They were both late for their appointments. They began walking back. There’s only one way, Raul thought. Find out his real anger. Only ego commands such outrage, he thought.
It dawned on him.
His confidence returned as it became clear. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Incredible as it was, Alec didn’t like Raul, that virgin, winning from him, number one seducer, a girl.
Raul could barely contain his laughter. It was all so clear now. He was on top of it. What he had to do was obvious.
“You know,” he said to Alec, “we didn’t go to bed.”
Alec’s head jerked slightly. “You didn’t?”
“No, I’m too much of a clutz.” He laughed. “It’s so funny. Here I am losing you, for what? For what?”
“Exactly the way I feel. Was it worth it, Raul?”
“No.”
They walked on in silence. Then Raul said, “What you’ve been saying to me is that it’s either her or you, right?”
Alec looked at him, surprised. “Well, I can’t see you if you’re seeing her, I…”
“I understand.” Raul felt in control now, knowing what Alec wanted. “Alec or Barbara, Raul has to choose.”
“It’s crazy for you to give her up, Raul. I just can’t keep seeing you…”
“Why is it crazy for me to give her up? What the hell good is she doing me?” Raul roared with laughter. He exulted with victory. His mistake wouldn’t cost him after all.
They stopped by a high wall that looked down into the theater’s courtyard. Alec watched Raul, considering. Both of them were breaking out into smiles. They knew what each was doing, and the consciousness made them play the farce with more glee.
They looked at one another, smiling. They captured themselves with the joy their faces expressed. Barbara, Raul being late, drove by in her car. She stopped a hundred yards away. Raul pointed to her, laughing. Alec turned around, looking at Raul to see what he would do. Raul didn’t move, and Barbara drove away.
Alec looked at him, astonished. The first formers playing below tossed a miniature football over the wall. Raul picked it up, looking at Alec. He laughed and said, “You want a little guilt, Alec? Here, have a little guilt.” He tossed it to him.
Alec swung about, laughing, and said, “Here, have some guilt, Raul.” He tossed it to him.
They threw it back and forth, yelling that it was guilt. They ran up and down the street, joyously bumping into cars and people as they gave guilt to each other. The first formers heckled them for the ball.
“Alec,” Raul yelled, “they want their guilt back.”
“Here it is,” Alec said, throwing it to Raul.
Raul leaned over the wall, saying to them, “Here — listen to this, Alec, it’s a terrible cliché—you can have your guilt. We want no more of it.”
“My life may seem suddenly calm,” Raul wrote in his notes, “but it remains a mess. My lies to my parents are beginning to strain under repetition and consequent lack of credibility. Hell, that was a sentence. As for Barbara, her presence in my life is annoying. Something draws me to her; I cannot make a clean break. I still hope for a loss of my virginity. But things worked out well with Alec, and I am quite happy, strangely enough. It’s just that it all seems to be the calm before the storm.”
He stayed in his room at the back of the apartment like a cowed animal. At night he prowled about it, a caged panther.
His life had been seriously invaded; he tried now to recapture the order of his inner life. Months ago, as part of a long argument with his family, Raul had established the rule that no one entered his room without knocking. A while after that, he put on a latch, never failing to lock the door behind him. Without the door closed, it was as if a gaping wound had been left unhealed; without it locked, the wound was in danger of reopening.
Raul’s own sense of power was all-important to him. Without his fortress secure, he retired, deep in his chair, frightened and exhausted. No joy surpassed the locking of that door after dinner; the playing of the radio in the subdued room, his voice climbing the blank walls.
This was no adolescent phase, though it bore resemblance to one. Wherever he went, with or without his parents, this was true. If he had to resort to the bathroom for peace, he would do so. The demand for privacy excluded demanding it, though he did once with his parents, for that alone would breach it.
His mania, therefore, was never taken seriously. His parents were hurt by it, particularly his father — for what secrets could he have from him? His brother was equally surprised by it, and rather than believe Raul wished to be alone — or away from them — they put it down to silly resentment. It would pass. All they had to do was draw him out. There were constant expeditions in there for that purpose, Raul marking each one with hate.
Jose Sabas, Raul’s brother, was in his final year at Columbia University. It was a momentous year for him because of the Columbia uprising; and his intense political activity made any visit of his to the Sabas home an event. His news was always astonishing and his skill in the telling provided a willing audience. Though Raul couldn’t bear his brother’s mere presence, he still looked forward to his visits. But when Raul found the company of adults too awful to tolerate, he retired to his room, and often his lumbering warmhearted brother followed him there. Jose would act as if the latch on Raul’s door were non-existent, jamming it violently. “Come on, man. Open up.”
“Okay, wait a second.” Raul would remove the now twisted latch. Jose entered the room in big strides, Raul closed and locked the door.
“So what’re ya doin’?”
Raul liked to be tight-lipped with his brother. He just shrugged his shoulders.
“I see you’re reading Bleak House. It’s a great one of his.”
Raul nodded.
Jose took out a cigarette. “So what’s the story with you and school?”
“Could you give me a Camel?” Jose handed him one. “I don’t know. Uh, I’m goin’ to school.”
“Yeah, but can you see staying with it, or what?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Come on, man, it makes a lot of difference. Like the money. Like what you wanna do. It’s your life, man.”
“I don’t know whether it’s my life or not. I mean…That’s stupid, I don’t see Cabot as my life.”
“Well,” Jose hesitated. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know what it means. Exactly what I said — Cabot isn’t my life.”
“That just seems unreal to me.”
“Okay.”
“No, I mean, when I was in high school, all my friends were there, you know, and the tests and that kinda mindset you get into about grades. I mean I didn’t think of myself in those terms. I was a poet, a playwright.” Jose smiled ironically. “And I couldn’t fuckin’ stand the bullshit the teachers and the administration would go in for. There were times I just said — fuck the school, you know. I didn’t think, like that was my life. But, ultimately, it was. Couldn’t get away from that. What else were you gonna do? You know, living with your parents. With Columbia, it’s different ’cause you don’t have that dependency, you can’t be defined by it. At least you can’t let them.”
“And why the fuck should I let them now?”
“Let what? What do you mean?”
“Look, just ’cause you’re in college and I’m in high school doesn’t mean I should let them define me.”
“I wasn’t saying that at all. You shouldn’t let them define you. I just meant it was a different situation. You’re trapped in the situation, and you’re just forced to find some way of dealing with it.”