Contrary Pleasure (5 page)

They left the place. Standing, she was a little taller than he had
expected her to be. Long-legged and a little broad across the hips. She held
his arm tightly and walked in stride with him, her dark hair bouncing against
her shoulders, red purse swinging. He thought of how the evening might end, and
it made him feel weak and dizzy. One moment her coarse vitality would make him
feel weak and trapped—caught in something beyond his depth. And the next moment
he would feel strong and possessive and excited.

“Honey, I bet with those shoulders you play football, do you?”

“Not at this place, Elise. I used to in high school, but they’ve got guys
they pay to play. Coal heavers. Gorillas.”

“I had a boyfriend once used to play pro ball for a truck company. He was
real punchy. He was a tackle and they were for always hitting him on the head.”

They ate in a small dark Chinese restaurant and she said, “I love this
gunk, but it don’t stay with you. It
kinda
goes right
on through and you’re hungry all over again.”

And in the dark spring night, back out on the sidewalk, she clung to his
arm, swaying a little and her voice was lower and huskier and she said, “I bet
you don’t think I’m a singer at all. I bet you figure I was throwing a big snow
job.”

“I believe you, Elise.”

“You know what you’re going to do,
Brocky
boy?
You’re going to come up and I’ll put a record on and I’ll show you I’m a
singer, see.”

It was a narrow building, crowded in between stores. The street door
wasn’t locked. They went up three flights of stairs, and the air in the
stairwell had a musty flavor. Her room was small, with a vague smell of laundry
and dust. It had a kitchen alcove, a small bathroom with noisy plumbing. The
studio couch where she slept was not made up from the previous night, and by
the head of the couch, beyond the rumpled pillow, cigarette butts had been
squashed out on the varnished floor beyond the edge of a dark-brown rug. He
felt sick and hollow inside. There had been girls. A very few. Back seats of
cars. Blankets under the trees. Once a back hallway. But girls. Not women.

They drank what was left in a bottle. She had a record player and she put
on a blues record and sang along with it, slurring her way into the notes,
snapping her fingers, swaying in exaggeration of the mannerisms of torch
singers. In the dim lights of the room she had a feral, overpowering look. He
wanted to leave and he couldn’t think of any way to get out of it without
looking like a fool, like a fool kid. She had sort of taken it all for granted.

She made him sit and watch her sing and then she came over to him and
kissed him hard and turned off the floor lamp near the day bed. It was
different than ever before. It was a kind of delirium, and a devouring, and a
sense of evil.

He awoke and the two windows were gray and the light was in the room,
insipid on the litter and the spilled clothing. She was asleep, breathing
heavily through her mouth. He was on the outside and he slid out with great
caution. He looked at her as he dressed. She was on her side, one arm high,
showing the dark patch of armpit hair, one breast like a sagging white gourd.
She was a stranger he had never seen before. A strange woman, and in that light
she looked forty.

He had his door key and he got into the fraternity house without waking
his roommate, and managed to wake up when the alarm went off after nearly an
hour’s sleep. The night with her was like something dreamed. In class he felt
like something dead. Through the drone of the lecture he would think of her and
something would turn slowly in his stomach and the backs of his hands would
prickle. It was a nauseous excitement.

He went back to the beer joint that afternoon. He knew he shouldn’t. But
he had to go back and on the way there he told himself she wouldn’t be there.

She was in the same booth and she was looking directly at him as he came
through the door. She wore the same suit but this time her blouse was yellow.
He felt
ganglingly
awkward as he walked to the booth.
He knew he was blushing.

“You snuck out like a mouse or something,
Brocky
,”
she said, and he wanted to shush her because her voice was too loud.

“Had to make morning classes, Elise.”

She reached across the table and held his hand strongly and said, “We had
fun,
Brocky
. We had fun, didn’t we?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want you should think I’m like that. I mean that I’d do that
with anybody.”

He wished she wouldn’t talk so loud. “I don’t think that.”

“It’s on account of it was you. Cute
Brocky
.
With the shoulders.”

He wished he could stop blushing and that she would let go of his hand.
And the day became a replica of the previous day. And it was at her place, his
arm around her, that she said, “You’re going to think I’m awful when I tell you
something.”

“What?”

“Archie, he wasn’t overseas. He isn’t dead. I wish he was but he isn’t.
He’s a seaman. He’s on an oceangoing tug. Right now he’s down somewhere in the
Caribbean. They’re hauling some kind of dredge down there. He’s a genuine
bastard,
Brocky
. He goes away, he thinks I ought to
lock myself up and wait for him or something. I should be dead or something all
the time he’s gone. I got to have fun, don’t I? This time, and he’s been gone
seven months now, he doesn’t send a damn nickel. How do you like a guy like
that?”

“But when will he—”

“You relax, honey. He won’t be back for a long time. Now you kiss Elise. Kiss
her nice. There. That’s my boy with shoulders. That’s my good boy. Do you like
this,
darlin
’? Do you?”

The April days were like that. The April days and April nights. She had
taken him down with her into some dark place. Nothing else mattered. Classes
were vague things. They talked about work he did not understand. He dozed
often. He prepared nothing. He moved through a world that was like a dull
dream, moving each day closer to that single vivid reality of her body. He knew
she was a liar. He learned she had never sung. He knew she was sloppy,
ignorant, opinionated, dull of wit. But that did not matter. It did not matter
what mind or spirit went with that practiced body. Each day was time that must
be gotten through somehow, because the hours led inevitably to her bed in the
musty room. Sometimes they would cook there, and he would buy food and bring it
to the room. She was an indifferent cook. She liked to have him bring a bottle.

His allowance, compared with the average, was generous. But he soon found
that it was not nearly enough. She didn’t have any money at all and she wasn’t
working. He had to give her lunch money. And on May first she had to have
thirty-five dollars for the rent on the tiny, shabby apartment. She kept
needing things. Stockings. A new bra. Repairs to her wristwatch. A pair of
shoes. When she wanted something and he could not provide it, she became sulky
and she wouldn’t let him near her. He knew precisely what she was doing. He
raised money in every way he could think of. He wrote home for money for
imaginary textbooks, for a fake dental bill, for new shoes. He started selling
his possessions to other students, hocking things at a pawn shop, borrowing
from the guys in the house. At first it was easy to borrow. A five here, and
two dollars there, and a ten-dollar bill from his roommate. Then they started
making excuses and he could borrow no more. He knew they sensed the change in
him. He felt as if he were falling through space toward the inevitable smashup.
And it didn’t matter.

He cut so many classes and did so poorly in
classwork
that he had to have an interview with his faculty advisor. He promised
everything with great sincerity, trying to cut the interview short because
Elise was waiting in the usual place. Everything was going to hell, but it
didn’t matter. He thought that he might get a chance to crack the books just
before exams and squeak through somehow. His watch was gone, and most of his
clothes, and that helped a little, but June first came inevitably closer and
with it the need for another thirty-five dollars in one chunk. He didn’t want
to think beyond June first. He had a vague idea of getting a job there in the
city during the summer so that they could go on as before. Elise began to ask a
bit nervously about the rent, but he told her he knew where he could get it.

It wasn’t until nearly the last day that he remembered Marty. He wondered
why he hadn’t thought of Marty before. During his freshman year he had been
required to live in the dormitories with a roommate selected by lot. He had
drawn Marty
Greenshine
. At first he hadn’t liked him
at all. A strange guy, older than the others. Serious as a judge. And bright.
Disconcertingly bright. And Marty always had plenty of money. After a time he
had learned that, behind all that seriousness, there was an off-beat sense of
humor. An obliqueness. Marty would have the money. He had heard Marty was still
in the dormitory, in one of the single rooms. He stopped at the gate office and
checked the number. Number 312, Lowman Hall.

It had been a long time since he had been in one of the dormitories. He
went up to Marty’s door and knocked. He remembered that it had been a little
after twelve when he knocked on the door. And a bright, good-smelling day
because it had rained in the morning and the whole world was washed clean and
new. He could hear some guys playing catch down in the quad,
pock
of
ball into glove. And somebody singing somewhere, in a deep resonant voice, a
trained voice. When there was no answer, he started to turn away and then tried
the knob. The door opened. He saw Marty’s clothes laid out neatly on the bed.
He remembered Marty’s habits. Marty would put his robe and slippers on, lay his
clothes out, and then go down the hall to the shower. He checked the closet and
saw that Marty’s wooden clogs were gone. Marty usually spent a long time in the
shower room. He looked out the window. Maybe Marty would be sore that he hadn’t
been over to see him. Maybe Marty would go off on one of his queer stubborn
streaks and refuse to lend the money. Or maybe Marty had heard that he had been
borrowing from everybody.

The more he thought about it, the more positive he became that Marty was
going to say no. His hands felt wet and he dried them on his handkerchief. He
began to get sore at Marty. The little bastard would say no, all right.

It wouldn’t hurt to make a quick check and see if Marty was flush enough
to spare the cash. Just a quick check.

He remembered going to the bureau and the way the top drawer creaked a
little as he pulled it open. Marty always put his wallet in there when he went
to the shower room. Brock took the wallet and opened it and saw the wonderfully
crisp sheaf of bills. Marty liked new bills. His hands felt shaky. He thumbed
through the bills, counting the three twenties, a ten, a five, and four
singles. He took the three twenties out and started to put the wallet back. He
hesitated, then opened it again and took out the ten. Seventy dollars. Marty
certainly didn’t need it. Anyway, he would pay it back. Mail it to Marty in a
plain envelope after he got the summer job. No harm done.

He felt a sudden need for haste. He opened the door and looked down the
hallway. It was empty. He walked lightly and quickly toward the staircase. He
glanced into one of the rooms as he went by. The room door was open. A boy sat
at a desk and glanced at Brock. The guy looked faintly familiar. But, hell,
he’ll never remember me. Marty won’t even know when he lost it. He was only two
blocks from Elise’s place when he realized that the bills were still folded
tightly in the palm of his hand. He stopped and, with great casualness,
transferred them into his wallet, sliding them in beside the single dollar of
his own. He’d promised Elise, hadn’t he? What the hell could you do? You
couldn’t go back on a promise. Marty would never miss a lousy seventy bucks.
Anyway, he was going to get it back, wasn’t he? It was just a loan.

So he had given Elise forty dollars and she had taken thirty-five of it
down and given it to the wife of the building superintendent and come back
upstairs and they had gone to bed, he with greater eagerness than ever before,
as though in this way he could blind himself. Later it rained again. They made
toast of stale bread and ate it with jam. In the evening they went out and ate
well and went back to her place. Every once in a while he would think of Marty.
And he would feel angry with Marty. He stayed with her all night and missed his
first two classes, and went directly from her place to his eleven o’clock class
without textbook or notebook.

At eleven-thirty a man came in and tiptoed to the front of the hall. The
lecturer frowned at the interruption. The man whispered to the lecturer. The
lecturer checked the seating chart and Brock saw them both look directly at
him. His heart seemed to make a wild, fluttering leap within him.

“You’re excused, Mr. Delevan,” the lecturer said.

Brock got up. He walked down the aisle and followed the man out into the
corridor. “What do you want me for?”

“You’re wanted in the office of the Dean of Men, Delevan.”

When Brock walked into the office, he knew it was all over. He had fallen
through the air for a long time and this was the shock of landing. His faculty
advisor was there, and three members of the student council, and Marty, and the
boy who had glanced at him as he had passed the open door. They kept glancing
at him and looking away nervously.

The Dean of Men said quietly, “This is a serious matter, Mr. Delevan. I
shall ask you a question. Did you go to Mr.
Greenshine’s
room yesterday at about a quarter past twelve and, without Mr.
Greenshine’s
knowledge or consent, remove seventy dollars
from his wallet while he was taking a shower?”