Girls In 3-B, The (7 page)

It had been Jackson who told her about this party in the first place. "They talk a lot of crap, but maybe it's the sort of stuff you'd like. Lot of arty guys. I don't think any of them had anything published yet. Anyhow, you might as well get it out of your system." She had been offended by the condescending tone and at the same time pleased by what was probably a concession to her tastes. At least he was willing to spend an evening being bored in her company.

She had spent a lot of time getting ready, discarding the striped slacks as too casual and the flowered jersey as too suburban, pulling out most of her eyebrows and penciling in new ones. This was her debut into the world of creative people. She felt a little frightened.

Suppose they didn't like her? Suppose she didn't fit in?

It's only an extra-curricular activity she reassured herself, just a group some professor has to sponsor. They're not even professional authors. She hated to agree with Jack at any point where the arts were concerned, but it comforted her to feel a little scornful in return for the scorn these more assured people might presumably feel for her.

Someone asked, "Are you a Freudian or a Jungian?" and she turned to answer, but the questioner was lost in a babble of other voices. The bearded boy shambled over and sat down at her feet. "What do you do to release your inhibitions? I don't have any inhibitions myself
--
I just do whatever I feel like doing."

"Hard on the bystanders."

"What in hell do I care about bystanders? I'm completely self-centered. To develop talent it's necessary to be altogether self-oriented."

The girl in pink-rimmed glasses nodded.

The girls, Annice decided while she munched potato chips, were nothing much to look at. Here as in high school the serious-minded femmes were the homely ones. Except for a little Nisei girl who looked like a painting on silk, they were mostly eye-glassed, too fat or too bony, not so much ugly as lacking in some assurance that pretty girls wear from the day of their first lipstick. Annice identified their look of self-depression without any trouble because she herself had worn it until she was almost sixteen. It was the opposite of charm. She had been rescued by an invitation from the captain of the high school basketball team, whose girl fortunately ruptured an appendix on the day of the Junior Prom; grace and poise settled over her with the folds of the formal her mother was persuaded to buy, disclosing
--
as it were
--
curves she had never known she had. Except for a woman of thirty-five who in spite of gray-streaked hair and a comfortable dumpiness gave off the unmistakable aura of successful sex, the females at this poetry-reading were the type who failed to attract men mainly because they didn't think of themselves as desirable.

Probably here to find a man,
she thought unkindly, forgetting that although she had come here with one she was looking around for better pickings.

The boys were more interesting. Used as she was to student fads and eccentricities in dress, she paid no heed to the corduroy trousers, the blue work shirts, the Ivy League stripes and button-down collars or the green velvet-frogged smoking jacket worn by the balding, round-bellied host. Most of them wore moccasins with white sweat socks or no socks. Three or four with bumpy intelligent faces and harsh South Chicago voices she thought were Jewish, but it was hard to tell because this year everybody made a fad of Yiddish slang
--
he's a schlepp, she's a no-goodnik, you should read a book already. There was a young Arab with a thin startled face, conspicuous here for his tailoring. The Jewish boys kept handing him peanuts and potato chips and refilling his glass, very politely, and after a while he started looking around uneasily like a trapped rabbit. Later, much later, she noticed that he had left.

There were three or four boys with beards, none as well developed as Alan's, and one weedy boy had an aggressive British moustache. Definitely, in this crowd the men were the ones to notice. She turned an aloof profile to Alan, and after a few glances away he reached up and pulled her down on the floor beside him. "What's your name, woman
?
”

"Annice."

"Anise like you drink
?
"

"I don't drink anything."

"Releases the inhibitions. I don't drink because I haven't got any inhibitions. I live with complete selfishness.”

"You said that before."

"It's still true. I'm completely unable to feel tenderness or compassion for anybody, even the women I lay."

"How adolescent of you."

In a sudden silence one of the boys said, "I'm writing a novel on homosexual incest." He looked around for admiration.

Jackson said, "Why don't you do a book on cannibalism
?
That's the most complete form of identification there is."

The popeyed girl in the pink frames grabbed his arm. "Oh, you're right, you're absolutely right, I think that's a simply wonderful idea."

Annice glared at her. After all, Jack was her escort, and nobody else had any business drooling over him until she was good and ready to turn him loose.

It seemed a long time before the volume of talk lessened and the thin man sat down in an armchair and asked who wanted to read. This produced a long pause during which several people thumbed the pages of their notebooks and looked at once reluctant and hopeful. Finally the boy with the muttonchop moustache spoke up. He had written a novel
--
not just planned it or talked about it but written it; he said modestly that it hadn't found a publisher yet and he wasn't sure it was any good. Then he read a long chapter. It was about a thin talented young man who came to a big city and endured privations while writing a novel. There was a scene in which, locked out of his cheap room because he couldn't pay the rent, he wandered the streets looking for a rest room. Annice felt herself getting more and more uncomfortable. When he stopped reading, two girls got up and headed for the bathroom.

The host said, "Well, you might call the excerpt scatological," and there was a puzzled silence while they tried to remember what it meant.

Then one of the girls said bravely, "I thought it was quite well written." There was a shout of disagreement.

Annice listened while they tore the story and the author to pieces. Alan sat with his back against a chair leg, listening in silent scorn.

A girl read a poem about standing in the moonlight longing for her dead lover. One of the young Jews read a poem about love in the slums among the smells of broken plumbing and the tiny scrabblings of mice. Alan said, "For Christ's sake, has everybody here got kidney trouble?" He grabbed Annice's notebook and flipped the pages rapidly.

"Hey, give me that."

"Can't weasel out now."

He read silently until he found a sonnet; he read it aloud, accenting the rhymes and pausing at the end of each line. "It's crap," he said, dropping the red notebook on the floor. "A lot of bull. Why don't you women learn that your place is in bed? All this futile struggle to create, when all you're really good for is to release some man's inhibitions."

"Fascist."

"I'm not a fascist, I'm a neo-communist."

Annice blinked back her tears.
So maybe it isn't a good poem,
she thought angrily.
He didn't have to pick the worst one in the book. He didn't have to read it like that, so--so corny. I hate him.
She turned her back on him, a difficult thing to do in that packed room, because no amount of deep breathing and not-winking could keep a few tears from rolling down her face. She was conscious of his breath on the back of her neck.

After five or six more selections the young people began to leave in groups and couples, tiptoing out without farewells. Suddenly Alan gripped her shoulder so hard she squeaked. "Come on. I'll take you home."

"I came with somebody else."

"The hell with that. Where do you live
?
I've got things to talk about."

She looked around for Jack, but he was nowhere in sight. She made her way doubtfully to the bedroom, bumping into people and muttering apologies. The broad-beamed hostess helped her find her pocketbook and jacket. "Alan's a nice youngster," she said, "but he's a wolf. Watch out for him, he’ll take everything but your shoes."

"I can take care of myself." She looked with increased interest at Alan, waiting beside the door.

The cool outside air washed her fatigue away as she swung the foyer door open. This was a better or at least a fancier neighborhood than the one she lived in. There were strips of grass along the curb; her thin heels sank into loam as she crossed to Alan's small beat-up sports car. He walked around, leaving her to open her door. "It's not locked. I never lock it. Nothing inside to steal."

They took Lake Shore Drive, magic in the neon-lighted night, with the dark brooding expanse of the lake on one side and the tall cut-out silhouette of the downtown skyline on the other. "Look," she said, "it's like two different worlds."

"Like the essential dichotomy of the human soul."

He drove fast, but well. She hadn't expected him to be a good driver
--
most of these arty boys were bumblers where anything mechanical was concerned. He laid his hand on her knee. "Where do you live
?
Do you have an apartment of your own?"

"I'm doubled up with two other girls."

"Tripled up. For God's sake be accurate in your use of language. It's the only thing that deserves respect. Sloppy females." The hand moved up an inch and came to rest.

She waited.

"Do you ever sleep with men?"

"What business is it of yours
?
"

"I'm no satyr," he said solemnly. "I'd like to go to bed with you, but not unless you want to. You have a kind of immature charm I find attractive." He stopped for a red light and tightened his fingers on her thigh. "Women should have the right to decide these things for themselves."

"I'm not going to decide anything like that," she said angrily. "At least, not the first time we're out together."

He shrugged. "First time or tenth, what difference does it make? You know your own kind of people without any formal introductions." She had said this so many times she couldn't argue with it now. "Besides, sex is pretty much the same any old time. I've tried all the variations. Had my first girl when I was thirteen. It all comes back to the same frustrations and partial satisfaction." He lit a cigarette. "Pretty boring."

"Why bother, then?"

"Why eat when you don't digest everything you eat? It's a gain. Need it to give you health and balance. That's the only rational approach." He guided the little car into a small deserted park and turned off the motor. In the sudden silence she could hear the rustling of dead leaves scudding along the ground and the chirp of a night-sleepy bird.

"It might do you good to kiss me, anyway. I won't do anything you don't want me to."

She spoke thickly, because his beard was already brushing against her mouth. "The trouble is, I don't know what I might want to do."

"Always do what you want. Anything else is death to everything that matters."

She had never been kissed before by a man with a beard. Curiosity overcame her. But she forgot about it when the tip of his tongue found hers; all of her feeling, awareness, desire centered in her mouth. Suddenly she clung to him, unable to keep her hands off him.

She had done enough dating in the two years since her sudden bounce into popularity to keep a half-conscious guard over the progress of a man's hands on her body. After a long time
--
at least, she supposed it was a long time, in view of all that happened in it
--
she pushed him away and struggled upright. "No, not that. I won't do that."

"But baby, that's what all this has been leading up to."

"I won't."

"You're not in any danger unless it's the fourteenth or fifteenth day. That's a lot of crap."

"That's not it." And it wasn't; the panic that shot through her went deeper than any fear of getting caught. "I don't want to."

"Okay, I won't ask you again." His hands shook. "I bet you're a virgin."

It sounded shameful. Babyish, sappy, scared. She turned her face away so he couldn't read the disgusting truth. "Whether I am or not hasn't got anything to do with it."

"Well, then, it has to be that you don't like me."

"I do like you!" She did; quite suddenly she felt he was the most attractive boy
--
no, man
--
she had ever met.
If you don't like a fellow after you've done all those things,
she asked herself,
then when do you?

He laughed. "Okay, so don't worry about it. I'll call you up some day when you haven't got so much resistance." He buttoned up the top of her dress for her, his fingers impersonal as those of a window-dresser arranging a mannequin.
He doesn't have to be so damn calm,
she thought angrily. He said, "You don't have much of a milk fund, do you
?
You wear falsies."

"It's only a slight padding, and besides, it's none of your goddam business."

He laughed.

When she let herself into the apartment, trying to walk softly because the other girls were in bed and the lights were off, she found that her bra was unhooked, the straps of her slip were pushed down off her shoulders, her stocking seams were crooked.
I'm a mess,
she thought with smug pleasure, glowing all over at the memory of Alan's cold hands against her warm tingling skin. She shucked off her clothes and stood looking for a long time at herself in the bathroom mirror, giving her wide-awake reflection a critical going-over. She smiled, pleased, as she turned off the bathroom light and picked her way through the clothes dropped on the bedroom floor.

She was still undecided whether she would go further the next time. If there was a next time.

Phyllis said, "This is a crazy business."

Pat frowned at her notes. She took dictation with speed and every appearance of self-assurance, but she couldn't always make out the pothooks afterwards; and Mr. Thomson
--
Blake, darling
--
never forgot so much as a comma once it was dictated. It was different with the assistant editors and production people; with them you could fake a little. She pushed her hair back. "Huh?"