They ended up in a cat house, Judd agreeing to go just to get the stuff out of his system. But when the moment came when he always imagined himself doing it to Artie, this time again it didn’t happen. The act itself lasted longer, and for a time he imagined a wedding scene – Ruth in white, a shining bride, coming toward him. He would not picture himself doing it to her. There came back the scene on the beach, and then a kind of blank grief was in him, and, at his climax, a dreadful trembling, a sense of tumbling, like giants crashing in a circus act.
Going home, Artie was half potted. Judd still felt querulous; the post-coital compound of disgust and remorse was on him, and with it some dreadful unidentifiable anticipation.
Artie started to tease him about Ruth, making cracks.
“Shut up,” Judd said.
“Wow,” said Artie. “This is getting serious.”
“Aaw, cut the crap!”
He looked at Artie, and all at once his friend’s face appeared to him the way he had seen it the very first time when his mother brought him over to Artie’s house: he saw it as long-jawed and pasty. A tumult of revulsions and fears raced through Judd; everything, everything in the whole past of creation was wrong. In that moment he knew Artie, knew him objectively, as a being apart from himself. In the thing that they had done, they had not been doing the same thing. Artie had been doing something else, something he had done before, like the one in the lake, and the ones Artie had made dark hints about – the campus fellow who had been found shot, the taxi driver found castrated. Artie was driven by some demonic force, and in himself it was not the same. Had everything, then, been a gargantuan mistake? When he had believed himself to be participating, joining with Artie, had they really been separate, doing their separate things? If that could be so, then what – what had he been doing there? The possibility was a gasping void. Judd closed it out of his mind, and yet found it continuing into another thought: when people imagined they could be immersed together performing the act of love together, it was also like that: each was doing a separate thing.
Judd was silent the rest of the way home. Artie once or twice took gulps from the flask, then brooded. He got off at his house, saying in no obvious connection, “All right for you, you -.”
The tumultuous sense of some impending change, something tremendously imminent, remained in Judd through half the night. He could not analyse it, though he attached it to Ruth. In the morning the feeling was still with him, and with it he felt a compulsion to talk. If he met Ruth, he would perhaps babble out everything.
Instead, he found himself talking about her, about being in love with her. On impulse he was visiting a young married member of his birding class, Mrs. Cyrilla Sloan – and his excuse for ringing her apartment bell on South Shore was the delivery of a book he had promised her.
It had come upon him, that morning, that he must leave no promise unfulfilled; it was as though he were propitiating the nonexistent gods of luck.
Just after his ten-o’clock class, he found her looking morning-fresh, neat; Ruth would be a young wife like that, a secret bird in her nice neat little package of an apartment.
Mrs. Sloan offered him coffee, drew him into conversation. And presently Judd was talking in a rush, more easily than to Aunt Bertha, saying he was considering changing his plans – perhaps he would get married, perhaps he would get a job as a teacher instead of going to law school. Of course, this might displease his father, but -
“Don’t tell me you’ve fallen in love, Judd!” She smiled warmly as though she now understood his sudden visit.
And as he described Ruth, Judd became convinced it was really love – he wanted only to be with Ruth; all the tumult in him was the result of some complete change-over.
She kept smiling, letting him talk, telling him that she was glad he had found someone to be interested in, that she had always felt he needed someone. But he mustn’t be too emotional, she said; he mustn’t let his emotions run away with him. For now he was talking about getting married secretly, about going away somewhere to live.
The tumult in him was subsiding a little. Judd had no idea why he had made up all these things about family opposition, going so far with the drama.
It seemed to him that she held his hand lingeringly, perhaps invitingly, as he was leaving. Only by telling her he was in love he had caused her to change toward him. It was as though he had inadvertently used a password for the closed little world of ordinary people.
As he came out of the apartment building Judd felt relieved, eased as never even by intercourse. He heard himself whistling.
He spied Ruth with a little group in Sleepy Hollow, and lay down beside her on the grass. The crowd would begin to talk of them as a pair. It was an idyllic scene.
Someone had left a newspaper lying on the grass, and after the first glimpse of the headlines, Judd made himself avoid looking at it. They were still churning, churning over the city. But he would be safe. He was changing; he had to be safe to find out what he was going to be like.
The house had a different atmosphere; there were plants all around, huge green potted palms and rubber plants, and there were vases filled with flowers. Against an entire wall of the so-called library were the catering tables. Cases of real stuff from Canada were stowed in readiness under the boards. Max, hustling everywhere, showed Judd all this while telling him what a good buy he had got on the liquor, and that Sandra would be down in a minute; she was resting.
Then, as though she had sensed the young brother’s arrival, Sandra appeared. She was a statuesque girl, and each speech seemed to have been thought out in advance so that every word was precise. “So this is the genius of the family,” she said, offering her hand and pressing his for a second, with proper sincerity. “I wonder if you know how proud your brothers are of your accomplishments! I understand you speak eleven languages.”
Max said that Sandra was interested in literature, especially the French, so they would have much in common. Judd tried her quickly, mentioning Huysmans, Verlaine, Anatole France. She had not read any of them – if she had even heard of them – but she declared she would make a mental note to look them up, and you could see her inscribing the titles on her mind.
Max was looking at them almost desperately, wanting everything to be right and fine, and Judd even felt a surge of warmth toward his brother on this day. “Looks like it’ll be some party!” he remarked stupidly, and suddenly wished nothing would go wrong. If they were going to catch him, let Max have his dumb engagement party first unspoiled.
The dinner was in grand style, the full table, all the aunts and uncles, and the old man at his best, even genial – a real feast of the high bourgeoisie, Judd told himself, and when he went to fetch Ruth he prepared her in that vein.
She looked as if she belonged perfectly in the crowd, he was surprised to find – her dress, shoes, all. He introduced her as he might an ordinary date. But Aunt Bertha gave Ruth her knowing scrutiny, then told him privately, “I don’t blame you – she’s charming. This time you can’t be blamed.” Then she added conspiratorially, “You haven’t told anybody? Nobody knows?”
“I haven’t told even her,” he said. He felt gay, suddenly crazily elated.
The whole South Side was there, all right, the Weisses and the Strauses in force, including Artie’s entire family. The moment Artie came in he began to make a noisy play for Ruth – “I saw her first!” Then Judd had a peculiar feeling, as if everything he had been building up in the last few days about himself and Ruth was an act; in Artie’s presence it all fell apart.
Artie was taunting Ruth about that reporter, Sid. Did Sid know Judd was giving her the big rush? “Oh, Sid’s so busy I can’t even see him to tell him.” She laughed, and then Artie was on the crime again, full of the latest reports, and – hey, here was an idea for her boy friend, the reporter. What about the other unsolved killings on the South Side during the last year? That university student who had been shot, and the young man who had disappeared, just a few blocks from here, in April, Perry Rosoff – maybe the same fiend was responsible for them all! She ought to tell Sid to investigate the connection.