Rich Man, Poor Man (21 page)

‘Where should I meet you tonight?’ she asked, starting the motor.

‘In front of the Library. Eight-thirty okay?’ ‘Eight-thirty, Lover Boy,’ she said. ‘I’ll lay out in the sun and think about you all afternoon and pant’ She waved and went off.

Tom sat down in the shade on the broken chair. He wondered if his sister, Gretchen, talked like that to Theodore Boy-Ian.

He reached into the lunch bag and took out the second sandwich and unwrapped it. There was a piece of paper, folded in two, on the sandwich. He opened up the paper. There was writing on it in pencil. ‘I love you,’ in careful, schoolgirlish script. Tom squinted at the message. He recognised the handwriting. Clothilde wrote out the list of things she had to phone for in the market everyday and the list was always in the same place on a shelf in the kitchen.

, Tom whistled softly. He read aloud. ‘I love you.’ He had just passed his sixteenth birthday but his voice was still adolescently high. A twenty-five-year-old woman to whom he’d hardly ever spoken more than two words. He folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket and stared out at the traffic sweeping along the road towards Cleveland for a long time before he began eating the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, soaked in mayonnaise.

He knew he wasn’t going out to the lake tonight, for any old weeny roast.

The River Five played a chorus of ‘Your Time Is My Time’, and Rudolph took a solo on the trumpet, putting everything he had into it, because Julie was in the room tonight, sitting alone at a table, watching and listening to him. The River Five was the name of Rudolph’s band, himself on the trumpet, Kessler on the bass, Westerman On the saxophone, Dailey on the

percussion, and Flannery on the clarinet. The River Five was Rudolph’s name for the band, because they all lived in Port Philip, on the Hudson, and because Rudolph thought it had an artistic and professional sound to it.

They had a three-week engagement, six nights a week, at a roadhouse outside Port Philip. The place, called Jack and Jill’s, was a huge clapboard shack that shook to the beat of the dancers’ feet. There was a long bar and a lot of small tables and most of the people just drank beer. The Saturday night standard of dress was relaxed. Boys wore T-shirts and many of the girls came in slacks. Groups ‘of girls came unescorted and waited to be asked to dance or the girls danced with each other. It wasn’t like playing the Plaza or 52nd Street in New York, but the money wasn’t bad.

As he played, Rudolph was pleased to see Julie shake her head in refusal when a boy in a jacket and tie, obviously a preppie, came over and asked her to dance.

Julie’s parents allowed her to stay out late with him on Saturday nights because they trusted Rudolph. He was a born parent-pleaser. With good reason. But if she fell into the clutches of a hard-drinking preppie, smooching around the floor, with his superior Deerfield or Choate line of talk, there was no telling what sort of trouble she might get into. The shake of the head was a promise, a bond between them as solid as an engagement ring.

Rudolph played the three trick bars of the band’s signature for the fifteen minute break, put his horn down, and signalled to Julie to come out with him for a breath of air. All the windows were open in the shack, but it was hot and wet inside, like the bottom of the Congo.

Julie held his hand as they walked out under the trees where the cars were parked. Her hand was dry and warm and soft and dear in his. It was hard to believe that you could have so many complicated sensations all through your body just holding a girl’s hand.

‘When you played the solo,’ Julie said, ‘I just sat there shivering. I curled up inside - like an oyster when you squirt lemon on it’

He chuckled at the comparison. Julie laughed too. She had a whole list of oddball phrases to describe her various states of mind. ‘I feel like a PI boat,’ when she raced him in the town swimming pool. ‘I feel like the dark side of the moon,’ when she had to stay in and do the dishes at home and missed a date with him.

They went all the way to the end of the parking lot, as far aways as possible from the porch outside the shack, where the dancers were coming out for air. There was a car parked there and he opened the door for her to slide in. He got in after her and closed the door behind them. In the darkness, they locked in a kiss. They kissed interminably, clutching each other. Her mouth was a peony, a kitten, a peppermint, the skin of her throat under his hand was a butterfly’s wing. They kissed all the time, whenever they could, but never did anything more.

Drowned, he was gliding and diving, through fountains, through smoke, through clouds. He was a trumpet, playing his own song. He was all of one piece, loving, loving … He took his mouth away from hers softly and kissed her throat as she put her head back against the seat. ‘I love you,’ he said. He was shaken by the joy he had in saying the words for the first time. She pulled his head fiercely against her throat, her swimmer’s smooth summer arms wonderfully strong, and smelling of apricots.

Without warning the door opened and a man’s voice said, ‘What the hell are you two doing in here?’

Rudolph sat up, an arm tightening protectively around Julie’s shoulder. ‘We’re discussing the atom bomb,’ he said coolly. ‘What do you think we’re doing?’ He would die rather than let Julie see that he was embarrassed.

The man was on his side of the car. It was too dark for him to see who it was. Then, unexpectedly, the man laughed. ‘Ask a foolish question,’ he said, ‘and get a foolish answer.’ He moved a little and a pale beam from one of the lights strung under the trees hit him. Rudolph recognised him. The yellow tightly combed hair, the thick, double bushes of blond eyebrows.

‘Excuse me, Jordache,’ Boylan said. His voice was amused.

He knows me, Rudolph thought. How does he know me?

‘This happens to be my car, but please make yourself at home,’ Boylan said. ‘I do not want to interrupt the artist at his moments of leisure. I’ve always heard that ladies show a preference for trumpet players.’ Rudolph would have preferred to hear this in other circumstances and from another source. ‘I didn’t want to leave anyway,’ Boylan said. ‘I really need another drink. When you’ve finished, I’d be honoured if you and the lady would join me for a nightcap at the bar.’ He made a little bow and softly closed the door and strolled off through the parking lot.

Julie was sitting at the other side of the car, straight up, ashamed. “He knows us,’ she said in a small voice.

‘Me,’ Rudolph said.

‘Who is he?’

‘A man called Boylan,’ Rudolph said. ‘From the Holy Family.’

‘Oh,’ Julie said.

“That’s it,’ said Rudolph. ‘Oh. Do you want to leave now? There’s a bus in a few minutes.’ He wanted to protect her to the end, although he didn’t know exactly from what.

‘No,’ Julie said. Her tone was defiant. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide. Have you?’

‘Never.’

‘One more kiss.’ She slid towards him and put out her arms.

But-the kiss was wary. There was no more gliding through clouds.

They got out of the car and went back into the shack. As they passed through the door, they saw Boylan at the end of the bar, his back to it, leaning on it with his elbows behind him, watching them. He gave a little salute of recognition, touching the tips of his fingers to his forehead.

Rudolph took Julie to her table and ordered another ginger ale for her and then went back on the bandstand and began arranging the music sheets for the next set.

When the band played ‘Good Night Ladies’ at two o’clock and the musicians began packing their instruments as the last dancers drifted off the floor, Boylan was still at the bar. A medium-sized, confident man, in grey-flannel slacks and a crisp linen jacket. Negligently out of place among the T-shirts and enlisted men’s suntans and the young workingmen’s Saturday night blue suits, he strolled leisurely away from the bar as Rudolph and Julie left the bandstand.

‘Do you two children have transportation home?’ he asked as they met.

‘Well,’ Rudolph said, not liking the children, ‘one of the fellows has a car. We usually all pile into that.’ Buddy Westerman’s father loaned him the family car when they had a club date and they lashed the bass and the drums on to the top. If any of them had girls along, they dropped the girls off first and all went to the Ace All Night Diner for hamburgers, to wind down.

‘You’ll be more comfortable with me,’ Boylan said. He took Julie’s arm and guided her through the doorway. Buddy Westerman raised his eyebrows questioningly as he saw them leaving. ‘We’ve got a hitch into town,’ Rudolph said to Buddy.

‘Your bus is overcrowded.’ The fraction of betrayal.

Julie sat between them on the front seat of the Buick as Boylan swung out of the parking lot and on to the road towards Port Philip. Rudolph knew that Boylan’s leg was pressing against Julie’s. That same flesh had been pressed against his sister’s naked body. He felt peculiar about the whole thing, all of them clamped together in the same front seat on which he and Julie had kissed just a couple of hours before, but he was determined to be sophisticated.

He was relieved when Boylan asked for Julie’s address and said he’d drop her off first. He wasn’t going to have to make a scene about leaving her alone with Boylan. Julie seemed subdued, not like herself, as she sat between the two of them, watching the road rush at them in the Buick’s headlights.

Boylan drove fast and well, passing cars in racing-driver . spurts, his hands calm on the wheel. Rudolph was disturbed because he had to admire the way the man drove. There was a disloyalty there somewhere.

‘That’s a nice little combination you boys have there,’ Boylan said.

‘Thanks,’ Rudolph said. ‘We could do with some more practice and some new arrangements.’

‘You manage a smooth beat,’ Boylan said. Amateur. ‘It made me regret that my dancing days are over.’

Rudolph couldn’t help but approve of this. He thought people over thirty dancing were ludicrous, obscene. Again he felt guilty about approving of anything about Theodore Boylan. But he was glad that at least Boylan hadn’t danced with Gretchen and made fools in public of both of them. Older men dancing with young girls were the worst.

‘And you, Miss … ?’ Boylan waited for one or the other of them to supply the name.

‘Julie,’ she said.

‘Julie what?’

‘Julie Hornberg,’ she said defensively. She was sensitive about her name.

‘Hornberg?’ Boylan said. ‘Do I know your father?’

‘We just moved into town,’ Julie said.

“Does he work for me?’

‘No,’ Julie said.

Moment of triumph. It would have been degrading if Mr Hornberg was another vassal. The name was Boylan, but there were some things beyond his reach.

‘Are you musical, too, Julie?’ Boylan asked.

‘No,’ she said, surprisingly. She was making it as hard as she could for Boylan. He didn’t seem to notice it. ‘You’re a lovely girl, Julie,’ he said. ‘You make me happy that my kissing days, unlike my dancing days, are not yet over.’

Dirty old lecher, Rudolph thought. He fingered his black trumpet case nervously and thought of asking Boylan to stop the car so that he and Julie could get out. But walking back to town, he wouldn’t get Julie to her door before four o’clock. He marked a sorrowful point against his character. He was practical at moments that demanded honour.

‘Rudolph … It is Rudolph, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ His sister must have run off at the mouth like a faucet.

‘Rudolph, do you intend to make a profession of the trumpet?’ Kindly old vocational counsellor, now.

‘No. I’m not good enough,’ Rudolph said.

That’s wise,’ Boylan said. ‘It’s a dog’s life. And you have to mix with scum.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ Rudolph said. He couldn’t let Boylan get away with everything. ‘I don’t think people like Benny Goodman and Paul Whiteman and Louis Armstrong are scum.’

‘Who knows?’ Boylan said.

They’re artists,’ Julie said tightly.

‘One thing does not preclude the other, child.’ Boylan laughed gently. ‘Rudolph,’ he said, dismissing her, what do you plan to do?’

‘When? Tonight?’ Rudolph knew that Boylan meant as a career, but he didn’t intend to let Boylan know too much about himself. He had a vague idea that all intelligence might one day be used against him.

Tonight I hope you’re going to go home and get a good night’s sleep, which you eminently deserve after your hard evening’s work,’ Boylan said. Rudolph bridled a little at Boylan’s elaborate language. The vocabulary of deceit. Trapped English. ‘No, I mean, later on, as a career,’ Boylan said.

‘I don’t know yet,’ Rudolph said. ‘I have to go to college first.’

‘Oh, you’re going to college?’ The surprise in Boylan’s voice was clear, a pinprick of condescension.

“Why shouldn’t he go to college?’ Julie said. ‘He’s a straight A student. He just made Arista.’

‘Did he?’ Boylan said. ‘Forgive my ignorance, but just what is Arista?’

‘It’s a scholastic honour society,’ Rudolph said, trying to

extricate Julie. He didn’t want to be defended in the terms of adolescence. ‘It’s nothing much,’ he said. ‘If you can just read and write, practically …”

‘You know it’s a lot more than that,’ Julie said, her mouth bunched in disappointment at his self-deprecation. ‘The smartest students in the whole school. If I was in the Arista, I wouldn’t poor-mouth it.’

Poor-mouth, Rudolph thought, she must have gone out with a Southern boy in Connecticut. The worm of doubt.

‘I’m sure it’s a great distinction, Julie,’ Boylan said soothingly.

‘Well, it is.’ She was stubborn.

‘Rudolph’s just being modest,’ Boylan said. ‘It’s a commonplace male pretence.’

The atmosphere in the car was uncomfortable now, with Julie in the middle angry at both Boylan and Rudolph. Boylan reached over and turned on the radio. It warmed up and a radio announcer’s voice swam out of the rushing night, with the news. There had been an earthquake somewhere. They had tuned in too late to hear where. There were hundreds killed, thousands homeless, in the new, whistling, 186,000 miles per second darkness which was the world of radio land.