He was only thinking of calling her because he was in America, and could call.
The terrace was as reassuring as an ad—nobody on it but a butler looking morosely at his hands, who snapped to at the sight of trade. And the two glossies. How marvelously repetitive girl-types could be. He already doted on that dent where the brownhaired one’s waist was, having often guided it over crosswalks, squeezed it any number of situations, and lain with his head in its concave. She had on an armless jerkin, pants, a pouch at the waist, and a tan. A tan swimmer, she would be, with a nice temper. The other girl’s hair silvered and spun on itself, with one little flip waiting to be tugged; under it was the kind of dazzled eye and loose lip-gleam that made her hard to focus on—there was even a 1920s-in-Berlin look about her fuzzy dress and frappé color; she would be the one with whom you do anything. Inside her very possibly was a slum.
What fun it was. He was always wrong.
The air on terraces was always carbonated—with height was it? People on them became drugged into temporary well-being, like on a beach. Tonight the clouds were whistling—he heard them. Gomorrah looked good from here. Walking up to the two girls, he felt sinuous, as if his underwear had changed to silver.
“Be twins,” he said, the backs of his hands prickling. “Then I can choose blind.”
“We thought you’d never get here,” the brown one said. “I’m Dina, this is Maureen. Have some champagne, it’s free.”
“She thinks you’re crashing.” The blond one smiled at him.
“Don’t you?”
“She thinks you work here,” the brown one said.
“Don’t you?” Maureen asked.
“Not yet.”
“Or maybe you’re with Claes?” Dina said it slyly.
“Not yet.”
“We are.” Maureen was the straightforward one—it was just the hair.
“Maureen is—she works for Art Galaxy; I just hung along.”
“We heard there was going to be a buffet.”
“A hot one.” Dina said.
“Oh, there will be. Hot meatballs. Hot shrimp.” He tried to see the place in their light. About his age, but not like the girls he’d known here. Not school-types. High school, and then jobs, it would be. Job jobs, with no auras to them. No teaching in the most unique nursery school in Cambridge, like Monica Ellsworth—hah, he’d remembered her name. Applecheeks. The speed freak.
“You crash regular?” Dina.
“I j-just got back today.” He didn’t want to own up to this place.
“I told you, Maureen. Din’ I? He has that overseas look.” Dina stared moodily into the wheel of hors d’oeuvre in front of the impassive barman. Scooped up two. “My boyfriend, he’s been back since months.”
Ever since she lost her job, they’d been eating by following the crash lists. “You look in the papers for club activities; you call the magazines. Sometimes the designers’ shows, even.” The freeload list was endless. “Gee, isn’t New York wonderful?”
Where was she from? She scooped up a salmon-round and a deviled egg. “How anybody can like caviar. Hmm? Oh—Lindenhurst.”
Maureen came from the Bronx. “We live in a project. A good one though.” Parkchester. Her folks’ name was Breitwieser. “Wish Arnie could see this place.” Her intended. She was working at Galaxy because Arnie wanted to be in art. Right now he was working as a baker for her father. Her mother did hand-knits for the big stores.
“Her mother knits all her clothes. Naturally.” Dina lowered her lids at him. There was a spark there.
“What a fab place. I wish Arnie. Who lives here?”
They both looked at him expectantly.
“Ordinary people.” He felt frightened. It was true. And he might be ashamed of it.
“Come on, must be some tycoon—look at the appetizers.” Dina patted a last one down. “Now I’ll wait for the buffet.” Her friend was meeting her here. Then they’d all four go out to Maureen’s. She and the friend had met Maureen at a guru lecture Saturday, in Town Hall. “‘Nourishment,’ the ad said. But it turned out to be spiritual.”
“You into yoga, Maureen?” He was surprised.
“My study group went. It’s very popular.” Her soft, almost r-less accent ran the words together. Ve-wee. He would take it from her tongue like a caramel. Would her intended? She saw him looking at her tiny diamond ring. “See those engraved places, alongside? That’s for where you can add to it. As you work up.”
“What’ll you add?”
“Baguettes.” The word wet her lip like a rainbow.
“Excuse me,” she said, “but do you know where the bathroom is?”
He didn’t, down here. “Let’s ask him.”
“Back of the kitchen, there’s one,” the butler said. Hired for the day. He looked like an old prizefighter. Tight in the blazer, worn. What was it like to stand by, not listening? The man took Maureen’s champagne glass as she went.
“Get off the ice.” The girl Dina, at his elbow, whispering it.
“What do you mean?”
“What I said. This is our trick, Fred’s and mine. She’s going to ask us home. For the night.”
As the two women he’d spoken to before ambled to the drink table, holding out their glasses, Dina turned her back to them, facing him, dug a steel finger in his rib, swept a small salver’s contents into her pouch, already open, then took a second look at the little tray, pinched that too, and stared up at him like a sprung cat.
He’d never seen it done before. Common occurrence. Way his knife must have gone. Made the party seem closer. “Thought Freddie was coming here.”
“Fred, to you. No, he won’t make the rounds. Only in the park. I’ll call him where he waits, tell him to meet us there. He’s like—you know—still in ambush … You came out pretty good, didn’t you?”
The party was more crowded now, people coming in through doors of rooms still unknown to him. Anybody in ambush, would have to be careful here. He couldn’t see his parents anywhere. Buddy was always hard to find in a crowd. From here, the terrarium couldn’t be seen. “How’d you know I was in?”
She shrugged. “Dime a dozen. Wait and see. You got a place?”
He nodded.
“Don’t crowd us then, see. Maybe you can turn a trick here.”
“Maybe.” Now that she was closer, he smelled the cold, leathery odor of people who bedded outside or anywhere, of himself two nights ago. He could only smell it because he was here. “Does Freddie—Fred—trick in the park?”
“Trade, you mean? You wouldn’t say that, he was here. He’d knock you off.” Suddenly she perked her tam; the two women were passing. “He makes his own kind of rounds,” she said airily. “You thinking of it? You don’t look right for it. You don’t know how, you might knock somebody off for good.” She shivered. The steel finger went in his ribs again. Her trick, maybe. “Lay off then, huh?”
People thronged around them. “What are you going to do? At the Breitweisers?”
“Take a bath. Sleep. Be in a house.” She crossed her arms and clutched her shoulders. “If I can get him in a house. We got kicked out of my residence club. I snuck him in. Oh, all the girls do it; these days a management winks. But Fred … sometimes he’s still pretty animal. They threw us out.” She looked up at Bunty. “Not sex, you know. No, no, no—if you want the sad truth. But hotels are no good to him, even flophouses. He always makes for the park. To jobhunt from there, it’s hard. And I dunno, nine to five gets harder, the longer you don’t. So I figure, get him in a house. Get that organized.” She bent, cleaning the nail of her mid-finger with that hand’s thumb. “Felipe could cook up a storm, once. Felipe’s Fred. Maybe that intended of hers will get him a union card. She says bakers aren’t the same as foodhandlers but she’ll try.” She smiled suddenly, walked over the table, took up a loaded tray and held it out to him. “So lay off.”
“Guess you couldn’t go back to Lindenhurst.” A statement of kinship. Nobody he knew could.
> “You kidding? I knew a German girl from there, once.”
He saw how green he was.
“Fred and me both come from the Coast, we worked a spa there. I did. Oh on the up-and-up, in the sauna, a receptionist even. I got him on as a poolcleaner. An elegant joint. Only when the customers saw me with a Chicano, my share of the tips stopped. So Felipe and I worked our way east.”
His eyes unfocused, over the devotion of women. And on Maureen, wending her way back to them. A man stopped her, in the cocktail way. She was bantering with him. But even from here it was plain she still had her eye on the baguettes. Buxom in her woolly, she looked like a nice pink house.
“Listen Dina,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve got a wad—made hay in a crapgame last night. Here, take some; don’t go out there.” He peeled off two hundred left from what Buddy had last sent him. “To the Bronx, I mean.”
“Jesus.” She held it in front of her.
“Put it away.” Across the floor, Buddy was waving at him, pushing gently through the crowd. Maureen, going toward the library now for some reason, must in a moment bump into him. And the two of them—into Dina and him. Lines of force. There must be about sixty people at his birthday party; with luck, he would hear the life-story of only two.
“Why you giving it to me for? You got the hots for Maureen, huh?”
“I’ve already got a girl.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Why latch onto her, that’s all. She’s her kind of nice girl, that’s all. And you know what her folks would be.”
Dina raised her eyelashes. “Like mine. Just because you saw me pinch the dinky tray, huh.” The money was still in her hand. “Here.”
“No, take it anyway.”
“You want me to scram, huh. How?”
“You could go to the bathroom. And not come back.”
“And leave her in a lurch? That’s worse isn’t it—than going out there?”
“Would it be?”
She wouldn’t look at him.
“I’ll send her home in cab.”
“Oh. Like good girls get. And what’s in it for you?”
What was? At the parties he was used to, rapping was the style—that’s what the parties were for. Though being in style made it harder. “I don’t know.”
She smiled down at the money. “You just like Felipe. Impractical.”
“Am I?” He started to be pleased.
“Get it from those Asians. That’s what. Okay—Jesus, here comes somebody.” She flipped open the pouch at her waist, thought better of it. Smiled like a movie-still. “Dinner’s being served,” his father said. “In the dining car.”
At parties Buddy still went blackface. Poor guy, a marked man. City College, circa 1945.
“We’re enjoying your party, sir.” He prayed his father would think this was the way he was with girls. “This is Dina.”
She held out a graceful, empty hand. She must have stashed it. Had Buddy seen—in time?
“I’m—er, C-Carroll Monteith, sir.” Bunty said. “We’re just leaving.” He gave his father what he hoped was the high sign. Of a man who had just made an arrangement. Yale School of Architecture, 1976.
“Pip-pip,” Buddy said, raising his brows. “Good-oh. Quick journey, Mr., er—Monteith. Visit, I mean. Will we see you again? Later this evening perhaps.” He turned on his heel, his shoulders angry.
“He knows we crashed,” she said.
“Let’s go,” he said, sunk. “I’ll go find Maureen. You go the other way.”
“Bye.”
He stopped short. It was always so final. “Bye.”
But Maureen was nowhere to be found.
He circled back to the terrace, in case Maureen had. Dina was still there. He saw she knew.
She took his arm. “She left a pink stole in that room over there, when we came in. Let’s go check.”
There wasn’t much there to paw among—gloves, jackets, one umbrella, a few scarves. It was still summer.
“No, she scrammed. Guess I told her too much.” Dina swung around nonchalantly, scanning. “Guess this is the library. No books. But it always is.” She was shivering.
“Want me to get you a wrap?”
She laughed. “Where?”
“I’ll find something.” Maeve left furniture behind like successive skins, but saved everything she had ever worn. Like skin.
“That your racket? No thanks. When the leaves turn, maybe. Then maybe I’ll come back for mink.” She did a time-step. “Gee, a song … Don’t think we haven’t thought of it.”
“Haven’t got a racket. Yet.”
“Well, don’t start one here, the barman’s onto us. He said he’d seen me before. I think he’s a Pinkerton.”
“What’s that?”
“Where’d you grow up? They hire them. To watch.” She came up to him, tugged his jacket. “I was going to scram. All by myself. Couldn’t you see that? Want your money back?”
“Is Freddie real? Fred I mean. Felipe.”
It took her a while. “He has a bad sphincter muscle. And a citation. But they still throw him out for it. He soils sheets. And her mother hand-knits them, probably.”
“Do you really sleep in the park?”
“Not always. Last night we did. Near the chess place. It depends. Sometimes I can get him to check in somewhere. If he has a stake. Sometimes somebody asks us in.”
In the corner there was a flowered sink, with a wastebasket underneath. He watched her empty the leather pouch, daintily clean it out, fill the washbowl again and sink into it to her upper arms. The soap was perfumed. She inhaled deeply. “Luxury is everywhere.”
It was always one of the good times out, seeing a pretty woman wash. There would always be a little more to this one’s story than she said. Or a little less. It was attractive, the way laziness was. And crummy bars. And runt dogs.
“No, please keep the money. But I’d love to know where you stashed it. I couldn’t figure out.”
She picked up her tam by its button and held it aloft. The money wafted slowly past her grave face, and down.
For some reason, that killed him. Her too. A feeling that felt it could shed itself, pressed them together.
Not misery but the excitement that came of it, more from her, but some from him. Under her dress she had nothing on—when he looked surprised, she murmured, “Threw them away this morning. They threw themselves away. My pants.” As he closed with her, he murmured back, “No, I’m just always surprised it’s the same shape.” They crushed briefly together. He should have locked the door first, but no one came in anyway. What he’d meant about shape was that women who came on like a pack of assorted … cared—deuces and treys, eights and aces—ought to show it down there somehow. What did it matter. Almost at once he was able to offer his handkerchief to tuck between her legs. She did that. Locked against his chest, she listened to what couldn’t get out of there, the heart he wanted to be proud of. Holding her head, he heard the tears that couldn’t fall. This was the kind of girl he always got.
She was at the sink again when she said, “I wanted to be in a house, that’s all.”
“I was overseas. But not with the war.”
When they left the room she had the silver salver in her hand; she had polished it. “I’ll leave it with the Pinkerton.” He waited for her at the housedoor, in front of the Nevelson. She came back, dreamily. “He wasn’t there. But he’ll know. He saw me take it. Anyway, I won’t be coming back here.”
“Wait.”
He ran back through the house and up the stairs. The bedrooms were new to him, but much the same. In the one that must be Maeve’s, he went straight to the double armoire where her coats would be. There they were, in a sequence like a memory, all the way back to the department stores. He chose one from somewhere before the middle of them—brown and thick, not seen for a long time. Then switched it for a prettier one, with fur. Down the back way, he met no one.
She was still standing there. Something she must hav
e done to herself while he was away had made her look to him as she had in the beginning. Women never looked too bad when they were waiting like that. She didn’t move when he draped the coat on her.
“For winter.”
Locking her thumbs in the coat’s lapels, she hung on. She knew when not to say anything. Did she suspect he didn’t have to leave? What did she think of him, more or less?
Downstairs, under the canopy, she bent back, gazing up at it. White, with three twined initials in gold braid. Like a monogrammed sheet. “Get me a cab?”
He ran for one. Fifth Avenue had none; he picked up one on Madison, rode it back and jumped out just in time. She was just walking away, head down. Toward the park.
“You have to expect more,” he said, grabbing her. She let him tuck her in. When he gave the driver some bills, she glowed.
“He wants to know where.” She could go to a hotel. But of course she knew that.
Leaning forward, she told the driver to go down Columbus Avenue. “Eighty-third or fourth, maybe.” A bar called the Lotos, on the west side of the street. “No, maybe seventy-third. I’ll show him where.” Freddie Felipe could trust her still. Her shrug was merry. “Our bathroom and kitchen facilities. We walk to it.”
He reached through the window to squeeze her hand. “Check you at the Lotos, sometime.”
“What are you, a talent scout?”
As the cab pulled away, though, she leaned out and gave him the sign he’d gone around the world with. Be with it. Right on. Peace. Whatever you took it to be. He’d made her happy then, or generous. He took it that he still could be proud of his heart.
Upstairs again, waiting for someone to come and deal with the three locks that told who the Bronsteins were, he still smiled, for the generalized love that only the ones who were his age, stamping forward and along the old lottery paths, knew how to take.
Whoever had come to the door was having trouble.
For the moment while the locks clicked; number one—human manual, number two—electronic Siamese, number three—a soft slatching, like the roller-bearings at Dachau, he ducked into one of his mowzels and was back with his own kind. Damphaired fur, close rawhide, thong and toe, calico smoke. Wherever the drum thumps, the poetry machines are grinding for the night. The swish of the snares, seineing the bottoms for no meaning, is always a beach sound. What-ho the bonny crevices of all the wars you’re not going to. Heave-to, to the bonny advices of all the girls who are not ashamed of it. Lie down with us, in the drag-wail of the dixie cups. Onka-bonka, what a boss drummer. Going to the front, onka-bonka. Right here.
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