by Packer, Vin
In Charles’s middle teens, this emotion was transferred to people, not so much to people he was close to, whoever they might be — who? His mother? His father? Not the glob of protoplasm at Holy Child, thank you; but there were a few, as he had grown up, to whom he was close: some fellows, the kind who hung out at the library after school or stayed to do lab work because it interested them, the worker bees, bespectacled and boring to any but their own kind and their mothers. These were not the ones who touched him, even when there was occasion to sympathize with them, a reason — for Charles felt that they, like he, could handle what was handed them, were strong, could take it. Hadn’t he? Lord knows what had happened to Billy was test enough for any man, and then some, too: the way his mother had carried on and never stopped carrying on; Charles had watched his father lose in her eyes for the simple reason that the well was running dry.
“Clinton, I didn’t expect a lot when I married you, but I never expected we’d be poor.”
“You never expected we wouldn’t be rich.”
“What’s the difference?”
She really didn’t know.’
All right. Closest he could come to feeling sorry for someone to whom he was close was his mother; close only because she was his mother, he supposed, and yet there had been many times in the long-ago past when he was small and he had run to her, and she had seemed to be all there was that mattered, that strange little woman who spoke of Jackie as though she were a girl friend who helped give her home perms, and not the late President’s wife.
But the ones he really felt sorry for were the ones who were scared: they were in between the ones who walked cocksure and sung aloud on city streets, and those who slumped in doorways soaking in their own urine; they were not the far-out frightened either, who wore gloves to touch money and wiped off the silverware in restaurants before eating with it; they were not the easily frightened who knew by heart the telephone numbers of a drug store, police precinct, ambulance service, and fire station.
They were the ones whose work suddenly fell out of their hands, the ones who could not believe that it was impossible to pick up the coffee cup because the coffee was splashing over the sides, the ones who had to sit down for a moment to remember where it was they were hurrying to, and the ones like Hagerman who had accepted it all so calmly, who had come prepared to pay off and even to toast his misfortune with a drink, only to suddenly snap a moment before preparing the drink, and kick the picnic hamper with his eyes ablaze with rage, and for one-half a second stop, bite his knuckles, pale and shaken, and then, the moment ended, run.
And Lois … was she one like that? Or was it all an act with her? Or both?
And now he felt so estranged from her, a way he had never felt before with her, which had never occurred to him before — that he was somewhere on the fringe of her life, on the outskirts of Lois Faye, that this place, this apartment, was very familiar to her, and the girl, Terry Swan; and all the rest was very far away, the slow hours of drinking and talking and listening to the music in Grandview Park, the ride down Route 9W to the Bluebird, the wonder of whether or not she would, wouldn’t; and when she did, the soft feel of her flesh, her hands cupping her breasts to fix them for him to have, the wet answer she never failed to give him, the easy in and out and how their eyes would drink each other in, and what a way to feel; and when she didn’t, how it hurt right in his guts, right there near his pancreas, knots that only she could tie, which was also something one had to grant her; he did, anyway.
Well, if she were one like that, she did not seem too scared right now. Charles heard her laughter, and the repeated “darlings” and “divines” and wandering back to pick his drink up from the kitchen counter, he stood a moment listening.
“… really, darling, you ought to know by now I couldn’t care less, darling, if you wear Celui. It’s a perfect scent for you, it really is.”
“He’s out-of-whack; he never gets things right. I wear L’Heure Bleu.”
“Oh, darling, I don’t care.”
“But, darling, I wouldn’t wear your scent; now, please.” “I really don’t care, I’m not that way.” “I’d never do that to anyone.” Really.
Charles looked up to the ceiling and rolled his eyes, and was about to walk in then and join them, when he heard Terry Swan say, “Can’t you get rid of Joe College?”
“You hate him, don’t you?”
“I don’t hate him.”
“Yes you do, I know you do.”
“It’s just that he’s not right for this crowd. This isn’t my tame set dropping by, darling.”
“Charles can be fun. After a few drinks — ”
“Darling, look. Monti Rock is coming and Tiger Morse and Jerry Foyster; Andy Warhol might drop in; that’s the scene, darling.”
“They’re coming here?”
“No. They’ll be at the Cheetah. It’s that kind of a scene.” “Who’s coming here?”
“A few friends, very insville. One of them wants to name a racehorse after me. And he has a friend who’s in the shipping business. He’s not Onassis, but you’re getting warm. And there’s a broker, and another businessman.”
“I’d love to meet them!”
“Shake Clyde College.”
“How?”
“Can’t you tell him to get lost?” “No.”
“That’s right; he’s your alchemist. Okay, what’s his story? Is he a budding playwright? You could tell him you absolutely insist that he go see some play you’ve already seen.”
“He doesn’t like plays, I don’t think.”
“Music?”
“No, I won’t be able to do that. He lives here. He’s not impressed by the city.”
“Did you say he lives here?”
“Yes. On East Eighty-second Street.”
“He has family here?”
“Yes.”
“That does it, then. Tell him you want him to stop in and say hello to his family. Tell him you wouldn’t respect him, if he didn’t.”
“He won’t fall for that, Swanny.”
“Try it. Tell him you feel guilty; you want him to stop in for an hour, at least, and see his family. He can meet us at the Cheetah later.”
“In an hour?”
“No, darling. We’ll ditch him for three or four hours. We’ll say we’re eating over at the Mayfair, and that we’ll meet him there. But we won’t eat there. He’ll come to the Cheetah eventually; he knows we’re going there.”
“It’s awfully unkind.”
“Oh, darling, he’s so nowhere.”
“He is?”
“Look, Lois, he’s cute. God, he’s very cute. I’d like to string him for a lamp. But honey, he isn’t with it. That’s what’s wrong with chemistry. It can happen with a fry cook, for God’s sake.”
“He’s not that bad!”
“Darling, Lotus, look, I’m not insulting your boyfriend; he’s very cute, and I can see where you’d hear some music there, but really, sweetie, it’s that strange little high music no one else hears — but dogs, maybe. Tell him to go visit his family.”
Charles heard Lois sigh; then he heard Swanny dancing around the room again singing: “They Didn’t Believe Me,” along with Dinah Washington, and Charles shrugged and screwed up his courage, and walked in with his drink, and took his chances.
He said, “Lois, can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“In private.”
“Your lips, your eyes, your dough, your hair, is in a class beyond compare, you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever rolled,” Swanny was singing.
Lois followed him into the kitchen.
She said, “She just says things like that to shock people. She’s never rolled a man in her life.”
“I was thinking: I have to get my mother an Easter gift. I ought to find out from my father what she wants.”
“I know what I want.”
“You just got your Easter gift.”
“I still know what I want f
or Easter.”
“Anyway — I was thinking. Would you mind if I left you here? I could meet you later.” He hoped for an explosion, an “I certainly would mind.”
She was wrapping a strand of her hair around her first finger; she said, “I want something from the Kaleidoscope, and I want it to be vinyl.”
“It is Celui you wear, isn’t it?” He laughed; now he could not fathom her not coming with him; this was their day; all of it had been for her.
“This is my apartment, too,” she said, “but it’s a secret, for she is suffering from a serious mental illness and has not long to live. She thinks she’s me.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“You want to leave me here.”
“Unless you want to come with me. We could go to the Plaza for drinks, the way we planned, and then we could have dinner someplace, maybe up in the Eighties.”
“Some cheap Charley’s.”
“No, I’ll take you someplace nice. You can decide. But remember what you’ve got on. We can’t go every place.”
He loved the crazy purple pants and the yellow sweater. A poor boy, slipped over her head, became a very rich boy.
“Charles?”
“What?”
“Will you meet us later?”
In the other room, Swanny was singing, “And when you tell them, and you’re certainly going to tell them, that I’m the broad who took your loot from you, they’ll never believe you, the fuzz won’t believe you — “
“Will you, Charles? She’s really very nice. She just likes to pretend she’s taking every man in pants for his money.”
“She took the South American, didn’t she?”
“What do you care?”
“I don’t. I just want you to come with me. Don’t you want to come with me?”
“Of course I want to!” “Then come.”
“I can’t and you know I can’t! I can’t be rude to my best friend!”
“What about me?”
“I’d feel very guilty if you didn’t go see your family while you’re in New York.”
“You surprise me at times. It’s sweet of you to think of my folks.”
“What kind of a girl do you think I am?”
The phone rang then. It didn’t ring; it made the same ding-dong sound as a doorbell, but Terry Swan flew into the kitchen and picked up the small blue Princess sitting on the counter, and said, “Hel-lo, there.”
Lois said, “I love a bell chime. When I get my own apartment I’m going to have a bell chime.”
Swanny was saying, “Oh, darling, I’m sorry! My mother’s ill and I have to visit her tonight.”
Lois put her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
Charles went into the living room and got his overcoat from the closet; the closet was lined with wallpaper which depicted a genteel demoiselle handing a flower to a kneeling knight.
He put on his coat and stood there for a moment, hoping Lois would come in from the kitchen.
But Terry Swan had hung up on her caller. She was telling Lois, “That was this awful man who manufactures ant farms; he claims he’s only forty-eight, darling, but he looks like he’s taken his first step out of Shangri-La, and he wears those Countess Mara ties that blind you with all the swirls and curlicues, and he cuts all his meat up in teeny little pieces before he eats, no matter where you are, Twenty-one or Clos Normand, I could just die of embarrassment, but he has tickets to everything and he’s very big in the world of little gifties from Tiffany’s, so I’m very sweet when he calls and — “
Charles left.
Eleven
Really, Peter Hagerman was celebrating. In the Unmuzzled Ox.
Near ten o’clock, on the night of the Inferno.
You are a man
If you have a beer,
You are a fear-less
Care-less
Chug-a-lug man of the
Dia-mond.
Clink your glass!
Drink your glass!
Call for more beer!
Beer here!
Because he had had a very close call early this afternoon.
Look at it this way: there were 150 micrograms of d-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate in each sugar cube. He had put all four, wrapped in Saran Wrap, into the thermos. If they had not fallen out of their wrappings and melted into the ice cubes en route to his rendezvous with Shepley; if things had worked out the way he had planned them, and he had slipped the sugar cubes into Shepley’s drink, Shepley would probably be ape now in Rockland State booby hatch.
Which was what Hagerman had hoped for, before reason had done battle with his rage: he had hoped to make Shepley flip, really flip. It had been planned very carefully; up to a point, it had gone over as though they had rehearsed:
“I hope some of the brothers saw you packing up the hamper, Shepley.”
“I saw to it. But it was a pain in the ass lugging it out here.”
“Oh, you have it rough, man! I’m going to be out a hundred and fifty dollars, and you gripe about lugging a picnic hamper out on the bus. You did take the bus?”
“No, I flew. I’m Superpledge.”
“Well, Shep, you pulled a pretty super swindle on me.” “You asked for it.”
“You’re right. Shep, I’ve cooled down since our little talk. You may think I’m still p.o.’d, but I have to hand it to you. You’ve got guts.”
“And I’m not going to back down, Hagerman.”
“Hell, is that what you think I think? You think I think that? I know when I’m licked.”
“Then let’s get it over with.”
“I’ve got to stall for about fifteen minutes. Some of the other actives are down the road. I want to wait until they go before I take off. See, they think I’m up here making you go through all kinds of hell. See, I’ve got to maintain my image, mother-lover.”
“Yeah. Your image.”
“I’m not a bad egg when you get to know me, Shep. Want a drink?” “All right.”
“We’ll toast your initiative, want to? Are there paper cups in the hamper?”
“Yeah, but what’s that?”
“It’s port.”
“Port?”
“Hell, it’s good stuff. Sandeman’s Tawny.” “Isn’t that a little sweet?”
“I’ve got some ice to cut it. If you don’t want it, well — ”
“I suppose I can choke it down.”
“Let me get us some ice from the thermos.”
“Hagerman?”
“What?”
“Why don’t we get the business over with first?” “Sure, Shep.”
They had made the exchange: a roll of tape for a roll of bills; then Hagerman had gone over and picked the thermos up from the ground, and unscrewed the lid.
The sugar cubes were dissolved, so was the dream of Shepley going off his rocker, going so far off his rocker he’d wind up like someone who’d had a lobotomy performed on him; if six hundred micrograms of the stuff couldn’t do that, rain couldn’t get you wet.
There would be nothing to fear from Shepley again, nor from Blouter.
But it had not worked out, had it? And really, Hagerman was celebrating. He really was. He was singing all the old Pi Pi songs — he knew them all by heart, all the verses of all of them, and he was teaching them to Thorpe who was so pie-eyed his head was hanging by a thread, and he had put Charles Shepley clear out of his mind; the boy didn’t exist, that was a fact.
Thorpe was talking about some goddam girl and how they used Saran Wrap when they made out, and even the mention of Saran Wrap did not bug Hagerman.
Nothing could.
Not even Old Len and Peg Beauty, if they were to stroll in arm-in-arm wearing sandwich boards with Greecemark written on them.
Hagerman ordered another round of beer. Then he got up and went back to the phone booth, and by now he knew the number by heart, so he just closed the door and slipped a dime down the slot, and dialed.
“Hello?”
“The Congs are going to kill Turtle.” He waited for the click and the dial tone, but this time she didn’t hang up.
She said, “Why do you think so?”
“Because you never gave a damn about him, Matilda!” “How do you know that?”
Hagerman was not stupid; she was trying to hold him on the line so the call could be traced. Well, that took time.
Hagerman said. “What kind of encouragement did you ever give him, Matilda?”
“I love Joey. He’s my only son.”
“Your only son. Tch, tch, tch. I’m impressed.”
“Why do you want to torment me?”
“You tormented him, didn’t you? You underestimated him, didn’t you?”
“You read the piece in The Far Point Record, is that right?”
“Victor Charlie’s captured him. Matilda; he’s being tortured right now. If you listen real hard, you can hear him screaming … Yeeeowww!”
He hung up.
When he went back to the booth and sat down, Thorpe said, “It must be hard with Janish so far away. You mish her?”
Then Thorpe’s head hit the table; the beer glass smashed to the floor, and a waiter hustled over. “Eighty-six,” he said.
Really, Peter Hagerman was invulnerable.
“I apologize for my companion,” he said. He said, “Come on, pledge, let’s call it a night.”
With the waiter’s help, Hagerman got Thorpe out into the street. At the curb, Thorpe vomited.