Another Country (35 page)

Ellis grinned. “Why should you feel sorry for them? They’ve got each other.”

The four of them now came abreast, Ida putting her arm through Eric’s.

“A couple of the waiters on my job are like that. The way some people treat them—! They tell me about it, they tell me everything. I like them, I really do. They’re very sweet. And, of course, they make wonderful escorts. You haven’t got to worry about them.”

“They don’t cost much, either,” said Vivaldo. “I’ll pick one up for you next week and we can keep him around the house as a pet.”

“I simply am not able, today, am I, to say anything that will please you?”

“Stop trying so hard. Ellis, where are you taking us for this business-mixed-with-pleasure drink?”

“Curb your enthusiasm. We’re practically there.” They turned away from the park, toward Eighth Street, and walked into a downstairs bar. Ellis was known here, naturally; they found a booth and ordered.

“Now, the extent of the
business,
” Ellis said, looking from Ida to Vivaldo, “is very simple. I’ve helped other people and I think I can help Miss Scott.” He looked at Ida. “You aren’t ready yet. You’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do and a hell of a lot to learn. And I’d like you to drop by my office one afternoon this week so we can go into all this in detail. You’ve got to study and work and you’ve got to keep alive while you’re doing all that and maybe I can help you work that out.” Then he looked at Vivaldo. “And you can come, too, if you think I’m trying to exploit Miss Scott unfairly. Is it your intention to act as her agent?”

“No.”

“You don’t have any reason to distrust me; you just don’t like me, is that it?”

“Yes,” said Vivaldo after a moment, “I guess that’s right.”

“Oh, Vivaldo,” Ida moaned.

“That’s all right. It’s always good to know where you stand. But you certainly aren’t going to allow this—
prejudice
— to stand in Miss Scott’s way?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Anyway, Ida does what she wants.”

Ellis considered him. He looked briefly at Ida. “Well. That’s reassuring.” He signaled for the waiter and turned to Ida. “What day shall we make it? Tuesday, Wednesday?”

“Wednesday might be better,” she said, hesitantly.

“Around three o’clock?”

“Yes. That’s fine.”

“It’s settled, then.” He made a note in his engagement book, then took out his billfold, picked up the check and gave a ten-dollar bill to the waiter. “Give these people anything they want,” he said, “it’s on me.”

“Oh, are you going now?” asked Ida.

“Yes. My wife will kill me if I don’t get home in time to see the kids before I go to the studio. See you Wednesday.” He held out his hand to Eric. “Glad to have met you, Red; all the best. Maybe you’ll do a show for me, one day.” He looked down at Vivaldo. “So long, genius. I’m sorry you don’t like me. Maybe one of these days you ought to ask yourself why. It’s no good blaming
me,
you know, if you don’t know how to get or how to hold on to what you want.” Then he turned and left. Vivaldo watched the short legs going up the stairs into the street.

He wiped his forehead with his wet handkerchief and the three of them sat in silence for a moment. Then, “I’m going to call Cass,” Vivaldo said, and rose and walked toward the phone booth in the back.

“I understand,” said Ida, carefully, “that you were a very good friend of my brother’s.”

“Yes,” he said, “I was. Or at least I tried to be.”

“Did you find it so very hard— to be his friend?”

“No. No, I hadn’t meant to suggest that.” He tried to smile. “He was very wrapped up in his music, he was very much— himself. I was younger then, I may not always have— understood.” He felt sweat in his armpits, on his forehead, between his legs.

“Oh.” She looked at him from very far away. “You may have wanted more from him than he could give. Many people did, men
and
women.” She allowed this to hang between them for an instant. Then, “He was terribly attractive, wasn’t he? I always think that that was the reason he died, that he was too attractive and didn’t know how— how to keep people away.” She sipped her drink. “People don’t have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you’re dead, when they’ve killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn’t have any character. They weep big, bitter tears— not for
you
. For themselves, because they’ve lost their toy.”

“That’s a terribly grim view,” he said, “of love.”

“I know what I’m talking about. That’s what most people mean, when they say love.” She picked up a cigarette and waited for him to light it. “Thank you. You weren’t here, you never saw Rufus’s last girl friend— a terrible little whore of a nymphomaniac, from Georgia. She
wouldn’t
let him go, he tried all kinds of ways of getting away from her. He even thought of running away to Mexico. She got him so he couldn’t work— I swear, there’s nothing like a Southern white person, especially a Southern
woman,
when she gets her hooks into a Negro man.” She blew a great cloud of smoke above his head. “And now she’s still living, the filthy white slut, and Rufus is dead.”

He said, hoping that she would really hear him but knowing she would not, perhaps
could
not, “I hope you don’t think
I
loved your brother in that terrible way that you describe. I think we really
were
very good friends, and— and it was an awful shock for me to hear that he was dead. I was in Paris when I heard.”

“Oh! I’m not accusing
you
. You and I are going to be friends. Don’t you think so?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Well, that settles it, as far as I’m concerned.” Then, smiling, with her eyes very big, “What did you do in Paris all that time?”

“Oh”— he smiled— “I tried to grow up.”

“Couldn’t you have done that here? Or didn’t you want to?”

“I don’t know. It was more fun in Paris.”

“I’ll bet.” She crushed out her cigarette. “
Have
you grown up?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “any longer, if people
do
.”

She grinned. “You’ve got a point there, Buster.”

Vivaldo came back to the table. She looked up at him. “Well? How are the kids?”

“They’re all right. Cass sounded a little distraught, but she sends her love to both of you and hopes to see you soon. Are we going to hang around here, or what are we going to do?’

“Well, let’s have supper,” Ida said.

Vivaldo and Eric looked at each other for the briefest of seconds. “You’ll have to count me out,” said Eric, quickly. “I’m bushed, I’ve had it, I’m going to go home and hit the sack.”

“It’s so
early,
” Ida said.

“Well, I just got off a boat and I’m still vibrating.” He stood up. “I’ll take a rain check on it.”

“Well,” she looked at Vivaldo, humorously, “I’m sorry the lord and master isn’t in a better mood.” She moved herself out of the booth. “I’ve got to go to the little girl’s room. Wait for me upstairs.”

“I’m sorry,” said Vivaldo, as they climbed the stairs into the street, “I’d really looked forward to sitting around and bullshitting with you tonight and all, but I guess you really better leave us alone. You understand, don’t you?”

“Of course I understand,” said Eric. “I’ll give you a call next week sometime.” They stood on the sidewalk, watching the aimless mob.

“It must feel very strange for you,” said Vivaldo, “to be back here. But I hope you won’t think we’re not friends any more, because we are. I care a lot about you, Eric. I just want you to know that, so you won’t think I’m putting you down gently, sort of, tonight. It’s just one of those things.” He stared outward, looking very weary. “Sometimes that girl gets me so I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”

“I know a little bit about it,” Eric said. “No sweat.” He held out his hand; Vivaldo held it for a moment. “I’ll give you a call in a couple of days, all right? Say good-bye to Ida for me.”

“All right, Eric. Be well.”

Eric smiled. “Stay well.”

He turned and started walking toward Sixth Avenue, but he did not really know where he was going. He felt Vivaldo’s eyes on his back; then Vivaldo was swallowed up in the press of people behind him.

On the corner of Sixth Avenue, he watched and waited, the lights banged on and off. A truck came by; he looked up into the face of the truck driver, and felt an awful desire to join that man and ride in that truck wherever the truck was going.

But he crossed the street and started walking toward his apartment. It was the safest place to be, it was the only place to be. Strange people— they seemed strange to him now, but, one day, again, he might be one of them— passed him with that ineffable, sidelong, desperate look; but he kept his eyes an the pavement.
Not yet, not you. Not yet. Not yet
.

3

On the Wednesday afternoon that Ida went off to see Ellis, Cass called Vivaldo at the midtown bookshop where he worked and asked if she could buy him a drink when his day was over. The sound of her voice, swift, subdued, and unhappy, had the effect of jolting him out of his own bewilderment. He asked her to pick him up at the shop at six.

She arrived at the exact time, wearing a green summer dress which made her look very young, carrying an absurdly large straw handbag. Her hair was pulled back and fell over her shoulders; and, for a moment, watching her push through the doors, both blurred and defined by the heavy sunlight, she looked like the Cass of his adolescence, of years ago. She had then been the most beautiful, the most golden girl on earth. And Richard had been the greatest, most beautiful man.

She seemed terribly wound up— seemed to blaze, nearly, with some private, barely contained passion. She smiled at him, looking both young and weary; and for a moment he was faintly aware of her personal heat, her odor.

“How are you, Vivaldo? It’s been rather a while since we’ve seen each other.”

“I guess it has. And it’s been my fault. How are things with you?”

She shrugged humorously, raising her hands like a child. “Oh. Up and down.” Then, after a moment, “Rather down right now.” She looked around the store. People were peering into bookshelves rather the way children peered in at the glass-enclosed fish in the aquarium. “Are you free? Can we leave now?”

“Yes. I was just waiting for you.” He said good night to his employer and they walked into the scalding streets. They were in the Fifties, on the East Side. “Where shall we have this drink?”

“I don’t care. Someplace with air conditioning. And without a TV set. I couldn’t care less about baseball.”

They started walking uptown, and east, as though each wished to get as far away as possible from the world they knew and their responsibilities in it. The presence of others, walking past them, walking toward them, erupting rudely out of doorways and taxicabs, and springing up from the curbs, intruded painfully on their stillness and seemed to menace their connection. And each man or woman that passed seemed also to be carrying some intolerable burden; their private lives screamed from their hot and discontented faces.

“On days like this,” Cass said, suddenly, “I remember what it was like— I
think
I remember— to be young,
very
young.” She looked up at him. “When everything, touching and tasting— everything— was so new, and even suffering was wonderful because it was so complete.”

“That’s hindsight, Cass. I wouldn’t want to be that young again for anything on earth.”

But he knew what she meant. Her words had taken his mind away— for a moment— from his cruel visions of Ida and Ellis. (“You told me you hadn’t seen him since that party.” “Well. I
did
go to see him once, just to tell him about the jam session.” “Why did you have to see him, why didn’t you just call?” “I wasn’t sure he’d
remember
me from just over the phone. And then I didn’t tell you because I knew how you’d behave.” “I don’t care what you say, baby, I know what he’s after, he just wants to get inside your drawers.” “Oh, Vivaldo. You think I don’t know how to handle little snots like that?” And she gave him a look, which he did not know how to answer, which almost stated
Look how I handled you
.)

But now he thought of himself at fifteen or sixteen— swimming in the Coney Island surf, or in the pool in his neighborhood; playing handball in the playground, sometimes with his father; lying in the gutter after a street fight, vomiting, praying that no enemy would take this occasion to kick his brains in. He remembered the fear of those days, fear of everything, covered with a mocking, staccato style, defended with the bullets of dirty words. Everything was for the first time; at fifteen or sixteen; and what was her name? Zelda. Could that possibly be right? On the roof, in the summertime, under the dirty city stars.

All for the first time, in the days when acts had no consequences and nothing was irrecoverable, and love was simple and even pain had the dignity of enduring forever: it was unimaginable that time could do anything to diminish it. Where was Zelda now? She might easily have been transformed into the matron with fleshy, spreading buttocks and metallically unlikely blonde hair who teetered on high heels just before them now. She, too, somewhere, some day, had looked on and touched everything for the first time and felt the summer air on her breasts like a blessing and been entered and had the blood run out, for the first time.

And what was Cass thinking?

“Oh, no,” she said, slowly, “I certainly don’t mean that I want to
be
that miserable girl again. I was just remembering how different it was then— how different from now.”

He put one arm around her thin shoulders. “You sound sad, Cass. Tell me what’s the matter.”

He guided her into a dark, cool cocktail lounge. The waiter led them to a small table for two, took their orders, and disappeared. Cass looked down at the tabletop and played with the salted peanuts in the red plastic dish.

“Well, that’s why I called you— to talk to you. But it’s not so easy. I’m not sure I
know
what’s the matter.” The waiter returned and set their drinks down before them. “That’s not true. I guess I
do
know what’s the matter.”