Hunger and Thirst (46 page)

Was she goading him? He began to feel a desperate fear. A fear of being rushed, of being told what to do, of not being given a chance to do what he wanted to do. He almost pulled away forcibly and shouted in her face—No, I don’t love you! I don’t want to marry you! I
refuse
to marry you! I refuse to throw away all my work for a nightly bed and a squawling battlement called home.

He felt a fierce desire to escape from what seemed to be methodically forging unbreakable links around him.

The topic passed. She didn’t say any more. And he found peace again as he lay on the blanket and pressed their bodies against each other. He felt the warm night wind on his face. He had her in his arms. But he was free too.

“I wish it could be like this forever,” he said.

* * * *

The curtain closed. He crossed his fingers, stretched forward and looked over the balcony railing. Applause flooded up from the darkness like a rushing of black wings. The curtain flew open. The cast stood lined up, smiling. Loud applause. The curtain zipped shut. In a second it rushed aside again. The principals stepped forward. The applause increased.

“Oh, boy!” he said.

The curtain closed and opened a third time. The cast all smiled broadly. They bowed gracefully, nodding their heads.

He sank back with a satisfied sigh. There were two more curtain calls. He sat pleased while the light from the stage sprang into the auditorium, then was cut off by the rushing curtain.

The lights went on and Erick went downstairs, listening to the comments of the people as they went out of the auditorium.

Sally hugged him. “Wasn’t it wonderful!” she exulted.

“Terrific!”

They embraced. Then they stood in a big circle on stage and held hands with the rest of the cast. He grinned at Lynn and Lynn smiled a little, nodded to Sally. They all started to sing, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot.” Their voices swelled up to the high stage ceiling. They all rocked gently on their feet, their eyes smiling at each other. Erick looked at them all. It was a moment of utter nostalgia, he thought. Closing of the show. All the separate components blended together now to become separated again. Sets to be scrapped, stage swept away of all the familiar magic. Then, the show forgotten, the rush of studies for final exams.

And Sally was with him. He looked at her. He was singing to her and she to him — “We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.”

Everyone cheered. Hands were released, the spell broken. Everyone lingered a moment. Then the strands parted. The stage manager called for the set to be struck. And someone shouted, “Party at the Golden Campus!”

“It’s all over,” he said to Sally.

She pressed against him. “There’ll be others,” she said. Over her shoulder he noticed Lynn standing nearby as if waiting to speak.

“You want to see me, Lynn?” he asked.

Lynn shook his head once and turned away. “No,” his voice came briefly in the swell of other voices. Lynn walked off stage, taking out a cigarette.

* * * *

They all clomped down the narrow squeaky stairway into the Golden Campus. A pall of cigarette smoke hung just below the ceiling. The dance floor was filled with sitting couples who were watching a small combination perform on the low platform. Shivery clarinet notes fluttered in the air like the sound of idiots laughing. The pianist beat out a tinny rhythm while the bass man plucked wildly at his strings.

“What’s going on?” Erick asked, squinting.

“A jam session,” Sally said, “Didn’t you ever see one here before?”

“No,” he said, “Did you?”

“Sure, lots of times.” He felt himself draw away from her a moment. Then he went back. “Oh,” he said.

They went back to the big table that had been reserved and everybody all sat down at it. The show’s business manager brought armfulls of quart beer bottles from the counter. Excited hands shot out and plucked them from his grasp. He bottles skidded over the streaked table and glasses filled up with the dark malty liquid. The thin music cut like a knife through the cloud of chatter, laughter and smoke.

“You want beer?” Erick asked.

“What?”

“I said, do you want beer?”

“If you do.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I’ll have what you have.”

“What?”
he asked, bending close.

“I’ll have what you have,” she said. He nodded and straightened up. He was jostled innumerable times as he moved for the counter. He had his feet stepped on, someone got the cuffs of his trousers dirty. A slight ire fanned into life. Are they kicking hell out of the building code, his mind commented.

He spilled half of one coke on his coat as he returned to the table. He cursed loudly. He put the glasses on the table. “What an ordeal,” he said.

“What?” she said. He didn’t repeat it. He took his handkerchief out and started to wipe the coke from his coat. She handed him a tissue from her handbag and he nodded his head and sat down.

“Thank you,” she said.

“What?”
He contorted his face into a grimace.

“Thank you for the coke!”

“Oh.”

The darkness was alive with arms and legs and a sea of faces. He air seemed to burst with an amalgam of cacophonous sounds.

He drank in moody silence, listening to the band. He looked around, feeling the same sense of detachment he always felt when he was down there with a girl. It was different being with a couple of men. He could relax and talk and enjoy it. But with a date, he couldn’t relax. He didn’t like it. Unconsciously he felt that any girl who came to a place like that wasn’t the kind he wanted to be with.

A hand dropped on his shoulder. Lynn leaned over him.

“The manager wants us to do a few routines from the show and a couple of the songs,” Lynn said.

“Oh?”

“Come on up,” Lynn said, “I want to introduce you.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“Go on Erick,” Sally said, smiling.

They threaded their way through the sprawled audience. When they stepped on the platform Lynn took the microphone from the band leader. Erick stood there awkwardly, watching Lynn, hoping that he wasn’t blushing. One of the female vocalists from the show stood beside him.

Lynn blew self-consciously into the microphone.

“Testing, testing,” he said. His voice blared out over the audience.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he went on, “Latter term used advisedly …” No reaction. “As the good musician has said we are members of this year’s CampuShow. We’ve been asked to present a few choice excerpts from the show which we shall proceed to do for, we hope, your entertainment.”

Erick felt a severe desire to kick Lynn in the rear for being so wordy and polite to those people. He felt himself coloring hopelessly with all of them staring up at him, seemingly at him alone. He saw several of them yawning. He saw one of the young men fall back in the lap of a girl behind and close his eyes and her pushing him up with a lap.

“First I’d like you to meet the author and the composer of the show,” Lynn said. He pointed, “Erick Linstrom and Bill Veezy.”

Erick tried to smile but he knew it was a false grimace. He saw Bill Veezy beside him take a little choppy bow. “I thank you!” Bill Veezy said.

“Boo!” shouted the drunken young man from the audience. Erick felt himself tightening and his fingers twitched at his side.

“Now,” Lynn said, “A brief comedy routine from the show by the two male leads, Al Spencer and Jack O’Brien. Take it away men!”

Lynn stepped over next to Erick. Erick felt an increasing warmth and tension in himself. He felt absolutely ridiculous standing there exposed. He knew he couldn’t have felt worse if he’d been naked. He turned to Lynn guardedly and said, “Whose bright idea was this?”

“Good publicity,” Lynn said casually.

“Shit.”

The two male voices slapped hollowly against the ceiling. The comedy fell flat, it sounded pathetic. No one seemed to be listening anyway. Erick wanted to pull the two actors away from the microphone and clout their heads together. He glanced at the audience. They were all talking it seemed. Some of them were getting up and stumbling off toward the counter or the toilet. The drunken young man stood up momentarily, accentuated a loud “Ha ha!” and then sank down again in a heap, waving his empty beer bottle.

Now Erick watched the audience intensely. He stared right back at them, his muscles knotting. He felt as if he had been turned into icy stone. All except for the pit of his stomach. Someone had ignited a fire there.

The bubbling chatter of the audience continued under the thin monotonous voices of the two men speaking his lines which once had seemed funny.

Erick turned and looked at Lynn. Lynn was staring blankly at the floor as if waiting for the end of this unfortunate incident. Erick opened and closed his hands in slow rhythm.

“Stupid bastards,” he murmured to himself. He looked at them all again. He felt a sudden overwhelming desire to have back his army rifle, to stand there with it at his hip and just pump endless rounds of hot lead into their ranks.

The thought aroused him more. He shivered and thought fiercely of them all screaming and falling dead with blood spurting out of the holes in their faces. He lost himself in the vision of killing them all.

The routine ended. And Lynn stepped to the microphone.

“That’s it,” he said, “Don’t fracture your hands now.” Erick hated him suddenly, completely.

“Hooray!” cried the drunk, waving his bottle still, “Hooray! It’s over!”

Erick tightened again. He could have chopped the man’s head off with delight. He yearned to kill someone, to wreak violence on someone. He shook with the crushing desire for revenge. He almost felt that if he let himself go at all, he would vault into the audience with an insane scream and bite and kick and tear at anyone who happened to be in his way. He never felt as close to insanity as then with all those white raucous faces mocking his work. He felt his lips trembling and then he almost cried as he fought to stop the trembling and then he almost cried as he fought to stop the trembling. A sob filled his throat which no one heard because of the noise.

“And now,” Lynn said, still poised, still detached, “While you wipe the tears of laughter from your bloodshot eyes, Gloria Leads will do a popular blues number from the play. Play Bill,” he finished up with an airy wave of the hand.

Bill stated to play. Erick could hardly hear it. Bill played louder. The tinny resonance of the piano annoyed Erick. One of the notes didn’t play. The dead thudding irritated him more.

Gloria stood in front of the microphone in a low cut evening gown. The men howled. One of them whistled shrilly with two wet fingers shoved in his mouth.

“Sing to me baby!” yelled the young man with the bottle, “Sing me a lullaby.”

“Oh, you kid!”

Her thin voice was lost in the noise.

Suddenly Erick found himself lurching forward in a blind rage. He stepped off the stage not caring who saw him. He hoped almost desperately that someone would try to stop him. He yearned to commit violence. He pushed rudely through the seated ranks. He stepped on someone’s hand and felt pleasure in the “
Watch it
for Christ’s sake!” that exploded in his ears.

“Drop dead!” he snarled over his shoulder and heard Gloria’s voice barely coming through the microphone.

Sally looked up as he leaned over stiffly.

“I’m going,” he said tensely, “You can come with me or stay.”

She looked surprised. Her eyes studied him curiously. He straightened up and turned away quickly and pushed through the crowd. He didn’t look back at her, at anyone. He wanted to get away, to escape. He jumped up the steep narrow staircase furiously.

The cool evening air bathed over him as he stepped onto the sidewalk. He stood by the curb staring at the street and breathing deeply, trying to get rid of the tight feeling of hate. His chest heaved and jerked with uncontrolled breaths.

Then she stood beside him.

They started to walk. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t speak, she didn’t touch him.

“Lousy air in there!” he said bitterly.

She made a slight undefinable sound. He kept looking ahead, still breathing heavily.

“You
didn’t have to leave,” he said angrily to her.

“I wouldn’t stay without you,” she said quietly. It made him angry. She’s weak! he thought. It was only a little after that he realized that nothing would have please him them, agreement or disagreement.

They walked a block without speaking, Erick moving in choppy erratic strides, constantly looking around, up, down, as if searching for an avenue of escape which would lead him to freedom from all dismay.

Finally he felt her hand take his arm and he looked at her.

She was staring at him as if she couldn’t understand him at all. It was the same look he’d seen on her face the first time he’d met her.

“Don’t be angry with me,” she said.

He twisted. “I’m not angry with
you!
For Christ’s sake you know that! It’s that stupid bunch of idiots down there! By Christ it may be wrong to say I’m superior to anyone but by
Christ
, I
am
superior to them!”

His teeth clenched. He almost hissed the words, spit them out, “Their stupidity, their moronic shouts and grunts. I could have killed them all! By God I could have killed every stupid son of a bitch in the pile!”

“I love you,” she said.

He felt as if he’d been struck. He stopped suddenly, stared at her, dumbfounded.

His face was blank. Everything vicious and twisted and bitter drained from it in a bewildering instant. He stared at her, unable to believe his ears, unable to appraise the sense of complete cleansing he felt at her simple words.

Then he sighed.

“Oh, Sally,” he said and his smile was a hopeless one.

He put his arm around her shoulders gently.

“I’m sorry I spoiled your party,” he said, “The party, everything. I’m sorry.”

He felt absolutely contrite for the first time he could remember in years.

“I understand,” she said.

He wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to talk, to explain.