Hunger and Thirst (36 page)

“Hello,” he said.

She smiled a trifle. She looked terrible, half drugged, about ready to topple over. Her eyes were dark rimmed. A tray full of half-smoked cigarettes lay in crushed heaps before her on the table. There were two sidecars standing there, hers half empty.

It was silent for a moment. And he felt the moment in every nerve, felt the surroundings, the darkness, not intimate somehow, but cool and crouching about them like a waiting animal. The dull wall lights, the music flowing from the speaker over the bar. Her sitting there in a low cut black blouse.

She drew deeply on her cigarette as if he had come uninvited and she were absorbed and had not the slightest intention of speaking to him.

“Well?” he said, feeling his heart beat sharply and erratically.

She looked at him. This she turned away with a convulsive sigh.

“I … don’t know,” she said, “I can’t tell you now. I thought I could. I had it all made up. But now you’re here I can’t even get started.”

She sighed again and stamped out the cigarette with shaking fingers. She bit her lower lip. He never felt a moment of more strength in their relationship. It was the only moment that he’d ever felt she was a helpless girl, afraid and timid.

“I … probably wouldn’t even have called you if I wasn’t full of sleeping pills,” she said, “I’m groggy.”

Then she snickered bitterly to herself. “But I can’t sleep. Can you beat that? Full to the brim of sleeping pills and I can’t sleep. That’s the first time that ever happened.”

He swallowed. He didn’t like it. Her smoking so desperately and gulping down the drink and being full of sleeping pills. It struck him as terribly unnatural. Yet he didn’t want to leave her.

“You look tired,” he said.

“I
am,”
she said, “The office work is killing me. And that weekend …” Her voice trailed off and, instantly, he saw the weekend as some new hideous element in their relationship, some carnal debauch that she had thrown herself into to forget about him. “I shouldn’t have gone,” she said, quietly.

He tried not to sound nervous. “Where did you go?”

“To a friend’s house in Connecticut,” she said.

He took the drink in front of him and sipped it. Then he felt a sudden shaming alarm which he tried to ignore but which could not be eradicated. He swallowed, then said, “I … hope you have some … some money. I’m broke.”

“I’ll sign for them,” she said.

Silence. It hung over them. He felt ill at ease. He held onto the narrow stem of the glass and stared at the circles of wetness on the slick table top.

“I … guess the letter didn’t help much,” he suggested.

She lit another cigarette.

“It didn’t say much,” he said.

“It didn’t say
anything,”
she said.

He almost flared up and said—Oh is that so, well, I thought it was rather expressive myself!

“Well,” he said, suddenly hating the word for a poor man’s way of getting talk started. “I … think it said
something
. I still think it’s impossible to go on without, well, love. I don’t know whether you’re capable of it. But I’m not.”

“At least it might have told me more,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Well,” she said, “How you felt. After that night I thought you were the cruelest person I’d ever met. I thought it was all a lark to you. Just another one night stand.”

He turned to her, incredulous.
“What!”

He stared.

“You thought
that
?” he said, “My God, you should only know how I’ve … suffered.” It sounded weak and melodramatic but it was the only word.

She sighed heavily.

“I’m glad I’m not the only one,” she said.

“You mean it actually meant something to you?”

She turned and faced him. Her face was the blank face she had worn the night they’d parted. He saw now that it was a face that bespoke complete unhappiness and sorrow.

“Look
at me,” she said, “Do I look as if it didn’t mean anything to me?”

“I … never knew,” he said, “I thought it was, well, unimportant to you.”

She shook her head, breathing with difficulty.

“Well,” he said, as if winding up a pedantic discussion, “It’s obvious that we’ve both been laboring under a misapprehension.” Hic jacet, he thought. That’s that. Good night all.

They sat in silence, unrelieved by the mutual realization that they’d both been disturbed by the incident.

After a while he finished his drink and put it down.

“Where does that leave us?” he asked directly as if it were her place to answer.

She didn’t answer. She seemed afraid to. She had to skirt the edges of it.

“I’ve never been as happy since I was a kid,” she started, “With you I mean. It made me feel like a high school kid, not like an older woman. I felt young and excited. It was wonderful to act my age again.”

“I’m glad,” he said, “I was happy with you too.”

He knew he’d said it because it seemed called for. He wasn’t sure whether he felt it or not.

“I’ve known a number of girls. But, outside of … Sally, you’re the …”

He noticed how her face tightened when he spoke of Sally. And it made him nervous talking about Sally with the girl who had lived with Sally. He was afraid Leo would say something against Sally, reveal some terrible secret about her. Sally was a secret in his heart, too precious to take out into the light and hold up for prying eyes; even eyes that already knew of it.

“I’m glad,” she said, as if he had finished what he was saying, “I … I thought I could love you. But now I … I don’t know.”

She turned to him, softness in her face for the first time that night.

“I’m glad you’re not cruel,” she said.

“Believe me,” he said, feeling a sudden overwhelming desire to tell her everything, “I suffered. And not only physically.”

They sat in silence again. The red neon lights around them shone on the green leather and on them sitting there in the dimness. It was like a make-believe world, divorced of reality. He felt her hand touch his and then their fingers locked.

He felt two things. A sudden rush of pitying love for her. A sudden rush of fear that it had started again and his freedom was gone. Responsibility. It tottered over him again like a giant.

“Was Sally so much to you?” she asked.

He swallowed. “Not really,” he said, shivering at his own words.

After a moment he said, “I’m glad you called.”

“And if I hadn’t,” she said, “It would have ended?”

“Probably.”

She smiled weakly. “Thank God for sleeping pills,” she said. Her fingers tightened on his. He put his arm around her and held her against himself, resting his cheek against hers.

“You’re shaggy,” she said, “How long since you’ve shaved?”

“Two days,” he said.

“My God,” she said, “It scratches.”

“Would you rather I had peach fuzz?”

“No.”

After a little while he kissed her. Her lips were warm and yielding. He could smell the cigarettes and the pills on her breath and it excited him. He slid his hand down and felt the soft flesh of her stomach through the skirt.

“You don’t have on your girdle,” he said.

She smiled wearily. “No.”

The she pressed close. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said, her breath short now. Her hand closed over his leg under the table and she kissed his neck. He felt heat rising in him. And the words tore themselves loose without effort, he wanted to say them.

“Shall we talk of love?” he whispered, kissing her cheek, “Is it too early? Is it wrong?” He wondered if it was himself talking.

She was breathing harshly now. Her throat kept moving convulsively.

“
Do
you?” she whispered in his ear. His alien mind thought it over for a full second and answered—Of course you don’t, idiot. Sex; all of it. Glands and gratitude.

“I
do
, I
do,”
he muttered heatedly, kissing her earlobe.

“Oh god, Erick, I love you so!” she said suddenly and passionately, her fingers clutching his leg, rubbing her side against his.

Their mouths locked in the darkness and her tongue slid quickly into his mouth, warm and wet. She pulled away with a gasp.

“Leo,” he said.

“Oh, Erick.
Darling.”

Issued the voice from his hidden brain, from the man sitting in his dripping cold catacomb and yawning—
What is all this estimable horse shit?
Voice like a cold trickle of water on the wall of a crypt.
You’re gibbering boy, you’re gibbering, don’t blow a nut now
.

“Is your mind working again?” she said, making him start.

“No,” he said.

She kissed him on the mouth and her hot breath clouded down his throat. Then she muttered in his ear.

“Good.”

He wondered why she didn’t say anything about marriage. He waited, afraid to bring it up himself. The he realized that he was hardly the archetype of the successful man. One story sold for $25 and that received with no recognition at all. All his efforts for success, futile.

It made him angry. It made him want to throw away his typewriter and try something else. Anything else. But he knew there was nothing. Not unless he robbed a bank, he thought with a wry twitch of his lips.

There was nothing. If he were working in one of his favorite banes—a den of nine to five—he would probably commit suicide the first month. He was sure of it. Suicide was something always there. He knew that. And it all gave him an empty, hollow feeling as if this talk were just stale wind, hopeless and worthless. He sat there limply while she caressed him and got more and more excited.

They sat there until three in the morning.

He kept saying “You should get some sleep,” and she kept answering, “I know but I can’t bear to leave you.”

So they sat and she ran her hands all over him and he touched her body and she shuddered and kept saying angrily, almost apologetically, he thought, “
Damn
this hotel for making it so hard to get anyone in my room!”

Not—to take
you
to my room—he noted. It made him feel more empty. As though he had given his love for nothing, plucked it out and booted it down a black bottomless hole.

Finally they went to the lobby and she pressed against him and looked up.

“Erick, I love you,” she said, “I always loved you. Even at school. I used to hate Sally.” Then she added as his face reflected unpleasant surprise, “Sometimes.”

“Thank you for calling,” he said, “It was …”

Her face clouded. “
Don’t
you love me?” she asked, plaintively.

“Yes,” he said, without looking into her eyes. Tell her anything, his mind said. Tell her anything, just get out of here.

Leo smiled. “Oh God, if I hadn’t called.” She looked up at him and her eyes were Sally’s. “Oh, please,” she said and it was Sally’s voice. And he embraced Sally and kissed Sally and told Sally he loved her.

He walked back to his room.

There, in the silence, he lay listening to the el and the trucks and the cars. And he heard someone walking down below, coming up the stairs as if they were climbing a mountain of prodigious height.

It was the drunk. Erick heard his rising phlegmy tenor in the hallway,

“Onward Chrishin So-
oh-jers
!” (Belch) “Marshing as to
warr!”

Erick dreamed about nothing.

* * * *

Two weeks later Lynn spent a Saturday night out.

“I’ll let you have the key,” he said, after Erick asked him, “But I’ll be back early Sunday morning and I expect you to have that bitch in heat out of here.”

He felt like punching Lynn in the nose. But it was the only place they had. “All right,” he said, sullenly.

That night Leo and he made love on the couch. And, finally she put the chain on the front door and, coming back into the living room, she languidly pulled her tee shirt over her head, unhooked her brassiere, slid off her slacks and pants and stood naked in the bright lamplight. She held her arms over her head and writhed a little.

“Oh, I feel so wonderful!” she muttered and knelt by the couch where he lay, watched her. Her teeth were gritted. She started to unbutton his shirt.

“You love me, baby?” she muttered as she reached in and began to stroke his chest.

He swallowed. She looked up quickly into his face, her hand motionless on him.

“Yes.” He framed the word with his lips.

She opened her mouth almost in a frenzy then and drove it over his, pushing his head deep into the pillow, her hands running over him like wild, leprous spiders, her saliva running down his throat.

In bed she was wild again. She bit his shoulder until the skin broke and wanted him to bite her. “Harder,” she’d mutter, “Harder!
Hurt
me!”

And, after every time, she kept asking him, “Erick, do you love me?”

And he kept saying—yes—and kept getting sicker and sicker because he found no relief with her.

About three, they fell into an exhausted sleep.

When he went into the livingroom early in the morning, he found Lynn sitting there grimly, looking through a bulky Sunday Times.

He glanced up at Erick coldly, then looked back to his paper without a word.

Erick had to go back into the bedroom and wake her up. She was lying naked on the bed, stretched out, her legs spread wide apart.

At first she smiled sleepily and kissed him and asked him why he’d dressed. Then he told her Lynn was back and they had to go and her face grew hard, lips turned down.

While she dressed in jerky, impatient motions in front of him, her face was the face that turned him away, that frightened him.

Erick wanted to have some coffee and toast but she said no. Then she insisted on washing the dishes they’d used the night before. She stood at the sink washing them meticulously as if she didn’t want to give Lynn the slightest excuse for complaining about her. She was quiet.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She said, “Nothing,” in a tone of voice that made it, “Everything.”

They left without Lynn saying a word all the time. As they walked silently and quickly, he kept looking at her hard, bitter face. Her eyes were dark and furious.