The Smut Book

by Tito Perdue

  Again, she looked in the boy’s direction. She was softening, as Lee could plainly see.

  “Oh, all right. But just one, okay?”

  He sent her off with gratitude and then waited to see if the boy would accept her. Across the floor, a new girl had entered the scene, a tall sort of person with her hair made up to look like a movie actress. Had ever he seen this person before? Yes, he had seen her in the Canteen in the days before he had tired of that place. He knew this much, that she was a year or two older than himself and perhaps even more than that.

  “I dare you,” Steven said, who had come up out of nowhere.

  “Who is she?”

  “Doesn’t matter who she is. Just look at her.”

  “Yeah, but how old is she?”

  “It don’t matter how old she is! Shit, you’ll be that old, too, someday.”

  “Why don’t you dance with her?”

  “You kidding? I don’t have that kind of nerve.”

  That did it—Lee had no choice now but to make a fool of himself.

  “Okay, if I have to.”

  “Wait a minute, I want Steve to see this.”

  He hesitated, however. Suddenly he experienced, Lee, a hand upon his neck, and behind that hand, Cecil’s hideous strength.

  “I hope you don’t think you’re just going to stand around all night.”

  “No, no,” said Lee.

  “You ought to be dancing with Naomi.”

  “I would, but she’s dancing with Smitty. Actually, I’m thinking about dancing with that . . .” he pointed to the tall girl “. . . tall girl.”

  “Zoë? Shit, boy, she’ll eat you alive! I used to know somebody who went with her.”

  Lee could feel his headache.

  “No, that’s okay, go ahead and dance with her if you want to. You need the experience.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Do it.”

  “Naw.”

  “I’m getting mad at you. I can always tell.”

  Lee pushed off. The girl was standing in the relaxed and confident way that seemed to say she was older and more acquainted with things than people realized. Cecil was watching, as also Steve and half a dozen other people. Lee put on a bored face but then veered off at the last instant and went instead to collect a glass of the green punch with lemons and limes floating in it. The music was playing “Jezebel,” a song uncannily representative of his own situation at that particular time. And if at first he had been taken aback by the saffron and lavender gown the girl was wearing, he reconciled himself to it. Those hues were unified, as it were, and brought together by her own living person. Lee went up to her: “Want to dance? Naw, you don’t have to.”

  She laughed. “With you?”

  “Yeah. Cecil is with Sandra.”

  She put down her punch—a good sign—and then towed him—she was strong—out to the middle of the floor. The music had changed over to “Long Ago and Far Away,” a morose sort of song that immediately made him feel as if everything that he had done or ever would had also happened long ago and far away. And then, too, he knew that it was being bruited about by modern science that someday life itself must end. Thinking about that, he experienced a wish to put his own life into motion and score some achievements while he still could.

  “You sure do dance good!” he said, looking up at her. Her clothes were as described, while the girl herself was as white as a marshmallow or interior of an apple, or new-painted house. Would they, or not, play “My Foolish Heart” while he had this one in his arms?

  “Thank you,” she said, referring back to what he had said about her dancing.

  “No, it’s okay. Anyway, it’s true.”

  It was not especially true, and by this time he would actually have preferred to be with Gwen or someone like that. On the other hand, he was being observed by some four or five grinning friends who respected his nerve. Could anything be more dispiriting than that, to find that one’s reputation was increasing at the very moment that same person was about to move away?

  “We’re leaving, my parents and me.”

  “I thought he was going with Gwen,” she said, referencing Cecil.

  “He used to.”

  “He likes blonde girls, right?” Her hair was black, but she tossed it anyway.

  “Yeah. But he likes brunettes, too. He’s my best friend, actually, one of ’em.” The music had ended without Lee being acutely aware of it, and the next he knew, they were dancing to “Sin,” a new song that contained some especially fine lines, it seemed to him:

  Take away the breath of flowers,

  it would surely be a sin.

  Lee hadn’t expected the girl would actually begin humming to it. Truth was, he liked her and that she was devoid of any very obvious inhibitions.

  “You hum good, too.”

  She laughed.

  “But I’ll still be able to come back and visit sometime,” Lee attested.

  “He’s the fastest runner in school, is what they tell me.”

  “Yeah.”

  They danced through that song and two others before she towed him back to the punch and fished out one of the limes and began sucking on it. He took that to mean, Lee, that his time was over.

  “Well, thanks for dancing with me,” he said.

  “Sure, honey.”

  He bowed. His collar was too tight and he was not attuned to wearing a knotted tie. In point of darkness, the room was about as dim as ever he had seen it, and he must remember to congratulate the girls who had managed things in such a way. Darkness and girls, perfume and punch—he couldn’t understand why all of life shouldn’t be the same. Suddenly that moment he perceived Cherise (high heels, scarf, pink dress) standing alone at the edge of the floor. He raced to her, arriving before anyone else.

  “Hi!” he said. “Want to dance?”

  “Well. I guess.”

  She was no taller than he. Gathering her in, he was smitten by her perfume, a styptic smell, astringent to a degree, that went direct to the brain centers of his head. Gazing into her eyes with concentrated focus, he witnessed that her earrings had little blue stones in them that matched her eyes, done deliberately, he suspected. She was so clean and fresh, she took at least two baths a day, he guessed.

  “We’re moving, my parents and me.”

  “Well, that’s no good. We can’t have that, Lee.”

  He agreed.

  “Have you talked to them?”

  “Oh, I’ve talked to them, all right! Doesn’t do any good.”

  “Well, maybe you can come visit sometime.”

  She danced well, a function of her quintessential nature. Another three years and she would have become so devastating he wouldn’t have been able to bear it.

  “In my opinion,” he said, turning serious, “you’re going to be the best-looking girl in Alabama, you and Barbara.”

  “I’m worried about Barbara, poor thing. Those little freckles.”

  They danced. Life was short, the girl was pretty, and he had only to jump up and down and turn around and she will have turned into a construct of bones—these were the sort of thoughts that interfered with his evenings. Standing eye to eye, he could see how her jaw ended in a hinge.

  “They probably won’t let me visit very much. Once a year, maybe. But that’s about all.”

  “They won’t be going together very long.”

  “Heck, no. Anyway, he’s going with Sandra now.”

  “Look, he even wears those boots at parties!”

  “Yeah. He bought ’em with his own money, too.”

  Her shoulder was of just the right kind, neither too thin nor the other way around. Suddenly he found these following words breaking free despite his efforts to slow them down: “Maybe we ought to be going together, you and me.”

  “No, you’re going with Naomi.”

  Lee waved it off.

  “Besides, I don’t steal other girls’ boyfriends. Like some people.”

  “Maybe he stole he
r.”

  “Ha! Why would anybody want her?”

  “You can’t ever tell.”

  They danced. He could have reminded her, had he so wanted, that the music had ended. Women’s flesh, he couldn’t understand it. Porcelain and ambergris, as he mooted humorously to himself. Looking into her eyes, he could very well see the little rods and cones, blue and gold, going about their eternal readjustments.

  “If I’m like this at eleven,” he cautioned to himself, “what would I have been at eighteen?”

  They continued for another few moments, but “My Foolish Heart” never returned. Finally, the girl pulled back and expressed her pleasure.

  “Thanks, Lee; you’re a real sweet boy.”

  “Yeah. Say, did you know I’m going to be thirteen in just a few months?”

  “What happened to twelve?”

  “That’s what I meant—twelve.”

  “And someday you’re going to find just the right girl! I’m sure of it.”

  “Doubt it. They don’t have these kinds of girls where I’m going.”

  “That’s sad. Now don’t you forget to come visit us, you hear?”

  “Be dead by then.”

  The level of the punch had been falling fast, and by the time he returned to the bowl, there remained only an inch or two of sediment and rinds. His friend Steven had meantime gotten bogged down with a red-headed girl from some other school, a wild-looking personality with flowers in her coiffeur. The place was quieter than usual, no doubt because of a Les Paul and Mary Ford song that had come on. The strange thought then came to Lee that perhaps the outside world had disappeared and none were left alive but these fifty people, smiling in the dark. Soon they would belong to the antique past, and these present-day people would look back upon them, if they did, with but a sort of bemused condescension—he had noted this modern proclivity. This brought him to the Babylonians, who had perhaps cherished their moments just as much as he his.

  It was then that “My Foolish Heart” came on for only the second time, arriving not when he was in Barbara’s arms, nor Gwen’s, but when he had just stepped outside to see if the world still existed. There was no question but that this was his favorite piece and that if he had his way, he’d be dancing with both those girls at the same time, together with others as well. Listening to that voice, he put some slack in his tie (always too tight) and set off in search of free agents no one had claimed as yet. There were numerous of these, but authentically pretty ones were thin on the ground.

  He found one, as he thought at first, till she came into better focus. In any case, his interest had come to roost upon a brown-headed girl in a brown silk dress (this, too, done deliberately) fitted out in a sash of some kind. Unlike the first girl, this one girl actually grew prettier as he came nearer, ending finishing up as a true beauty who bore comparison, if not with Barbara, with Sonya at any rate. He stopped. He had known this person, he was sure of it, having first acquainted himself with her in third grade.

  “Hi!” he said. “You probably don’t even remember who I am!”

  He had stridden too far, clashing into her nose with his much larger one. He was nearsighted, of course, always had been.

  “Hi,” he reiterated. “I’m one of Cecil’s friends.”

  “That’s nice. Which one are you?”

  He pointed to himself, saying, “Got fifty licks so far. Don’t know about Cecil.”

  “Twenty. I heard you didn’t have hardly any at all.”

  “Oh, for God’s sakes. You would have to of been there! By the way, do you remember when we were in Mrs. Thornberry’s class? Boy!”

  “I just moved here last summer.”

  Lee jumped back. All those memories, those photographs of the mind, they belonged to someone else.

  “Want to dance?” he asked. It is true that his favorite song had ended, to be followed, however, by “I Can’t Stop Loving You” that was almost as good. She danced well enough, and he let a full minute go by before he began questioning whether this one would be his wife. No, she lacked that deep and mellow quality that he demanded in wives of his.

  “You sure do dance good,” he claimed.

  “Thank you.”

  “Pretty good. You going with anybody?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who is it?”

  She nodded shyly in the direction of Preston, a former friend of Lee’s who happened in actual fact to be going with Molly Parker.

  “He’s going with Molly.”

  “Oh. Well, what about that one, is he going with somebody?”

  “Naw, that’s just Craig. Myself, I’m not going with anybody either at this particular time.”

  “But you used to be going with somebody?”

  Lee said nothing. They had drifted close to Cecil and Sandra, who had fallen asleep in one another’s arms and become one person. Coming nearer, Lee looked into the lovely girl’s face from just inches away, finding there the image of a serene lake with flamingo accessories and dark yellow Moon overhead. He would not have resisted, not at all, had Cecil wanted to trade partners with him. Truth was, he had been wrong, quite wrong to have imagined he could be satisfied with a second-tier girl.

  He guided his partner back to whence he had taken and thanked her politely for the enjoyment of the dance. Steven had drawn off into the cloak room meantime to finish the packed lunch his mother had prepared. The music had begun to repeat, and many of the more prudential people—Lee despised them—had abandoned the building to stronger hands. Cecil, taking intermission from the prettiest girl in Alabama, had gone to the punch bowl (empty now save for a few withered lemons and shards of ice) and was smoking a thin black cigaretto hidden in the palm of his hand. There was but one last chaperone in the place, a tired-looking woman who would have gone home by now, had she had her way. Lee trained his Will on her, causing her to look up briefly and scan the area.

  “I’ve been dancing with Gwen quite a bit,” confessed Lee to Cecil.

  “I saw you. And what’s Naomi been doing all this time?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  “Look, my boy, these people aren’t going to fall in love with you just because you want ’em to. You got to force ’em.”

  “Force ’em.”

  “That’s right. Just keep working at it, and pretty soon they give up. ’Course now, sometimes you’re the one that gives up.”

  “And so you give up?”

  “No, no! Shit, boy! Don’t never give up, not ever.”

  Lee also noted this down in the notebook of his mind.

  “Cecil?”

  “Hm?”

  “How many girls have you . . . ?”

  “’Bout sixteen, more or less. ’Course now I’m not saying I kissed all of ’em.”

  “Some of ’em, but not all.”

  “Right.”

  “Whew!”

  A strange boy just then came up, peered into the punch, and then slumped down hopelessly in the nearest chair.

  “You leave this town, you won’t never kiss anybody—that’s my prediction.”

  “They got girls down there, too.”

  “Sure they do. But what kind of girls? Shit, they won’t be anything like what we got here. Just look at ’em. Look.”

  Lee looked, his gaze running into Barbara and Gwen, Sonya and the others. He wanted to cry.

  “And I’ll tell you something else, too. You get down there and you’ll start being a different kind of person.”

  “Not me.”

  “Bullshit. College—that’s where you’re headed.”

  Lee snorted and then set out patiently once again to explain about his short fate.

  “And you’ll be wearing a goddamn little suit every goddamn day of the week!”

  The boy was getting mad. Lee coughed twice and then strove to change the conversation.

  “I suppose you and Sandra’ll be married, next time I see you.”

  “Doubt it. Hell, no. No, she’s pretty much the same kind
of person you are.”

  Lee jumped back.

  “College, and all that shit.”

  “Well, maybe she’ll marry me,” Lee said humorously.

  “Doubt it.”

  “I doubt it, too,” the strange boy added.

  “Anyway, you aren’t never coming back here. Never, never, never.”

  “Sure! To visit.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Hey! She’s gone!”

  It was true. Taking her umbrella and scarf, the chaperone had left the floor, and at this moment was hobbling down the rather steep staircase that led to the city. It had not disappeared, the world outside, but simply become extraneous. Seeing all this, Cecil excused himself and hurried off to Sandra, a choice that left the remaining girls (and there were several of them) for Leland’s use alone.

  It was past ten o’clock in the evening when the last of those girls departed, leaving nothing for either of them. He was to remember one girl in particular, her pink gown billowing up about her like a cloud of cotton candy as she clambered into her father’s car.

  “Sleep well!” said Lee, directing the words silently in her direction. “Presuming tonight’s excitement subsides enough to let thee!” He turned then to Cecil and, speaking in real voice, offered to shake with him.

  “Well. ’Bye.”

  “Bastard. You’ll be sorry.”

  They shook anyway, and the last Lee saw of him, the boy was trundling off homeward to the tune of the little silver chains that adorned his boots.

  The night was clear, and the people, insofar as there still were any, were carrying umbrellas. Lee perceived a double-deck airplane running through the bloated clouds. Life had just seven stages, and he had used up two of those already. He spun around and then ran forward for the space of about a block and a half. The night was cold, and the oxygen had a salubrious effect upon his lungs and outlook.

  “Ah, me,” he said. Soon he would have left the commercial district altogether and, moving with the night, would have reached the district where Steve and Mildred dwelled. He passed Lacy’s place and then, in quick succession, six well-known houses (well-known to him), their chimneys all plugged with stork nests. It was seldom that his headache was as thin as now or as tenuous; one might almost say that he hadn’t any. He stopped, tempted to go back for the screwdriver he had left behind. Naw, it was too late for that.