Come and Join the Dance

by Joyce Johnson

  “I usually don’t have any dreams at all,” Susan said. “And they’re never like yours. I’m always taking exams I’m not prepared for. Lately I’ve been dreaming about Mrs. Prosser—isn’t that prosaic?”

  “Pick up your mail,” Kay said. “That’s the way to get rid of her. If you want me to, I’ll pick it up for you.”

  “Oh no,” Susan said quickly, “I’m going to do it this week.”

  Kay smiled. “Well, we all have our little hang-ups. At least you manage to get up every morning. It’s not a bad deal being a daytime person.” She threw a towel over her shoulder. “I’m off to the public baths. How does the corridor smell today?”

  “Like cheese,” Susan said.

  Kay opened the door. “Blue cheese,” she said gaily and shut the door behind her.

  It was strange to be in the Southwick Arms in the prolonged, conscienceless hotel morning. Susan had always thought of it as a setting for those things that happened only at night: wild parties with beer bottles and jazz crashing into the courtyards, rumored affairs locked behind doors along the green corridors, intense discussions in the community kitchens about whether anything really meant anything—all ending for her, arbitrarily, at one-thirty when the dorms locked up; and so the Southwick Arms had always seemed unreal, theatrical—scenery to be assembled and dismantled at will. Alone in Kay’s room, she was suddenly shocked to remember that Kay had actually been living for three months in the real world—for what could be realer than the paint peeling off the radiator? She tried to imagine herself living in Kay’s room, although of course her parents would never have allowed it. Yet Kay’s parents hadn’t allowed it either, just as they hadn’t allowed Kay to flip and simply walk out of school in the middle of her last year. It had terrified Susan to see Kay leave college. She remembered wondering how Kay could possibly survive it. “But it’s so silly, Kay,” she had pleaded. “It’s just one more term.”

  “It’s time I learned something,” Kay had said, surprisingly calm. “When I’ve learned something, then I’ll go back, when I’ve stopped being stupid.”

  “But you’re not stupid!”

  “I want to see more than fifty per cent when I walk down the street,” Kay had said. And Susan had seen her face become luminous. A day later, Kay had moved out of the dorms and into the Southwick Arms Hotel; she had miraculously found a part-time job in the library for twenty-five dollars a week. She began to live on thirty-five-cent hamburger meat, to stay up all night, and to develop secrets—there were usually traces of mysterious visitors around the room: cigarette ashes, half-empty glasses of beer. Kay had even brought her own kind of comfort to the hotel: the books of Blake, Rimbaud propped up on the dresser, and the three prints she had tacked on the wall opposite her bed—a little nun, a pale courtier in a black doublet, and a Japanese girl with a face white as paper—all three austere, fleshless, staring down unmoved upon disorder. Kay’s saints, Susan thought.

  The morning sun made the green oak leaf wallpaper declare its ugliness; the room looked different at night. Actually, Susan envied Kay this room, even envied her the books she chose to puzzle over—Pound’s Pisan Cantos was on the floor beside the bed. Susan picked up the book and turned the pages idly, not actually reading; she didn’t really like poetry, a curious failing. She wondered if Kay tormented herself with Pound’s Chinese inscriptions.

  “Isn’t the Pound fine?” Kay had come back from her shower.

  “I was just looking through it,” Susan said, shutting the book.

  Kay snatched it up and turned the pages with a disturbing avidity. “Did you read this? Listen—‘Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.’ Peter lent it to me.”

  “It’s Peter’s?” Susan felt a stir of excitement hearing his name, saying it.

  “He brought it over last night,” Kay said, smiling tremulously. “He’s taken on my education.”

  Susan remembered that she hadn’t told Kay about meeting Peter. Somehow she didn’t want her to know. But surely there was nothing wrong about meeting someone accidentally on the street, no reason to feel guilty about it. She wondered whether Peter were in love with Kay and tried to convince herself that would be lovely. “I’d like to borrow the Pound,” she said. “Maybe next week.”

  Kay was staring at her. “You won’t be here next week,” she said solemnly.

  “Oh, that’s right!” Susan laughed. “How funny—I never remember.”

  “But you’re going out into the world!”

  “Shut up!”

  “Miss Susan Levitt, the well-known expatriate,” Kay teased. “And she doesn’t give it a thought!”

  “That’s not exactly true, you know,” Susan said painfully.

  “I know,” Kay said. “I guess I’m jealous.”

  “I wish you were coming with me.”

  Kay was silent. “I couldn’t,” she said at last. “Even if I had the money. It’s a big thing just to go below 110th Street. I’m too—committed, I guess. No, stuck—that’s less elegant.”

  “You’ll finish school next year,” Susan said lamely.

  “Yes,” Kay said, “I’ll go back and get my Bachelor’s. I think I’ll give my diploma to my parents. It’s really theirs. Everything’s theirs. Even my books. And these pajamas—my mother made them.”

  They were cotton batiste, white with blue rosebuds and a little lace around the collar—exactly, Susan thought, what a mother would make for a young daughter, someone soft, protected. Kay was furiously picking at the buttons. “I’m not ever going to have children!” she cried. The pajamas dropped on the rug in a little heap. Kay began to pull open all the drawers in her dresser. “Everything’s dirty,” she groaned. “I can’t find anything.” It was strange to see Kay without clothes; she was always so well hidden in her dark skirts and shapeless sweaters that it was difficult even to imagine her body. It was terribly round and white, a woman’s body, not a girl’s. Kay was beautiful, Susan realized. She stared at her in astonishment, until she caught herself staring, and then suddenly Kay’s nakedness in the little room and the way she pulled open the dresser drawers as though there was no one there to watch her at all seemed unbearably intimate. For a moment Susan was almost angry with her, not that she was shocked. She walked over to the hot plate and peered down at the boiling water. “Kay, where are the cups?” She didn’t want to just sit there on the edge of the bed trying to look unconcerned. It was stupid to be so uncomfortable. After all, Susan thought, Kay wasn’t a virgin. Perhaps once you had irrevocably gone to bed with a man, you took your body for granted—you knew, which was different than knowing about. She remembered asking Kay once, “What’s it really like? How does it feel?” And Kay had only answered, with the maddening smile of an adult, that everything changed too much if you thought about it. Susan still despised herself for having had to ask.

  Perhaps she should have gone to bed with Jerry. She had always put it off, telling him, “It’s just not the right time yet, Jerry,” without ever deciding when the right time would come. And yet she hadn’t been afraid. Maybe it was just bitchiness; it would have been different if she had been able to love him—then she could have done it blindly, without questions or afterthoughts. But surely she had loved him a little, at least in the beginning. They had been too shy with each other to think of it then. And now she was graduating a virgin, which was against all her principles. She was sick of being a child, sick of being only a member of the audience. It was time for her to move into the Southwick Arms Hotel.

  The pot of boiling water shook in her hand and slopped on the table. “Oh, no!” Susan wailed.

  “What’s the matter?” Kay asked.

  “I don’t seem to be able to do anything. Can’t even make instant coffee. I wouldn’t last a week on a desert island.”

  Kay laughed. “Most deserts are probably civilized deserts like this with bad plumbing. You’d get along after a while.” />
  “Maybe I wouldn’t. I really wish I knew how I’d turn out, Kay, whether I’d survive. I want to test limits. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I hear the plumbing’s really bad in Paris.”

  “Oh, Kay! I’m serious.”

  “You mean you want to go out and look for trouble.”

  “Yes,” Susan said, “even trouble. I think trouble’s better than nothing. Kay … I just can’t stand myself sometimes. Why doesn’t anything ever happen to me? Why hasn’t anything ever happened to me here? I don’t even know whether I want to go away. It’s just an idea. I just happen to have some tickets… . Kay, if you were going you’d know, wouldn’t you? Things really happen to you.”

  Without looking at Susan, Kay said, “Well, I’ve had a pretty strange few months. I’m not sure what it all means yet.” She walked over to the table and picked up her cup of coffee. “No … that’s a lie.” Kay sounded as if she were talking to herself. “I do know. I do know.”

  “Know what, Kay?” She wasn’t quite sure that she had any right to ask.

  “Well … I think I’m going to be a failure,” Kay said slowly. “I think that’s already settled. And that’s all right. But I do want to be a magnificent one. A gigantic smoking ruin. It’s the mediocre failures that clog up the world.” Kay was staring at her now. “You’ll probably stop talking to me, Susan.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Susan cried. “Besides, I don’t believe you. I think you’re just feeling depressed.”

  “I’m not depressed today.”

  “What about Peter?” Susan found herself asking. “Is he a magnificent failure?”

  “Peter’s very beautiful,” Kay said gravely. “But I don’t know what’ll happen to him.”

  “But he is a failure.” There was a look of pain on Kay’s face. “But I didn’t mean it that way—I do like him.” She smiled at Kay anxiously. “I forgot to tell you—I ran into him yesterday on Broadway. We had coffee.”

  “I saw you pass,” Kay said.

  “You should have come with us!”

  Kay stirred her coffee. “Oh … ” she said, “I was feeling antisocial. Anyway, you wouldn’t have talked to each other if I’d been there. He told me it was the first time he’d ever had a conversation with you.”

  “I’ve been shy with him, I guess.”

  “That’s pointless.”

  “Kay,” Susan asked abruptly, “are you in love with Peter?”

  Kay’s face reddened. “Really now! Don’t I have enough troubles?” She walked quickly over to the dresser, fished out a black sweater and yanked it over her head. “Let’s get out of here and look at the morning. I haven’t been up this early since I left school.”

  “Where to?”

  Kay was studying herself in the mirror. “Want to walk me over to Peter’s?” Her voice was elaborately casual. “I promised to wake him whenever I got up.”

  “I think I really ought to go back to the dorms, Kay.”

  “Oh come on, you can just walk me there.”

  Susan hesitated. “All right,” she said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THEY DIDN’T TALK at all until they got out of the elevator and heard the music blaring behind Peter’s door at the other end of the corridor. “My God!” Kay said then. “He must have left the radio on all night.”

  “I really can’t stay very long,” Susan whispered as Kay pressed the buzzer. No one answered. “Maybe he isn’t home, Kay. We could go and have some coffee.”

  But Kay had tried the door. It was unlocked. “He always leaves it this way,” she said. She was holding it open, and there was nothing for Susan to do but walk into Peter’s living room, where there was no one to listen to the jazz. All the lights were on, though, and underneath the music they could hear the rush of the shower. “Might as well wait,” Kay said. She pushed aside a tangle of army blankets on the sofa and sat down. “Looks like someone slept over.”

  Susan leaned against the door, her hand on the brass knob. The silence between them now was heavy, peculiarly intense, as though anything said would be dishonest. There was no reason for her to wait for Peter—just because they had run into each other on the street, an accident without significance. It would have been a braver thing to have come alone, or not to have come at all, not to have used Kay for this. What was she looking for, anyway? Something to kill time, that was all it was. Amusement. Kay had come to Peter because she meant it.

  “What’s the matter?” Kay frowned at her. “You look like you’re going to take off any minute.”

  “Oh I’m not,” she said tightly, placing herself on a hard little chair near the door. The trespasser’s chair, she thought.

  Kay had tucked her feet up under her and was smoking a cigarette, staring sad and empty-eyed at an invisible point in an unknown landscape; she might have looked that way sitting alone on her bed in the Southwick Arms Hotel. But maybe Kay’s room and Peter’s living room and all the other rooms in the world that had been assembled defiantly just for the time being and then neglected, because after all the arrangement was temporary, were rooms in the same endless apartment, connected by miles and miles of dark hallways and worn linoleum, furnished with the massive, imperishable castoffs that parents whose children had left home gave to the Salvation Army. Susan was just a spy, a sneak thief who lived in a room with pink walls in her mother’s house.

  The rush of the shower had stopped. A door opened, and then there were footsteps coming down the hall. Kay sat up very straight and stubbed out her cigarette. Susan wished she would look at her. “Peter?” Kay called out sharply. “Peter?”

  But the black-haired lanky boy in the blue jeans and dingy white shirt who strode into the living room was not Peter after all, but Anthony Leone. “Wow!” he said happily. “Two women and so early in the morning!” Susan began to laugh, feeling giddy, lightheaded. “Hi.” Solemnly Anthony nodded to her.

  “Hi,” she said, trying to choke down her laughter. She had been frightened before when she had thought the footsteps were Peter’s; she always laughed when she was frightened.

  “These yours?” Kay asked Anthony, pointing to the army blankets.

  “Yeah. I’m homeless again. Mitchell finally evicted me.”

  “Where’s Peter?”

  “Still sleeping. What did you expect?”

  Kay stood up. “I’m going to wake him.”

  “Oh don’t do that. He’s in bad shape. We got pretty loaded last night. I got sick, which was stupid.”

  “Are you feeling better now?” Susan asked.

  “Sure,” he said cheerfully. “Now I’m hungry.”

  “I’m going in,” Kay said. “He’s got his fellowship paper due at five.”

  “Look—why don’t you let Peter sleep. Why are you always so damn motherly?”

  “I’m not motherly at all.”

  “Yes you are. You always have that we-all-have-our-work-to-do attitude. And what’s your work, anyway?”

  Kay’s face went rigid for a moment. “Living,” she muttered. “Just living.” She marched swiftly past him and up the hall to Peter’s bedroom.

  Susan heard her shut the door. The jazz was terribly loud. Someone really ought to turn it off, she thought.

  Anthony was asking her something: “Do you think she’s bugged with me?”

  “No,” she said, “Kay never really gets angry.” But she wondered if that were true.

  “What’s the matter then? Is she some kind of martyr? I don’t dig that at all. I hate passive people!”

  “Why?” Since she was alone with him, they might as well have a conversation.

  “I hate the way they let themselves be taken in. They’re suckers, and suckers are stupid people. God, how I hate stupidity!”

  “My!” Susan said. “You’re awfully violent.”

  “Stop flirting w
ith me. I’m serious.”

  “I’ve never flirted with you,” she said, embarrassed. “I hardly know you.”

  “Oh no? What about the Riverside Café? We’ve been flirting for two years now.”

  There was something attractive about his ferocious determination to be taken seriously. For once she felt older than someone. “You might be right, at that,” she said. It was true that for two years Anthony’s eyes had signaled to her over all the heads in the Riverside Café, where he was to be found every night standing at the bar until four in the morning, and that she had never been able to resist smiling back at him, even though she knew he grinned appreciatively at all the passing girls. “A campus bum,” some of the girls at school had labeled him. But there seemed to be more to him than that. Once when she had been alone in the Riverside, Anthony, drunkenly dodging the little tables in his path, had come over to talk to her. He had told her that he wrote poetry, was a Communist, was only eighteen, and that he had just been expelled from college for bringing a girl up to his room, and could he walk her back to the dorms. She had said, “No. I think I can make it myself.” “C’est la vie,” he had shrugged sadly. “C’est la vie.” To her surprise, he had walked quickly away from her.