“Fifty might seem a lot,” Flash admitted, “unless you take into consideration I’m doing three or four different jobs for em.”
“You got em any gigs yet?” Gene asked.
“Hell, I’m mappin out a whole tour, puttin it all together.”
“Where?” Lou asked
“Startin at this roadhouse I know just over the New Hampshire border, in Hudson. Near Nashua. We’ll go west into Vermont, then cross into northern New Hampshire, hit Bangor over in Maine and work our way down from there.”
“You really got it lined up?” Gene asked.
“Mostly, yeh, I just went up there, got commitments for most of the route.”
“How?” asked Lou.
“Shit, that’s where I sell siding. The boonies. I know all the little roadhouses, drink with the goddam managers. I told em this group was hot, they would pack in the customers. How the hell do they know? How the hell do I? I figure you put ‘ROCK GROUP’ in big letters after their name, who knows the difference? Then if they do pack em in, we get some good figures under our belt we can come back to Boston, build from strength.”
“Sounds great,” said Gene.
“Thank God I had the foresight not to put all my eggs into sports when I founded the N E A E A.”
“How do you mean?” asked Gene.
“You recall, the parent organization of the North American Curling League is the New England Athletic and Entertainment Association. In my management of Rasputin, I can use the same stationery. It comes under entertainment. Foresight. Somehow I knew, I sensed that sports was on the way out. Circuses, that’s what it is now. Besides, it doesn’t fit in with the spirit of the times. The spirit of the times is not competitive. Age of Aquarius and all. Spirit of harmony, love, expressed through music. Competition is out. Professional sports will soon be laughed off the fields and out of the stadiums. Who is a sure bet to fill Boston Garden on any given night—the Celtics or the Rolling Stones? Huh? Take your choice.”
Flash’s new career gave Gene inspiration. He knew he couldn’t pull off a Flash number, but maybe if he quit just looking at the ads, gave himself some time to think …
The second week of his job hunting Gene got dressed every morning in his suit which Lou always touched up on the ironing board the night before to do her bit, show him she wanted to help in his great career hunt; and after a flurry of preparing eggs-toast-coffee and listening to the news on the radio (a new habit which Gene felt lent his job-hunting campaign a sense of being on top of things) he strode off briskly to the corner of Mass Ave and Boylston where he purchased a Globe, folded it neatly, and tucked it under his arm the way the businessmen do, and with a cheerful whistle proceeded to the Prudential Center, where he spent the day.
He picked a comfortable chair in the Sheraton lobby for reading the paper—sports, comics, maybe some columns opposite the editorial page. He didn’t read the employment ads anymore. It had dawned on him they would always be essentially the same. There was simply no job he could stand that would also be approved by Lou. It was a puzzle to which he knew there had to be a suitable answer, one that was not to be found in the help wanted columns. It was something he had to solve on his own. All he needed was a little time and it would come to him.
The Pru was his headquarters. After the paper he rode the elevator up to the Skywalk, where you had a panoramic view of the whole city. Then he looked through the wonderful shops in the complex, the Saks Fifth Avenue and the Lord & Taylor, thinking which stuff would look good on Lou, had coffee at the Pavilion coffee shop, got a hamburger for lunch at Brighams, dropped into the Mermaid bar to catch a few game shows on the tube, went across the street to the Paperback Booksmith, and picked out a mystery he’d take back and read in the Sheraton lobby. Around four he’d hit the Mermaid again for a beer, watch “Bonanza,” and split just before the cocktail crowd. He walked back home with his brisk pace, hurried inside, threw off his coat and jacket, loosened his tie, and yanked off his shoes.
“Wow. Now I know what they mean by pounding the pavement.”
“Don’t worry,” Lou said, “it’ll happen.”
It did.
At the end of the second week of his life at the Pru Gene figured he couldn’t keep putting it off. He knew he could never stand sitting at a desk all day but that was the kind of job she wanted him to have, one where you had your name on the door and your Bigelow on the floor. But he figured maybe if he got the kind of job he liked at the kind of place she liked, she’d never know the difference. She told him there were lots of book publishers in Boston, and he could tell she thought that was good, a worthy thing to be into. As far as Gene could tell it would be just like any other kind of office job until it occurred to him if you published books you had to get them out to the stores. The books. You couldn’t just leave them lying around. You would have to put them in boxes and someone would have to move those boxes.
When Gene came home one night and told Lou he had landed a job at the venerable firm of Adams House, Publishers, she was overjoyed. He said he was in the training program. That’s why he had to buy a new suit.
Actually he was in the stockroom. But what the hell, he really did work for Adams House. He now had two suits and he alternated, wearing one of them to work every day. The other guys in the stockroom wore jeans and T-shirts and needled Gene about wearing a suit and tie. They called him “Diamond Gene.”
But upstairs his attire and pleasant manner drew favorable attention.
A lady editor whom Gene often saw dozing at her desk commissioned him to bring her black coffee every day at eleven and three. Word of his courtesy and efficiency spread, and he was given the responsibility of escorting the aged editor Shepard Hoskins to and from lunch at the Ritz every day, a journey that entailed walking through the Boston Common and the Public Garden each way.
When Gene was handed this assignment, he naturally wanted to know what to look out for. All he was told was that Hoskins was too old to go by himself.
“Does he fall down?” Gene asked.
“No,” the sleepy lady editor said, “he gets lost.”
“Ah.”
So every day Gene escorted Hoskins back and forth to his lunch at the Ritz.
He was gaining responsibility.
Lou would be proud.
The weather that spring was raw and scratchy, contentious and cold, smelling of mud and wounds.
No one made fires.
Now that he was a nine-to-fiver Gene didn’t feel like cooking much. Besides, he never knew when Lou might show. The war was taking more of her time. It was also making her thinner, more wan. What was her health till the war was won? Or lost, whichever it was she wanted. She missed meals entirely, forgetting insubstantial things, living on cigarettes, peanut butter, and zeal.
One night he came home after work and found her asleep, sprawled over test papers. He knew if he woke her and tried to get her out for a meal she’d refuse so he stealthily crept off and came back carrying a flat cardboard box hot to hold and steamy with wonderful smells so strong as to render a whole room woozy.
Gene sat the box down about a foot away from her, opened the lid, releasing the full force of the fragrance.
She made a small moan, moved, sniffed, blinked, woke.
“My God,” she said, “what’s happening?”
“Pizza.”
“With sausage-n-pepper?”
“With everything.”
They devoured the gooey mass in earnest silence, slurping, stuffing, dripping, demolishing the great mixed wonderful mess including all crust, then picking at crumbs as they had a can of beer, burping and sipping, satisfied.
Warm and full, Gene suggested they get out of their goddam rut, go somewhere—maybe up to Maine this weekend. They could grab a bus, get off where it looked good, get them some fried clams, climb around the rocks, breathe some good fresh cold ocean air. Change of scene.
“Gene? I forgot.”
“What?”
“A weekend
meeting of all New England faculty-student peace planning committees at Providence. I’m supposed to go.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No. No need.”
“Should have said.”
He shrugged, so hard his shoulder wrenched.
She went back to her test papers.
He went to the kitchen and stuffed away the dead box of pizza, made himself a tall glass of gin with an ice cube. He spread out the Globe sports page on the floor and studied the NBA standings.
He heard Lou yawn, looked over to see her stretch, and said, “Hey, babe?”
“Hmmm?”
“Will you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Will you promise that if you start makin it with any other guy you won’t tell me? I mean, you know, I know you’re free, we both are free, to do anything like that we want, but I just don’t want to know about it.”
She looked at him steadily and said, “OK, I promise.”
Then she went back to her work.
She had promised, anyway.
Not that she wouldn’t do it.
That she wouldn’t tell him about it.
The weather went from raw and clammy to steamy hot. The gentle, breezy part of spring didn’t happen that year. Gene was baking alive in his goddam suits and realized he’d have to hit Filene’s basement and try and pick him up some kind of summerweight jacket.
All just part of the pressure of being a rising young professional man.
The hell of it was he was having to hold off the lady editor who liked him from pushing for the company to bring him up from the stockroom into some better job. It was hard to explain he didn’t want the kind of jobs they considered “better.” Just to ensure he stayed in the stockroom, he thought he might have to fuck up a little. Forget to bring the lady editor the coffee that kept her awake in the afternoon. Maybe let old Hoskins get lost in the Public Garden. Show a little irresponsibility.
One night he came home from work and found Lou there with a six-pack, some deli food, and a guy named Steven Alexander.
“Steven,” Lou explained, “is active in the inter-University Peace Co-Ordinating Group.”
“Oh,” Gene said.
This time it was him and not the other guy who must have looked unpleasantly shocked. He could feel the heat of his cheeks, and that made him more uncomfortable. He didn’t know how he knew, he just knew.
Steven Alexander looked completely at ease. He was an instructor in mathematics at Boston University. Tall, with red hair in a brush cut and steel-rim glasses. Smooth, pale skin with freckles on his face and hands. He wore a lightweight cord summer suit of the type Gene had just decided he’d better try to buy before he baked to death. He wore a neat blue shirt and a black-and-white polka-dot bow tie. Though he was sitting on the floor along with Lou where she had spread out plates for the deli food, he did not look casual or mussed. He looked crisp.
“Please join us,” he said to Gene, indicating the food.
His voice was unbearably pleasant.
“In a sec,” Gene said.
He took off the scratchy coat to his suit, went to the bathroom, and washed his hands and face. His shirt stuck to him. He didn’t want to make a big production of changing his clothing. He just rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He came out whistling, went to the kitchen, and cracked a can of beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon. That must be the beer of Steven Alexander. Lou didn’t drink Pabst. Didn’t used to, anyway.
He sat down on the floor and Lou said, “Corned beef’s good.”
She pushed the plate with corned beef toward him. He made the sandwich, careful to be sure it was a normal sandwich, neither scrimpy nor gigantic.
“Have a good day?” Lou asked.
“Super,” Gene said.
“You look hot.”
“It’s a hot day.”
“Yes, it is.”
“We seemed to have missed spring,” Steven Alexander said.
“Or it missed us,” Lou said.
They laughed. Lou and Steven did. Gene smiled.
Lou finished her sandwich, wiped her hands, and went to the kitchen. She opened a beer for herself and asked Steven if he’d like another one. He said no thanks, he had to be getting along pretty soon.
“I mustn’t forget,” he said as he stood up, “those clippings about the deserters in Sweden you were going to loan me.”
“Oh! Right.”
Lou went to a pile of papers on the couch and extracted a couple of sheets of Xeroxed newspaper stories.
“Here,” she said, handing them to him.
“I’ll return them,” Steven said, as he slipped them into his briefcase.
“No hurry.”
“Good evening,” Steven said to Gene, “it was nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” Gene said.
Lou walked with him to the door, and stood out in the hall with him for a moment or so. It was quiet and then Gene heard them exchange “Good night.”
Lou came back in and started clearing stuff off the floor.
“I’m going to clean up,” Lou called from the kitchen.
“Clean up what?”
“The kitchen. All this shit that’s accumulating. Breakfast dishes.”
“OK,” he said.
The kitchen wasn’t in any different shape than it usually was, and usually it was Gene who got around to cleaning it up when it started to get out of hand. He turned on the radio to a rock station, but it was hard to hear above the noise from the kitchen. It sounded like a minor war. Pans banged and clashed, plates and cups collided and pillars of suds billowed up like the clouds from explosions.
When it was over Lou emerged pale and bedraggled, pulling her dress over her head.
“I think I’ll go to bed and read awhile,” she said.
“It’s awful early.”
“I’m awful tired.”
“He seems like a nice guy.”
Lou looked blank a moment.
“Oh. Steven?”
“Yes.”
“He is,” she said, “he’s a very nice person.”
“You’re fucking him, aren’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I believe it’s true.”
“Well, I guess you can believe what you want.”
“What I want is for you to tell me if it’s true.”
“You told me once you didn’t want me to tell you that. If it ever happened.”
“Well now I do.”
She got a cigarette, lit it, and sat down on the couch.
“OK,” she said. “It’s true.”
“Congratulations,” he said.
She stood up and yelled.
“Goddam it you asked me to tell and I told and you go and get smartass about it.”
“OK. I’m sorry.”
“We talked about this from the start. Remember? We agreed we’d both be free to—to do what we want.”
“Yeh. I guess I just thought—I thought maybe we might not want to.”
“Well, for a long time we didn’t.”
“I still don’t.”
“Then don’t.”
“It makes it different.”
“Why? Why should it make anything different for us? I didn’t say I loved the guy or anything. I wanted to make it with him, and he wanted to make it with me, and we did. That’s all there is to it.”
“And what if you both want to do it again?”
“Then we probably will.”
“Do me one favor.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t do it here. I mean even if I’m not here or something. Do it at his place.”
“OK.”
“That’s all.”
“Good night, Gene.”
“Good night.”
Gene decided to take a lover. He didn’t really want to, but he felt he should. Maybe it would help bring the balance back between him and Lou. Maybe if they both had other lovers it would somehow
bring them closer again. If nothing else it might help make him forget about her fucking that Steven Alexander guy. He kept picturing Lou in bed with him, imagining her doing with him all the things she had done with Gene. It actually seemed … obscene. For the first time he understood what the word meant.
He thought about getting it on with Marcia, the lady editor at Adams House. He knew she liked him. She was thirty-something and divorced. She wasn’t any beauty but she had a kind of drowsy appeal about her. The trouble was he liked her. They were sort of friends. If they had an affair they’d talk a lot and tell each other their troubles. He didn’t want it like that. He wanted someone to fuck, and that’s all. Someone who wanted the same thing.
He found her in accounting. Mitzi. She wore long false eyelashes and miniskirts and her ambition was to marry a doctor. She might have some jollies beforehand but she’d settle for nothing less when it came to tying the knot. Good. No one was fooling anyone. Gene was sympathetic to her dream.
“Maybe you should be a nurse,” he said when they were finishing their first drink, a martini for him and a tropical nights delight for her at Bob Lee’s Islander. When Gene tried to think of someplace to take her that he thought she would dig, he remembered the dinner after Flash’s party and it struck him as perfect. The semidarkness, the leis around the neck, the rum drinks with decorations. Hers had a little native canoe floating in it.
“Uggggggh,” she said.
It was not a reaction to the drink, but to the thought of being a nurse.
“I can’t stand sick people,” she said.
“But you dig doctors.”
“For husbands.”
“Respectable?”
“Rich.”
“Ah.”
“Maybe not millionaires but steady rich. I don’t go for these flashy types who are always messing with stocks and investments. I mean some of em are cute to date, but for a husband I want regular rich. No ups and downs.”
“And till then?”
“Till then’s my business.”
“Maybe I can make some of it my business.”
“You’re cute,” she said.
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