d have fed you, Sam?” he said aloud. The cat’s ears twitched forward and then fell back. “Who’d have fed you, hah? Seems to me a man’s got to have some sense of responsibility …”

  Fourteen

  THE STRIDENT SONG OF two grackles waked him late the next morning. He lay listening to the birds, attempting to isolate the sylvan smells that filled his head. The grackles were camped outside on a ledge, annoying the cat with their shrill calls, feathers glistening in the sun like sheets of carbon. The cat crouched in the window, peering through the screen, growling to himself. Roy lay on his side watching all this, feeling better with the sweet smell coming off the hills. The phone’s ringing finally got him out of bed.

  “What I called about,” Ellen Streeter said, “was to inquire how you’re getting to the ranch.”

  “Driving,” Roy said. “The last trip on water skis was just too hard on all the family.”

  “Your car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alone?”

  “I think.”

  “Would you take me?”

  “All right,” he said. “In about an hour … I thought you had a date.”

  “I did. But Harris called this morning and broke it. He was furious because I said I was going straight home last evening and went to your house instead.”

  “In about an hour,” Roy repeated. “I’ve got to bathe. And iron my Indian madras underwear. Feed the cat. Kneel toward Mecca. All kinds of things.”

  Ellen said that would be fine and rang off. Roy smoked a cigarette and ate a bowl of cereal. He pulled on a pair of khaki shorts and walked outside to retrieve the clothes he had dropped along the lakefront on the night before …

  Sometime during that night Ouida had untangled herself from Rinemiller’s dead embrace and wandered half asleep, the smoke and whiskey smell of him still clinging to her skin, down the hall to her own bed. Thinking of this next morning, the gesture was dimly consoling. I have some standards, she said to herself. She had come awake in her own bedroom, and who could say, for that matter, what really had happened during the night? They’d both been drunk — helplessly, monumentally drunk — struggling up the stairs together, fumbling in the dark with buttons, buckles, underwear snaps. He had stretched out alongside, kissing her arms, and when she rolled over, languidly returning the kiss, Rinemiller was limp and gulping air, already fast asleep.

  At some remote hour, she liked to think, she had clutched her clothes to her breast and fled down the hall. But she knew there had been something in between, sometime before and after, with the phonograph music still thumping on the ground floor. Alfred had regained consciousness and taken hold of her in the night, resuming the familiar progression of events, mounting in awareness, until such point when they were both seized by wild, bed-groaning flights of anarchy, at once spirited and aimless, in quest of something long since passed from sight and mind. She could not recall where it had taken them or how it was ended; there was more the memory of exertion than exaltation.

  She had come awake early, in her own room, and immediately set about putting the house in order while Rinemiller shuddered with his bad dreams in the upstairs bed. Window draperies stirred with the rustle of dead leaves on the lawn. Servants moved about noiselessly; the gardener rolled the courts and pruned hedgerows bordering the massive rock fences. Ouida sat in the kitchen, talking with the cook and listening to popular songs on the cheap radio.

  George Giffen arrived at noon, stalking into the big house, smiling and confident, breathing Dentyne in her face, taking her in his bear’s clasp like a sugar daddy come to call. Then he bolted up the stairs to shake Rinemiller awake. She could hear their movements from the kitchen, tracing their progress from bedroom to bath and back to bedroom. They would be coming down the stairs soon, and she wished suddenly for all the guests to arrive, the whole pack of them descending at once to bring some privacy to the manse. She was relieved to have Giffen around to help her face Rinemiller. She’d need an army, though, to deal with Roy. If he came at all. She wondered if he would. Had he been aware of the phone call? Had that slut told him? Perhaps he had been in the same room all the time, listening to Ellen Streeter rattling on. She would need the crowd, in any event, to cushion the shock of renewal …

  I have a horror, she thought, of salvaging operations.

  She remembered Earle going off to war, brandishing his lieutenant’s bars, just af
ter they were married, and the horror of his coming back. The feeling advancing not so much from fear he might have changed, but rather just the reverse — that he hadn’t changed at all. Returned, instead, just as he had been in the beginning, packaged and shipped home in one of those germ-free, sterilized plastic bags. Good as old! Exactly as remembered in her high school hopes. It was the trouble with all of them. Didn’t anyone ever change? She ought to try to make that clear sometime … Don’t you see, lover? The magic’s all gone. We had something once, but you never changed … Impale them with your love and they were the same as dead, gone fixed and rigid and beady-eyed: my wax museum of propped-up paramours. So few of them grew large in her eyes with the passing of time. If Roy should come, she hoped he would have changed in some small way, put on weight, added a quarter inch in height, succeeding in an overnight alteration. With even the slightest change, they might become old lovers all over again.

  She sat alone at the kitchen table, wishing the others would arrive, all of them new and exotic and miraculously strange-visaged. When she grew tired of waiting, she prepared a tray of gin drinks for herself, George, and Alfred. They would feel so much more secure with cold drinks in their hands. She had the refreshments ready by the time the two men came down the stairs.

  Giffen had changed — my heavens, she could see that. All of a sudden changed. And so had Alfred, though it could not be called progress of any sort. He seemed to have gone off in the other direction, retreating, pale and timorous, into a fog of indecision. Here she’d been uneasy about meeting his glance, and there was scarcely anything to meet. His face was vague, eyes all glassy; his rogue’s smile little more than a joke. She asked him how he felt.

  Rinemiller touched his gleaming forehead; there was gooseflesh risen on his arms. “I’ve got an awful hangover,” he said. He looked at Giffen, and added: “Ouida and I got tight last night. I think I must have drunk a quart of whiskey. It didn’t occur to me until this morning that I never had anything to eat …”