What’s Happening? (28 page)

“You rotten, … rotten …,” she blurted, gasping for breath.

“I know, so are you.” He embraced her and pulled her down on the blanket.

They lay on the blanket laughing, holding each other. Marc took her head between his hands and kissed her.

“Marc, baby, it's so great, just so great.”

“I know.” He kissed her forehead. “I'm very pleased with you … by you … at you … just pleased and very happy.” His hand stroked her hair. He suddenly squeezed her tightly, happily.

“When we first met I dug you the end,” Rita explained, “but I never thought we'd be together as long as this, or as much as this, or as nice as this. You make everything seem great, grand.”

She kissed the tip of his nose. Marc laughed and hugged her tightly. She kissed his mouth full, her arms encircling him tightly.

They lay on the blanket quietly, just enjoying the warmth of their embrace for a long time, as the warmth and the sound of the surf lulled their souls.

Marc squinted down the curving expanse of beach. The sun was low in the western sky. Only a few dark figures remained on the beach.

“It's time to get going, baby. We want to get home in time to eat and then to the show.”

“I wish we could stay here forever.”

“We shall stay here forever. In our memories, in time, this moment shall never die—it exists.”

“Can we come here again?”

“We'll come back again. Maybe tomorrow—if I don't get stuck in school.” He took a cigarette out of the pack, lit it, and sucked some smoke into his lungs. “Well, let's get started,” he said in a strained way as he pushed himself up to a standing position.

He reached his hand down, took Rita's hand, and pulled her to her feet. They picked up their gear and started toward the car through the warm sand that sank beneath their feet.

19

The lowering sun blazed a brilliant, blinding, reddish gold directly through the windshield, making driving near impossible. Marc spoke little, concentrating on overcoming sunset's glare.

“I'm glad we got the radio fixed,” Rita remarked, humming soft harmony to the tune drifting through the car.

“Uh humm …”

“I really like to listen to music while we're driving, don't you?”

“What?”

Marc had been conscious only of the road ahead; his concentration was instantly reabsorbed by the road.

“I said I like to listen to music while we're driving.”

“Will you stop bugging me, for Christ's sake!” He didn't turn from the road. “I have to drive and I can't concentrate and listen to you.”

Rita recoiled instantly.

“… and shut the God damn thing off.” Marc snapped the radio off. “How the hell can I drive with this sun, and you, and the radio?”

Rita brooded silently, peering through the side window at the houses which lined the highway, foliage entwined about their steps, bathed in the evening sun. She gazed absently at the other cars alongside of which they drove, passing each in turn.

“Wow … this sun is blinding,” Marc said abstractly, pulling the sun visor down.

Rita remained silent. Though well initiated to Marc's inexplicable outbursts of temper and anger, she was not impervious to their sting. She spoke not another word until they reached New York—which to New Yorkers is Manhattan.

The city was hot and close with humidity even though the sun was setting behind the buildings. Rita and Marc began to perspire, their clothes beginning to cling uncomfortably. Marc pulled alongside a parked car and backed into a parking space.

“Wheww … I'm sure glad to be home. I'm tired,” he exclaimed, turning off the ignition. “I wish the hell we were still at that cool beach.”

Rita ignored him, hastily gathering her belongings from the back seat. She opened the car door and started angrily toward the apartment.

Marc remained in the car for a moment, watching her stride toward the building. He knew from her rapid, determined walk that she was still angry. Her face was set and she was probably cursing him.

“Hey, wait for me,” he called, jumping from the car.

Rita continued into the building, ignoring him completely.

Marc locked the car, ran to the building, and started up the stairs. He heard a door slam shut on a landing above as he ran up the steps.
She is a fiery one
, he thought, laughing to himself.

“What the hell are you so mad about?” he asked innocently as he closed the apartment door behind him.

Rita walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. She began changing out of her swimsuit, which she had worn home under a sweater and jeans. She reopened the door and came out of the bedroom clad in her bathrobe. Without looking at Marc, she marched straight toward the bathroom.

Marc put down the glass of beer he had poured for himself. “Hey, come on now.” He sprang from his chair and caught Rita by the arm as she stormed past him. “Come on, don't be so angry. I didn't mean to be curt with you. It was the sun and all.”

“That's no excuse to talk to me the way you did,” she said, refusing to look at him, trying to loose his grip.

“Aww, come on now … I'm sorry.”

“That's just the trouble, you're always sorry. And the next time you'll do it again. I'm tired of being spoken to like I were your little servant girl.”

“I didn't talk to you like you were my servant girl, baby. The sun …”

“The sun, the sun … I suppose the sun
made
you talk like that, hanh?” She tugged desperately, trying to pry Marc's hands from her wrists.

“Can't you forget it?”

“No, no, I can't forget it. You've been taking me for granted for weeks now and I'm tired of it. You don't own me.” She succeeded in loosing Marc's grip. She bolted into the bathroom and slammed the door.

“God damn it! I said I'm sorry,” Marc shouted to the closed door.

The water of the shower started to spray down against the plastic curtains. Marc twirled about angrily and walked to the kitchen table.

“God damn women …” He emptied the beer can into his glass. He cocked his arm to crash the empty can against the wall. As he brought his arm forward, he lessened the power driving it forward and dejectedly let his arm flap at his side without releasing the can. He glanced momentarily toward the garbage pail and lobbed the can at it. It hit the lip of the pail and rebounded to the floor.

“Can't even throw the God damned garbage away right.” He lit a cigarette, took his glass of beer, and walked to the window overlooking the street. He rested his head against the window frame.

Below, someone had opened the fire hydrant. A powerful stream of water was gushing across the street. Neighborhood children danced in its cooling spray. One child ran through the spray with his dog in his arms. Smaller children in white cotton underclothes were gleefully running down the steps of the tenements across the street. When their underclothing was soaked, it clung to the pink skin of their buttocks. They were all happy and dancing in the water. One kid in the spray was fully clothed, and his clothes were soaked and flapping about his body as he danced. Older folks fanning themselves in apartment windows watched the cavorting children, probably wishing they could jump in too. One old woman, heavy and squat, had taken off her shoes and was dancing by the curb across the street from the hydrant, as the water skimmed there and then flowed toward the sewers. Her husband, in a strap undershirt, a cigar stub in his mouth, was laughing and clapping his hands. On the roof across the street from Marc's apartment some older boys and girls in bathing suits were leaning over the edge of the roof, watching the younger children in the spray below.

An old lady sat at one of the windows of her apartment in the same building where the kids were leaning over the roof. She fanned herself with a folded newspaper with one hand, covering her mouth with her other hand. Marc wondered why the old woman covered her mouth with her hand—perhaps to hide the spaces from which her teeth had fallen.

A car eased through the stream of water, the children screaming delight as the water pounded its metal side.

Marc pushed away from the window frame and sat in the overstuffed arm chair which faced the window. He gazed up at the dusk-streaked sky and sighed, shaking his head. He sipped his beer, leaned his head against the back of the chair and smoked his cigarette.

They're all alike
, he thought to himself.
God damn women. God damn women. Can't even ask them to let you drive the car, they start crying and bitching
. “God damn it …” he shouted through gritted teeth, twisting to stare at the closed bathroom door. “Wait till she comes out,” he said under his breath.

His eyes scanned the apartment. It was a pleasant apartment in which they lived, he thought, his anger easing. The three rooms had been his alone before Rita moved in. The place wasn't elaborately furnished, but it was all that he could afford in the beginning, and in the beginning furniture and space do not matter—not at first, when all one wants is privacy. It had been enough for the two of them too—in the beginning anyway. But as reason through prolonged association supplanted passion, Marc began to see shortcomings, to realize the need for more than a communion of physical existence. Perhaps some paint? It was still his apartment, he thought angrily, and it was the way he wanted it; he refused to be pressured into a corner.

Marc had never before thought of the toll of living together, but he was at least mindful of it now. It was a nice enough apartment, he assured himself. It was convenient for him to get to school during the school year. It was a long haul, however, from his east-seventies tenement to the Village. That was why Rita had quit working. She still attended acting classes, although lately she had been attending less and less. She no longer had the time; she was now more concerned with the task of keeping a pleasant home for Marc and herself. Living together was great, Marc thought, except for times like this. He couldn't stand a woman's caprices. In the last weeks, they had been getting along real well, he admitted—just every once in a while they'd have a little conflict.

I
didn't have to yell at her like that. I didn't mean to
.

The bathroom door opened and Rita came out in her robe, a towel draped into a turban about her head. Contrary to what Marc had expected, she walked toward his chair and sat on the edge of the chair, slipping her arm behind his head.

“I'm sorry, baby,” she said, kissing his temple. “I guess I was just a little hot and bothered before. The shower cooled me off.”

“That's all right. I didn't mean it, you know? I know you didn't either.”

“Okay, … let's forget it. We said we were sorry. I love you.” She leaned forward and kissed him. Marc slid his arms about her waist and held her tightly against himself. They parted and he rested his head against hers.

Dusk was now enveloping the city and the room was deep grey and dark with shadows. Rita absently stroked Marc's head.

“It's kind of funny,” she said.

“What's that?”

“Oh, the way I've changed since we've been living together.”

“Me too. I'm a lot different than I was. Don't know how to explain it … but I can tell.”

“I can't say either, but I know it's different,” she explained. “Maybe it's that I understand.”

“Us?”

“Us … and me—lots of things. Things about love and people. Things I never stopped to think about before.”

“Yeah, I know. I guess when you're bouncing around like a Yo-yo without a string you don't give much time to thinking about other people, and how maybe they're unhappy or lonely or sick, too. I never gave two damns about anybody. If they bugged me, carried on the way I didn't like, I put them down, but quick. But you, with all your crazy tantrums and all, you drive me nuts … but, somehow, I don't mind it so much.” He smiled a bit.

“Yeah, that's something like it. I would never have taken the things I take from you from a guy before. But now it doesn't matter. You know, what's the difference if you get a mad on once in a while—I know you don't mean it. I love you and you love me, and we need each other. Without you it'd be like living on the moon. I know you don't get angry because you … well, I don't know. You just get mad sometimes—so do I—then it goes away, and everything is all right again. I guess that's the difference. I understand, like life is real, life is earnest. I guess love is really just an outweighing of human faults and hard times and old bitch Mother Nature by warmth and companionship. You know, you learn to accept the fact that everybody is a bit different, imperfect. We're getting to understand the things we don't like, aren't we?” she asked softly, smiling.

“Yeah. I feel that way too. Sometimes you think I'm putting you down and you get angry at me. And then I get a little angry 'cause I'm not really putting you down. But I understand you more now, and I don't mind so much.”

“I'm getting better though,” she suggested.

“Me too, I hope. I'm tired of being inside my doubting skull counter-punching myself. I want to relax. I'm glad we're together. It's good for us, for me.”

Rita continued to stroke Marc's head.

“Do you think we'll get married?” she asked absently.

“I don't know.” Marc shrugged. “Maybe … who knows?”

They remained where they were, Marc sitting in the chair, resting his head against Rita, Rita sitting on the arm of the chair stroking his head—the golden, purplish, reddish, harbingers of night rose high in the sky, pulling the veils of evening after them.

20

The finger holes spun in a blur over the letters and numbers on the phone dial as Rita's finger selected the desired combination. She sank back in the overstuffed chair, gazing through the window at thin strips of cold, fall rain winding out of the sky. Small clumps of transparent light-grey clouds, outlined against the dark grey of great rain clouds, floated on the wind, their fragile bodies torn out of shape, dispersed into vague nothingness. The room was overcast by gloom; no lights were lit. Rita sat half in shadow, her legs and hips obscured by dismal grey, the upper part of her body encased in ebon shadow.