Boys & Girls Together (95 page)

Or do.

So he dawdled over dinner, and when it was finally done he convinced the others that a drink was in order, on him, of course, and when they agreed he led them to a lively Third Avenue bar where they all had a terrible time till after midnight. Then everybody went home.

When Branch reached the front door of his apartment he paused. Slowly he reached into a pocket for the key, took it out, aimed it toward the lock. He experienced a bit of difficulty inserting it, because his hand was trembling, and that made him angry. “Nobody pushes me around,” Branch muttered, and he threw the door open and slammed it behind him.

Aaron was sitting in the living room. Quiet. Smiling.

“I hope you know you made a spectacle of yourself,” Branch began.

Aaron sat quietly. Smiling.

“Ass would be a better word. You made an ass of yourself. I mean it. You know why I’m so late? Because I had to apologize to half the civilized world about you and the assy way you behaved. I’ve never seen anything like it. When you left it was like some leper. You should have seen the way everyone was looking at you. And if you think it was fun for me to explain that
I
was the one who brought you, well, you’re crazy. I’d like an apology, Aaron.” Branch waited.

Quietly, Aaron smiled.

“I want an apology. Right now. Say something.”

“Nineteen,” Aaron said.

“Oh my, get him.” Branch began to pace. “Off on one of his silly damn games. Well, I’m on to you, Aaron. I’m supposed to ask what nineteen means and then you’ll tell me and it’ll turn out that it’s some way of insulting me, right? Well, tough. I don’t care what nineteen means, so you can say nineteen all you please, it doesn’t bother me.”

“Twenty,” Aaron said.

“I want an apology! I’m ashamed of you. You’re just not adult enough to go into civilized society. Everything’s such a game with you. You’re one of the biggest babies. Stealing the Scotch like that. You’re just not old enough to play with the big boys.”

“Twenty-one,” Aaron said.

“I can see there’s just no point in trying to deal with you rationally. Good night, Aaron.”

“Twenty-two,” Aaron said.

Branch turned and went to the bedroom. He took off his jacket and hung it carefully in the closet. Then he took off his tie. He slipped off his trousers, unbuttoned his shirt. Then he crept to the doorway and held his breath. The apartment was completely quiet. No sound.

“Twenty-four.”

Branch whirled and hurried to the bathroom. He washed his face and brushed his teeth and put on his pajamas. After that he left the bathroom and turned out the light in the bedroom and slipped under the covers.

“Twenty-eight.”

Branch pulled the blankets over his head and closed his eyes, but after a moment he realized it was just too stuffy under there, so he threw the blankets back and carefully fluffed his pillow and then sank his head into it so that his ears were covered. He stared at the ceiling. Then he thought he heard footsteps, so he lifted his head from the pillow.

“Thirty.”

“
What are those numbers?
” Branch jumped from the bed and tore down the corridor into the living room, grabbing Aaron’s shoulders, shaking them, shaking them hard.

“Synonyms for stupid.”

“Well, stop it.”

“Bonehead. That makes thirty-one.”

“Stop.”

“Eventually. Clod. Thirty-two.”

“I’m not a clod. Why am I a clod?”

“Thirty-three.”

“What word did you just think of?”

“Beetlebrain. How long have we lived together?”

“Six months maybe. Why?”

“And what have you been looking for all that time? Thirty-four and five.”

“What do you mean, what have I been looking for? A play?”

“Thirty-four and five, by the way, were boob and booby. That’s right, a play. And what do I do?”

“Drive a cab?”

“What else?”

“Write?”

“Not ‘Write’ question mark. ‘Write’ exclamation point. Write! And
that
is why you are stupid. Because only a genuine cretin could live with a writer and look for a play and never put two and two together.”

“You’re a novelist. You don’t write plays.”

“Have you asked?”

“No, but—”

“Ask.”

“All right; have you got a play?”

“I might have.”

“But you don’t.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Branch turned. “I’m going to sleep. Good night.”

“Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight.”

“Where’s it take place, this play of yours?” Branch’s voice was very loud.

“A college town!” Aaron shouted back. “Here. Manhattan. Yes. Up near Columbia. One of those big old buildings near the Columbia campus.”

“Make up your mind, Aaron. Manhattan isn’t everyone’s idea of a college town.”

“Up near Columbia,” Aaron said again. “That’s the set. The living room of a big run-down apartment between Broadway and West End.”

“And what’s it about?”

“What’s it about?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, that’s a little difficult to put into words, so—”

“You’re making this up as you go along. Admit it.”

“Love!” Aaron cried. “Love!”

“Boy, that’s an original theme,” Branch said. “That’s what I call breaking new ground.”

“Five characters, one set. Five people. Two men, three women. The men don’t count for much. One of them’s a make-out man, the other’s kind of a backward rich kid. The women have the big parts. Two of them anyway. The two young ones.”

“I’m already confused.”

“Well, shut up and maybe you won’t be. The three women live in this apartment, O.K.? A mother, her daughter and a boarder. The daughter’s name is Loretta—her mother named her after Loretta Young. Her mother had great plans for her, O.K.? But the daughter didn’t turn out quite pretty enough. Oh, she’s attractive, Loretta is, but not the knockout her mother needed. See the mother, she lives all the time in the sweet by and by, when she was belle of the ball, before she got married and her looks started going and her hair turned gray—”

“Dreamy mother with big plans for her daughter. Aaron, come on, it’s
The Glass Menagerie
.”

“Like hell it is. Listen. The daughter’s one main character: lonely Loretta.
Can’t stand being alone
. And the boarder’s the other main character. Lemme tell you about her. Name’s Claire. A young old maid, but great: bright and funny and smart and not really ugly except she’s a cripple. Clubfoot. Clubfoot Claire. She and Loretta, they’re like good sisters: close.

And they all work around the Columbia campus. Claire, she works in a bookshop. And Loretta, she waits table in a little restaurant. The mother—she’s got no name, just the mother—she works in a dress shop—women’s clothing. So there’s the people, Scudder—five of ’em. The animal make-out man, the rich-kid grad student, the mother and lonely Loretta—and Clubfoot Claire.”

“I can hardly keep my eyes open,” Branch said.

“You’re gonna pay for your lip, Scudder—” Aaron sat limp in the chair, arms dangling, eyes closed—“but right now it’s Act One and we meet the girls! Dinner’s over, Loretta’s getting ready for a date, Claire’s teasing her, and the mother’s blabbing on about when she was a girl. And here we get the mother’s big word:
eligible
. I told you how she had big plans for Loretta? Well, her plans are marriage and marriage with an
eligible
man. For
eligible
read loaded. And in comes the animal. He’s a grease-ball and no genius, but handsome, and it’s obvious Loretta’s got the hots for him, and the mother, she almost tosses her cookies after they’re gone. He’s a poor Dago Catholic, three strikes is
out
. And she goes into this big spiel to Claire about
eligibility
. And suddenly we realize that she may be an old bag, the mother, but on this subject, at least, there’s passion left. Her daughter
will marry an eligible man
—she
means
it. That night, when the animal brings Loretta home, they neck a little—a dash of sex for the butter-and-egg man, Scudder—and the animal paws her and every time he touches her body she
writhes
. She’s like a bitch in heat when he fingers her flesh, and when he takes off, Loretta goes and gets Claire out of bed and they chitchat about how crazy Loretta is for the animal and how the old lady is agin’ it, but mostly what you get here is how close the girls are—they
read each other
, they
care
. Kind of a sweet scene. And then, late afternoon a couple of weeks later, in comes the mother like gangbusters because it has happened! He has come! The eligible man has appeared! This rich-kid grad student, he walked into the shop to buy his mother a birthday present and they started to talking and he’s very shy but nice-looking and loaded and—surprise—she’s invited him to dinner. That night! Well, there’s surprise, all right, and irritation, but the mother rides roughshod through it all and then the doorbell rings and in comes this richie—Frank Fink in the flesh. Shy and not very handsome and what they have is cocktails without liquor. It’s a really funny scene except it’s all sort of horrible to Loretta, who’s acting kind of out of it, and then, as the mother continues pumping the rich kid about his background and explaining what a
fabulous catch
any daughter of hers would be, Loretta comes down to the very front of the stage with Claire and the lights start to fade and in the background the mother is going at it hot and heavy and maybe some sweet wistful music starts to play and Claire says, ‘You don’t have to tell me, I know,’ and Loretta starts maybe a little to weep and Claire says, ‘How far gone are you?’ and Loretta says ‘A month’ and then the mother and the richie come swooping down on them, laughing and happy and noisemaking like crazy and we have an intermission.”

“That’s a good curtain,” Branch said. “But there better not be—”

“Good
curtain
! You ass, the whole thing’s marvelous.”

“
There better not be
a big abortion scene—I’m bored with them already.”

“Yours is a common mind, Scudder. Get me a drink.”

“Get it yourself.”

Aaron threw back his head and howled. “Such pain he’s going to suffer; my heart bleeds.” Then he got up and made himself a drink. “So we come up on Loretta and the animal.” Aaron gestured with his glass, pacing around, glancing out the window at the black Hudson. “Loretta tells him how she really cares for him but that means nothing, he’s used to adoration, and then she tells him again how she’s swelling with his carelessness, and he says tough. He’s been through this kind of thing before and he’s cool as hell.
They don’t even talk about abortion
,
Scudder
—he never even goes so far as to make an offer—and Loretta’s terribly shook by all this and she says how he’s got to marry her and he says how he’s on to whores like her and then he says there’s probably twenty guys at least who might be the little old papa and she’s sorta hysterical by now and swears he’s the first, which is corny but true, and he only laughs and then he
really
pours on the venom and reduces her to rubble and then Claire and the old lady come in from the flicks and the old lady doesn’t know why they’re fighting but she jumps right in and chews the animal up and down and tells him never to come back and this strikes him as being the funniest joke of all time and he gives his love to everybody and takes off. And the mother says thank God he’s gone because things have been going really well between Loretta and the richie—he’s taken her out a couple of times the past week—and the mother just knows that everything is gonna work out great and Loretta says she’s pregnant and without a word the mother whips a hand across her daughter’s face. Loretta just sits there like a lump, she’s that far gone. Whip! The mother creams her again, harder. Whip! Whip! Whip! She slaps on and on and probably she would’ve killed her kid if Claire hadn’t pulled her off. Then there follows this looonnnnnnng pause, and then the mother says that she is just stunned and furious that the rich kid would knock up her daughter. Loretta tells her it wasn’t the rich kid but the animal and the mother says no, it was the richie, and Loretta says it wasn’t the richie and the mother says how can you be sure and Loretta says on account of he’s never touched me and then
the
mother says,
‘That can be remedied!’
—and whammo, we’re off into this fantastic scene where the mother says screw with the richie and Loretta says no, no, no, and she’s really hysterical when in from left field dashes Claire—
and on the mother’s side
—and that’s the clincher. Claire convinces Loretta to do it and finally Loretta just nods and nods and the mother is smiling and saying over and over and over, ‘Love will find a way. Love will find a way.’ ”

“What a wild idea,” Branch said. “Where do you get ideas like that?”

“I’m a writer, Scudder. I got imagination. Catch this next scene: the seduction. Loretta alone in the house. Nervous and scared. In comes the richie. They talk. The talk gets personal. Loretta says that she thinks that maybe they oughta break up and he says why and she explains that she thinks he’s attractive but obviously he doesn’t find her that way and that that’s no basis for a relationship so maybe they ought to just stop seeing each other now before she gets hurt. And he says, no-no, he finds her fantastically attractive but he was afraid she’d rebuff him and
that’s
why he hasn’t made a pass. And she says then that maybe they shouldn’t break up after all and that’s great with him and they talk a little and she says that she’s found out something: her mother keeps a bottle. Really? he says. They quick go get it and have a few
schlugs
and he asks a few what he thinks are clever questions trying to find out where the others are. When he learns they’re alone, he grabs her and kisses her and she like melts in his arms and he kisses her again and again and then he tears around, dousing the lights until there’s just one left on, and then he comes back and kisses her some more. Then very slow and nervous, they start to undress. Loretta’s upset as hell and the richie’s scared to death and nobody sees Claire as she steps out of the shadows. Nobody knows she’s there. She watches as they kiss and touch and undress. Loretta’s standing by the couch with not very much on and the richie comes up and they sink slowly down but just before he grabs her Claire—back in the darkness—she holds out her empty arms to Loretta and like a ball bat you know she loves her, Claire loves Loretta, really loves her, and when I say love, Scudder, I mean love, curtain.”