Hunger and Thirst (59 page)

Absurd.

He rested his head on her shoulder and stared dizzy at the floor. She was motionless. When I think of the tensions in this room, he thought, of the currents tearing at the planks, it makes me shudder. And that’s how it is everywhere, he expanded briefly, talk going on, giddy masquerades held in huge ballrooms surrounded by abysmal murk. Vast pretenses. Spots of artificial light in the ocean of night. Man.

He drew back his arm when the front door opened and Leo came in. She seemed to waver in the doorway.

“Well hello kiddies,” she said, “did I interrupt anything?”

Sally got up. “Want a drink?” she asked.

Leo pursed her thin lips. “Well, I just might,” she said. She drew off her jacket so that her slight breasts pointed through the tight yellow sweater. She saw Erick look at them.

“Pretty?” she said, a smile beginning on her face.

“Yup,” he said, “Nice music.”

In the kitchen Sally ran water from the sink. Leo sat down and crossed her legs.

“Where you been?” he asked.

“Beer drinking,” she said, “In dark booths.”

“Dark booths.”

“Confessionals with beer,” she said.

He snickered. “That’s good,” he said. Sally came in and gave Leo a drink. Leo sipped. “Whiskey on beer,” she recited, “curls up your hair.”

Sally sat down and started talking to Leo about Felix. Erick sat slumped pretending to read a book of poetry he’d picked up off the coffee table. Once he thought he noticed Leo nod her head in his direction as if to say—What’s with him?

After a while he got up and weaved his way into the bathroom. He stood there dizzily, listening to Leo’s voice in the living room, her sharp laughter.

When he came back and sat down he noticed that he’d forgotten to zip shut his pants. A bolt of shock ran through him. My God, he thought, bemused, I’m under the influence, I am no longer accountable. Time for rape, his mind suggested. His mind thrust it aside.

“Well, I have to hit it,” Leo said, after a while.

“It’s only eleven thirty,” Sally said.

Leo shrugged and went to bed anyway. Sally got up and went into the bathroom.

When she sat down Erick started to read to her. It was the first time in his life he’d ever read to anyone. He wondered how he sounded but it didn’t matter too much. Was it a silly voice, an empty voice, a drunken voice? Goodbye plan, he decided.

And felt what amounted to relief.

Suddenly he banged the book shut and pressed his face into her shoulder.

“Why can’t it always be like that night?” he begged. In his mind he said, How will this affect her, what will be her reaction to this calculated skein of syllabic effect?

He felt her body tighten.

“I don’t think the furniture can stand it,” she said. He felt a tear in his eye.

Then she sighed. “It could have been,” she said. Vacillating thing! His mind insulted her.

“It could have been if I was human,” he said, clutching at the opportunity in spite of his mind, “If only I’d admit to myself what I know is true. That I love you.”

“You don’t love me.”

“Yes,” he said, rolling his face on her shoulder, feeling the warm flesh against his cheeks, “I do. I want to say it. I
do
love you. I love you! See? It’s easy to say. It’s been eating at me since we met. I have to say it. I won’t back down. It isn’t lack of love that keeps us apart. It’s what you called … art. Well, it’s more than just art. It’s life for me. I couldn’t give up my life could I?

He moved his face down and pressed it against the warm swell of her breasts. She began to caress his hair gently, without excitement.

“I love you Sally,” he said.

She didn’t answer.

“Please don’t think that’s the babbling of a drunken author,” he said.

She didn’t say anything. And he kissed the white tops of her breasts with a feeling of sacred love for them, for her. He rested his brow against them.

What are you really?” he asked, “What do you really think? I don’t know, do I?”

“No,” she said, “You don’t, Erick.”

“No.”

“You know only what I’ve wanted you to know,” she said.

“Oh,” he said. He put his legs up on the couch and rested his head back in her lap. He turned his face into her breasts.

“Don’t, Erick,” she said quietly.

He stared at the ceiling, feeling the heat of her legs through the skirt.

“What’s it all about Sally?” he asked, “Here I am and here you are, two spots in immensity. Why are we together and why should it last or end? There must be a purpose to it. Or else this life is such a terrible waste of time.”

She sighed. Her fingers brushed back his hair. He looked up at her.

“Sally.”

“Yes.”

“Would you kiss me Sally? Please.”

Their eyes held for a long moment. He felt that every second of their past together was flickering in that gaze. That they were searching for some answer. Their eyes never moved.

Then her face seemed to float down. It came closer and closer and more and more of the room and the world disappeared in the shadow of her. Her full soft lips were almost on his, his mouth trembled. He could feel and smell her breath on his mouth.

She rested her lips on his.

Her head was motionless. She just rested there without even breathing as though she meant to stay there. And he thought—I saw my mother kiss my father like that. When he was lying dead in his coffin. It was for goodbye.

But her lips were warm and he was alive. He reached up suddenly and plunged his fingers into her silky brown hair, fastening his fingers on her skull. He stretched his body taut to let every bit of the sensation run through him.

She straightened up and he took his hands away. Her breasts pressed against her sheer blouse. He pushed his face against them and kissed the blouse over them. She held his head in tense fingers and pushed him into them.

“Oh, Erick, Erick, Erick,” she sobbed.

Then it was over as suddenly as it had come. She relaxed her grip and he was looking at the ceiling again.

“I planned to seduce you tonight,” he said.

She was silent. He looked at her. She was smiling down at him, amused.

“I really had it planned to the last detail,” he said, trying to sound amused himself, “I only forgot one thing. Me.”

“And me,” she said.

“And you,” he admitted, “I forgot you no longer love me enough to forget yourself.”

“A woman never forgets herself, Erick,” she said.

He swallowed. “You mean there’s always something practical in it?” he said, trying to sound casually amused still.

“That’s right,” she said.

He was a shifting mass of emotion. He suddenly felt cold and resentful. From worship for her he now felt distaste, alien regard. He felt ridiculous in her eyes. And knew, in tight anger, that she was a woman and he was a boy. And felt as if a disgusting secret of the ages had been revealed to him.

“I wouldn’t do it unless the man married me,” she said.

“You mean you’d do it with anyone who said they’d marry you?”

She took a deep breath. She didn’t answer.

“And what about last summer? And what about before last Christmas?” he said like a hurt juvenile looking for revenge, any kind of revenge.

“I thought you’d marry me, of course.”

“You never thought that,” he said coldly.

Her fingers left his hair. She shifted uneasily. “You’re kind of heavy,” she said.

He sat up and leaned back against the couch, extending his long legs onto the floor.

“So, it’s all a game, eh?” he said lightly.

“All a game.”

“And you won’t let me seduce you?”

“What do you think?”

He reached out and picked up his glass. “I think we’ve wasted a lot of time,” he said.

She didn’t reply. He felt nervous. He tried to tone down his last words. “Well, at least I don’t mind,” he said, “As long as I know no one else can seduce you either.”

“You don’t.”

“Oh come on Sally, we’re not that far apart.”

She got up and turned off the record player. She stood there stiffly.

“Could it ever have been?” he asked.

She didn’t turn to face him.

“That’s a funny question,” she said and he saw her shoulders shake a little. He pushed up then, thoughts crowding through his brain, pushing one past the other like people in a rushing mob. He felt sick with loss.

“Sally,” he said.

“You’d better go,” she said.

He went over quickly and put his hands on her shoulders. She twisted away and he stood watching her hurry from the room. He heard her heels on the floor, heard the springs of her bed as she fell across it. He hoped Leo was asleep.

He went into her room. In the dark he could hear her crying. He sat down on her bed. She kept crying. He reached out for her shoulder, touched her upper leg. He pulled his hand away and reached for her shoulder. Life seemed to be flooding away from him. He felt as though he were trying to reach down his hands an catch hold of a stream and stop it in its path, keep it from rushing away from him.

“Please don’t cry Sally,” he said, “it makes me unhappy.”

“I’m sorry … if it does. Y-you can’t always be happy, if y-you want to be with o-other people,” she said, her shaking voice muffled against the pillow.

He turned her over and without a word took her in his arms. She did nothing. He held her close and stroked her hair gently.

“Sally,” he said, “I do love you. I hate to see you unhappy. Why does love always make people unhappy? I want you to be happy. If …”

She was silent.

“Sally?”

“W-what?”

“Nothing. I just thought you were asleep.”

“No.”

“All right.”

“You’d better go,” she said.

“I don’t want to leave you like this.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He sat there a long moment, indecisive. He almost asked her to marry him. Then he knew he didn’t want to marry her. So he kissed her forehead and put her back on the pillow and stood up. He listened to her uneven breathing in the darkness and found himself swaying back and forth in the darkness as if waiting for something to happen.

Then he spoke trying desperately for some magic phrase that would end all irresolution and make things happy again.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “Sorry for whatever I’ve done to hurt you. Believe me I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Then he turned and went silently out of the room. He put his coat on, and started for the door.

He heard a whispering sound and turned. She was standing in the dark dining room, her face white and very serious.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“It’s late,” he said, “I’d better.”

She stood before him as he pulled his knit gloves on. Then she opened the door and dutifully held up her cheek as he bent over to kiss it. He wanted to stay. He turned away and walked out saying, “Good night Sally.”

She said, “Goodbye.”

When he was halfway to the corner, the cold air washing over him, he realized what she’d said. And wondered if she meant it. Wondered if the cord had been cut after so long a weaving. The simile made him smile for a moment grimly. Maybe it was that all along.

After a while he got tired of waiting on the corner for the bus and walked the long way home.

* * * *

He hadn’t meant to go to her dance recital. It had been almost two months since he’d seen her.

But Lynn was taking a course in aesthetics and was required to attend it. He asked Erick to go with him. And Erick thought it would be all right. He know very well she’d be in it. But he pretended not to think about it.

As they went into the oven-hot gym, the striking difference in weather between this night and the last one he’d seen her impressed itself on Erick. He felt heat oozing through the gathering crowd. He kept wiping his face and neck and arms. In a few minutes his handkerchief was soaked.

When the lights went out he put on his glasses. Sweat kept dripping off his eyebrows across the lenses. He kept wiping them off but they kept blurring. Most of the time he seemed to be watching the dancers through a mist.

He saw Melissa. She was in a chorus number. She wore a tight blue leotard and did little arm and leg movements. She looked very graceful. When he turned away from her he felt no sorrow. He felt nothing. Her face was the face of a status.

Then Sally came on for a solo.

His eyes never left her. He forgot the heat. Sweat ran unheeded over his face. A tom tom beat filled his ears.

Under the glaring lights she leaped around like some pagan indulging in a frenetic rite. The audience was the silent watchers, the judgers. They were other members of the tribe squatting naked on the forest floor and watching her, their dark eyes glittering hungrily in the firelight.

She was wearing the tightest costume he’d ever seen on her. It was more like a dark skin. Every line of her body was revealed. He drank in the sight of her. It was like a hot summer dream weaving in the sweltering darkness, the only focal point her leaping on the floor.

She was beautiful. She had improved wonderfully since the recital the year before. She was vibrant and quick, it seemed she hardly touched the floor. Her long legs stretched out, twisted as she flew through the air.

Then, suddenly, she was on the floor, writhing in sinuous rhythm. He felt his heart beat faster, his breath caught, his throat moved. One of her legs lifted in an arched powerful motion. He was not conscious of the small, almost frightened sound he made. The muscles in her thighs and calves stood out like white sheathed serpents. He swallowed again, thirstily. She was an animal, a magnificent animal. He had never seen it before or, if he had seen it, would not look. That she was an animal, yes, too often. That she was magnificent, never. And now it was too late. The thought tortured him.

He stared at her. He had her dancing naked. She was bent back with tense gracefulness, her strong uptilting breasts arcing with her body, every line in tune with the rhythm.

Then, in languor, she swirled slowly around the wooden floor, her bare feet making tiny squeaking sounds on the boards. Her long brown hair tossed lightly as she left the floor in a silent leap and landed, catlike and sure. She turned slowly and moved her body snakelike, writhing her shoulder sensuously. He felt his stomach muscles tremble.