Come Destroy Me (6 page)

He kicked the chair lightly, shook his head, and flicked on the overhead light. He thought, What a dreamer I am! Dream. Dream. Dream.

When he took off his shirt he went to the mirror and stared at himself bare-chested. He kicked his loafers under the bed, gave two rolls to the cuffs of his pants, and stood arms akimbo before his own reflection, his jaw stuck forward, an eyebrow arched, a leer on his lips. He looked tough. He said to the mirror, “I’m Charlie Wright. Age sixteen. In love with a pretty little girl named Jill Latham. What’s it to you?” Then his face broke into an embarrassed grin and he said again to his reflection, “You crazy character. Charlie boy, you’re nuts, Charlie boy.”

He got tired of watching himself and he moved away and sat on the bed, undid his pants buckle, and pulled them down, leaving them in a heap on the floor. In his white jockey shorts, he stretched himself out on the bed without taking off the cover. Then he inspected the hair on his arms and on his legs, holding them up so he could see them in the light. He had a lot of hair. Men with a lot of hair were virile. What the hell! Who gave a damn?

For a long time he lay there looking up at the bulb, staring at it until his eyes hurt and ran. He wondered how long he could look at the bulb before he lost sight of everything but the special red color he saw eventually. If his mother thought he wasn’t a man, why should he try to act like a man? He could spend the rest of his life staring at light bulbs and not go to Harvard or do anything. Stare at light bulbs.

Think about Jill.

He wasn’t ready yet. He got up and went down the hall to the bathroom, ran water on his face, and again watched the mirror as the water dripped down his chin and over his lips. He winked at himself, grabbed the toothbrush, and ran it lightly across his teeth. He took a long time with his toilet. Man! The word made him sick. What did his mother know? He didn’t even have a father, did he?

Back in his bedroom he put the light off, tore the cover from the bed, and stripped it to a single sheet. He sank his head down on the pillow and lay on his stomach. Now he could think about her.

The moon gave a fork of light to his room and he did not feel sleepy. He wanted to be sure exactly what he would think about her before he started, and to begin with he went through the whole evening again, reviewing everything. He could not remember the song.

He took the pillow and put it beside him, putting his arm around it very gently. “Jill, tell me,” he whispered. “I’ll understand.” The linen cover of the pillow brushed against his lip uncomfortably, and he put his own wrist up and touched his lips against it. “Tell me, Jill. It’s all right,” he said. He kissed his wrist lightly.

In his imagination, her words came to him in that husky, soft tone. He spoke them aloud as she might speak them. “Charles Wright, I’m glad I found you. My, yes. Oh, my,
yes.”

An electric sensation of delight shot through him to the ends of his fingertips and he felt strangely warm and tense and — he thought of her word — tender.

“I’ll always be gentle with you,” he told his wrist. “Ah, Jill, don’t you know the way I feel?”

“Yes, Charles, I think I do.”

“There’ll never be a need for words,” he said. He leaned on one elbow staring at his wrist as though it were her face, and he said the way she would say, “Charles. Charles,” and gently he bent and kissed his wrist, bringing his hand up to his own face, caressing it, making it go tight on his cheek. He said with his lips in his own flesh, “Jill, I love you. I love you, Jill.”

Then he jumped up, startled, at the opening of his bedroom door. Silhouetted in the fork of light, his mother stood looking down at him.

She said, “Honey, I’m sorry.”

“S’ O.K.”

“I was upset,” she said. “Evie’s never done anything like this before. You’ve always been good kids, and I let it get me, I guess.”

“I don’t care,” Charlie said.

“Are you all right, honey?”

“What do you mean?” He couldn’t control the quick anger in his voice.

“I didn’t upset you, too?”

“Heck, no,” he said.

“Good boy…. Did you study hard at the library?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s my good boy. Good night, honey. Don’t you worry about Evie. Russ will take care of everything.”

Charlie thought, Damn Russ, damn him to hell. He said, “Good night, Mom.”

The door shut and Charlie fell back on the pillow. He grabbed it to him and held it. Why didn’t his mother just leave him alone? Why didn’t Russ just move in? Ah, God, Jill, God.
You’d
understand.

Her name is Jill.

“You would! You’d understand.”

Suddenly he was crying like a kid sissy, muffling the sounds with a big soft feather pillow squeezed against his chest.

A
FTERWARD THEY SLEPT
, Evie slumped over on the right-hand side of the front seat of the automobile, her head nodding against the windowpane, Jim with his legs stretched out cumbersomely, his shoulders leaning against hers. They were parked a mile from the Golden Eagle, on the flat part of South Hill Road, off to the side of the ditch.

Lofton found them almost immediately. He saw the car as he drove along and his stomach did a flip. He slammed on the brakes and maneuvered his car to the side, jerked the key off, and sat for a moment dumbly. He was in some embarrassing position, all right, and he had better act fast, but what the deuce was he going to do if … Well, heck, he was going to put a stop to it. Take the bull by the horns and put a stop to it! He thought of Evie and the way she had looked earlier and his nerves curled, recoiled, and shot up again rigid with anger. He clamped his hand down hard on the chromium handle and got out, slammed the door with purposeful heaviness, and began walking up the dirt ditch. They must have seen his headlights, heard the noise of his motor and the slamming door, he thought. They must know. But it was quiet. Crickets were singing and frogs chortling and the wind whispered in the tall grass down in the fields. Otherwise it was quiet. Lofton exaggerated the sound of his footsteps, kicking pebbles and brushing the ground with his shoes. There was nothing for
him
to be embarrassed about if …

Geehosopher, if he were home now he’d make a super de luxe cheese sandwich and listen to the ball game.

At the back of the car he saw no one inside, and for a moment he thought with some relief and certain wonder that they were not in the car. Then he saw Evie’s head near the window, saw she was asleep, and saw the lanky form of Jim Prince resting against her.

He thought, Well, thank the good Lord they’re decent, anyway.

Then he got mad. He yanked the door open and caught Evie as she fell toward his arms, and he yelled, “Wake up, Prince!”

Evie opened her eyes and gaped at Russel Lofton. At first there was no reality to his being there, to her being there, to the weight of Jim Prince at her back. At first it was as though she were dreaming it and she could only stare back at Lofton with puzzlement. Presently she could think, and, thinking, remember. It seemed like a long time ago that it had happened. Again she saw herself as another person would see her, standing off from herself, surveying herself objectively. But this time she was sick from the picture. She even wanted to laugh at herself asking Jim Prince to take her to a smoky bar, she wanted to laugh at her own dramatic naïveté, but it was not funny the way it might have been if it had not happened to her, had this consequence. Now it was something terrible and shameful, and she could not tell from the expression on Lofton’s face how he felt. It was important how he felt. It was the most important part of the whole wretched predicament.

She said, “Mr.
Lofton,”
and she sat back in the seat, pushing Jim’s shoulder away from her, and again she said, “Mr.
Lofton.”

Jim sat up, rubbing his eyes, shaking his head vigorously, and blinking nervously at Lofton. He said, “What’s the trouble?” and Evie looked away from Jim Prince. She did not want to see his face. It was not that she was afraid to see it now; she was repelled by his image. She thought that suddenly he looked pasty-faced and sallow, even with the sunburn. From what she could see in the darkness, his face looked like the soft white face of a young boy wakened from sleep. Somehow it made their whole experience sordid. They had done nothing great and glorious, they had not even been in love. And why had it happened? Because, Evie formed the words in her mind, they were a pair of stupid kids.

“You can lose your license!” Lofton blurted out. “Don’t you know you can lose your license?”

“For what?” Jim Prince said softly, meekly.

“For drinking. For drinking until you’re so intoxicated Mr. Bates at the Golden Eagle has to warn you not to drive. That’s for what, you young smart alec!”

Evie said nothing. She lowered her eyes and stared at the dashboard of the car, thinking that if Lofton said anything directly to her, she would cry. She knew she would.

Jim said, “I’m sorry. That’s all I can say.”

“And don’t you care how it looks? A young girl like Evie here!”

No one said anything and Lofton repeated, “Don’t you care how it looks?”

Jim Prince was thinking with relief that Lofton did not suspect anything. He wished he could hold Evie’s hand tight, to make it better for her.

“Sure I care.”

“You ought to think about that before you start off on something like this.”

“It’s not going to happen again.”

“You bet it isn’t,” Lofton said firmly. “You bet your britches it isn’t.”

In the darkness Jim reached for Evie’s fingers, felt the soft touch of her skin, and then felt her hand spring away from his. He thought if he could only
talk
to her now. Lofton stood framed in the door of the car, his thick fingers tapping on the roof in the momentary silence. He repeated, “You bet your britches it isn’t. You ready to drive back with me, E-venus?”

“Wait a minute,” Jim said. “I can — ”

“I’ll go back with Mr. Lofton,” Evie said.

“Wait a minute, Evie, listen — ”

“I’ll go back with Mr. Lofton!”

Jim started to say more, but when Lofton took her arm to help her from the car, she burst into tears, and walked away like that, crying, with Lofton holding his arm around her and saying, “Now, ?-venus. Now. Now.”

After they were gone, Jim Prince picked up the soft piece of white lingerie pushed back in the seat and stuck it in his glove compartment. He thought, Why did I have to be drunk? Why? He thought, Why did I have to be drunk? I love the girl.

She cried quietly as they drove along, and Lofton was silent. He didn’t know what to say. Eventually he bolstered his courage and said, “Drinking is only half of it.”

“I know.”

“?-venus, it just doesn’t look right. When a boy takes you off in a side road late at night, it means he’s got something on his mind.”

“I know that.” Evie sobbed her words out.

“And when he gets you drunk first, why then — ”

“But it wasn’t his fault,” she said. “I wanted to get drunk.” She sat up and blew her nose in the handkerchief Russel Lofton had given her.

“Why?”

“I think it was because of — because of talking with you earlier.”

“What!” Lofton was horrified. Geehosopher, you’re trying to help one minute, next minute you’re responsible for what happened. Jumping geehosopher. He hadn’t said anything when they had talked earlier. He hadn’t
thought
anything, either.

“I said — because of talking with you.”

Evie believed it was true. She had been restless since school was out, but it was during and after her talk with Russel Lofton that her restlessness had swelled up in her and reached its peak, and she had felt different then, full of a desire for something she did not know, something she was not sure about. She had thought about him all evening. Right up until she stopped thinking. After the beers.

“Now, E-venus, don’t be silly.”

“No, I mean it. I mean it.”

“That’s a fine thing to say.” Lofton tried to insert a note of frivolity in his voice, a chiding tone, because he was afraid she was going to start talking seriously now, the way she had earlier. He thought
that
was a silly thing to be afraid of, but he was afraid just the same.

“I guess you don’t understand.”

She wished she could make him understand, but she did not understand either. Not everything. One of the things she did not understand was why she felt numb and aloof from it all, from what actually had happened. Now she felt far away and divorced from that girl in the car drunk with Jim Prince. It was because, she believed, Russel Lofton trusted her. Right off. Automatically.

“Oh, I understand. Oh, I see,” Lofton chuckled, “said the blind man.” He wondered why he wanted to say, “Evie, I’m an old man. I’m an old man.” Even he didn’t believe that. Why did it occur to him to say it?

“There you go being funny. You’re strange. You were real mad at first. Now when I start to explain, you make fun of my explanation.”

“I wasn’t making fun.”

“Yes, you were. Deliberately.”

“No, Evie. I don’t want you to believe that.”

“You said it!”

“Said what?”

“My name. You said Evie.”

The city-limits sign reflected in Lofton’s eyes and he swung off South Hill Road onto Dedham and toward Broad. The streets were all but empty. Azrael went to bed early, and there was little traffic, only a few bulky trucks rumbling off toward Burlington and Manchester. Lofton looked at his watch and saw that it was past twelve. He thought he ought to call Em, but his thought was arrested when Evie said, “I think I’d do anything for you.”

“That’s awfully nice of you to say.” Lofton tried to keep his voice steady. He would drive her straight home, he knew that. He would not take the time to call Em…. What was the matter with him tonight?

“I mean as a friend,” Evie said.