The Swing
The world, filled to the brim with stillness, suddenly overflows: a hedge branch moves, through the hedge a hand appears, and then he’s there, in the yard, glancing up at the windows with his hair falling over his forehead. Janet feels a pain of happiness, a swooning terrible pain that is like grief. She has never felt anything like this knife-twist of happiness, this dark joy that seizes her like suffering. He can’t see her in the dark window, and she is glad: she imagines her face to be desolate with love. He walks through bright moonlight into the shade of the silver maple, and his graceful walk across the yard is like a wind she feels on her skin. He sits down on the swing. He hooks his arms around the ropes. Frowns up at her window, scuffs a sandal on the patch of dirt. The bent ropes, the turn of his neck, his anklebone above the sandal, all this seems as mysterious and beautiful as the moonlight pouring into the yard. Then he pushes off and begins to swing. He is pulling back on the ropes, he is reaching his legs out, stretching, swinging into the light of the moon. Then back, his legs bending as he swings into shade. Light, dark, light, dark, his loose pants rippling as he swings. And the swinging releases her: she waves, she laughs, but his attention is fiercely concentrated on his swinging, for him there is nothing but that. Oh why is he swinging on her swing like that, forgetting her, annihilating her? Janet turns from the window, throws her leather jacket over her nightgown, hurries barefoot down the thickly carpeted stairs.
In the Library
The darkness on the second floor is cut by streaks of yellow light from the streetlamps on Main Street. Through the high, arched windows the dark blue night-sky is suffused with moonglow. In the lounge Blake and Danny sit in leather armchairs that are half-turned toward a leather couch, where Smitty lies with his head resting on a couch-arm. An ashtray with a burning cigarette rests on his stomach. With one hand he supports a bottle of beer on his chest.
“Go on,” Blake says.
“So I’m sitting there on the couch like a good little Boy Scout with one hand hanging down over her shoulder accidentally on purpose with my fingers sort of touching her tit through her blouse which is made of this very silky material and I’m thinking what is the best way to advance the action without blowing my cool.”
“Go on,” Blake says.
“So I start kissing her and she’s kissing me back like she might be interested in male Caucasians but please don’t jump to any conclusions and my other hand just happens to be resting on her knee which when I look down I see her skirt is pushed up and I’m looking at all of it, man. I mean this girl is giving me the view all the way up the avenue. So I start moving my hand real slow and easy up the old leg like I’m a cat burglar crawling across a roof and either she doesn’t notice or she don’t care.”
“Her mind is on higher things,” Blake says.
“So that’s the downtown action and meantime uptown back at the ranch I’ve got my hand on this button on her blouse and I’m sort of fiddling with it and hey, how about that, it slips through the buttonhole, just one of those things.”
“A little accident,” Blake says.
“I’m innocent as a baby in a cradle saying googoo.”
“You’re innocent and I’m the Virgin Mary,” Blake says.
“So down in the valley, valley so low, I’m working my way up an inch at a time and meanwhile on top of old Smokey all covered with snow I’ve got my hand under her blouse and I’m feeling her up through her bra which has these fancy lacy edges, man. She doesn’t stop me and I’m starting to ask myself how far I can go.”
“You’ll go far, young man,” Blake says.
“So I’m sitting there hard at work on the late-night shift with one hand jammed up against the front of her panties and the other hand shoved up under her bra and her just sitting there letting me feel everything which is making me very curious about just what else is going to take place with this chick whose acquaintance I am making.”
“He was always a curious student, interested in his studies,” Blake says.
“So I’ve got one hand down in Cherry Lane and the other up in Jug Alley and tell you the truth I’m getting a little tired of doing the cha cha cha when it’s time to start jumpin’ to a rock-roll beat. She’s sitting there with her blouse hanging down over her belt buckle and her bombs swinging in the breeze and her skirt up around her elbows and the way I figure it the time has come for every good man to come to the aid of his country.”
“The Army Wants You,” Blake says.
“I consider the situation and decide the best way for me to go in the situation which is looking good from where I sit is to take it slow and go with the flow. Stay loose as a goose and then vamoose. So before she knows what hits her I bend over and kiss her very sweet and polite like I am not making out with a cunt on a couch but I’m her long-lost brother come back from the orphanage. This is definitely the way to go because she’s hot to trot and hey why not. So I’m sitting there kissing her all brotherly sisterly and one of those things just happens to happen which is that I just happen to stick my tongue in her mouth. You will fucking not believe what happens next.”
“What happens next,” Blake says.
“What happens next is she sits up and pushes me away and yanks down her skirt like she just noticed she’s not alone in her wigwam down on the reservation. ‘Fresh!’ she says. I fucking swear to God that’s what she says. She’s so pissed she looks like she’s about to spit blood. Can you believe it? One hand halfway up her fallopian tubes and one hand buried in her bazooms and it’s good clean all-American fun but one false move with the old tongue and she wants to stick me on a banana boat and ship me back to Brazil. I fucking couldn’t believe it, man. Can you believe it?”
“I can’t believe it,” Blake says, crestfallen.
“Dumb bitch,” Smitty says.
Danny stands up and walks to a window. He looks down at the bank, at the store windows on Main Street, at a stoplight changing from red to green. Up above, the sky is a dark, radiant blue. He feels a sudden desire: to smash through the glass, to float up into that blue radiance.
The Man with Shiny Black Hair
Out for a stroll on this fine summer night, the man with shiny black hair passes the library. Blue-dark the arched windows in moonlight: a nice effect. Panes throwing back tree branches and the corner lamppost. The man with shiny black hair imagines the moonlit aisles, where earlier in the day he gathered pictures for his gallery. That was before the blond man in the trench coat made him nervous. The lights of Main Street, even at 1:34 in the morning, make him nervous. The little yellow lights on the movie marquee seem to be going round and round, round and round, an infuriating illusion. He needs calm, darkness, calm. Quickly he crosses Main Street and heads over the iron bridge above the railroad tracks. Glitter of rails, black towers in the sky, the mass of overhead wires stretching away. He’ll walk around awhile, up past the high school, out of harm’s way, who knows what he’ll find, maybe another picture for his collection, you never can tell.
The Pleasures of Window Gazing
Coop stops unsteadily before the window where the tall and lovely lady stands higher than the street. She looks down at the world through sunglasses darker than the night. Her nose is so thin that each nostril is no wider than a pencil line. Her legs are so long that each one seems an entire tall woman. Under the soft material of her peach-colored dress her small breasts, high and round, look as hard as billiard balls. Her long smooth fingers are slightly bent, as if they’re holding an invisible, delicate object. For some reason all this makes Coop think of marble fountains and cool water. As he looks up at her, a sudden longing ripples over him, as if someone has drawn a fingernail across the skin of his stomach. And his heart is moved, though his hands feel thick and clumsy by his sides. His nails are black with engine grease. He isn’t worthy of touching the strap of her sandal. He feels sunk in his worthlessness, a drunk on his way home, but then again it’s a free country, anyone can look, so why not him? The street is
trembling, the air is trembling. The lady herself seems none too steady on her pins. As he tries to concentrate his attention, he sees a little tremor in her finger. In her dark glasses the stoplight changes from red to green, there’s a glow of green on her bare shoulder, the lady is trembling and shimmering, Coop feels a tug in his stomach, and stepping forward until he’s next to the window, he closes his eyes, rises a little on his toes, and, pushing out his lips, places on the cool glass a heartfelt kiss.
The Beach on a Summer Night
On this warm night in August, at this late hour—it’s 1:42 in the morning—the beach is quiet but not deserted. For this is the hour of lovers and loners, who come down to the water long after the others have left. The lovers lie in each other’s arms on old army blankets, or on towels placed side by side. Sometimes they lie down in full moonlight. Sometimes they seek the shadows cast by the three lifeguard chairs, or the upside-down rowboat, or the side of the closed refreshment stand. The loners sit looking out at the water, or walk along the shore. One sits high up on a lifeguard chair, staring out at the dark-bright water of the Sound; another sits on a rock at the end of the jetty, smoking a cigarette; a third walks along the hard wet sand, shiny in the moonlight, between the crooked line of seaweed and the water’s edge. On this night the waves are very small. They break slowly and quietly, unrolling along the wet sand in orderly lines that suddenly are broken by new lines, in a pattern difficult to grasp. The loners, as they watch the unrolling of the waves, are careful to avoid each other. They are even more careful to avoid the lovers, who seem to feel they have a right to the whole beach. The lovers, for their part, take pains to avoid other lovers and are irked by the presence of the loners, whose footsteps sometimes pass so close to a blanket that the lovers grow tense. The lovers and loners are therefore very much aware of each other, but it is difficult to know what they are thinking. Are the lovers grateful to the loners for making them feel fortunate? Do they perhaps envy the loners their night freedom, far from the demands and desires of another creature? As for the loners, it’s easy to imagine that they are irritated by the lovers, who remind them of their loneliness, and who invade the beach as if to take over the last preserve of the solitary wanderer. It’s possible of course that the loners, for reasons obscure to them, have come to the beach precisely because they know that the lovers will be here, on this warm summer night. The tide is going out. Small dark sandbars glisten like wet glass. On the licorice-dark water a bar of moonlight stretches from a point just beyond the low-breaking waves to a point just short of the horizon. The bar is solid in places, as if painted carefully with a brush, but in other places it is shaky, and here and there it breaks into quivering points of light. Far out on the water, a white light appears on top of a black lighthouse and goes out. It will not return for another five seconds. Downshore, on a far point of land where a roller coaster used to stand, a small red light flashes once a second on top of a radio tower. In the distance the green and red lights of channel markers blink on and off. At the horizon, where the radiant dark-blue sky is distinct from the black water, you can make out a narrow strip of land: the dark hills of Long Island. The moon is large and paper-white, with blue shadows.
Secrets
Janet runs barefoot across the lawn turned gem-green by the moon, a fairytale green, the green of lost cities at the bottoms of lakes in the depths of dark forests, she is running across the bottom of a green lake but something is wrong and she hesitates as she nears the swing. He doesn’t turn, doesn’t look at her, just sits staring the other way, how is it possible, he doesn’t love her at all, god what a fool she’s been, all alone now under the blue sky of the dead summer night. He turns, he smiles, ah the charmer, the heartbreaker—rises to meet her. She flings herself into his hug, because what else is there to do really, and besides she’s a little crazy on this night, oh she’s moon-mad, summer-loony, and anyway who cares, not her. He spins her around, lifts her into the air, sweeps her off her feet, her handsome one, her lovely one. She can’t bear this happiness hurting her like pain. Now he stands back, gives a little bow—a bow!—sweeps out his hand: he is offering her the swing. For you, my dear. Sir, you are too kind. And she sits, and she begins to swing, reaching out her legs, leaning way back, rippling into moonlight and back into leafshade, while he pushes gently-hard, his hands firm against her hips in the summer nightgown. Then he stands aside and allows her to swing by herself. She ripples into moonlight, her nightgown fluttering, her tanned legs shining under the moon—she swings with flung-back face, looking at him upside down, laughing suddenly into the moon-mad sky. And at the top of her arc, watch me now, she lets go: for a moment she seems suspended in the moon-heavy air, lying lazily back, a girl stretched out on moonlight, but she feels the breeze on her face, the tug of the earth, and she’s down, panting, laughing.
“You’re wild tonight,” he says laughing: approving.
“Think so?” she says, throwing back her hair, lifting her face to the moon.
“When I was a kid,” she continues, “I had a hideout, right over there. My secret place.”
She leads him into the spruces. The needles are soft and sharp on her bare feet, cool and crackly. Against her hands the prickly twigs feel like many hairbrushes. She ducks her head, fights her way in, laughs, sits, feels him sit next to her. Shaded by thick branches, they look out at the swing and the moonlit yard.
“I like secrets,” she says. “Don’t you?”
The Children Set Forth
The children are opening the doors of their bedrooms, they are passing through rooms touched by moonlight. There is moonlight on the rug with the green parrots, moonlight on the kitchen clock shaped like a teapot, moonlight on the arm of the mahogany rocker and on the porcelain milkmaid with the little pail on the mantelpiece. The children open the doors of their houses softly and step out into the warm summer night. They can hear the cry of the insects, the sound of the trucks on the thruway, and far away a faint music, rising and falling, dark and sweet, restless as dreams, lovelier than sleep, music unending.
Black Masks
On the top step of the long wraparound porch, cluttered with flowerpots and old furniture, a tall shadow appears. The side of the porch is fierce with moonlight and sharp black shade, but here the porch is nearly dark, except for the thin light of a distant streetlamp partly concealed by a Norway maple. The tall shadow glides to a front window and pushes up against the screen, which rattles but does not move. At a second window the buckled screen jiggles in its track. Slowly, jerkily, it rises, grating, squeaking. Behind the screen the wood-framed window, rain-swollen, scrapes upward with repeated palm-thrusts. Now the shadow slips through the opening and into the dark house, now the front door opens inward, the wooden screen door is unlatched. Four girls wearing black masks rise from the bushes.
In the musty parlor, smelling of old rugs and furniture polish, they sit on sag-cushioned chairs with doilies on the arms and a too-soft squeaky couch. Summer Storm ranges silently, opening table drawers and little boxes. A streak of moonlight on a wall catches a small oval mirror, illuminates a patch of wallpaper showing a barefoot boy rolling a hoop. On the couchback a doll sits with wide-open eyes and a little rosebud mouth. Summer Storm stops, listens, and sends Black Star, her second in command, into the next room. The house is quiet, except for the faint sounds of Black Star moving about. She returns and raises both arms, crossed at the wrists: the all-clear sign. Summer Storm finds in the drawer of a lamp table an old mousetrap, which she shows to each member of the gang in turn, before handing it over to Night Rider, who writes the note: WE ARE YOUR DAUGHTERS. A fourth member is dispatched to the kitchen and returns with a box of stale crackers and a screw-top jar of much too tart apple juice. The masked girls settle back on their cushions, while Summer Storm sits Indian-style on the floor, straight-backed, hands on knees, alert, listening.
Laura Follows the Moon
Laura has wandered away from the lamplit streets of her ranch-house neighborho
od, but at the back of the Congregational Church she feels visible from the dark secondfloor windows of a nearby house with gables and a tower. Where can she go? Where? Behind the elementary school the long shadows of swing-posts stretch sharply across the pale bright sand. The sand reminds her of a beach. Where on earth? Where? Her legs are growing tired. The town is too spread out, you could walk for days. You could walk for days all night. Down to the library, across Main, over the iron bridge above the railroad tracks, past the long steps and fat beach-colored pillars of the high school. Why did the moron bring a ladder to school? Because he wanted to be in high school. Shelter is what she needs, shelter, but in the parking lot behind the high school two bright lights shine on the asphalt stretching away, put a gleam on a solitary black car with a long shadow. In the wire fence of the empty tennis courts, a green tennis ball is stuck in the mesh high up. Her legs are killing her. She thinks she must have been walking for an hour, for hours, impossible to tell, nothing changes in the night. The whole town is beginning to feel like her room. She’s got to get out of here, got to find something, and when she looks up at the sky she knows that the moon will take her where she needs to go.
Con Amor de la Muerte
“I think what I need,” Haverstraw says, “what I would really like, at this moment of my life, at this point in the late twentieth century, is a breath of fresh air. Come with me? Just across the street, I mean. It can’t be much past two.”
“Just let me throw on a sweater over this damn thing.”
Across the street from the row of attached brick houses runs a sidewalk lit by a single streetlamp. Behind the sidewalk lies a strip of grass with a slatted wooden bench, and behind the bench rises a slope broken by a rocky outcrop and topped by a few oaks and pines. Haverstraw, chewing a pretzel, and Mrs. Kasco, smoking a cigarette and carrying in one hand a glass of wine, pass under the streetlamp and pause at the bench. Mrs. Kasco glances at Haverstraw, who steps up to the slope and begins to climb, turning to offer her his hand. She is wearing high heels. From the wide rock ledges grow tufts of high grass and gigantic dandelions with flowers the size of silver dollars. At the first ledge Mrs. Kasco takes off her heels and carries them in her right hand, pinched between thumb and two fingers. She leaves her cigarette in her mouth as she offers first the wineglass and then her other hand to Haverstraw and climbs up to the second ledge.
Enchanted Night Page 3