Boys & Girls Together (112 page)

Walt had begun feeling sick to his stomach before Stagpole’s appearance, and he was aware, as Jenny led the red-haired man around the room, that what he didn’t need was anything more to drink. Still, he stooped over the bar and poured himself another glass of gin, because he hoped it might help him think of something to say when his turn came, because he
was
a fan of Stagpole’s, and that always made saying anything difficult. Walt sipped the gin, not looking at Tony, who still stood across the room from him, staring at him, waiting probably for him to run over and drop to his knees and beg forgiveness. The gin tasted funny, and Walt looked at his glass for a moment before he realized that he had poured the gin from a Scotch bottle, which very likely meant it wasn’t gin at all, which probably had a good deal to do with why it tasted funny.

Also it was warm.

Warm Scotch, Walt thought, ummmm-boy, and he was reaching for some ice cubes when his stomach took a turn for the worse and Walt hurried out of the room. When he reached the corridor he ran down it, whirling into the bedroom and out of it to the bathroom floor, dropping to his knees, his head over the bowl.

Closing his eyes, Walt waited.

Tony said, “I’m going.”

“Go.”

“Not until we’ve talked,” Tony said.

“We’re talking.”

“Not until you’ve listened, then,” she said, and she closed the bathroom door and locked it.

“Tony, I don’t feel so goddam well if you don’t mind.”

“My father’s a doctor.” She sat on the edge of the tub.

Walt opened his eyes and looked at her. Even now, in the stifling heat of the bathroom, she managed to appear, in her goddam watermelon whatever it was, almost cool. “Would you please let me vomit in peace?” Walt said. And then he said, “Look, you want to drop for some guy, terrific, it’s none of my business. Don’t bother apologizing, you don’t hafta.”

“What else do you want to say?”

“I don’t want to say anything. I frankly do not care who you put out for. I just wanna upchuck alone, O.K.? Now can I have a little privacy or can’t I?”

Tony said nothing.

Walt stuck his finger down his throat.

“I’ve watched operations, Walt; you’re not going to make me sick that easy.”

Walt removed his finger but stayed, head down, over the bowl.

“It’s that I lied, isn’t it?” Tony said.

Walt, eyes closed, nodded. “That’s got a little to do with it. I mean, I would rather you hadn’t shacked up with half the adult population of New Jersey but it does bug me somewhat—” Walt began to gag.

Tony knelt down beside him.

Walt pushed her away. “Dammit, can’t you leave—”

“Why do you think I lied?”

“Because you’re a liar. Why else?”

“I did it—”

“Oh boy, I can hardly wait—”

“—because I couldn’t get you any other way. Not if I told the truth. Because I love you, Walt.”

“That’ll make me vomit if the Scotch won’t.”

“
Goddammit
,
you’re gonna believe me!
” She moved up next to him. “That’s the only thing I care about left, and you are going to believe me when I leave here and say good goodbye. That I loved you. I love you in spite of the fact that you’re funny-looking and not all that sweet and—”

“Tony—” Walt said.

She grabbed his shoulders. “I don’t suppose you care that this big thing that’s making you fall to pieces happened when I was just a kid and I don’t care either because it doesn’t matter. What matters is
you
blew it,
you
, buddy, you threw it all away, what we had,
you
pitched it all—” And her voice built in the steaming tiled room and Walt, sick, tried turning toward the toilet, saying, “Look out, huh, look out, look out,
Tony
—”

Then nobody said anything.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tony whispered finally.

“All over you,” Walt said. “All over your dress.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Tony said again.

“You moved right into me,” Walt said. “I tried making it to the toilet but you moved right in my way.”

Tony shook her head and slowly began to unbutton her dress.

Walt knelt over the bowl and threw up again. “I really feel crummy,” he whispered.

Tony took off her dress and looked at herself in the mirror. “Oh dear,” she muttered, “you got the slip too.” She took it off.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

Walt gripped the sides of the bowl. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Shhh, baby,” Tony told him. “You just take care.”

Walt reached out for her. “I’m sorry, I am, but why did you have to lie?”

Tony knelt beside him, took him gently in her arms. “Because I was in love, baby, and people in love do desperate things.” She began to rock him.

Walt, eyes closed, lowered his face against her bra. “Do you really, do you?

“Here,” Tony whispered, and she reached behind her back, unhooked her bra, lifted it gently up, giving his mouth a better grip.

Then there were three screams.

The first one when it came, came from Stagpole.

But that was only natural, since he had maneuvered himself into a position with his back to the window and his face, therefore, to the door. Everyone else in the room was grouped around him, facing him, which he rather liked, and he told them stories and they laughed, and if it weren’t for the heat he would really have almost enjoyed it, what with the eye play he was managing between himself and the gaunt young man called Fire, but then the thing appeared crawling slowly through the doorway and Stagpole screamed. “
Jesus!
”

Rudy stopped and for a moment, lifted his bloody face, trying to locate something, and then he started to crawl again, saying “Father ...? Father ...?” as he moved painfully along.

Everybody scattered and Esther clutched her heart but Sid, frozen, retreated toward the window, watching his son crawl toward him.

“Father ...? Father ...?”

When Rudy was almost on him, Sid supplied the second scream.

“DIE!”

The third scream came immediately after, and it was Branch’s, and probably he meant some word but none was distinguishable. He simply ran across the room, and when he was above the quiet form he dropped beside it and gathered it into his arms and began to keen, and when Rose came over and tried to lead him away she discovered Branch would not let go.

In a moment all save five people had moved quietly out of the room, standing like cattle in the hot foyer. Branch, of course, had not moved, continuing to keen, his face now buried in the neck of the dead. And Sid was still standing by the window. Esther, still clutching her heart, stared at her husband, and Rose, panting from her labors, tried dislodging her son.

But Branch just would not let go.

Jenny watched it all from the foyer. Then she whirled, bolting for the bedroom phone, calling Boston. She waited, eyes closed. When she got the law firm where Tommy was working the summer she said, “Mr. Alden, please,” and then, when his voice came on the line, she said, “Tommy?”

“Hello, Jenny. How’s the play?”

“Well, there’s been some ... a postponement, maybe, and I wondered if you loved me.”

“Yes.”

“Then marry me.”

“I’m married.”

“Auh?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you, Jenny. I guess I was trying to hint around that day when I called you after your name was in the paper. See, it’s all kind of, I don’t know, a mess, except she’s very nice except it more or less had to happen, the marriage, if you get what I mean, and I haven’t told anybody but I’m thinking of going north around Labor Day and surprising people.”

“You be happy,” Jenny said.

“You too, Moose.”

“I am.”

“So’m I.”

“Good for us,” Jenny said, and after she’d hung up she went over to the bed and lay down. She had no idea how long she stayed there, but the next thing she knew a slender Negro was asking her please to come to the living room and, since he was a policeman, she went, and he thanked her, explaining that someone in the neighboring building had seen something on the fire escape and had called the police, and, as she was leaving the room, Tony appeared from the bathroom in what probably was Branch’s bathrobe, and Tony asked what was going on, and when Jenny told her Tony went into the bathroom and told Walt, green by now, that Rudy was dead and Branch had likely cracked and there was a Negro cop outside asking questions.

Walt, in pain over the bowl, only wondered what the punch line was.

The questioning took a long time. Nobody knew much of anything, but they had to be asked anyway, and the eventual conclusion was that R. V. Miller had probably slipped from the fire escape where he was wont to linger and was, in any case, dead. Long before the questioning was concluded a doctor was summoned and, after brief consultation with the police and Mrs. Scudder, gave her son a shot, which soon loosened his hold, and he was then carried unconscious to the bedroom and allowed to rest there. Charley Fiske of Kingsway Press arrived shortly before the doctor, having been summoned, he said, by the playwright Aaron Fire, who, as the police were finishing up, gave a moving speech about the future of
Madonna with Child
, that future being, as far as he was concerned, absolutely and totally nil, since the script had been more or less commissioned by Branch Scudder and since Branch, even if he were in condition to continue with the production, would never do so, since he saw only the deceased in one of the two central roles. Consequently, the playwright concluded, out of respect for the dead and the maimed, he was withdrawing the play from presentation, which was his contractual right. The actress in the other central role was more than a little upset by the play wright’s moving gesture but was at least partially soothed by the editor of the deceased. The question of body disposal was settled quickly, when Esther Miller said “The boy will be buried beside his grandfather!” with such force that Sidney Miller argued but briefly about interstate costs, and, that over, Campbell’s Funeral Church was called and soon came, and Sid urged them on to their greatest effort, and Campbell’s, used to parental grief, agreed to do its best.

By the conclusion of all this, the rising of the moon was complete, and as the police released them the people scattered. Walt and Tony were among the first to go and Walt did fine on the elevator trip down, supporting himself, but outside, the first strong breath of night heat made him woozy. He grabbed a building facade for support, stayed there gasping until Tony slipped his arm around her shoulder, shifted the brunt of his weight against her hip. Walt was still reluctant to leave the safety of the building, but at Tony’s urging he gathered courage and in a moment, when he felt himself properly propped, he let go and leaned on her completely as they moved along.

“Don’t let go,” Walt told her.

Tony said “Never.”

Jenny left as soon as she heard Charley calling Princeton. She dashed out the door, and when the automatic elevator was slow to obey she ran down the six flights and out into the night. Charley, when he ran down the stairs a few minutes later, found her sitting on the front steps of the building.

“I’m through running,” Jenny explained. “I’m through hiding. I can say good night to you like a human being. That’s why I stopped.”

Charley sat down beside her. “I couldn’t agree more” he said. “That was what I was running to tell you.”

“We had our chances,” Jenny said. “They are gone. I’ll never get involved with you. Not again.”

“Don’t worry; I’m involved with another woman now and thank God this time it’s my wife.”

“I’ll never work for you again either.”

“I wouldn’t fire my new girl. She’s forty-five and homely and we get along just fine. We’re staffed completely, except Archie has an opening coming up.”

“He does?” She shook her head. “I could never work for Archie Wesker.”

Charley stood. “I’m gonna be rude and not even offer to walk you home. And I’m sorry about the play.”

Jenny nodded. “I wonder if it was any good,” she said. “Only one person ever really saw it. It’s kind of silly to take the word of one person.” She stood. “Good night, Charley. And I’m glad you’re not walking me home.” She shook his hand and started across the street into Riverside Park.

“Is that safe at night?” Charley called.

“I hope so,” Jenny called back. “I only go through the park for half the way.”

“I’ll walk you halfway home, then.”

Jenny waited for him to cross to her.

They slipped into the shadows.

Sid and Esther were the last to leave. They sat quietly in the living room, talking softly to Rose, or rather Sid talked, Esther remaining silent, coddling her grief in private, Sid assumed. So they talked, scrambling for things in common, all the time staring at that one thing they did share, the spot on the rug where their children had lain. The spot held them, and though once they certainly would have fought over it, or over what it represented, now they just sat, old and tired and staring. But finally, inevitably, Sid said “Well ...” and Rose answered him in kind, “Well ...” and though no one made a move, the ending was at hand.

“So if you’re ever near Chicago,” Sid said, leaving the rest.

“Thank you. Or you Cleveland.”

“Who can tell?” Sid muttered.

So did Rose. “Who can tell?”

Then they stood, Sid helping Esther, Rose accompanying them to the door. “I’m sure your son will be fine,” Sid said.

Rose nodded. “Oh yes. Once I get him home.”

“So will Rudy,” Esther said. “Once I get him home.”

Sid opened the door. “I meant that about Chicago.” He pushed for the automatic elevator.

“If you’re ever near Cleveland,” Rose said, and she waved and said good night and shut the door. Sighing, she moved toward the bedroom, taking off her green dress as she went. She took off her girdle and heaved another sigh, and then she took a bathrobe from her son’s closet. Rose went into the bedroom. The moonlight was very bright and she pulled a chair up close beside the bed and lowered herself into it.

Branch had such a lovely face. Rose smiled, put her hands on her stomach, preparing herself for her nightlong vigil. Softly, in a voice so sweet it surprised her, she began to sing: