Strange Sisters (5 page)

"Big night?" he said.

She looked at him coldly, quickly. "I beg your pardon."

He grinned. "All the coffee. No food. I figured you must be trying to work one off."

"I don't know what you mean."

"No? Okay, if that's the way you want it. You take my word for it, though, there's nothing like a good old Seltzer. You like to try one?"

"No, thank you."

"Don't be like that, sweetheart. I'll make it on the house. Don't be like that."

"Let me alone. For God's sake, let me alone."

His vanity bled in his face, changing it to a dull, ugly red, and his mouth sagged in an expression of angry sullenness. "Sure, lady. Pardon me for living. Pardon me all to hell."

He moved off behind the counter, but his words had shattered her defenses against the past. Don't be like that, he'd said. That silly expression. Someone else had said it to her a long time ago, and its repetition now cued the recollection of an experience she did not want to remember.

Christ!
she thought.
Kenny Renowski!

And now that she had remembered, it seemed to her that there was even a subtle physical similarity between Kenny and the counterman. Kenny was younger, of course, at the time she remembered him, and his hair was darker, and he wasn't so tall, and maybe he was a little better looking, though she was a poor judge of that, but there was something common to both of them, and she decided it was the silly arrogance, the nasty little bloated ego that could be heard in the voice and seen in the eyes and in the way the head was carried.

Where was Kenny now, she wondered. In what dull town, working at what dull job, married to what dull, impossible girl? Probably the same old town. Probably doing one of the petty, dreary jobs that seemed to be, for some obscure reason, essential to the existence of people in a town like that. Probably married to one of the girls she used to know when she was there.

Jesus, how she had despised him. Him and all the other strutting, revolting little cocks so proud of their fuzzy masculinity, just beginning to be conscious of the weight of their genitals between their legs. And the girls had been no better, for that matter. They were just as bad with their secret little yens, their secret little knowledge, their frightened, frantic attempts to give a nauseating spirituality to what was no more than an ache in the groin. Oh, Jesus, what a relief it was to get away from them after each horrible day of school and get back to the beautiful, exciting company of Stella. To return each day from their gray fringe existence to the clean and shining center that was Stella.

But it hadn't been that bad at first. At first it was actually almost all right, because then, in the early years, it was right and normal for like to prefer like. But then, later, one somehow crossed an intangible demarcation line, and once you were across it, it was no longer normal for like to prefer like, but it became necessary and normal for like to prefer unlike, and what had been normal back on the other side of the line now became abnormal, and if you didn't make the change at the time it was supposed to be made, you were in a hell of a fix. You were left, as she had been, with a growing sense of detachment and loneliness in a kind of emotional isolation resulting from the blurred perception of your own oddness. And, it would have been worse than it was, worse than it was later to become, if it hadn't been for the great compensating constant of Stella. Stella was the poetess-priestess of an island sanctuary, and if there were imperfections in her role of Sappho, there were also subtle mechanisms of the mind to reject recognition of them.

The men, for instance. God, the constant flow of panting men! Even they had been reduced by the devious mind to fantasy figures without body or place in the real scheme of things. One could even ignore, thanks to the adroit mind, Stella's imperception, her insensitivity to the true character of the relationship of which she was part—her pretty, inept confusion when she tried, on rare occasions, to understand Kathy's failure to display the orthodox signs of transformation beyond the intangible demarcation line.

"Kathy," she'd said, "why is it you never go places like the other girls? You're much prettier than any of them."

"But I do, Stella. I go lots of places."

"Please don't be obtuse, darling. You know what I mean. Why don't you go out with a nice boy once in a while? You're old enough now. It would be good for you."

"I'm not interested in boys, Stella."

"Well, that's the point. You
ought
to be interested in boys. And I happen to know that there are a great many boys who are interested in
you.
It isn't that you don't have opportunities. Look, darling. It isn't natural for a pretty girl to be alone all the time. Will you please tell me why you have no interest in boys?"

And Kathy's heart cried out in silence,
Oh, Stella, can't you see that I'm not alone at all? Can't you see that I can't be alone while I'm with
you,
and that I'm with you every minute of my life, because even when we're physically apart I'm still with you in my mind, and that I can never be alone so long as you are here to touch or to think about? Oh, Stella, Stella, sweet shining Stella, can't you see anything or understand anything or share with me just a little this feeling that I have?

But all she'd said was, "I don't know, Stella. I'm just not
interested."

Then Stella had shrugged and laughed and looked prettily frustrated, because naturally she had this intimation that everything was not quite as it should have been, but she never
knew,
never actually
knew,
and it was fantastic, looking back, that she could sense this thing but never actually recognize it until it was much too late.

Kenny. Kenny Renowski. What right did he have to come filtering back after all this time from the dark and distant March day when he had been fixed for her as the symbol of a constant threat and, even more disturbing, of self-revelation? The March day of the wet, gray early spring when she had disposed of him once and for all, and had consigned him, she had hoped, to the oblivion of total repression. Damn him to hell, what right did he have to return from the dead by tenuous association with a cheap little drug store clerk to molest her now, at this precarious time, when she was poised on the verge of destruction and needed all her faculties for present trouble?

He had been one of the facile boys. One of the complacent and arrogant little aristocrats of adolescence that rise like cream—or scum, as she thought of them—to the surface of the human volume of every high school. She had been pretty, and he had been, of course, irresistible. Or so he had considered himself, and in the beginning it had been fun. It had been great fun to watch his obvious advances against her indifference, to follow with a mild sadistic pleasure the progressive stages of his incredulity and disintegration as he found the indifference to be impregnable. Oh, Christ, it was really funny! A lonely, withdrawn girl of no position, however pretty, totally unimpressed by his attention! It was really quite impossible. It wasn't supposed to be that way at all. She was supposed to melt, to submit, to acknowledge his charm with appropriate concessions. She was supposed to wet herself with joy. And it was fine fun for a while, before the fun was killed, to watch the formula of conquest reverse itself. To see him debased by a green and sappy passion. To see him watching her in revolting humility, groveling inwardly, pleading with dog's eyes.

She wondered how far she should permit the ridiculous business to go, and she decided that the limit should be imposed by her own stomach. So long, that is, as her perverse pleasure in his silly suffering was a larger factor than her revulsion. So she let it develop to its natural climax, and in the end it was she who suffered more. It was she who finally confronted for the first time, thanks to the catalyst of his fumbling aggression, a reality far more disturbing than a temporary glandular frustration.

He had fallen into the practice of standing on a certain corner to watch her pass on her way home from school. She never looked at him directly, but she was acutely aware of him, and she relished the sharp turmoil of emotions his presence aroused—the confusion of contempt and curiosity and genuine animus. He worked so hard to achieve a studied casualness, as if it were the purest coincidence that he just happened to be at that spot evening after evening at the very time she would be passing it. And finally, as she had known he would, he made a move.

It was this wet gray day in March with water dripping from the branches of trees and standing in little puddles on the sidewalk and in the street. In the air there was the lift, the raw promise, the damned lie of spring, and as she passed with a load of books under her arm, he fell in beside her and said, "Hello, Kathy."

She increased the cadence of her steps a bit. "Hello," she said.

"Let me carry your books, Kathy."

She felt his hands on them, and she clamped them more I tightly against her side. "No, thanks. I can carry them."

"Oh, come on, Kathy. Don't be like that."

He tugged at the books, and rather than make a foolish issue of it, she released them suddenly.

"Oh, well. Go ahead and carry them if you want to."

She could sense at once the subtle change in his personality. Already, with such a nominal concession, his bruised ego began to recover, to reorganize itself along a line of dominance. She caught in the corner of her eye the change in his expression, the quick little lift of his chin, and her contempt for him swelled within her, assuming the proportions of exorbitant mockery. She speculated on the extent of his consternation if there were all of a sudden a contact of mental telepathy between them, and the thought prompted in her a wild urge to hilarious laughter.

"You're a funny girl, Kathy," he said. "Am I?"

"What I mean is, you don't seem to mix much. Sometimes it seems as if you just don't like anyone."

"Maybe I don't."

"Not even me?"

"Why should I make an exception of you?"

"I don't know. Anyhow, I like you. I think you're the prettiest girl in school."

"Do you?"

"I just said so, didn't I? Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Not particularly."

"You see what I mean? Why can't you be nice to a guy?"

"If you don't like the way I am, you can give me my books and leave. Nobody's holding you here."

Again from the corner of her eye, she saw the impact of her words on his ego, the swift collapse of the slight bloat that had developed as a result of his obtaining her books.

He said quickly, "Let's go over to Tinker's for a coke. Would you like a coke, Kathy?"

"No."

"Oh, come on. Give a guy a break, can't you?"

"Why should I?"

"Well, damn it, just to see what it's like. You could just try it once."

She hesitated. She was tempted to concede again, and she didn't quite know why. Not, God knew, because she anticipated any pleasure from it. Except, perhaps, the pleasure of extending her manipulation of his emotions a little longer, of seeing him humbled and debased in the silly pursuit of something he'd never get. Of something that didn't even exist, although there was no possible way for him to understand that. She herself hardly understood it yet.

"All right," she said. "If you want to buy me a coke, I guess I can drink it."

So they turned at the next corner and went down to Tinker's. It was a small clapboard building with a flat roof. Inside, there were plywood booths around three walls, the fourth wall being reserved for the counter. There were stationary stools before the counter and a few tables with chairs scattered in the central area. There was also a garish juke-box of many colors with golden bubbles rising soundlessly through visible tubes. There was always a spinning platter, an amplified voice or the overwhelming collaboration of strings and reeds and brass and percussion, the fiat five-cent can of what passed for music. Tinker's was one of those places which, for no apparent earthly reason, catches on and hangs on and will not die. Its short orders were bad, its accommodations were inferior, its attitude was indifferent; but in spite of these things it was popular, a congregating place, and trade was brisk in dimes and quarters primarily.

Kathy sat in a booth and sipped her coke and tried to avoid looking at the face of Kenny Renowski across from her. The juke-box blared, there was a heavy smell of greasy hamburger and onions in the stagnant afar, and all around her were students she didn't like engaged in an awkward mass flirtation with a function she abhorred. She choked on her coke and set the glass unemptied on the table of the booth.

Standing, she said, "I'm leaving."

He also stood. "Already? Be a sport, Kathy, and stick around. We have lots of fun in this joint. Stick around, you'll see."

"I don't want to stick around. I want to leave. Thanks for the coke."

"Wait a minute. I’ll go with you, then."

"You don't have to come. You can stay and have some of the fun you were talking about."

"Damn it, Kathy, I said I'd come, didn't I? Why do you have to be so antagonistic about everything?"

"I'm not antagonistic. I just don't care whether you come or stay. You can suit yourself."

He took hold of her arm and said desperately, "Don't be like that, Kathy."

They were outside again by that time, and she wheeled to face him, jerking her arm furiously from the grip of his fingers.

"That's the second time you've said that. Please don't say it again." "What?"

"That silly stuff about my not being like that. I
am
like that, whatever
that
means, and if you don't like it, you can get away from me. Just get the hell away."

She turned again and began walking, and he fell into step beside her. "I didn't mean to make you sore, Kathy. It's just an expression. Would you like to take a walk?"

"A walk? Where?"

"Oh, out in the country a little way. It's a swell day for walking, don't you think? You can actually smell the earth, wet as it is, and there's a kind of feeling in the air. It would be nice outside of town today. We could walk out to West Creek and back. It isn't very far. How about it, Kathy?"