Augusta Played (25 page)

“It would seem so.” It saddened Norman to see his father beginning to fail. The soft voice was even softer. How old was he now?

“Don't be a wiseguy. Ever since you were a baby, you were backtalking.”

“As I recall it, I was too obedient for my own good.”

“To your mother and me, it looked different.”

“How is Mother?”

“How do you think? She has a son she never sees, who is dead to her because he had no respect for the traditions of his family.”

“Yeah, well,” Norman said, thinking of the letter she had written to Gus, “it could be that with this as with everything else you are living in the past. Someday you should ask Mother how she really feels.”

“Me? In the past? Ha. Speaking of somedays, someday you should find out what goes on in an average day in the life of your old father the fossil. I am up to my neck in political intrigue. In the future, I may be ruling on the Constitution of the United States of America, to your enlightenment and benefaction. Past!” Sidney snorted, all the more furious for having just been thinking of it. “You're the one that lives in the past, Norman, with your theories of history as refracted through the prism of musical development. Has anyone informed you what Beethoven is doing these days?”

“Beethoven?”

“Decomposing.”

Norman stared disgustedly as his father laughed at length, slyly, his shoulders heaving.

“You are really something,” Norman said.

“If you want to top me, you're going to have to get up earlier.”

Norman vaguely remembered having said something like that to himself about Gus once, but he couldn't remember in connection with what.

“Did you order?” Sidney asked.

“Chicken livers,” Norman said. “For you too, I took the liberty. Since when did you order different? Here it comes.”

“They make chicken livers like nobody's business,” Sidney said.

“You said.”

“Hearing me repeat myself is one of the little nuisances you have to put up with if you want to go on collecting your fifty smackers a week.” Sidney fished the money from his wallet and waited while Norman slipped it into his. Then he tucked his napkin into his collar, and not until his mouth was full, as if having a mouth full of food might ameliorate the effect of what he was about to imply, said, “You know Birdie Mickle?”

Norman's hand paused in midair. He brought it down and said, steadily, “Sure. I scorched her fox in your office.”

“Okay, Norman, so there will be no beating about the bush I am going to ask you this in the baldest possible terms, without any nuances under which a person might take cover if he was so inclined. Consider that you are in court, because it comes to the same thing. Perjure yourself and you'll wish you were not Norman Gold, son of Sidney. Believe me.”

“What is this, a threat? Are you threatening me? What a thing for a father to do to his son! Christ! I come to dinner—”

“Here is the question, Norman. I am warning you that it is coming so you can give your undivided attention to it. The question is, Are you pecking in Birdie Mickle's nest?”

“Am I what?”

“I do not think I need to repeat myself this time. Miss Chicken Delight is not chicken liver.”

“What an idea! What a crummy idea! Jesus, Pop. Do you think I would do such a thing? What am I, a heel?”

“You take a little money from your old man, maybe you also snitch a little snatch.”

“That is not the same thing. That is not the same thing at all. It is one of the points about which I take issue with Freud.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“Then listen. You want an answer, you'll get an answer. Here is the answer. I am warning you in advance that it's coming so you can be on the lookout for it.”

“Sarcasm ill becomes you, Norman.”

“I'm only thinking of you. Who knows, if somebody doesn't tell you a fact is in the vicinity, you may never realize it's there. It could go right by you.”

“Enough, Norman.”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No, I am not poking your girl friend.”

“You don't have to put it like that.”

“You were refined?”

“This is Birdie Mickle we're discussing, not some insignificant streetwalker, which is what most of your longhaired loose female persons are, from your generation. Birdie has heart, soul, a mind. By the way, eat.”

“I'm not hungry. I have other things on my mind now than food, thanks to you. What I want to know is, what made you think it was necessary to ask such a question.”

“Fine, I'll tell you the person whereof whom the idea originated. He knows your wife.”

Norman felt sick.

“His name is Hacking. Richard Hacking.”

“How do you happen to know Hacking?”

“Met him at Birdie's.”

“I don't believe it.”

“What's to believe?”

“How would Birdie Mickle and Richard Hacking know each other?”

“I don't know. Why shouldn't they know each other?” Norman frowned.

“Oh ho,” Sidney said. “I see. By the dawn's early light no less. The big liberal with a heart that bleeds at the merest mention of discrimination is perplexed at this crossing of social lines. He wonders what a fancy schmanzy classical conductor sees in a Forty-second Street stripper.”

“Don't be an ass. I know what he sees in her. I saw them myself.”

“Rude! Rude! How come you never learned from your mother the fine manners she's got?”

“I thought Birdie was your private piece.”

“Birdie doesn't belong to anyone but herself. The more I listen to you, Norman, the more I believe you are fundamentally reactionary.”

“You don't have to wave the knife at me. You're evading, Pop. You think I don't know when you're evading the issue? It was the way to stay D.A.—when you're threatened, attack.”

“Norman, Norman. If you only knew how far off the track you are.”

Sidney was bluffing, but he was damned if he'd admit to his son that his relationship with Birdie was at this point not entirely what it appeared to be. His son at thirty was still too young to have learned from personal experience that a woman could be a sweetheart one day, a mistress the next, and virtually a daughter the day after that, so to speak. True, even on this long third day of their relationship Sidney did not feel about Birdie as if she were Rita, exactly. But Sidney was a true sophisticate, not one of those tricked out in medallions and Man-Tan, and as such, he knew that every thing has a season, every purpose a time, and so forth, and what else was sophistication, but realizing this?

But why should he break his neck educating his son in the ways of the world, when sooner or later the world would do that? Let the boy find these things out for himself. On reflection, for one thing, Sidney did not want the son to know that the father wasn't getting it up so much these days. Not that he couldn't, and sometimes it rose all by itself, impromptu, a little bit of secret life under the desk in his office, but he had just lost interest in using what was there. After all, at seventy-two, he could not imagine that there was any mystery about what would follow when he heaved his spreading hulk onto some woman's bed. As for pleasure, what could match that of the imagination, besides friendship and work? And rest. He felt increasingly a desire to put his head on a pillow in the middle of the day and sleep until something happened, something that he had not already experienced.

These feelings he could convey to Birdie, but not to Norman, who would no doubt decide that his father was once and for all over the hill, when in fact, so far as Sidney was concerned, the culmination of his career was yet to come. If he tried to explain to Norman what he really felt for Birdie, it would stain it—it would be like pissing on the most precious part of their relationship. But a brain is not a chamberpot, and as much as he longed to urinate, he would die before he would do such a thing to the twin of his soul. So he said to Norman, “Can't you conceive that Birdie just might happen to know a man who knows your wife, without there has to be more to it than that? Birdie is very musical. Maybe they talk music.” In a way, Sidney thought, it was only fair to Birdie to let Norman think her relationship with Hacking was platonic. If Norman thought she was sleeping with both of them, he might conclude that she was a whore. Birdie was always annoyed with men who jumped to conclusions. This way Norman might get it backwards, but the score came out the same.

Norman had been eating slowly, and thinking his own thoughts. He doubted seriously that Hacking and Birdie Mickle discussed music. If Hacking wasn't balling her, he was getting something else off her. And then he realized what it must be.

“Now I get it,” he said, choking. “Oh boy, now I really get it. It is clear as fucking crystal. God, God, God.”

“What on earth are you yammering about? You should see yourself in a mirror, believe me. You look like your blood is boiling. And they talk about hot-blooded—I'll bet your blood is two hundred twelve degrees Fahrenheit. Drink some water.”

“I don't want any water.”

“What did I say? I said maybe Birdie and Hacking discuss music. Is there anything in that to be so upset about?”

“I'm not upset. I choked.”

“On a chicken liver? How is it possible to choke on something this slithery?”

“It takes talent, obviously,” Norman said, drinking a glass of water.

“I'm glad to see you follow my advice sometimes,” Sidney said. “A son who is too big to take his father's advice is too small to give it.”

“If you don't mind, Pop, I think I'll split. I want to make a phone call.”

Sidney was surprised and let down, but he tried not to show it. “Now that you mention it,” he said, “I have to make a call also. Isn't modern life something, Norman! I keep trying to magnify your awareness of the miracles we live among. Telephones, for example. Where would we be without them, I'd like to know? And refrigeration by dry ice, also modern transportation, computers, and snoop ships. Though this
Pueblo
thing, now there is a real can of worms.”

“I'm going, Pop. I'll see you next week.”

“Sure,” Sidney said, but as he watched his son walk to the door of the restaurant and out, he felt deep sadness settling on him once more. This time it was not an envelope, like a second skin. It was internal. It invaded his mouth and nostrils and ears, packing his lungs and gut like pressurized air, a feeling of fullness and tightness. Heartburn, Sidney said to himself; but it was more like heartache. He picked up the check. The restaurant was still fairly empty—it was too early for the main trade—and the waiters were whispering among themselves, as if they were spectators at a play and the diners were the show. What did they think of the props? The vinegar bottle at Sidney's elbow was sticky and the leftover rice on Norman's plate had a jaundiced tinge under the ceiling fixture.

When Sidney tried to reach Hacking by telephone, to inform him that he had a screw loose and that if he didn't come through for Birdie, he, Sidney, would personally break his balls or at least arrange for somebody to carry out that minor task, the line was busy.

It was busy because Norman was trying to reach Elaine at the same time.

What Norman had figured out, sitting at the dinner table with his father, was that her husband and his wife could not conduct their assignations in deep space. They had to have somewhere to meet. Obviously, they met at Birdie Mickle's place. Why else had she ushered him out so precipitously the night he was there?

50

A
MACHINE
answered. It had Elaine Hacking's voice. “We will be out of town for the summer,” it said. “If your messageis urgent, please ring Mr. Hacking's manager at -.” Anumber followed. “Otherwise, your call will be returned after Labor Day. Please leave your name, number, and message at the sound of the beep. Beep.”

So much for his father's celebration of the miracles of modern gadgetry. Norman was in no position to leave his name, much less a message. He could not discuss his matter of urgency with Richard Hacking's manager. There was nothing he could do but wait.

It was summer now, warmer than last year's. Norman sacrificed an inch of height and exchanged his boots for desert shoes. He and Gus both slept naked with the windows open and the curtains up. If that made the perverts happy, Norman was glad somebody was happy. All over New York, you could look in people's windows and get an eyeful of flesh. It was too hot to be sexy. Even the perverts appeared to have lost interest.

It was too hot to sleep well even naked. Tweetie-Pie spent half his time in his bath, or lounging beside it like a movie mogul with dark glasses and cold drink. When he swung, sunlight danced on his wings and breast and head and back. When he sang, it was as if he owned the world. He was certainly master of his cage. At night, he slept in its comfortable darkness while Gus and Norman lay on that shelf of semiconsciousness poised between sleeping and waking, draped in dreaming.

In the morning, Norman rose groggily and turned on the television… Shaving with TV Accompaniment. The accompanist was supposed to remain neatly in the background, and at first Norman didn't register what the reporter was saying. Robert Kennedy? California? The reporter continued to speak into his microphone, but some time passed before Norman could assimilate the meaning of the statement. By then, Gus had wakened and was sitting cross-legged on the bed. “Here,” Norman said, throwing her his shirt, “put this on.” She did, but she still didn't say anything.

There were some Grape-Nuts in the cabinet in the kitchen and Gus fixed two bowls and they tried to eat in silence, but it wasn't possible to eat Grape-Nuts in silence. The crunching seemed obscene to both of them. Norman would crunch, and it echoed in the room like gunshot. Gus would crunch, and it echoed like an answering volley.