Bereavements (23 page)

“Hello, Bruno”—her eyes heavy-lidded and slightly pink. (He knew that the boys, indeed had seen a few from the advantage of his high position, had drained several bottles of gin or vodka into the community punch bowl.) “Why ain’t you dancin?”

It seemed a stupid but not at first deliberately cruel and taunting question.

He had no answer she didn’t already know, and so just stood there, helpless, as was so often his habit with the countless torturers in the world who tried to bait him.

His silence was of no concern to her. “
These
—are—
gardenias
,” she said of her slightly wilted corsage, her enunciation exceptionally sharp, clear and loud, as if, besides being shockingly small and twisted, he was also an idiot, hard of hearing. “My boyfriend
sent
them to me—they were
delivered?
—by the florist’s
truck?
—for the
dance?
—Jimmy Greene?—
you
know him!—he’s in our biology class—the tall one with the red
hair?—
six-feet-two at eighteen years of
age!
Ain’t that
amazing?
” A moment’s pause. “How tall are
you?
”

No reply. She shrugged. “Well, I can guess. A yardstick would just about do.” She came closer. “Y’know, I’ve got a playhouse at home I used when I was four; you’d just about fit—if you ever needed a place to stay.”

She was very close now, and half-smiling. “But your
face!
My but you’re handsome, real super-goodlooking, I gotta give you that! Like a movie star? And sweet Jesus you’ve got a mouth! Why was it ever wasted on you? A God-lickin’ beauty if I ever saw one!”

Her lips parted slightly now, pink tongue peeking out of one corner. “You ever been kissed? I mean
kissed
—by someone who ain’t your mother? Mother’s kisses don’t count.” She laughed and it seemed almost good-natured. “Y’know what? I’d like to kiss you. I’d really like to try.” Her bottom lip disappeared for a moment. “But I ain’t ever kissed a dwarf before. How about you?” Another laugh. “I don’t mean have
you
ever kissed a dwarf! I suppose you ain’t, unless you found one in a freak show, but a
real
girl—someone
normal,
like me. Pretty. And desirable.” A moment. “Ain’t often you get the chance, I guess.”

The sad, sad part of all this was that he
wanted
to kiss her, and be kissed back. He prayed that she meant it, his pulse going so fast he could feel the blood beat in each sweating temple. Yes, he wanted that kiss, no matter the cost or the circumstances. Nevermind what this cheap, silly, humiliating, embarrassing, taunting, sadistic, mocking girl said. Because (sweet Jesus!)
she
had a mouth, too: utterly “God-lickin’ ”—to his empty heart.

He was half-strangled for air, the kiss going on for so long, but he thought he dared not breathe, this not being the proper way one kissed. Lovers, true lovers he had seen in films, always drew apart, away from each other, panting for breath.

Airless, his senses dizzied, he pressed his famished mouth closer, then, lost to reality, made the mistake of touching her breast.

She freed herself instantly with a startled cry, mixed fun and horror, ran up the balcony steps, then turned and looked down at him, breathing as heavily as he.

Oddly she said nothing truly cruel or disparaging. Simply:

“Bruno—If you ever grow three feet more, and lose that hump on your back, come around. I’ll be waiting.”

Waiting.

On the third day, he had to call Mrs. Evans. There was nothing else to do, no way to spend the crushing weight of his desire. He couldn’t continue, hours at a time, pacing his tiny room like a prisoner before the morning of his execution.

The maid—what was her name, Rose?—answered, friendly enough until she heard the name of the caller. Then, icily, though she obviously knew who he was, made him repeat it twice more, adding shockingly, “and who is it you wish to speak to?”

He had already told her, but he told her again, feeling kin to the protagonist in Kafka’s
The Castle.

“Well—” (Extreme doubt.) “I’m not sure Madam is in,” leaving it there.

“Well, would you find out!?” He was angry. “Would you be good enought to inquire?”

After a pause: “Very well.”

He waited, and waited, the corner of one fingernail chewed to the pink point of bleeding. But then, suddenly,
she
was there, and “spring came on forever”—her soft voice like the sweet flood of a drug through the veins of an addict.

“
Bruno!
”—as if it had been a year. “How
nice
of you to call. I’ve been thinking of you.”

He had no idea what he mumbled in reply, being too relieved, too happy to listen as she continued: “I have your card. And so pretty; with flowers, and smelling so lovely! Tell me. Is that —is that some sort of cologne you use?”

As wonderful as all this was: her gentleness, and warmth, her apparent happiness that he had called, he discerned (was he unreasonably suspicious, insanely paranoid?) something vaguely fake or artificial in her tone—as if she felt herself compelled to buy a bunch of violets she didn’t really want from a ragged flower-girl on a snowy street corner.

“I think maybe,” he said, after pretending to be surprised that the card was perfumed at all, “that I had just finished shaving, and some of the lotion I use was still on my fingers when I wrote it.”

It seemed more manly that way: an accident of sweetness; it pleased her nonetheless, since she hardly believed in accidents at all.

The weather next. How sharply cold (they agreed) it had turned; and the radio this morning (he said) warned there might be flurries of snow.

Wouldn’t that be fun! (she replied) My! So early in the season. Well, if it did, if it snowed, she’s be right out in it; she loved it melting on her face; the flakes, like tiny fractured stars (her very words!) catching on her eyelashes.

Was she high? Or drunk? He was instantly ahamed for having thought so. She was just being gay, and playful, and maybe, maybe genuinely glad he had called. Why should he doubt it? After all, she was lonely, too—sad, and deeply grieved. So he got to the point. When . . . when could they meet; when could he see her again? He wanted (placing his heart on his sleeve) to see her so very much.

Well goodness. (Such a question.) Bruno!
Any
time. He knew that; they’d agreed. Only he was to be sure, always be sure to call, to telephone first; as if, at the moment, he wasn’t doing exactly that . . .

Martin Dzierlatka dialed for the third time, and Rose told him for the third time, civilly, having learned quite well how to pronounce his name,
Dz
and all, that “Madam is on another line.” Would he care to leave his number so she could call him back?

He was afraid to do that for fear she wouldn’t call. “No. I must go out for a while,” he lied. “I’ll try again later.”

He smoked two cigarettes, drank a can of beer, stared at Grover deeply asleep on the living room couch, snoring with the mucused purr of a giant cat, curled in a fetal position, a sparkle of spit gathered at one fallen corner of his mouth.

The operator interrupted Mrs. Evan’s valium-spiked monologue to demand another coin, the nasal tone half-human, half-machine. This was the second time.

“
Dear
Bruno!” his lovely lady said quickly, “spending all his hard-earned money to call me! I must let you go for now. Stay well. Be happy. We’ll see each other soon. Very soon.”

And he heard the hum of the dial tone.

Sometimes, in the McGraw-Hill mailroom when work slackened off, Bruno would pick up the phone and dial outside just to hear that tone, that hum, listen to the voice of the loveless world, hurt himself, needlessly, with all the numbers of friends he didn’t possess, could never call.

Other-worldly, that sound: recorded on the deserts of Mars, the clouds of empty Venus.

He must be ill, he thought, dialing like that, listening: doing such a thing.

Angel’s teacher, that Miss Evans, called five times. No, six, counting a week ago yesterday. Too often.
So
often that Aurelio, who didn’t mind initially, had finally to get rough.

“Listen—Miss Evans—there ain’t nothin’ wrong with him now. He got over his fever n’everything. It’s uh, how do you say?—emotional, unnerstan’? I seen a lot of it in his mother. It’s a kind of phraze kids go through his age; I mean fourteen. They’re moody, y’
know?
Sensitive. Am I right? Hell, you should know; you got a million kids . . .”