Blood Secrets

by Jones, Craig

  Spring term ended, and I signed up for two classes over the summer. I moved out of the dormitory and in with Gloria. She was short on money and took a part-time job in a travel agency, so that three days a week I had the apartment to myself. During the first week I saw nothing of Frank, and I thought maybe he had gone away for the summer even though his name remained on the mailbox. With too much time on my hands, I became friendly with Tom Kennard, a likable bore, and his girlfriend, Janet, a harmless twit whose most memorable features were a sorority pin and a lisp. The three of us spent several afternoons drinking beer in Tom’s apartment, and I sometimes turned the topic of conversation to “the weirdo” living next door to him.

  Frank, they said, was something of a prodigy, having finished his master’s at twenty-one and now, at twenty-five, nearly through with his doctoral dissertation. His area of concentration was Asian-African Studies (“Very faddish,” affirmed Janet, puckering the f), which probably accounted for the sparseness of his living conditions. Tom had been in Frank’s apartment only once, and according to him, once was enough. Old cushions and pillows substituted for furniture, the walls were absolutely barren, and except for one study lamp and the fluorescent tubes in the kitchen and bathroom, the entire place was lighted by candles. The living room, said Tom, looked more like a hut than a home.

  “What about those girls who come to see him?” I asked.

  “God only knows what they do in there,” said Janet. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he practices voodoo.”

  When I finally saw him again, it wasn’t in our apartment building but in the student union grill. Sitting alone in a booth, he had a book in front of him, from which he read only bits at a time. He would lift his eyes from the page and squint pensively, giving the impression he was not about to accept anything until he had taken it apart for himself. While I stood in the cafeteria line waiting for my cheeseburger, I stared at him, but I was analyzing myself. Why in hell did he interest me? There had been other guys, much more appealing in every respect, whom I had found unattainable, and I had never compromised myself by pursuing them. Here I was a student of Literature and therefore, I figured, a student of human motives and emotions; still, I could not put a finger on the motives behind my own behavior. I wasn’t out husband-hunting, I didn’t suffer from nymphomania, I had no penchant for tall men, I wasn’t a masochist who enjoyed rejection, I had little interest in history or politics or anything else he was likely to talk about, I was unimpressed by his bohemian appearance, and I certainly wasn’t one of those lost little girls who need a man to tell them who they are.

  “Hi. Remember me?”

  He looked up and blinked. He was still absorbed in his book and his own thoughts. I felt like the violator of some intimate connection.

  “Yes,” he said, “I remember. The eavesdropper.”

  I sensed I wouldn’t be invited, so I sat down immediately.

  “Well, eavesdropping is one way of finding out things. Another thing I’ve found out is that you make your girlfriends cry.”

  His mouth tightened. “Let’s put it another way: I let them cry.”

  “Oh? And what do they have to cry about?”

  “Things you probably wouldn’t understand.” Said oh, so politely, but it was a definite swipe. An emotional snob, I thought.

  “Do you run ads in the paper? ‘Strong shoulder seeks tears’? Or ‘Have compassion, will travel’?”

  He inhaled deeply and looked away.

  “Well,” I continued, “how do you meet them?”

  “You don’t strike me as the type who goes in for small talk. Why are you doing it with me?”

  “I wouldn’t classify this as small talk. Unless you consider your personal life small.”

  “You’re very good at passing the ball. If you’ll excuse me, I—”

  “No. Please. I don’t like eating alone.”

  “You came in here alone.”

  “But now I’m not. Please stay.”

  “I’m too uncomfortable,” he said.

  “I make you uncomfortable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because . . .” His face reddened, his tone hardened. “I don’t know what you’re up to. But whatever it is, it’s not attractive, and I’m not amused.”

  “You mean I’m not your type?”

  He winced at this, picked up his book and left.

  I sulked the entire evening. Gloria and I played Scrabble. I drew nothing but vowels, cursed my luck, snapped at Gloria, smoked one cigarette after another, criticized Rita Hayworth’s acting on the midnight movie, and went to bed with a headache.

  When I woke up on Saturday, I resolved to pull myself out of this slump. But the very fact that I did not understand the slump irritated me all the more. I began working on a paper due on Tuesday, but Ugo Betti and his “emblematic themes” could not compete with Frank’s words going round and round in my head: “Things you probably wouldn’t understand” and “I’m not amused.” How dare he! If I considered myself to be anything, it was bright and amusing. I was the “star” of the dormitory I had lived in, always the center of attention when I wanted it. I was also famous for whipping up a paper in five or six hours, and I had often been propositioned by the other girls to write theirs for them. I wanted to tell him about the time a girl from Shaker Heights laid a hundred dollars on my desk (tempted, I still declined it) and begged me to write something on Sinclair Lewis so she could spend the weekend shacked up with the mechanic who had replaced the spark plugs in her Corvette.

  But this paper I was working on did not come together. By Sunday night it was still disjointed and lacking focus. I pushed it aside and asked Gloria if she wanted to go out for a beer. Although she had to get up for work the next morning, she sprang from her chair and got to the door before I did. All weekend she had been watching me the way I imagine doctors watch a terminal case; obviously, she equated my suggestion with improved health.

  Just as we reached the parking lot, Frank and a girl were getting out of his car, each with a bag of groceries. Instantly, I consoled myself with the fact that the girl was pale and mousy. But as Frank looked at me and quickly turned away, I was struck by something else: because the girl was so puny, she could easily have been seventeen or eighteen, but she could also have been as young as fourteen. What really got to me were the groceries; somehow, they seemed just as suggestive as a toothbrush and pajamas.

  “What a sorry-looking little thing she is,” I muttered as we drove away.

  “That’s exactly what I told you about,” said Gloria. “And she’ll probably be sorrier for getting mixed up with him.”

  I didn’t answer. I waited until we got to the Campus Keg and had a beer in front of us, then told her what had happened in the union grill. She looked at me in surprise.

  “You mean you went over to him?”

  “You don’t have to say it like that,” I protested.

  “Oh, brother!” she said, rolling her eyes. “Are you suddenly developing a taste for strange excitement?”

  It was bad enough being angry at him, but Gloria’s criticism of me tempted me into playing devil’s advocate.

  “Don’t get dramatic,” I said. “What is he—Jack the Ripper?”

  “Meet him in the fog sometime and find out.” She lifted her glass of beer and was about to sip, when suddenly her face turned sly. “Waaaait a minute. Is that why . . .” She leaned forward. “Is that little incident with him the reason you’ve been obnoxious all weekend?”

  “Of course not,” I answered irritably. “I just don’t see why you’re so critical of him.”

  “Me critical! Look who’s talking—Irene Rutledge, verbal lampoonist par excellence. Compared to you, I’m Little Nell.”

  “All right, Nell, let’s drop it.”

 
As we drove back home, I was fully aware of the subtle side glances she was giving me. When we pulled into the parking lot, Frank’s car was gone. Gloria looked at the empty spot and said, “Well, that must have been a quick meal.”

  “Maybe the girl took off with his car,” I said sullenly.

  “I hope you’re not going to knock on his door to find out.”

  “Let’s just forget it.”

  “Exactly my sentiments.”

  For the next two weeks I busied myself with reading, working on a tan at the campus swimming pool, and deliberating over which classes to take in the fall, when I would enter the Ph.D. program. Gloria had a party and conspicuously left Frank uninvited; if she expected a reaction from me, she didn’t get it. I was regaining the old grip on myself, the rock reassuming its comfortable firmness.

  Then came the incident with Larry.

  One morning in July, I saw a group of fraternity boys, identifiable by the pins on their sport shirts, running around blindfolded in the grassy area between the auditorium and the river which cut through the center of the campus. The mysterious game turned out to be Blindfolded Football, wherein the unblindfolded quarterback of each team called the signals and yelled out directions to the other team players. I thought it thoroughly ridiculous but just comic enough to watch a few minutes before moving on to my class. Standing on the dirt footpath about three feet from the river, I was soon noticed by one of the quarterbacks. He smiled and before the next play he shouted to his team, “All right, you guys, there’s a gorgeous redhead standing over here who’s waiting to see what you can do!”

  Coming toward me on the footpath, but a good distance away, was a blind boy. In one hand was a briefcase, in the other the white stick he used as a “sweep” in front of him. Even farther in the distance, but approaching in the same direction, was Frank. Although I pretended to watch the players, I kept Frank in my sights, and I noticed quite plainly that the second he saw me, he turned abruptly and began to cut across the grass toward the auditorium. He kept his eyes on the ground and quickened his step until it was almost a sprint.

  God! I fumed. What does he think I am—poison?

  “To the left! To the left! The left, Donovan, you dumb jerk!”

  I turned in time to see a wave of players heading toward the river—and the blind boy. The boy stopped immediately, his head making the same back-and-forth sweeping motion his stick had made.

  “Look out!” I yelled. “Look out for—” It was too late.

  Some of the players did halt, but three crashed into the boy and sent him tumbling right into the river. For a few seconds, my legs wouldn’t move, and when they did, I found myself converging on the scene simultaneously with Frank. The boy was flailing the water, and the others, blindfolds removed, were shouting, “This way! Swim this way!” Fortunately, there was a good-sized stick right at my feet. I picked it up and called, “Use this—get him to grab hold of this!” (The reason we were all unwilling to jump in unless the boy went under was that the river was practically stagnant and notoriously filthy, not so much a river as an elongated cesspool. Upstream from where we stood there were patches of green slime beneath an overhang of trees.) The boy stretched out his hand, but a few inches remained between him and the stick. One of the quarterbacks surrendered it to Frank, whose long and lanky arm filled in the needed inches. The boy was pulled out, and Frank sat him down on the ground. The smell of the river on his clothes was atrocious; the players backed away from it.

  “My briefcase! Where’s my briefcase!”

  I turned and saw the last corner of it sinking into the water.

  Frank said, “I’m afraid it’s gone.”

  “It can’t be! Everything’s in it! My notes, my . . .” He was almost crying.

  My panic gone, I was quickly filled with anger. Eyeing the quarterback, I said, “I hope you’re satisfied, you stupid ass!”

  “Me? I didn’t run into him.”

  “You were calling the directions! You know there’s a footpath here, you know people use it, you saw me here, you certainly saw him!”

  “I didn’t. I—”

  “And the rest of you, running around like five-year-olds—blindfolded, for God’s sake!” Their blindfolds were off; they could walk away as freely as they pleased. But the boy couldn’t. The grim irony of the situation made me furious. “He could have drowned!”

  “Look, we’re sorry.”

  “Sorry isn’t going to rescue his briefcase.”

  Satisfied that Frank was looking after the boy, the players retreated, mumbling to each other. I heard one of them say, “Man, what a bitch she is.”

  I bent down in front of the boy. “You know, you’ll have to have a tetanus shot.”

  “My notes, everything . . .” He bit his lip.

  “His stick went into the river,” I said to Frank. “I’d take him to the health center, but I have to get to class. I have a test. Could you take him?”

  “Sure,” he said, actually smiling at me.

  I was in the middle of supper and telling Gloria about the incident when the doorbell rang. It was Frank.

  “Come in. Did he get his shot?”

  “Yes, he’s okay. I spoke to three of his professors this afternoon and told them what happened. They’ll arrange to have someone dictate the notes he lost. By the way, I invited him over for dinner tomorrow night. I wondered if you wanted to come too.”

  The invitation came too unexpectedly for me to be anything but direct. “Sure. Why don’t you sit down and have some coffee? We were just finishing.”

  “Thanks, but I have company.” He looked past me and said, “You’re invited too, Gloria.”

  The double invitation annoyed me. And “I have company” conjured up a picture of that mousy girl with the groceries.

  “And what are you looking at?” I challenged Gloria after he left.

  “The willing fly about to enter the web.”

  “You mean you’re not going?”

  Her only answer was a smirk.

  Frank made spaghetti and clam sauce and presented Larry with a new briefcase. After dinner we sat on cushions and drank wine. My face was as placid as Buddha’s, but my insides were roiling, first with anticipation, then with resentment. Frank turned the whole conversation over to Larry, asking about things like the Braille facilities in the library and the note-taking device blind students use. Larry needed little encouragement. He rattled on about his childhood, and the two of them tossed around the subject of who were more fortunate—those who had never seen or those who had lost their sight. I contributed nothing, even though Frank tried to rope me in by asking my opinion here and there. I kept pouring wine from the half-gallon jug and staring at Frank’s bare legs. They were so skinny that the thighs were barely wider than the knees. Why, I asked myself, would someone with those legs wear shorts? But then, why should I be staring at them? Why did I want to reach out and run my hands down them? Up to this time, I had slept with only two guys. Both of them had been handsome, nearly perfect specimens, but even so, I never became aroused simply by looking at them. Maybe because this new attraction was so alien to me, I was able to get hold of myself and switch from wine to coffee. The coffee kept my eyes off his legs, but watching his face and listening to his voice didn’t help my resistance. He listened to Larry with the same facial expression he had had while reading that book in the union grill: he wasn’t being merely polite, he was interested. Sullenly, I told myself he’d listen to a grasshopper if it could talk.

  Finally, Larry said he had to be getting back to the dorm. Boldly, I told Frank I wanted to go along for the ride. He nodded and smiled, but even in the candlelight I could see him coloring.

  Before he got out of the car, Larry asked if he could feel our faces. He did Frank’s first. When it came my turn, I expected his hands to
be as clammy as his eyes looked. They weren’t. As a matter of fact, there was something comforting in the touch, as though I were being examined by an old family doctor. When he finished, he said we made a nice-looking couple. Frank was clearly embarrassed, and I was ashamed at having said practically nothing to Larry all evening.

  Riding back home, I tried to think of anything except where we were heading. Inviting myself along to the dorm was one thing; I could not suggest that he invite me back up to his apartment. I looked over at his white, white legs as we passed under a streetlamp.

  “Do you ever go out in the sun?” I asked.

  “You mean lie in it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have the patience for it.”

  “Really? You strike me as the very essence of patience.”

  No response.

  “Besides the sun,” I said, “what else are you impatient with?”

  He smiled. “Other people’s impatience, I guess.”

  “Ohhh, impatient with impatience. Very Philosophy 101. Shall we go on to falling in love with love and I hate to hate? Anything else you’re impatient with?”

  “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “What about . . . aggressive girls?”

  “They make me nervous.”

  “Why is that?”

  “They usually have too many expectations. They want soft bells and sirens and violins and calliopes all at the same time.”

  “I see. Tone deaf emotionally. Your, uh, little girlfriend with the groceries—she’s very retiring, I suppose.”

  “Yes.” It was a “yes” that meant “Back Off: Dead End.”

  “The aggressive girls—how do you handle them?”

  “Would you like to get some ice cream?”

  The thought of taking it back to his apartment squelched my objection to the evasion. “Anything but strawberry.”