Hunger and Thirst (69 page)

“Go in and seduce a 20,000 a year man,” Lynn said to Marie, taking her by the arm and steering.

Marie threw one posing hand behind her puffy coiffeure.

“Baby, I’m the one that can do it!” she bubbled, then flounced off and cried, “Max!” to a bald and startled bachelor and flung herself into his arms with a shriek of ersatz emotion. There were giggles and appreciative murmurs of “That Marie is a
card”
.

Erick saw some of the men and women looking at him. He lowered his eyes, his face coloring.

Lynn saw him still holding the suitcase tightly in his hand and he looked down at it.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Erick started to answer and his voice broke and he started to turn away muttering, “I’ll get the hell out.”

Lynn grabbed the suitcase and slid it quickly into the hall closet and led Erick into kitchen. A chubby young woman was being kissed there by a young man. Erick saw their loins writhing together.

“The bedroom is available,” said Lynn as their lips slurped apart self-consciously. They laughed awkwardly, then picked up their drinks, hooked arms and began to move out of the room. The girl looked at Erick, the man looked at him. And, as they went out, he saw them shrug to each other as if to say—I don’t know, it must have come out of the faucet.

Lynn shoved the door and it whispered through its white arc and settled quietly into its frame.

“What is it, Erick?” he asked.

Erick sank down on a chair and sat mutely. He looked at Lynn and tried to tell him. He couldn’t, the words wouldn’t come. Tears began to roll down his cheeks. He lowered his head quickly and tried to hide them. He tried to speak again but his voice kept breaking. He twisted on the chair and looked around as if for escape. He ran a shaking hand over his hair.

Then he felt Lynn’s hand fall on his shoulder.

“What
is
it?” Lynn asked slowly and distinctly, “Erick?”

“My … m-mother,” he sobbed and almost started to cry.

Lynn was silent a moment. Then he asked, “When?”

“Before,” Erick said with a sob, “I … I was out w-w-walking. I went out walking. She was sick and she said Erick p-please s-stay with me. B-but like a jerk I … I went out a-anyway, anyway and I walked around and I guess I was g-g-going to kill myself I think. I walked up Broadway and then to … oh what’s the difference! I … I … she died while I was gone. She … she … she collapsed and …”

The words shook from his lips like water flung from dripping fingers.

“All right,” Lynn said, “Listen to …”

He was interrupted by Marie pushing through the doorway.

“Hank, I’m plumb outta liquor,” she said pensively, too cute, in pure indication that she expected Lynn to leap into the air, click his heels wildly and shout—
Well
then, I’ll just
get
you some right away, baby!

Lynn grabbed a bottle and shoved it into her arms. “Drink from the bottle,” he said, then turned her and pushed her out of the kitchen.

“Well!” she said, “I
never!”

“You always,” Lynn answered and slid the lock in the door.

Erick sat there on the chair trying not to cry. He didn’t want to cry. But everything seemed to conspire to make it happen. The hope of finding a silent apartment there, a quiet evening of comforting talk, sleep.

Instead, he’d found strangers there having a party.

“I have to entertain these people, Erick,” Lynn said, seeming to guess, “I didn’t plan that your mother would die today.”

The words were so smoothly spoken that, at first, the impact didn’t strike Erick.

Then the words themselves rose up in power and sucked the breath out of him. He had never said in his own mind—my mother is dead. He fought the grief, he bowed beneath it, but he had never faced the issue squarely. He hadn’t seen her dead. He almost half believed that if he let the concept out of his mind completely and never admitted she was dead—something would intervene, a miracle would occur and …

Now Lynn had said the fatal words. She
was
dead now. And for a second, the idea—Lynn killed her!—struck at his grief crazed mind. He almost leaped up and grappled for Lynn’s throat.

He did look up suddenly and Lynn saw hate in his eyes.

“I see you haven’t faced it yet,” Lynn said quietly, “That’s always been your trouble Erick, you don’t face anything.”

Erick half stood. “I didn’t come here for lectures,” he snapped, “I’ll get out. I’ll get so far out no one will ever see me again.”

“Sit down,” Lynn said.

He sat, completely weak, feeling within himself the desperate need to hear some strong voice say—do this—and—do that. He felt rudderless, without any power of self motivation. He was lost, adrift in a sea of responsibilities and worries, without the ability to even raise the sail, without the slightest strength to chart a future course.

“Come on into the bedroom,” Lynn said, “You can take a nap.

Erick looked up worriedly, “How?” he said weakly.

“By foot,” Lynn said.

“How
… can
I?” Erick asked, “Not …”

“Can’t you walk?”

“I … I can’t go by those … all those
people.”

“Pretend they’re monkeys,” Lynn said, “They really are.”

“Then why do you do business with them!” he suddenly found himself asking irately as if the entire incident had fallen to that one point.

“Come on,” Lynn said.

“I refuse to stay in the same house with these—with these hypocrites and … and …”

“Whores,” Lynn said, “Come on Erick.”

Erick stood up and Lynn took his arm.

He felt waves of hot sickness gushing through him as they went through the door. What would he do if someone spoke to him. Could he answer? He might burst into tears in the very midst of them. The shocking thought of crying and showing his misery before those people he despised suddenly drilled long icicles of dispassion through him. He walked stiffly, face like rock. He didn’t look at any of them. He felt their eyes on him. He heard Lynn saying something about my friend, sick, happened to be in the neighborhood. Stop lying to them, his brain said, tell them the truth.

I have just murdered my mother.

“There’s someone in there,” Lynn said as he came up behind Erick standing at the bathroom door turning and re-turning the knob stupidly as if he didn’t believe it was locked.

“Hold it in, will ya!” Marie’s voice howled from the inside.

Erick turned away and stumbled into the bedroom. There was a fur coat on the big double bed.

“Who’s that?” Erick asked.

“Some idiot woman’s coat,” Lynn said. Erick heard a swishing sound in the dark as Lynn moved the coat off the bed.

“Sit down, “he said.

Erick moved back silently and sank down on the soft bed.

“Take off your shoes, Rick,” Lynn said gently.

He took them off, bending over, feeling tears flow from his eyes, sobbing awkwardly, his fingers fumbling blindly with the laces, knotting them helplessly.

Finally he jerked them off his feet and dropped them.

“Lie down,” Lynn said, “Take a nap, the party will be over soon.”

“Oh. Okay. Th-thanks … Lynn.”

“Go to sleep,” Lynn said and closed the bedroom door behind him.

Erick lay down in the darkness, smelling the coat beside him on the bed.

Then he sat up and dropped his legs over the edge of the bed. He reached out and felt the warm fur. He stroked it absently. Then his fingers twitched away from the itchy hair and he stood up suddenly and walked to the window. He looked down over the street, watching cars pass, watching the lights of the city flashing on. He saw the red light on top of the Empire State building. He wondered again what a fur coat was doing there in August, it was so hot. The street was airless. Heat seemed to simmer in the air. He felt it now, like hot damp hands caressing him, clutching, rubbing at him lethargically.

He turned back. He was dreadfully thirsty. He wondered if the bathroom were empty. He tiptoed to the door and listened leaning his forehead against the door. He heard the laughter and the gabbing. He opened the door a little and the noise pried its way through the crack.

The bathroom door was still shut. He closed the door and suddenly realized that he hadn’t eaten since the night before when he got home from the walk. He remembered the fountain in the park and wished he were there in the darkness leaning over it and letting the cold water gush down his throat. If that little boy were in the way he
would
kill him.

And if he were by the lake he would walk into it without hesitation. It wasn’t the erratic, half crazy impulses anymore. It was a complete, non-argumentative desire to end his life. He was certain of it.

So certain that he walked to the window and put one foot up on the sill.

If there hadn’t been a screen there which he couldn’t open he would have stepped up and over. But it would have been ridiculously petty to fumble with a screen catch at such a moment. And, by that time, the reaction had come anyway and he was shivering, visualizing himself on the street bloody and crushed, he felt the crushing pain of himself on the street bloody and crushed, he felt the crushing pain of himself hitting the pavement.

Another reaction. He wanted himself to be dead and punished for what he had done. Suddenly, he clenched his right fist and drove it brutally against his chest. He struck himself again and lurched back, losing balance. He fell on the floor with a thump and felt a sharp pain in his back and hips. He sat there fearfully, heart beating rapidly, afraid they had heard and would come in en masse to laugh at him sprawled on the floor.

He pushed himself up with a grunt and sank on the bed. He lay on his side and stared at the window. He saw the lights of the apartment across the street and saw some people moving around like robots. It was a woman, a man. They seemed to be rearranging things. All they did was move from room to room.

He found the looking more and more painful until he realized that he was squinting his eyes, bunching together the flesh around them. He relaxed his eyes and closed them.

The darkness oppressed him.

He opened his eyes. He had the feeling that he was trapped. That he was never going to be free again. He knew he could get up and leave the apartment. He could leave the street, the city, the country if he wanted.

But he was trapped.

A sense of utter imprisonment covered him. And he knew it would never end. He was sure that, always, in the night or the day, he would walk with the sense of being confined, of having caught himself in some invisible and terrible mesh that could not be severed or released.

He lay there, as if bound, staring at the window. Then he jumped up as if to prove himself that he
could
move. He paced like a prisoner in his cell. He looked around anxiously as if he half expected the walls to begin moving in silently, driven by some dreadful machinery until the room was a cell, then a closet and, finally, no space at all but all the walls and ceiling and floor touching together and, in between, the jelly of him all crushed and compressed like pulpy fruit in a grinder.

He whimpered in fear. He needed someone to run to. He needed someone to bury his face in their lap, someone to stroke his head and say—it is all right now, child. He was afraid of being alone. He had thought for years that he wanted to be alone. Now he knew that it was the most terrible thing in the world. And, suddenly, he had the urge to hitchhike to Connecticut and find the grave of John Foley and sit there quietly with his old friend, feeling his companionship. He wanted to relive the past, knowing the things he once knew. He wanted to be kind to John and loving to Sally and marry her and keep his mother alive and happy and …

He sat there on the bed, staring blankly at the floor.

Dead.

Was she
really
dead? How could he believe it. Just the night before they had quarreled. She was very much alive then. He had told her that he wasn’t going to get some enervating job and quit writing. Well, the, she said, get yourself a night job and write in the day, no one is asking you to give up your writing. I know, you
say
that, he said, but you’d just love it if I got some job in an engineering plant and drove myself crazy.

She had turned her face away and sighed and shaken her head over and over and he had shouted—You would, wouldn’t you! And she hadn’t answered. And a few minutes after she had suffered a small attack and he had seen her cheeks twitch with pain. And he had to get medicine and was a long time in getting it because he was sick of her attacks and wished to hell she’d stop pretending to be sick just to hold him.

He lay down again, resting on his side. He listened to himself breathing, remembering the morning in Germany when he had lain under his muddied shelter half and listened to himself breathing as if trying to remember exactly how it went so he wouldn’t forget if he were wounded.

There was something lacking. Something terribly needed. He couldn’t rest. He rolled over with a moan, restless and pounded his fist into the bedspread.

“No,” he moaned. He yawned then and saw the picture of himself yawning widely as if he were sleepy and nothing else was the matter.

Then he stared hollow eyed at the wall and watched a pattern of light that shone on the dresser mirror.

Then he felt it in his hands, the fur coat. He drew it to himself. And, suddenly, pressed his face into it. Wrapped his arms around it and sobbed into its silky softness like a little boy crying his heart out on the warm coat of his dog. When the girl finally went home Lynn had to pry the coat from his arms.

* * * *

He lay on the bed in Lynn’s pajamas. The apartment was empty except for the two of them. Lynn was sitting in his underwear, a half demolished drink propped on his knee.

“When did she die?” he asked.

“This afternoon,” Erick said, “I went walking, as I said. She had a stroke while I was gone. When I went home she wasn’t there, she was in the hospital. I went to see her and they told me she was …”

Lynn nodded. He took a sip from his drink.

“Where are you going to stay?” he asked.