Hare in March (5 page)

Burroughs put the paper back in his pocket.

He said, “That was written by a doctor, Peter. An M.D.”

After a small silence, Hagerman mumbled, “I wouldn’t go to the moon, either.”

“I didn’t mean to belittle your position as Pledge Director, Peter,” said Bud Burroughs. “I admire the way you take it seriously. I remember when I went through The Divine Comedy. It made a great impression on me, because you were P.D., and you took it seriously. It’s just that lately I’ve been all fired up about the psychedelics. Peter, I really think we’ve got something we can’t even begin to fathom, something important, something worth taking risks for.”

Hagerman turned his chair around and faced Burroughs. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you I do.”

“Yes. It makes The Divine Comedy seem like small potatoes. I can see that, all right.”

“Well, not exactly, but — ”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“You’re right. I’m just a Pi Pi P.D. at F.P.C.” “Look, Peter, I said that like you say I’m a son-of-a-cop.” “You are … you are … But you’re stretching and I’m not.”

“Jesus, Peter, modesty doesn’t become you.”

“You’ve called something very important to my attention, Bud.”

“Knock it off!” “No, you have.”

“If you’re going to be uncomfortable being with me while I try the stuff, I don’t want you to do it.” “I
would
be uncomfortable, Bud.” “Well. No hard feelings.”

“But I think you’re right about it being worth the risk. It’s just that I can’t see
you
taking the risk.” “I can get someone else to be with me.” “Bud?” “What?”

“Instead of getting someone else to be with you, while
you
take the risk, let’s get someone else to take the risk.” “I
want
to try it.”

“Good!” said Hagerman. “And I want The Divine Comedy to be something more than just another dumb fraternity stunt!” Hagerman smiled. “So you take LSD
after
we see what it does to Shepley and Thorpe.”

INFERNO

C
ANTO
I

(Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!) The South Pole of the Heavens at high noon is well above the southern horizon, and all is bathed in light. Turning north, Shepley perceives Palisades Woods. Nearest to him is Thorpe. In the heart of the forest, the pair come to a clearing, whereon they gather wood for a fire to burn ten hours. They return from whence they came.

C
ANTO
II

When the shadows of day say it is in its fourteenth hour, Shepley hears a harmonious chant: “Lamb of God, locate a portable radio, a blanket, make sandwiches, secure a jar of instant coffee.” Nearest to him is Thorpe, and he perceives that he must pack it all together in preparation for a journey, north to hell.

C
ANTO
III

Shepley is roused by the sight of Hagerman’s Corvair when the day is in its fifteenth hour. He descends to the curb whereupon he enters the back, wordlessly. Nearest to him is Thorpe.

When Charles Shepley finished reading his itinerary to Lois Faye, on the eve of the Inferno, he stuck the paper back inside his coat and put her pocket flashlight back in her bag. He placed the bag between them on the seat of her black Thunderbird. She drove up 9W in the rain, headed for Grandview Park. Charles had called the Bluebird Motel to reserve a room, which they would probably occupy for one hour, four hours from now, but there had been nights with her when she waited in front of the motel, with the motor running, while Charles paid for a room they never used. The clerk knew Charles; he trusted him to pay the eight dollars whether or not Charles and Lois took the room, and since the Bluebird was the only place within ten miles that never questioned a young couple, Charles was conscientious about living up to that trust.

She said, “Are you nervous about it? It sounds like a strange picnic.”

“Hagerman has it in for me.”

“Why?”

“I’m not rah-rah enough for him, I guess.” “I hate to drive on a night like this.” “Thorpe is really nervous. He thinks Hagerman’s psychotic.”

“If anything ever happened to this car, I’d never forgive myself.”

“Thorpe thinks Hagerman’s psychotic.”

“I’d
never
forgive myself … You know something, Charles?”

“What?”

“You’re a very lucky person.” “Why?”

“I wish things weren’t so important to me.” “Things like the car?” “Yes, things like the car.”

“If I had a car, I suppose I’d worry about something happening to it.”

“Oh,
you
don’t know what I mean.” “Then tell me.”

“Well. You don’t have a car, but it doesn’t bother you.”

“I’d like to have a car.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know. A car.”

“I
begged
my family for this car.”

“I suppose I wouldn’t beg for one.”

“I
know
you wouldn’t.”

“Probably not.”

“But I
did!”

“Okay, okay.”

“It was important.”

“I believe you.”

“No you don’t.”

“I
do,
Lois.”

“And not just any car. It had to be a 1957 Thunderbird!” “I see.”

“No you don’t.” “Okay, I don’t.” “I know I’m selfish.”

“No, you’re not selfish. What the hell.” “I am.”

“I don’t think you are, particularly.” “I’ve been told that I am, and I am!” “All right!”

“You don’t know anything about me!”

“Here’s the turnoff.”

“I see it.”

“Well, turn off.”

“No!”

“No?”

“No.”

“Where are we going?” “I don’t know.”

“Well, let me know when you decide!” “I will.”

Charles Shepley was not surprised, but he was angry, and at a loss to explain to himself just at what point in their conversation things had taken a turn for the worse. He appreciated the fact that he could seldom explain her; she worked on whim, but it did not stop him from going over whole evenings in minute detail, trying to figure out how her whims worked. He sat sideways in the seat, watching her.

• • •

He had met her his first day at Far Point College, at a mixer. Everybody had black cards pinned to them with their names and their affiliations written across them in gold. “Independent” was written under her name, and while he talked to her, she told him Pi Phi and Kappa had both wanted her to join, but she was not a joiner. She was a short girl with long blond hair, long, thin legs, and a larger bosom than most short girls had, than most medium-sized and tall girls had, for that matter. She was a 36-C. He liked talking to her because she had a certain phony quality, which was so exaggerated it was “pop.” She had a strange little accent; “no” sounded like “now"; “oh” like “ow,” and near the end of the evening when she said she had to go, it sounded like: “Oy haf tew gow.” Her face was glowing, because she was nervous, and her sweater was much too tight, a 34 trying to hold all that back. She had very long Fu Manchu nails, painted Certainly Red, but she wore no facial makeup except for a light pink lipstick; her eyebrows and lashes were unusually dark, and the whites of her eyes were very bright, setting off the vivid blue of her irises.

When Charles asked her if he could walk her back to the dorm, she said she would drive him to his fraternity house, and just when they were about where they were now on Route 9W, she had looked across at him and said, “You think I’m a big phony, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Yes you do.”

Charles had said, “No,” making it sound like “now.”

She’d laughed. “Of course you do. I’m half-Jewish and I hate the Pi Phis and the Kappas, for they know of my tainted blood.”

“You killed our Saviour.”

“But you like my car, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I was born of a very wealthy family.”

“Were you?”

“No.”

“What else isn’t true about you?”

“My last name. It isn’t Faye. It’s Ginzberg. But that’s a secret.” “Okay.”

“I don’t look Jewish, do I?”

“There is no such thing as looking Jewish. Catholics don’t have special physical characteristics. Methodists don’t.

Seventh-Day Adventists don’t. So why would those of the Jewish faith look any differently from others? … Did you have a nose job?”

“Yes. And it hurt, a lot.”

“Do you want to go somewhere and have a drink?” “Yes. Champagne.”

The “drink” had cost Charles fifteen dollars. They had crossed the Tappan Zee bridge to Tarrytown, and gone to the bar of the Hilton Motor Inn, and while they killed the bottle of Piper Heidsieck, he had made a date with her for the next night.

Charles Shepley’s allowance was fifteen dollars a week. When he got back to the Pi Pi house that night, Thorpe was asleep. His wallet was on the bureau. Charles took a ten from the bill compartment, leaving a five. It was the only time he had ever stolen in his life, but it was not the last time. In seven months, since his arrival at Far Point College, Charles had stolen $367. He had spent all of it on Lois Faye, and $120 of it had gone to the Bluebird Motel for her privilege to change her mind, which she had exercised fifteen times out of twenty-seven. Every time Charles paid for the room anyway, the Bluebird’s clerk had said, “That’s the way the ball bounces.”

The ball was losing its resiliency; the game was wearing thin. Last month the Pi Pis had fired a Negro houseman, convinced he was the thief in their midst. The brothers were keeping their cash in the Pi Pi Mosler. Charles was spending more and more time near coat racks in campus coffee houses, and several afternoons a week wandering around the men’s dorm, watching for empty rooms.

Charles kept a throw-away diary. Every day he wrote down his thoughts, read over what he had written, and promptly destroyed it. The entries were like letters from himself, keeping him up on what was happening to him. The habit had begun with the thefts; it was his way of admitting to himself what he was doing; it was there on paper, he was rational, alert to the dangers, cognizant of the fact he had no way to justify his behavior nor account for it; he logged it as one might watch the progression of a journey or an illness — but when he threw out the daily notations, and before it was time to make another entry, he dismissed it from his mind, the way his mother refused to consider herself a debtor unless she had opened the envelope containing the bill.

Last night’s entry:

Lois Faye said, “What are you thinking about?”

“I wasn’t thinking. I was watching the road.”

“Watching us get farther and farther away from the park, huh?” “Yes.”

“You’re angry, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Disappointed, even heartsick?”

“What’s the matter with you? I wonder about you.”

“Aren’t you disappointed, even heartsick?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You know damn well why!”

“Why? Was going to the park so important?”

“It was to me.”

“It was that important?”

“Yes, it was that important.”

“And you’re seething inside, aren’t you? Your stomach’s in knots.”

“You’re so right.”

“I know I am. I just wanted you to have some idea of how I felt before I got this car.”
“What?”

“It’s awful, Charles, isn’t it, when something’s important and you can’t have it?”

“You’re sick, Lois. Did you ever think of that?”

“Am I too ill to go to the park?”

“Oh, my God!” and he began to laugh.

She laughed too. She said, “Tell me when you see some place I can turn around.”

• • •

One night Charles had double-dated with Thorpe. Pi Pi pledges were required to date four sorority girls a month, during their first semester of membership. That particular night Thorpe and Charles had taken two Tri Delts to Grandview Park in Thorpe’s Chevrolet. Thorpe had taken his date into the woods for a walk, while Charles sat in the back seat with his. She was not a good conversationalist, and she did not smoke; Tri Delt pledges were forbidden to drink. Charles could think of little to do with her but kiss her. He did, and she kissed him back, and there was a lot of tongue involvement, and she let him put his hands up under her sweater and unhook her brassiere, all within the first half hour. In the second half hour when Charles moved his hand down, she took his hand away, and he put it back, and she took it away, and he put it back, and finally she said, “No, really.”

“Okay,” he said.

He smoked a cigarette and complained about having a Saturday class, and she said she was glad she didn’t have one, and then he put his cigarette out and began all over again, minus step three, since he could tell she meant no to that. But he thought of other things while he was kissing her and touching her breasts, and he wished Thorpe would come back, and he remembered Lois. He had been home the weekend before, and he had visited his father’s lab at the Richmond Institute, where his father was involved in an elaborate research project involving the mating habits of invertebrate animals. The lab was lighted only by the artificial daylight lamps in the breeding cases; it was a beautiful effect, green and still and shadowy. He had stood quietly and observed the peculiar fluttering flight of a silver-washed fritillary, with the male in close pursuit, gliding around in rings, as she alighted on a large red flower and spread her wings so wide they lay quite flat, and then he had moved on and watched two dragonflies nestle on the tip of a reed. The female curved her belly into the male, sliding in between his feet, lifting herself gently toward his chest, while they moved very subtly and sensitively together; then they were nearly immobile save for the tiniest fluttering of the male’s wings, and the contractions of his threadlike abdomen.

His father had remarked, “Human intercourse seems so clumsy in contrast to this, so lacking in grace.”

Charles had nodded in agreement, but he had been with Lois Faye by that time, and he had thought that however volatile and unpredictable she was, however much it cost in dollars and patience and strategy to get her to the room at the Bluebird, however drunk they always were by the time they did get there, it was never ordinary or awkward; it was always graceful and natural and good.

“Charles?” the Tri Delt pledge had whispered to him, while he was touching her breasts on the second go-round that night in the back of Thorpe’s Chevy, “Charles?”

He had stopped and asked, “What?”

She had tapped him on the tip of his nose with her finger, smiled coquettishly, and said, “Hello.”