Hare in March

by Packer, Vin

  The feeling the dream gave him lingered.

  It was a warm, bright morning, a perfect morning for The Divine Comedy.

  He showered and shaved and polished his loafers, was Mother Varner’s escort for breakfast, was high-spirited at the chapter meeting where he assigned actives to guide pledges on their Infernos, was snapping his fingers and singing up in his room, when Shepley appeared.

  “Can we have a little private talk, Hagerman?”

  “Now what do you want to get out of, Shepley?”

  Shepley had smiled then, and then Shepley had given it to him: the shaft.

  “Out of debt, Hagerman.”

  Eight

  Lois Faye had a dream.

  It was to have her own apartment on East Fifty-seventh Street in New York.

  It was to have an answering service and a garage for the car.

  It was to have a Yorkie she would probably call Canapé and a canary she would probably call Peter Duchin.

  Last summer Lois Faye had spent a week visiting Terry Swan. “Swanny” and Lois had gone to Briar Hall together; Swanny had graduated a year ahead of Lois, flunked out of a junior college in Vermont, and talked her parents into letting her take an apartment between Third and Lexington on East Fifty-seventh. She was supposed to be studying Speed-writing; she was supposed to be looking for a job in publishing. She subscribed to Telanserphone and kept her Mustang in the garage of the apartment house. She had a Yorkie named Truffle and a canary named Lester Lanin.

  “I can remember when we had to go into a closet to smoke,” Lois had told her, “and now look at you! You have everything!”

  “Oh, yes,” she told Lois in a Martin Luther King accent; “we on de move!”

  And Lois Faye had burst out laughing, because that was her kind of humor; she didn’t have anything against Martin Luther King, but all of that was something else; she felt relieved when she was with someone like Swanny; Swanny’s place was just the kind of place Lois Faye would fix up — not a cutesy apartment with modern chairs that looked like dogs begging, and gimcracks from Serendipity and Greenbranch, no gum machines or Tiffany lamps, no café curtains, no travel posters or Toulouse-Lautrec Jane Avril reproductions, no unpainted furniture from Macy’s stained walnut, not any of that jazz, but a serious-looking scene: a Queen Anne settee, a Stiffel table lamp finished in old antique brass, a tambour desk from the Baker collection, a silver bonbon dish from Gorham; elegant, restrained, the sort of place a stockbroker would be comfortable in.

  Swanny had not made a home for herself; she had fixed up a trap for the likes of Credit Card Carl, Wally Wallet, Chase Manhattan Marvin, and Bankers Trust Blum.

  “For myself, I’d like all white,” she had told Lois; “white rugs, white furniture, I’d wear all white — I love white — but white is too hooker. The hookers ruined white and poodles. You have to look as though you wander into Parke-Bernet to browse at auctions; you have to look as though you usually go to the openings at Wildenstein. You don’t wear wool after five and you don’t wear mink in the daytime. White is out. Unless you want to marry some guy who wears green suits and owns a handkerchief factory.”

  Listening to Swanny talk was like having a vision or hearing a prophet; it was the Word. It said it all. Lois Faye burned for more; she burned to go and live in New York. She crammed her handbag with matchbooks (which Swanny kept in a Steuben bowl) from the Plaza, the Ground Floor, the Forum of the Twelve Caesars, the Top of the Six’s, and she went back to South Orange, New Jersey, and moped around and complained about having to attend F.P.C.

  Her mother said, “I never had an education. You’re going to.”

  “What for? I want to get married someday.” “All the more reason. Who’s going to marry you in New York?”

  “There are lots of men there. Men, not boys. Men with money.”

  “Your father doesn’t want you to marry a millionaire. He wants you to marry someone with something up here,” tapping her head.

  “What about what I want?”

  “You got your mink, didn’t you? You got your Thunderbird, didn’t you? Think of your father, for a change. Try college. Will it kill you to try?”

  “I’ll be a dud-avocado. I’m a half-breed. You fixed me up good, marrying a Jew.”

  “Do I hold it against you that you’re a Jew? Don’t hold it against me that I married one.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Try college. Rich boys get educated, too.” “Not at Far Point College.”

  “You wouldn’t know one if you fell over one. They’re very subtle.”

  • • •

  Take Charles Shepley, for example; take the afternoon of the Inferno. “Charles?” “What?” “Are you rich?” “Sure.”

  “Is that why you don’t have to be in the Inferno?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, not really.”

  “Yes it is. I know it is.”

  “All right. It is.”

  “You’re rich and that’s why you don’t want things.” “Umm-hmmm.”

  “And you don’t propose, for you are trifling with me.”

  “Propose? I have three more years of college.”

  “But you don’t have to be anything, because you’re rich, so you don’t have to be graduated.”

  “You have it all figured out … Watch for a red barn on the left.”

  “Don’t order me around or I’ll get on my high horse!”

  “Look. You want to go into New York, don’t you? You want to buy the Pucci, don’t you, and see your friend Swanny, and go to the Plaza, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then watch for a red barn on the left.” “I hate this sort of thing!” “Do you think I like it?”

  “What’d we have to pack a hamper of sandwiches for? What do we have to act like we’re going on a picnic for?” “You didn’t have to pack anything.”

  “It’s in my car!”

  “So there’s a hamper of sandwiches in your car; is that too much to ask of you?”

  “It’s going to smell up this car.”

  “We’ll throw them out, Lois, as soon as I’ve made the rendezvous with Hagerman.”

  “The rendezvous. It sounds like bad James Bond.”

  “Okay, okay. Just do what I tell you, and it’ll all be over very fast.”

  “It’s for kids.”

  “Most fraternity stuff is!”

  “Did you have to join a fraternity to please your father who is a tycoon in his own right?” “You guessed it.”

  “You don’t even smile. You are heavy!” “There it is! Stay to your left.” “Ho hum.”

  “It isn’t my idea of an afternoon’s fun, either.” “What if Hagerman makes you stay here for hours?” “He won’t. I just had to look like I was setting off on an Inferno.”

  “The stores close at six.”

  “I know when the stores close. I live in New York, remember?”

  “I’m just a taxi!”

  “I’m sorry about it … Now turn off here.” “I don’t know why I had to come along on this secret rendezvous. Why couldn’t you have met me after?”

  “Because I didn’t want to take a bus out here and back.” “Why can’t I meet this Hagerman?”

  “Because you can’t. I don’t want him to know anyone’s around.”

  “Is he rich, too?”

  “We’re all millionaires. Okay?”

  “What if he sees my car?”

  “That’s why we’re here early, so he won’t see the car.” “I may just call out to him, ‘Hagerman, come and see the car!’ ”

  “Do that. And kiss your Pucci goodbye.”

  “I like a fun millionaire. You’re not a fun millionaire.”

  “When this is over, I’ll be lots of fun.”

  “Where will we go for dinner?”

  “Longchamps. Okay?”

  It would not surprise her if he were serious. On his own, Charles Shepley never suggested anythi
ng expensive to do. She forgave him the Bluebird of Happiness, because it was the only place near Far Point where students could go for that, but when they went to dinner, he never picked the Villa Arturo in Dobbs Ferry, or the Water Wheel Inn in Ardsley, or Le Gai Pinguin in White Plains; she had to suggest places like that, or they would wind up in some awful four-dollar student steak house.

  He was never reluctant to go to the better places; it was just that, left to his own devices, he would not take her to them.

  He was a little too subtle for Lois Faye.

  Her mother was right, she would not have known Charles Shepley was rich if she had fallen over him.

  Little things gave him away. He was certainly not in the millionaire class, Lois Faye didn’t think, but he had money. Her first inkling had come when he had actually ordered a bottle of champagne for them on the night she had met him. She was always telling boys she wanted champagne. Usually they asked the waiter for a couple of highballs; at best, a champagne cocktail, but Charles had ordered a full bottle without batting an eye. He had been to Europe with his family; he lived in the 500 block in the East Eighties, which meant East End Avenue, veddy chic; he paid for the room at the Bluebird, whether or not they used it; he could blow thirty dollars on dinner without so much as a frown when the waiter brought the check…. On the subject of money, Charles Shepley was a very cool character. And he gambled.

  But he was a boy. Just as he did not whisk her off for continental cuisine in an elegant setting without a little prodding, neither did he surprise her with a string of real pearls, or a little gold bracelet; he needed a push, a diagram. He did not know how to do, and it was probably because he didn’t that Lois Faye found herself not the least intimidated by him, and consequently not in any way inhibited with him.

  “What is it with you and me?” she would ask him sometimes in bed. “What’s what?”

  “Why doesn’t it hurt? It’s supposed to hurt a girl.” “Not if she wants it.” “What do I want it for?” “Why don’t you just enjoy it?”

  “I do … I hate it!”

  “You’re probably in love with me.”

  “No, I’m not!”

  “We’re probably in love.”

  “We are not!”

  “Then what is it with you and me?” “I don’t know. I hate it!”

  She did hate it, too, because sometimes she could not stop herself.

  “It’s chemistry,” Terry Swan had told her flatly, over a drink at the Drake, during Christmas vacation. “It’s not a good thing to happen the first time, darling.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll imagine you’re in love with him.”

  “Hunh-uh. He’s not my dish. Very unsophisticated.”

  “Wait until you kiss Sidney Sophisticated. You’ll go scampering back to dear old Charlie. Chemistry is lethal. I’m glad it didn’t happen to me the first time. I’d be a dancing teacher’s wife. My chemistry lesson teaches the merengue to over-forties.”

  “You didn’t marry him?”

  “I might’ve, if I’d been your age when I met him.” “Anyway, Charles never mentions marriage; we’re very cool.”

  “What are you going to say if he asks you?”

  “I’m going to tell him that I want to come to New York, that I don’t feel like settling down so soon.”

  “If you’ve gotten that far in your fantasies, you want him to ask you.”

  “No I don’t!”

  “Sure you do, darling!”

  “I do not. Not at all!”

  But it did bother her that Charles Shepley took her for granted. No one ever really jokes; last night’s little trick of running out on him while he was in the bathroom at the Bluebird had made her laugh, but her sense of humor had not given her the sudden impulse to flee. Nor had it been all that easy to leave, after the session on the bed beforehand, nor had she rested very well back in bed at the dorm.

  He had his hold on her; it had nothing to do with a Pucci blouse, but Charles Shepley was not going to know it.

  She parked her car where he told her to, a half mile down from the red barn on the road to Pearl River, about fifteen miles from Far Point.

  “Why can’t I come with you? I’ll hide behind the barn.” “Lois, will you just do this one little thing the way I want it done?”

  “What’ll you buy me?” “The Pucci; right?”

  “That’s for coming out here,” she laughed, “not for sitting in the car while you go off on a mysterious rendezvous.” He said, “Just be good. You owe it to me after last night.” “I paid for the room.”

  “Why don’t you just sit here in the car and make up a sign with ‘I Paid For The Room’ written on it? Okay?” “I may not be here when you come back.” “That wouldn’t surprise me, either.”

  He got the hamper out of the back of the car, and trudged down the road with it, and Lois Faye snapped on the radio and lit a cigarette. She was on her sixth cigarette when she saw a red Corvair pull up to the barn in the distance.

  The whole sorority-fraternity thing was too much.

  Last night out in front of the Unmuzzled Ox, she had come upon a group of girls on their knees making Praise Allah gestures and singing: “I am so goddam glad that I am ma Ka-ap-pa, Ka-ap-pa, Ka-ap-pa, Gam-am-ah"; a tall redheaded girl standing over them while they sang had waited until they finished, and then commanded them to flush like toilets. They had all flattened out on their bellies in their heels and hose and pushed their bottoms up and down and made gurgling sounds, while a crowd gathered to laugh.

  Try college.

  I never had an education; you’re going to.

  So for a while she kept on listening to the radio, and then she smoked her seventh cigarette, and then she got out of the car and stretched.

  Secret rendezvous.

  Hah!

  She started walking toward the red barn in her yellow poor boy and her purple bell-bottoms and her white round-toed boots, giggling to think of Charles looking up in the midst of his rendezvous and seeing her off in the adjoining cornfield posed as a scarecrow.

  But when she was halfway there, the Corvair zoomed away from the barn, kicking up a dust cloud behind it.

  She found Charles on his knees near the barn door, picking up pieces of silverware which had fallen from the hamper.

  “What happened?”

  “Hagerman had a little temper fit. He kicked the hamper over.”

  “Did you pay him off?”

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s all settled; as soon as I get this stuff picked up, we’ll take off.”

  “I have to change my clothes.”

  “Why can’t you go like you are? I’m not supposed to be seen in Far Point until the Inferno’s over.” “Will you be embarrassed if I’m like this?” “No … pick up that thermos, will you?” “Where’d it come from?”

  “It belongs to the house. Hagerman brought it with him.”

  “Why? What’s in it?”

  “Ice. He was going to have a drink with me. Then he changed his mind.” “I love a mystery.”

  “So do I. He came out here in a good mood, and left in his usual foul temper.” “What’d you do?”

  “Nothing he didn’t count on … I pity Dan Thorpe.”

  “I don’t pity any of you. You’re all silly!”

  “Dan’s got to go on his Inferno with Hagerman.”

  “I am bored, bored, bored … I didn’t stay in the car.”

  “I see you didn’t.”

  “I won’t do anything you say.”

  “Hand me the thermos. Let’s get going.”

  “I’m going to keep the thermos,” she said.

  “Okay, keep it.”

  “Charles? Would I be less pushy if I weren’t half-Jewish and the Kappa Kappa Gammas had asked me to pledge?” “I like you the way you are,” he answered. “Nuts.”

  Nine

  The highway between Pearl River and Far Point was peppered with drab roadhouses which smelled of draught beer and chloride of lime, an
d kept the jukebox and television going at the same time. One of them was Eddie’s, where Thorpe had been ordered to meet Hagerman at three that afternoon. It was five thirty now. Beyond Mombasa was going into the stretch over the bar, while Donna Reed’s words were almost lost to the noise of “Spanish Flea” by the Tijuana Brass. Thorpe and Hagerman were on a chit for five Hanky Bannisters apiece, and Thorpe’s mood had swung from fear of Hagerman to envy of the other Pi Pi pledges, who were rumored to be down at Aunt Sate’s house near the Far Point bag factory.

  Thorpe’s Inferno was a real fizzle; it had turned into Batman and Robin, with Batman issuing long maudlin soliloquies about the burdens of his office, and Robin wondering if Shepley was tied to the New York Central tracks over in Tarrytown, or set adrift off the Far Point Boat Basin in Far Point.

  At first, Hagerman’s conciliatory disposition had come as a welcome miracle; then it had begun to pall, as Thorpe’s ears grew tired of Cornel Wilde and Donna Reed competing with Cher and Petula Clark and Herman’s Hermits and The Supremes, and his buttocks ached from the hard wooden chair; now, Thorpe was bored and a little high, and growing more outspoken in his responses to Hagerman.

  When Hagerman signaled the waiter for another round, Thorpe let go an exasperated sigh that penetrated even Hagerman’s self-involvement.

  “What’s that for, Dan?”

  “I’m getting smashed, aren’t you?”

  “One more. Then we have to think about your Inferno.” “I wouldn’t mind a crack at Aunt Sate’s girls.” “I don’t take my pledges where the other actives take theirs.”

  “Where’s Shepley?” “Dan, don’t take liberties.” “I just wondered.”

  “I’m sorry you have to room with someone like Charles Shepley.”

  “Shep’s okay.”

  “He’s a very dangerous boy, very goddam sick.” “Shep?”

  “Shep. He’s like all of them. Osmond and Blouter and even Burroughs.”

  “I don’t get you, Peter.”

  “You know how they are about their families. When a man pledges a fraternity, he should leave all that behind him.”