Gay Place

by Billy Lee Brammer

  “What time is it?” she said.

  “Little after nine,” Roy said.

  She could not seem to hold her eyes open in the light. Finally, she slipped off the side of the bed and walked past them into a small bathroom and began washing her face. While she bent over the lavatory bowl, Willie said: “We were looking for a blanket. Should I take one off the bed here?”

  Ouida returned to the bed and sat on the edge of it for a moment, blinking. “How long have you been here?” she said to Roy.

  “Couple hours.”

  “Where in the world did you go?” She was not cross, especially; it was more as if she were disappointed and a little impatient in dealing with a small child.

  “I had to take George Giffen over to Fenstemaker’s ranch.”

  She sighed and made a gesture of resignation: Roy’s answer did not explain anything, but it was too hopelessly confused to go into any further. She looked away from them, thinking.

  “Blanket …” she said aloud.

  She got to her feet again and went to the closet and pulled down a heavy Mexican serape. Willie took it from her.

  “I suppose,” she said, “you wanted this for the out-of-doors?”

  Willie said yes. He thanked her and headed down the hall. Roy remained where he was, liking the looks of her good legs and her hips and her small behind and the soft roll of her abdomen encased in cotton underwear. Her wisp of a brassiere was like something from a subteen shop. She returned to the bed and sat with her legs hanging off the side. She got a cigarette lighted.

  “I was sick after you left,” she said. “God, I was sick.”

  “Are you feeling better?”

  “I think.”

  She propped herself against the back of the bed and sat smoking, holding an ashtray in her lap.

  “Shut the door and come sit with me awhile,” she said.

  He sat at the opposite end so he could see her better. It occurred to him that he had spent nearly, all one night in bed with her but had only the vaguest impression of how she looked. She was like a little girl just going into woman.

  He was breathless for a moment, thinking back, struck by the little girl image. Once, on the promise of three gasoline ration stamps, he had driven across town to a neighborhood of broken-down flatbed trucks and decaying church buildings, where a small girl of twelve or thirteen sat waiting on an ancient front porch swing. The yards were smeared with chicken dung, and she had come toward him, holding the gas stamps out for him to see as if to demonstrate the absolute, manifest goodness of her promise. He was home from military school and had met her the night before in a cheap movie house. Next to the water fountain. Munching on popcorn. The two of them bored with the movie. They had sat together on one of the back rows, kissing interminably. She promised gasoline stamps if only he would come take her someplace the next evening, and there he was with the family’s prewar Buick parked out front on the ruined street. “Someplace” was a wooded gravel pit she knew about, and after kissing and holding on to her small breasts during the final quarter hour of twilight, he suggested they move into the back seat. She slipped over the top, and before he could get a station fixed on the radio and extract two cigarettes from the pack above the visor, she had pulled off nearly all her clothes. She sat in a corner, small and lovely in her cotton knit underwear and thin brassiere, waiting for him, explaining, once he had joined her in back, that her older sister had instructed her in how it was done. She sat watching him, smiling faintly, waiting for something. Instead, they sat together in back, holding on to each other, until it was time to go. Outside her house he tried to return the gasoline stamps, but she wouldn’t accept them. Her father had come out on the porch, drunk and abusive, and there had not been time even to promise he would call.

  He never seemed able to call, nor did he see her again, and now he sat at the end of the four-poster bed, watching Ouida in her rich girl’s cheap underwear, wishing he had. The memory of the child in the back seat of the old Buick filled him with regret. Where was she now? Whoring in New Orleans or disguising her innocence as an aging car hop along the border — he would have called her now under any circumstance. He could not remember her name. The street where she lived no longer even existed; a four-lane highway had long since supplanted those diseased neighborhoods. But the small girl, in his memory, seemed to embrace all of virtue in a world of barbarisms.

  Ouida was talking. He had not been paying attention.

  “I was so sick …”

  She was still going on about that. He turned round on the bed and stretched out beside her. She continued to sit up with her shoulders resting against the back of the bed. She put her hand out and touched his face. He felt he should say something; he’d been silent for several minutes.

  “You look like a little girl,” he said. He could not see her; his head was turned the other way and one arm was flung across her bare legs.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Ouida said. “Let’s go someplace where everyone looks different.”

  Nineteen

  CATHRYN HAD WAITED IN the front room while Willie looked for the blanket. She stood next to the side door, watching the progression of events at the party, trying, but not in the least succeeding, to share in the general rapture. The cowboy musicians were clearly drunk now, and they were playing overtime in exchange for whiskey and an opportunity to dance, every so often, with the women. The noise in the house had risen to such a pitch that it was nearly impossible to determine its individual components. It was just noise: bad music and loud talk, interspersed with whoops of maddened laughter, held together by the continuous thumping of bass chords. She watched Harris and Ellen Streeter grappling with one another behind a potted palm. Ellen was pale and stoic looking. Harris had kissed her and now had backed off, glaring at her. Ellen said something — it was impossible to hear any of it — and then Harris pulled her roughly against the wall. She shook loose and stepped away, as if gauging the distance, and then swung her small fist, cracking Harris smartly across the bridge of the nose and a corner of one eye.

  Harris blinked in astonishment; he reached up and touched the nose and eye. Ellen watched him for a moment, then turned and walked off into the crowd. Harris’s face had gone red all over, and a single large teardrop advanced from the corner of the sore eye, spilling down his puffed cheek.

  Willie appeared with the serape. “You ready?” he said to Cathryn.

  “Just a minute,” Cathryn said. She told Willie about the blow Ellen Streeter had struck Harris behind the potted palm. They stood there for a few moments, watching Harris, who looked their way for an instant but did not seem really to notice anyone. He had a pocket handkerchief out and was blotting at both eyes. His face was still very red. Finally, he walked off in the direction of the bathroom.

  Willie and Cathryn turned to leave, but Rinemiller reached them as they moved toward the side door.

  “You there this afternoon when Earle made the jump?” he said.

  Willie said yes, and Rinemiller said, “I mean were you there when he hit the ground? Did you see him when he hit?”

  “No,” Willie said. “Giffen and Roy got there first. I’m not certain whether they actually saw him land — but they were there first. What’s matter?”

  “It’s Earle,” Rinemiller said. “He pitched over in the kitchen a few minutes ago. Still passed out. Maybe it’s the booze, but I got to thinking maybe he cracked his head harder than he wanted to admit to himself this afternoon …”

  “Well let’s go have a look,” Willie said.

  “He’s out cold,” Rinemiller was saying as they pushed through the crowd. “His goddam eyes are all up in his head. His skin’s clammy and he looks awful …” He paused for a moment, thinking, and then added: “But no more awful than most drunks, I suppose.”

  The party was still going good; people moved past and in front of them, looking reckless and extravagant and gloriously muddled. One of the women had been persuaded to sing, and she was goi
ng at it vigorously, in an occasionally off-key light opera voice, describing how it was when the Deep Purple fell.

  In the kitchen, Earle Fielding was sprawled on the linoleum, his long legs half under the table. A sofa cushion had been slipped under his head, and there was a crowd gathered, pushing in close to see. Willie bent down to get a better look; he peeled back one eyelid but was uncertain about what exactly he was looking for; he attempted to take a pulse count; he kept losing it. Finally, he straightened up and said to Cathryn: “Wait here a minute. I’m going to go find Roy.”

  He headed out of the kitchen and down the back hallway toward the little bedroom where he’d last seen Roy and Ouida. The bedroom door was closed, but light shone at the bottom, against the polished tile. He put his head against the door panel to listen. He rapped lightly and then once again, with more authority. He turned the knob and stepped inside. They’d left only their impressions on the unmade bed; other than the bed, there was little else. Willie wandered into the small bathroom, switched on the light, examined the tile floor, shook the dry shower curtain. He stared at himself in the mirror above the lavatory. His face seemed as bleached and pallid as Earle Fielding’s. He splashed cold water across tender eyelids. Then he switched off lights and left the room and moved back up the hall. Cathryn was at the other end, next to the door to the front bath. She took his arm and said: “Everyone’s gone crazy — really.”

  Willie glanced at Cathryn and then, through the bathroom door, at Ellen Streeter. Ellen sat on the edge of a low tub, pressing a washcloth against the side of her face. Willie and Cathryn stepped inside, and Cathryn said: “Feel any better?”

  Ellen smiled faintly and nodded her head. She got to her feet and stood in front of a mirror, holding the cloth away from her cheek to examine the bruise. She sat down again on the edge of the tub. Willie asked what happened; Cathryn stared at Ellen and said: “Harris socked her back. Right outside the door here. I saw it all … The son of a bitch.”

  “Men is men,” Ellen said, looking up and smiling again.

  “Jesus …” Willie said.

  “You’d have to collapse on the floor and scream and swallow your tongue to get any attention around here,” Cathryn said. “Think I was the only one who noticed.”

  “Where’s Harris?” Willie said.

  “Wandered off somewhere,” Cathryn said.

  “Sure you’re all right?” Willie said.

  “Yes,” Ellen said. She got back to her feet and looked in the mirror. “Harris and I have now exchanged black eyes … We ought to buy us some boy-girl look-alike sweaters.”

  Willie left Cathryn with Ellen Streeter and returned to the kitchen. Earle still lay sprawled, half under the small table. Rinemiller and Huggins were maneuvering over him, as if about to lower grappling hooks.

  “I couldn’t find Roy,” Willie said to them. He stared at Earle, and added: “We ought to get him into town.”

  Rinemiller nodded and got hold of Earle Fielding’s two feet. Willie and Huggins struggled to get a firm grip under each arm. The three of them began a slow, shuffling move toward the kitchen door. Cathryn appeared and Willie told her to go out front and bring the car around. Cathryn made a languid gesture, as if resigned to the inevitability of witnessing one delirious incident after another.

  A few people stopped and stared and smiled as they carried Earle to the car. One young man, locked in an excess of pleasure with his date in the backseat of a car, let loose of the girl and looked out the window as they moved past carrying Earle.

  “Hey-hey!” he called to them. “You all gonna be back now? Anybody drops out the tournament, screws up the pairin’s for everyone else …”

  They got Earle stretched out in the back of Rinemiller’s car. Huggins sat alongside the unconscious figure, and Alfred moved up front to drive. Willie and Cathryn followed in another car. The rain had started up again, and they drove along the soft roads toward the main highway, alternately accelerating and slowing with the downpours as the stormclouds sailed overhead.

  Twenty

  THEY HAD DRIVEN IN silence most of the way into town and along the gleaming streets; fled across soggy lawns, rainsheets flashing against the stone walls of the cabin. They walked through Roy’s three rooms, turning on lights, silent and self-conscious, touching hands. Roy got some music started on the phonograph; Ouida sat on the side of the bed, combing the dampness from her hair. Rain drummed on the expanse of lake water. They sat listening to the weather, talking a little, waiting for her hair to dry. They kissed until the whacking of their pulsebeats made it nearly unendurable, and then they switched off lights and lay in darkness, listening to the lake sounds; presently they were communicating in gasps and half-sentences and muffled laughter, and Roy could very nearly convince himself that they had something, the two of them there, something amounting to more than mere mathematics and consecutive, counted-on-the-calendar fornications; a prize that outshone thrust and parry, challenged parts, and the mingled secretions of comparison shoppers.

  And then, the two of them passing into sleep in simultaneous exhaustion, he could not be sure. For an instant he could hear the singsong chants of children, the sounds outdistancing ancient discords; ephemeral fragrances came to him in sleep: pine and cinnamon and fish-water, and he remembered an old friend from college telling him of making love to his wife of ten years in the backyard mint bed, next to the water hydrant, thrashing in sweet leaves, in the dark of night, laughing and talking and whispering Solomon’s Song: Thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant, and our bed is green. And he could not be certain. Memory, reason, poetry, failed him in sleep. He was unable to recall even the wife of his youth, his sweet dumb blonde mirage of a wife, swilling Nugrape Soda in the Norfolk U.S.O. — where was she now? And where was Ellen Streeter, his lover of a leap-year month? Or the child who’d been so accommodating in the backseat of the prewar Buick? Or even Ouida, sitting cross-legged on the bed, romping about in her cotton underpants, small breasts swelling and going flat with the shift of her weight? There was only the idea of them — he’d nearly forgotten all the details in the short space of their absence. Now they were no more than an idealized montage, symbols of desire put together from all his women. He hoped they were somehow, each of them, with him in the bed, beneath the covers. He was certain he could feel one or all of them up against him as he passed into the deepest hour of sleep.

  In the morning there were flecks of lipstick round his mouth. He blinked at himself in the bathroom mirror, wondering how long it would be before Ouida came awake and how soon he would need to construct a face, an attitude, with which to ease a wife at dawn. He went out on the rock porch and stood in the gray light to wait for the milkman. When he got back inside, Ouida was awake and ravenously hungry, boiling eggs and munching vanilla wafers. She was barefoot, with a pair of his bleached khakis tied round her waist, good hips filling the seat, trouser legs rolled to the first flare of calf muscle. They sat across from each other at breakfast, and Roy struggled with the right noises, the alien faces, until the phone’s ringing rattled the dime store silver service.

  “I hope they haven’t tracked us here already,” Ouida said. She sat pinning her hair and watched Roy hesitating, his hand on the hooked receiver. He picked it up, finally, and said hello.

  “You give up on the party?” Willie said to him.

  Roy said yes he had; he’d withdrawn from public life; he’d divested himself of all worldly attachments.

  “Yes … well listen,” Willie said. “I’ve got to get in touch with Ouida. I can’t find her anywhere.”

  “What you need her for?” Roy said.

  “You know where she is?”

  “She’s around,” Roy said. “I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  “Yes … Well … Listen …” Willie said. “Earle’s in the hospital — nothing really serious — I mean he’s not going to die or anything — but I thought Ouida ought to know.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  �
��He’s got a concussion, it turns out. That parachute jump. Got clonked on the head after his helmet was knocked off. Something like that.”

  “I’ll tell Ouida,” Roy said. He got the information about which hospital and what room and how many special nurses. And the doctor — he’d forgotten to ask about the doctor: after telling Ouida, he had to call Willie back and ask about the doctor. Ouida cleared the breakfast table and began dressing, and Willie gave him the doctor’s name and more reassurances.

  “He was unconscious most of the night,” Willie said, “but he began coming out of it about an hour ago. He’s not quite sure what’s going on, but he’ll be all right.” Willie’s voice was smoke-strained and full of exhaustion. “Rinemiller and I took turns sitting up with him.”

  “Alfred? He was with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’s he acting?”

  “He grumbled about Giffen a few times — wondering where George was — but otherwise he —”

  “You say anything to him?”

  “No … What in hell would I say? Weird feeling just being there with him. Now I’m going home to bed and think about whether I ought to expose him. Know where I can get a good job?”

  Roy said no, but that Willie might think about running for a seat in the Legislature. They hung up. Roy put on a clean shirt and tie and then walked outside with Ouida for the drive to the hospital.

  The big country house was silent. Cars were parked all along the drive, creaking in the morning heat. Inside the house a Mexican maid moved through the main room, emptying ashtrays, collecting bottles and sandwich crusts and half-filled glasses of whiskey. Huggins lay asleep in his underwear; he lay on one of the sofas, wrapped in the serape Willie had left behind the night before. He had got back from the hospital at two or three in the morning, waved a liquored goodbye to the cowboy musicians, and collapsed on the couch. He made horrible sounds early that morning, but the maid did not seem to notice. She went into the kitchen, switched on the dishwasher, and then walked out back and down the hill to look in on her husband and children. Huggins stirred on the couch, murmuring to himself, as the dishwasher shuddered on the kitchen floor. Huggins opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. He struggled to an upright position, sitting on the edge of the couch, and fumbled with cigarettes. Then, he got to his feet and wandered into the kitchen, stared at the dishwasher and rinsed his whiskered face at the water tap. He chewed on a turkey wing and took a swallow of vermouth from an open bottle. He rubbed his damp face again and squinted in the morning light.