Vivaldo lived alone in a first-floor apartment on Bank Street. He was home, Rufus saw the light in the window. He slowed down a little but the cold air refused to let him hesitate; he hurried through the open street door, thinking, Well, I might as well get it over with. And he knocked quickly on Vivaldo’s door.
There had been the sound of a typewriter; now it stopped. Rufus knocked again.
“Who is it?” called Vivaldo, sounding extremely annoyed.
“It’s me. It’s me. Rufus.”
The sudden light, when Vivaldo opened the door, was a great shock, as was Vivaldo’s face.
“My God,” said Vivaldo.
He grabbed Rufus around the neck, pulling him inside and holding him. They both leaned for a moment against Vivaldo’s door.
“My God,” Vivaldo said again, “where’ve you been? Don’t you know you shouldn’t do things like that? You’ve had all of us scared to death, baby. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
It was a great shock and it weakened Rufus, exactly as though he had been struck in the belly. He clung to Vivaldo as though he were on the ropes. Then he pulled away.
Vivaldo looked at him, looked hard at him, up and down. And Vivaldo’s face told him how he looked. He moved away from the door, away from Vivaldo’s scrutiny.
“Ida’s been here; she’s half crazy. Do you realize you dropped out of sight almost a month ago?”
“Yes,” he said, and sat down heavily in Vivaldo’s easy chair — which sagged beneath him almost to the floor. He looked around the room, which had once been so familiar, which now seemed so strange.
He leaned back, his hands over his eyes.
“Take off your jacket,” Vivaldo said. “I’ll see if I can scare up something for you to eat — are you hungry?”
“No, not now. Tell me, how is Ida?”
“Well, she’s worried, you know, but there’s nothing wrong with her. Rufus, you want me to fix you a drink?”
“When was she here?”
“Yesterday. And she called me tonight. And she’s been to the police. Everybody’s been worried, Cass, Richard, everybody—”
He sat up. “The police are looking for me?”
“Well, hell, yes, baby, people aren’t supposed to just disappear.” He walked into his small, cluttered kitchen and opened his refrigerator, which contained a quart of milk and half a grapefruit. He stared at them helplessly. “I’ll have to take you out, I haven’t got anything to eat in this joint.” He closed the refrigerator door. “You can have a drink, though, I’ve got some bourbon.”
Vivaldo made two drinks, gave one to Rufus and sat down on the other, straight-backed, chair.
“Well, let’s have it. What’ve you been doing, where’ve you been?”
“I’ve just been wandering the streets.”
“My God, Rufus, in this weather? Where’ve you been sleeping?”
“Oh. Subways, hallways. Movies sometimes.”
“And how’d you eat?”
He took a swallow of his drink. Perhaps it was a mistake to have come. “Oh,” he said, astonished to hear the truth come out, “sometimes I sort of peddled my ass.”
Vivaldo looked at him. “I guess you had pretty rough competition.” He lit a cigarette and threw the pack and the matches to Rufus. “You should have got in touch with somebody, you should have let somebody know what was happening.”
“I — couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
“We’re supposed to be friends, you and me.”
He stood up, holding an unlit cigarette, and walked around the small room, touching things. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He lit the cigarette. “I know what I did to Leona. I’m not dumb.”
“So do I know what you did to Leona. Neither am I dumb.”
“I guess I just didn’t think—”
“What?”
“That anyone would care.”
In the silence that hung in the room then, Vivaldo rose and went to his phonograph. “You didn’t think Ida would care? You didn’t think I would care?”
He felt as though he were smothering. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought.”
Vivaldo said nothing. His face was pale and angry and he concentrated on looking through his records. Finally he put one on the machine; it was James Pete Johnson and Bessie Smith batting out Backwater Blues.
“Well,” said Vivaldo, helplessly, and sat down again.
Besides Vivaldo’s phonograph, there wasn’t much else in his apartment. There was a homemade lamp, brick-supported bookshelves, records, a sagging bed, the sprung easy chair, and the straight-backed chair. There was a high stool before Vivaldo’s worktable on which Vivaldo teetered now, his coarse, curly black hair hanging forward, his eyes somber, and his mouth turned down. The table held his pencils, papers, his typewriter, and the telephone. In a small alcove was the kitchen in which the overhead light was burning. The sink was full of dirty dishes, topped by a jaggedly empty and open tin can. A paper sack of garbage leaned against one of the kitchen table’s uncertain legs.
There’s thousands of people, Bessie now sang, ain’t got no place to go, and for the first time Rufus began to hear, in the severely understated monotony of this blues, something which spoke to his troubled mind. The piano bore the singer witness, stoic and ironic. Now that Rufus himself had no place to go—’cause my house fell down and I can’t live there no mo’, sang Bessie — he heard the line and the tone of the singer, and he wondered how others had moved beyond the emptiness and horror which faced him now.
Vivaldo was watching him. Now he cleared his throat and said, “Maybe it would be a good idea for you to make a change of scene, Rufus. Everything around here will just keep reminding you — sometimes it’s better just to wipe the slate clean and take off. Maybe you should go to the Coast.”
“There’s nothing happening on the Coast.”
“A lot of musicians have gone out there.”
“They’re on their ass out there, too. It’s no different from New York.”
“No, they’re working. You might feel differently out there, with all the sunshine and oranges and all.” He smiled. “Make a new man of you, baby.”
“I guess you think,” said Rufus, malevolently, “that it’s time I started trying to be a new man.”
There was a silence. Then Vivaldo said, “It’s not so much what I think. It’s what you think.”
Rufus watched the tall, lean, clumsy white boy who was his best friend, and felt himself nearly strangling with the desire to hurt him.
“Rufus,” said Vivaldo, suddenly, “believe me, I know, I know — a lot of things hurt you that I can’t really understand.” He played with the keys of his typewriter. “A lot of things hurt me that I can’t really understand.”
Rufus sat on the edge of the sprung easy chair, watching Vivaldo gravely.
“Do you blame me for what happened to Leona?”
“Rufus, what good would it do if I did blame you? You blame yourself enough already, that’s what’s wrong with you, what’s the good of my blaming you?”