Come and Join the Dance (5 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

A
NTHONY WAS TWO
years younger than she was, but a lot had happened to him. Only two years before, he had been a senior in a parochial high school in Pittsburgh. Something had boiled up in him that last year, a delinquency of books and violence. “I hadn't read anything till then,” he told Susan. “
Ivanhoe
, Dickens,
Popular Mechanics
and the Bible—nothing! I played basketball.” Somehow he began to stumble across other books—Thomas Wolfe, Rimbaud, Huxley, D. H. Lawrence. “I read some of
Ulysses
and thought Joyce was nutty. And of course I was reading a lot of crap too.” He wrote two notebooks of poetry and hid them in his locker. At the same time, he was terribly bored; he found himself provoking fights all the time and not even knowing why. In one of his classes he announced dramatically that he would no longer go to chapel because he could not believe in “the myth of God.” He was expelled. His father had beaten him. “Just because he believes that people should be beaten,” Anthony said, suddenly furious. “He didn't care. He never went to school, that hypocritical old bastard.” His fists clenched; he eyed all the people in Schulte's as if he were looking for someone to hit.

“Okay,” Susan laughed. “It's all right.”

“He said he'd get me a job in the steel mill. Big deal! That's where I'd end up if I went home now. I said the hell with that. Then the school said they'd take me back if I promised to go to chapel—I was a good student or something. So I went back. There's an anticlimax! But I decided to have a good time. I went to town on some of the papers I wrote, almost caused a couple of riots. But anyway they gave me honors in a lot of crap when I graduated, and I got the scholarship I just bitched up… . By that time I was completely cynical.”

“Are you still completely cynical?” Susan teased him.

“Yeah.” He grinned.

“What's your poetry about?”

“About? I don't know—whatever hits me. It's good. Listen—I wrote this one a week ago… . ” He recited the poem too rapidly, as if he wanted to say all of it at once.

Somehow she could not really hear it. Perhaps it was good. Sitting in Schulte's with Anthony, she could not take her eyes off the street. And yet it was funny, she thought—if she had been outside at that moment, she would have been staring in, at the tables, the people, probably at Anthony; so in a way you never ended up seeing the place where you really were at all, not that there was much to look at in Schulte's. The same paper roses had been on the tables ever since she was a freshman; the same people continued to come even though the coffee was awful. Kay was always there. She said she only felt at home in nondescript places, so they usually ended up in Schulte's on the long, shapeless afternoons when they had both cut classes. Kay had taught her what a significant and necessary thing it was to cut a class, not just an irresponsible act. Her parents, paying bills for “advantages we never had,” would not understand, but stolen time had such a liveness to it; you could really feel yourself exist, knowing that the barrage of facts was continuing six blocks away without you. How long it had taken her to discover this! Peter, Kay and Anthony must have always cut classes. They were outlaws, part of a mysterious underground brotherhood. How was it that she had suddenly become able to recognize them, thinking, There's one, there's another, the recognition instant and uncanny. “Screwed-up people,” Jerry called them, seeing them all as casualties, those who would never “make it.” “What's wrong with Kay?” he would ask. “Why doesn't she wear lipstick, go back to school?” “I don't know,” Susan had answered, embarrassed because he made her feel that something should be done about Kay: “Listen, Kay, it's such a simple thing to put on lipstick.” But for Kay it couldn't be simple. Sometimes she thought Kay was like one of those captains who went down with their ships, although it was hard to believe in that sort of thing.

It was strange that Anthony had called her “another one.” But of course she did have a bad reputation. Probably very few people thought she was still a virgin. No one knew how much she lied, how skillful she had become in making adjustments in reality: inferences, suggestions, a few dark strokes, a laugh she had learned from someone. A shy Southern girl in the dorms had once said wistfully, “Susan, sometimes you're so-o-o bizarre.” Disgusting! She would have to stop lying in Paris. A fresh start, a clean break—she had begun to think like a criminal. It was bad enough to be a coward. It was all upside down for her too; most people were afraid of reputation, not of the acts themselves. It was stupid to ruin your reputation and have nothing to show for it. You didn't even have the comfort of being defined as an outlaw—that was something to be, one of a community. Instead, she had always been a scrubbed, prissy little girl who ate all her cereal, who sat scared stiff with her hands folded while another little girl poured red ink on the floor “just to see what would happen” or said “I don't care” to the teacher. It was easier to be good. But she had always secretly watched the wild girls, wanting to be one of them, never daring: eighth-grade Marjorie who had flunked history with a total lack of concern and had tagged after all the cigarette-smoking boys in high school; and now there was Kay. She had brought Anthony where Kay would have brought him, almost automatically. “Let's go to Schulte's,” she had said. “I like that place.”

“I don't know why. It's no place at all.”

“That's why I like it.” They had both laughed—a moment of rapport. Later it might be harder to be Kay. If she spent the day with Anthony and he asked her to go to bed with him, Susan would have to say that he had misunderstood, or didn't he see that it would all be so meaningless? She had always liked the word “meaningless”—it was something you said after everything happened to you, when you no longer cared about caring or not caring. It was a graceful way out, a regretful smile over a glass of champagne. “But it would all be so meaningless.” She would flourish that above her emptiness until it fitted her. And Kay would give love and never mention it and perhaps go bankrupt—putting her to shame as she listened outside the bedroom.

“Let's go soon,” Anthony said. She nodded. Half an hour before, he had said, “Let's split,” and she had said “Soon” and ordered another cup of coffee, somehow reluctant to leave, afraid of missing something.

Now she saw a man and a girl turn the corner two blocks away and begin to walk down Broadway, the girl shapeless in a black sweater, lagging a bit behind the man, whose walk had a peculiar uneven rhythm. He looked straight ahead, never back at the girl, who now and then caught up with him. She could not see their faces. It was difficult at first to tell that they were together. Susan watched them through the window coming closer and closer.

A block away. There was still time to put down her cup, say, “Okay, let's go,” pay the check, walk out and rescue the afternoon. Now Anthony was talking about taking her to the Frick Museum. “The Met's too big. I go out of my mind there. There I am digging a Rembrandt and I'm thinking about the Japanese paintings I haven't seen yet and the whole goddamn Greek wing, and I feel like running because I haven't got time, because in two hours they're going to close up the place.” Susan nodded absently, watching the two figures in the street. “But you don't understand. For most of my life I didn't see anything, anything at all. Then—New York. Wow! Too much.” Anthony shook his head sadly. “Too much. Hey, stop looking out the window!”

“There's Kay and Peter,” she said. She had been waiting for them all along. But it was only to see them, to see the fact of them together.

“Where? Listen, let's leave anyway. I want to talk to you.”

“I just want to see Kay a minute.” She was beginning to feel completely treacherous.

“Yeah. A minute,” Anthony jeered.

They were crossing the street. Anthony stood up and waved to them through the glass. They saw him and waved back. It seemed to her that she had planned everything, even the waving.

“Spies! Spies!” Anthony hooted as they came into Schulte's. Everyone was laughing. She laughed too. She saw now that Peter and Kay had the same faces they always had. You couldn't tell that they had made love to each other. Kay smiled at her in a rather embarrassed way and seemed to be trying to whisper something about being sorry. “Listen,” Peter was saying, “the system is inescapable. You might ask us to sit down.”

“Breakfast or lunch, Peter?” said Anthony.

“You son of a bitch! I'll just have coffee. Have to get back to work. That's what Kay says, anyway.”

“Have something to eat—some eggs,” Kay said softly.

“But I never have eggs. I exist mainly on the Chinese dinner and the kindness of friends.” He paused as if he expected them to laugh, but the words had been too elaborate. The odd thing was that what he said was probably true. Susan wondered why she liked him. “Why do you always try to feed me, Kay?”

“It's an old Jewish custom,” Kay muttered.

“But it's much more sinister than that. Kay wants to fatten me up so that I'll make my contribution to mankind. You should always walk behind me too, Kay, with a little bell, so that I won't waste any more of my time. Do I have fifteen minutes left to have my coffee and get back to the apartment?” Kay was silent. “Maybe I won't go back at all.”

“Oh, you'll go back,” she said.

“Do you think you'll get the fellowship, Peter?” Anthony asked.

“I might stand a good chance, if I had more time to fill out the application.”

“There's enough time,” Kay said.

“Five o'clock—three hours.”

“Well, hurry up, man. Come on. Someone get the waitress.” Anthony stood up.

“God!” Peter said. “If I could only get out of New York, out of that hole I'm in. You can get good cheap apartments at Harvard. I'd throw everything out, buy new furniture … ”

“You should give a big party before you go,” said Anthony. “With a jazz band.”

“Yes. A final disaster!” Peter agreed excitedly. “Will you come?” He spoke suddenly to Susan, forcing her to look at him.

“I'll be in Paris,” she said. He was sitting next to her and had stretched his arm along the back of the booth. An arm in a blue shirt sleeve. She resented it fiercely.

“Come to my party. Don't go to Paris. Conditions are bad all over.”

“Is it any different at Harvard?”

“That's very good,” Peter said. “It's too bad you're always so quiet.”

“I'm just well brought up.” She wished he'd stop looking at her.

“She's a poopsie,” said Anthony. “But I'm going to reform her. I'm going to make her wild and strange.”

“And what will you do with her then?” Peter asked. He put his hand on her shoulder—anyone might have done that, she thought. Kay was frowning darkly over the menu.

“I'll make love to her. Listen, she's nice. She bought me breakfast.”

“I don't like to be talked about,” Susan protested.

“No?” said Peter. “I think you love it.”

“It's really very dull,” she said helplessly.

“But you
do
love it.”

“I wonder where the waitress is,” Kay said, carefully propping the menu between the salt and pepper shakers. She gave Susan and Peter a sad, dazed stare.

“Kay,” Susan said, “Anthony and I are going to the Frick Museum.”

“You'll see my nun there.”

“Why don't you come with us?” Susan felt as if she were talking to a stranger.

Kay shook her head. “I like to be alone when I go to a museum.”

“What do you do when you're alone?” Peter demanded. “What are your secrets, Kay?”

“I won't tell you my secrets,” she said quietly.

“That's right,” said Anthony. “Don't tell Peter anything.”

Peter laughed harshly. “You are all against me.”

“That's not true!” Kay cried. “That's not true!” She almost stood up, as if she wanted to rush over to him and protect him from everything with the softness of her body, but she didn't even touch his hand. Everyone was silent. Peter drummed absently on the table.

The waitress came and said, “What'll it be?”

“Coffee! Coffee!” Peter sounded as if he were invoking a deity. Kay's face was impenetrable again.

“Peter,” Susan said coldly, “why must you know people's secrets?” It was true that they were all against him, she thought. He was the enemy, with his reckless, disinterested probing.

Peter didn't answer her at first. He picked up a spoon and weighed it in the palm of his hand. “Because I have none of my own,” he said finally. For a moment she doubted him, but he wasn't performing now; she almost wished he were. “I even keep a record of my dreams,” he added. “Typewritten. Very impressive. That's my one great project. When I die, I'll bequeath it to the university.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes,” he said. “It's true. Five black folders. You're terribly curious, aren't you? Would you like to see them?”

“No,” she said, retreating uncomfortably, “I wouldn't.”

“Why not?”

“Well … I just think that dreams should be private.”

“What else do you think, Susan?” Peter asked relentlessly.

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think about me, for example?”

She began to feel frightened, as if at any minute she were going to find herself standing naked in front of him, yet she wanted him to go on, wanted the pain of it.

“The way you stare when you're not talking is very mysterious. What are you looking at? Are you seeing everything? Digging everything? Or do you see nothing at all?”