She looked across the table at the child psychologist. “Dr. Fibbage,” she said, “you look like you just saw a ghost. Did I say something wrong?”
He reached out uneasily to pat her hand. “I’m unused to such honesty from someone so young.”
“Claudine is a red-blooded American girl, that’s why,” Mr. Craft said heartily. “Here you thought you could watch Emily Dickinson grow up under your microscope, Fibbage, and instead you found yourself buying Monster Sundaes for a healthy, normal seventh-grader. Am I right or wrong, Claudine?”
“You couldn’t be more right, Mr. Craft,” Claudine replied after she had licked off her spoon. “You know something? You talk very sensibly, for a writer. I told my friend Robin Wales that writers could be as sensible as architects—that’s what he’s going to be. I’m beginning to think maybe some day I’ll be a writer after all—I mean a real one, not an imitation. Well,” she said, rising, “goodbye now, and thanks a lot for the sundae. I promised Robin I’d play with him if all the reporters and photographers would leave us alone. And I guess now they will, won’t they?”
At the front of the drugstore, Claudine turned to look back at the two men who stood at the cashier’s counter, their feet nailed to the floor, staring after her. She waved farewell to them and, whistling the “Marseillaise,” ran off down the street in search of Robin.
TEASE
For many years I have told a story on myself, the point of which was, I supposed, that as a young man I was a good-natured fool. Now, however, if I regard what happened not as a joke on me but as a revelation of what we are all capable of, I remember something very different. It is as though my young protagonist were no longer the self I cherish with such wry and amused fondness, but had become instead a stranger—a wild and predatory stranger. But here is the story as I used to tell it:
When I was twenty-one a college classmate and I got temporary jobs in the Panama Canal Zone, jobs that seemed glamorous beforehand but turned out to be drab and routine. Only the after-hours night life was fun, and even that palled after a few weeks.
One night we decided to change our luck by crossing the Isthmus and spending the night, and our money, in Colón instead of in Panama City. Not that the program there would be any different. Rum-and-Cokes while we watched the jugglers, the tango teams and the imported strippers, and tried without real hope to make the B-girls, hired to separate tourists, sailors and other fools from their wallets without yielding up anything more than a smile or a dance. It made no more sense than going, say, from Brooklyn to Newark in search of novelty. But at least the décor, the faces and the bodies would be different.
So we went off on the Toonerville railroad that joggled us across the thin strip of jungle separating one ocean from another. We bought round-trip tickets, to make sure that we’d get back, but for the rest of it we decided to leave things to chance.
“Let’s make a pact,” I proposed to Tommy. He was the kind who could appear calmly sober all evening, and then amaze people who didn’t know him by passing out with his face on the table top, or slipping slowly to the floor. “We’ll take along twenty bucks apiece and go as far as we can on it. Agreed?”
He understood me. We were already weary of those coldblooded whorehouses—the Villa Amor, Las Tres Palmas and the rest—where, although you could drink at your leisure and dance with the girls beforehand, you were rousted unceremoniously from their cubicles in order that they might hurry down and hustle up the next customer. We were tired too of the streetwalkers. It was true that they were not supervised and hence were more human: They led you languidly, even at dawn, into the rabbit warrens where they lived and fornicated, down endless ramshackle open corridors teetering above the littered courtyards alive with scrawny squawking chickens, past room after doorless room, one with an Indian mother vacantly suckling an infant, another with a pipe-smoking toothless grandfather opening a mango with fingers gnarled like roots, a third and fourth with a nude couple snoring as they slept or scratching themselves as they quarreled above a wailing phonograph, until finally you reached the girl’s own room, her very own because she earned it by flinging herself down on her back on the pallet, yanking her print dress up over her naked belly and giggling as she beckoned to you with her brown hand. Yes, they were all too human, but if they complimented you on your manliness, they could give you no faith in your personal charm.
For that we had turned to the B-girls. The Americans resident in the Zone had promptly discovered, as such people always know such things, that Tommy and I were not even candidate members of the colony but were only transients, and therefore they protected their daughters from us, with perfect justification, as if they knew that our motives were the worst. Those waxen-looking girls living lonesomely in the tropics—of whom we were told by a bartender (citing no authority) that they were pale because they menstruated twice a month—were as unappealing to us adventures as, say, pygmy women to explorers on safari. They were safer than they knew.
And so we had taken up the game of trying to conquer Latin night-club hostesses who, although they were hired to please, had no slightest intention of allowing themselves to be conquered, no matter how much money, energy and charm you invested in them. Practiced in capturing your interest on the dance floor or at the little tables across which they leaned to display their shadowed charms, they sensed precisely how many drinks of colored water they could con you into buying them, at a dollar a shot, before your patience or your funds ran out, or before the last floor show faded away late in the night. These professional persuaders were more firmly determined to avoid genuine intimacy, we had learned at some cost, than the most carefully nurtured Yankee maidens. But the more we—unlike the tourist suckers—knew of their determination, the more we were tempted to overcome it, not by buying them but by winning them. That was why Tommy understood at once what rules I was proposing for the old game we had tacitly agreed to play in new surroundings.
When the train pulled in, we strolled about and had a leisurely dinner. Before it was fairly dark we were pub-crawling.
I cannot recall anything about the first places we went to. One drink at each sufficed to convince us that they were no different from those of Panama City. The one we finally settled at, though, remains fixed in my mind, because it was there that I encountered Isabel.
When we drifted in the band was just finishing “Begin the Beguine,” behind a horribly grinning, lacquered male singer. As we pushed through to a ringside table they went into a fanfare, not for us but for an American stripper introduced by the singer as Pepper Mint, or something of the sort. The lights went down and the girl came out bathed in a green spot, and began to glide sinuously before us, the horizontal bands of cigarette smoke shifting in the poor light as she disturbed them with her weaving arms, hips, and legs.
She was extraordinarily good, gifted at what she was being paid to convey. In a few moments she had wriggled down to nakedness, or to very little more than high-heeled pumps. Her body was magnificent, and it was most disturbing to have that greenish torso twisting and flexing before us within arm’s reach. Tommy was breathing so hard as she skidded offstage, her dimpled buttocks winking farewell, that he could not find his voice to dismiss the two B-girls who sidled up and slid into the empty chairs at our table.
“You like to buy us a drink, yes?”
I shrugged. “One round. We’re not rich tourists.”
The blond one, who had seated herself at my side, laughed unaffectedly. “Was too much for you, the dancer?”
“Not for me,” I protested, and sat up to examine her. She was a grinning, self-confident woman in her late twenties. Her dyed hair went well with a creamy skin the color of light coffee. She had slim, quick fingers that flicked and snapped like her eyes when she spoke, and teeth that showed irregular but very white when she smiled her oddly reckless smile.
“Isabel. I call you Toby, you look like a cat with those fat cheeks, okay?”
She had me. She was an impudent one,
and maybe it was because of that that I was challenged into making her see me, and admire me, not just as a source of revenue but as a man.
Once the floor show was over we started to talk. My Spanish was impossible; her English was like a movie Mexican’s, good for a million laughs. Between laughs, and drinks, I learned that she was in fact a Mexican, or so she said, from some hopeless village near Veracruz, where she had waited on tables and earned just enough, entertaining sailors in waterfront bars, to keep from prostitution. She had beaten her way down to Panama for reasons as vaguely stated as mine, but her safari must have involved a nerve that I wasn’t even sure I possessed. Now she was selling not exactly her body but her sensuality and her whimsical appeal.
In fact, in precise proportion to the degree that she charmed me, I wanted to charm her, to impress her, to make her like me. Tommy, stimulated no doubt by the luscious memory of the stripper, was more concerned simply with making out with Luisa, a chunky and matter-of-fact woman who could be gay, as she was paid to be, only by some effort of will.
The catch, though, was that in order for Tommy to make out, he had to be charming; and in order for me to be sure that I was really a charmer, I had to make out.
So Tommy allowed Luisa to make admiring sounds as she felt his biceps, and bought her more drinks. And I, good old Toby, bought Isabel more drinks too. The more we drank, the later it got, the more Tommy and I had invested in our endeavor. Isabel and I did not dance even once, although we had the opportunity all evening long on that crowded dance floor to press the lengths of our bodies against each other.
Why didn’t we? I didn’t want anything so easy, I didn’t want to be paid in installments, and as I looked over Isabel’s shoulder, sliding so warm and brown within her semitransparent white blouse in time to the band’s rhythm, and watched Tommy grappling doggedly with hefty Luisa, dragging her like a sack of maize across the floor already cluttered with sailors and their B-girls, I knew, as though it were written out for me like the printed prophecy that pops out at you from a penny scale, that Tommy would get nowhere, while I—well, I had a chance.
“It’s getting late,” I said to Isabel. Then, smiling with all my heart: “Let’s be serious. You know what I want. I want to go home with you tonight.”
“Toby, you sweet, you can’t do that.” She shook her head solemnly, but softened the refusal by showing me her white, white teeth.
“Don’t read me the rules.” I reached out for her forearm and took it tightly in my hand. It was almost the first time I’d touched her; I felt a shock of pleasure and was warmed to see her face turn grave. She knew that she could not just put me off. Gripping her arm until I could feel her pulse, I said, “I’m not buying any more fake drinks unless you tell me yes. I don’t want to buy you, I like you too much, you savvy? I want you to like me that way.”
“I do.” Her tone was absolutely unfeigned. Even the fact that she didn’t look at me, but sat with lowered lids, gazing thoughtfully at my fingers on her arm, convinced me. Then, as if coming to a decision, she glanced around, checking on the waiter, who was busy at another table, checking on the patron, who was bawling out a bartender at the register, and finally fixed her brilliant liquid eyes on me. “You can’t go with me—but maybe I can go with you.”
“Don’t say maybe. Say for sure.”
“All right, I say sure, if you buy us a room. But don’t tell your friend.”
I was happy to promise. I even bought the next round, although it was Tommy’s turn. We were both close to being drunk, and closer to being broke, and we arose with exaggerated politeness as the girls went off together to the john. It was late, the crowd had thinned out, and the drummer saluted our gallantry with a ruffle and a spinning of one of his sticks high in the air, grinning and showing us his gold teeth as he caught it.
“Salud!” Tommy called out, raising his drink. But to me he said, “The women are fixing to dump us.”
“How do you know?”
“Luisa’s got a bicycle parked out back. She and Isabel come to work on it, with Isabel sitting on the back fender.”
“So?”
“They got to go home the same way.”
I had to laugh. “Listen, pal,” I said, “if I get Isabel out the front door, you think you can cope with Luisa and her two-wheeler? You think you can cope?”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Tommy replied with dignity. “I’m going to give it the old college try.”
The girls were already on their way back to the table. I said hastily, “Here’s luck. And check your wallet for the train ticket—it’s a long walk back.”
We made it very clear to the waiter that our spending was over. The patron had no cause for complaint; he looked up from counting dollars and balboas and even mustered a greasy goodnight smile as his girls checked out. A couple of cabs were drowsing at the curb, and I hustled Isabel into the nearest one before she could change her mind. Laughing and squirming, she twisted about so that she could blow a farewell kiss to Luisa through the back window.
I had my hand on the bony shoulder of the sleepy Negro hackie, but I hesitated before pressing him on, in order that I might get one last glimpse of Tommy and Luisa. I was rewarded. While we craned our necks, Luisa emerged from the shadows of the alleyway next to the night club, whose neon sign had just been cut off. As she pushed her bike to the sidewalk, she was evidently arguing with Tommy, whose head was shrinking down like a bull’s to protect him from the rain, which was starting to patter, then to bounce off the ground. She thrust her chunky body forward, climbed aboard and began to pedal off, with Tommy trotting along beside her.
Isabel was laughing, softly at first, and then wildly, her head back against the upholstery, her breasts shaking as she clapped her hands. “La lluvia,” she gasped, “the rain!”
“What about it?”
“The more it rain, the faster she go. The faster she go, the harder he run. You know something, Toby? He never gonna catch her.”
“I never thought he would.” I was torn between guilt and gloating. “Never mind them. Where should we—”
Isabel gazed at me sweetly. “I know nice hotel. Brand-new.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“But we got to stop first. Not too far. I got a girl friend—”
“Another one?”
“You silly! I meet her sometime after work. Poor. No money. In the rain …” She looked at me pleadingly.
“You’re breaking my heart.” There was nothing I could do. Besides, I was curious. “What are we going to do with her?”
“Maybe we get a sanvich.”
“It can’t be anything more than that. I blew all my dough on your phony drinks.”
“No-no, you’ll see.” She leaned forward and shot a stream of Spanish at the driver, who nodded drowsily, threw the car into gear, and released the clutch with a jerk.
We were pitched against each other. At last. Breathing in her fragrance, a mixture of some cheap lilac perfume and the friendly odor of her warm body, I pressed her to me. She smiled luxuriously and murmured something I did not catch.
“You do like me?” I asked. “Really like me?”
For answer she raised her hand and ran her fingers through my hair. She was a little weary, not so eager as I, and five or six years older, maybe more; but her answer was yes, of that I was convinced. Reassured, I bent to kiss her lips.
But the taxi stopped jokingly. I looked up, annoyed. From the shadows of a darkened store front there stepped forward a big sullen-faced girl with wet hair half plastered to her skull, a terrible complexion and a man’s zipper jacket flung carelessly over her shoulders. She opened the door of the cab without being invited, as though she had been expecting us.
Isabel introduced her to me as Gertrudis or something equally ugly—any name would have seemed ugly—but it made no difference, since her lack of interest in me bordered on the absolute. Wedging her wet bulk firmly into the back seat, she launched at once into a lengthy speech none of whic
h I could understand, partly because of that Central American way of speaking as though Spanish consisted of nothing but a run-together series of liquid vowels. Although she salivated as she spoke, and gesticulated broadly with her mannish, reddened hands, she did not betray any genuine animation in speech or gesture. All that mattered anyway was that Isabel was far more excited by her than by me.
We had gone no more than a dozen blocks when the driver brought us to a halt before an all-night milk bar. The girls scrambled out and hurried on inside, their heads bent against the raindrops, leaving me to deal with the cab driver, who had already slumped over into a fetal position, chin against his chest and hands pressed between his upraised thighs.
“Cuánto cobra usted—” I began, but the driver interrupted without even troubling to open his eyes.
“I wait.”
I glanced through the dripping window at the milk bar. Isabel, laughing and chattering, was urging her friend to eat. It was becoming painfully clear that the whole scene had taken place before. Well, I was damned if I was going to give up now. I clenched my teeth and went on in.
Isabel patted the leatherette stool at her left. “Toby, you better eat too. Is late.”
“You’re telling me?”
I had a soft drink while I waited and watched. Isabel was sipping at a milkshake in this oasis of light in a darkened city and hanging on her friend’s words—uttered between huge gulps of bread and cheese—as though each one was precious. Gertrudis was a big eater—a second sandwich soon went the way of the first—but she seemed to derive no more satisfaction from this than from her talking, which made Isabel’s eyes sparkle and from time to time doubled her up with laughter. I might just as well not have been there. At least, not until it was time to pay the cuenta.
Isabel looked away with a new-found delicacy as I fumbled through my pockets. The bill was less than I had expected, though, and I managed a smile as she thanked me. Her friend, the boillike blemishes standing out garishly on her sullen countenance in the lavender light of the fluorescent tubes, did not bother to acknowledge me, but simply shrugged the zipper jacket over her meaty shoulders. Before she slouched on out to the taxi, she threw a farewell remark at the counterman, who mumbled something casual around his dry, dangling cigarette butt as he cleared away our little debris. Apparently they were all buddies.
NIGHTS IN THE GARDENS OF BROOKLYN Page 40