by Sidney Hart
Just beyond the kitchen the rear stairway of the hotel exited on to a sandy, rock strewn, barren stretch of ground barely able to support the few forlorn weeds that struggled to survive there. The chambermaids were the ones who used these stairs most often but it was also known that band members, tennis pros and the occasional mountain rat, the sobriquet of choice for a member of the dining room staff, crept up to visit women guests in their rooms by this route. Perhaps it was that traffic that had worn the topsoil into dust. Someone who had been lurking outside the kitchen disappeared inside the doorway to the stairs as I left the kitchen and I hurried after her. The door was ajar and when I stepped out of the sunlight into the darkened entryway my eyes seemed still to be filled with the brilliance of the day rendering me totally blind in the dark stairwell.
“Diana?” I called out. There was a rustle of activity nearby. “Are you in here Diana? It’s me, Mel.”
“Up on the landing. Come up here Mel.” Out of the darkness above me came Diana’s voice. I groped my way to the banister and started to mount the stairs when a body brushed past me and fled towards the door. Damn it! I thought, she’s crazy. But then all at once she grabbed me from behind and kissed me, a furiously passionate and exhausting kiss, a kiss like no kiss ever known, a remarkable, unforgettable kiss, a soul freeing make-me-immortal kiss.
4.
I can still feel the nauseating misery of that night. I had thought of nothing but her throughout that day. Her mysterious appearances and disappearances of the previous day had made Diana thrilling and exciting to me. I didn’t know what to expect from her, but it was as if she was capable of conjuring fantastic magic. Her brooding quality and her intense and dramatic emotional contortions suggested a churning eroticism I had no experience with and the very idea of it excited and terrified me. We had kissed just the day before on the stairway at the rear of the main building. It was the most passionate kiss a girl had ever given to me. She was taut, muscular, pressing into me with her mouth and pelvis one minute, and then suddenly limp, spent, weak and crumpled the next. “Stop, not here,—tomorrow night. I’ll meet you at the lake.” She was breathless and so was I. Can you imagine how this felt? What a drama! Had I done that? I had kissed a girl to the point where she had swooned and gasped for air! Amazing. I couldn’t quite believe it, frankly, but I wanted to so much that suspending disbelief would never again be as easy. Ron had been right when he said Diana was something special and it was all I could do not to run wildly to the waiters’ quarters to tell him what she had just done. Telling Ron what had happened would not have been bragging, it would have been making it more real for me.
So, I had been in excellent spirits all day immune to the usual hectorings of Sammy and the guests at my station, nonplussed by the chattering of the sous chefs, counting minutes and hours and waiting for the night. When the last guest left I piled the coffee cups and dessert dishes into my box, hoisted it up to my shoulder and brought it into the kitchen exchanging it for a clean and empty tray to be used to collect and remove the glassware. While I had been feeling very excited and enthusiastic all day, as the time for my meeting with Diana came closer I began to feel a nervous anxiety, a sense of apprehension. The glasses on my tray were stacked close together and when I hoisted this load and balanced it on my fingertips, a busboy conceit, the glassware clinked and jingled like an ill-tuned carillon.
“Melvin must have a date,” Ivan Goldman said to the assembly of waiters and busboys. “You’ll never get her brassiere open with those hands if they don’t stop trembling, Melvin.” I looked at him, wanting to glare indignantly, but I could feel my eyes were wide, not narrow, and fear had raised my eyebrows almost to my hairline. Ivan saw the panic in my face and came over to me. He put one of his gorilla-long arms over my shoulder, stooped down and in a soft voice said, “Do you need a rubber?” I hadn’t considered that. It was in fact beyond my wildest dreams that Diana would ever make love to me, let alone on our first date.
“Yeah, good idea,” I said. My mouth was so dry I could barely get the words out. Ivan squeezed my shoulder, fumbled in his pocket and came up with a foil wrapped condom, the outline of its elliptical roll clearly visible through the wrapper.
“I thought you’d need this one day. I’ve been carrying it around with me for weeks waiting for you to ask.” He squeezed my shoulder again and walked back to his station. I looked up and scanned the dining room furtively, but no one seemed to be paying attention, not even Ron. Did Ivan really mean that? At that moment I felt completely helpless. I wanted to believe what he had said to me, but this was a rough and cynical bunch. One of their most common games was to say something in very sincere tones to a waiter or busboy, and as soon as he accepted them at their word, they ridiculed and mocked him for his gullibility. I was already too filled with anxiety to risk being the butt of a nasty joke. I tossed the condom into the air, caught it behind my back in my left hand, picked up the tray of glasses, this time balancing it on my palm instead of my fingers, and walked into the kitchen. If my mouth had not been so dry I would have whistled.
Back in my room I laid out my clothing for the date with Diana. Ron came back while I was studying the effect my plaid shirt would have with my khaki pants.
“Do you have anything in black besides your work pants?”
“What’s wrong with these pants?”
“They’re ordinary Joe College, Ivy League issue pants. Does Diana look like someone you’d expect to find at Bryn Mawr?” Neither of us really knew what to expect to find at Bryn Mawr, but the spelling and sound of the name were so exotic to two Bronx boys we spoke of it as if it were a Martian station on earth. Diana, the dark and sensual, the erotic, feral child of the earth, was a familiar creature, even if familiar only from dreams.
“So what do you want me to do?” I was irritated and impatient, and without another pair of pants. Ron was shorter than I and stocky in the bargain so I could not expect to borrow anything from him.
“Okay, you can’t do anything about the pants. Now with the shirt, leave a button open one down from the neck.” He stopped to think, staring at me with a frown on his face that told me he wasn’t at all satisfied with what I had given him to work with. I could only wonder if that included my anatomy as well.
“What are you smoking now?”
“Winstons. Why?”
“Buy a pack of Camels, open it, get rid of half the cigarettes, crumple up the pack a little bit but leave enough room so you can toss a butt up from the pack and catch it in the opening where you tore off the aluminum foil. Lift the butt to your mouth and snatch it with your lips. Then flip open your Zippo lighter, light the cigarette, and snap the lighter shut. Don’t offer her one. It’s a Camel. Not for the ladies.” It sounded fantastically right to me.
“Don’t wear that Aqua Velva crap you keep on your dresser. Rub this on your chin.” He handed me a pint bottle of gin.
“Come on, you’re not serious. Is she impressed by alcoholics? I’d rather use nothing.”
“Just trying to be helpful.” Ron kept looking at me and frowning.
“What is it? What’s bothering you?” All my insecurities had been called into play by his look. My nose was too big, my ears stuck out too much, my arms were too thin, my feet too large. I was a latter day Ichabod Crane trying to be Cary Grant.
“You look fine. Your looks aren’t the problem. With women, unlike men, looks aren’t that important. Strength, that is what they want. Strength and a sense of danger. Not real danger, not pain, but a feeling of risk, a feeling that you might just go out of control, like a horse. That’s why girls like riding horses so much. They like the feeling that they have control of a powerful animal, and they know that if they let up for a second, the animal will carry them away. Is there an animal inside you Mel?” Yeah, a chicken, I thought.
“Well …”
“Forget it. Don’t be too eager and don’t talk too much. Let her come for you. Don’t chase after her.”
“Sounds
like a prizefight,” I said.
“That’s one way to look at it. But actually it’s more like a duel where you spar with words.”
“Ron, you’re full of shit,” I said, hoping I was right.
“Fine. Think that if you like. Just don’t chew her ear off about your college applications and your life as a busboy. Remember that you’re supposed to be joining the Marines after the summer and find something interesting to say.” And with a brief gesture of salute he left me standing in the room alone.
I bought the pack of Camels, tore off one corner of aluminum wrapper, emptied out some of the cigarettes, crumpled the pack a bit, and started practicing the flip. The first few times the cigarette shot out of the pack like a missile and landed at my feet. I had gotten the wrist action right, but it was the timing of the squeeze that caught the cigarette in the mouth of the pack that was off. I was beginning to perspire. I decided to give it a few more tries and if that wasn’t enough I’d figure out something else to do. The last thing I wanted was to hit her in the eye with a cigarette because I was trying to look cool. On about the fourth try I got the timing. I did it a half-dozen more times to be sure and then headed for the lake.
The air was cool and had a smoky smell, probably a fireplace in use in one of the cottages across the water. The dew had already dampened the ground making the grass slippery as I descended the hill to my meeting with Diana. I was shivering, more from my own anxiety than the damp, when Diana appeared from around the boathouse. Even in the dim light of the quarter moon she was a wonder to see with eyes luminous against her olive complexion that seemed all the more mysterious and sensual at night. That slightly strained and contorted emotional quality I associated with her was there, but now, in the darkness beside the lake, it didn’t seem so exotic. It made me uncertain of what she expected from our meeting and I wondered if she had come, not to take me into her arms again, but to tell me it had all been a mistake; a terrible mistake.
“Hi,” I said, and dug into my shirt pocket for the pack of Camels. She stood still, brooding, seeming almost to be suffering, and I resisted the impulse to go to her and touch her. I flipped the cigarette into position, lifted it from the mouth of the pack with my lips, and then flicked open my Zippo lighter to light up.
“I can’t stay,” she said in a breathy voice as I pressed down on the gritty wheel of the lighter and sent a burst of fire into the air. I sucked in the smoke, heavy and abrasive in my chest, flipped the lighter closed, and said nothing. I had forgotten how strong Camels were and I couldn’t tell if the dizziness I was feeling was from the cigarette or from the announcement Diana had made.
“Did you hear me? I can’t stay.” Irritated, she looked away but didn’t leave. I looked down at the red ember of my cigarette, its glow dimming under the accumulating ash, and felt a tingling in my forehead like a dull electric current, while nausea took up residence in my stomach.
“Gee Diana, I was hoping …” I started to feel faint and dropped my cigarette on the ground so I could stoop over and get some blood to my brain.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, while I remained pitched forward fumbling with the cigarette, which had soaked up enough water from the grass to extinguish itself.
“I’ll be with you in a minute.” My nausea had become intense and I had soaked my clothes with a cold, clammy sweat.
“I forgot I already had a date for tonight. I’m sorry. Another time maybe. Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said remaining bent in half, afraid that if I stood up I’d pass out right at her feet. “You go on, we’ll set something up later. Go ahead, meet your date.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah, terrific. It’s just my back goes out every now and then. I’ll be okay, don’t worry, this has happened to me before, it’ll let up in a minute,” I lied, “go on.” I wished she’d leave. My intestines were churning like the propeller on a motor boat and the nausea, like a fist wrapped around my stomach, was squeezing harder and harder and I felt that something was going to explode out of me, one end or the other or both simultaneously if I had to stand there for even one more second. But I could tell that Diana wasn’t ready to leave. It was as if all at once I had become weird enough to be interesting to her. I pitched over on to the dew drenched grass and lay on my side. As soon as I went down the nausea eased, and my head began to clear. Diana knelt down beside me and stroked my brow. Her hand felt very warm. “You’re all perspired.”
“When the pain lets up I’ll be fine. It’s an old hockey injury.” Where the hell did that come from, I wondered. What I knew about hockey wouldn’t fill the space on a puck. It’s Harlan, I thought, Harlan has gotten through to me. Harlan has changed me. “Really, don’t worry about me I’ve survived this before, really, go.” Suddenly, she turned away abruptly, as if she had been slapped in the face, rose quickly, and was gone. Another of her dramas. Another mystery. But all I could feel was a shameful and humiliated misery. I lay there for several more minutes with no place to go and no one waiting for me, at least not just then. Later, Ron and Ivan, and God only knew who else would, like the cast of a Broadway show on opening night, be waiting eagerly for my review of the evening’s adventure—though in this instance they were the critics and I the player.
Exhausted by my cowardly performance I remained supine on the ground, staring into the star filled sky where the quarter moon had moved directly over the lake. I had allowed my nerves to sabotage me and I was disgusted with myself. The theme music from the movie “Picnic” calmly coasted over the water from one of the cottages in the bungalow colony, the one with the fire burning in the fireplace it seemed.
“Harlan!” a voice cried out from across the lake all at once, shrill and indignant, and then laughter, the delighted, excited abundance of a woman’s jubilant laughter, followed by the leaky steam pipe hiss of someone trying to quiet her. I sat up all senses focused and alert, listening, watching the house with the light from the fireplace flickering in the windows, shadows dancing on the walls of the room. Two silhouettes passed in front of the windows and then a lamp was lit in the house. They were too far away for me to see their faces and within minutes I began to doubt that I had heard Harlan’s name called out. The music stopped but within a minute “Picnic” was playing again. Someone had left the armature on the record player turned to the side so the record would keep replaying until they grew bored with it or just stopped hearing it. I watched the couple move about in the living room, watched them come together and dance, swaying slowly to the dreamy music. That looking gave me a strange feeling of power over them, as though I might will their actions and control their movements. Lying on the moist grass across the lake, hidden in darkness, I willed them to undress. They stopped dancing but remained in the dancer’s embrace. My heart began to pound. Undress, I urged. They parted and one of them left the center of the room. The music stopped and the light dimmed, the flickering of the fire once again shifting the shadows in the room. I began to wonder how close I might get without being detected, and while this thought both excited and disgusted me it did not deter me from weighing the options available to cross the lake. It was chilly and the water would feel cold, too cold for such a long swim. The rowboats and canoes were locked in the boathouse and breaking the lock would compound my sense of guilt. It seemed it would be impossible to cross the lake and with a sense of relief, assuring myself I was not a total coward, I rose from the grass and walked down to the dock. From the edge of the wooden platform the cabin seemed closer than it had been from the grass and swimming across might not be so impossible after all. Kneeling down to test the water with my fingers, aware all the while that this was a hollow, empty display for no one’s benefit—even I wasn’t fooled—there was no way that I’d swim across the lake to peer into those windows, I scooped at the water and began to move it aside as if I might part the waters of the lake and walk across its muddy bottom. My scooping had caused enough agitation u
nder the dock for the bow of the little skiff used by the waterfront counselor to come bobbing out from underneath me. This was an unconsidered option, as if sent there to test me. Was I a coward, or a moral degenerate? There was no longer room for self-deceit. Not going across would be about fear, not righteousness. The oars lay inside the rowboat and it was easy enough to get inside and push off from the dock into the cold and still waters of the lake.
The movement of the air across my damp clothes and clammy flesh sent chills through me, and rowing gently so as not to make any noise did nothing to warm my body. My back was to the cabin and when the skiff came close to the other shore I turned the boat around to land it stern first and park in the reeds. Wading through the shallow water, still torn about what to do, I shuddered as much from my apprehension as from the cold. But now it was about seeing if it was Harlan who was here, not about voyeurism. Just as I was securing the tether to the branch of a fallen tree at the water’s edge a car’s engine started and headlights were turned on illuminating the shoreline and the skiff in a brilliant and blinding white light.
“Okay Harlan honey, I’ll see you tomorrow night. Thanks for the pastries.” I heard Harlan say goodnight, and as his car pulled away the woman called out after him “I love you” in a tone that urged him not to forget that fact.