Vivaldo stopped and tried to straighten. They leaned, half-in, half-out of the door. The bartender watched them. Vivaldo looked at the bartender, then at Jane. He and Rufus stumbled together into the blinding rain.
“Let me help you,” Jane cried again. But she stopped in the doorway long enough to say to the bartender, whose face held no expression whatever, “You’re going to hear about this, believe me. I’m going to close this bar and have your job, if it’s the last thing I ever do.” Then she ran into the rain, and tried to help Rufus support Vivaldo.
Vivaldo pulled away from her touch, and slipped and almost fell. “Get away from me. Get away from me. You’ve been enough help for one night.”
“You’ve got to get in somewhere!” Jane cried.
“Don’t you worry about it. Don’t worry about it. Drop dead, get lost, go fuck yourself. We’re going to the hospital.”
Rufus looked into Vivaldo’s face and became frightened. Both his eyes were closing and the blood poured down from some wound in his scalp. And he was crying.
“What a way to talk to my buddy, man,” he said, over and over. “Wow! What a way to talk to my buddy!”
“Let’s go to her place,” Rufus whispered. “It’s closer.” Vivaldo did not seem to hear him. “Come on, baby, let’s go on over to Jane’s, it don’t matter.”
He was afraid that Vivaldo had been badly hurt, and he knew what would happen at the hospital if two fays and a spade came bleeding in. For the doctors and nurses were, first of all, upright, clean-living white citizens. And he was not really afraid for himself, but for Vivaldo, who knew so little about his countrymen.
So, slipping and sliding, with Jane now circling helplessly around them and now leading the way, like a big-assed Joan of Arc, they reached Jane’s pad. He carried Vivaldo into the bathroom and sat him down. He looked in the mirror. His face looked like jam, but the scars would probably heal, and only one eye was closed; but when he began washing Vivaldo, he found a great gash in his skull, and this frightened him.
“Man,” he whispered, “you got to go to the hospital.”
“That’s what I said. All right. Let’s go.”
And he tried to rise.
“No, man. Listen. If I go with you, it’s going to be a whole lot of who shot John because I’m black and you’re white. You dig? I’m telling it to you like it is.”
Vivaldo said, “I really don’t want to hear all that shit, Rufus.”
“Well, it’s true, whether you want to hear it or not. Jane’s got to take you to the hospital, I can’t come with you.” Vivaldo’s eyes were closed and his face was white. “Vivaldo?”
He opened his eyes. “Are you mad at me, Rufus?”
“Shit, no, baby, why should I be mad with you?” But he knew what was bothering Vivaldo. He leaned down and whispered, “Don’t you worry, baby, everything’s cool. I know you’re my friend.”
“I love you, you shithead, I really do.”
“I love you, too. Now, get on to that hospital, I don’t want you to drop dead in this phony white chick’s bathroom. I’ll wait here for you. I’ll be all right.” Then he walked quickly out of the bathroom. He said to Jane, “Take him to the hospital, he’s hurt worse than I am. I’ll wait here.”
She had the sense, then, to say nothing. Vivaldo remained in the hospital for ten days and had three stitches taken in his scalp. In the morning Rufus went uptown to see a doctor and stayed in bed for a week. He and Vivaldo never spoke of this night, and though he knew that Vivaldo had finally begun seeing her again, they never spoke of Jane. But from that time on, Rufus had depended on and trusted Vivaldo — depended on him even now, as he bitterly watched him horsing around with the large girl on the path. He did not know why this was so; he scarcely knew that it was so. Vivaldo was unlike everyone else that he knew in that they, all the others, could only astonish him by kindness or fidelity; it was only Vivaldo who had the power to astonish him by treachery. Even his affair with Jane was evidence in his favor, for if he were really likely to betray his friend for a woman, as most white men seemed to do, especially if the friend were black, then he would have found himself a smoother chick, with the manners of a lady and the soul of a whore. But Jane seemed to be exactly what she was, a monstrous slut, and she thus, without knowing it, kept Rufus and Vivaldo equal to one another.
At last Vivaldo was free and hurried toward them on the path still grinning, and now waving to someone behind them.
“Look,” he cried, “there’s Cass!”
Rufus turned and there she was, sitting alone on the rim of the circle, frail and fair. For him, she was thoroughly mysterious. He could never quite place her in the white world to which she seemed to belong. She came from New England, of plain old American stock — so she put it; she was very fond of remembering that one of her ancestors had been burned as a witch. She had married Richard, who was Polish, and they had two children. Richard had been Vivaldo’s English instructor in high school, years ago. They had known him as a brat, they said — not that he had changed much; they were his oldest friends.
With Leona between them, Rufus and Vivaldo crossed the road.
Cass looked up at them with that smile which was at once chilling and warm. It was warm because it was affectionate; it chilled Rufus because it was amused. “Well, I’m not sure I’m speaking to either of you. You’ve been neglecting us shamefully. Richard has crossed you off his list.” She looked at Leona and smiled. “I’m Cass Silenski.”
“This is Leona,” Rufus said, putting one hand on Leona’s shoulder.
Cass looked more amused than ever, and at the same time more affectionate. “I’m very happy to meet you.”
“I’m glad to meet you,” said Leona.
They sat down on the stone rim of the fountain, in the center of which a little water played, enough for small children to wade in.
“Give an account of yourselves,” Cass said. “Why haven’t you come to see us?”
“Oh,” said Vivaldo, “I’ve been busy. I’ve been working on my novel.”
“He’s been working on a novel,” said Cass to Leona, “ever since we’ve known him. Then he was seventeen and now he’s nearly thirty.”
“That’s unkind,” said Vivaldo, looking amused at the same time that he looked ashamed and annoyed.
“Well, Richard was working on one, too. Then he was twenty-five and now he’s close to forty. So—” She considered Vivaldo a moment. “Only, he’s had a brand-new inspiration and he’s been working on it like a madman. I think that’s one of the reasons he’s been rather hoping you’d come by — he may have wanted to discuss it with you.”
“What is this new inspiration?” Vivaldo asked. “Offhand, it sounds unfair.”
“Ah!”—she shrugged merrily, and took a deep drag on her cigarette—“I wasn’t consulted, and I’m kept in the dark. You know Richard. He gets up at some predawn hour and goes straight to his study and stays there until it’s time to go to work; comes home, goes straight to his study and stays there until it’s time to go to bed. I hardly ever see him. The children no longer have a father, I no longer have a husband.” She laughed. “He did manage to grunt something the other morning about it’s going very well.”
“It certainly sounds as though its going well.” Vivaldo looked at Cass enviously. “And you say its new? — it’s not the same novel he was working on before?”
“I gather not. But I really know nothing about it.” She dragged on her cigarette again, crushed it under her heel, immediately began searching in her bag for another.