Looking for Mr. Goodbar (17 page)

She said, “So long,” and walked out of the apartment, but as soon as he closed the door she began running down the stairs, tripping when she was most of the way down on a loose tread she usually was wary of, falling but barely feeling the hurt. In the
apartment her mind, usually so full of a variety of thoughts she’d just as leave weren’t racing through, was quite blank. She started to get undressed and then knew there was no way in the world she was going to go to sleep with the two of them over her. Maybe never. Maybe she would move. It wasn’t such a bad idea, anyway. St. Marks Place got less and less appealing as the junkies took over and once or twice she’d talked to Evelyn about moving to the West Village, which was still pretty nice. She got her keys and left the apartment, walking uptown on Second.

She needed pretty badly to talk to somebody but it was almost eleven thirty, too late, probably, to call Evelyn. There was an older woman at school she liked and wouldn’t have minded being with right now. Her name was Rose and she was middle-aged and Jewish, like most of them, but she was pretty, with long curly gray hair, which she wore in a bun at the back of her neck, and pale pink lipstick. Rose was benevolent in a way that most of them weren’t. The other older women, if they weren’t talking about the union and fringe benefits and prices, were bragging about their children and grandchildren with an intensity that suggested some undeclared contest whose winner would someday be showered with all the fringe benefits in the world. Rose had no children. She and her husband, who was a lawyer, were very close. A lot of the other women, when they weren’t in a contest to see whose was better than whose, were telling stories to prove who had it worse. Whose husband was more demanding. Rose never complained about her husband. Occasionally she would tell stories about their two French poodles. And when she asked how you were, it didn’t seem to be just an excuse for telling you how
she
was. She seemed to want to know, though not so badly that she would push to find out. Theresa would really love to talk to Rose right now, but Rose would think she was out of her mind if she called out of the blue and said she needed to talk.

She wasn’t far from Corners. She would go there, maybe have a glass of wine, maybe . . . except she had no money. She couldn’t
go in with no money. But as she told herself that, she had a picture of herself lying in bed with the sounds of mattress-pounding and springs creaking over her head. Not that the picture made any sense, the bedroom in Brooks’s apartment wasn’t even over her room, but the vision had the same force as reality, so that instead of turning around and heading for home she stood stock still outside of Corners, afraid to go in and unable to do anything else.

A man poked his head out of the bar and said, “Hi, honey.”

She looked at him without responding.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Cat got your tongue?”

“Hello,” she said.

“Good. Now tell me what’s the matter.”

“Nothing,” she said. “I just—”

“Why don’t you come in and have a drink and tell me about it?”

“That’s what’s the matter,” she said. “I felt like having a drink and I just realized I walked out without my money.”

“No need for a pretty girl to buy her own drinks,” he said. “Come on.”

She let him lead her into Corners. The bar was crowded but someone got up and gave him what must have been his stool, right at the end where the window was. He beckoned her to it and she sat down. He stood close to her. He signaled the bartender, who came over, smiling affably as if he knew both of them.

“What’ll you have, hon?”

She asked for a daiquiri without knowing why. She wanted something sweet, that was it.

He wasn’t particularly attractive. Not that he was ugly, but there was something a little strange-looking about him. He looked at once very coarse and very smooth. As though he’d once been made of rough granite and his surfaces had been sanded down. He had brown hair and a strong peasant face but his skin was smooth. He was wearing a nice business suit and spoke well and yet the overall effect was of the foreman of a construction gang, not a businessman. He was on the old side, maybe in his forties.

“So,” he said, “you ran out of the house so fast you forgot your money.”

She smiled.

“What happened?”

She didn’t feel like telling him anything but she couldn’t tell him it was none of his business while he was paying for her drink. She shrugged.

“Fight with the boyfriend?”

“Something like that.”

“Didn’t feel like it, huh?”

She was beginning to feel a certain revulsion toward him. She sipped her drink, saying nothing.

“Okay. You don’t want to talk about it.”

“Right.”

“Then talk about something else.”

It was peremptory; if she was aware that he was paying for her drink, he was, too.

“I’m a teacher.”

“No kidding,” he said. “What’re you doing in here?”

“Having a drink,” she said. “Remember? I took a walk and then I—”

“All right, all right.” He put up a hand to signal stop. “So you’re a teacher.”

“What do
you
do?” she asked so he wouldn’t ask where she taught.

“I sell space.”

She laughed.

“You think it’s funny.” His tone was irritable and yet she was sure he’d deliberately said it that way for laughs. “That’s because you’re a hick little chicken.” His manner was at once belligerent and seductive. Five minutes ago it would have upset her more but at his signal the bartender had just brought her another drink and she was beginning to feel nice.

“I know what it is,” she said. “But it sounded funny, anyway.”

“I don’t think it’s so funny,” he said. “Someone who sells space is basically selling nothing.”

She didn’t respond. She sipped at her drink. She knew she didn’t like him at all but she also knew he wasn’t bothering her. The daiquiris slid down like soda.

“Don’t you think that’s sad?” he pressed.

“If you do,” she said.

“If
I
do?” He checked her glass to see if she was ready for another one. Not quite. The whole thing was strange. Here was this strange man being nasty and buying her drinks at the same time. “What kind of answer is that? Don’t you have any opinions of your own? How’re you going to teach young kids if you don’t have opinions of your own?”

Another drink.

The strangest thing was that she was feeling very sexy. It couldn’t be him; it must be the drinks. She really felt like crawling into bed with someone. She looked at the bartender. That was who she’d really like to get into bed with. The bartender. Or Carter. Or—

Suddenly he began firing questions at her—where did she teach, her hours, her salary, the names of children in her class—and she realized that he was testing her. She giggled and he asked her what was funny now.

“That you don’t believe me,” she said.

“What’s so funny about that?” he asked, but he was responding to her own flirtatiousness. He was a little less belligerent, a little more sexual.

“You know funny things can’t be explained,” she said, her voice soft with suggestion. “You either get them or you don’t.”

“What you’re getting,” he said, “is loaded. I think I’d better get you home before you fall to pieces.”

That was pretty funny, too. That he was saying it as though taking her home had something to do with her safety.

I’m only doing it for your own good. Honey.

She finished her drink and ate the cherry with slow relish.

“You’re so nice,” she said, wide-eyed. “You’re only doing it for my own good.”

“Right,” he said, smiling. “I’m only doing it for your own good.”

They left Corners and began walking downtown. He said wait a minute, he’d find a cab, but she didn’t want to wait. She wanted to walk. He gave in but she knew that he was giving in because he knew that she had already given in. She sang Beatles songs. She sang “Day Tripper” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Norwegian Wood” and then she began all over again. He put his arm around her because she was shivering in the cold.

At her apartment she fumbled with the keys until finally he took them and opened the door. The light was on as she’d left it when she . . . a hundred years ago.

She smiled flirtatiously. “Thank you for taking me home for my own good.”

He closed the door, locked it and took her in his arms. He smelled of beer. He kissed her for a long time. She moved back away from him—toward the bed. He smiled but he looked like a beast of prey. She sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off her shoes and turned off the light. In the darkness she could just see him taking off his jacket, then his tie, then his shoes.

“Well, doctor,” she said, giggling, “
now
what are you going to do for my own good?”

“Only what you want, teach,” he said. “I’m only going to give you what you want for your own good.”

He lay down on top of her. He was heavy but she didn’t mind. It didn’t matter, any more than it mattered that she didn’t like him. His body was there and felt good. They made love. He wasn’t tender but he was competent and when they were finished she fell asleep.

When she awakened the luminous clock dial said it was ten to four in the morning. Her head was throbbing. The moment she saw him lying there she knew she had to get him out. Quickly.
Before it was light. She couldn’t stand the thought of seeing him in the daylight, she
hated
him. She tapped his arm and he didn’t respond. She got panicky and shoved him until he woke up.

“What the fu—”

“You’ve got to go,” she said.

“What for?”

“It’s almost morning.”

“So?”

She searched frantically for a reason. “My boyfriend’ll be back.”

That woke him up. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was drunk.”

He muttered and cursed but he got up and turned on the light and got dressed. She lay huddled under the blanket, her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep until he left. Thank God. When she’d heard the outside door open and close, she got out of bed and double-locked the door. It occurred to her briefly as she did this that she was locking the barn door after the horse was stolen but she felt too rotten to be amused at her own joke. She was horribly thirsty and she took a glass of water and some aspirin. She got back into bed but she couldn’t just lie there, she was too miserable. Her thirst was unquenchable and her headache was worse. She got out of bed and took two more aspirin with another glass of water. She felt as though she’d acquiesced in her own rape, a thought which when it hit her struck her so hard that she leaped out of bed and switched on the TV set in one sweeping motion. Something was on that was so old that she didn’t know any of the actors or actresses except Claudette Colbert. She got very involved in it and finally she felt herself getting drowsy. In the moment before she fell asleep, as the screen images faded from her eyelids, his face briefly flickered in front of her; she wanted to scream but then it occurred to her that they didn’t even know each other’s names. In some way this was reassuring. A little while later she fell asleep.

The next morning she awakened knowing, as though it were
something she’d been actively thinking about and planning for a long time, that she was going to move.

Evelyn had a beautiful
little apartment in an old six-story house on Morton Street which she shared with her boyfriend, a guitarist who traveled with a group, when he was in town. She checked out apartments for Theresa, as did other people in school, particularly in the West Village, where Theresa thought she really wanted to live, but months went by and nothing turned up, and finally she settled for what was called a three-room apartment because it had an eat-in kitchen that was separate from the main room, in a newer apartment house on Sixth Avenue.

She became quite friendly with Evelyn and saw a lot of her when Larry, Evelyn’s boyfriend, was out of town. Evelyn seldom talked about Larry and Theresa wondered if Evelyn assumed that
she
had some very real boyfriend who she just happened to not talk about, either. Sometimes Theresa would refer by name to someone she’d picked up and slept with as though he were a real person—“A friend of mine was just saying”—but she was afraid to use the same name too many times because then Evelyn might suggest that they all get together, she and Larry, Theresa and her friend, and then Theresa wouldn’t know what to do.

She wrapped around herself the secret of the way she was living, and if the wrap was necessary, and even comforting, it was also constricting, a barrier, because it placed such sharp limits on the areas of her life she could share with Evelyn or anyone.

Actually, when she thought about it at all, she didn’t really feel that she
had
a life, one life, that is, belonging to a person, Theresa Dunn. There was a Miss Dunn who taught a bunch of children who adored her (“Oh, that’s Miss Dunn,” she heard one of her children say once to a parent. “She’s one of the kids. A big one.”) and there was someone named Terry who whored around in bars when she couldn’t sleep at night. But the only thing those two
people had in common was the body they inhabited. If one died, the other would never miss her—although she herself, Theresa, the person who thought and felt but had no life, would miss either one.

In the fall the
teachers’ union struck against the schools on the issue of community control. The lines were clearly drawn (more so than they would be a couple of years later, when the complexities of the issue had begun to assert themselves): On the picket lines were the older teachers who’d gone into teaching for themselves, who’d struggled into the middle class and weren’t going to let any of what they had be taken from them, who might occasionally have some real feeling for education or children but couldn’t believe their own interests should follow either or be subordinate for a moment to the question of self-determination for the black and Puerto Rican communities. (Rose was the only one of this older group who wasn’t with them and took an inordinate amount of abuse from women she’d been friendly with for years.) Walking through the picket lines every day, feeling closer to each other all the time, and further from those outside, were the young teachers, white, black, one or two Puerto Ricans, who believed that equality and self-determination came before all the other issues, who had struggled into the middle class and were determined that it was not now going to limit them in their sympathies, their perceptions of justice.