“You think so?”
She nodded.
“Okay. Call me Willy.”
She started into the bathroom. “Listen, if you’re scared to be alone, I can leave the door open.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Well, um, wouldn’t it make you feel better to know I’m right there where you can holler?”
“I don’t care,” Clinton said.
“Don’t you get scared, alone?”
Clinton saw anxiety in her face.
“Sometimes,” he said.
“You do!” she said happily. “Well, I believe that’s perfectly normal, so I’ll leave the door open enough to hear you. In case you holler.”
“Thanks.”
She hurried gaily into the bathroom. Clinton’s head had scarcely touched the pillow when Shirley’s face appeared again at the bathroom door. “Listen, if you get so lonesome you can’t stand it, we can have a conversation right while I’m havin’ m’bath. Just pull that chair over and set with your back to me, is all you have to do.”
“Thanks.”
“And we can talk about just any old thing till you feel better. Or I could give up m’bath altogether. ‘Cause I’m clean as a pin. I just need refreshment. And I want to try out m’new cake o’ soap. Are you as crazy about soap as I am?”
Clinton could still hear her voice, but it seemed to come from a great distance. He had fallen asleep. Shirley moved quickly to his side and stood there for a long time just looking at his face. And then she touched his forehead lightly with her lips.
Clinton felt the coolness of it; and he heard, as in a dream, the softness of her voice: “You’re only asleep. Aren’t you, Willy?”
Then Shirley crept silently into the bathroom. The panda named Herskelwitz sat on the toilet while she took her bath.
Later, when Clinton awakened, the character of the room had changed. Shimmering blades of daylight, very thin, but sharp as swords, shone through cracks in the shutters and were softened only slightly by the curtains that now hung motionless in front of them. The lamps had been put out. Clinton knew it was daytime, but it seemed more like night than night itself. Without moving his head, he could see Shirley. But at first he could not believe what he saw:
She was seated on the floor, just inside the closet, smoking a corncob pipe. She wore lavender pajamas and the lavender panda sat on her bare knee. At first, when he looked at her, her body was so utterly without motion, not even breath, that he feared she was in some kind of mysterious trance. But after a long moment, she exhaled, and emitted a puff of smoke. Then she placed the pipe in her mouth again, and with a series of brief and frenzied pulls at its stem, her lungs once again filled with the smoke. She seemed to try to hold this smoke inside of her as long as possible.
The girl, unaware of Clinton, was so intent on her pipe that he felt as if he were an interloper watching through the keyhole as she took part in some curious and private ceremony. Then, to remind her of his presence, he turned over on the bed and stretched his limbs, making as much noise as might seem natural. Without looking at her, he sat forward and put his feet on the floor.
“Hello, Willy,” she said.
“I guess I fell asleep. I’m awful sorry.”
“You was tired. What’s wrong with that?”
“But I shouldn’t be takin’ up your bed. Where’d you sleep?”
“I didn’t. I seldom sleep too much,” she said, “except on Sundays.”
“What time is it?” Clinton said. The words sounded strange to him. There was no time in this room, not now, not any more. Something else had taken its place.
Shirley said: “I watched you quite a bit. Do you mind?”
“Watched me sleep?”
“Uh-huh. I felt like a thief. But it was nice. And nights are long.”
She got to her feet and stepped out of the closet.
Clinton said, “Do you sit in the closet quite a bit?”
“Only when I turn on. It’s better in a small place. You want some?”
“Some what?”
“Don’t you know?” she said, approaching the bed.
“You mean the pipe?”
“You can keep a secret, can’t you, Willy?”
“Sure.”
She held the pipe under his nose. It smelled like sin itself: exotic, faintly acrid, indescribable.
“What is it?”
Shirley put her mouth next to his ear, and whispered: “It’s marijuana.” Then she stood straight, thrust her stomach forward in the attitude of a little girl, and gave a false little laugh.
Clinton stared hard at the pipe. “If I tried a little puff, would I become a fiend?” Then, quickly, he added, “I mean, would I get addicted?”
“Huh-uh, not if you got a strong will. Have you got a strong will?”
In his mind Clinton reviewed rapidly certain of his own vices, and the strength of their hold on him. “Not very,” he said.
“Then maybe you better not have any,” Shirley said.
“Okay.”
“What’d you dream about?”
He thought for a while. “My brother, I guess.”
“Me, too! That’s what I dreamt about. My brother.”
“I thought you didn’t sleep,” Clinton said.
“Oh, I dream awake. I do it all the time. You want to hear my dream?”
“Sure.”
“You may have to help me some,” she said, settling into one of the straw armchairs.
“How can I?” Clinton asked.
“Well, if I start to cry, you have to stop me. Just take hold of my shoulders and say, ‘Shirley, you look very pretty in lavender,’ and make me listen. Okay? Just in case. But maybe I won’t cry atoll. —Anyway, I dreamt about my little brother Willy. It’s not my fault or anything, but he’s dead. Everybody says it’s not my fault because it was accidental. But when I dream about him, we’re both settin’ in the tree singin’ songs. The Isle of Capri and Billy-Boy and every song you ever heard of. I never think about him bein’ dead and all, ‘cause I don’t really believe in it. We just sing songs and I change the words for him. Like I sing:
“‘Summertime was nearly over,
Blue Kentucky skies above;
I said, Willy, I’m a rover,
Can’t you spare one sweet word of love?”
“Which is all purely my own imagination. I mean the part about Kentucky and Willy. But he thought I made up the whole thing for him. And when I sang Billy-Boy, I made it Willy. Don’t you think that was cute?”
Clinton said: “I think I heard you singin’ while I slept.” He rose from the bed and sat in the chair opposite the girl, facing her.
“That’s prob’ly why you slept so good,” she said. “My voice is a very soothing quality. —Anyway,” she continued her dream story, “we could hear the woman callin’ us, but we just stayed put, him on one branch, me on the other.”
“What woman?”
“Oh, just some Miss Hoozit we was boardin’ with at the time. After m’folks died, me and Willy boarded out all sorts of places. But this Miss Hoozit was the last one, ‘cause after that I run off by myself.”
“Without your brother?”
“Just me alone. ‘Cause Willy’d already had his accident. He fell off the high branch. Y’see, he was tryin’ to fly. Cutest thing, believed every word I told him. I used to tell him when his wings got big enough, we’d fly away together, and he believed me. Every day that summer, he’d say, ‘Shirley, are they big enough yet?’ And I’d say, ‘Not quite, Willy, but pretty soon!’ And then one day, he di’nt ask me. He just took it on hisself to try.”
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Clinton said, “Is that what you dream about?”
“Mm-hmm. Except in the dream, him and me both, we just fly all over the country together, we go whippin’ right through the air to North Dakota and Delaware and Greece. Even Colorado and Panama City. And we stop on various trees to rest and sing songs.”
“Where�
�d you fly to tonight?”
“No place special. I just sang while you slept.”
Clinton said: “You know, I hate to change the subject, but I got two things I want to say. One of them is, I’m gettin’ to where I like you a whole lot; and the other one is, I’m gettin’ awful hungry.”
Shirley jumped to her feet. “You want candy?” She went to the bureau. In the top drawer she found a jar of Hershey’s kisses. “I keep ‘em in a jar so they won’t get ants.” She took off the lid and handed it to Clinton. He began to unwrap the little silver pyramids of chocolate and stuff them into his mouth. “If you want to,” Shirley said, “you just eat every last one of ‘em. You want me to send down for more? ‘Cause all I have to do is go to the head of the stairs and holler. . . .”
She started toward the door. Clinton stopped her. “Hey, Shirley, don’t do that. I won’t eat but one or two of ‘em, anyway. But thanks an awful lot. I’m just crazy about these things.”
“You really like ‘em?”
“I really do. Whenever I see ‘em anywhere, I get some. ‘Cause they’re just fabulous. Want me to unwrap you some?”
“I shoulda thought about you bein’ hungry.”
“I wasn’t, though, till just a minute ago.”
They sat facing each other in the big wicker armchairs, Shirley hugging her legs under the big pajama top, Clinton unwrapping the candy. They smoked cigarettes, too, and they were both wide awake.
“Now tell me about your dream,” she said.
“Okay.”
“What’ll I do if you cry? Is there somethin’ I can say?”
“Oh, I don’t think I will. But thanks, anyway.”
“Go on then, what you dream about?” she asked.
“My brother,”
“Is he dead?”
“No!” Clinton exclaimed. “He’s alive! He’s Berry-berry Williams!”
“Oh! I forgot.” She frowned and looked away for a moment. “Go ahead, what you dream about him?”
“I dreamt I went to see him in jail.” He laughed.
“Lord, I hope it was some nice jail,” Shirley said.
“It was! It had these real thick walls and when I got into the cell where he was, they wouldn’t let me out.”
“Were you scared?”
“No. I kind of liked it. It felt good bein’ in there with him. It was a nice place, and it had two bunks. So I got in one of ‘em, and he got in the other one; and we went to sleep. One of my favorite things is sleepin’ in a room where somebody else is.”
Shirley leaned forward eagerly, as if a dream held for her more suspense than any tale of an actual event. “Then what?”
“That’s all.” He felt that his story had disappointed her. “Sometimes I just dream these very crazy things that don’t amount to anything.”
Suddenly Shirley said, “Do you believe when people die, it’s just absolutely ker-plunk? Forever?”
“No.”
“No what?”
Clinton said: “I don’t think they die just absolutely ker-plunk forever. I think they sort of float around like when you dream.”
Shirley thought that over. “And they still like to have songs sung to them, don’t they?” she said.
“I guess they do,” Clinton said. “I would, anyway.”
“Isn’t it funny,” Shirley said, “how, down on the street, I just knew to trust you?”
The talk went on between these two people, Shirley and Clinton, for a long time. Here in this second-story room at the Tin Pot Arms Hotel on Gasparilla Street, with the shutters drawn against the sun, there was talk of her growing up in various Kentucky towns, and of his childhood in the Old Neighborhood, talk of all the places and towns the girl had worked in during the numberless years that followed her thirteenth birthday; there was talk of Berry-berry and Ralph and Annabel, the White Tower and Mevvin from Heaven, and the motorcycle ride through the mangroves; and each one told what he believed in and gave utterance to profound thoughts and deep secrets: life-and-death matters like heaven and hell, love and hate, ghosts and flesh, parents and children, religion and movies and favorite songs, even politics and the brotherhood of man. The discourse was rich and rapid and nobody knew or cared what time it was. Clinton took a bath while Shirley sat outside the door with the lavender panda on her knee, and pretty soon they took to singing songs together: Red River Valley, For Me and My Gal, The Isle of Capri, sad songs and fast ones, and Way Down Upon the Swanee River, and they dedicated their songs to the ghosts of all the children who had ever died or grown up in the world. And they danced on the wooden floor of this second-story room of the Tin Pot Arms Hotel, humming their own music, Clinton with a towel about his waist, and Shirley in her pajama top. She showed him how to do the cakewalk as they sang:
“I’ll be down to get you in a taxi, honey,
You better be ready ‘bout a half past eight . . . ‘ “
And by the time he had learned, they sat on the edge of the bed, breathless, hugging one another, and they vowed to be friends forever. Soon they were lying on the bed in a close embrace, body against body. The boy’s mouth was pressed into the hollow of her shoulder and he could feel her hands traveling across his body, on his shoulders and on his back. They exposed to one another secrets of body even more profound than any of the talk had been. For a moment, like children who had not learned shame, they were apart, with only the contact of eyes, and then they were close once again. When Clinton’s body had entered hers, there was a moment of perfect stillness in which he prayed for death, an end of time. But this stillness gave place to motion, and the motion repeated itself again and again, and soon they had created a subtle and amazing rhythm of closeness and pleasure, closeness and pleasure, closeness and pleasure, until there was no lavender bedspread, no bed at all, no room, no hotel, no island, no earth. Only this closeness. Followed, too soon, by the sudden terrible knowledge that he had not died. This creation of senses, of nerve and blood and flesh, so exquisitely wrought that the world itself and all time were dissolved by it, had now itself dissolved. The closeness slipped away.
A person is born in the grips of this hunger for closeness; he seldom achieves it and never can keep it for long, but he learns to be grateful for a letup in the hunger itself, even when the letup is brief. Some are always too young to have learned this, and others too old and foolish. Clinton was young. His blood remained high in him. And in a few minutes they began again, he and the woman, his first woman, to build another of these brief universes, perfect and beautiful, and doomed. They built it and for a moment it was there, and then it collapsed. They witnessed the return of the world, the lavender panda, the iron bedstead, their two bodies lying close; and all of it illuminated by the sharper than ever sword thrusts of sunlight through the shutters.
Shirley rose suddenly from the bed. She covered herself with the pajama top and, hiding her face from Clinton, she ran into the bathroom and closed the door. It occurred to him that she might have been crying. He called to her, “Something wrong, Shirley? You okay?” But she did not answer. For a moment he lay on the bed, studying his body like some startling new possession. Then he realized that for perhaps an hour or more he had not given one thought to Berry-berry and his search for him. His notebook lay on the trunk at the foot of the bed, all but forgotten. He moved quickly to it, and made this entry:
[Clinton’s Notebook]
Did not think about B-B for more than an hour. Must figure this out. We have been singing songs here, songs for ghosts. There is much to tell about. And trouble. The girl is crying. I don’t know what to do. I’m hungry. Must find Berry-berry.
He stopped writing, and listened. Shirley, in the bathroom, was trying to stifle the sounds of her weeping. Clinton stepped quickly into his trousers and stood outside the bathroom door.
“Can I come in, Shirley?”
“No.”
“Shirley, I want to tell you something. Can you hear me?”
“Go away!”
She turned
on the water faucets. Clinton raised his voice above them: “Shirley, you look very pretty in lavender, do you know that? It’s the first thing a person notices about you. I really mean it, too, not just because you’re crying either.” There was no answer. He could hear nothing but the sound of running water. “Shirley, can you hear me?”
At length, the door opened. Shirley entered the room, drying her face with a towel. She was frowning, and the skin surrounding her eyes was puffed and inflamed.
“You okay?” Clinton said.
She looked at him as if she had never seen him before. “What’s your name, anyway?” she said. Her voice was lower, almost husky; and coarse.
Clinton smiled at her. “Don’t you know?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to play the Willy game any more. I mean your real name. You don’t have to tell me, of course. I don’t really care.”
“Why shouldn’t I? It’s Clint. I told you last night.”
“Oh. Well, thanks. Thanks for tellin’ me about lavender, too. It dudden work in the mornings though. But thanks.” She went to the bed and turned back the spread. “I took my pill, so maybe you better go now.”
“What pill?”
“Sleeping pill. So now’s your chance to scoot. You want to go, don’t you?”
“I got to try to find my brother.”
“Yeah, I know. Berry-berry.” She opened her pocketbook and searched inside of it. “I got something for you.” In her search, she came across a mirror, and glanced into it, briefly, displeased with what it presented. “Christ,” she said, “I ought to have my butt kicked, foolin’ with a kid your age.” Then she dug into the purse once again. “Where’d that damn thing get to?”
“What you lookin’ for?”
“Newspaper clipping. About your brother. He’s prob’ly not even in the State of Florida any more.”
“How do you know?”
” ‘Cause he left town the day after he stabbed my girl friend.” She handed him the clipping. “Here, if you don’t believe me. Advertiser wrote the whole thing up last Thursday. It don’t give his name, but take my word.”
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