“I believe he’s looking at your mighty build,” said Horace. “Must be the village queer. Let’s set him on fire.”
It is quite mature, I thought, to know everything and say nothing. I had not practiced this much in my life, and felt myself almost plump with rough wisdom, as the old man walked on.
I told Horace I was not wanting any supper that night, stomach knotted and butterflied. But I was her prized friend, heavy on the aftershave, the shave itself a ludicrous solemn wipe of the blade through foam. He went down to the John Birch diner with his Swann’s Way in hand, to give the shiftless owner more grief.
She was not right. Something had happened. There were five new bottles of paregoric on the dresser next to the long needles, the brush and the hand mirror. She stared at me with her mouth pinched and her eyes wary with fear and sadness. What is it? I wanted to know. You can tell me, in my last clean shirt, a blue one to match her blouse, telepathy.
“He took me to the field, the fence, and the dog was not there anymore. But he wanted me to look at the vacant field where it had been, I know it. The man in the house wasn’t our friend anymore, either, Albert told me, angry. He was a busybody, a turncoat, maybe a fellow traveler or a Jew.”
“You think he killed them both?”
“I don’t know. We go on a while and then there’s always some kind of rage or treachery.”
“Why don’t I take that Klan outfit and shove it up his ass for him?”
“No,” she said quickly, head swung up to glare and then dissolve, back into her bewildered tortured beauty.
“But you have no real home and an awful life. I could get money. My father is well-off. By the end of this week I’ll have two hundred.”
“Very, very sweet. Hand me my dream bottle.”
I did, and went and fetched her two Cokes, lightning across the face of the piggish, unknowing woman alone in the dining room.
“You’re Peter Pan,” she smiled. “I think you remind Albert of his son.”
“Your husband.”
“He wasn’t so much older when we met. He liked my legs, even my poverty.”
“So do I, Felice.” It was rich and almost too heavy on my tongue.
“All I can do is drag youth down to indecentness.”
“No. You care. You’re in a trap. There’s a whole other world. There’s movies, and music, and poems, and fishing in a private place with cypresses in the water. You with me. You can’t tell. Time—”
“Oh, please shut up. I told you I didn’t need to know anybody else. I’m just sailing along the current in the rain gutter, a piece of nothing, nobody can touch me without drowning.”
I thought that was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.
I was just on the edge of breaking into song with that great anthem of blind Christian affirmation of the fifties, “I Believe.” All jazz, Beatism, cattism had fallen away. By God, I was in Harold’s world, women with troubles, a spell of swooning charity on me.
“You’ve forgotten I’m your friend,” I told her.
“Well, that’s something. To know you’re not alone. A part of me must have that.”
I knew she was about to say a thing so sincere and poignant, from that bleak experienced face of hers, that it would be a sign for our parting, and she did.
“Even in hell the real part of me can carry that young face of you with me, friend George.”
I left the room all moist and on the verge of going ugly in the face with sorrow and joy.
I was wanting to be a broader man when next we met, so I picked up Horace’s Proust and began reading it that night while he went down to the bus station to see if the magazines had changed. The great champion of sensitivity and time, in his cork-lined room, allergic to noise, claimed my pal. This thicket of nerves I could not broach, however, most likely because I had my own, clawing over the pages in competition. But it was still of great use in the room, because it was French, I thought as I tossed it away.
Horace came in with a great smile. I was on the bed dreaming high and valiant stuff. He looked behind him down the hall.
“Well, somebody’s having a good time here. Did you know there was a woman down the way? And she must be all woman. They hadn’t shut the transom. She couldn’t get enough from some guy. Oh Bertie, Bertie, deeper, deeper!” I changed from the smile of my good dreams to a face that must have been stone fury.
“You couldn’t have heard that. That’s from a dirty comic book.”
“I tell you. And get this, what she was moaning when I left: Churn butter churn! Churn butter churn! Old Bertie whamming away.”
He couldn’t have made this up.
“Your kind go from blind ignorance straight to cynicism. You don’t feel, you don’t know.”
“Hey, George, you quoting Marcel? I’m not cynical at all. She was having a hell of a time.”
Her language, an image from French dairy cow country — my good horror. How could this thing be? Albert was using the dog against her. He was forcing the paregoric down her, making her sick and blabbering.
“Now, man. You ought to see your face. What’s eating you?”
Horace was tall, too wise, knowing nothing. I hated him.
I couldn’t go see her that night. It was a bitter, bitter evening. Horace wanted to go down to the lobby and lie in wait so we could check out the woman when she came by. I told him that was a horrible sophomoric idea. Why? he asked, getting fed up with me. He said we might have found a lady with a profession here. He was ready to do a Chinese dwarf.
“Let’s leave it like the harmonica player,” I said, stonily.
“That isn’t the same at all.”
“Leave it.”
“You don’t tell me, all right? You’re not the duke of Kosciusko.”
He went down and I was happy he came back without seeing her.
The next morning was Sunday. Horace called himself a free-thinking Baptist. He’d brought a suit and he went out to that church down the way. I was apostate, but very glad he wasn’t. I checked the rail, being stealthy. That bastard Albert was in the chair, staring tiredly, having forced her twice this week. I was praying for an artery to snap in his face and vowed direct revenge if it didn’t. The man must be stomped and dragged off in a net. I could see venom popped up in his cheeks, spotting them red.
“Hey you,” I called, not very loud.
He twisted his head back, trying to find me.
“En Attendant Godot? En Attendant?”
He got up, shaken, and I watched the top of his head, gray hair brushed forward Roman, leave for the street.
When I knocked on the door and waited, I heard something clink inside. She came to the door in nothing but a house wrap, wet from the bath.
“Friend George.” Her eyes were very dull. She was on the stuff, her conscience awful.
When I went in she’d already gone back to the tub. I sat on the bed and heard her stir the water. Then I heard the clink again. For the longest time she said nothing.
“You ought to watch your transom. My friend heard you really having a good time last night.”
There was no reply at all.
“I thought wrong. You don’t need a friend so much as. . somebody to betray.”
Nothing. You heard water sounds, just a little.
I studied the bed and carpet and dresser — all she had and was, as far as I knew. A hotel was a stupid and desperate place to live, I suddenly thought. And rotation from one to another, having her bicycle and robe and boots and chain everywhere, up the stairs dutifully with them again and again, setting up like carnival gypsies except with less dignity and no good at all even to yokels with a quarter. But I was being unfair to her, and caught myself up again. Because I cherished her, nothing could budge me.