Dancing Aztecs (15 page)

The suggestion of a different category of life, an utterly strange approach, was so strong that it briefly stopped Jerry in his tracks. Surely Fayley and Spang were queers, but that wasn't the point; being queer had nothing to do with TVs and sofa placement. Human beings
have
found a variety of ways to live, a fact most people have scant reason to notice. Taken by this idea, surprised and in a way made curious by it, Jerry stood still in the middle of the room, forgetting for a minute the search for the golden statue while he studied the things around him, trying to work out the attitudes, the assumptions, that had led to this other way.

He was distracted from these musings by the sudden appearance in the opposite doorway of a slender, languid young man who strolled into the room as though the presence of strangers in here were simply another part of this different approach to life. As maybe they were.

Jerry's first reaction—startled surprise and apprehension—was smothered by his second reaction—a cultural hostility to homosexuals—which gave way almost immediately to yet a third, different kind of surprise, a kind of comic wonder, when he realized this fellow really did accept Jerry's existence as natural, not at all out of the way. With a little smile, a casual wave of the hand, he nodded at Jerry and said, “Well, hello.”

“Hello,” Jerry said. Punch him? Make a run for it? Bluff it out? Bluff
what
out?

“I'm David. Kenny's friend.”

Jerry pointed at himself. “Jerry.”

Rather more than ordinarily casual, David made another of his waving gestures and said, “I assume Kenny's taking care of you?”

“I guess so.” It was hard to know what David thought was happening here, and so doubly hard to figure out the right answers to questions. Also, Jerry had just noticed that the calm casual facade of David was marred by very red, very puffy eyes. David had been crying. Was David a nut case?

“Do feel right at home,” David was saying, with an almost imperceptible break in his voice. Suggesting, perhaps, that his heart was also breaking?

“Thanks,” Jerry said. He was sure by now the statue wasn't in this room, though most other statues from human history were.

“Is Kenny getting you a drink?”

What was the answer to
that
one? Frowning toward the doorway through which David had entered—would the unseen Kenny enter at any second with a gun in his hand?— Jerry hopelessly said, “A drink?”

“You mean he isn't?” David shook his head with a kind of fussy petulance, then offered a long-suffering sigh. “Well, then, I suppose it's up to me to maintain the hospitality of the house. What would you like?”

“To drink?” It was hard to follow this conversation. “Sure, what the hell,” Jerry said, and shrugged. “You got a beer?”

“Beer?” Doubt touched David's brow, also perhaps a touch of snobbery. “I'll see,” he said, and went away, back through the same doorway.

Jerry was still trying to decide whether or not to follow him, give the rest of the apartment a quick search, when the apartment door opened behind him and another one came in, putting his keys back in his pocket.

Kenny Spang; no doubt of it A painfully skinny black man with a huge fuzzy Afro, he gave Jerry a look of combined surprise and irony, saying, “And what have we here?”

“You must be Kenny,” Jerry said, since he might as well go on behaving as though he belonged here.

“So I must,” Kenny said. “And who must you be?”

“Jerry. David's in the kitchen.”

“Is he?” A very knowing amusement glittered in Kenny's eyes.

“Getting me a beer.”

“How good of David. But then, David is such a good person.”

“Sure,” Jerry said, and David himself came back, with a tall pilsner glass full of beer.

“Well, well,” Kenny said, and watched the glass as David handed it to Jerry.

The truth would have to come out very soon now. Jerry drank beer as quickly as he could.

David gave his roommate a wounded look. “It's good of you to come back,” he said, his misery showing through his attempt at unconcern.

“Rather too early, I see.”

David showed such serene languor that he looked boneless. “Jerry and I have just been having a chat while waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me. That's rich.”

If Jerry was going to search the rest of the apartment, he'd better do it now, before these two realized the mistake they were making. Putting the empty glass down, he grinned at them both and said, “Well, you know what they say. You don't buy beer, you just pay rent on it. Where's the head?”

Both of his hosts seemed taken aback by his manner, but it was David who recovered first, pointing at the doorway and saying, “Through the bedroom.”

“Fine.”

The television set was in the bedroom, at the foot of the double bed. So were the statues, both of them on a high glass shelf over a table with an expensive-looking chess set laid out on it While scratching the bottoms of both statues with a key, to see if it was plaster or gold beneath the paint, Jerry listened to the conversation continuing in the living room. There was a smirk within Kenny's voice, hurt outrage in David's.

KENNY
: “Well, I can't say I care much for your taste.”

DAVID
: “
My
taste!
You're
one to talk!”

KENNY
: “It happens
I
know what I'm looking for, unlike some others I could mention.”

DAVID
[
Wistfully
]: “I have been looking all my life for a rational love.”

KENNY
: “You choose unusual places to look.”

DAVID
: “I'll certainly agree with that.”

KENNY
: “Well, I couldn't interrupt you two for the world. I'll find
somewhere
to go.”

DAVID
: “Don't you dare! If you leave here, you'll take him with you.”

KENNY
: “Losing your nerve, sweetie?”

DAVID
: “Well, you'll never lose yours. But if you walk out and leave that creature here I'll never forgive you. I mean that, Kenny, I'm very serious about that”

KENNY
: “Giving him to me, are you?” [
Tinkling laughter
] “If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the park.”

DAVID
: “Oh, you're just vicious.
Vicious!
”

Plaster, and plaster. Putting the statues back, Jerry returned to the living room on the second “vicious,” to find the roommates confronting one another like a pair of cats. Jerry gave them his cheerful unaware grin, saying, “Well, listen, fellas. Sounds like you two got a lot to talk about, so I won't keep you. Thanks for the beer. See you around.”

“Oh, I'm sure,” Kenny said, while David struggled in vain to look unconcerned.

“Well,” Jerry said to himself in the elevator going down. “Whadaya think of
that?”

AFTER DINNER …

Wally Hintzlebel, swimming pool salesman and afternoon adulterer, was one of those people who grow up in the shadow of New York City without ever being a part of it In the Long Island community where he'd grown up, many of his school friends had had fathers who worked in the city, and during his teens kids he knew would occasionally take the train to Manhattan, but Wally never hung around with that kind of crowd. He hung around with a
local
crowd. He was a small-town boy, surrounded by other small-town youngsters, and the fact of Manhattan upthrust on the horizon meant nothing to him.

In adult life, his swimming pool selling would occasionally bring him over the city line into Queens or Brooklyn, but so far as Manhattan was concerned this was only the third experience of his life. The first, nine years ago when he was fifteen, had been on the occasion of his mother's birthday. Having saved sufficient money, Wally had presented her with tickets to a Broadway musical, plus dinner in a midtown restaurant Though Mom had kept saying how wonderful it all was, he'd known from the very beginning it was a mistake, and one he'd never repeat. Her strained smile in the grubby noisy train had told him, with no words from her, just how difficult she found this mode of transportation. In the restaurant, her assurances that everything was delicious had alternated with her repeated questionings of the waiter, wanting to know the ingredients of all the dishes. She kept tasting things and looking far off, as though trying to hear a distant bell, then saying, “What an
unusual
taste.” As for the musical, full of nearly naked girls and much boisterous singing, Mom had patted his arm afterward and said, “I'm sure it's a wonderful show.”

The second Manhattan experience, five years later, had been during one of Mom's rare absences from home. Aunt Leah, Mom's only sister, was dying in Springfield, Illinois, and Mom had gone out there for a week, four days of bedside waiting, and then the funeral. Wally drove her to LaGuardia Airport for the flight to Springfield, then got back into the car after her departure, suddenly realizing that home was empty, nobody was there; a nervous, expectant tingling had all at once suffused his body, like a sunset blossoming over a western sky. Driving from the airport out to Grand Central Parkway, he came to the point where he could either turn east toward home or west toward the city, and like the trivet on a Ouija board the car suddenly jerked itself westward. What could Wally do but go along?

In its way, this second visit had been even worse than the first. After driving about hopelessly through two hours of late-afternoon traffic jam, knowing no one, having no destination, Wally had settled at last in a hokey tourist bar off Broadway, where he had become very drunk and very sick. Also, the police impounded his car, and he had to spend the night in a hotel room, alternating nightmares with mad dashes to the bathroom. It had cost fifty dollars to get the car back the next day, and Wally had spent the rest of his mother's absence safely in front of the television set in his own living room.

And now he was back for the third time (with a break for dinner), but in this instance Manhattan meant nothing at all. If the trail of the golden statue led to Alaska, to the Congo, to the rings of Saturn, that is where Wally would go. Manhattan was a backdrop only, it had no place in his thoughts.

Which meant he didn't realize until he got to 29 West 45th Street, the Bud Beemiss address, just how unlikely that was to be a private residence. He drove there hurriedly from the Midtown Tunnel, dinner (chicken, peas, baked potato, cherry pie, coffee) roiling in his stomach, and he visualized himself in the Beemiss apartment, clutching the electric coolness of gold, but the instant he saw the building he knew what had happened. Beemiss's office, not his home. And nobody here at this hour.

Blinking, churning, Wally scrabbled in the glove compartment for the list of names and addresses. Beemiss no good, somebody else, somebody else.

Oscar Russell Green, 291 West 127th Street
That
had to be a home address. Also, Green was supposed to be the leader of the Open Sports Committee, so why wouldn't
he
have a full list of the membership?

Wally lunged the Pinto forward. Oscar Russell Green. Gotta hustle.

THEREFORE …

DOO de doo, de doo, de doo, de-
doot
-de doody doo.

Oscar Russell Green was a rotten dancer, but he didn't care. He had no natural sense of rhythm, he had two left feet, he moved his shoulders wrong, and he had no idea what to do with his hands, but he just didn't give a damn about
any
of that. If he wanted to dance, goddam it, he'd
dance
, that's all. Dance all over the friggin' living room, no matter how much the friggin' furniture got in the way. Hell with the friggin' furniture.

Oscar was dancing the Hustle. He wasn't, actually, but he thought he was, and that's almost the same thing. He was lumbering around the living room, cartwheeling inadvertently from time to time over the larger pieces of furniture, but always picking himself up again and dancing on. Ever on. To the music in his head, or maybe to the music of the spheres. Remembered music.

After the Irish comedy team of Frank and Floyd had departed, Oscar had napped woozily until the doorbell ringing had brought him around to a violent headache. Fortunately, the ringing had heralded the delivery boy from the liquor store, so a lot of quickly gulped hooch had smothered the headache and left Oscar more or less awake and more or less in his wrong mind, his non-Leader mind.

Nevertheless, enough of his right mind had remained for him to fret about the broken Other Oscar and to decide at last to fix the damn thing, right
now
, right this
second
, right this
instant
, where the hell's the Elmer's glue? Kitchen kitchen kitchen kitchen, ah
hah!
Elmer's glue. Next, he brought the Other Oscar and the Other Oscar's other leg in from the bedroom to the living room, spread a lot of Elmer's glue over the furniture and the lamps and his hands and the floor and various parts of the Other Oscar, and then jammed the leg back on and damn if it didn't stay. Damn if it didn't He put the Other Oscar on the living room window-sill to dry—he had a hell of a time letting go of the thing, what with all the Elmer's glue all over the damn place—and when he stepped back to view the result (flipping backward over the beanbag chair) it seemed to him the Other Oscar looked as though he was just climbing over the sill, just coming in from the great outdoors. There wasn't any fire escape outside that window, nothing but dark silent air five stories over the street, so this had to be a
real
god to be able to come in through that window. A flying god. “Whadaya hear from the flying nun?” Oscar asked it, and went chuckling away to find his bottle. Then he came chuckling back with the bottle and sat on the Barcalounger—
floop
, it went, and there he was lying on the Barcalounger, all unexpectedlike—and he sat there chuckling for a while and drinking from his bottle, and then he discovered he couldn't put the bottle down.