Boys and Girls Together (15 page)

‘Can you promise that you won't be miserable if you can't live as if I had an inexhaustible income? If you can, I can promise not to gamble.'

‘We can't live in this clerk's house for ever, can we? I hate this house and always have and always will. I hate San Francisco. What good would it do to pretend that I don't? I hate the thought of waking up and still being in this lousy house in this lousy city.'

‘O.K. Doesn't that mean I've got to keep thinking of a way to get us somewhere that you like, in a house you like? Doesn't that mean I've got to be patient about everything every day, so patient that it's unhealthy? And doesn't that mean I can't sit down calmly and go about my work one day after another until I've got something written that doesn't make me sick to my stomach? And since this is so, don't I have to keep thinking of a quicker way of getting money than by writing, and doesn't this thinking always end in gambling?'

‘Well, I can see you've got to put the blame on me again, the way you always do.'

‘No. Why don't you look at it this way? Put up with
everything for a year. Know that after the year is over we'll be in a position to live a life more to your liking because during the year I will have worked and earned money and not had to think about how unhappy you are,
or
about gambling.'

‘I want to go to sleep, and I hope I'm not pregnant.'

‘I want to, too, and I hope you are.'

Much later, many sleepless moments later, long after many remarks of friendship, love, tenderness, animosity, hatred and loathing had gone unuttered one by one, and many kind or bitter questions had gone unasked, each of them listening to the breathing of the other, their hands almost touching accidentally now and then, each of them feeling the nearness and the ceaseless troubling of the other, the woman said, ‘Are you awake?'

‘No, fast asleep.'

‘I'm scared.'

‘What about?'

‘I don't know.'

‘If you mean you want to get in my bed, get in.'

The woman scrambled naked and bouncing from
her bed into his, backing up into him so that he could hold her the way he always did when she said she was scared.

‘Isn't it all lies?' she said when she was snug and warm.

‘I don't know.'

‘It must be. That's why all I believe in positively is money, and boys for girls. Money makes the lying boys do to girls and girls to boys so much nicer, so much easier to do.'

‘Lying's the beginning of everything wrong, deranging and dirty.'

‘Everybody does it, though. You know everybody does it. So if that's so, it must be necessary, too, and if it's necessary, isn't it better to accept it and let it go at that?'

‘I don't know. Maybe it is. Even so, the idea doesn't appeal to me. I'll tell you why, too. It's impractical. It's so much simpler to start out by not lying. Why should anybody deceive anybody else? But most of all why should anybody deceive himself? The reason I hope you're pregnant is that if we have enough kids maybe one or two of them will be all right in this thing.'

‘The two we've
got
are all right in it, aren't they?'

‘Who knows? Maybe they're all right until they're put to the test and then maybe they aren't all right. But if there are enough of them maybe one of them will be all right even after he's been put to the test.'

‘The test of growing up and becoming a shit like everybody else, is that what you mean?'

‘Well, yes, if you want to put it delicately.'

‘Anybody will be a shit sooner or later. Anybody who doesn't die before he's eleven, at any rate. It's just that some people are bigger ones than others. And still others become shits without growing up first, like you, for instance.'

The woman turned swiftly with delight to scramble all over the man, spilling laughter and pleasure all over him.

‘What's so funny?'

‘What I said. It's so true. I'm so surprised I said it. You are a shit and you never grew up. It's true. Ask anybody. You don't know your ass from a hole in the ground and yet you're always trying to figure out big things, trying to write them and get them straight. You were either born grown up and had to ungrow to become a shit, or you were a born shit and didn't need to grow up to be one, I don't know which.'

‘Very clever.'

‘All right. You love the truth. Try to tell me it isn't the truth.'

‘Only partly. Most of it's true, but what you've left out is that if it's true of me, it's much more true of others.'

‘That's just your lousy ego. Maybe it isn't much more true of others at all. How do we know? Maybe they don't even give it a thought.'

‘That's what I mean. If they gave it a thought, if they were willing or able to expose themselves to the risk of giving it a thought, they most certainly would come through in worse shape than I come through.'

‘Well, who's smartest, they or you? They are, and you know it. Why should they bother? Why should they go to all that trouble just to find out that they're shits?'

‘Because it's progress,' the man said. ‘Modern progress, like cigarettes an inch longer.'

‘Like
what
an inch longer?' She giggled and swarmed all over him again. ‘I wish you'd get thoughtful again. What's a cigarette factory? It's a penitentiary, isn't it? What's a million dollars? It's a curse, isn't it? What's holding up my curse?'

‘Maybe it's a boy. Wouldn't you be glad if a boy was holding it up?'

‘That's better. That's more like it. More thoughtful. I can just see the inside of your head—all broken bottles and rusty wheels and a few tired weeds trying to act like they're rose bushes, and you wandering around in there looking things over. I can just see you noticing something that looks like a blossom on a dried old weed and thinking to yourself, “By God, here comes a true thing, a new thing, at last. Here comes beauty at last. Maybe it's going to be something perfect, whatever it is.”'

‘The inside of my head is an old city on the banks of the Euphrates, and the things growing there are not
weeds but olive trees and grape vines. I've seen the place many times in my sleep, and I've always felt at home there. It's a deserted place mainly but it is still magnificent, although in ruins.'

‘That's more like it. That small talk about cigarettes an inch longer was no good at all. What a liar!'

‘You don't believe I've seen the place?'

‘You're inventing it right now. You saw a photograph of an excavated grocery store in your ancient-history book one day and that night you saw the photograph again in your sleep, and ever since you think you're a fine boy with fine dreams and a fine past.'

‘Do you know that's how it might have started at that? It
is
true, though, that I have been to ancient cities in my sleep, I remember hanging around a deserted building that was beside the sea once. That was a handsome dream if I ever had one. It was an abandoned place.'

‘What happened to the place on the banks of the Euphrates?'

‘I may have invented that one. Or at any rate I think I went out of my way to put it on the banks of the Euphrates because that's where my people lived a long time.'

‘You and your people. You'd think they'd done something. Did they invent anything at all? Didn't everybody have to wait for a poor boy who got his ears boxed to invent the electric-light bulb and the
phonograph and everything else? I read all about it at school One man, hardly belonging to
any
people, did all that inventing. What the hell did your people ever invent?'

‘They say my great-grandfather Red Haig built fine-looking houses out of stone.'

‘Was that his real name?'

‘It was.'

‘How did he ever get a name like that?'

‘He had red hair.'

‘He didn't.'

‘He did.'

‘I thought they all had black hair in that part of the world.'

‘Most of them did.
He
had red hair, so his name became
Red
.'

‘Your hair isn't red.'

‘No, but yours is, and maybe Johnny's will be. The red helped, you know.'

‘Helped what?'

‘Helped me decide you might just be the one.'

‘Which one?'

‘To get in my bed and talk all night and be Johnny's mother.'

‘
You
thought about things like that?'

‘You know damn well I did. We talked about things like that every time we were together. What's the matter? Memory gone blank?'

‘Oh, I just thought that that was to string me along, make me feel better, make it a better lay, and all like that. I never took any of it seriously. Suppose I
didn't
have red hair, what then?'

‘I may not have decided you might be the one.'

‘I could have been dyeing my hair red. How do you know I wasn't? It's easy to do. How do you know I don't have it dyed every time I go to the beauty parlour? Maybe my hair's black for all you know. You may have got took.'

‘I just felt that the mother of my kids should have red hair.'

The woman turned swiftly, swarming and slipping under him.

‘It's all right,' she said. ‘I don't want you to stop being thoughtful, but as for me, this is when I just let go and speak without thinking.'

‘Is there anything in this apartment to eat?' the woman said.

‘Not unless Marta put something in the refrigerator.'

‘Did you ask her to?'

‘No, but maybe she did anyway. If she didn't,
though, you could sneak downstairs and bring something up.'

‘Are you hungry, too?'

‘I could go for a little something.'

‘How come? It's after three, you know.'

‘So what? Marta's downstairs. I don't have to get up tomorrow. I plan to sleep until evening.'

‘We can't do that. What about Lucretia?'

‘You get up around two or three if you want to. Take a taxi and spend some time with her, and around seven take a taxi and come home and we'll go to dinner some place.'

‘What about Alice and Oscar?'

‘Bring them along. Bring Lucretia, too. What I mean is, I want to sleep until I'm sick and tired of sleeping. I need a lot of sleep.'

‘No, you've got to get up at a reasonable hour and take me in. It wouldn't do for you to fall out at this stage of the game. Things are going to be getting more and more exciting for Lucretia and I know she'd be miserable if you weren't there to notice how exciting and beautiful she is even with a funeral staring her in the face.'

‘I'd like to get out of it. After all, I never knew him. Why don't you just go in and then come back alone and we'll drive somewhere and have a good dinner? The funeral's not until day after tomorrow. I'll go to that funeral if you think I must, but for God's sake after the funeral don't bring her here.'

‘I've already asked her, and she's accepted. We can't get out of it now.'

‘Of course we can. Just
get
us out of it. The kids are sick or I'm sick, but get us out of it. I'll tell you why. I want us to spend four or five days together alone. There's a lot of things to talk about and we never get a chance to talk about them when we're taking care of the kids because we're always so tired and irritable. I'm not going to be trying to work, either. I just want to spend four or five days alone with you. It's very important.'

‘We can do it after Lucretia leaves. I told her to stay as long as she likes, but she won't stay more than a week.'

‘A week's too long. One night might be all right, but you can't get anybody to stay only one night. Just get out of it.'

‘What do you want to talk about?'

‘Everything.'

‘Talk about it now.'

‘No. We started to have another fight tonight, and then we didn't. I think if we work on that a little more, we can get things in order. We need time, though, away from the kids and everybody else. I'll tell you something. I was going to tell you after things quieted down a little, but I'll tell you now. I've got more than six thousand dollars. It isn't enough but it's a lot. It's more than some people earn in a whole year of hard
work. I won it on the horses. Two bets. Yesterday while you were at the beauty parlour and today while I took a nap at Lucretia's. You know my credit's good, so I took a chance. The first three bets yesterday ran out, but the next one came in and I had a profit. I only bet one today and it came in, too, and paid more than twice as much as I had expected it to pay. Well, what I want to talk about is this. It's no good. I can't expect to do it again, but we've got
this
money and it'll keep us nicely for a year. I mean, I worried all the time, and I've got no business betting if I'm going to worry. I didn't worry for a while last night when I drove to the airport to get Alice and Oscar, but that was because I was drunk and desperate. All we had in the bank was a hundred and forty dollars and with Lucretia coming to town I knew that wouldn't last long, so I did what I did. But I know I was too lucky and I don't want to kid around any more and lose what I've got, and more that I haven't got, and then have to borrow, or try to, and make a fool of myself and a shambles of this family. I'm still pleased, because it
is
a lot of money and I got it on my nerve. I want to forget all about money now. I want to put the money in the bank and write cheques as bills come in and forget all about money and think about this family and my work. I know we'll be all right in a year, maybe less. I'm very tired. I'm even scared because the money came so easily. It seems so
simple. Just pick a horse and bet on him. But it's
not
simple. It's a miracle every time you win. I'm not up to miracles any more, and I'm not up to losing any more, either. I don't want to need to try to kid myself. I want to quiet down and forget money. Gambling owes me a lot of money, a lot more than six thousand, but I've got to forget that it owes me anything. I've got to be satisfied that I've gotten six thousand when I need it so badly, when all of us do. There's money coming from England all right. A hundred dollars or so. That's all. There's no other money coming. I haven't written a story in years that any magazine would care to buy. When I get back to work I may be able to write one every now and then and sell it.
While
I'm working on something long, I mean. You've got to help me, though. I don't mean just to
say
you will. You always say you will, and I know you try, but this time you've got to really help me. You've got to put yourself out, otherwise there's no telling what's liable to happen to us.'