“Right. The book that Raoul gave you and you gave my mother is now Loretta Willensky’s gift from me,” he said “So if I were you I wouldn’t mention that little gift to my mother, since she never received it.”
The operator interrupted and he fed the coin box.
“I think,” he said, “she would be a little embarrassed if she found out how it ended up as Loretta Willensky’s gift.”
Silence.
“Did you hear me, Alison? Wouldn’t you admit that the whole thing is a little embarrassing.”
“With everything that’s happened today, Sydney, please don’t start exposing me to myself.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t start exposing me to myself again.”
“Where exactly is Ellie’s cottage located, Alison? The operator didn’t give me the address.”
“Why do you want to know, Sydney?”
“So I can come and get you.”
“I was invited here for the weekend.”
“Alison, you just finished complaining about being there with people you hardly know.”
“I can’t tell them I hardly know them and I’m going home.”
“Alison, you don’t owe them any explanations.”
“I couldn’t do that to Shep, Sydney. Shep trusts me where you’re concerned. I promised her never to discuss things with you. Then how would it look, if I went running off with you all of a sudden?”
“I don’t care how it looks. She stranded you, didn’t she?”
“She had to help Annie.”
“Liz Lear could have done that.”
“Sydney, Liz doesn’t have a car.”
“Alison. Listen. For real nothing forty-eight-hour affairs, Liz Lear has rented limousines to drive to Vermont in. She could have rented a limousine to go to Westport.”
“But Annie needed Shep, too, Sydney.”
“I need you,” The Love Machine told Maggie Stewart.
Silence.
“Alison? Did you hear me?”
“Sydney, it isn’t easy for me to talk.”
“What?”
“It isn’t. You’re putting me in a terrible position. If they knew who I was talking to, what would they all think of me?”
“What would who all think of you?”
“Ellie and Gloria, Fay, Judy and Corita. They’re all in the other room having drinks. God. We haven’t even had dinner.”
“It’s none of their business who you’re talking to.”
“Sydney, Ellie already gave me a funny look when she told me the phone was for me. She might have recognized your voice.”
“I don’t care.”
“I know you don’t care, but I care. How does it make me look if I hang on the horn with you when Shep’s up there handling an emergency? Don’t you see, Sydney?”
“Do you think they want you there?”
“I was invited.”
“Because of my mother. That’s the only reason. You’ve got them all running for the wrinkle cream, Alison. Liz Lear calls you Youth Explosion. You’re chicken in their eyes, Alison. They’re all laughing at my mother because she’s turned down chicken lane.”
“You’re doing it again, Sydney. You’re trying to expose me to myself.”
“Don’t you want to know the truth? … Alison?”
“What?”
“We could go home and defrost the refrigerator, smoke some Acapulco Gold, and play with Dr. Teregram. We could stop for steamers on the way.”
“Oh Sydney.”
“What are you doing there in the first place?”
“I was invited.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Sydney, I promised them I’d go to some place called Linger with them.”
“Fay Foote’s place.”
“I can’t hurt their feelings.”
“What about my feelings?”
“I didn’t promise I’d go to Linger with you, Sydney.”
“When I heard you were stranded, I drove out here to get you.”
“They’re drinking, Sydney.”
“They drink.”
“Why do they drink so much? They’ve been drinking since noon.”
“It’s not your age group.”
“Do you know what they call getting your period? Getting the curse. I think I’m going to get my period any second and that’s what’s making me so uptight. Sydney, I have to hang up.”
“Did you hear me? I drove out here to get you.”
“I don’t see how you can do that gracefully, Sydney. That would be super-sneaky.”
“I don’t want to go back without you,” he said.
“We can’t hurt Shep, Sydney; how can we? Sydney, they’re getting ready to leave. I have to hang up, Sydney. I’m super-confused, so don’t add to it, please.”
At eleven o’clock Shockproof sat at the bar in Linger, drinking a third Dewar’s and water. The real action in Linger was just about to begin. The checkroom girl informed him of this as she sat beside him, putting X’s on quarters with red nail polish. This was one of her duties, to mark the house quarters so the jukebox owners would return them to Linger, and to keep the music playing as the place began to fill up.
Linger was a strange name for the cavernous room with its black walls and ceiling and flashing psychedelic lights. The lights gave a phosphorescent glow to people’s clothes; the room seemed like one of M.E.’s old detergent ads where shirts and blouses danced around by themselves. No one at a distance seemed to have arms, hands, necks, or faces. The music was loud—hard rock. The bartenders were hustlers, picking up half-full drinks and dumping them down drains. The small dance floor was packed with gyrating couples. Cigarette smoke settled over the room like a fog, and all the matchbooks bore the inscription Linger, Swinger.
Shockproof was watching the door nervously, waiting for Alison with that sinking feeling that she wouldn’t show up. He was wary, too, of when she would, of how they would all behave toward him now that he had invaded their territory for the first time. While he watched people enter Linger, he remembered an old John Collier story about department store mannequins entertaining at dances after all the help and customers went home. So many faces seemed waxen and of no definitive age. There was a strange, stylized hyper-enthusiasm in the exchanges between small groups of females and males, who seemed always to enter separately, then discover each other with extravagant joy: males lifting females off the floor in wrestling embraces, many grand mouth-to-mouth kisses, accompanied by shouts of “darling,” “love,” like this room was some fun-filled Garden of Eden where males and females were encountering one another for the first time. Shockproof knew it all for what it was: code.
Then a very familiar voice said, “Leave, or I’m going to have you bounced, Sydney.”
“Hello, Corita.”
She was deeply tanned, wearing a white linen dress which glowed splendorously and was embellished at the bosom V by a large, round, gold, sign-of-Capricorn medallion. She had short, shaggy brown hair with piercing brown eyes and an expression of anger he remembered well from times he would not straighten up his room, eat salad of any kind, or put down what he was reading immediately, to answer her summons to the dinner table.
“Did you hear what I said, Sydney? You’re underage.”
“I’ll switch to Coke. I’m waiting for someone.”
“She’s not coming, Sydney. She doesn’t feel well.”
“Where is she?”
“You know where she is. She’s at Ellie’s and Gloria’s. She wants to be by herself.”
“Where’s their place?”
“She wants to be by herself, Sydney. Why don’t you go back to New York now?”
“No,” he said.
“Shep doesn’t know you’re out here, does she?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you go back to New York now, and leave it that way?”
“Where’s their place?”
“Sydney, don’t make me call the bouncer.
Let’s not have a scene here.”
“Then tell me how to get to Alison.”
“If she’d wanted you to get to her, she would have given you instructions when you talked to her.”
“She’s confused.”
“I agree. But it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
“I know what’s going on,” he said.
“When didn’t you, Sydney?” she said. “You’ve got five minutes to pay up and leave. Stick to the rules, Sydney. Don’t make everyone including yourself uncomfortable.”
Actually it took ten minutes for the bouncer to show up and escort him from Linger. Shockproof put up a struggle and was dragged toward the door shouting out denunciations, while he caught chaotic glimpses of familiar faces: Judy Ewen, Gloria Roy, Ellie Davies, Victor and Paul—then he was picking himself up from the gravel driveway, brushing off the knees of his bell-bottoms.
Victor was walking rapidly toward him. “Hey, Sydney. Are you all right? For God’s sake. I couldn’t be angrier with Corita. She didn’t have to do it that way.”
He brushed off the sleeve of Shockproof’s blazer. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Whew! Sydney! You really let fly. I hope you didn’t mean all that.”
“All what?” Shockproof said shrugging, alternately trying to go back on code, and to remember who he was in what novel … and he became Dustin Hoffman playing The Graduate, out to capture Elaine Robinson by sheer persistence, by relentless, stubborn, clumsy endurance. “Where’s Alison, Victor?”
“She didn’t come in with them, Sydney. She’s probably at Ellie’s and Gloria’s.”
“Where’s their place?”
“Next to Judy Ewen’s on Dune Road.… Sydney. For God’s sake, don’t tell Shep I got involved in this. I don’t want to be in the middle. Lord. What a situ-ation.”
But he was smiling very faintly, and Shockproof smiled back at him.
“Thanks, Victor.”
Shockproof knew the way, and drove carefully through the fog envisioning Benjamin, the Graduate, slamming his hand down on the railing of the church balcony, yelling, “Elaine!!!”
The organ music stopped.
He slammed his hands down again. “Elaine!!! Elaine!!! Elaine!!!”
The fog grew thicker and he drove down the winding side roads very carefully, unable to believe that despite the emotional debris he had brought about and then left behind him, despite the unimaginable consequences of the scene in Linger, and the palpitations of his heart, there was a pleasurable physical stirring near his groin at the thought of finally reaching Alison.
He remembered her saying over the phone that she thought she was going to get her period any second, and Corita telling him she didn’t feel well. He definitely wanted her, and he began to count on the fact that it wouldn’t make any difference if she had her period, as it never had when Estelle had hers, but he became hung up momentarily on a part of Good Time Coming by Edmund Schiddel. He remembered when Anson Parris hurried down to Neile Eythe’s Mott Street apartment that afternoon, on impulse, and told Neile how he wanted her.
“Can’t have today,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because—you know.”
“I hate ‘you know.’ Why should there be ‘you know’ between us?”
“I can’t because—my glimpse of the moon, you fool!”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, comprehending.
No.
No one under thirty would try and pull that, and coming in from the fog he coupled with her, passing the firehouse now, watching the curves, passing Judy Ewen’s, where those at Linger had left their cars: he could see them lined up in the driveway. He cut his motor, switched off his lights, and got out of the T-bird. The house was lit, the front porch light on, and he walked through the wet grass to the door, letting himself in quietly. He was about to call out to her when he heard her giggle.
“… and I told her that, too”—Fay Foote’s voice—“everything I’m telling you now.”
“God. You’re gross. What’d she say?”
Fay Foote imitated ME. “Fay. Listen. You’re jaded. Really.”
“God. You’re a super-marvelous mimic. I can just hear her.”
“I said, Shep: (a) these so-called bisexual little girls who hang around my places are the shit at the rodeo, and (b) you don’t have to protect these young kids today, you have to protect yourselves from them.”
A squeal.
“I said, Shep: these kids are years ahead of us, and anyway you always had a morality that dated back to the Punic Wars.”
“I did a paper on Punica fides, contrasting it with Attic faith. Just last year.”
“Shep said that’s better than no morality at all.”
“I hate morality. It’s super-beside-the-point.”
“We’re on the same wavelength, baby.”
“God. All this time I’ve been showing Shep the emotion I feel for you. I can see that now.”
“I turn you on, don’t I?”
“Mucho mucho.”
“Then come on over here.”
“First tell me I’m not the shit at the rodeo.”
“I’ll just tell you that we’re not at a rodeo right now. How’s that?”
Someone got up and walked across the living room floor, pausing just long enough to turn up the hi-fi.
For a few seconds longer Shockproof stood in the entrance-way, staring into the dining room where the coffee cups and dinner plates and wineglasses had been left uncleared. He started to leave, unnoticed, as he had arrived, but before he left he took a few steps forward and yanked the tablecloth and everything atop it to the floor.
He didn’t look back toward the living room, or say anything, or hear anything after that. He got into his car and headed home.
Thirteen
WE DID NOT GO OUT / WE DID NOT FEEL HAPPY
What got him through the weekend was Jordan Legier’s paintbox theory in Good Times, Bad Times, which he read Saturday morning, after Loretta Willensky went off to Jones Beach with Albert.
The Big Joker in the sky presents all people with a paintbox for use during their stay on earth; everyone uses his paintbox to make the pictures of his life: learning, working, love, marriage, etc. Except no one’s paintbox is the same. Some are beautiful and fully equipped, but in some a brush is twisted or missing altogether. In others, even primary colors are not included. A few paintboxes will not even open.… Yet everyone must depend on the paintbox he received from the Big Joker: that is his sole equipment for his life.
Shockproof wrote Joel Schwartz a letter detailing the paintbox theory, though he was not in the habit of corresponding with him. He started to write his father the same sort of letter, but changed his mind and instead sent off something about his appreciation of how his father and Rosemary must have suffered because of her inability to have children (“… see now the pathetic reasoning behind your choice of the name ‘Daughter’ for the cat”). He was eager to write Estelle Kelly, but he had no idea where in Hawaii she was, and imagined anyway that the Captain would intercept and destroy any letter from him to her.
He imagined that somehow he would work in the paintbox theory during the confrontation with M.E. at the end of the weekend, though he was not sure how he would use it: in her defense, or in his own, or as a summation to whatever it was they would say to one another. The confrontation loomed as unpredictable and unfathomable in his mind as the future itself. He found himself measuring time so that forty-eight hours from a certain minute that future would be past, three months from this day that past well past, and in a year barely remembered.
Early Saturday morning, Cappy had called, chatted ten minutes with him in her usual way, but he felt after the phone call that she was acting for M.E., who by then had surely received telephone reports from Quogue, and probably asked Cappy to check on him.
The paintbox theory carried him along. It was in his thoughts as he flushed a deceased salam
ander down the toilet at Zappy Zoo Land, and as he walked to and from work across Fourteenth Street with its sad and grotesque carnival of the unbeautiful people, and as he read Steps by Jerzy Kosinski, unable to make sense of it or become uninvolved in it, convinced the italicized dialogue scattered through it was the way people with the best paintboxes talked to each other—no wonder it seemed beautiful and mysterious and desirable.
“… Simply give yourself up to what you feel: enjoy that awareness. Lovers are not snails; they don’t have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.”
“I never thought of it as you see it; that would not come naturally to me. But you, what do you feel?”
“I want you, you alone. But beyond you and me together, I see myself in our love-making. It is this vision of myself as your lover I wish to retain and make more real.”
He could not read too much of Steps at one time, would put it down and pick up Listen to the Silence, living in the clang of locking asylum doors with fourteen-year-old Timmy, running through that loony bin carrying trays to the girls’ building, with the sausages cut up so the girls wouldn’t use them at night.
On Sunday afternoon Loretta Willensky thanked him politely for the weekend, and Albert drove her back to Bucks County in Mike’s car. Shockproof read many books at the same time, paced, and watched for M.E.’s Mercedes.
He had made up a sentence about Alison. Finally you have hurt me more than I love you. But he did not believe in either thing, the hurt or the love, though he liked the sentence and wrote it down on a slip of paper, imagining as he did that anything like that he had ever read had been written by someone insensitive enough to remember pain or joy so well that he could describe it.
The entire weekend had one focus: M.E.’s arrival, and most of the conversations in his head were between M.E. and himself, endless variations with vastly different approaches, and moods swinging from solemn to blithe, rejecting to uncensuring. He planned and planned it, yet when she finally let herself in the front door shortly after eleven Sunday evening, he was irritated that she had interrupted Island Princess with Marcello Mastroianni, which he was watching on television.
“Are you decent?”
Shockproof Sydney Skate Page 14