Miss Lonelyhearts (5 page)

But the romantic atmosphere only
heightened his feeling of icy fatness. He tried to fight it by telling himself
that it was childish. What had happened to his great understanding heart?
Guitars, bright shawls, exotic foods, outlandish costumes--all these things
were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the
advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning,
engineering
,
to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust. He should therefore
realize that the people who came to El Gaucho were the same as those who wanted
to write and live the life of an artist, wanted to be an engineer and wear
leather puttees, wanted to develop a grip that would impress the boss, wanted
to cushion
Raoul's
head on their swollen breasts.
They were the same people as those who wrote to Miss
Lonelyhearts
for help.

But his irritation was too profound
for him to soothe it in this way. For the time being, dreams left him cold, no
matter how humble they were.

"I like this place," Mary
said. "It's a little
fakey
, I know, but it's gay
and I so want to be gay."

She thanked him by offering herself
in a series of formal, impersonal gestures. She was wearing a tight, shiny
dress that was like glass-covered steel and there was something cleanly
mechanical in her pantomime.

"Why do you want to be
gay?"

"Every one wants to be
gay--unless they're sick."

Was he sick? In a great cold wave,
the readers of his column crashed over the music, over the bright shawls and
picturesque waiters, over her shining body. To save himself, he asked to see
the medal. Like a little girl helping an old man to cross the street, she
leaned over for him to look into the neck of her dress.
But
before he had a chance to see anything, a waiter came up to the table.

"The way to be gay is to make
other people gay," Miss
Lonelyhearts
said.
"Sleep with me and I'll be one gay dog."

The defeat in his voice made it easy
for her to ignore his request and her mind sagged with his. "I've had a
tough time," she said. "From the beginning, I've had a tough time.
When I was a child, I saw my mother die. She had cancer of the breast and the
pain was terrible. She died leaning over a table."

"Sleep with me," he said.

"No, let's dance."

"I don't want to. Tell me about
your mother."

"She died leaning over a table.
The pain was so terrible that she climbed out of bed to die."

Mary leaned over to show how her
mother had died and he made another attempt to see the medal. He saw that there
was a runner on it, but was unable to read the inscription.

"My father was very cruel to
her," she continued. "He was a portrait painter, a man of genius,
but..."

He stopped listening and tried to
bring his great understanding heart into action again. Parents are also part of
the business of dreams. My.
father
was a Russian
prince, my father was a Piute Indian chief, my father was an Australian sheep
baron, my father lost all his money in Wall Street, my father was a portrait
painter. People like Mary were unable to do without such tales. They told them
because they wanted to talk about something besides clothing or business or the
movies, because they wanted to talk about something poetic.

When she had finished her story, he
said, "You poor kid," and leaned over for another look at the medal.
She bent to help him and pulled out the neck of her dress with her fingers.
This time he was able to read the inscription: "Awarded by the Boston
Latin School for first place in the 100 yd. dash."

It was a small victory, yet it
greatly increased his fatigue and he was glad when she suggested leaving. In
the cab, he again begged her to sleep with him. She refused. He kneaded her
body like a sculptor grown angry with his clay, but there was too much method
in his caresses and they both remained cold.

At the door of her apartment, she
turned for a kiss and pressed against him. A spark flared up in his groin. He
refused to let go and tried to work this spark into a flame. She pushed his
mouth away from a long wet kiss.

"Listen to me," she said.
"We can't stop talking. We must talk. Willie probably heard the elevator
and is listening behind the door. You don't know him. If he doesn't hear us
talk, he'll know you're kissing me and open the door. It's an old trick of
his."

He held her close and tried
desperately to keep the spark alive.

"Don't kiss my lips," she
begged. "I must talk."

He kissed her throat, then opened
her dress and kissed her breasts. She was afraid to resist or to stop talking.

"My mother died of cancer of
the breast," she said in a brave voice, like a little girl reciting at a
party. "She died leaning over a table. My father was a portrait painter.
He led a very gay life. He mistreated my mother. She had cancer of the breast.
She..." He tore at her clothes and she began to mumble and repeat herself.
Her dress fell to her feet and he tore away her underwear until she was naked
under her fur coat. He tried to drag her to the floor.

"Please, please," she
begged, "he'll come out and find us."

He stopped her mouth with a long
kiss.

"Let me go, honey," she
pleaded, "maybe he's not home. If he isn't, I'll let you in."

He released her. She opened the door
and tiptoed in, carrying her rolled up clothes under her coat. He heard her
switch on the light in the foyer and knew that Shrike had not been behind the
door. Then he heard footsteps and limped behind a projection of the elevator
shaft. The door opened and Shrike looked into the corridor. He had on only the
top of his pajamas.

It was cold and damp in the city
room the next day, and Miss
Lonelyhearts
sat at his
desk with his hands in his pockets and his legs pressed together. A desert, he
was thinking, not of sand, but of rust and body dirt, surrounded by a back-yard
fence on which are posters describing the events of the day. Mother slays five
with ax, slays seven, slays nine...Babe slams two, slams three...Inside the
fence Desperate, Broken-hearted, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the
rest were gravely forming the letters MISS LONELYHEARTS out of white-washed
clam shells, as if decorating the lawn of a rural depot.

He failed to notice Goldsmith's
waddling approach until a heavy arm dropped on his neck like the arm of a
deadfall. He freed himself with a grunt. His anger amused Goldsmith, who
smiled, bunching his fat cheeks like twin rolls of smooth pink toilet paper.

"Well, how's the
drunkard?" Goldsmith asked, imitating Shrike.

Miss
Lonelyhearts
knew that Goldsmith had written the column for him yesterday, so he hid his
annoyance to be grateful.

"No trouble at all,"
Goldsmith said. "It was a pleasure to read your mail." He took a pink
envelope out of his pocket and threw it on the desk "From an
admirer." He winked, letting a thick gray lid down slowly and luxuriously
over a moist, rolling eye.

Miss
Lonelyhearts
picked up the letter.

Dear
Miss
Lonelyhearts
--

I
am not very good at writing so I wonder if I could have a talk with you. I am
only 32 years old but have had a lot of trouble in my life and am unhappily
married to a cripple. I need some good advice bad but
cant
state my case in a letter as I am not good at letters and it would take an
expert to state my case. I know your a man and am glad as I
dont
trust women. You were pointed out to me in
Delehantys
as a man who does the advice in the paper and the minute I saw you I said you
can help me. You had on a blue suit and a gray hat when I came in with my
husband who is a cripple. I don't feel so bad about asking to see you personal
because I feel almost like I knew you. So please call me up at
Bugess
7-7323 which is my number as I need your advice bad
about my married life.

An
admirer,

Fay
Doyle

He threw the letter into the
waste-paper basket with a great show of distaste.

Goldsmith laughed at him. "How
now,
Dostoievski
?" he said. "That's no way
to act. Instead of pulling the Russian by recommending suicide, you ought to
get the lady with child and increase the potential circulation of the
paper."

To drive him away, Miss
Lonelyhearts
made believe that he was busy. He went over to
his typewriter and started pounding out his column.

"Life, for most of us, seems a
terrible struggle of pain and heartbreak, without hope or joy. Oh, my dear
readers, it only seems so. Every man, no matter how poor or humble, can teach
himself to use his senses. See the cloud-flecked sky, the foam-decked
sea...Smell the sweet pine and heady privet...Feel of velvet and of satin...As
the popular song goes, 'The best things in life are free.' Life is..."

He could not go on with it and
turned again to the imagined desert where Desperate, Broken-hearted and the
others were still building his name. They had run out of sea shells and were
using faded photographs, soiled fans, time-tables, playing cards, broken toys,
imitation jewelry--junk that memory had made precious, far more precious than
anything the sea might yield.

He killed his great understanding
heart by laughing,
then
reached into the waste-paper
basket for Mrs. Doyle's letter. Like a pink tent, he set it over the desert.
Against the dark mahogany desk top, the cheap paper took on rich flesh tones.
He thought of Mrs. Doyle as a tent, hair-covered and veined, and of himself as
the skeleton in a water closet, the skull and cross-bones on a scholar's
bookplate. When he made the skeleton enter the flesh tent, it flowered at every
joint.

But despite these thoughts, he
remained as dry and cold as a polished bone and sat trying to discover a moral
reason for not calling Mrs. Doyle. If he could only believe in Christ, then
adultery would be a sin, then everything would be simple and the letters
extremely easy to answer.

The completeness of his failure
drove him to the telephone. He left the city room and went into the hall to use
the pay station from which all private calls had to be made. The walls of the
booth were covered with obscene drawings. He fastened his eyes on two
disembodied genitals and gave the operator Burgess 7-7323.

"Is Mrs. Doyle in?"

"Hello, who is it?"

"I want to speak to Mrs.
Doyle," he said. "Is this Mrs. Doyle?"

"Yes, that's me." Her
voice was hard with fright

"This is Miss
Lonelyhearts
."

"Miss who?"

"Miss
Lonelyhearts
,
Miss
Lonelyhearts
, the man who does the column."

He was about to hang up, when she
cooed, "Oh, hello..."

"You said I should call."

"Oh, yes...what?"

He guessed that she wanted him to do
the talking. "When can you see me?"

"Now."
She was still cooing and he could almost feel her warm, moisture-laden breath
through the earpiece.
"Where?"

"You say."

"I'll tell you what," he
said. "Meet me in the park, near the obelisk, in about an hour."

He went back to his desk and
finished his column, then started for the park. He sat down on a bench near the
obelisk to wait for Mrs. Doyle. Still thinking of tents, he examined the sky
and saw that it was canvas-colored and ill-stretched. He examined it like a
stupid detective who is searching for a clue to his own exhaustion. When he
found nothing, he turned his trained eye on the skyscrapers that menaced the
little park from all sides. In their tons of forced rock and tortured steel, he
discovered what he thought was a clue.

Americans have dissipated their
radical energy in an orgy of stone breaking. In their few years they have
broken more stones than did centuries of Egyptians. And they have done their
work hysterically, desperately, almost as if they knew that the stones would
some day break them.

The detective saw a big woman enter
the park and start in his direction. He made a quick catalogue: legs like
Indian clubs, breasts like balloons and a brow like a pigeon. Despite her short
plaid skirt, red sweater, rabbit-skin jacket and knitted tam-o'-shanter, she
looked like a police captain.

He waited for her to speak first.

"Miss
Lonelyhearts
?
Oh, hello..."

"Mrs. Doyle?" He stood up
and took her arm. It felt like a thigh.

"Where are we going?" she
asked, as he began to lead her off.

"For a
drink."

"I can't go to
Delehanty's
. They know me."