“No. Can’t you?”
“I can, as a matter of fact. My old man would stand the tariff of one of the frats if I’d live there, but I wouldn’t live in one of those fancy flophouses with all those bastards for a thousand a month.”
“Why don’t you rent a better room or an apartment or something?”
“I know. You think I’m a goddamn liar. That’s all right, though. I don’t mind. You can think whatever you please and kiss my ass besides.”
“Look. What the hell’s the idea of coming in here and talking to me like that? I won’t kiss your ass, but I may kick it if you don’t look out.”
“Sure. You’re just the big corn-fed stupe who could do it, too, aren’t you? Well, go ahead. I had an idea you had some brains, just from the look of you, but I guess you’ve got them all in your hands and feet, if you’ve got any at all, just like all the other stupes around here. Go on. Kick my ass. Kick the shit out of me.”
“Oh, go to hell. I think I’ll have a drink out of that bottle after all.”
He took a swallow from the bottle and gagged. Howie Brewster watched him with open curiosity and an immediately resumed amiability.
“You ever had a drink of whiskey before?”
“No.”
“Honest to God?”
“What do you want me to do, apologize for never having a drink before? I’ve had beer, out with friends now and then, but I never drank any whiskey.”
“Never mind. You’ll learn. How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“You’ve got plenty of time. I’m twenty myself. If I was a year older, I’d be contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
“Balls. You’re a big talker, aren’t you? Your old man’s rich, and you’re a regular rounder.”
“It’s a defense mechanism. The truth is, I’m neurotic as hell. It’s a fact, though, that my old man’s well heeled. You can believe it or not.”
“How come you can’t afford anything better than Mrs. Murphy’s, then?”
“Because my old man’s a bastard. He’s a bastard, and so am I. We deserve each other. When I refused to join his goddamn frat, he put me on a subsistence allowance. He thinks it’s good for my soul.”
He tipped his bottle and took a long pull and did not gag. Standing, he walked to the door.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve got to read my goddamn economics assignment. Not that it’ll do any good. I won’t remember the crap. This’ll probably be my last year here. Second and last. I’ll flunk out sure as hell.”
He left, swinging his little bottle openly by the neck with an air of bravado in defiance of Mrs. Murphy’s posted prohibition of liquor on the premises, but he was back a couple of nights later, and in the weeks that followed, accumulating to a couple of months, he and Henry became comfortable cronies with a developing taste for beer. By tacit understanding, after the first night, whiskey was dropped as an issue, and the beer was in the beginning a kind of compromise that became quickly a social lubricant, and at the same time the substance of a bond. They discovered a small place downtown near the river where the question of age was not raised against them, and it was here that they habitually spent the nights that they could afford to give to it. The compatibility was supported by a mutual interest in writing and a shared conviction that the novelists of the twenties and thirties, the giants of the middle age between two wars, had never been properly read or appreciated until the two of them came along to do it.
Beneath Howie’s pretentious rebellion, his excessive profanity and assumption of decadence, there was in truth, Henry learned, a genuine loneliness and uncertainty. And below these, now and then discernible, a depth of black despair. At first, as their sensitivity to each other increased, the real Howie was no more than a collection of suggestions, a personality merely inferred by some of the things he said and did, but then, one night in Mrs. Murphy’s Poor House, there occurred an incident that made him, in one rather terrible minute, perfectly clear.
Henry had been to the bathroom at the end of the hall. On his way back to his room, passing Howie’s closed door, he heard from behind the door a dry, rasping sound. Without pausing to think or trying to identify the sound, he stopped and turned the knob and stepped into the room. Just beyond the threshold he stopped abruptly, feeling within himself a rising tide of horror that was excessive in relation to its cause. Howie was lying face down across his bed, and he was crying. The sound of his crying was the arid sound of grief without tears.
“What’s wrong?” Henry said.
He knew immediately that he had made a mistake. He should not have opened the door to begin with, but having opened it, he should have backed silently out of the room and left without a word. Howie rolled over and sat up on the bed, and his voice, although quiet, had the brittle intensity of a scream.
“Get out of here, you son of a bitch! Who the hell do you think you are to come walking in here any goddamn time you please without knocking?”
Henry’s first reaction was one of simple shock at the violence of the attack. He backed out and closed the door, but when he was in his room again, he began to feel angry and was tempted to go back and give Howie a damn good beating. But this reaction was also short-lived, and shock and anger gave way together to genuine concern and an uneasy sense of shame for Howie’s brief emotional nakedness. He wondered what on earth could have happened to disturb Howie so deeply, but he was really aware, even then, that it was nothing specific, no one thing in particular, and that Howie had merely reached, as he had before and would again, a time of intolerable despair.
Thirty minutes later Howie was standing in the doorway.
“May I come in?” he said.
“Sure. Why not?”
“Well, you know. I thought I might not be welcome.”
“Oh, to hell with it. Come on in.”
Howie came in and sat down, and that was the only reference ever made to the incident by either of them. “I’ve written a long poem,” Howie said.
“Oh?”
“Yes. Two hundred twenty lines.”
“That’s pretty long, all right. What’s it about?”
“Well, it’s pretty hard just to say in so many words what a poem is about. Would you like me to read it to you?”
“Go ahead.”
“I call it The Dance of the Gonococci.”
“What?”
“The Dance of the Gonococci. You know. Gap bugs”
“Oh, come off. You’re joking.”
“Certainly not. Why should you simply say that I’m joking?”
“You’ll have to admit that gonococci are pretty unusual subjects for a poem.”
“Nothing of the sort. If Burns could write a lousy poem to a louse, why can’t I write one about gonococci? In my opinion, gonococci are much more poetic than louse. At least, one can have a lot more fun acquiring them.”
“What do you know about it?”
“Look, sonny. Just because you’re a green and sappy virgin, don’t think everyone else is too. You’re just retarded, that’s all.”
“Talk, talk, talk. Talk big, talk loud.”
“Oh, God, you’re impossible. You don’t know anything about anything. A dose of clap would do you good.”
“It might do you good too. Then you might not think gonococci are so damn poetic.”
“I had a dose once. Didn’t I tell you about it?”
“No.”
“I was seventeen at the time. I caught it from a girl from one of the best families. Nothing but the best for Howie, you know.”
“One of the best families in shantytown?”
“Don’t be facetious, sonny. Catching the clap is not a minor matter. Not that it amounted to much, really. It’s no worse than a bad cold.”
; “I’ve heard that before, too.”
“It’s the truth. You ought to try it.”
“Oh, balls. Go on and read the damn poem.”
“No. I’ve changed my mind.”
“Why? Don’t think I’m going to beg you.”
“Please don’t. It’s just that I don’t think you’d appreciate it. You’re obviously not sufficiently cultivated. Besides, I’ve got another idea.”
“Do you think I’m sufficiently cultivated to hear it?”
“Maybe. Time will tell.”
“Well, what is it?”
“Let’s go see Mandy.”
“Who’s Mandy?”
“Jesus Christ! You mean I’ve never told you about Mandy either?”
“If you did, I don’t remember it.”
“Mandy Moran. Junior. She lives over in the dorm. Honest to God, Henry, I’ve actually never mentioned her?”
“I don’t remember it.”
“An egregious oversight, I assure you. You’ve got a treat in store, sonny. Last year Mandy and I did a lot of knocking around together, but this year we haven’t seen much of each other. I guess that’s why I haven’t thought to mention her. I don’t think she likes me much any more, to tell the truth, but I’m still madly in love with her, of course, in spite of being neglected. As a matter of fact, I have a standing project to go to bed with her. Come on. We’ll go over to the dorm and see if she’s in.”
“I don’t think so, Howie.”
“Why not?”
“Well, damn it, I don’t even know the girl, and besides that, you can’t go busting in on someone without an invitation or a date or anything at all.”
“Are you, for God’s sake, telling me what you can or can’t do with Mandy Moran? You don’t even know her yet, and already you’re telling me what you can and can’t do with her.”
“Oh, all right! I’ll go with you, just to get you off my back, but It’ll damn well serve us right if she has us thrown out on our asses.”
“That’s the spirit. Who knows? Maybe this will be the first step in despoiling you of your disgusting virginity. I’d consider it a rare privilege to be instrumental in your first tumble, sonny.”
“Oh, go to hell, Howie, will you, please?”
They walked up the hill to the girls’ dorm and were told by a superior female senior, the receptionist in the entrance hall, that Miss Moran was not in. Miss Moran was, the superior senior volunteered, working that night on the stage of the little auditorium in Fain Hall.
“We’ll go over there,” Howie said. “Come on, Henry.”
“Do you think we’d better?”
“Certainly I think we’d better. Why not?”
“If she’s working, she may not want to be bothered.”
“Oh, come on, Henry. You’re constantly making excuses. Are you afraid to meet a girl, for God’s sake?”
“Don’t be a damn fool. Some of us country boys might give a few lessons to a lot of guys with exaggerated opinions of themselves. Not to mention names, of course. What’s this Mandy doing in the little auditorium?”
“I’m not sure. Probably painting flats. She’s got an idea she wants to be a set designer.”
“For plays?”
“Hell, yes, for plays. What else do you design sets for? She’s a member of the Little Theater Group.”
“That sounds like a pretty good thing. Interesting, I mean. I might like to try something like that myself.”
“Well here’s your chance. You get on Mandy’s good side, she might be able to get you in.”
The little auditorium in Fain Hall was dark, but there was a line of light across the stage at the bottom of the drawn curtains. Howie led the way up a flight of shallow stairs to stage level and out of a small off-stage room onto the stage itself. It was a very small stage, really, but it gave the effect of echoing vastness, and there was no one on it, excluding Howie and Henry, but a slim girl in a sweat shirt and slacks. She was holding her chin with the fingers of her right hand and staring disconsolately at a flat on which she had, obviously, been daubing paint. There was paint on her clothes, paint on her hands, paint on her face, and even a little paint in her pale, short hair. Henry thought that she must surely be the loveliest girl in all the world, although she wasn’t that, and was a long way from it.
“Hello, Mandy,” Howie said. “Long time no see.”
She shifted the direction of her gaze from the flat to Howie. She did not change her disconsolate expression in the least. She had, apparently, merely shifted her attention from one unsatisfactory object to another.
“Has it been a long time?” she said. “I haven’t missed you.”
“Well, to hell with you.”
“To hell with you too, you crazy bastard.”
“I wanted you to meet my crony, but I can see I picked the wrong time for it.”
Her attention shifted again, from Howie to Henry. “Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” Henry said.
“Don’t you even want to know his name, for God’s sake?” Howie said.
“What’s his name?” she said.
“It’s Henry Harper.”
“I’m glad to know you, Henry.”
“Henry, this is Mandy Moran.”
“I’m glad to know you, Mandy.”
“How about going somewhere for a beer?” Howie said.
“You drink beer, Henry?” she said.
“All the time,” Henry said.
“I’ve written a long poem,” Howie said. “I’ll recite it for you.”
“I can hardly wait,” she said.
“It’s better than anything Eliot ever did,” Howie said. “It’s called The Dance of the Gonococci.”
“A shocker,” Mandy said to Henry. “Howie’s a real shocker. He works at it. You don’t look old enough to drink beer.”
“Cut it out, Henry said. “You have to be a certain age to drink beer?”
“Legally, I mean. What class you in?”
“Freshman.”
“God, I envy you. I really do. I’m a junior myself.”
“That’s what Howie said.”
“I feel like your mother.”
“Ask her to nurse you, for God’s sake,” Howie said.
“Don’t be crude, Howie,” she said.
“A couple of virgins talking to each other like that,” Howie said. “It’s disgusting.”
“Just because you couldn’t get any, Howie,” she said, “It doesn’t signify.”
“For God’s sake,” Howie said, “are we going for a beer, or aren’t we?”
“Wait’ll I wash,” she said.
She walked off-stage to a lavatory. Waiting, they could hear water running and splashing and considerable blowing.
“She washes like a goddamn porpoise,” Howie said.
“She’s lovely,” Henry said.
“Mandy? Well, so she is, when you stop to think about it. She’s so damn irritating, it’s hard to realize it most of the time. Crazy too, of course. A real nut if I ever saw one. So am I, however, so it doesn’t make much difference to me. Something happened to her as a child.”
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“It must have, that’s all. Nothing’s happened to her since that I know of.”
“Damn it, Howie, you shouldn’t say things like that about her. It’s not right.”
“Well, kiss my ass! Listen to the virgin freshman leap to the defense of his junior mother.”
“All right, all right. Get off my back, Howie.”
At that moment Mandy returned, and she had got some of the paint and had
missed some. Her short, pale hair looked as if she might have run a comb through it two or three times.
“Where we going?” she said.
“We know a place,” Howie said.
“I know the kind of places you know,” she said.
“Relax,” Howie said. “You must remember that we have your freshman child with us.”
She took Henry’s arm and pulled it up under hers and held it tight against her slim body. He could feel her small breast against his wrist. She kept his arm clamped under hers, and he kept feeling the breast.
“Never mind what Howie says,” she said.
“I don’t,” he said.
“Where is this place you know?”
“I guess he means the one down on the river. We go there sometimes.”
“It’s a long walk down to the river.”
“Quite a way, all right.”
“I have to be in by eleven.”
“We could have a couple of beers and come right back.”
“All right. Let’s go.”
“Well, by God, I’m glad you got it settled,” Howie said. “Am I included, by the way?”
“Suit yourself,” Mandy said. “You can come along if you want to.”
It took them almost half an hour to walk downhill from the campus and across town to the river, and it was about nine-thirty when they got there. They ordered three beers and drank them and ordered three more.
“Do you want me to recite my poem now?” Howie said.
“Not particularly,” Mandy said.
“Oh, let’s hear him recite it,” Henry said. “It’s better than anything Eliot ever wrote.”
“All right, Howie,” Mandy said. “Go ahead and recite it.”
“I’ll be damned if I will,” Howie said. “I know when I’m not appreciated.”
Take Me Home Page 8