Desert of the Heart: A Novel (24 page)

It was here Evelyn had interrupted the secondhand raw material Ann offered her to discover the present Nevada for herself. Ann wanted her to see not the fact but the meaning of Frank’s Club, Ann’s meaning. For Frank’s Club was man’s answer to the poverty of the land. Reno had grown up along the railroad, along the highway, without a mine to its name. It invented its own. The casinos were Reno’s gold mines, but synthetic and perpetual, correcting the flaw of nature. They could accommodate any number of prospectors. They could support not only the town but the scattered population of the state. When Reno built a church, Frank’s Club supplied both the money to be spent and the souls to be saved. The town could maintain a courthouse and perpetuate laws that restored gold even to the river. It was a sound economy which exported nothing but advertising and imported human beings at their own cost to feed the inhabitants. A perfect kingdom, based on nothing but the flaws in human nature. It thrived.

And this was the economy, obscured only by a confusion of other minor enterprises, of thriving civilization everywhere in the world. But elsewhere you could be deluded by just that confusion. It was extraordinary how other industries could create the illusion of value, the hallucination of salvation through products as meaningless as automobiles and cosmetics, text books and cameras. It was true that casino owners spoke more loudly than any of the other kings of industry to defend their contribution to society. They could speak more loudly because theirs was the purest activity of civilized man. They had transcended the need for a product. They could maintain and advance life with machines that made nothing but money. And the only requirement, after all, was life, all needs subsidized (food products, housing, education, law, religion) by the lucrative desires of mankind. This desert town was man’s own miracle of pure purposelessness.

Ann had prepared herself to defend this vision against any other, but she had chosen Evelyn’s own world of the university as the enemy she would have to equal or defeat. The pursuit of learning was, after all, as pure of purpose as gambling, only archaic enough to need subsidizing. She had heard from the secular pulpits of the classroom that learning had value in itself, but there was nothing of more intrinsic value in learning than there was in gambling. For eighty per cent of the people in Frank’s Club gambling was no more than an entertainment. For eighty per cent of the students in the classroom it would be generous to say that learning had even entertainment value. Only a small minority in any group developed a passion for anything. For every obsessive gambler there was undoubtedly a young Faust in the atomic laboratories. And, if there were a few who loved learning for learning’s sake, surely there were many more who loved gambling for gambling’s sake. Human nature was the same in the casino and in the ivory tower. But in the casino the vision was unclouded. You loved the world for its own sake or not at all.

It was a beautiful argument, but Ann had no opportunity to use it. Evelyn had asked for and taken the facts instead. Reluctantly, Ann let Evelyn drive her down to the Club every evening and pick her up sometimes an hour, sometimes two hours early. After the first night she did not gamble. Apparently winning all that money had had a more sobering effect than losing would have done. Evelyn had no interest in playing either the machines or the games. She came, she said, to be near Ann, but often at the end of shift Ann had to go in search of her, finding her engrossed in observing a particular dealer or change apron or gambler. On the way home, Evelyn was often silent, but sometimes she would ask technical questions about the operating of the Club that gave no room for theoretical answers, and sometimes she would comment briefly on an incident, usually insignificant in itself but given a not quite explicit importance by Evelyn’s view of it. If Ann countered with a view of her own, Evelyn offered no more than a disinterested silence. She was never critical. She did not seem disturbed by anything she saw. Ann very much wanted to ask her what she was really thinking and feeling, but both their bodies were so demanding that, when they were at last alone, always aware of the threatening dawn, their conversation was fragmentary, crude with desire or elaborately incoherent with the last brilliance before sleep.

During the day, when they might have talked about the Club, Evelyn shared her work with Ann; and, since it apparently did not occur to Evelyn to defend her interest in teaching and learning, Ann could find no opportunity to attack it. Instead, she settled to a study of poetry, learning the discipline of its higher grammar, tracing the folklore of its imagery. Once she challenged Yeats’s view of salvation in
Sailing to Byzantium
only to be shown that he challenged it himself in
Among School Children,
and his criticism of education seemed so reasonable and undisturbing to Evelyn that Ann could only accept her clarifications of the text in silence. The poetry was, in fact, so interesting that Ann often forgot to be preoccupied with her own world. In Evelyn she had found a companion for her mind whose knowledge and perception far outreached her own, and she was eager to learn.

But her contentment was threatened again each night when she looked up and saw Evelyn standing alone in the crowd, at once detached and absorbed. What was she seeing? What judgment was she making? In her concern, Ann worked inaccurately, and several nights running she was either over or under her ten-dollar limit when she checked out. The third time Bill had to sign for her, he spoke with impatience.

“If you can’t keep your mind on your work, you’d better keep your girl friend out of the Club.”

“Follow that logic far, and you’ll have to fire yourself,” Ann answered angrily.

“Meaning?”

“How often have you signed for Joyce this week?”

“You forget she hasn’t been working long. She’s doing damned well for a beginner.”

Ann censored a nasty retort and turned away. She was angry because Bill was right. She was also angry because Evelyn’s presence in the Club had obviously become a subject of general knowledge and speculation. She did not really care what people thought, but they could keep their ideas to themselves. It was her own fault. She should not let Evelyn come down to the Club.

“You don’t have to be in such a hell of a hurry,” Silver said, catching up with Ann as she went downstairs to put away her hat and apron. “She’s waiting for you.”

“Sorry, Sil. I didn’t see you.”

“You don’t see anybody these days, love.”

“Don’t
you
start in on me.”

“Then don’t let her come down every night.”

“Why shouldn’t she?”

“She doesn’t belong here, love. She makes people nervous, you for instance.”

“Maybe I don’t belong here either!” Ann snapped.

“Maybe not.”

“Don’t get at me, Sil.”

“I can’t leave you completely alone until after the wedding, love. There’s a rehearsal Wednesday afternoon. Joe didn’t see why we couldn’t have it Thursday afternoon. I had to explain to him about not seeing the bride on the day of the wedding.”

“How are you going to manage that?”

“He’s spending the night at the Mapes.”

“Do you want me …?”

“No, love,” Silver said smiling. “There are no instructions to the maid of honor to sleep with the bride the night before the wedding. It doesn’t say
not
to, of course, but I think they have in mind a last night of chastity, a last night in Daddy’s old pajamas, a last night of solitary weeping for one’s girlhood. I can’t remember mine very well. Perhaps I’ll weep for yours.”

“Sil …”

“Go along now. Don’t keep her waiting.”

Ann had to go back into the Club to find Evelyn. Her own nerves were raw by this time of night, and she hated going back into the noise and crowds she had just escaped. As she pushed open the back door, she ran into Walter.

“What are you doing here?”

“Having a drink on Bill,” he said, anger raising the pitch of his voice. “Really on him. I threw most of it on him. Where’s Evelyn?”

“In here somewhere. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Forget it.”

“Walt?”

“Listen, Ann, some guys, when they get hurt, don’t have the sense to keep their mouths shut. Bill knows a lot of people. Things get around. I just came down to see if I could knock a little sense back into him.”

“What things?”

“It doesn’t matter. Are you going to get Evelyn or shall I?”

“I’ll get her, but I want to talk to you, Walt. I want to know what’s going on.”

“She shouldn’t come down here. It’s no place for a decent woman.”

“Has Bill been talking about Evelyn?”

“And you. It’s partly your fault. I know you don’t care what people think. You can afford to be indifferent. But Evelyn isn’t a change apron. She’s a university professor. It makes a difference.”

“What difference?” Ann demanded.

“Sometimes I don’t understand you,” Walter said, tiredly, tightly. “But I’m a simple, heterosexual male with an unexceptional I.Q. I haven’t even got an Oedipus complex. My only problem is that I’m a reactionary about women. I still think that’s what they are.”

“You’re a nice guy,” Ann said gently.

“Exactly. I’m going home.”

“Have a drink with us?”

“Thanks anyway. I’m tired.”

“I’m sorry, Walt.”

“I’ll
never mention it again,” he said, but his attempt at the old joke was not really successful.

Ann watched him out of the door and then turned to find Evelyn. She was watching a blackjack game where the betting was heavy. Her eyes were passive, and the stillness of her body made her seem in a kind of trance.

“I could leave you here all night and you’d never know the difference.”

“Sorry, darling,” Evelyn said, smiling. “I wait here not to be in the way.”

Ann regretted her sharpness at once. How was Evelyn to know that it was just her unobtrusiveness that made her conspicuous? How could Ann explain it to her? She did not understand it very well herself. Bill’s viciousness, even under the circumstances, was uncharacteristic of him. And Silver’s controlled jealousy made no sense at all. As for Walter, though his knight-in-shining-armor complex had sometimes made him clank a little, she had never heard him talk about decency before. Understandable or not, there was a conspiracy developing that Ann could not be indifferent to. In that much, Walter was right. She ought to protect Evelyn. But Ann did not know how to tell her not to come down to the Club again without offering an explanation. Damn Bill! Damn them all! Why couldn’t she and Evelyn be left alone? There was so little time. Evelyn would go to court a week from today, from yesterday by now. Only one week. Why should Ann say anything? Mightn’t it be better just to be silent, to take the time they had, live in terms of it, and then let the whole thing go? Perhaps that was what Evelyn was doing. She accepted the present because it bore no relationship to the future. And wasn’t that the attitude Ann herself advocated? Before she had known Evelyn, yes, but now the temptation to take what there was was not as urgent in Ann as the temptation to risk the present for the future. She did not want Evelyn now as much as she wanted a world in which Evelyn was always possible. But she did not know what world that was, and in her ignorance and in her need she was silent.

Evelyn did not go down to the Club early on Tuesday night. She had been busy with her own work. On Wednesday, Ann explained that she would have dinner with Silver, Joe, and Bill after the rehearsal and probably have a drink with Silver after work.

“Might you be out all night?”

“I don’t think so, but don’t wait for me.”

Bill was waiting for her on the sidewalk outside the new Episcopal church. Dressed in a business suit, he always looked both younger and sterner than he did in frontier clothes, a choirboy who had outgrown his innocence but not his moral malice. Ann checked her anger. She must somehow also check his for today and tomorrow. It could wait.

“They’re already inside,” he said irritably. “You’re late.”

“I’m sorry,” Ann said, her upper lip curling over her teeth. “I couldn’t find my plate.”

It hurt him to have to smile at their old joke, but the habit was stronger than his will. And his reluctant amusement gave Ann a brief, unkind pleasure. Her cheerfulness grew more resolute. She inquired about the emotional state of the bride.

“She’s having an argument with the minister. She’s determined to walk down the aisle. He says, without anyone to give her away, she should come in from the vestry. She says she’s giving herself away, and that ought to do.”

“Is Joe being any help?” Ann asked, a straight question possible now that she felt herself in tentative control of his mood.

“None at all. When the minister said there wasn’t any point in her coming down the aisle by herself, Joe suggested that she could take up a collection as she came. I decided to wait for you out here at that point.”

“I wonder if the wedding’s still going to be here,” Ann said, as they walked up the steps together.

“Apparently Silver is an Episcopalian,” Bill said. “And the minister has, thank God, a sense of humor.”

“It’s all so unlikely,” Ann said.

“That’s what Joe and Silver like about it.”

Bill held open one of the great doors. Ann hesitated, caught for a moment by the direct, bitter regret in Bill’s eyes. There was no way around it.

“Let’s be as civil and unsymbolic as we can, shall we?”

“I’m making an effort,” Bill answered coldly, nodding her through the door.

She walked by him into the church, empty but for the three quarreling figures at the other end of the center aisle.

“Look, I’m a J-J-J-Jew, at nose and heart anyway,” Joe was saying as he sat down on one of the altar steps. “It doesn’t matter to me what we do.” Then he saw Ann and Bill and leapt up again. “Here are two more Christians for you, F-F-Father. Be consoled. The b-b-balance of power has shifted.”

“What’s the problem now?” Bill called as they walked down the aisle.

“Silver wants me to go one step f-f-further into the sanctum-s-s-sanctorum than I’m supposed to so that, when we kneel, I can have a s-s-substitute for my Adler Elevators. Help me reason with her, Ann. She’s not bigger than both of us.”