The Game Player (15 page)

His affair with Mary continued unabated for the last month and a half of the junior year and until July of the summer. In July, he went to Europe with his parents, and returned in September, tan, well dressed, and suddenly bulkier. I thought at first that the impression of instant manliness was because I connected him with Europe. But that was not so. I don't know if it's possible for there to be a subtle maturation of bones and skin in two months, but Brian left an adolescent in Paris and picked up a man's body at Kennedy Airport.

I had seen Mary a few times while he was gone. He wrote me several letters and her only one. Though I didn't tell her that, she seemed to know it instinctively and she called me up several times to ask how and where Brian was. Before the junior year had ended I had asked Miriam out on two dates but had to halt an already halting courtship because she went to camp as a counselor for the summer. So Brian's return triggered the opening gunshot of our most intense sexual race: Brian trying to be free of Mary and I hoping for captivity to Miriam.

After the first month of school, Brian's dates with Mary began to include me even if they or I had not secured a girl for me. He and I would talk happily of the future: our college boards, our high school grades, and the college courses we were taking, assured Brian of getting into the school of his father's dreams, and I had surpassed my parents' dreams just by graduating. Brian had managed, through his father, to get me into the courses he was taking at Yale and I had reason to hope, because I was editor-in-chief of both the school newspaper and literary journal, along with the fact that the
New York Times Magazine
section had published an article by me on the concerns of teen-agers, that I could overshadow my decidedly inferior science and mathematics grades and join Brian at Yale. We were full of ourselves and Mary hung on Brian's arm while we dragged her up and down Greenwich Village on weekends.

My notoriety from the article immediately brought me opportunities to free myself of my virginity, largely because (as Brian pointed out) my discussion of adolescent sexuality implied we were all on the verge of parenthood. Though that made Miriam's mother less willing to hand the phone over to her when I called, Miriam seemed more eager to pick it up. She accompanied me to Brian's house for the cast party after the opening of our Fall Production.

It was held in the furnished basement, a huge, carpeted game room complete with pool table, pinball machines (Mr. Stoppard was a collector), and a lavish buffet that had a special distinction: liquor. The Stoppards welcomed us, said they were going to sleep shortly, and left. When the door closed behind them Miriam turned to me. “Amazing,” she said, her eyes at their bluest from the addition of eyeliner and other touches of beautification that were unusual with her.

Brian, gorgeous in his black pants and black cashmere sweater, said, “Why, Miriam, darling, what's amazing?”

“They're going to let us alone all night?”

Brian's face was flushed from his performance and against the black of his outfit he looked Shakespearean. “My parents,” he began, but then stopped when he thought of something. He raised his hands in the air and clapped until there was silence. “I should make this clear to everybody,” he said in a loud voice to the whole crowd. “My father is a nut about noise.” People looked appalled and someone went over to the record player to lower it. Brian watched with a smile and, when the record volume was reduced to tinkling, he continued. “So he had, at a cost of, oh, I don't know how many thousands, every room soundproofed. If you don't believe it, turn up the record and go out. You won't hear it. He
also”—
Brian raised his voice because the jubilation over his announcement was deafening—“he also believes it's healthy for young people to drink, even to get smashed.” Brian nodded seriously at the cheers this brought. “I thought so. I knew you people didn't come to celebrate the rebirth of theater in this country.” After the laughter, he finished with, “You can all sleep here, if you don't mind cots or sleeping on gym mats. There's a phone in that room in the corner and, if you close the door, nobody will hear the noise of the party while you ask permission.”

There was chaos for at least fifteen minutes until everyone had their drinks and sandwiches, the music had been agreed upon, the pinball players and dancers had settled their territorial disagreements, the phone calls to parents had been made (many of them were tragic failures since a single no invariably affected one other person), and all the late arrivals had been escorted safely through the silent, dark upstairs to the teen-age Babylon below.

I had sat myself down with Miriam on a couch against the stairway wall with a drink, I'm ashamed to admit, I love: Bourbon and Coke. I was enjoying the honey-sweet taste and feeling my forehead compress from being high. “Why don't you call and try anyway?” I asked her.

“Because I know she'll say no,” she said in an intent whisper. “It took hours just to get her to let me stay until one.”

I rattled the ice in my drink. “Does she expect you to remain a virgin all your life?” I said this conscious of its daring; I had never mentioned sex before.

Miriam didn't react except to say, “I'm not a virgin now, Howard.”

I had been regarding her coolly and, though I felt a change in my face, it must have involved little movement, because I was frozen into a posture inappropriate to the stabbing shock I felt. My head was back on the couch, my legs crossed, my right hand holding my drink, while I rubbed off the moisture on the bottom with my left—a posture I had picked up from my father's cocktail party mannerisms. It was meant to show wit and an unflappable sophistication. I looked at her and she looked earnestly at me and inside I felt as if I had looked away, so I looked again and she still insisted on that frank return of my silent inquiry. “Bullshit,” I said without considering. I saw spit go with the release of the word.

“Howard, I didn't know that when you drink your personality changes. Do you really think I would bullshit you about it?”

I tried to uncross my legs and sit up at the same time. I did it but not without sloshing my drink. “I'm sorry.”

“You're spilling,” she said, brushing my pants leg with her hand.

I grabbed her hand. “Forget it! I want to apologize.” She looked up with a smile—a good smile of affection. “I'm sorry,” I repeated, letting her go. “I didn't mean it that way.”

“Yes, you did,” she said cheerfully. “Anyway, I shouldn't have told you like that.”

“Why not?” I asked, in a desperate attempt to recover. “We're friends. How else are you supposed to tell me?”

She plainly showed her disappointment. “Howard, please don't be mean and silly about it. We're more than friends.”

But we're not equals, I thought. Not anymore. “You're right, we are. Still that—there's no other way to tell me. It's not like you're being unfaithful.”

“It's not?”

“Well, we're not boy friend and girl friend, are we?”

She stood up and bent over, her face flushed and very close to mine. “You shit. Before you say anything else you'll regret, I just want to tell you that I hated it.” Her eyes were wide open, two blue marbles in white casing. “I hated it because I wanted it to be you.” I tried to talk, but couldn't. “I was such a fool that I actually felt guilty about it.” She walked away through a few of the dancers to the stairway entrance.

I caught up to her because she had stopped on the first step, leaning her head against the wall despairingly. “Please don't do this,” I said in a repulsive whine. “Just because of two minutes of acting like a fool, don't kill me. Please. I'm sorry.” She hadn't moved until I blurted this; her eyes were red and it was a moment before I realized she was almost crying. “I was—” I quickly glanced around to make sure there was no one in earshot, which there wasn't, but I saw Brian looking at us from across the room. “I was jealous. I love you.” This brought her eyes around to mine. Tears had begun in earnest. “Can I kiss you?” I asked.

She laughed feebly and that, with the tears, made her look clownish. She suddenly grabbed me by the neck with her left hand and pulled me toward her, saying, “Don't ask.”

After a slightly salty kiss, she leaned against me and asked if she looked like she'd been crying, which made me burst into laughter. She hit me playfully and said we should go outside. We spent the hour or so that she had before her mother's curfew necking on Brian's front step, while I got to feel her small pretty breasts and strong, narrow waist, with the fall wind whipping the tall maples around us, the rush of the leaves sounding like a paper ocean.

Before I opened the heavy door to the basement, I relished the diminishing ache of maintaining an erection for an hour, and felt a strength and lightness of spirit that was totally new. I was amused, while I walked down the stairs, at the thought that sex meant so much, when I realized it was probably love that had refreshed me.

The dancing had stopped, though the music was still blasting, but the game playing seemed to have increased; four or five people had crowded around each of the four machines. Couples had turned out the lights at the other end of the basement and were sitting on the floor, some of them necking heatedly and shamelessly. The table of drinks and food that stood between these two factions was disorganized, every bottle broken into, every stack of meat halved and disheveled. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard Brian call to me, “My God, I thought you'd deserted us for the whole night.”

On the periphery some people glanced at me. I hurried over to the pinball machine Brian had called from. “Be quiet. Everybody seems to be asleep over there.” I nodded towards the couples.

“The sleep of reason,” Brian said. Mary was at his side and he put a hand on her left breast and slowly moved down its length, saying, “This causes it.” It was a tantalizing movement, so hypnotic that its barbarism was obscured.

“Brian!” She jumped away and I came to with the bewilderment of someone dreaming. Had it happened?

Brian ignored our reactions. “Were you two fucking?” he asked me.

“Are you drunk?” I asked. His eyes were glazed, but only slightly. I looked at Mary and she seemed stunned.

“Yes and no,” Brian said with a frown. “Answer my question. Were you and Miriam doing it up there?” His tone was not hostile. He seemed genuinely curious. “I have to know.” He nodded towards Mary. “We were talking about it. The bitch doesn't think Jews can do it.”

One of the two people by the pinball machine gasped and I felt the general uneasiness from the other players. I was neither scared nor upset, just puzzled. Was he freaking out or had he calculated this? Mary had said, “Howard, he's crazy.” And she misinterpreted my silence for belief, because she then shrieked, “It's not what I said, Brian! Tell him it's not what I said!”

Brian looked at her, unruffled, smiling, and spoke with his voice in a nasal drawl. “My dear, don't you realize that that is a confession you've said something like it?” He turned to me with a look of, Isn't she silly?

“Mary,” I said. “I don't believe it. Don't worry. I wouldn't care anyway.”

One of Mary's good friends had reached her side. Mary's shoulders were tensed so that she looked as if she were chilled and trying to hide from an icy wind.

“Anyway,” Brian said, in the relaxed tone of a person suffering from boredom, “you were right, Howard. She's an insufferable snob.”

I had expected something like that, for Brian is nothing if not logical, so I said quickly and lightly, “Well, I'll wait till this blows over. And I advise you to do the same, Mary. Eventually he'll say what it's all about.” I walked away to the pool table but I wheeled about when I heard the scream.

Not a hysterical, almost funny, horror movie scream, but a scream of anguish and dread that yanked the thirty or so people in the room from their lives and into Mary's. There were cries of, “What?” and Mary's friend, holding her to prevent her from keeling over, yelled at Brian that he was a bastard. Suddenly Stoppard looked very drunk, his feet spread out oddly as if to balance himself, his face quizzical, his mouth stupidly open. And I heard someone note it with the surprise it merited; none of them had seen him out of control.

The explanation that he was drunk settled everyone's nerves and Mary, shaking with sobs, was taken out by her friend and escort to be driven home. Brian's drink was taken from him and a very pretty girl named Sandy asked him if he wanted to lie down or needed coffee.

“‘That's a fair thought,'” he quoted. “‘To lie between a maid's legs.'”

“Boy, acting turns him into a real nut,” someone said. And there were a few more jokes made, everyone slowly returning to their games and lovemaking. I sat down in a chair next to the pool table and watched Brian loll in Sandy's arms while she helped him over to the couch on which Miriam and I had quarreled. Once there, she left to get him coffee from the huge caterer's urn on the table. He waved to me with a foolish grin on his face and I nodded before turning to watch the pool game. In a few minutes it ended and I played the winner. I looked over at the couch from time to time and saw Brian and Sandy sitting close together, Brian talking quietly, often with his eyes closed. Sandy would laugh mildly and then listen seriously to what appeared to be a long story.

I lost track of them during a particularly intense stretch of the game and when it ended I found that they had disappeared. The music had been allowed to end without a new record being selected and our numbers seemed to have diminished, only two of the pinball machines now in use, more of the lights turned off, some of the gym mats having been moved off the wall to the floor, and some of the neckers now asleep in each other's arms under blankets.