The girl we were on our way to pick up didn’t go to Albany High, which is where I went, but to a different high school which shall be nameless, and the story on her was she’d already been sent away twice, once to have a baby and once to be institutionalized for a while, and now she was back again and the same as ever.
Anyway, the story is she was the same as ever. I don’t know, I’d never seen her before in my life and I never saw her again after that night and I’m not entirely sure what her name was. Joyce, I think, but maybe not. Joyless Joyce. Maybe. Maybe not.
There was a street corner, and we were supposed to pick her up there, and she was actually there, one of the few times in my life when the next step has been where it was supposed to be. The only snag was, she had her little brother with her. She was sixteen, he was seven. When she got into the car with us, she explained her parents wouldn’t let her out any more unless she took her baby brother with her, the theory apparently being she couldn’t do too much fucking with a baby brother along to cramp her style.
All theories are false, that’s my theory.
We drove out to this huge vacant lot where baseball is played sometimes and carnivals used to set up in the summertime, O. C. Buck shows and outfits like that, and this guy drove the Rambler out over the lot and came to a stop where it was very dark, and we all got out and walked around, and the girl whispered to us the plan, which was that two of us were to keep the baby brother occupied while the third one was back in the car with big sister. Done.
So big sister and the guy whose car it was faded away, and the other guy and I started bright idiotic conversation with the baby brother. I remember it was a very starry night and I started trying to point out various constellations to him, the Big Dipper and this and that, and the kid seemed to take an interest and then again he didn’t. Maybe it was my own supersensitivity, but I felt as though the kid knew exactly what was going on, even though he was seven years old, and he felt sorry for us and didn’t want to embarrass us by tipping the fact that he was onto us, so he was craning his neck back and looking up at the sky just to humor me. That may be wrong, but that’s the impression I had.
After a while guy number 1 came back, and winked at me, and started talking to the kid about baseball, of which the kid knew nothing but the Albany Senators, and he started telling us how his father had taken him out to see the Albany Senators play a few times, and to be perfectly honest I would have preferred to stay there and listen to the kid, but pleasure called and so I drifted unobtrusively — I think — away, and went over to the car, and the windows were all steamed up.
You think I’m making that up? The windows were all steamed up, they were.
I opened the front door on the passenger side and there wasn’t anybody there. With the windows steamed up, and the night pretty dark as it was — the sky clear but moonless — I couldn’t see much of anything inside the car, except she wasn’t there.
Then she said, “Back here.”
“Oh,” I said, and shut the front door and opened the back door and got into the car.
It smelled funny. Musty, and green. I don’t know why, but the smell made me think of rabbits. And all I could see was her pale skin. Her dress was up around her waist and her panties were off and she was half lying, half sitting cattycorner on the back seat, her head below the level of the window, and her belly was narrow and flat and pale, and her pubic hair was dark and mysterious.
Things were kind of cramped back there, and I had a little trouble getting my pants and underpants off. I left them wrapped around my left ankle, and tucked my shirttail up inside my T-shirt, and then very awkwardly I mounted her, and for the first time in my life a girl touched my cock. She put her hand on it and pointed it to the right place — which was farther down and back than I’d thought it would be, as I remember — and of course the ways had been well greased, and I slid in, and sort of hunched over her with my back breaking, and she began to grunt, panting, breathing faster than I ever heard anybody breathe before or since, and her hands clutched at my sides and back as though she was afraid I would try to get away, and her hips moved so fast I couldn’t keep up. I tried to, but it was impossible, so what I did was half-time, stroke in on a complete pulsation of hers, stroke out on a complete pulsation, and so on.
I came in less time than it takes to tell about it, but so did she. At the time I wasn’t sure what was happening exactly, but my experience since then tells me she came four or five times in the short period of time I was inside her, and then I came, and abruptly she became practical — all women do after sex, no matter what the marriage guidebooks say — and started stuffing wads of tissues here and there. There was a blanket over the seat to protect that.
This is a terrible memory. That’s all right, it’s almost done. I’d just like to point out how after guy number 3 had his turn and we all drove back to drop her off again nobody remarked about the funny smell in the car, including the baby brother. That’s all. Including the baby brother.
And now I am going to get back to Brock Stewart. You think I’m not? I am.
At first he thought the place was totally empty, but then he saw the girl standing behind the counter, down at the far end, her white dress and fair hair blending with the decor behind her.
She came walking slowly toward him when he sat down, and he gave her an easy smile, noticing the sensual way she had of walking, the slightly pouty look to her lips, the way her blue eyes seemed to smolder as she looked at him through half-closed lids. And there was something faintly suggestive about the way she said, “What would you like?”
“To finish the book,” he said.
She smiled, lazily and without malice, and wiped the counter with a filthy damp rag. “Not a chance of it,” she said. “You won’t even finish this chapter.”
“I’ve got to,” he said.
“Why?” she said.
“Because,” he said, “if I don’t manage to succeed at something in the course of this horrible week I may kill myself. Everything is collapsing around me, I have to prove I am still capable of triumphing over adversity as a result of my own efforts.”
“Prove to who?” she said.
“To whom,” he said.
“All right,” she said patiently. “Prove to whom?”
“To me,” he said.
“Who made you judge?” she said. “I mean, whom made you judge?”
“For Christ’s sake,” he said, “you have to do, don’t you? You can’t just give up, can you?”
“Sure you can,” she said.
“Well, I’m not going to,” he said. “Who would I be if I gave up?”
“You mean where would you be.”
“No, I don’t. I mean who would I be? Whom would I be?”
“You’d be you,” she said.
“I can feel the ground crumbling away beneath me,” he said. “I’m terrified.”
She said, “What is the worst possible thing that can happen to you?”
“Everything stops,” he said.
“You mean, you die?”
“No,” he said. “I mean I don’t get the book done, and Betsy doesn’t come back, and I don’t live in that house any more, and all of the things that I have been and roles that I have played and personas that I have assumed will come to a stop.”
“And what is left,” she said, “will be you.”
“As naked as a shaved puppy,” he said. “And as defenseless, and as shivering, and as doomed. Who can I be if I don’t have somebody to be?”
“That makes no sense,” she said.
“I’m not asking for sense,” he said. “In the world of the New York Times there’s no sense, only a progression of events. If the progression of events stops, we are doomed. The same thing is true in my life. If the progression of events in my life stops, I am doomed.”