Going Down Fast (19 page)

He drove home indirectly, through the streets of the prospectus. Dusk was settling. Puddles stood in the gutters: better storm sewers needed. These streets seemed more crowded, harder used than Muriel's or his. A gang of colored boys were blocking the street, though when he blew his horn they drifted aside. Then a tough threw a snowball hard against the back window of the car. Narrow grimy crowded street. Black smoke billowed from a chimney—burning something illegal. Dirty obsolete wooden houses, cheap shingle-sided multiple dwellings, apartments cramped together without a bit of green space. Really, he was a snob to sneer at the pictures in the prospectus, when a child could invent a healthier environment than this. No plan was perfect. Political action always ended in less than you'd hoped for. He had lived in the city eight years and he could not imagine leaving, but its politics were as grimy and archaic as this street. The machine of the city and the machine of downstate grinding hopes of reform between them. Politicians who ran as Polish or Irish in the third generation, as if that were a program. People shrugging their shoulders and blaming everything on the Syndicate, like peasants talking about the will of God. Irrationality and interconnection and the payoff. Even businessmen were unwilling to cross city hall, because the mayor stood on the back of his machine and acted as the friend to business, jiggling ordinances, zoning laws and taxes to attract or keep industries.

Three white beatniks came noisily out of a basement, a girl with long black hair with her arms around both men, one with a moustache and one with a beard. The big hulking one struck him as familiar, but Asher had already looked away. Stare and you encourage them. He drove more quickly, afraid another hoodlum would throw a snowball and break his windshield.

He felt relief as he turned on his own street with its wide lawns, the gray Gothic dignity of the fieldhouse. In front of a fraternity some students were rollicking in the snow, having a mock battle, while the snow was flying. Teaching, what would it be like now? He could always do consulting on the side. He'd run into Tom Lovis at that fund raising affair for Senator Botts, and Lovis had given him the word about the possibility of a research park. If that came off, the other possibilities might open. Lovis had done pretty well for himself. He was moving up fast. Written some of John Roger's speeches when he'd run for the House. That was a role Asher had sometimes imagined for himself: one of the hard working politically knowledgeable cadre behind a good clean liberal candidate, one of those who helped him define his position, consulted in crisis.

He let himself into his apartment. Danish with clear true blues and greens: he approved of his livingroom. He liked it better than Muriel's. Undoing the button on his trousers, loosing his belt, he sat in his adjustable tilt chair and reached for his briefcase, settling it against his leg like a faithful dog. In a while. First he resumed his survey of the
Times
with the magazine section which he read completely except for the recipe and school ads, but not excluding those many advertisements featuring lissome, elegant, bare but never vulgar ladies, erotic and soothing at once and somehow in the public interest.

Anna

Monday–Sunday, November 10–16

In midmorning a boy strode in with an envelope, asking for her. She nodded him gone and slid it into her desk, unopened.

“What's that?” asked lean virtuous Mrs. Cavenaugh. “We can't let things pile up without attending to them.”

“No,” Anna said meekly. “I'll take care of it.”

She kept hopping downstairs but her chance did not come until noon. She told the girl who ran the machines, Oh, go to lunch, I have a little job but I'll xerox it myself, and showed her a letter she had been holding up. As the girl left, Anna tore open the envelope and without pausing to look at the pages, ran them through, crammed all back in the envelope and went at once.

The snow had melted, leaving the lawns a faded watery green. In a block she unbuttoned her coat. The big yellow envelope felt conspicuous. Never had she cheated when she was in school and she had never given her students exams they could cheat at. Nevertheless when Leon had assumed she would help she had not hesitated. Ducking into the Oriental Institute she hurried across the lobby past the guard. Leon, Leon where are you, damn your eyes? Slowly she walked the aisle between cases of Egyptian artifacts. That unreliable bastard. Why couldn't he get up when he had to?

Letting the envelope trail the floor between two fingers she headed toward the great Assyrian winged bull, toward the sideways-walking, wallhigh winged bull with the face and beard of a man. Strong, full of dignity, he surmounted photographs of his excavation. Muscular pillars for legs, sexual cannon, broad and deep man's forehead. The beard extended square and curly like a cultivated field. Beast labeled a cherub: how did your name decline to pink-assed tutti? As she stepped back to admire the brawny legs, stout chest and heavy fullfeathered wings, she knew it reminded her of Rowley.

Hand fell heavily on her shoulder. “Hi gang. Got it?”

Turning she handed the envelope over. “I made two copies.”

“Good girl.” Leon peeked in. “I'll keep the other, you never know when. Tonight let's take in the old Bette Davis flick at the Clark.”

“Aren't we going to have lunch?”

Shook his head. “Promised to have it back by twelve. Let me tell you, if my Uncle Burt wasn't such a big slob donor to his old frat, we'd never have got a touch of this.” With a salute he turned. She watched him shuffle off, one long arm swinging loosely in the rhythm of his walk, the other stiffened against his side to hold the envelope in place. A patch of sunlight came to life on his orange hair, then he passed under the arch and out.

She drifted after slowly. Fake spring. The campus squirrels waddled across the lawns. If she looked at them they caught her eyes and stared back, expecting food. On a day like this she would have found herself energized, ready to shout at her classes in angry joy. She would have cursed, my god, half the semester over and what have I taught them? Finished the day with a good fatigue, despair at results, but pleasure in the process. Well, she could climb a bench and lecture squirrels: mountebank to nutlovers.

Wednesday, November 12:
The streets were dark as she walked toward Leon's through no man's land of leveled buildings, a slough of mud pocked with stacked bricks and loose rubble. In mid air the elevated Illinois Central station lights blinked in the wind. She walked fast, for the empty fields had no protective passersby. The arc lamps dipped like branches, the cold-colored lights bobbed. Near the tracks new townhouses (suburban living in the city) were building. On a completed wall someone had chalked
FAT CITY
. Oh yes. Then the long arcaded viaduct past columns columns columns, echoes of mayhem and cars whooshing through puddles.

She rapped. In an island of light Leon slumped in the director's chair, brows meeting. Facing him Paul was centered on the swaybacked couch. Turning, Paul looked surprised but not pleased. Tête-à-tête interrupted. She understood. So clear out, it's my turn. Paul slid toward Leon and she took the other end of the couch, collapsing with a loud sigh.

Paul said shyly, “I wanted to thank you both for the exam.” He picked at loose stuffing through an old burn.

“Did it help?” she asked.

“Mainly just having it. I studied as if I didn't, but it kept me cool. Finally about midnight I sat down and took it, and it was a snap. Then I went, had a hamburger and came home to bed. All collected, I walked in, finished early, even the essay part that was out of the blue.… Almost didn't look at it. I had qualms, then I figured it was harder for me to look than not to.”

Something in his voice puzzled her. “What's wrong?”

“Never cheated before.”

“That wasn't cheating,” Leon drawled. “You had the questions, not the answers. Every fraternity jackass in that course had that advantage—why not you?”

“The University shouldn't be like a payphone you can monkey with. And I've been trained to do things the hard way. You know, public display of virtue. The Jamesons all think they're God's dummies, you know, walking ads for black justice.”

“What do you think you were scared of?” Leon asked.

“Failing. What else? Losing my scholarship.”

Leon spread his big hands. “Then why aren't you flunking everything?”

“That would take work. Maybe I'm just not interested.”

Leon grinned like a trap. “But you were supposed to be an archaeologist. A kind of scientist.”

“I saw myself playing Schliemann. Uncovering brilliant civilizations in some jungle. Kid's dreams.”

“You saw yourself—or that sister of yours saw you?”

“Of course, it's been a mutual thing—”

“I wonder.” Leon watched with hard narrow eyes. “You're smart, kid, so why are you stuck under your sister's thumb?”

“Don't be ridiculous. You think she dominates because she's older. The truth is that half the time I make decisions for both of us.”

“Why?

Paul cupped his neck, staring. “What do you mean, why?”

“Why don't you make your decisions and she make hers? She pressures you to decide what you're going to do. What business is it of hers? You don't owe her a life.”

Anna sat forward. “Come on, you think my relationship with Estelle is healthier? Lock me in a room with her and I'd lose my mind.”

“Yes.” Bam went Leon's fist. “I do call his bond with his sister sick if it keeps him from doing his own thinking. If he acts under blind compulsions coming off it. If he flunks a course because that's the only way he can say with his life,
no
! If he can't move out freely toward others. What is it protecting him from, that he should be learning? He's married to her—and he's too young to be married.” The passionate baying of Leon's voice rounded through the high dusty room. Paul looked moved in spite of himself. Moved, yes, and intrigued. A strange halfsmile touched his face. In that moment he looked very like his sister.

Leon stirred. His hand fell on his belly, kneading. “Anna, how come you haven't made us supper?”

Paul frowned at his wristwatch. “I have to be going.”

“Stay,” Leon said. “Plenty of food. I like company when I eat.”

As she worked in the kitchen she was overhearing seduction. Paul mistrusted Leon. His dark highdomed face would tense suddenly, harden to expressionlessness. Yet he was too much the young intelligent unsure male held on the leash of his vanity before someone older who wanted, holy shit! to discuss him, to resist Leon long. Perhaps the narrow domestic encounter began to bore Leon. How had she grown dependent? She must get out and see other people instead of plodding over here every night to curl up involuted dialogue.

He had the urge to make disciples. He had been born lonely and must continually manufacture a family to replace the first and second he had lost, that had failed him. As he had collected her he was trying to collect Paul. It meant much to Leon to have others do as he advised, to believe he was helping. Like any man he had to feel himself in the world.

“If love isn't just a bullshit word for neurotic grasping needs, if it don't mean I own you, I eat you, I use you for a crutch—then it's seeing, then it's attention. It's that heightened insight into the other person, as much what she could be as what she thinks now that she is. It's unfolding attention, attention that creates. That's what you understand in film. What you see, is. ‘A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.' Blake. The eye creates.”

They ate in the livingroom. Paul looked at his flatware and seemed relieved that it was clean. “If you'd return those popbottles,” she said plaintively, “we could eat in the kitchen. All this balancing.”

Paul strolled in to see what she was talking about and gave a low whistle. He moved with a ranginess at once graceful and awkward. “Tell you what. This weekend we'll load the bottles in Leon's car and return them.”

“Ought to be ten bucks, maybe more,” Leon muttered.

“Oh, you're such a baby about money,” she said.

“You must drink soda like a car burns gas.” Paul laughed flatly, like a box stepped on.

“I used to take other things. Anything. More a holocaust than a habit, you might say.”

Paul made a face of respect. “Not any more?”

Opaque eyes fixed on the wall. “The places I got to that way, they got worse and worse. Hardly worth taking a trip if you don't get out of your bag but only farther in.”

“Did you ever take speed?”

Leon shrugged, slapping mustard generously on his spanish rice. “Three interviews today. Pat my back. Bitches talking about how demanding, how ungrateful old people are, and you can see in their ugly faces and bleached hair skinned up on top in pink curlers what kind of turds they'll dry into. The
in
-ter-
view:
what a crock.” He chugalugged a Coke. “Tell you what I'd love to do. Get fired in a day. You start off to gain the subject's confidence. See what they want to talk about. Seem to write everything down. People hate it when they talk for five minutes and all you do is check a box. They want to register on you.

“After you snagged them good, you begin. You want to give the subject an illumination. You want for one minute
to turn him on to himself
.” Leon heaped more food on his plate. “You persuaded the person they really shocked you, revolted you. You appear terrified. You faint. You retch on the carpet.”

His eyes commanded, visionary, cold. “Suppose you're interviewing on sex attitudes. You move in slowly on the subject till, bingo, talking, talking, still asking questions, you make out on the couch. What do they think? What will they do? They find out. The truth is what they do. Or interview becomes fight. Or by subtle questions you lead him farther and farther on a limb, then cut! educational process. Leave every subject more alive—”