Dog Tags (29 page)

“We sound like a bad movie.”

“Yes. We run off together and get killed in a car accident.”

“I have just the car for it,” he said. “It's in worse shape than I am. Where would we run off to?”

“Algeria.”

“Grentzer thinks we should all go to Vietnam. Expiate. Salvation through works.”

“China,” she said. “I'd like to see China.”

“Peking. Those tile roofs, and temples. I'd like it,” he said, cheery for an instant.

“A fantasy.”

“Well,” he said weakly, “you're fantastic.”

“Why, Doctor,” she said. “How gallant.”

Ou-yang smiled broadly. “She is a
lovely
girl. I never thought to
see
you again.”

“Are you in real trouble?” she asked.

After a moment Benny said, “No. I just don't like myself much. I keep wondering why I bothered. Why I bother. Life is a dull, chronic pain in the ass. And when I think what else I might do, it's always something childish and shameful.”

“Like running off with me.”

“You wrong me savagely, ma'am. We've been circling each other for years.”

“For the wrong reasons.”

“Yup.”

“At least you know.”

“At least
we
know.”

He drove her home and kissed her gently. “Why do I kiss so much?” he asked suddenly. “Why do I bother you with that?”

“Why not?” she said. “And why talk about it? Come in handy when you run for mayor.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I'm not very good about women. Never grew up. Do the same again, too,” he muttered.

“They all think you're beautiful,” Mary said.

“I turn into a great hairy spider at midnight. The things I like to do,” he said, “used to be sins. Now they're social errors or political tyranny. All the fun is gone. I used to think of myself, years and years back, as a good lover distributing joy. It turns out I'm an exploiter. Admire the female form; turns out I'm an exploiter and a voyeur. Like to live naked; turns out I'm an exploiter and a voyeur and an exhibitionist. I don't know where I was headed but I got sidetracked. And
years
ago. Why can't I grow up and forget it? You think I would have been happy as a stud? A dumb paid stud?”

“You men are all alike,” she said. “All you need is a good fuck.”

He laughed through shock and anger. “Don't be bitchy. I don't talk that way and I don't think that way.” Half a dozen superspades ringed him, smoke eddied, a piano tinkled. “What you doin with that sister?” one of them asked softly. “What you doin here anyway?” and they ringed him closer. Just found joy, the piano said. “Art Tatum,” he said. “I once shook hands with Art Tatum. He was blind and he had stubby little fingers.”

“Niggerlover,” she said.

“Oh shut up,” he said. “I was a prince.”

“Now what does that mean?”

“I was a prince,” he said stubbornly, “and a famous violinist. From high notes to middle, from middle to low, you be my fiddle and I'll be your beau.”

“You're fun.” She giggled. “You're a beautiful man.”

“I'm glib,” he said. “It's not the same. Hell, you've got troubles too and all I do is talk about myself, and I suppose I like you as well as anybody I ever knew.”

“Ah,” she said. “That's dangerous. Good day, your highness.” She slipped out. “See you tomorrow?”

“I'm off. Day after.”

“I'm off day after,” she said.

“Three days,” he said. “Can we make it?”

“If they go on strike I'll see you tomorrow. You're not too old, you know. You're too young.”

He was miles down the road and framing future replies when he saw Walt Coughlin. The red car whipped toward him, and past, and for a split second they clashed, the white-gold hair and the ice-blue eyes looming at him; his heart thudded, and he pressed down on the accelerator, but Coughlin vanished behind him, unswerving.

20

He crossed his doorsill at a quarter of five, and announced himself to his answering service. For years he had done so with barely suppressed hope tingling in his fingertips: “A Miss Swinburne will call back,” they would say, or “Doctor Lin called.” More likely Parsons. Often it was “Mrs. Untermeyer,” sometimes “Mr. Jacob Beer.” Tonight a miracle: no messages whatever. He left Iacino's number, and called Frank Cole. “In the red car, on the Misqueag Road. Headed for Suffield. Driving fast and looked a little wild.”

“I don't know what the hell he's doing,” Cole said. “We keep missing him by fifteen minutes. Drunkard's luck.”

“Let me know.”

“Doc.”

“Yes?”

A silence. Benny grimaced. Imbeciles. “Would he have any reason to bother you?”

“None at all,” Benny said.

“Okay.”

“Can you keep a man at his house?”

“Haven't got that many men. If we had any kind of decent police force. I told her to call me if she heard anything—a car, footsteps, anything. She's home, you know.”

“I heard. Good luck.”

He changed to woolen trousers, flannel shirt, work shoes; he zipped himself into a windbreaker—ah, foul-weather gear!—and let himself out the back door. The sky was still pearly but clearer, and glints of white light rippled off the lake. He went to the rowboat; it was floating free, and the stake was low. Grunting happily, he levered the stake from the damp earth and with a small rock pounded it home a few feet farther up the receding bank. Bizarre landscape, treetops alien, rising like skeletons from the water, rootless and trunkless. The crow's-nest huge in the late light. Tomorrow. If they had miscalculated? If the waters rose and rose, and Benny too went under? He looked back at his house, masonry and brickwork and timbers, wide windows, and watched the water rise, flooding the basement, blowing the furnace, dissolving away his carpets, furniture, diplomas, bed. But they had not miscalculated. They were professional men, with slide rules, unsmiling men. Benny would have his private lake. Lucky Benny. And his private house and his private car and his private joys and private woes. Like to have a few public joys. He sold out next day and went to join a commune in California, where his skills made him welcome. There were thirty-odd communards; Benny was the oldest, but they tolerated him and would like him in time. The young women were splendid, tanned and buxom, and they ground flour and baked bread, and no one slept alone.

He left the lake and trudged among his limp shrubs. Crocus soon, and daffodils, resurrection and head colds. He sloshed through puddles and rivulets, circled the house, slogged up past the south chimney, headed for the front door and saw the woman, the suitcase, the rusted, dented foreign car. His breath was stopped, but briefly; he walked on, faces and names thronging, and when she heard him and turned, he saw with sudden, immense, unmanning love that it was his daughter.

Early in the day, he cautioned himself, preparing two whiskeys, but a special day and tomorrow off, and how often do I drink with a maiden of nineteen? Maiden! More jokes. Shoeless he shuffled to her; she blurred, hazed to Carol, Carol at nineteen. God, these carbon copies! He missed Joe: a pang.

Sarah raised her glass: “Love and luck.”

“Love and luck.” They sipped. “Tell me all.”

“I will not.”

“Good girl. I couldn't bear it. Are you pregnant?”

“Oh God,” she said. “My father is a male chauvinist pig. Why not ask me if I have a job, or what am I doing about capitalism? No. I'm not pregnant. My mother is a genetics counselor.”

“Keeps my work down.”

“Ah. Say on.”

“Nope. Never discuss your wife with your girl friend.”

“Oh dear. You're quarreling.”

He shook his head and smiled for her; why break good habits? “No. Life is sweet.”

“It's a bloody bore,” she said.

“Oh come on! You're nineteen. You're supposed to be out there screwing and yelling bullshit and having a high old time.”

“You don't think that's boring?”

He shrugged. “Never bored me. Naked on the beach.” A faceless woman stretched and blinked luxuriously in the molten light; oily, she gleamed. The ketch bobbed offshore. “Anyway I'm supposed to be learning from you. That's what all the papers say.”

“No way,” she said. “You don't groove on rock.”

“I like the Beatles.”

“You would. How's Mom?”

“I thought you'd never ask. She's absolutely fine. Misses you badly. Alone, the two of you gone, the two of us working; she bustles and makes cheerful noises, but I think she'd love another family.”

“Oh, how funny!” Sarah sparkled. “My God, if she had five more.”

“You jest.” Benny drank, comfortable and happy. “You and Joe were plenty. I used to lie awake dreading disasters. Auto accidents, dope, rape. We were lucky. A little of each, but no harm done.”

“We were lucky. How's Joe?”

“Okay, I guess. I wish I knew more about him. What kind of trip did you have?”

“Good.” She too drank, and tucked up her feet, and smiled Carol's heartbreaking smile. “Good. Skied the whole way home, almost. Stopped off everywhere, then moved on. I couldn't stay in one place because I didn't have enough clothes. Clothes are very important.”

Benny clucked. “False values. Bourgeois society.”

“You bet,” she said. “It cheered me up after Lonnie. All those apple-cheeked boys breathing frost and lusting after me.”

Apple-cheeked boys. Benny felt himself glitter slightly, an old goat's last caper. Would you start again? Give them up, annihilate them, exchange them for the gift of the gods? Be an apple-cheeked boy with an old goat's art? Carol, Sarah, Joe, obliterated in an instant, painlessly of course. Faustus. The God of Abraham and Isaac glared. Yah. Who can you sell your soul to these days? “What now? Or shouldn't I ask?”

“Home,” she said, and mouthed a kiss. “I'm going to go on a diet and read elevating literature and bring my daddy his slippers at night.”

“Godsake,” Benny said, popeyed. “Just what I always wanted.”

Again she disconcerted him: “Is it?”

After a friendly moment he said, “No. You're too young to know what I always wanted.”

“You're a terrible man.”

“Nonsense. I'm a pillar of the community.”

“Oh that,” she said.

“Oh that,” he said. “Want another?”

She rose and stretched; he observed with more than interest, and mocked himself again. “No thank you,” she said. Her black hair fell to her waist, to the label on her jeans, as she pirouetted; it swirled, floated, fell to rest. “I'm going to shower, and anoint myself, and get out of this leather shirt and into a sexy little dress and drive you crazy.”

“A fine way to treat your spiritual adviser,” Benny said sternly, and she hooted merrily, and plumped into his lap, spilled his drink, kissed him soundly, leapt up and pranced out of the room.

Later he stood naked at his own window, old goat, gazing drowsily at his own lake. At the knock he called “Come in,” who could it be but Carol, and she did come in, his Carol, home from the office. He stared. She was two Sarahs. How, when, had that happened? A rich, round fertility goddess; he saw Sylvia suddenly, and remembered Sylvia once, diamonds between two rubies. Carol blurred, then flowed back into her own ample contours; she closed the door carefully and gazed upon him in pity. “Let me guess,” she said. “Mahatma Gandhi.”

“It's my birthday suit,” he said lamely, and they laughed; Carol said, “Happy birthday, old man. Here's a kiss,” and her arms wrapped him about. “By golly,” he said. “Good thing we don't stick out in the same place.” “You have less character than any man I know,” she said. “Furthermore, you've lost your pants again.” He squeezed her plump behind, and she moved away. “Are you through for the day?”

“I am. Iacino holds the fort. I was planning to take a drink or so.” A quiver of lust tightened his flesh and passed; inwardly he frowned, and was defeated. He sat on the bed and rubbed his eyes. “You're tired,” she said. He nodded and opened his arms; she moved into the embrace and stroked his hair. Her breasts, his temples. Holding her, he loved her. “Lie down a little,” he said. “My prowess is legendary.”

“Later,” she said. “So is your prow.”

“It isn't lust,” he said.

“No?” She tilted his face and scoffed. “Prostate.”

“Oh go to hell,” he said, but he smiled. “I have a serious case of adolescence. They said I'd outgrow it but it keeps getting bigger.”

“So it does,” she observed. “The fact is, lover, that I'm tired too, and hot.”

“A long hard day.”

“The usual. Diaphragms, IUD's, abortion referrals. Oh, I get tired of it. We ought to go away. It's been a gloomy winter.” She released him and went to the mirror.

“Good idea,” he said. “The islands. Season's about over.” The ketch flew, wing-and-wing; the keys were deserted, and sooty terns swooped and shrilled.

“Whose car is that in the driveway?” she asked. “Some patient dead in the office?”

“Surprise,” he said. “A house guest.”

“House guest?”

“Right. Young, sensationally beautiful, a hot number. Likes older men.”

“Benny! Oh Benny! Where is she?”

“Why don't you light up like that when I come home?” he asked, but she was gone.

He lay down again, and astonished himself by sleeping. He was awakened by the telephone. “He's got a pistol,” Frank Cole said. “Just thought you ought to know. A dozen streetlights, and two embarrassing holes in that Miss Milk billboard.”

Not fully awake, but perceptibly if inexplicably more cheerful, he arrayed himself in conventional flannels, a flashy blue shirt and moccasins; he stood at the window again and watched evening gather above his lake, and the long gothic shadows of the crippled trees. Spooky. Gods. Silently he padded to the hall and crossed to the front window to watch the light fail farther up, on the high ground, the wooded hills. Often he had seen deer from this window, pricking brittle through the brush; once, browsing on the rough lawn, a lone buck, wary and almost final.