Boys & Girls Together (58 page)

“Are you married?”

“Huh?”

“Are you married?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Jenny looked around for her purse.

Archie moved to take her in his arms again.

Jenny discouraged him.

“Come on,” Archie said.

Jenny rummaged through her purse.

“All of a sudden we’re turned into pumpkins, is that it?”

Jenny nodded.

“Well, for Christ’s sake.”

“I’m sorry,” Jenny mumbled.

“Jesus H. Christ!”

“Don’t talk like that.”

“Just can it, will ya?”

“Please. I said I was sorry.”

“If I seem the least bit ruffled, Miss Devers, it’s only because, with the possible exception of cancer, there is nothing I loathe more than a good old-fashioned, one-hundred-percent American teaser.”

“I’m not.”

“Don’t get me started.”

“I’m
not
.”

“Then what the hell
are
ya? You been coming on at me all week. Let’s just cut the crap and admit it.”

“I want ... you to know ...” Against her will, she started crying.

“Hooray, here comes the tears.”

“ ... to know that ... you have totally and ... completely misunderstood my ... actions.”

“Sure I have. Of course I have. That story of mine makes a lot of sense, leaving a manuscript around someplace. So tell me you believed it and tell me that you couldn’t have waited for me just as easy out on the sidewalk and tell me why goddammit you had to wait until the last goddam second before asking was I married!”

“You have ... totally ... and completely ...”

“Cry all you want.”

“ ... misunderstood my ... actions.”

“It doesn’t change anything. Now I may have misunderstood yours, Miss Devers, but I’ll try to make it next to impossible for you to misunderstand mine. I used to live in this apartment before I got married. For a small fee my ex-roommate allows me afternoon privileges. I intended sharing those privileges with you this lovely afternoon until it turned out otherwise. I cannot say that I am pleased at that turn of events—you are, to use the vernacular, shapely—but I will, however, live. I will not, however, wait for you to do your face so that it looks like you haven’t been crying. I will see you at the office, perhaps later, perhaps Monday. Until that time, Miss Devers, may I just say shove it.”

Jenny waited until the door slammed before allowing her sobbing to get out of control. Half blindly, she made her way to the sofa and dropped down, clutching at the cushions, her head buried in her arms. She cried for a long time, until her throat hurt. Then, slowly, she managed to stop. She sat up on the sofa, hands folded in her lap, breathing deeply. When she was under complete control, she stood, looked around for the bathroom, found it, turned on the faucet, and stared at herself in the mirror. Her face was, of course, a mess, but that was all right. It was the fact that her blouse was unbuttoned that set her off crying again. This siege was shorter, and when it was over she washed her face and did what she could with her hair and then went back to the sofa and sat down.

Well now.

What do you do if you’re a good girl in a bad world and you’re sitting in somebody’s apartment and it’s Friday in Manhattan and you’ve just been unjustly insulted and it
does
make a difference, a big difference, if he’s married or not, and it’s hot, and your apartment not only isn’t air-conditioned,
it can’t be
, because the wiring in the building is so rotten, and I could just kill that Archie Wesker.

Well, of course, I’ll just have to quit my job.

I’m not going to have Bob Mitchum staring me in the face for the rest of my life. I’ll quit—snap—like that—snap—and I’ll live a life of luxury while the two hundred and fifty-seven dollars in my special checking account lasts, and then—then—to hell with then, Jenny thought. I can’t be bothered with it now.

She was suddenly in a marvelous mood, so maybe
that
was what she had been ready for all the time—quitting. She stood and grabbed her purse, hurrying across the room, because the important thing was to get right down to that office and empty that desk and leave a little note informing Kingsway Publishers Inc. that this was not goodbye, it was goodbye
forever
. “Miss Devers is bugging out,” Jenny said, and she left the apartment, dashed to the street, caught a cab and urged the driver into a maximum effort as he raced her down to Kingsway.

As Jenny got out of the elevator, the main-desk receptionist was waiting to get in. They nodded to each other and Jenny hummed aloud as she made her way along the deserted corridor to her desk. Sitting down, she started opening drawers. They were empty. Oh, there were paper clips and pencils and carbons of correspondence that needed eventual filing, but, as far as anything personal was concerned, the drawers were empty. Jenny nodded. Of course they were. It was a bad habit to keep personal. things in the office. Once you started spreading your worldly goods, you lost them. So the drawers were empty, and she had known all along they, were going to be, so why had she rushed like a lunatic to clean out an already empty desk? Jenny wondered about that. Then she began to wonder if there was anything of her in her tiny apartment or was that just like her desk was? Then she wondered if she was going to cry again, helplessly realized the answer was going to be yes, said “Dear God” out loud and bit her lower lip as hard as she could, trying desperately somehow to stop, because even though the office was empty, it just didn’t do to broadcast grief, and, besides, if the office wasn’t empty, whoever was there would come around and ask a lot of silly questions. In spite of herself, Jenny, wept—quietly, but not quietly enough, because from somewhere Mr. Fiske was suddenly standing over her, saying, “Miss Devers? Miss Devers? Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“Then ...”

“
I happen to be in a marvelous mood!
” Jenny shouted at him, and he nodded, and that made her mad, and then he smiled, and that made her madder, and she couldn’t have been more amazed a couple of hours later when she found herself in bed with him. She was tempted to ask him if he too was married, but somehow another affirmative answer would have been just too embarrassing, so she didn’t.

Charley would have given an affirmative answer, had she inquired. He was married, had one child, and had never before, not even remotely, been the least remiss. He didn’t do that kind of thing (hadn’t done that kind of thing).

Reprehensible: indefensible. (His way of putting it.)

“You gotta not be ashamed.” (His father’s.)

To the best of Charley’s memory, his father had first uttered those words on a blinding autumn morning, during recess, on the playground of Covington Academy, a reasonably exclusive Connecticut boarding school for boys. Just prior to his father’s utterance, Charley had been chatting with the Keeler twins, Ronald and Donald, who ordinarily ignored him. This day, however, he had just trounced them both in a relay race, he alone running against the two of them, and since their demise had been witnessed by several other members of their class, the Keeler twins were anxious to air the reason behind their setback.

“You cheated,” Ronald (or Donald) Keeler said.

“It was a running race. How could I cheat?” Charley replied.

“Course he cheated,” Donald (or Ronald) seconded.

“But I didn’t.”

“Guys like him, they always cheat.” The twins were ignoring him now.

“Always.”

“You gotta expect that of guys like him. Cheating.”

“You gotta.”

“I’m not surprised. Are you surprised?”

“I’m not surprised. Are you surprised?”

“After all, his old man’s nothing but the janitor around here.”

“Custodian,” Charley said.

They turned to look at him. “Janitor” in chorus.

Charley shook his head. “No. Custodian.”

“He’s the goddam lousy janitor and that’s all he’s gonna be and you’re nothing but the goddam lousy son of the goddam lousy janitor and that’s all you’re gonna be too. Goddam janitor’s son.”

There were two of them and they were both his size, but if there had been ten and all ten giants, he still would have attacked. Charley ran at them, pummeling one until the other grabbed him from behind and pulled him down onto the playground and for a time it seemed as if their numbers would carry the day. They were sitting on him, hitting him around the face, and his nose was bleeding badly and his lower lip was cut and suddenly it dawned on him that he might just possibly lose and so he gave a terrible shout of protest and perhaps it was the sound of his own voice or the taste of his own blood or the fact that he had always associated the Keelers with the bad guys in his own private Western but as he lay there, as they hit down at his face, he knew he could beat them if he wanted to. And he wanted to. Charley twisted his body one way, then the other, back and forth, and soon one of the Keelers lost his balance, then the other slipped, and then Charley was on his feet, light and fast and on his feet, and soon one of the Keelers had a bloody nose and then the other had a swollen right eye and then the bloody one began to cry and his brother joined him and they started to turn and run away but Charley shouted again, diving on them, pulling them down, sitting astride them both, shouting and hitting until he felt a sharp pain at his ear and his father had him and was dragging him across the playground and down a flight of steps and through a door into the boiler room beneath the main building of Covington Academy.

“Animal!” Mr. Fiske said then. “Squabbling! Fighting in the dirt!” He was from the old country. He had lived in America for fewer than twenty of his forty-five years. His name, now Fiske, was once a good deal longer.

“But—”

“Before you give me your excuse, let me tell you there is no excuse.”

“They called you the janitor. I tried to tell them you were the custodian. The custodian.”

“Look!” Mr. Fiske held out his hands. He was tall and wiry and his fingers were long. “At my hands. Look.”

Charley shook his head. “Yes?”

“They’re dirty! The work I do, they get dirty! Either way, they get dirty! But I ain’t ashamed. That’s the main thing. The only thing. No matter what. You gotta not be ashamed.”

“I’m not ashamed,” Jenny said. She lay in her bed under the top sheet; Charley Fiske lay beside her. They had finished sleeping together perhaps two minutes before, and since then neither of them had said anything.

“Of course you’re not.” Charley rolled up on one elbow. The bed creaked. “My God, neither am I. We shouldn’t be. Why did you say a thing like that?” The bed creaked again.

“That creaking. It just drives me crazy.” She tried to make her fingers stop fidgeting with the sheet, tried to get her voice to sound less fretful.

“Why did you say that about being ashamed?”

“Because it’s true. I’m not ashamed—I don’t care what you do.”

“What do you mean, what I do?”

“I had the feeling—ordinarily I’m not like this; I probably seem nervous to you but I’m not, I’m placid ordinarily and—I had the feeling that—this is very hard—that you wanted to run—there, I said it!—I had the feeling that bed play was over and you were going to run.”

“Well, you’re wrong.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

“Now, I
do
have to go.”

“Oh.”

“But it’s because I’ve got a very important appointment that I simply cannot break.” He sat up in bed and reached for his clothes.

Jenny watched him. “I’m not ashamed!” she said again. “This is probably one of the three worst conversations of my life and God knows what the other two were but it is not going to make me feel ashamed.”

Charley zipped up his fly. “I am a much better person—”

“
Than what?
”

“Than you have any reason to believe. Than I may seem now.”

“I’m a better person too. What do you think, that I’m a quick—what’s the phrase?—roll in the hay?”

“Of course not.”

“
Why shouldn’t you?
Haven’t I acted like one? You don’t even know me. Why shouldn’t you?”

“Jenny ...” Charley said, and his voice was sweet and full of compassion and very, very sad. “Come on now.”

“You say you’re nice. Are you?”

“Yes. I hope so. I try to be.”

“Then don’t leave. Not yet. Do that much. I’ll entertain you. I can be very entertaining. What would you like?”

“A suede jacket for my birthday.”

“I’m sorry,” Charley’s father said, “I can’t give you a suede jacket.”

Charley looked up at his father. It was dusk and they were walking to the little house that Covington Academy let them live in, the whole Fiske family: Charley, his father, and his three beautiful sisters.

“I’m sorry,” his father said again. “I feel very foolish. I ask you what would you like and when you tell me I say no.’ I promise you this, though: someday I’ll have the money to give you a suede jacket. But not next month, not this birthday. Do you understand?”

“I don’t really need any jacket,” Charley said. “I don’t really need anything. I don’t like birthday presents. I think it’s dumb, giving people presents just because they have a birthday. Now someday, when I graduate the smartest in my class from Covington Academy,
then
you can give me a present.”

“You’re a nice boy, Charley.”

“I hope so. I try to be. I don’t know why I said that about wanting a jacket. As long as I have this—” he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his folding carpenter’s rule—“and this—” he tapped the rule against his wrist watch with the second hand—“what do I need?” Then he dashed off to try to find something to measure.

Charley had been measuring things for almost as long as he could remember. He was never without his wristwatch with the second hand and his folding carpenter’s rule. He knew how big his bed was, and his room, and how many feet it was from there to the top of the stairs, and how long it took to crawl that distance as well as walk it or hop it, and he knew the length of his front yard, the width, too, as well as the length and width of each block of cement in the blissfully irregular sidewalk that passed by his home, and how many feet it was to the corner and to the next corner, and to the corner after that.