Stars (The Butterfly Trilogy) (28 page)

     Philippa went back to the apartment building he had come out of and read the names on the mailboxes.

     There it was: number 10—Rhys.

     She went out the next night, right after her art history class, and she got to Rhys's street just as he was coming out of his building. She followed him again and watched as he got on board the same bus. When she did
this for the next three nights, which were not school nights, she wondered if he was going to a job, because it was always at the same time, always the same bus.

     On the sixth night, she decided to skip her English literature class and follow him. Philippa got on the bus two stops before Rhys's and huddled down in the back so he wouldn't see her. As usual, he was waiting at Highland. As she watched him take a seat and slump against the window, she hoped it wouldn't be a long ride, or that there were transfers, because the hour was late, and the city, so late at night, frightened her.

     When the bus stopped along the Sunset Strip, Rhys got off; Philippa saw him go through a plain doorway with a sign over it that said "Woody's."

     For the next week Philippa hurried home right after evening class and got on the bus before Rhys did, watching him get off at Woody's, until finally, on a night when she had no school, she worked up the courage to get off two stops past Woody's and walk back. She hesitated on the sidewalk before approaching the plain wooden door, wondering what could be on the other side, wondering, in fact, if she should knock or just go in.

     Her dilemma was solved when a strange-looking couple came around the corner and went in, just pulling the door open and going inside. The man was wearing a sweatshirt, khaki pants, and sandals; the woman was dressed in a black leotard and a baggy sweater, her face a peculiar chalky white with heavy black mascara around the eyes. Philippa realized that they were beatniks; she had seen some on TV, but this was the first time she had ever seen any in person.

     Afraid, but thinking of Rhys, she pulled the wooden door open and stepped inside. She had to wait until her eyes adjusted to the darkness, despite the fact that she had just come in from the night. While she waited, she heard peculiar sounds and smelled odors she wasn't familiar with. The sounds, she realized after a moment, were bongo drums, beating in an irregular rhythm; the smells were a pungent, sick-smelling smoke mingled with the thick aroma of coffee. When her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw a stairway leading down into a cavernous room crowded with tiny tables and chairs.

     She made her way slowly down the stairs, afraid that some one might come up and tell her to leave. By the uncertain light of the many candles that flickered on the tables she saw that the walls of the coffeehouse were unpainted bare brick, and nothing was hung on them. The floor was wooden and littered with cigarette butts; the tables were small, and the chairs looked uncomfortable. The place was crowded with bearded men, and with women who wore no lipstick and too much eye shadow.

     As Philippa made her way to a vacant table and squeezed behind it into the wobbly chair, she felt her excitement mount, She had entered a wondrous, forbidden world, an upside-down world where nothing was normal, as if all rules had to be broken. The flickering candlelight and bongo rhythm seemed to seep into her skin and invade her body, electrifying it with a sense of daring adventure. Philippa's head swam with the smell of smoke, which didn't smell like regular cigarettes; she saw that everyone was drinking coffee and talking while a man on a small stage beat bongo drums. She looked around, tense, excited, her pulse throbbing in cadence with the drum. She tried to spot Rhys in the crowd, but the room was too dark and smoky. She could only barely make out pale faces in the irregular candle glow, the faces of people who looked dissatisfied, lost somehow, as if they only came out at night while the real, the normal world slept. And then she saw Rhys walking up onto the stage and taking a seat on a tall stool. No one clapped or acknowledged him; they just continued to smoke and drink coffee.

     Rhys began to talk. "No solution is possible, therefore action is impossible. Existence precedes essence. We are forlorn because we have lost God. Now we have the Bomb. We are nothing but bags of meat. We create ourselves, yes, but why? There is no purpose. Born, breathe, die. No design, only chaos. There is no point at all. We have the Bomb. There will be no tomorrow."

     Philippa looked at the faces of the people around her, saw how intently they now watched Rhys, how drawn into his sadness they were. And she suddenly wanted to stand up and say, No, you're wrong.

     When he was finished, people snapped their fingers instead of clapping. As he left the stage, Philippa wondered if he had seen her and maybe would come to her table. But Rhys disappeared. She drank an awful cup of thick
coffee and listened to a very strange guitarist until finally she left, troubled by what she had seen and heard.

     Philippa went to Woody's again after that, taking a later bus so Rhys wouldn't see her and sitting against the far wall to hear him recite his strange and sad philosophy. And that night he looked straight at her.

     While he recited his melancholy poetry, he kept his eyes on her as though she were the only person in the crowded room, as if he were giving the message directly to her, his dark eyes seeming to say, See? Aren't I right?

     Afterward, a beautiful woman went up on the stage and kissed him. Right on the mouth. They talked for a moment; Philippa could see him laughing. Then the woman went back to her table and Rhys threaded his way to where Philippa was sitting.

     He didn't take a chair. He stood gazing down at her through the smoky darkness, then he said, "You shouldn't be here. This place isn't for you."

     "I wanted to see what you do."

     He laughed softly and sat down. He leaned forward on his elbows, and she saw two microscopic candle flames in his black eyes. It occurred to her that Rhys would have no trouble hypnotizing people. "You're young," he said. "Not in years. I don't know how old you are. But in soul and spirit. You're a very young spirit, very hurtable. You don't know anything yet, and maybe you shouldn't. Go away from this place. Go back to where you can be young."

     "I wanted to talk to you."

     He shook his head. "Let me have someone take you home," he said. "It's late, and there are predatory spirits on the streets. Joe, the bongo player, he'll take you home in his car. I don't want you to get hurt because you came to see me."

     "Let me stay."

     He reached out and found a tendril of hair that had escaped her pony-tail. He drew it out and seemed to examine it by candlelight. Then he tucked it gently back behind her ear. "I'll go get Joe."

     Philippa couldn't sleep. She had to see Rhys. She had to tell him how wrong he was, that there
was
hope, there
was
a future. She was also driven on a deeper, more instinctive level: the need to be with him, maybe to touch...

     She waited until it was late, when she was sure he would be back from Woody's, then she hurried down the deserted street and ran up the stairs to number 10, her heart pounding. She listened outside his door.

     She knocked.

     There was no answer.

     "Rhys?" she said.

     She tried the doorknob. The door opened easily and swung away from her. "Rhys?" He wasn't there.

     His apartment came as a shock. There were bare bookshelves, and yet books were stacked in towers all over the floor. The only furniture was a stained mattress on the floor with a single Madras spread and a small table with an old Remington typewriter on it. Clothes spilled from a duffle bag as if he had just moved in; ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts and ash; empty whiskey bottles littered the floor. And strangely, there was nothing on the walls except a dime-store picture of Jesus in a plastic frame, underneath which someone had written "Fried shoes."

     Philippa looked around at his things. At his records—Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, Woody Guthrie, Depression ballads, and a record that turned out to be a long poem entitled "Tentative Description of a Dinner to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower." And his books, which were all about Oriental philosophies, Zen Buddhism, and existentialism. For some reason, Rhys had four copies of
The Stranger
by Albert Camus. There was a
Life
magazine spread out on the floor, opened to a series of graphic pictures showing Soviet secret police being gunned down by Hungarian rebels. A page had been torn out—a picture of Marilyn Monroe in a wedding gown feeding a piece of wedding cake to her bridegroom, Arthur Miller.

     Philippa went to the typewriter and saw that a roll of butcher paper was threaded through it; no separate pages, just a running stream of consciousness. She looked at the last thing Rhys had written: "In this papier-mâché town we have to snear at the unGod ones who sneer at our own chase after
the unique loneliness of unlife, the singularity of oneness with forever, the essence of the nonborn eternity cycle."

     In the margin, he had written, "The young spirit came to the old papier-mâché town."

     And then all of a sudden he was there, in the doorway. "So you came," he said softly, closing the door behind him. He offered her the cigarette he had been smoking. It didn't look like a Chesterfield or a Winston, but she recognized the smell from Woody's. "What is it?" she said.

     "Boo," he said, putting it in an ashtray. "Pot."

     She shook her head. "I want to talk to you," she said.

     He looked at her. "So talk."

     "Rhys. You're unhappy—"

     "We're all unhappy. I think you are, too," he said quietly, coming close to her. "You're driven and determined because of something or someone. But you'll be hurt in the end. By me, I suppose." He reached up and touched her cheek. "You shouldn't have come here."

     "Why do you believe the sad things you do?" she said, seeing her reflection in his dark eyes as if she were looking up from the bottom of two deep wells. His hand moved to her ear; she felt him tracing its outline. "Where do you come from, Rhys?" she said. "What has made you this way?"

     "I haven't come from anywhere. I'm here, now, that's all. I invented myself."

     "That doesn't make sense."

     He smiled. "This is a world in which carpenters are resurrected, and you say I'm not making sense." His hand moved under her chin, slowly, gently. "We exist. That's all. After existence comes essence. We create ourselves, each second, each minute. And then we cease."

     His touch was setting her on fire; she was having difficulty breathing. "You make it sound like there's no point to anything."

     "There isn't. Life is pointless.
We
are pointless."

     "Someone once told me that I was worthless," she said, tears shimmering in her eyes. "Mother Superior told me that I wouldn't amount to anything. But she was wrong. And you're wrong, Rhys. Your attitude is wrong."

     He shook his head, his dark eyes sad. "Existence is ail that is real," he said, trailing a fingertip down her throat and under her collar. "We exist. Period. And how or why we exist is meaningless. Humankind is an accident. We have no purpose. You and I have no purpose, together or apart. We just simply
are.
"

     "That is so sad."

     "No, not sad," he said with a sigh. His finger was now tracing the outline of her lips. "Just
there.
It simply
is.
We get born, we breathe, we die."

     "And don't you believe in anything?"

     "Belief is just a word."

     "Why have you given up like this, Rhys? What made the fight go out of you? When I was a little girl and other kids made fun of me because I was fat, I would go running to my father. And do you know what he told me? My father told me that the winners stand up for themselves and the losers just lie down and take it. Don't be a loser, Rhys." Her voice caught. "Please, don't—"

     He bent his head and put his mouth over hers. He drew her into his arms slowly, pressing her to him gently, as if to get her used to the feel of him, his hands exploring her hair, her shoulders, her back as he kissed her this way and that, and then with his tongue, just so tenderly that Philippa wanted to cry. How could he be so sad and yet so loving? She clung to him; she wanted to take him all the way inside her and keep him there until he was healed.

     He reached up under her blouse and unhooked her bra. When he touched her breasts, she gasped.

     "It's all right," he murmured.

     He took her face between his hands and looked at her for a long time with the sweet-sad smile of someone who is saying good-bye. He unbuttoned her blouse and kissed her breasts, her nipples.

     She wanted to say the proper words, but she didn't know them; she wanted to touch him, but she didn't know where. He took her hand and guided it down, and when she took hold of him, he made a sound deep in his throat.

     "Rhys," she whispered.

     He said, "We have all night. The first time must be the best time, because there can't ever be a first after this."

     He took her to the bed and undressed her, slowly, kissing her in between, touching her all over, while she found the way to caress him, to meet his kisses with passion. He was teaching and she was learning, but she wouldn't be aware of that until much later.

     Afterward, he smiled down at her. "So, there's a tigress in the papier-mâché town."

     She moved her hands over his bare shoulders. She had been surprised to find him so muscular. "I love you, Rhys."

     He kissed the tip of her nose. "Your world is another world from mine. Your purpose and my purpose aren't joined. You'll never understand—" He stopped. He kissed her, deeply. Then he said, "
I'll
never understand."

     "What happened to you, Rhys?" she said. "Was it some thing long ago?"

     "Long ago? When I was a little boy, something terrible happened to me. Something unspeakable. But it was supposed to happen. Or it never did. I don't know."