Boys and Girls Together (3 page)

‘Won't be the first time,' Ellen said as if she were saying the right thing.

‘You're darn tootin' it won't,' the barber said proudly. ‘Well, Daisy, I guess you know you look like something bad little boys dream about. I guess you know that. Am I right, Dick?'

‘Any woman can do it if you'll give her a tub and
some hot water to bathe in and enough time to believe she's got it, and a few kind words.'

‘Yeah,' the barber said, ‘that's all they really need, a little soap and a few kind words. I get a kick out of the way I can always get the little woman to think she's got anything Betty Grable ever had and a few little things she ain't got.'

‘It happens,' Ellen said, ‘I happen to admire Betty Grable and have no delusions about myself. I happen to know I'm younger than Miss Grable and I also happen to know I went further in school than she did.'

‘What else do you happen to know?' the barber said. ‘She knows a few other things, too. I think it has to do with the kind of people she comes from.'

‘My family wasn't rich,' Ellen said, ‘but they kept out of jail.'

‘They were pretty religious, too, weren't they?' Charley said. ‘Hell, tell Dick and Daisy how religious they were.'

‘They went to church every Sunday,' Ellen said, ‘and I happen to think it did them no harm.'

‘No, no,' Charley said. ‘Tell them how they were in the Presbyterian Church for maybe thirty or forty years.'

‘Maybe more,' Ellen said. ‘Anyhow, they were always good Presbyterians.'

‘What she's trying to say,' Charley said, ‘is that they were better than my people, who were Lutherans.'

‘No,' Ellen said earnestly, ‘that's not what I'm trying
to say at all. It happens that I happen to think rather highly of the Lutherans, although to be perfectly honest I don't know what they believe.'

‘They believe having kids is the duty of every married couple,' Charley said, ‘but I guess you know why they believe it.'

‘They believe it because it's in the Bible,' Ellen said.

‘The hell they do,' Charley said. ‘They believe it because they know what you've got to do to get kids.'

‘Say,' Ellen said suddenly, ‘is he laughing at me or something? Is he, Daisy?'

‘You and your religion,' Charley said. ‘I'm your religion and you ain't nothing without me. Absolutely nothing.'

‘I suppose you
are
something without me,' Ellen said.

‘Just a barber without you,' the husband confessed, ‘but with you … well, you and me know, don't we, chicken?'

‘Yeah, we know all right,' Ellen said trying to get sober and trying to get Dick and Daisy into the fun. ‘What we know you could put in a nutshell and have room left over for the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
or something.'

The telephone bell rang and the man answered it. He had to stay on the line almost ten minutes. During that time Daisy and Ellen went into the kitchen together to get fresh drinks for themselves and another for Charley, even though Ellen had been warned he'd
fall asleep the minute he got home, and Charley wandered around in the living-room talking to himself and trying not to hear what the man was saying on the telephone, but of course he knew the call was from New York and the talk was about a play. They were back in the living-room when he finished talking.

‘Cooper. He thinks he's got a producer for the play. An
old
play, Ellen. Something I had to drag out of the trunk because Daisy thinks we're too poor. Does Ellen make you do things like that, too, Charley?'

‘
Does
she? First I had two chairs and I was making a good living, but she said that wasn't enough, so I put in another, but that wasn't enough either, so I put in a fourth one. Well, do you think that satisfied her? Hell no. Now she wants me to rent the empty store next door, break down the wall and make it an eight-chair shop. So what am I going to do? I'm going to make it an eight-chair shop. I'll say she gooses me. She gooses me all the time. Is it a good play?'

‘I think it stinks, but Daisy doesn't care about that. She's crazy about money, that's all.'

‘And boys,' Daisy said.

‘She doesn't care if I ruin my name, she just wants to see more money.'

‘What's the name of the play?' the barber said.

‘It used to be called
The Idiots
, but Daisy said nobody would go to a play with a name like that, so I changed it to
Free For All
.'

‘That's a pretty good name for a play, too,' the
barber said. He was pretty well gone now, but he was trying not to be, and his task was slowing down and getting serious and a little self-conscious. He seemed in fact to be a little unhappy in a kind of vague way, the way it is when the top of the alcohol happiness has been reached and a man knows he's sinking fast, sinking into the lonely sleep of a small boy who expects a lot some day and is pretty sure he expects too much.

‘
Free For All
,' the barber said. ‘What's it about, a fight?'

‘Well, yes, in a way.'

‘A writer don't like to tell what everything he writes is about,' Ellen said.

‘Don't be silly,' Daisy said to Ellen. ‘Dick loves to talk about his writing. He drives me crazy talking about it all the time, morning, noon and night.'

‘Well, anyhow,' the barber said, ‘is it a kind of brawl in a saloon or something like that, a free for all, the way we used to have them sometimes when I was in the Army and we were in a little town and the Navy came in and tried to take over? Is it something like that?'

‘Yes, it is.'

‘Jesus,' the barber said, ‘one time there I took a hell of a beating. I thought I was going to get killed in the saloon instead of in the war, but I didn't feel so bad because I knew they'd say I died a hero and Ellen would get the insurance and decoration.'

The man half-listened to his wife and the barber's wife go after themes of their own, kids and schools and nurses and baby-sitters and groceries and all the rest of it, and then he and Charley went after fresh drinks and stayed in the kitchen until Charley began to nearly fall over now and then, and then the barber said: ‘Jesus, Dick, I wish to Christ I knew how to write because the God-damn stuff I know would make a hell of a book. I wish to God I'd taken it up instead of barbering, not that I ain't doing all right. I own the shop, I've paid for the house, Ellen's got clothes from Magnin's and the other good shops … she's got something from Ransohoffs that cost a hundred bucks … and I've got a few bucks put away for the kids, for college, I mean, but hell, if I'd taken it up I wouldn't have to hang around a barber shop all day talking to a lot of bums. I'd be in my damn studio writing books.'

The man moved back into the living-room and Charley said: ‘Come on, chicken, bedtime for the old man now. And listen, Daisy, it sure was nice of you and Dick to ask us over. I'll have a hangover in the morning, but it was worth it. I haven't had so many laughs in a long time. Will you come over to our place Saturday night?'

‘Sure,' the man's wife said the way she always did.

‘We'll try,' the man said. ‘Daisy'll phone Ellen Friday afternoon about it.'

‘O.K.,' the barber said. ‘I'll have a new bottle of black label to open.'

After a minute they were gone, and the man said, ‘I wish you wouldn't invite everybody you run into to come here quick—real quick, the way it was tonight—you could have said day after tomorrow, couldn't you, so I could get out of it?'

‘I thought you had fun,' the woman said.

‘I did, but I'm starved and drunk and bored to death and the night's shot to hell, and there you are looking real crazy.'

The woman didn't say anything. She put out all the lights except a little one and then zipped her clothing straight off and laughed, and the man began to take off his.

‘Look at the fool I'm making of you,' the woman said, holding her arms out and dancing slowly. ‘Shall I stop?'

‘Sure.'

‘What a crook.'

‘No, I mean it.'

‘O.K.'

The man looked at her a moment, and then he said: ‘I stink. I'll get in the shower. You go right on dancing.'

‘Don't be funny.'

‘O.K., then, get some chili.'

‘Chili? Are you crazy?'

‘Hell no, starved! I've got to get something besides Scotch inside my gut.'

‘You mean you want to
eat
?'

‘Hell yes!'

‘You want me to put my clothes back on?'

‘Who said anything about that?' Out of his clothes now, he lifted himself into shape, lifted the bulge at the belly, so it wouldn't be so noticeable. The woman looked at him and laughed.

‘Look at you,' she said, pointing and laughing. ‘Just look at you, and you want to eat. God, are other men like that, too?'

‘Just get me some chili. And dance a little more before I go.'

The woman danced saying: ‘You dog, you just won't
ever
get completely helpless, will you? The way other men do?'

‘No,' the man said. ‘I'll be out in a minute. There's a box of crackers somewhere, too.'

He went to the bathroom and the woman went to work in the kitchen.

He felt good in the shower and was full of smiling inside because she was something at that, she was as nearly something as any woman he had ever known and probably more nearly something than any wife he could think of, anybody's wife he could think of, even though she was a lot that was a pain in the ass if the kids weren't asleep and the day wasn't over and she hadn't had a bath and he hadn't had a couple to drink and the going was another kind of going; she was a lot like that, too much like that if she ever wanted to know the truth about herself, a nagging nuisance until it was a time like this, and the most astonishing kind of crook he could imagine, and she could get so ugly he'd have to either hit her or get out of the house and walk somewhere in a hurry, talking to himself, hating her, hating her stupid mother, her stupid grandmother, her stupid father and her stupid grandfather. If it weren't for the kids, he'd have thrown her out long ago, he'd have told her to hit the road, which was what she had coming, get the hell back to where she came from and not bother him any more, just because she had it, just because it was good. If it weren't for the way the little girl's bare bottom made his soul rejoice every time he saw it sticking up in her crib and the way her thoughtful face made him love her even
more than he loved the boy, he'd have told her to get up and go back where she belonged, he would have told her to marry somebody she deserved, not him, because she just didn't go with him, she just couldn't, he had to carry her every minute, he had to give her lies and her ugliness all sorts of values they weren't entitled to, he had to do it all the time, just because she happened to have it good, and they happened to have the two kids. If it weren't for the way the boy winked with his expression when he was satisfied and liked the absurdity of being alive, didn't know any better because Papa was there to look after him, and Mama was there to smell good to him and feel good to him when she hugged him, and his little sister was there for him to be nice to the way Papa was nice to Mama, tolerating her ignorance and her selfishness and her bad manners, letting her be his little bride, letting her nag at him for things that were his, letting her put her arms around him when she was sorry about something, letting her tell him she was sorry, if it wasn't for the way the boy liked the whole idea of all of them being together and fighting it out, he would have told her to hit the road and go out and make a name for herself walking the streets or peddling it out of a call house or getting famous in the movies by spreading it around among the fat old men who help a girl along. It would be another story if it weren't for the kids, but she was something at that, she was very nearly something just the same, and now he was full
of smiling inside about her, even though he hadn't forgotten the truth about her, either, or about himself, either, the lousy truth about both of them.

The table was all set and the chili was in the bowls. He'd bought the bowls especially for chili because he'd always liked it, and you could get it out of a can any time you liked, but it ought to be eaten out of a bowl, the way it had been long ago when he used to step into a chili joint and put away a bowl, crumbling half a dozen crackers into the red greasy juice. He had eaten it regularly from the time he'd been thirteen to the time he'd been eighteen, and he'd eaten it after that as often as he could find a place where they had it, and then he missed it for years, but all of a sudden it began to come in cans, and he had it back, beans and pieces of slobbery meat and the thick red greasy juice.

She was covered up now in a peach-coloured robe that was made so you could see through it, and she looked sad, like a little girl who's thinking sad thoughts, something about how strange life is, so he knew what was coming.

‘Do you love me, Dick?'

That
was what was coming.

He began to eat the chili.

‘There's two kids inside there sleeping. We've been together six years. We were together a year before that, before we got married.'

‘Yes, but do you love me?'

‘O.K. I love you.'

‘You crook!'

‘That's right.'

‘Well, why
don't
you love me?'

‘We've talked about this just about every night for seven years. I've told you all about it. You're welcome to lies if they make you happy. You're welcome to the truth if you insist on having it. Thanks for fixing the chili. You'd better have some.'

The woman began to eat. She wasn't acting now, she was as serious as anybody could be, he would like to be as nice as possible, but she was always asking him the questions you have got to try to answer honestly and that meant that even if he tried to be nice she would know he wasn't telling the truth, and she wouldn't like it. She wanted lies to be true, that's all.