Contrary Pleasure (6 page)

The words came from far away. And so did Brock’s voice when he answered.
He tried to talk about a loan, but it sounded weak and silly and strange. He
couldn’t put it into words. It was a Thursday. They made him wait in another
room. Then he was called back in. The others had left. Just the Dean of Men was
there. It was a Thursday.

“I’ve placed a long distance call for your father, Delevan. It will save
time if you listen to this end of the conversation.” The dean was a
mild-looking man with a soft voice. “You may sit down.”

The phone rang and he picked it up. “Mr. Delevan? May I speak freely
about a personal matter on this line? This is Hardy, Dean of Men. All right. I
am most sorry to tell you, sir, that yesterday your son, Brock Delevan, stole
seventy dollars from another student here. He has been expelled as of noon
today. No, sir, there is no doubt about it. He is here in my office and he has
admitted it. No, sir, there is no chance of a mistake or a misunderstanding.
The student involved does not wish to press any criminal charges. He will be
satisfied if the money is returned. Do you wish to speak to your boy? I see,
sir. I understand. I’ll tell him. Yes, sir. Good-bye.”

He replaced the phone gently on the cradle. “Your father will arrive in
the morning, Delevan. He will give me the money and I will see that Mr.
Greenshine
gets it. You can meet your father here in my
office at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Do you have enough money for a hotel
room?”

“I can stay at the house until…”

The dean shook his head. “I’ve seen this happen before. I don’t think you
should stay at the house. I don’t believe they would let you stay there in any
case.” Hardy looked intently at him. “Why did you take the money, Delevan?”

“Do I have to answer questions?”

Hardy stood up. “That will be all.”

Brock walked to the fraternity house. One of the freshman pledges stepped
in front of him just as he got inside the door, blocking his way. The freshman
looked scared. He did not speak. He held his hand out, palm up. After a moment
Brock understood. He took off his pin and put it on the outstretched palm. The
pledge pointed to a corner of the hallway. Brock saw his two suitcases there,
his topcoat and overcoat on top of them. He went over and picked them up. The
pledge stood, holding the big front door open. Brock felt the silence in the
house. He sensed that they were all back, out of sight, listening. Maybe they
wanted him to cry like a baby. He stopped in the doorway, turned around and
yelled, “Good-bye, dear brothers! Good-bye, you dull bastards!” The pledge
slammed the door hard as he walked down the steps.

Elise had known that he had classes and a lab that would take him until
four, and they had agreed to meet in the cellar beer joint at four thirty. He
walked to her place and carried the two suitcases up the three flights. He
still had thirty dollars in his pocket. It would buy a pair of bus tickets. The
old man could wait around the dean’s office for a long
long
time. They would get out of this crummy city. Take a new name. Call themselves
husband and wife. Get jobs. In a few years this would all seem far away.

He set the suitcases down and he had his hand lifted in order to knock
when he realized that a strange noise was coming from inside the room. For a
moment he could not identify it, and then he realized that it was the familiar
and hideous sound of the springs on the ancient studio couch, a rhythmic surge
and creaking, too well known to him, too well remembered. “Elise!” he yelled.
“Elise!” and his voice cracked on her name, the way it used to long ago when
his voice was changing.

There was a sudden silence in the room. And he thought of other answers.
Someone else was in there. Or she was doing some kind of exercises. Or her
husband had come back. The silence continued. He put his ear against the door
and thought he heard whispering. He banged on the door. There was no answer.
And he remembered something he had seen in a movie. He backed up a little and
swung his leg up and stamped his heel hard against the door, just above the
lock. Wood ripped and the door went open so easily that he lost his balance and
fell to his hands and knees, just inside the doorway. He raised his head
stupidly and looked at them there. It was like a dirty picture that had been
passed around in high school a long time ago. It was Elise, and it was a squat,
brutal man he had seen several times on the stairs in the building, or standing
in front. He had always nodded at Elise, and Elise had told Brock that the man
drove a taxi. It was all gone in that moment. It was just a dirty picture of
somebody he had never known. The woman made a thin sniggling sound. The man
yelled at him to get the hell out. He pulled the door shut. He felt a great
calmness. He picked up his suitcases and the two coats and went down the stairs
with even, methodical tread. Down in the lower hallway he had difficulty
opening the door. One of the suitcases banged against a doorframe. It spilled
open and everything fell out. He knelt and repacked it carefully. He saw that
they had put his dirty laundry right in with his fresh clothing. He felt calm
and far away and it shocked and surprised him to feel tears running down his
face, to stick his tongue out the corner of his mouth and taste the salt.

He checked in at a small hotel near the campus. It was still afternoon.
He undressed and went to bed. When he woke up, it was daylight. He did not know
if he had slept an hour or a week. He phoned the desk. They said it was a
little after nine in the morning. After his shower, he shaved. It seemed wrong
that he should still be wearing a Delevan face, a face bearing the clan
resemblance, eyes that tilted down at the outside corners, shelving brow, the
high-bridged nose, the heavy mouth, an expression elusively whimsical.

He got to the dean’s office at precisely ten. His father was there. The
old man said evenly, “Hello, Brock.”

“Hello, Dad.”

“Wait in the hall, Brock.”

“Okay.”

He waited in the hall a long time. The old man came out. He didn’t look
at Brock and he said nothing. Brock fell in step beside him. Once they were out
of the building the old man said, “Where’s your stuff?”

“In a hotel room. The Cardinal Hotel. Three blocks up Thompson.”

“I know where it is.”

The old man did one strange thing. He stopped short near the quadrangle.
He stopped and just stood there and looked at the kids walking by. Classes were
changing. Girls with one arm hugged around a stack of books. Sweaters with
letters. The old man stood and gaped at them as though he had never seen
college kids before. Then he started walking again. They went up to the room.
The old man said, “I left
Greenshine’s
money with the
dean. Do you owe any money?”

Brock had the list in a small notebook. The old man sat at the desk.
Brock read off the names and accounts and where the guys lived. The old man
copied them all down and totaled the figures. Ninety-six dollars and fifty
cents. “Have you hocked anything?”

“My watch and some clothes.”

“Give me the tickets.” Brock took the tickets out of the back of his
wallet and gave them to the old man. He stood up. “You wait here. I’ll redeem
this stuff and pay those boys back.”

“I got the addresses. You could send them checks. That would be all
right.”

“I’ll pay them in cash.”

“But it would be a lot easier to—”

“I know that. I know that.”

“I don’t get it, Dad.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to.”

The old man was back by one o’clock. He had a suit box tied with string.
He took the wristwatch out of his pocket and handed it to Brock. Brock strapped
it on his wrist. He remembered that it had been the big high-school graduation
present. He even remembered the box and the way it was wrapped and the card.
The old man had a funny look. He went into the bathroom and shut the door.
After a little while Brock heard him being sick in there. He thought of the bad
time the guys probably had given him. They had no reason to do that. The old
man hadn’t done anything. Brock called through the door, asking if he was all
right, if he could help. The old man said no in a strained funny voice. Brock
sat on the bed. His father was in the bathroom for a long time. He looked pasty
when he came out.

He planted his feet and stood in front of Brock. “What was it? Gambling?”

“No sir.”

“A girl?”

“Y-yes.”

“Get her in trouble?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You wanted the money, then, so you could give her a big time.”

“I… I guess so.”

“Sleeping with her?”

“Yes.”

The old man stared at him expressionlessly. “Every damn thing in the
world. Every damn thing. Every damn chance. Now a thief. A stinking filthy
sneaking thief.”

“Wait a minute, Dad. I—”

“Oh, shut up. I hope that she was the best lay since Cleopatra. And it
would have had to be a thousand times better than that to make it worth what
you’ve done to yourself, what you’ve done to your mother and to me. Love
doesn’t come that high, kid. There’s too much of it around. Pick up your stuff.
We’ve got a flight to catch. And don’t open your damn mouth.”

The old man had never spoken to him that way before. He had never used
that kind of language. He was glad his father hadn’t seen Elise. That would
have made it worse. But he didn’t see how he could feel worse. It couldn’t ever
get any worse than those minutes when he was at the foot of the three flights
of stairs putting things back in the suitcase, knowing the two of them were up
there in her room…

Now he lay in darkness in his own room and he heard the faint buzzing and
knew the records had ended some time ago. He got up in darkness and reversed
the stack and started it over again. School was out now. Next year they would
come back and they would talk about him in the fraternity house. And maybe the
next year they might remember him and talk about him too. And then nobody would
remember any longer. He saw himself in Marty’s room. They talked about moments
of decision. That wasn’t any moment of decision. There hadn’t even been any
thinking. Just taking the money in an automatic way, as though he were
dreaming. If you could find any moment of decision, it was that moment when he
left the bar and walked toward the booth where the strange girl sat. Or maybe
the moment he had turned away from the lab door after walking all the way over
there.

He saw himself in Marty’s room. A little automatic toy figure about four
inches high standing there opening the top drawer of a toy bureau. Why? Like a
sickness. As if he hadn’t been there when it was happening. One day in high
school one of the guys had worn a trick ring. You held it up to the light and
looked through a little hole and you could see a naked woman. April and May had
been like that this year. Like standing in a crowded place while people shoved
by you, but you didn’t notice being jostled because you stood there in the
middle of the sidewalk looking through the little hole in that ring, looking at
that naked body, that woman-body, that only clear and real thing in the world,
while all the rest of the world was just people shoving by you, going no place
in a hurry, wanting to push you out of the way.

He wondered who would pay her rent on July first.

The summer was ahead. He knew they expected him to do something. To make
some sort of decision about himself. He knew that he was expected to get some
sort of a job and work hard and try to get into the fall session somewhere. But
it made him tired to think about it. He wanted to stay in the room and keep the
music low and keep going over April and May, trying to figure out what had happened
to him. There were good guys and bad guys. Could you be a thief from the very
beginning and not know about it? Would you steal again? He wanted to be alone.
He wanted something that was broken to begin to heal. But it didn’t heal. It
stayed broken.

He knew that Ellen had heard some of the talk. Enough so that she had
guessed the rest. He saw it in the way he would catch her looking at him, a
pinched look in her eyes, a flatness in her stare, a look not of hurt, but of
appraisal. They had passed, long ago, from the embittered warfare of childhood
into a relationship of pride and trust, a sense of maintaining a united front.
And now it had become something else. All gone now, the shrill yelling as the
brother broke into the clear and went up and up, hand reached for the wobbling
ball, framed there against the autumn afternoon, shadow lanky in late cold sun,
and a hero had died. Meat had spoiled, and the flesh turned sad, and the eyes
turned inward to look at the pitilessness of what might have been.

It was the death of dreams that mattered. Those slow dreams that are used
to bring on the true dreams of sleep. Taking the long walk from the bullpen to
the mound in the bottom of the ninth, and the bases are full of Yankees and
Mantle is up, standing expressionlessly aside but watching closely as you take
the warm-up pitches, and the stands are muttering
who is he who is he,
and others say
a kid named Delevan they brought him up from class A for the
pennant race and they say he’s got stuff
and then you are ready and Mantle
steps in with that blocky face and the big back flexing and you let it go for
steeeeerike
so blazing fast he doesn’t even twitch
and
steeeeerike
again and on the last one he
swings in desperation too late and then the next hitter gets a tiny piece of
one enough to send it spinning crazy off to your right and you pounce and make
the play at the plate so it is two down and the stands yelling and the manager
looking like he would cry and they put in a pinch hitter who bangs one foul but
just barely and you steady down and burn one by and then break his back with
the floater and that’s the game and the series.