Gould (4 page)

Even with the two homosexuals. He bets both those guys, or has a sneaky suspicion, were straight and she just said they weren't  .     for what? So his ego wouldn't be bruised, or something? Or so he wouldn't feel he was one of four guys sticking it in her, and all the images that brings up, and maybe sometimes the four of them in a week, or five guys, even, or six—because how would he know for sure? As for the contribution, he didn't know what to do. Maybe a hundred, or more like fifty, which was about what he could afford. Either would help out a little and shut her up—for sure a hundred would—and cut him off from her for good. Well, maybe, but a hundred the max. He sent nothing. He never heard from her again. About a year later he was at a friend's apartment for dinner, a married couple, and while the woman was washing the dishes and he was drying them she said “You know, of course, that Lynette Taylor died,” and he said “What? What're you saying? Lynette? The dancer?” and she was nodding and he said “But what do you mean? What could've happened?” and felt faint, at least his legs got weak, and he had to sit and was still holding the dish and towel and the woman took the dish out of his hand and said “Why are you so white? What's wrong? You look sick,” and he said “Don't you know?” and she said “Know what? That you went out with her a couple of times and more than likely shtupped her?—for she was a free bird if there ever was one. But what of it? So did a lot of men,” and he said “I went out with her for months; maybe a half year. Two to three times a week. She wanted to marry me. I was very close to her. She was pregnant with my baby once and had an abortion—a year ago, or sometime around that,” and she said “That I also didn't know—Monty, come in here, Gould's not feeling well,” and her husband came into the room and said “What's wrong, your stomach?” and he said “Anna just told me Lynette, the dancer, died,” and Monty said “And you didn't know? I thought everyone who knew her had at least heard about it. Overdose, at a party; got sick, went into the bedroom to rest and she never woke up. What, a month ago?” to Anna and she said “I think so; no more than that,” and Monty said to him “She wasn't an addict; it might have been the first time she took the stuff. Cocaine with the booze, they said. But she just stopped breathing,” and Anna said “He took it so badly before I thought he was going to have a stroke himself. Did you know they were so close?” and Monty said “I knew they saw each other sometimes, and that Tim Rudd was pissed, someone said, because Gould took her away from him at a party—or something like that happened, anyway—but that's about it,” and she said “That's what I remember too, except for the Tim thing. Once at a party I saw Gould and Lynette, is all, though I don't recall any incandescence between them, do you?” and Monty said “Never, which is why we're both so surprised, Gould. What were you doing, hiding it?” and he said “What do you mean, because of her color?” and Monty said “Yes, if you want me to be honest about it,” and he said “But it's not so; I came to a few parties with her that you two were at, you don't remember?” and Anna said “Just that one that I can recall,” and he said “Well, I haven't been invited to many for the past year or so, so maybe that's why,” and she said “To be frank with you, I think that's because you were usually telling people off at parties—getting drunk, maybe, to do it—and they were getting bugged by your attitude,” and he said “Well, I don't know, people we know have become so freaking  .   .  middle class or something, lately, and it got to me—long ago—and their minds like compression machines, so old before their time when before they were so lively, talked about writing, thought about art, were going to chip away at walls in whatever field we went in, were freer and didn't just think advancement and money. But I still can't believe it about her—Lynette, her dying. There wasn't a funeral? Or there was and you went and never thought to tell me?” and Anna said “What did they do with her, honey?” and Monty said “Her family came up and brought her back to Raleigh to be buried and there wasn't even a memorial here for her, that I'm aware of. Was there and we just missed it?” and she said “We would have known, and gone to it, of that I'm positive,” and Monty said “True, we would have known, but why would we have gone to it? She wasn't, to be perfectly honest, anything particularly special in our lives, though really a nice, beautiful girl, I thought, and from everything I heard, a terrific modern dancer,” and he said “Poor Lynette,” and Anna said “She was beautiful—gorgeous, is more like it. Those cheeks, and with a gorgeous figure, which is to be expected. I can see why you were drawn to her—I think Monty, by what he said, was too—but I'd think she'd be too wild for you after a few times     for almost anybody. Unlike Monty, I wasn't surprised when I heard about it; nor do I believe     what I'm saying is I'm almost positive she was involved with hard drugs for a while, or she was heading for it. She seemed to want to try anything; you could see it in her gaze and by what she said. That wasn't the time I saw her with you, Gould, but—Tim, for instance; I forget if that was before or after you—and with others, I think, or alone. But you said she was pregnant with your baby?” and Monty said “She was? I never heard that,” and Anna said “Don't believe it, Gould, just don't, or have very strong doubts. It could have been no baby or one from any number of men, because someone as wild as she was could also be an imaginative and, all right, I'll say it, a conniving liar too,” and he said “She said she was pregnant and that I was the father, and when a woman says that you have to believe it unqualifiedly and help her out,” and she said “You went to the doctor with her and everything—I mean, the abortionist too?” and he said “She said I didn't need to and that she in fact didn't want me there—this was after we broke up, you understand. That she was plenty independent enough to do all of it herself—her words, almost verbatim,” and Monty said “She told you she got pregnant
after
you broke up?” and he said “That she got pregnant before, but told me after we broke up,” and Monty said “I was wondering, but it still smells a bit fishy to me. Listen, no disrespect meant to that lovely creature, but I wouldn't run around telling people you got even that close to being a father, though it was certainly the more than decent thing to do to help her out with the abortion, I assume you were talking about,” and he said yes, and Anna said “What do they go for these days? You might not know this, but I had one—Monty and I—right when we were starting grad school, and before it turned out we couldn't have children, and it cost us a then-walloping two hundred,” and he said “No, I didn't know; I'm sorry. She didn't give me the exact figure, but I managed to scrounge up three-fifty for her, which I think covered it completely and with maybe a few bucks to spare,” and she said “Wow, unbelievable,
unbelievable;
can you imagine that, Monty?” and Monty said “If she had one, then at that price I suspect it was done by a real physician,” and he said “I believe so.” He called her roommate when he got home and she said “It's late, my new roommate has super hearing so can hear my talking through the walls, but besides all that I don't want to talk about it on the phone. It's too disturbing. If you want to discuss it, come here,” and he went to see her the next night. She said “I was devastated; she was my closest friend. There's nothing I can tell you to add to anything, nor do I want to; you have no right to know,” and he said “So thanks, but why'd I come down here then?” and she said “I asked you here so I could say to your face what I've been hoping to since even before she died and that's that you're a rotten stinking scumbag. She was in trouble and asked you for help and you wouldn't give it. You even hung up on her,” and he said “I didn't hang up. I told her I'd call the next day with my decision and I thought it over and decided to help her as much as I could, financially and every other way—personally—but your line was busy and busy and busy, and same for the next day and the one after that. I gave up, thinking something was wrong with your phone—the operator didn't think so; I called one and she checked your line—and that Lynette would call me, knowing something might be wrong with the phone, but she didn't. When that happened I thought ‘Well, she wants to do it all herself; so let her.' And then I got a letter from her a few weeks later saying everything was okay and the abortion a success and she had no bad feelings toward me anymore, and that was it, so why are you letting me have it like this?” and she said “Lynette never lied and I'm sure our phone was fine then. And that when you hung up on her you in effect kissed her off. And she was right, because you never came through with a red cent, not then nor when she later asked you in a letter to help cover it. It hurt her tremendously. To the point where I thought she was even thinking of harming herself because of it,” and he said “Oh, come on. What are you going to accuse me of next, the overdose?” and she said “I'm not. She was foolish that way, took too many chances. But I also know she was broken up over having to lose the fetus the way she did, and your fetus, for she told me it was yours. And also that she had to borrow from her parents to pay for it, and all that didn't help her to not take chances at parties the months after or not to carry out her experiments on herself, I'll call them, too far. But that's all I wanted to say to you.” She closed her eyes, for a few seconds was silent in thought it seemed, and then said “Yes, that's all. I don't want to tell you anything else; you don't deserve it. What she felt about you—she felt a lot. How you hurt her by taking her to certain places and not others and only seeing her in the evening or here, and so on, because she wasn't the right color. I couldn't understand why she continued dating you once she knew all this, and sleeping with you too?—she must have been out of her mind. But that was another problem she had, a psychological one with white guys—the fascination with the Other, and taking their shit, and all that crap, and the more egotistical and callous they were, the harder she fell for them. But get out of here, you bastard. Get out now,” and he said “Hold it, just hear me out, because she fell for who?—she didn't fall for me,” and she said “Now, out, now, or I'll yell for Janice in there to call the cops,” and he left. Who knows? he thought on the way home. She could have lied to her roommate too. Or who knows, the baby could have been his. Let's say it was; well, he still shouldn't feel responsible in any way for her death. Did he try to keep her under wraps? Okay, he did a little, but not that much and he did feel, and she must have seen this, more and more comfortable being with her—on the street, anyplace—the longer he knew her, and she could have said something if any of it bothered her, no? They just weren't right for each other, that's the main thing; for a long-term commitment or short-term romance or anything except an overnight fling, and maybe you don't even want to start with something like that, and she should have been able to take care of herself. She said she could and he believed her, so why's he being blamed by that neurotic witch and why was he before by Lynette? She gave off the presence, and this is what she wanted to give off, of someone able to look after every aspect of herself, so why wasn't she? It couldn't have been all a goddamn farce on her part, could it? And she knew as well as he they only went with each other for the sex and to have a good time other ways, and to see someone fairly steadily but not to be tied down, and things like that and maybe, just maybe there was a little more to it for both of them—some feeling—he even said that to her once about himself, and sometimes when he was with her he did feel it, for a moment, for a night, but he did—but that was about it, all they wanted at the time and all there was. Does he have it right? He thinks he does. Is he being straight with himself? He thinks so, or as much as he can when he hasn't thought much about it before, and if he isn't being straight, then only by a little. She liked his looks, he loved hers and her wildness most times and boldness and outspokenness and unconventionalness and the profession she was in and so forth, and same she for him with two or three of those and his intelligence, or at least his book knowledge—his critical abilities when it came to artistic things, she said—and they liked—for him it was nearly “worshipped”—each other's bodies. They used to talk about it: “I've never seen such a hard perfectly shaped ass”—he; “I love your fat brawny neck; you look like you could jack up cars with it”—she; “Your biceps and popping veins in your forearms [she meant from the muscles] and large high-arched feet”; “Your endless legs and, solid as they are, the modeling clay—like way they curl around me”—he; “Your big dick with the beauty mark on it”; “Your every-single-time ready-to-go hole”—nothing brainy, nothing serious or new, except maybe for them; this is how they talked when they were alone in his flat or her room or on their bed, and if she missed a period a week or two after they last had sex—he can picture her right now lying in bed when she said that about his dick; he was sitting in a chair opposite her putting on his briefs; she still had the sheet over her shoulders and was sort of peeping out from behind it—why didn't she call him then? Did he ask her that? He thinks he did. But if she said anything, right now he forgets. And same with her ass: he was in bed, she was standing nude in front of her bedroom's long door mirror, leaning forward a little to inspect something on her face when he said that about its shape. He would have believed her if she'd called then. Be honest, would he have? More than her calling him three months later, and what she said then, he now remembers, is that she thought she could take care of it herself. What did she mean—a coat hanger, special pills, something like that? Did he ask her? He thinks he did, but now he can't remember it. No, once she stopped seeing him—once they stopped seeing each other, for he doesn't remember doing much to prevent it—she probably picked other guys up the way she did him or let other guys pick her up that way. In other words, the same way they'd met: at a party (or a bar), a little talk, eye contact, or lots of eye contact first and then talk, or asking someone to make the introduction, then necking in the kitchen (or at the bar)—even if she came to whatever she came to with someone else; all that mattered was if she was immediately taken with the new guy—and then to her home or his and the bed and up early next day for a dance rehearsal or class or the new thing she was thinking of starting to do: drama school. Or no new guys but just the old ones, some she had even discarded from the past. Or maybe even one of her homosexuals—for something different this time or to really give her a bang—decided, or she convinced him, to put it in. Oh, he'll never know, so leave it at that. At what? At his not ever finally knowing for sure if the baby was really his and how responsible he should feel over it and so on. “So on” what? Her color and if he did mostly want it to be night and not day when he was with her outside and the rest of the things. “Rest of the things” what? Everything, all of it, too many and too much to think about right now, what's he expect of himself? One thing leading to the other, from his baby to his not giving money to get rid of the baby, to her death—how much he should feel involved in it, “responsible” was the word he used. If he can never know, what can he do? Nothing, so for now forget it. He drank a lot at home that night, sat in the big easy chair and read yesterday's and today's