The Work Is Innocent

by Rafael Yglesias

  Richard was nervous, but having two madmen in one car was hilarious enough to cheer him up. He cautiously looked straight ahead, but hearing more tones of reasonable argument to his left, he looked past SHAFT’S LAST LAUGH 86 to the old man. He was looking right into Richard’s eyes. “How can you say that? It’s rude!” the old man said.

  Like a clock figurine, Richard’s head went right to watch the redhead triumphantly flex his muscles, left to the old man’s discussion, until finally Richard lost his fear of reprisal and he got up and left the car.

  For the rest of the ride and for his walk to the movie on the East Side, he adopted a new attitude. Looking down, he walked very fast, brushing past couples strolling arm in arm, knocking an outstretched hand away and not looking at the face it belonged to that asked for spare change. He slammed his shoulder into a lamppost as he veered away from a blind man with a cane and a cup rattling with coins. He was so intent on avoiding the insane that when Ann touched him on the arm to slow him up he yelled, afraid of an assault.

  But what had seemed to him a loud shriek of horror had only been a gasp. “It’s me,” Ann said, amused. “Why were you going so fast?”

  “Hi,” Joan said.

  Richard smiled and nodded at them. There was a line of people waiting to get into the theater and Richard noticed that they were looking. “I was thinking very intensely about something really important,” Richard said, as he moved to the end of the line with Ann and Joan. “You know, like football.” Well done, he thought.

  “I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t seen you.”

  “We’ll never know,” Richard said. “Isn’t that sad?” He was carrying this facetiousness too far, he realized. Also he hadn’t kissed them and now it was too late.

  “Have we got news,” Ann said.

  “Oh, God, Ann. I can’t understand why you’re so excited about it.”

  “About what?” Richard asked.

  “Raul has run away,” Ann said. She bounced on the balls of her feet. “Isn’t that incredible?”

  “Oh, come on,” Richard said. “He didn’t.”

  “Ann’s exaggerating,” Joan said with a glance of disapproval. “He left his parents, but he’s obviously gone to Alec, so it doesn’t make it as running away.”

  Richard restrained his contempt for Raul because he was afraid of offending Joan. “That’s so funny. Because if my parents had insisted I go to school, I’d have done the same thing.”

  “Really?” Ann said. “Where would you have gone?”

  “To a friend. That’s why it’s so funny.”

  Ann looked worried. “You’re not kidding? You really would have run away?”

  “Sure I would have run away. I’m glad I didn’t have to, but I wasn’t gonna go to school.”

  Joan looked at Ann with a smile of victory. “Thank God I’ve come across a reasonable human being.”

  “Why?” Richard asked. “Have people been putting Raul down for going?”

  “Well,” Ann said, “it’s a little silly, isn’t it? I mean when you were going to run away, did you plan to tell all your friends, even people who’d be likely to tell, where you were going?”

  “Raul told everybody where he was going,” Richard repeated, behaving as if it were a wildly funny thing to do, though he really didn’t feel it was. He was torn between making fun of Raul and defending him. It was apparent that Raul was his rival, and Richard was unable to guess which attitude would win Joan. “Well,” Richard said to Joan, “you must admit that’s a little—well, it’s not wise.” Ann laughed and Richard found himself joining her. Her laughter was coarse, he thought, and his fears were confirmed when Joan looked away in irritation. Joan said, “Forget it. It’s ridiculous to think about it.”

  Richard searched desperately for an apology that wouldn’t embarrass, but the line had reached the ticket booth and it was only until they were squeezing their way to seats that Richard realized he’d forgotten to pay for the girls’ tickets.

  Richard became more and more unhappy while they waited for the movie to start. He looked at the seedy elegance of the East Side crowd filling the theater. He loathed them. The men who seemed to be homosexual—it annoyed him even more that they probably weren’t—and the women, whose makeup was so liberal that decadence was too mild a word to damn them with. It was no relief to find young people dressed simply in dungarees and sweaters, because Richard saw in their faces a paler and more foolish bankruptcy.

  They were silent while waiting, and Richard got a chance to notice how much prettier Joan was than he had remembered her being. She had put on heavy makeup for the party and it had emphasized her plain features. The low forehead, high cheekbones, and small eyes had turned her into a Mongoloid. Without makeup, these imperfections remained, of course, but Richard was growing fond of the toughness they suggested. It was her figure that had sold him the night of the party, and now, with the dress replaced by jeans and a black leotard, he understood why Balzac had bankers lose fortunes over women. They saw Diary of a Mad Housewife, a movie that was both confusing and exaggerated for Richard, but apparently good for the audience and the girls. They left without saying much, Richard particularly disgusted by the press of gaudy sick people with their silly comments. Across the street there was a coffee shop and they went there.

  After ordering, Joan turned excitedly to Ann. “She was really great, wasn’t she? Especially in those scenes with the writer.”

  “I didn’t like him,” Ann said, with a small pout of distaste.

  “Yeah,” Richard said. “He was unreal.” The heroine’s lover, a famous young novelist, had been cast as a tall, dark, languorous young man, whose emotional aggressiveness was matched only by his sudden fits of vulnerability.

  “Really?” Joan said with an inoffensive air of superiority. “He seemed quite real to me. There are men like that.”

  Her assurance about any type of man was stunning to Richard.

  “No,” Ann said. “That’s a bourgeois man’s idea of a man. You know, the tortured artist.”

  Joan looked at Ann with her eyes unpleasantly small and hard. “How do you know the director or the screen writer or anybody else connected with the movie is bourgeois?”

  “It’s a natural assumption,” Richard said. He was pleased by the wise, bemused tone he adopted. Ann laughed and looked at him confidingly. Joan, indignant, shrugged her shoulders expressively. Richard decided he didn’t care if he angered her: for some reason he suddenly felt masterful. “Come,” he said to Joan. “One usually has money if one is making a film.”

  “I just meant their background could be working-class.”

  Richard laughed. “But what does that mean? Their attitude would have become bourgeois.”

  “Well,” Joan said with a smile, “this is something between Ann and me. She’s always putting things down by calling them middle-class. Anyway, I know what she really means.”

  Ann covered her face with exaggerated shame. “I didn’t mean anything,” she said in a small voice.

  “Come on, honey. You meant Raul thinks he’s like that.”

  Richard was dismayed that Raul was so controversial, and therefore important, a subject for them. He must have clearly shown his unhappiness, because Joan, after a glance in his direction, said, “I’m glad you didn’t run away also. We’d be arguing all night.”

  “Yes,” Ann said. “You little boys are a lot of trouble.”

  Richard laughed. “You know, I don’t think I ever recovered from the time, I guess it was in fourth grade, that a girl my age kept taunting me with the fact that girls mature more quickly than boys.”

  “So that’s why you hang out with older women,” Ann said.

  “Well, isn’t it supposed to reverse itself in adolescence?”

  “Oy,” Joan said. “You and Raul are holding us back. I mean we’re eighteen. We’re supposed to be marrying dentists.”

  Ann made a joke but Richard didn’t hear it. He had assumed they were in R
aul’s class. There was no chance for him, theirs was only a friendly interest.

  “Joan said you aren’t in school. I know it’s a drag to answer, but what are you going to do? Or doesn’t it matter?”

  “I think I’ll just be a mess,” Richard said, making a choked sound that was intended as a laugh.

  “No,” Joan said with a compassionate look. “Be serious.”

  “Well, if I tell you what I expect to do, you’ll think I’m out of my mind.”

  “Oh goody,” Ann said gaily. “It’s really wild, huh?”

  “No, it’s very sedate. But I’m sure it’ll strike you as an incredible pretension.”

  “So tell us and we’ll laugh at you,” Joan said.

  “I’ve written a novel.” Richard had really expected ridicule, but they questioned him closely about his book and, once encouraged, he became expansive.

  They were still excited by his novel after they had eaten and paid the check—Richard, to their astonishment, picked up the checks with a forbidding look and paid for them—and as he walked them to their bus, they said he should come over tomorrow and read some of it to them. Richard was embarrassed about doing that but they insisted. Joan spotted their bus ahead and ran to catch it, but Ann turned around and kissed Richard on the cheek before running after her. As the bus pulled away they waved to him and he felt revenged on his fourth grade tormentor.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Richard didn’t plan to go to Joan’s the next night without additional encouragement. He felt her offer could have been more polite than serious. He was unable to begin the final draft of his novel because of this anxiety. By five o’clock the issue was still unresolved, but Joan settled it by calling and asking him if he could come at eight.

  Richard badgered his mother into making an early dinner, his father amused at this boyish display. Aaron had him laughing nervously through the meal with taunts about his new girl friend. His fear of missing a moment of Joan’s company got him to her apartment at seven-thirty. She opened the door and they greeted each other shyly. From the foyer Richard saw two adults seated on the couch he had sat on the night of the party. Joan and he entered the living room tentatively. The male adult, a short, neatly dressed, ordinary businessman, rose and extended a hand to Richard. Joan said, “Richard, this is my father, Leonard—”

  “Hello,” Leonard said with a quick smile.

  “—and this is Mary.”

  Mary, not rising, flashed a smile at Richard that seemed fake and simpering. He caught a glimpse of a dress that didn’t suit her. Mary held her smile and said, “Joanie tells me your father is Aaron Goodman. I love his plays.”

  “Thank you,” Richard said, flustered. “I mean thank you for him.”

  “Well,” Leonard said. “We’d better be going.”

  Richard sat down on the couch once it was vacated and watched with great interest as Leonard instructed Joan as to what she should say if certain people called. He fetched Mary her coat, and while she was being helped on with it she said to Joan, “That’s a lovely top you’re wearing.”

  Joan received this compliment stiffly and moved toward the front door to let them out. After she closed the door behind them, Joan re-entered the living room and rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I don’t like her at all,” she said.

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s my father’s girl friend.” Joan smiled. “Oh, I see. You don’t know. My mother died when I was a child. So my father dates.”

  “Oh,” Richard said. Her mother being dead seemed very dramatic. “How did your mother die?”

  “Cancer.”

  “I hope I didn’t upset you.”

  “No. She died when I was eight. It was hard for a while but it no longer bothers me.” She laughed. “Too much, that is.”

  Richard got up from the couch and took his coat off. He folded it, laid it on the couch, and placed his novel on top of it.

  “You brought it. Good,” Joan said. “I hope Ann gets here soon so we can hear it.”

  “You can read it now, if you like.”

  Joan considered briefly and said, “Let’s wait. Do you want something to drink or eat or anything?”

  Richard asked for coffee. “Come and keep me company,” Joan said, and he followed her through the foyer into a long, narrow kitchen. He sat on the countertop next to the refrigerator and dangled his legs, beating an irregular rhythm on the cabinets below. Joan, after filling a teapot with water and placing it on the stove, lit one of the burners. “Reach in the shelf behind you and get a mug,” she said.

  Richard did so and gave it to her while Joan got a jar of instant coffee from another cabinet. “What does your father do for a living?” Richard asked.

  “He’s a salesman for a toy company. Do you want two spoonfuls?”

  “Uh, yes. What does a salesman do, exactly? I mean he doesn’t go door to door.”

  “I don’t know what his title is, but he handles distribution to department stores. You know.”

  “Has Mary been a girl friend for a long time?”

  “No. He met her a few months ago.” The phone rang in one of the other rooms and Joan went to answer it. She was gone for a while, and with each passing minute Richard criticized himself for his ungraceful and unsympathetic response to hearing of Joan’s mother’s death. It didn’t occur to him that no one would take such news without a sign of being stunned. He had felt constricted after his reaction to the news. He was convinced that Joan had been offended.

  The pot was whistling when Joan re-entered the kitchen. “That was Ann,” she said, pouring the water. “Some cousins from California are visiting and she can’t come.”

  Richard slid off the countertop, partly from shock. He said nothing.

  Joan turned to face him and she said with a sly dimpled smile, “That isn’t too much of a drag, is it?”

  Richard couldn’t help smiling. “Oh no.” He stood there, feeling that he must say something but unable to do so.

  “Milk and sugar, sir?” Joan went to the refrigerator and got a carton of milk.

  “Yeah,” Richard said, going over to the coffee and staring at the floating brown foam that instant coffee creates. Joan brought him the milk and sugar, and Richard fixed his drink. Joan, without speaking, left the kitchen. Now Richard was convinced that he had disgusted her.

  He carried his cup gingerly into the living room and was surprised at not seeing Joan. He was deciding whether or not to search for her when she briskly entered. Joan flopped onto the couch and put a pipe and a plastic bag of marijuana on the glass table in front of the couch. “That’s a good idea,” Richard said, and sat in an easy chair opposite her. “Maybe it’ll improve my novel.”

  Joan smiled distractedly while she rolled a joint. Richard watched silently and with apprehension. He might be very foolish indeed once stoned. Joan looked gleefully naughty.

  They smoked two joints solemnly, as if it were a wondrous ritual, heavy with the ardor of preceding young lovers. Richard was accustomed to getting high very quickly on little grass, but he felt nothing after an amount that should have overwhelmed him. Joan stretched her legs and put her head back on the cushions until Richard lit a cigarette, and she asked him for one.

  “Oh,” she said while taking it from him. “Do you want to hear some music?” He said yes. She put on Otis Redding and returned to her relaxed pose on the couch. He watched her, tensing against the drug and confused by the randomness of events. When the record ended and left an oppressive silence Joan’s eyes were closed. Richard got up, without thinking, and stood in front of her. What was he doing there? She stirred and he squeezed past her legs and picked up his coat and novel, tossing them to the side. He flopped awkwardly onto the couch.

  Joan sat up and smiled at him. “Do you want to read the novel now?”

  “Naw,” Richard said, convinced she didn’t mean it. “When I’ve rewritten it and have extra copies I’ll give you one.”

  “I’d love to hear it. I wanted to
get into the mood. But I won’t push you.”

  “I’ll confess something. As long as you’re really interested—”

  “I am! I really am.”

  “Good. Then it doesn’t matter. Actually I’d rather we didn’t sit around and read it tonight. All I’ve been doing for the past four or five months is write it. So I’d rather—” He was going to say, have some fun, but that seemed crudely sexual. “I’d rather, you know, talk. Do anything but relate to that novel.” He laughed with pleasure at speaking of it casually. “I’m so bored with it.”

  “Not really. It must be very nice to be working on something of your own.” Joan sounded as if she had led a long tragic life, deprived of self-fulfillment.

  “I suppose so,” Richard said with a sigh. He decided to play up the struggling writer pose. “It’s hard in a lot of ways, though. You know, I mean it’s good, you feel like it’s something that really counts but it’s tough maintaining that daily concentration. I always thought writing was a kind of ecstasy, but there’s a lot of drudgery. You get that great idea and you have to hold it day after day.” He had gone too far in trying to give the impression of struggle: he made it sound like pitching baseballs.

  “It took you a long time to write?”

  “Well, I’m not really finished yet. Probably it’ll take me another month for the final draft. I guess that makes it about six months. But that’s pretty fast.”

  “I’ve always wanted to do something that I could feel really expressed who I am,” Joan said. She went on about the different arts she had tried, but Richard heard only isolated words. He was looking at her firm long neck and the slope down to her breasts. He would meet her eyes sharply when her words intruded, but he would be drawn down again to look at her body with mounting desire. Reality, the white cardboard walls, the bright print of the couch they were sitting on, seemed to sharpen and vibrate with threats.

  I’ve got to kiss her, he thought, realizing that it was impossible to do. He edged his leg closer to hers so that they touched. It was a great relief to him that she didn’t jump up in protest. He looked at her and she was staring into his eyes: she seemed aware of his thoughts and he felt his face collapse in dismay.