Come Destroy Me (3 page)

She felt sorry for her mother then, sorry and tired of feeling sorry for her, and she felt glad too. She was all mixed up about the way she felt. Seldom did she have a chance to be alone with Russel Lofton, and she had seldom wanted the chance before tonight, but tonight something was singing in her and she decided that the way she really felt was wistful. Wistful.

She wore a bright yellow sleeveless blouse with a black full skirt, the color of her hair, and straw shoes on her bare feet. Her dark eyes shone and she had a good white smile, with dimples in her cheeks that gave her face a coy, diabolical expression. Quickly she leaned forward to kiss her mother on the forehead, and then, grabbing Lofton by the hand, she said again, “C’mon.”

It was dark outside. A row of street lights gave dotted illumination to the avenue, and Evie slackened her pace as they went down the wide cement sidewalk, and dropped his hand from her own. Then she was aware that they were alone, and she felt the one way she did not want to feel, like a young girl with an older man. She was not sure how she would talk to him.

“Thought you were in a hurry, E-venus.”

“I am. But it’s a nice night, isn’t it?”

“Sure is. Who’s the lucky fellow? Jim Prince?”

“Yes. I’m meeting him at Jake’s. I appreciate the ride.”

“S’ O.K.”

He held the car door open for her and slammed it shut after she was settled inside. Evie lighted a cigarette and drew the smoke deeply into her lungs. She thought that even her voice changed around him, and she never sounded as mature when she talked to him as she did when she talked to boys like Jim Prince. Yet to a grown man like Russel Lofton, she should be able to stay herself. She should be able to.

He moved in behind the wheel and started the motor. Evie waited until they had driven a while before she said, “You know, you’re funny.”

She called him simply “you,” because “Mr. Lofton” sounded queer then, and out of place. She had never called him “Russ,” and even though she was bold and forward usually to a point that exasperated her mother, she knew she would never have the nerve to say his first name when they were alone together.

“Why am I funny?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, why?”

“You just are.”

“That’s not fair, ?-venus — bring a subject up without finishing it.”

“Well,” she said, “for one thing, you’re attractive for your age.”

“By golly, I’m not an old man. Only forty-five.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. Evie watched his profile. A nerve in his neck was jumping up by his throat, and it pleased her. She had a remote sensation of power that it made it easier for her to talk better. “And you’re cute,” she said, the familiar teasing note coming back in her voice. “You blush.”

“You
make
me blush, ?-venus. By golly, the way you talk!”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

“E-venus?”

“It sounds silly. As if you think I ought to be all excited at being compared to a beautiful woman. As if you really think I’m just a kid.”

Russel Lofton laughed. “Aren’t you?”

“Do
you
think I am?”

“I think you’re a very nice young lady,” he said, “and if I were a few years younger, I’d give that Jim Prince a run for his money.”

“Jim,” Evie said disgustedly.

“Thought you liked Jim.”

“He’s all right. I don’t know. Sometimes I just wish I’d meet a real grown man, someone with sensitivity, who wasn’t just interested in mauling me.” Evie sighed and waited for him to answer, and when he did not, she turned and looked at him and saw that he was blushing again. “That’s sex in this generation,” she said, “and sex and love mean the same damn thing to most men.”

When she spoke like that Russel Lofton had no retort, no answer, no connection even. He said foolishly, “You must like college, eh?” because he was thinking that she must have learned to talk that way in college. Certainly not from Em. Em claimed she was just going through a stage, and the more it was ignored, the sooner she would outgrow it. But Evie Wright was a pretty girl and someday she’d get in trouble. It was a darn shame, Lofton thought, that she never had a father. A darn shame. And when he thought it, he wondered what in the deuce a father could do about it.

Evie ignored his question. “You don’t like me when I talk frankly, do you?”

“I don’t mind, E-venus, if that’s the way you want to talk.”

“Evie!”

“All right, Evie.”

“I know sometimes I sound silly, like when I tease Charlie and everything, but I think seriously about life too.”

“You shouldn’t tease the boy.”

“It doesn’t hurt him. He’s an awful introvert. In my psych course I learned all about introverts and extroverts. I’m an extrovert.”

Russel Lofton said, “I’m sure you are.”

“And I like to figure things out. You know — people.”

At the bottom of the hill, the lights of the downtown streets shone in on them and Lofton steered the car over to the corner of Broad Street and put the gear in neutral.

“Well, there you are,” he said.

“Do you understand what I mean?” Evie did not move, or put her hand on the door handle to open it. Lofton felt embarrassed with the conversation, but not unwilling to pursue it. If it were only
possible
to pursue it. Often he wished there were someone he could talk to, someone he could tell his loneliness to who would understand. Every time he tried, he felt like an idiot babbling dull platitudes and clichés, and one night after he had confided in Em, he felt sick with himself when he thought back on it. He thought now, Why in the name of ten thousand red-striped zebras did I blab all that nonsense about the way I felt the night Dora died? Actually, he thought, reasoning it all out in broad daylight, he and Dora had been like a pair of tigers in the same cage, and all that he really missed was the habits they had formed together. He couldn’t explain it
that
way to Em, and what he had said was silly night talk, the things a person says late at night when he’s tired and self-pitying and asinine.

He wished it were possible to talk seriously with someone, but Evie Wright was a kid. He looked at her suddenly, with the light coming in the car window on her coal-black hair, her ivory-white skin, and the bright blouse, and she met his look fully, openly, the way a woman would. Russel Lofton lost himself in her face for a fraction of a second before his arm hit the horn and the blaring noise alerted him.

“Sure, sure, ?-venus,” he said, flustered and bewildered by the fragment of momentary awareness of her as someone other than Em’s young daughter. “Sure, I understand.”

“Someday,” she said, “I hope we can talk about it more.” She pressed the handle of the door and it opened. “I’d like to.”

“Sure, E-ven —
Evie.
I’d like to too.”

“ ‘By, then.” She slammed the door shut and walked along the sidewalk to the entrance of Jake’s. He watched her go, watched the slimness of her hips and legs, and the outline of her bosom, and the classic profile of her face. She paused before she entered the store and looked back toward the car, smiling and waving. Russel Lofton waved back and waited until she disappeared from sight. Then he took his clean white handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face, crammed it back in with his change and keys, and leaned forward at the wheel. He shifted gears, pressed hard on the gas pedal, and gunned the motor of the car, lurching it at the start. Forty-five, he thought, was not old at all.

• • •

The jukebox was playing “Back Bay Ramble” and Jim Prince was sitting on a stool sipping a Coke, his long legs dangling to the floor, his sandy hair bleached white from the sun. The fan over the counter blew cold wind in his face, red with sunburn. He had fair skin and freckled wrists, clear blue eyes and a stubborn pug nose. Stacked beside him were books and pencils, and he was frowning when Evie entered and swung herself up on a stool beside him.

“ ‘Bout time,” he said.

“Don’t start now.”

“I left the library early to be on time. Got an exam, too. You know how tough summer-session exams are.”

Evie said, “I know.” She liked Jim in a hazy, undefined way, but there was something missing with him. There was something missing with all the boys she knew, an abyss, really, a gap. She had a crazy yearning feeling inside of her that made her a million miles away, and she wanted to be near but she couldn’t stop dreaming. She didn’t know what about. Just dreaming and feeling far away. She went over in her mind all that she had said to Russel Lofton and what he had said back to her, and what she could have said, and what he should have answered. It made her restless and she wanted to do something different, something lost, the way she felt.

“Your brother was at the library.”

“That’s not news.”

“I saw him talking to Jill Latham when I left.”

Evie didn’t answer. She knew Jim was trying to be nice, and it made her angry that he had to try. Besides, she couldn’t concentrate too clearly on the things he was saying tonight. She kept picturing herself sitting on a stool with the jazz music playing and a cigarette burning in the ash tray on the counter, and the balmy summer evening outside. She thought of herself as standing on the outside looking in at herself, and wondering who that dark-haired, mysterious, attractive woman was, and what she was thinking. It was like the beginning of a movie. Something ought to happen tonight, she thought. It just shouldn’t peeter out into another week night with a Coke at Jake’s.

Jake was sitting in the back of the luncheonette reading the paper and swatting flies, and there were a few young couples sipping soft drinks in the booths. Evie knew them, but she had no desire to smile and recognize them. She felt as though she were a stranger who had just come to a small town, right off the train, and stopped in here for a bite to eat and a cup of coffee. Evie didn’t like coffee too well, though everyone at college seemed to drink it. She didn’t know what she liked any more.

Jim said, “You know her?”

“Who?”

“Jill Latham.”

“She runs the bookstore, doesn’t she?”

“Yeah, some dish. Thought your brother was a goddamn introvert, according to you. You’re always saying he’s a goddamn introvert.” Jim laughed. “She’ll fix his wagon.”

“Her?”

“Sure. She’s on the make.”

“You make me sick.”

“She
is.”

“You think every woman is. You’re so conceited it’s nauseating. Really, Jim, it’s simply nauseating.”

“I’m telling you I know. Every night I go there she’s always watching me. You can tell when someone’s watching you.”

“She probably thinks you’re coming down with a tropical disease. Look at your face.”

“Thanks,” he answered. “Thanks a lot for all your human kindness. I got a sunburn. Thanks for understanding.”

Evie listened to the wild notes of the tenor sax and felt herself moving to the music. The music went right through her and she wished she could just get up and run fast, or shout, or do something as wild as it all sounded. She knew she was getting depressed with Jim Prince. Before she had been willing to nurse the depression along and think of how hard it was to have a hard core inside of you eating away, a core of loneliness. A hard one. She wanted to express herself tonight, to go someplace and find some way to express what she felt, and have it all out.

“Do you have your car, Jim?”

He was angry. “Yeah.”

“All right, I’m sorry.”

“Do you have to be so bitchy all the time?”

“No …. I wish we could drive someplace — fast.”

“There you go,” he said, “off your rocker.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Jim leaned forward and touched her arm. “Listen, baby, I try to understand. I try to understand you all the time, baby. Listen, all I want to do is get along with you.”

“Let’s go someplace and have a drink. We’ve never had a cocktail in some bar. Some smoky bar.”

Jim laughed. “You’re really crazy,” he said. “You’re sweet and crazy. Aw, come on, come on, then.”

He called good-by to Jake and took her hand. Beside her, he was much taller and he was aware of his height, and of Evie, and of the way she looked in thin summer clothes without stockings. She looked fine.

He said, “You can be sweet, baby.”

“What did you mean about Jill Latham making eyes at you?” Evie asked. As she walked with him down Broad Street to the parking lot, she was still imaging herself, how she looked, and how she would seem to other people. She practiced expressions. She had a serious expression now, as though she and Jim were discussing something terribly important.

“Well, she acts — funny, or something,” he said. “Funny.”

They turned off the sidewalk onto the gravel of the parking lot. Evie was not listening to Jim Prince’s answer to her question. She was wondering vaguely what he would be like when he was Russel Lofton’s age, and what Russel Lofton had been like at twenty-one. She was looking straight ahead at the darkness on the hills behind the lot, and she decided the expression on her face must be striped with serenity and sadness.

“Listen,” Jim said. “Three nights in a row last week she asked me if I had an extra pencil. I mean,
three nights in a row.”

T
HE LIGHTS FLICKED
— once, twice, and again. Old Mr. Crocker began to giggle.

Mrs. Whitmore made a yellow smile and called out, “Closing time. Clos-ing time.”

Charlie heard it all. He had been waiting for this minute a half hour, waiting without working and waiting with a weak wonder that he told himself was stupid. God, he could smell the lilacs and they were sweet. He stayed right where he was, his head bent to his book, his feet crossed, curled under the chair. He couldn’t look up. He knew what to call it. It was a
crush.
He didn’t know what to do with it. In a minute she would say something to him and he would be worse off than Mr. Crocker. He was acting like Mr. Crocker right now, he thought, like the village idiot.