Hunger and Thirst (35 page)

Pause.

“Well, all right.”

“She’ll be in the way,” Lynn said before she got there.

“For Christ’s sake,” Erick said, “Just because your pretty plan backfired, don’t take it out on Leo.”

Lynn looked bland. “Oh,” he said, “Did it backfire?”

Then his face hardened again.

“Listen boy,” he said as though he were Erick’s father, “We were supposed to do some work on a t-v script tonight. We’re not going to get anything done with
her
sitting around.”

“Why not?” Erick said stubbornly, “For Christ’s sake, is writing a t-v script such a big thing?”

“You don’t keep sluts around when you’re working.”

“Trying to get a rise?”

“Not at all. She’s a slut. I’m simply stating a fact.”

It was mostly vanity that made him flare up, Erick realized.

“Why don’t you give up, you big frustrated jerk!”

Lynn smiled, holding tightly.

“I was here. Remember?”

“Oh, you’re a great little bastard,” Erick snarled, “A
great
little bastard.”

“Let’s face it,” Lynn said, “She likes to give it.”

They didn’t get any script done. They just sat around and talked distractedly and everybody was bored. Then Lynn went into his bedroom with wine and a book. Leo and Erick sat on the couch.

“What’s the matter with him?” Leo asked, a little edgy.

“He’s still mad because he set us up and it worked.”

“What!”

She looked at him with shocked rage. “I’m just kidding,” he said quickly, afraid of the look on her face.

They sat there a long time. He still felt sick. His stomach muscles were tight and aching. He put his head in her lap and didn’t know what to say. She kept her hands off him.

“You have your girdle on,” he said.

She didn’t answer. Her mouth was a thin line.

To lie there on her lap in deadly silence. It wasn’t enough. He couldn’t relax. It seemed that something must be said. They had given their bodies to each other. There had to be some explanation, some resumé, some recapitulation. It was too much to just end. There were too many strands that had to be drawn tight and woven into a credible pattern. But how?

“I have to get up early,” she said.

As they walked silently through the streets he turned to her and looked at her profile. Finally he said, awkwardly,

“Well, what do you think of our relationship?”

She looked at him curiously. “What do I think of it?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, swallowing, “Where does it end?”

“
I
don’t know,” she said and it sounded utterly callous to him as if the entire subject were a matter she didn’t care to waste any time on. It made him feel sick to his stomach.

“I don’t know either,” he said weakly, “I’ve been thinking about it and … and I’m still confused. I …”

He stopped. He was angry for letting her know everything all the time, giving her the advantage. All the things he meant to hide were coming out. His need to love her. Because he couldn’t just sleep with her and let it go at that. For him there had to be more. He felt a severe need for it.

She was silent.

“I’m sick and exhausted,” he found himself complaining, “And I don’t know what to make of it.”

She still didn’t talk. He kept going. He couldn’t stop.

“It’s that we don’t know each other,” he said, “It’s that it’s a pity we didn’t know each other mentally before we knew each other physically.”

He didn’t see her wince as though someone had slapped her across the face, violently. When he looked at her, she had the same dead expression, the same staring eyes.

“Oh,” she said.

“I mean,” he thought he was explaining, “Like the way Sally and I knew each other mentally. Going around a lot together, talking about everything, and … well, just getting to know the way … you think.”

She didn’t say a word. She walked a little faster.

“I just don’t like it,” he said, “You seem to be drifting through this thing without the slightest concern. It hasn’t affected you at all.”

Still she said nothing. They turned up the street her hotel was on. Her eyes stayed straight ahead. Her arms hung at her sides and the fingers on her right hand curled limply around her handbag. Her eyes were lusterless.

“I don’t want this to end,” he insisted, “But it’s up to you. I … I just say it’s too hard to have physical love without mental love to go with it. Maybe you can do it but
I can’t
. Oh,” he threw up his hands in arch despair, “I don’t know!”

From there on he said nothing either. She went directly into the lobby, him behind her. She turned and looked at him a moment. Her face was dead, utterly dead.

“Goodbye,” she muttered suddenly and turned and walked quickly into the elevator.

He walked out of the lobby and down the street. The city spun around him like a Coney Island ride.

* * * *

He waited a week.

He lay on his bed and thought of her. He walked the streets and thought of her. The memory of that night with her grew and grew in his mind until it seemed to displace everything else.

He wrote her a letter. Thinking as he wrote it, of another letter he’d written to Sally. A different kind of letter, years before. He stopped writing once and felt a sinking sensation as he realized fully all the years that were gone. And, for a moment, looked at the world with clear eyes and the room was seen and himself in it and he saw how frightening it was to live in an empty present.

Then his particular grief came to the fore and he finished writing the letter.

The very second he dropped it in the mailbox, he regretted it. The letter hadn’t said a thing really. And suddenly he knew he didn’t want to start it all over again, even though he thought that he loved her. He didn’t want to start again because he had spent days doing nothing, sleeping late, going to movies with his last money, pounding the streets, throwing rejected stories in a pile rather than sending them out again.

He never wanted to see her again.

He was at Lynn’s place three days after he’d sent the letter. Lynn was home from work, nursing an ingrown toe nail. He was stretched out on the couch, his leg hanging over the edge, the foot stuck in a pan of hot water.

“What the hell are you moaning about?” he said, “She isn’t worth it. No girl is. And you know it.”

“Ask the man who owns one,” Erick said, bitterly.

“What do you want from me?” Lynn said, “Sympathy? I told you I don’t like her. I told you it would make you sick and it did. What can I do? Any girl that spends two years laying with another man and then starts acting fussy … well, to coin a phrase,
fug
her.”

Erick was in the livingroom when the phone rang. Lynn had limped into the kitchen to make coffee. He came in with a disgusted look on his face.

“Well, there she is,” he said, “I hope you’re satisfied. I should have followed my impulse to tell her you were dead.”

Erick felt a sudden burning sensation in him. He jumped up, his heart beating rapidly. His hands were shaking as he picked up the phone.

“Hello, Erick” she said.

There was silence for a moment. “Did you … get my letter?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, “I got it this morning. I’ve been away for the weekend.”

“Oh,” he said. “I wondered why you … didn’t get it before.”

“I’ve been away.”

“I … yes.”

Silence.

“Erick, could you come over to the hotel tonight?” she asked, “I’d like to talk to you about something.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes.”

“What time?”

“About nine thirty.”

“Oh. All right. Shall I call your room?”

“I’ll meet you down in the bar,” she said.

He hung up and went back to the livingroom, breathing nervously. Lynn looked up from his book.

“Well?” he asked, something threatening to break in his voice.

“We’re off again,” Erick said.

“She’s probably knocked up,” Lynn said with a smile as he started to read again.

Erick’s body jolted. He looked at Lynn with fear.

“In two weeks?” he said, his voice thin.

Lynn looked up with an obvious held smile. “Sure,” he said with cruel confidence, “Why not?”

Pregnancy. The idea appalled Erick. A child of his growing in
her
body. He knew it was impossible. Yet it might be true. He tried to remember what she’d said. I’d like to talk to you …
about something
. Not just—talk to you. Talk to you about
something
.

It horrified him. He wanted to turn away from her, never see her again. He wanted to push away the world with a shudder of revulsion and run. Fast.

Lynn looked up again, timing his words perfectly.

“Troubles?” he asked.

He put down his book. “Male and female, created he them,” he said cheerfully, “Gad, what a mistake.”

He looked amusedly at Erick. Erick was staring at his hands.

“One minute you’re hot for her and the next minute you’re scared to death of her,” Lynn said.

“Is it possible Lynn?”

“Anything’s
possible,” he said, wringing out his point.

“Oh God”

Erick looked at his watch. It wasn’t even eleven in the morning. He got up and paced around. He stood restively before the window looking out, feeling Lynn’s eyes on him.

“How the hell can I last all day without knowing?” he said.

Lynn shrugged.

Erick was in agony by lunch. Lynn looked up from his plate and shook his head, eyes half closed.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said wearily, “Stop worrying. I was only kidding you.”

“Yes, but …”

“Listen,” Lynn said, “Bitches don’t get pregnant. They haven’t got the time to spare nine months for anything natural.”

Erick twisted his head. “Oh, how do you …” he started again.

“Call her up then,” Lynn interrupted irritably, “Tell her you have an appointment. Tell her to meet you earlier. Tell her anything, just stop whining!”

Erick leaped at the suggestion. Even knowing that it was somehow wrong. But he couldn’t stand the waiting. He couldn’t eat, he was so wracked by fear and worry.

He called her after lunch when Lynn was back in the livingroom soaking his toe.

His stomach pulsed as the phone buzzed in his ear. When the secretary answered the phone he forgot at first and said, “Hello, Leo?” and she said, in a cool, impersonal voice, “With whom do you wish to speak?”

He shuddered and swallowed fast. “Miss Peck,” he said.

“Thank you,” said the secretary.

A long pause.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello, L-Leo?”

“Yes.” Coldly.

“Look, Leo, when you called before, I forgot that I have an appointment tonight.”

He knew immediately that she’d realize he was lying. He didn’t know anyone to have appointments with and she knew it.

“So, I thought I … could, maybe, meet you after work and we could …”

“I’m sorry, I have an appointment then.”

“Oh,” he said.

“Never mind,” she said, “It isn’t important.”

His first sensation was one of relief flooding mercifully over him, relaxing every knotted, torturing fear in him.

Then, almost immediately he was torn by a similarly disturbing pang of ambivalence. It was not what he had thought and that relieved him. But with that fear gone he heard her voice objectively again and heard the misery and the sorrow in it. And knew she had just wanted to see him again to talk to him.

“Don’t say that Leo,” he said, “I want to see you. You know that. I just can’t, that’s all.”

The sound of sincerity in his own voice almost made him shudder. For the first time in his life, he realized how wonderfully sincere a liar he was. And felt deeply the shame for it.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“I wish you wouldn’t say that,” he said, feeling twisted by regret and yet feeling a certain sense of elation that he was in complete mastery of the situation now. And could afford to be generous.

“Look,” he said munificently, “If you change your mind, let me know.”

He hung up after she did. And, suddenly, the feeling of elation departed.

He felt like an ass. A cruel, stupid ass. It was incredible, he thought, how one feeling succeeded another in our minds. From fear we can slide to elation then sorrow mixed with elation and then a sudden shame can bathe us. All these in the space of moments. What a fantastic quick change artist was the brain with its wardrobe of sensations.

He went back into the livingroom. Lynn didn’t even look up.

“Well?” he said, as if grudgingly concerned.

“It wasn’t a baby,” Erick said, “She just wanted to see me. But now we’re not even getting together.”

“That’s awful,” Lynn said, returning to his book.

* * * *

They were watching television when the phone rang. Erick went into the kitchen.

“Hello?” he said.

“Lynn?” asked the voice, “Is Erick there?”

“This is Erick.”

There was a pause. “This is Leo.” She sounded dreadfully ill.

“What is it Leo?”

“Can you … come over to the hotel? I’d like to talk to you.”

There was no hesitation. “All right,” he said, “I’ll be right over.”

“All right.”

“Will you be in your room?”

“I’ll be in the bar.”

He hung up and passed through the livingroom to get his coat from the bedroom. Lynn looked up.

“
No
,” he said flatly.

“Yes.”

Lynn shrugged. And Erick thought that in the old days at school if something like this happened there would be earnest discussion, heated demands, cries of “For Christ’s sake, don’t butcher your talent!”

Now Lynn shrugged. And Erick left him behind.

He walked to her hotel quickly, his mind always running ahead of him like an anxious dog, looking behind to see what his slowpoke of a body was doing. He wanted to run but he didn’t. He felt every urge to break into a run and run until his side was cut with a violent stitch. He just walked. And reached the hotel twenty times in his imagination before he reached it with his feet.

She was in the bar.

He went in and took off his coat and sat down beside her on the cool feeling, cool-smelling leather.