Contrary Pleasure (19 page)

He put the letters back. He found a high-school friendship book:

Roses are red, Violets are pretty. Let’s us get married and live in the
city. Your true friend, Sidney.

No matter how old and wrinkled I get, you’re one true friend I will never
forget. Maria Teresa Rooney.

He dropped the book back in and banged the drawer shut. These things
turned her into someone else. And he did not want that to happen. He opened her
closet. He knew her clothes well. He knew the feel of them against his hands
when she was warm inside them. They hung like empty promises. Brushed and neat
and mended, and so few of them.

It was too silent in the room. He turned to the small radio she had
accepted from him with such strange reluctance.
So that’s the end of the
Giant threat in the top half of the seventh, and the first man to bat for the Braves
will be
—He clicked it off. The voice seemed to echo in the room, brassy,
full of simulated enthusiasm, and then the memory of the voice went away and
the room was quieter than ever.

There was no magic in the room. It was a girl’s room. And the girl was
trite and too young and meaningless. Here were all the grubby mechanics of a
person living alone, a stranger. All the magic there had been in the young
flesh now seemed a magic that had been self-induced. It was a circus ground by
daylight. It was a magician seen from the wings, so that you knew how the trick
hinges worked and where the pigeons came from.

He took off his jacket and shoes and loosened his tie and stretched out
on the day bed face down. The
tapestried
cover
smelled of dust. A transient room with nothing enduring about it. A room for
the weak ones. Ben and Bess were strong ones, sure of their place. Walking the
earth heavily, looking about calmly. Bovine and steadfast in their own sense of
belonging. While the small ones scurry about and are eaten by giants.

When he heard the sound of her key, he rolled over onto his back. She
hurried across the room to him, her eyes full of concern, and edged onto the
day bed beside him, so that her round, warm hip fitted into the hollow of his
waist and she rested her hand flat against his chest as she looked down at him.
“Quinn, honey, what’s wrong? What happened? You shouldn’t come here like this.
Your car out in front—talking to me like that in the mill.”

He pulled his mouth tight, thinking he would cry. He reached for her and
pulled her down and held her, but it was no good because all the mill smells
were caught in her hair, and there was a sweatiness about her, and the taut
skin over the hard cheekbones was faintly oily. It was no good, and there was no
desire in holding her.

“I’ll talk about it later,” he said. “I just wanted to see you, Bonny.”

She seemed to sense his restraint and she pulled away. “Let me clean up,
then tell me,
darlin
’.” She went over and took
clothes from the closet and turned and gave him a bright nervous smile and went
into the bathroom and closed the door. He heard the metal thunder of the old
tub filling. He lay there and pictured her as carefully as he could, using the
images of her in an attempt to awaken and quicken desire, needing desire for
her the way, in crisis, strong drink is used to wipe the mind clean of other
things.

The tub noise stopped. Soon he heard the soft wet sounds as she bathed.
He tried to imagine her soaping firm breasts. His mental pictures were without
flavor or meaning. And the old fear was with him again. He got up quickly and
walked soundless in stocking feet to the bathroom door and opened the door and
walked in. The room was steamy, the mirror blurred. She had turned on the harsh
overhead light.

She looked at him and gasped and held her arm across her breasts in the
Venus gesture. There were blobs of suds on her shoulders, a soaked, blue sponge
in her hand, and with her mouth open that way in surprise, the harsh light
glinted on a metal filling. She tried then in a strained nervous way to smile
at him, and he wondered if it was supposed to be a seductive smile. It was a
thin grimace that did not touch her eyes. She held the sponge out shyly,
tentatively. “
Wanta
scrub my back,
hon
?”

He turned and pulled the door shut behind him. He tied his shoes quickly,
slid the knot of his tie up, shouldered into his jacket on the way to the door.
He half ran to the car. The evening traffic was heavy. He half heard the scream
of brakes behind him as he turned out into the traffic. He felt as if the world
had gotten vague. His face felt as if something sticky had dried on it and the
steering wheel felt too small in his hands, small and flimsy so that he could
not hold it properly.

The evening traffic of Stockton crawled through the old streets, snarling
and evil-tempered, honking at delays. Old men sat on high porches and watched
the glittering evening river. The narrow old streets emptied themselves onto
the wide velvet of main arteries leading out of town. The traffic sighed and
the speedometers climbed and temperatures dropped and gear ratios thudded
softly into the highest of highs. They swept out of the city toward mortgaged
greenness, toward window walls and storage walls and corner enclosures for
stereo speakers—toward PTA and the bowling league and the asbestos mittens that
came with an apron embroidered JOLLY HOST—toward the new issue of
Holiday
and toward the
twi
-night double-header on TV and the
bills that came in the mail and the book that came from the book club because
somebody forgot to send in the slip saying you didn’t want it—toward blacktop
driveways that were parking areas for small red bicycles and small yellow space
ships on wheels—toward a tossed green salad and one small lamb chop and skim
milk and no dessert because this was the year you lost twenty-five
pounds—toward matchstick draperies and the incredible chomping din of the
disposal and the mutter of the deepfreeze.

Metal river racing from stone of city to grass of suburbia, and in one
car was Quinn Delevan driving with quiet face and chewing the inside of his
left cheek and thinking of his dead loins.

The tennis, the swimming and the
long shower had made Ellen Delevan feel delicious and absolutely ravenous. She
glowed. This was going to be an absolutely perfect summer. One of the last
little nagging worries had faded away when Brock had decided to come out to the
club. He’d been so funny ever since that trouble at school. Nobody would talk
about it. She knew he’d done something that made Dad act as if he despised
Brock. Like he had committed a crime or something. And Brock acted different.
Even today. Sort of… well, timid with people. Not like he used to be, always
kidding around. More serious. As if something had happened to him that made him
older all of a sudden.

She had brought a blue, imitation-leather hatbox with a zipper that ran
almost all the way around it. She had toweled herself dry. She took out her
fresh
underthings
and put them on absently, thinking
about Brock. It would be nice if he and that Betty got along. She was nice.
Sort of odd and different. Funny-colored eyes. A perfectly marvelous tennis
player. She’d beaten Brock even, and Brock could take Clyde and Bobby Rawls.
That Betty Yost certainly had a mind of her own. Funny how she seemed to take
to Brock. They’d been talking at the club about how she was a man-hater. A lot
of the older boys had tried to date her and had been called out on strikes.
Brock had been sleeping as if he was awfully tired. And when Clyde had tiptoed
up to roll Brock into the pool, that Yost girl had whispered, “Leave him
alone!” and her eyes had looked like the flame on those Bunsen burners in
high-school lab. She grinned, remembering the way Clyde had stopped and stared
at her and then instinctively backed away as though he thought she was going to
bite him on the leg. Betty Yost had been real fierce about it. It made her
proud of Brock in an odd way to have the Yost girl take to him like that. She
was very pretty, actually. And she had that sort of quiet grown-up manner that
Brock had ever since coming home before school was out.

She put on her new pale-green cashmere cardigan, her light-tan skirt, the
dark-green sandals. She pushed the cardigan sleeves up above her elbows. Her hair
was still damp but drying fast. She pulled it back and put the little silver
clamp on it, wishing it would grow faster, and wondering if she should have it
cut short again. It was such a darn no-color. Not blond and not brown and not
anything. Scared mouse. That’s what Clyde called it.

She went out to the other room. Norma
Franchard
was sitting at one of the little tables, fixing her face. Ellen sat next to her
and dug her lipstick out of her purse. “I’m absolutely starving,” she said.

“I’m having a job keeping from snapping at this lipstick,” Norma said.

“What are the plans?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. Nobody said anything. I wish we could think of
something exciting to do. Bob and Clyde were saying something about bowling and
something about that new roller rink. Not for little Norma. I’m worn to a nub.
Anything I do from now on is a spectator sport. At least
almost
anything.” And she turned to Ellen with an exaggerated leer.

Ellen felt obligated to laugh in a knowing way. Norma was so darn crude
sometimes. Almost as if she felt she
had
to keep reminding you that she
slept with Bobby. Everybody knew it. Ever since sophomore high school. It
didn’t really make her cheap, because they seemed practically like old married
people. That was what Mother didn’t understand. Things had changed. If you were
going steady for just years and years, then it was all right. That didn’t make
you cheap nowadays. If you slept around, then you were cheap and everybody knew
it. And nobody respected you. But you didn’t lose any respect if you were going
steady. You had to know what to do to keep from getting caught, because if you
got caught, it was a disgrace that somehow made you cheap like the ones that
slept around. Ellen guessed that the kids probably thought she and Clyde did it.
Clyde acted sometimes like he couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t. It made her
feel funny to think what the other kids must be thinking about the two of them.
A sort of uneasy feeling and yet kind of smug, too. Let them think what they
wanted to think. It wasn’t exactly that she was scared, even though she was
scared, a little. She guessed it was sort of not being sure of Clyde. He seemed
so kind of crude sometimes. And he liked to show off his muscles, like standing
so long on the diving board before diving. Things like that.

Anyway, she wished Norma had more… reserve or something. She was cute and
a lot of fun.

Another reason was going to a different school in September, so far from
Clyde. If she was going to go to Cornell, like Bobby and Norma and Clyde, maybe
it would be different.

They went on out together. The boys were waiting. Ellen had her blue
hatbox and Norma had a canvas
zipperbag
, like a
basketball player. Ellen looked over toward the pool and saw that Brock was
awake and swimming again with that Yost girl.

“Before either of you say a darn thing,” Norma announced, “be it known
that Ellen and I could eat the tires right off that jeep.”

“It’s a conspiracy,” Bob said. “What are we for? Exercise ’
em
, drive ’
em
around, feed ’
em
, and start all over again. I’d rather have a cocker
spaniel.”

“Has anybody ever heard of a joint called
Brannigan’s
?”
Clyde asked in a dreamy voice, his eyes closed.

“Fat burgers with the works,” Ellen said reverently.

“Canadian ale with dew on the bottle,” Bob sighed.

“One of those big baskets of crisp, crunchy French fries,” Norma said.

They piled into the jeep and took off with Clyde spinning the wheels on
the gravel of the parking lot. It was too hot to eat out in the jeep, so they
went in and sat in a booth. Norma went over to the juke and turned and said,
“Hey! Frank Sinatra!” Both boys groaned. But she put in coins, pushed buttons,
and came back happily. They had two burgers apiece except Clyde, who had three,
along with two bottles of ale. Bob forcibly restrained Norma from going back
and replaying Sinatra. They sat in contentment and Clyde said, “What now,
people? The bowling? The skating?”

“Out!” Norma said. “
Definutely
.”

“No exercise,” Ellen said.

“There isn’t a good movie within fifty miles,” Clyde said.

“I can think of one thing,” Bob said. He gave Ellen a quick speculative
look. “Hell, I don’t know.”

“Give, man,” Clyde said.

Bob leaned forward, became conspiratorial. “Dad gets his vacation the
first two weeks in July. We’ve got the place on Lake Sheridan. You’ve been up
there, Clyde.”

“Sure. It’s nice.”

“He’s been beating on me for the last week to go up there and get the
dock in the water and get the water pump started and shovel out the joint.
Usually we get mice in the winter. He was up there a couple of weeks back, took
some friends up and they went after lake trout. But he couldn’t do all that.
No, it’s got to be Bobby. So what I was thinking of was two birds with one
stone. We could all go up there and stay overnight and you could help me with
that stuff he wants done, Clyde, and we could take some food along. It’s only
twenty-five miles. It’ll be cooler up there, but there’s a good woodpile. I
should know.”

“All of us?” Ellen said. “They wouldn’t let me do that!”

“Call your mother and tell her you’re staying with Norma. And Norma, you
call your folks and say you’re staying with Ellen. It ought to work.”

“What if they check?” Norma asked thoughtfully.