“I do love you,” Elaine said. “I’ve always loved you. As for going on together, we haven’t much choice, have we? We’re not the kind of people who do foolish things on the spur of the moment. We have a sense of responsibility.” She turned her face away from his in a gesture of impatience and withdrawal. “Oh, let’s sit down. What’s the use of dancing, what’s the use of coming to a party at all if we’ve got to talk about things like this.”
The dining room was half-filled by this time. Elaine paused to greet two of her bridge-club friends, reminding Gordon by pressing his hand that he wasn’t to forget to ask them to dance. Gordon returned to the punch bowl, while Elaine explained to her friends that Gordon was keeping an eye on Judge Bowridge for the evening, he and Gordon were such pals, and you know how Bowridge gets sometimes, stiff, my dear, positively stiff. I know he lost his wife, but still!
Bowridge had sat down on a bench behind the punch bowl. He had taken his spectacles out of his pocket and was cleaning them with a handkerchief.
“Ha,” he said, breathing air on the lenses. “Ha, ha. Didn’t think you’d be back, Gordon.”
“Here I am.”
“Sit down. Do you feel anything?”
“No.”
“Nor I. A little in the eyes, perhaps. My eyes are my weakest part. Those damn lights in the courtroom, not enough of them. Have to peer and peer to distinguish the defendant from the prosecution.” He pinched his spectacles on the bridge of his nose and glanced around the room. “In my opinion this straight alcohol is vastly overrated, unless we’re diluting it too much. Do you think that could be it?”
“Possibly.”
“Then let us mend our ways.” The judge rose. He walked steadily and ponderously, without a tremor. Gordon saw Elaine dancing with Dr. Lavery. She was talking very gaily, shaking her head and laughing, but he knew very well that she was watching him out of the corner of her eye. She was watching Bowridge too, as he ladled the punch and spiked it with alcohol from the bottle. Gordon felt like a little boy who is aware that he is doing wrong but keeps on doing it because he knows he won’t be openly reprimanded or punished in front of strangers. There’d be only the sweet steely smile, the secret pinch on the arm, the whispered wait-till-I-get-you-home, Junior!
And, like the small boy who knew he was doing wrong, Gordon pretended he was not afraid. His face smiled, while the fear pressed on his chest, stifling his breathing. Wait-till-I-get-you-home, Gordon! He knew now that he had always been afraid of her. This was no new fear that had sprung up because of Ruby, because he had finally given Elaine a weapon. It was an old growth, its multiple roots buried twenty feet under the ground, crossing and re-crossing each other, a maze of roots and at the core, Gordon’s personal minotaur.
“Wake up, Gordon,” Bowridge said.
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“Pardon?”
“I — wasn’t — asleep.”
“I didn’t say you were. You were dreaming. Sometimes I dream too, and I can look very alert when I’m dreaming but this takes practice.” The judge sat down on the bench and handed Gordon his glass. “In court, sometimes I dream, and sometimes I worry, about fifty-fifty. I worry about people, I try to clarify issues. I boil them down in a crucible, I boil and boil, and when I’ve finished there isn’t a thing left in the crucible, not an ash, not a drop of liquid. I also worry about my cough. Have you ever heard my cough?”
“No.”
“It sounds like this — chmm — there. Very dry. It could be anything. What do you suppose it is, Gordon?”
“Phlegm.”
“That’s no answer. Why do you suppose I have phlegm?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, there you are,” Bowridge said with gloomy satisfaction. “You don’t know and I don’t know.”
Gordon frowned. “I don’t get that about boiling the issues.”
“Ah, well, you boil off the extraneous matter, you vaporize the irrelevancies, and then what have you got? Nothing. It’s very clear, a child could understand. For a child there are no irrelevancies, everything is equally important, a fire, a bowel movement, a caterpillar on a leaf, the pattern of a print, a kiss, a bruise, a passing motor scooter, the smell of a certain cake of soap. I have no children, I am only making this up by the method of contrasts. I’m old. I’m too tired to be interested in fires or caterpillars. I don’t notice prints. My sense of smell is feeble, my bowel movements difficult. No one has kissed me for years. I hate the noise of motor scooters. You see?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ah, even a child can understand, it’s very clear.” The judge coughed twice, chmm, chmm, very dry. Then he put his glass down, took off his spectacles again and cleaned them, blowing on them, ha! ha! ha! and wiping the mist off with his handkerchief. He began to hum with the orchestra. “Catchy tune that. Spirited.” Escalante sang “Chuy, chuy,” and the Judge sang too, “Chewy, chewy, chewy chewy!”
“I feel,” Bowridge said, “that I’m getting into the spirit of things.”
Gordon took off his hat and put it on the floor. “It’s getting warm in here.”
“I like warmth. You and I could sing a duet, Gordon. That fellow up there can’t sing. Who ever told him he could sing? Someone should apprise him of the true facts. Come along, come along, you and I will sing a duet.”
“I don’t know the words.”
“They’re very simple, just chewy chewy, chewy chewy.”
“I don’t know the music either.”
“No matter. Just follow me.”
Gordon looked around for Elaine, but there were too many people on the dance floor and they all looked rather vague and trivial.
Gordon and the judge raised their voices in song.
10
Gordon hung onto the palm tree with both his hands. The tree was swaying, so he knew there must be a high wind. Against his forehead the bark of the tree felt harsh and dry, like the skin of a very old man. He decided to sit down under this tree and rest.
“Get up,” Elaine said.
“I lost my hat.”
“Get up. I’m warning you, Gordon.”
“A little rest, that’s all.”
“You disgusting fool, humiliating me in front of all those people. Get up, we’re going home. After the exhibition you’ve made of yourself you’d think you’d want to go home. Do you hear me, Gordon?”
He heard her, of course, but he was listening to other things as well, trying to give them equal importance as the judge said. He heard the engine of a car starting, za za za za za oom, and the faint click of heels on the distant sidewalk. He heard Miguel Escalante and his Latin American Rhythms, and the noise of the palm tree. It didn’t make the same kind of noise as other trees did. It crackled an incantation, waving its arms in grandiose sweeps like a demented evangelist. What a remarkable woman Elaine was — the wind that swayed the tree left her untouched.
“I lost my hat,” Gordon said.
“I have it. Can’t you even see?”
He peered up at her very earnestly, and of course she had the hat. Elaine never forgot such things. She would, after the Fiesta was over, pack the hat away in mothballs until the next Fiesta. It was a way of measuring time, counting Fiestas instead of birthdays. Next Fiesta he would be one year, three pounds and two moth holes older. I’m old, the judge said. My sense of smell is feeble — I’m too tired — I don’t notice — I hate — no one has kissed me—