She turned over and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Oh, Birdie, I didn’t mean to … ”
“Like hell you didn’t. Jack.”
She sniffed amusement. “Well, now you’re one up.”
He flipped the limp organ at her self-deprecatingly. “Am I?”
“Honestly, Boz, the first time I really didn’t mean it. It just slipped out.”
“Indeed it did. But is that supposed to make me feel better?” He began dressing. His shoes were inside out.
“For heaven’s sake, I haven’t thought of Birdie Ludd for years. Literally. He’s dead now, for all I know.”
“Is that the new kick at your tutorials?”
“You’re just being bitter.”
“I’m just being bitter, yes.”
“Well, fuck you! I’m going out.” She began feeling around on the rug for her slip.
“Maybe you can get your father to warm up some of his stiffs for you. Maybe he’s got Birdie there on ice.”
“You can be so sarcastic sometimes. And you’re standing on my slip. Thank you. Where are you going now?”
“I am going around the room divider to the other side of the room.” Boz went around the room divider to the other side of the room. He sat down beside the dining ledge.
“What are you writing?” she asked, pulling the slip on.
“A poem. That’s what I was thinking about at the time.”
“Shit.” She had started her blouse on the wrong buttonhole.
“What?” He laid the pen down.
“Nothing. My buttons. Let me see your poem.”
“Why are you so damn hung up on buttons? They’re unfunctional.” He handed her the poem!
“It’s lovely,” she said. “You should send it to Time”
“Time doesn’t print poetry.”
“Some place that does, then. It’s pretty.” Milly had three basic superlatives: funny, pretty, and nice. Was she relenting? Or laying a trap?
“Pretty things are a dime a dozen. Twelve for one dime.”
“I’m only trying to be nice, shithead.”
“Then learn how. Where are you going?”
“Out.” She stopped at the door, frowning. “I do love you, you know.”
“Sure. And I love you.”
“Do you want to come along?”
“I’m tired. Give them my love.”
She shrugged. She left. He went out on the veranda and watched her as she walked over the bridge across the electric moat and down 48th Street to the corner of 9th. She never looked up once.
And the hell of it was she did love him. And he loved her. So why did they always end up like this, with spitting and kicking and gnashing of teeth and the going of their own ways?
Questions, he hated questions. He went into the toilet and swallowed three Oralines, one just nicely too many, and then he sat back and watched the round things with colored edges slide along an endless neon corridor, zippety zippety zippety, spaceships and satellites. The corridor smelled half like a hospital and half like heaven, and Boz began to cry.
The Hansons, Boz and Milly, had been happily unhappily married for a year and a half. Boz was twenty-one and Milly was twenty-six. They had grown up in the same MODICUM building at opposite ends of a long, glazed, green-tile corridor, but because of the age difference they never really noticed each other until just three years ago. Once they did notice each other though, it was love at first sight, for they were, Boz as much as Milly, of the type that can be, even at a glance, ravishing: flesh molded with that ideal classic plumpness and tinged with those porcelain pink pastels we can admire in the divine Guido, which, at least, they admired; eyes hazel, flecked with gold; auburn hair that falls with a slight curl to the round shoulders; and the habit, acquired by each of them so young that it could almost be called natural, of striking poses eloquently superfluous, as when, sitting down to dinner, Boz would throw his head back suddenly, flip flop of auburn, his ripe lips slightly parted, like a saint (Guido again) in ecstasy—Theresa, Francis, Ganymede—or like, which was almost the same thing, a singer, singing
Three years and Boz was still as hung up on Milly as he had been on the first morning (it was March but it had seemed more like April or May) they’d had sex, and if that wasn’t love then Boz didn’t know what love meant.
Of course it wasn’t just sex, because sex didn’t mean that much to Milly, as it was part of her regular work. They also had a very intense spiritual relationship. Boz was basically a spiritual type person. On the Skinner-Waxman C-P profile he had scored way at the top of the scale by thinking of one hundred and thirty-one different ways to use a brick in ten minutes. Milly, though not as creative as Boz according to the Skinner-Waxman, was every bit as smart in terms of IQ (Milly, 136; Boz, 134), and she also had leadership potential, while Boz was content to be a follower as long as things went more or less his own way. Brain surgery aside, they could not have been more compatible, and all of their friends agreed (or they had until very recently ) that Boz and Milly, Milly and Boz, made a perfect couple.
So what was it then? Was it jealousy? Boz didn’t think it was jealousy but you can never be sure. He might be jealous unconsciously. But you can’t be jealous just because someone was having sex, if that was only a mechanical act and there was no love involved. That would be about as reasonable as getting uptight because Milly talked to someone else. Anyhow he had had sex with other people and it never bothered Milly. No, it wasn’t sex, it was something psychological, which meant it could be almost anything at all. Every day Boz got more and more depressed trying to analyze it all out. Sometimes he thought of suicide. He bought a razor blade and hid it in The Naked and the Dead. He grew a moustache. He shaved off the moustache and had his hair cut short. He let his hair grow long again. It was September and then it was March. Milly said she really did want a divorce, it wasn’t working out and she could not stand him nagging at her any more.
Him nagging at her?
“Yes, morning and night, nag, nag, nag.”
“But you’re never even home in the morning, and you’re usually not home at night.”
“There, you’re doing it again! You’re nagging now. And when you don’t come right out and nag openly, you do it silently. You’ve been nagging me ever since dinner without saying a word.”
“I’ve been reading a book.” He wagged the book at her accusingly. “I wasn’t even thinking about you. Unless I nag you just by existing.” He had meant this to sound pathetic.
“You can, you do.”
They were both too pooped and tired to make it a really fun argument, and so just to keep it interesting they had to keep raising the stakes. It ended with Milly screaming and Boz in tears and Boz packing his things into a cupboard which he took in a taxi to East 11th Street. His mother was delighted to see him. She had been fighting with Lottie and expected Boz to take her side. Boz was given his old bed in the living room and Amparo had to sleep with her mother. The air was full of smoke from Mrs. Hanson’s cigarettes and Boz felt more and more sick. It was all he could do to keep from phoning Milly. Shrimp didn’t come home and Lottie was zonked out as usual on Oraline. It was not a life for human beings.