Rufus wanted to say, Don’t let me stop you, man, but he said nothing. He felt black, filthy, foolish. He wished he were miles away, or dead. He kept thinking of Leona; it came in waves, like the pain of a toothache or a festering wound.
Cass left her seat and came over and sat beside him. She stared at him and he was frightened by the sympathy on her face. He wondered why she should look like that, what her memories or experience could be. She could only look at him this way because she knew things he had never imagined a girl like Cass could know.
“How is Leona?” she asked. “Where is she now?” and did not take her eyes from his face.
He did not want to answer. He did not want to talk about Leona — and yet there was nothing else that he could possibly talk about. For a moment he almost hated Cass; and then he said:
“She’s in a home — down South somewhere. They come and took her out of Bellevue. I don’t even know where she is.
She said nothing. She offered him a cigarette, lit it, and lit one for herself.
“I saw her brother once. I had to see him, I made him see me. He spit in my face, he said he would have killed me had we been down home.”
He wiped his face now with the handkerchief Vivaldo had lent him.
“But I felt like I was already dead. They wouldn’t let me see her. I wasn’t a relative, I didn’t have no right to see her.”
There was silence. He remembered the walls of the hospitaclass="underline" white; and the uniforms and the faces of the doctors and nurses, white on white. And the face of Leona’s brother, white, with the blood beneath it rushing thickly, bitterly, to the skin’s surface, summoned by his mortal enemy. Had they been down home, his blood and the blood of his enemy would have rushed out to mingle together over the uncaring earth, under the uncaring sky.
“At least,” Cass said, finally, “you didn’t have any children. Thank God for that.”
“She did,” he said, “down South. They took the kid away from her.” He added, “That’s why she come North.” And he thought of the night they had met.
“She was a nice girl,” Cass said. “I liked her.”
He said nothing. He heard Vivaldo say, “—but I never know what to do when I’m not working.”
“You know what to do, all right. You just don’t have anybody to do it with.”
He listened to their laughter, which seemed to shake him as though it were a drill.
“Just the same,” said Richard, in a preoccupied tone, “nobody can work all the time.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Rufus watched him stabbing the table with his stir-stick.
“I hope,” Cass said, “that you won’t sit around blaming yourself too much. Or too long. That won’t undo anything.” She put her hand on his. He stared at her. She smiled. “When you’re older you’ll see, I think, that we all commit our crimes. The thing is not to lie about them — to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it.” She leaned closer to him, her brown eyes popping and her blonde hair, in the heat, in the gloom, forming a damp fringe about her brow. “That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That’s very important. If you don’t forgive yourself you’ll never be able to forgive anybody else and you’ll go on committing the same crimes forever.”
“I know,” Rufus muttered, not looking at her, bent over the table with his fists clenched together. From far away, from the juke box, he heard a melody he had often played. He thought of Leona. Her face would not leave him. “I know,” he repeated, though in fact he did not know. He did not know why this woman was talking to him as she was, what she was trying to tell him.
“What,” she asked him, carefully, “are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to try to pull myself together,” he said, “and get back to work.”
But he found it unimaginable that he would ever work again, that he would ever play drums again.
“Have you seen your family? I think Vivaldo’s seen your sister a couple of times. She’s very worried about you.”
“I’m going up there,” he said. “I haven’t wanted to go — looking this way.”
“They don’t care how you look,” she said, shortly. “I don’t care how you look. I’m just glad to see you’re all right — and I’m not even related to you.”
He thought, with a great deal of wonder, That’s true, and turned to stare at her again, smiling a little and very close to tears.
“I’ve always thought of you,” she said, “as a very nice person.” She gave his arm a little tap and pushed a crumpled bill into his hand. “It might help if you thought of yourself that way.”
“Hey, old lady,” Richard called, “want to make it in?”
“I guess so,” she said, and yawned. “I suppose we’ve celebrated enough for one night, one book.”
She rose and returned to her side of the table and began to gather her things together. Rufus was suddenly afraid to see her go.
“Can I come to see you soon?” he asked, with a smile.
She stared at him across the width of the table. “Please do,” she said. “Soon.”
Richard knocked his pipe out and put it in his pocket, looking around for the waiter. Vivaldo was staring at something, at someone, just behind Rufus and suddenly seemed about to spring out of his seat. “Well,” he said, faintly, “here’s Jane,” and Jane walked over to the table. Her short, graying hair was carefully combed, which was unusual, and she was wearing a dark dress, which was also unusual. Perhaps Vivaldo was the only person there who had ever seen her out of blue jeans and sweaters. “Hi, everybody,” she said, and smiled her bright, hostile smile. She sat down. “Haven’t seen any of you for months.”
“Still painting?” Cass asked. “Or have you given that up?”
“I’ve been working like a dog,” Jane said, continuing to look around her and avoiding Vivaldo’s eyes.
“Seems to suit you,” Cass muttered, and put on her coat.
Jane looked at Rufus, beginning, it seemed, to recover her self-possession. “How’ve you been, Rufus?”
“Just fine,” he said.
“We’ve all been dissipating,” said Richard, “but you look like you’ve been being a good girl and getting your beauty sleep every night.”
“You look great,” said Vivaldo, briefly.
For the first time she looked directly at him. “Do I? I guess I’ve been feeling pretty well. I’ve cut down on my drinking,” and she laughed a little too loudly and looked down. Richard was paying the waiter and had stood up, his trench coat over his arm. “Are you all leaving?”
“We’ve got to,” said Cass, “we’re just dull, untalented, old married people.”
Cass glanced over at Rufus, saying, “Be good now: get some rest.” She smiled at him. He longed to do something to prolong that smile, that moment, but he did not smile back, only nodded his head. She turned to Jane and Vivaldo. “So long, kids. See you soon.”
“Sure,” Jane said.
“I’ll be over tomorrow,” said Vivaldo.
“I’m expecting you,” Richard said, “don’t fail me. So long, Jane.”
“So long.”
“So long.”
Everyone was gone except Jane and Rufus and Vivaldo.
I wouldn’t mind being in jail but I’ve got to stay there so long….
The seats the others had occupied were like a chasm now between Rufus and the white boy and the white girl.
“Let’s have another drink,” Vivaldo said.
So long….
“Let me buy,” Jane said. “I sold a painting.”