Bernie Randolph smiled at her.
I just can’t lie to you again, Jenny thought, and she turned abruptly, walking up to Mr. Lee. He was surrounded by other students, but that was fine as far as Jenny was concerned. The more the better. Eventually Bernie would have to tire of waiting. Jenny stood beside Eli Lee, trying to come up with some not so silly question; he was a smart man and the thought of him finding her foolish was instantly unendurable. Eli Lee was fifty, had once been a Communist, had turned to teaching when he could no longer act. Now that the pressure was off he was performing again, character parts only; he had a good, rough face that was instantly familiar to viewers of new television and old movies. Connecting the name with the face was, for some reason, all but impossible: audience referred to him as “that guy,” and even his own wife called him “Hey, you” from time to time.
“I’ve been avoiding this,” Eli Lee said.
Jenny looked quickly around to see who he was talking to. But, except for an occasional glimpse of Bernie Randolph waiting in the hall outside, the room was empty.
“I made a mistake with you,” Eli Lee went on.
“Auh?”
“You’re the least experienced person in this class, you know that, don’t you? You’re also suddenly the lousiest. I never should have taken you in.”
I must say something, Jenny thought. Yes; I must do that. She put her ... hands to her temples and began to rub, around and around.
“When a girl’s as bad as you’ve been for one week, I figure it’s that time of the month. For two weeks I figure she figures she’s knocked up, but you don’t strike me as that type. With you, all I can figure is that I made a mistake.”
Jenny nodded.
“You’re no straight ingénue, kid. You’re a minority group. Nobody’s ever gonna hire you for a sweet young thing unless your leading man plays pro basketball. The chances of your ever working would give Nick the Greek insomnia; the only reason I took you in is because I thought that if if if there was ever a part you were right for, you’d play the hell out of it. What you have is size and power but they’re nothing without discipline. Where’s your discipline gone, kid; where’s your concentration gone, kid; what in the hell has happened to you?”
Jenny could think of nothing to say.
“That’s all.”
Jenny managed to locate the door.
She made her way along the corridor and, holding tight to the railing, down the steps to 44th Street. Outside it was dark, warm for March, and she hesitated, wondering whether to put on her coat or not.
“I left as soon as he started,” Bernie Randolph said, standing on the sidewalk.
For a moment Jenny couldn’t remember who he was.
“I thought you’d rather no one heard. I could tell from his tone he was going to blast you.”
“How have I been?”
“I’m no teacher.”
“That bad?”
“You’ve been better. We’ve all been better. Coffee?” They started to walk.
“I’ve had things on my mind,” Jenny said.
“That happens. Will you have coffee or not?”
“I didn’t know I’d been so awful. Eli said he never should have taken me into class.”
“You’re very talented. He’s told you that too.”
“Not today. I don’t feel very talented. All my life I wanted to be good at something. I can’t think of anything better than being good at something. I can’t have coffee with you.”
“Why not?”
“Well—”
“Don’t make up anything. Just tell the truth; you don’t want to.”
“I do, though.”
“Then let’s.”
“Well, I can’t!”
“You have this evil stepfather and he punishes you whenever—”
“I can’t because I’ve got someone waiting for me. There.”
“Ten minutes? One cup?”
“No.”
“Sounds like a terrific relationship. Rich with understanding; give and take.”
“Bernie—”
“I mean, if you hadn’t wasted ten minutes trying to dodge me earlier, not only would you be on your way home now, Eli wouldn’t have taken your head off.”
“I wasn’t trying to dodge you.”
“You’re a lousy liar.”
“All right I was, because I knew you’d ask me for coffee and I wanted to go but I couldn’t and I didn’t want to lie.” She stopped walking. “Why can’t I have coffee? I mean it? Why? Why can’t I, I’d like to know? Class might have run late. So why can’t I have a cup of coffee if I want to?”
Bernie applauded softly.
“I’ll have two cups if I want to,” Jenny said. “I do what I please.”
“Great.”
“Let me make just one little phone call first.” She looked around. Up on the corner she saw a sidewalk telephone booth and they hurried to it. Jenny stepped into the booth, closed the door behind her, dialed. Bernie walked around the outside, glancing in occasionally, sometimes breaking into a quick dance, his heels clicking against the sidewalk. “Charley?” Jenny said. “Listen, would you mind if I was just a few minutes late?”
“You already are.”
“All right, a few minutes later. Would you mind?”
He said, “Not at all,” in a tone that said he minded.
“Just a few minutes? That’s all I’ll be.”
“I said I wouldn’t mind.”
“You didn’t mean it and you know it.”
“Stop the mind reading, will you, please?”
“I don’t see why I can’t have just one quick cup of coffee.”
“Have a goddam potful.”
“Why are you mad?”
“I’m not.”
“I’ll be right home.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“What—”
“If you come home you’ll do nothing but complain all evening about how I wouldn’t let you have one stinking cup of coffee which isn’t the truth in the first place.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Whatever you want to do. You’re a big girl.”
“Why do you have to make such a thing out of this?”
“Jenny, if anybody’s making a thing out of this—”
“It isn’t me, it isn’t!”
“Of course not. It’s my fault. Here I’ve had the supreme bliss of sitting surrounded by these lovely blue walls for many, many hours, and when I don’t froth at the mouth at the chance of extending my solitary confinement, I automatically come out the bad guy.”
“You’ve got no right to talk to me like that. You knew I had class—”
“I’m not waiting any more Thursdays, Jenny; you can quote me on that.”
“Charley—”
“I’m going home now; I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You better get ready! You better get ready to choose, Charley! I mean it! That’s the God’s truth and you can quote me on that too!”
“Slow down.”
“I don’t like the way you’re behaving and using me and not making up your mind and you better make it up and I mean what—”
“You’re so sweet I’d have to pick you.”
“You”—“bastard” she was going to say, you bastard son of a bitch, except she lost control before she could get it out, and was genuinely amazed at how quickly the gawkers came when you did that in public, lost control, because from all over the gawkers appeared, forming a second wall outside the four walls of the telephone booth, watching her as she turned, crying, around and around and around.
“I just feel so silly,” Jenny said as Bernie helped her out of the cab in front of her building. “I’m really all right, Bernie.”
Bernie guided her toward the front door.
A figure raced down to meet them.
“Charley, hi,” Jenny said. “Charley, this is Bernie. He’s that wonderful actor I’ve told you about.”
�
��Thanks,” Charley said to Bernie. “I’ll take her now.”
Bernie nodded.
“It’s just the silliest thing,” Jenny said as Charley led her in to her apartment. “All of a sudden I was so upset. It’s on account of Eli. He bawled me out, Charley. He said I was just such a terrible actress and that really upset me.”
The blue walls surrounded them.
“I’m very tired,” Jenny went on, her voice dropping now. “I didn’t think I was. But boy, am I ever tired. Eli, he shouldn’t have talked to me like that. Not when I wasn’t ready or anything. He shouldn’t have upset me.”
Charley knelt, took off her shoes. Then he got her to lie down and, lying beside her, cradled her gently.
“I just feel ... well, I haven’t felt this silly since I don’t know when. Oh, am I the tired one. Back home once I made a cake with baking soda instead of baking powder. I felt pretty silly then, I can tell you. The poor cake, it just lay there. Oh, I’ve really done some silly things in my time. That poor cake.” And she talked on, her voice dropping, and when it was less than a whisper she heard Charley saying something, the same thing, over and over, as he rocked her in his great hands. Jenny listened to him repeat it, and when she realized that was telling her he loved her, she managed a smile. “He loves me,” she whispered then. “Oh, I knew you would ... I did ... I did. Oh, isn’t this a red-letter day ...”
Jenny stood on the second floor of the customs area of Idlewild, looking down at the lines of people below, trying to find Tommy. His plane had arrived fifteen minutes earlier, so he really ought to be here, she told herself. She made a careful check, staring at all the faces down below, and suddenly it struck her that maybe he was there and she just didn’t recognize him. Impossible, she decided. Absolutely impossible. She’d known him all her life; she knew him now.
Jenny straightened her skirt and shook her head and continued her search. It was two o’clock of a May afternoon—she had taken the afternoon off for the occasion—and her stomach growled, which always embarrassed her, especially when it used to happen in school and all the boys around her laughed, Tommy leading the laughter, so she turned away from the window and hurried to the cigar store down the way and bought two candy bars. She wolfed the first one, downed the second in a fashion more ladylike, and returned to her position by the window.
Taking out his letter, she checked the information he had given her as to his arrival. Jenny nodded. Somewhere, down there, Tommy was waiting to pass through customs, and if that very rude boy at the rear of the. nearest line would only stop waving at her, she might stand a better chance of finding—
Oh dear, Jenny thought, and she waved back at Tommy.
He held up his suitcase and gestured to it, then to the customs man.
She nodded that she understood.
He mouthed that he loved her.
She cupped her hands around her ear and shook her head.
He mouthed it again.
Jenny waved to him, thinking how wonderfully well and handsome he looked, wishing that she felt well herself, or at least better. She was terribly nervous and had been ever since Tommy’s letter arrived, and she wished she were calmer and stronger for this, a difficult day.
Tommy put his hands to his heart.
Jenny whirled her index finger around her ear.
They both smiled and waved at each other as the customs line moved slowly forward. I must do this right, Jenny told herself, going over in her mind what she planned to say. Charley was against her saying anything, but Jenny felt she owed it to Tommy to tell. She opened his letter again and reread the beginning:
Moose:
It dawned on me the other day that in all my world travels, I have yet to meet your equal at Indian wrestling, shot-putting, or tossing the caber. This set me to thinking, which is what we Rhodes scholars do best. I think we ought to get married. I mean, enough is enough. What do you think ...?
Jenny looked down at the boy in the customs line. The boy looked back at her, pointed to his watch, then shook his fist at the slow customs man. Jenny smiled. The boy pulled out a pistol and fired six shots at the customs man. Jenny began to giggle. The boy produced a gigantic submachine gun and started blasting away at the customs man. Jenny laughed and laughed, then whirled, racing for the nearest phone, dialing Kingsway, asking for Mr. Fiske, saying, “Do you love your secretary?” when he answered.
“I do.”
“Say it.”
“I love my secretary.”
“More.”
“I have loved you more these last two months than I have ever loved anybody in all my life. I take it he’s arrived.”
“Yes.”
“But you haven’t talked to him yet. Well, you don’t have to tell him about us. All he asked you was a question: ‘will you marry me?’ All you owe him is an answer: ‘no.’ You don’t have to explain a damn thing.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s Tommy.”
“Jenny—”
“Nobody understands me like Tommy. I love you so. Goodbye.” She hung up and went back to the window. Tommy looked up at her; he was terribly old now, all bent over, and his hands trembled and he had to squint to see.
Jenny laughed out loud. You’re crazy, she thought, just like always. The customs man finally beckoned, so Jenny went downstairs, waiting by the exit door for Tommy to finish. When he was through, he shook the custom man’s hand firmly, took his suitcase, ran through the exit door, dropped his suitcase and grabbed Jenny around the waist, crying “Look at you, look at you, for crissakes.”
“Stop!”
“You’re a goddam sophisticate. My God, I leave a—”
“Tommy—”
“Fat clod and come back and she’s chic.”
“People can see us.”
“No, they can’t—I’ve clouded their minds so that they cannot—little trick I learned years ago in the Orient. You will never, in your wildest dreams, guess how much I missed you.” They started walking for a taxi.
Jenny wished she felt better.
“You’re going to turn me down, aren’t you?” Tommy said.
“No one understands me like you do.”
“May I ask why?”
Jenny told him. Slowly, with great and gentle care.
“You have a crummy apartment,” Tommy said when she was done. He glanced around at the walls. “I think they call this color ‘loony house blue.’”
“Don’t you want to say anything else?”
“I’d just as soon not talk about it.”
“But do you understand?”
“Of course I understand.”
“And you’re not mad.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t mad. I said I’d just as soon not talk about it. You really care for this Fiske?”
“I love him.”
“And he loves you and’s gonna marry you.”
“Yes.”
“I really hate him, I’m that jealous.”
“You’d like him.”
“Sure,” Tommy said, and then he said, “Got it.”
“Got what?”
“I was trying to think of what it was I minded about all this. I just figured it out, that’s all.”
“I had to tell you. I couldn’t just say ‘no’ and not explain.”
“I really appreciate that, Jenny. How long have I been crazy about you? Five years? Closer to ten?”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“At first I thought it was the seaminess I minded, but then I figured, if you want to drop your pants, drop ’em, it’s not much of my business.”
“Don’t talk that way,” Jenny said and she thought, oh dear, oh dear, this is going to be awful.
“I mean, you want to be the town pump, O.K.”
“Tommy!”
“But that isn’t what I mind, the seaminess. My second thought was—”
I wish he’d raise his voice, Jenny thought. It’s like a lecture in a school
room and I do wish he’d talk a little loud—
“—the triteness. But that isn’t it either. After all, every girl who comes to Manhattan has an affair with her boss—it’s practically an entrance requirement—and I figured you—well, I hoped you’d pick somebody a little more original to put out for.”
Jenny wished a lot of things.
“What I really mind, though, is the deceit. All the love shit; all the crap about how Fiske’s gonna marry you.”
I must not listen, Jenny told herself. I must be very careful or it’s going to be like the telephone booth and I don’t know if I can take that and—
“He’s never gonna marry you! He’s got too good a deal going for him the way it is.”
“That’s not—”
“I envy the guy. Has he had this setup before? I guess he probably wouldn’t tell you that, it might upset you. Admit it: he’s never gonna marry—”
“He ... is!” somebody said.
“Aw, Jenny, face it, huh? Come on now.”
“It’s ... truth ... !”
“Jenny, you admitted you’ve been shacked with him for almost two years now and he hasn’t made a move yet and he’s not going to and you know it and that’s why you’re not pushing him into a decision because you know which way the decision’s going and if you want to know the truth this whole thing is so bloody ludicrous it’s very hard not to laugh.”
I must get to the bed and lie down, Jenny told herself, starting on the journey.
“The fact is,” Tommy said, “that you’re nothing but a lousy whore.”
Jenny’s mouth opened.
“Don’t misunderstand me. I didn’t mean lousy in the sense of disgusting; I’d never call you disgusting.”
Jenny made it to the bed at last, and she sat down, then lay flat, thinking how much he must care for her, poor Tommy, to talk to her this way, except the realization brought with it no relief, and she closed her eyes, wondering which could last longer, his power to talk or hers to listen.
“Lousy in the sense of inept is what I meant, if you can use lousy that way. I mean, look around you; only an inept whore would live in a place like this. Can’t he at least help you out a little on the rent, get you a decent place? Hasn’t he got any pride? How can he bring his friends to a place like this?”
The Novels of William Goldman Page 70