Come Destroy Me (7 page)

Lofton snapped, “Of course!”

“Someone I could really talk to.” For a quick second, Evie played with the idea of telling him. Telling him what had happened. Yet it seemed there was so little to tell. She had thought all her life it would be one way or the other, a very wonderful thing or a very terrible thing, but it was neither. She felt ashamed again. It was neither.

“It’s nice to have friends to talk to,” Lofton answered.

“Do you think we could be like that?” Evie asked. “I mean — there’s an age difference and all. You’d probably try and
father
me or something. You know. Father complex?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Lofton said vaguely. He had a tic in the left side of his face, twitching back and forth. By golly,
this
was a night to remember! He thought, Oh, blast, it is
not
a night to remember. There wasn’t anything he even wanted to remember about this night.

“But do you think we
could
be?” Evie said earnestly.

Lofton found himself saying, “I know we could be,” in a voice that was not his any more, a voice that might have been his years back.

Silence followed, a big silence. Lofton tried desperately to fill it with words before Evie filled it with meaning, but he could not. He drove down Broad fast, turned onto Sock Hill with his wheels squealing. Evie was watching his face. He could feel her eyes on him.

She said, “I wish I knew what you were thinking right now.”

“Why?”

“Because of the expression on your face.”

“What’s the matter with my expression?”

“I just wish I knew what you were thinking, that’s all.”

Lofton was thinking he would be glad when the night was done, when he was driving back to his home alone, and when Evie was delivered to Em safely at last. Because before very long — before very long a man could go crazy.

The lights in the houses along Conrad Street were off except for the Wright bungalow at the end. Lofton slowed the car to a steady stop and said, “Well, here we are.”

“What do you want to believe?” Evie said.

Oh, geehosopher. “About what?”

“About Jim Prince and me.”

“E-venus, it never occurred to me that — Well, what am I supposed to say to a question like that? That young fellow had a nerve taking you out there!”

“Then I won’t see him again.”

“Huh?”

“I won’t,” she said. “You’ll see. You won’t be sorry you trusted me.”

Lofton leaned over and opened the car door on her side. “Your mother is worried. Better hurry in.”

“You’re not coming in too?”

“No, I’ll run along.”

“Maybe it’s better that way,” Evie answered. She got out and shut the door. Before she went she turned and looked at him. She said, “I’m going to change. You’ll see.”

Lofton shook his head. He watched her until she walked in the house. It was the second time in an evening that he had watched her walk from his car, the second time that he had felt her absence in a way that made him sorry she was gone from him, elated that she had been with him. It was as though she were a new person whom he had never known before, as though she had grown into a young and interesting woman in the space of a day. A young and interesting woman. Very, very interesting, he thought as he drove off, and he would like to help her. Somehow. Help her. There was no more to it than that!

I
T WAS FOUR O’CLOCK
. The office of the Azrael Gazette was quiet, and Emily Wright paused a moment in the doorway as she was about to leave. She saw Charlie seated before the typewriter, in the area called the bull pen of the office, and she thought of calling to him. The large wire fan above the desk where he sat blew up the papers that were held in the middle by the iron weight, and he seemed oblivious of everything but the sheet of paper rolled in the typewriter in front of him. She thought, He’s a good boy, and that thought led her to think fleetingly of Evie and of the way she had been acting for the last ten days. Since the night Russ had to chase after Evie and Jim Prince, Evie had grown quiet and pensive and annoyingly polite. It did not worry Emily Wright as much as it made her uneasy with Evie, uncertain as to how to receive her daughter’s new mood. Russ had said she was simply growing up and learning to show more consideration for people, and Emily had to admit he was right. Every night that Russ had come to dinner, Evie had waited on him and catered to him, sat afterward in the parlor and talked with him, and ignored Inez Colton’s invitations to the movies and Jim’s for a Coke. Emily Wright decided that one reason it made her nervous was because she was afraid Evie was too much attached to Russ Lofton. She was afraid Evie had developed a schoolgirl’s crush on Lofton, and it was embarrassing.

She would almost rather have her be herself again, go out with Jim Prince, who had called and apologized both to Evie and to Emily Wright, and act in the flip, casual way she had always acted. Yet perhaps Russ was right. Jim Prince had bad ideas — ”designs,” Russ called it. Russ said Jim Prince had designs on Evie.

Mrs. Wright sighed and pushed her hair back from her damp forehead. She would leave Charlie to work there in the office, where it was cool. A wave of affection rose in her as she watched the intent expression on his face, and she was glad suddenly for Charlie, glad he was the boy he was. She opened the door and felt the heavy weight of late-afternoon heat as she walked from the. Gazette offices down Broad.

• • •

After she left, Charlie was glad. He got up and crossed to the door, twisted the lock, and walked back to the desk. At last he was alone. He had been thinking about writing it all afternoon. Hurriedly he switched the fan off and sat in the silence staring at the typewriter keys.

He had not seen her since that night.

God, what had he done wrong? What? He had done something wrong. She did not come to the library all week. It was like being suspended in mid-air; he could not feel his feet. It was sitting in the chair in his bedroom staring at the walls and asking them why and staying there. Sometimes for hours. Until his bottom and his spine and his whole body were tired with sitting, but there was nothing to get up for. It was trying to read and taking the open book and slamming it down on his own head and saying, I don’t want to read. I want to know why. It was eating. Eating everything he could get his hands on from the icebox at home, stuffing the food in him like a glutton, not even tasting it. Filling himself until he was so full he was tired. It was sleeping. Coming home from the Gazette afternoons and lying on his bed sleeping as though he were drugged, dreaming and waking up and falling back to sleep again. It was bolting dinner down and running on rubber legs to the library and sensing the thick thud in his stomach when he saw she wasn’t there, when he realized she wasn’t coming.

It was wanting to cry and not being able to. Laughing instead. At himself. It was being bored with it, being so bored with it that he wanted to make himself stop thinking about her if he had to put a knife in his neck. It was not being able to do anything to stop it. It was talking to his arm and pretending it was her, talking to mirrors and imagining she saw his face, telling grass he lay on afternoons out near the ski slopes that her name was Jill.

It was not even listening to or caring about or thinking of his mother, Russel Lofton, Evie, or anyone but her. It was working at the Gazette afternoons waiting for everyone to leave so he could be alone. Completely alone. So he could be alone and be with it. Be with his obsession. Sit it out with it. Love it and hate it.

It was being in love with Jill Latham. And it was crazy.

She was not sick. He had seen her twice. Monday morning on her way to work, and this noon, Friday, he had seen her in Jake’s, but he had stayed on the opposite side of the street. He was afraid to talk to her because something was wrong. If she came to the library he could talk to her, but he could not talk to her right in broad daylight with everyone watching. He would not know what to say. He would say something awful, stupid, clumsy. God, he was such a creepy kid! Creepy, really creepy.

She must have thought so too. That was the reason he was going to write the letter. He was going to write the letter and then he was going to take the letter with him to the Red Clover Bookshop and drop it on the floor as he was leaving. He was going to buy the Oxford Book of English Verse, because he needed it. He would have to have it if he were going to Harvard, and he would buy it. ‘Drop the letter after. Simple. Easy. Nothing to it…. Oh, hell damn! Hell damn!

Slowly he began to type.

“Dear Charlie.”

He ripped the sheet out and shot a new one under the roller.

“My own dearest Charlie.”

He paused and bit his lip, and then he began to type fast. It was not a long letter, but it was what he wanted.

He stopped typing, took the sheet from the typewriter. He was not sure what name he would sign to the letter, and he thought he had better just write an initial. L or something. He could disguise his handwriting for an initial, but it would be hard to write a full name. Carefully he took the pen and signed an elaborate T. Then he stared at it. He wondered if it looked like a woman’s writing. He added a curl to the top of the ? and thought of something else. Quickly he spaced and added: “P.S. I know it isn’t very feminine to write on a typewriter and plain white paper, but I know too that you will understand. T.”

Charlie folded and refolded the paper. He did not want it to look too fresh. When Jill Latham found it, he wanted it to look like a letter he had received recently and carried with him. He would just drop it on the floor.

Now do it, he told himself. Now do it.

Now go ahead and do it!

It was different now when Charlie walked down the streets of Azrael. Before he used to think about the people he saw.

Cross-eyed Kelley Cotton. Kelley’s head looked too large for his body and his yellow cross-eye bulged like two large marbles. He had a fat wife named Louise who talked as though she were out of breath, huffing and puffing and mopping her flabby jowls with a handkerchief she kept wadded in her hand. Kelley’s Pharmacy was on the corner past the Gazette offices, and when Charlie passed there, Kelley was usually standing out in front in his starched white jacket, leaning against the wall and watching people. Charlie always said hello quickly and walked on, but he thought about Kelley a lot. He wondered if Kelley’s fat wife ever kissed Kelley, if she ever said, “Ah, Kelley, I love you so much!” He wondered if Kelley ever held her and told her, “You’re beautiful, Louise. Beautiful!” What he wondered was if Kelley and his wife made love together and laughed together and had a passionate relationship. That was the phrase. A passionate relationship. Like in the movies. Charlie thought up all sorts of things about them, and he wondered what the people on that street would say if they knew what he was thinking. Wow!

This afternoon he passed Kelley and did not even think of him once. He was rereading the letter he had written Jill, but more than that. Although he knew full well there was no way for Jill Latham to be watching him from her shop, because the shop was way down at the end of Broad, Charlie felt as though she were watching him. Watching every step he took and every move he made.

“Hi, Charlie.”

“Simpy.”

“You going away this summer?”

“Nope.”

Simpy rode on. He had not stopped his bike to shout those few words at Charlie, and Charlie had hardly looked at Simpy. He could see Simpy all year in school, and any time he wanted to walk over to Grant Avenue, where Simpy lived. And what was more, he didn’t like Simpy anyway. But it was different now. Before, when he met someone like Simpy riding along the street on his bike, he would exchange a few words, walk on, and then think about him. Just for a second or so. He would imagine Simpy riding his bike without any clothes on. Something like that. Just for a second or so. Automatically.

Now all he thought was how nonchalant he really was with kids like Simpy. He really was nonchalant. All he had said was two words. “Simpy” — not even
“Hello,
Simpy” — and “Nope.”

He thought that if Miss Jill Latham were watching, she couldn’t help but notice. He was mature. Plain mature.

Sometimes it was hard to walk thinking she was scrutinizing him in everything he did. That was nuts, to think that, but Charlie had a lot of crazy theories. One was this: No matter what you did, Charlie thought at times, eventually the one person you love will see you doing it. It was like God taking motion pictures of your whole life, saving them up, and showing them someday to the one person you loved. So she could see
everything!
You could be picking your nose, for the love of Pete!

That was one theory.

But now he just had an idea she was watching him perpetually. No, he didn’t know
how!
You can’t explain everything. He just felt it, and walking down the streets of Azrael was different for him now.

“Miss Jill,” he said in a whisper to the air, “you are monopolizing my whole goddamn life.” Then he laughed, but his fists were two hard balls, his knuckles white.

He crossed the street and passed Jake’s without looking in. His heart was a drum. He came closer. He slowed up. He was sweating. His heart was thudding inside him, his knees didn’t have bones. He thought, Do it! Do it! Don’t be a helly old coward! and by that time he had his hand on the door. He pushed it in and felt the cool air of the Red Clover Bookshop.