Going All the Way (19 page)

Sonny hadn't used the Elmer Layden game ever since he went into service; when he got out of basic and PIO school he and some other guys got an apartment off the base in Kansas City and Sonny kept his girlie magazines in an old college notebook that had a zipper on it. He had thrown the notebook and the magazines inside it away just before he got out of service, though, as part of the abolition of his past, of wiping the slate clean and starting fresh. He could have kept the zipper notebook and used it for something else, but he didn't even want to be reminded of what he had used it for before. He felt sure that when his real life began he wouldn't feel the need for those magazines of sexy fantasy, not only because it was an adolescent kind of thing but because he thought he wouldn't need to pretend things then, he would actually
do
them, he would fuck sexy babes whenever he felt like it; until of course he met the just-right Rodgers-and-Hammerstein sort of girl across a crowded room and would fall in love forever and enjoy pure, legalized, clean, moral sex with his wife and be free of dirty thoughts and desire for the rest of his life. Actually, he originally thought that jacking off was just something you had to do until you fucked, and once you started fucking you didn't feel the need for masturbation anymore. It surprised and depressed the hell out of him when after he fucked for the very first time, struggling and slipping and panting on a moonlit golf course with Buddie Porter, he came home and jacked off twice. He figured that must have been because he wasn't madly in love with Buddie, maybe it was only when you started fucking girls you were madly in love with that you didn't have to beat off anymore.

Sonny's head ached from the rum, but he felt completely wide awake and terribly horny. He wondered if maybe there were any old girlie magazines left in the Elmer Layden game. He could take it into the bathroom and lock the door. As quietly as possible, he creaked down the wooden bunk ladder to the floor and stealthily made his way to the closet. The door whined when he pulled it open. He stood stock-still for a while, listening for Luke Matthews' steady breathing, then reached his hand into the right-side shelves of the closet where his old games were stacked. He tried to feel the right box by its size and started pulling one out that began to rattle. It must have been the Monopoly set, and the little metal pieces were making the noise. He shoved it back in with slow care. He felt the box below it and was almost sure it was Elmer Layden's Official College Football. He slipped it out little by little, holding the box above it with his other hand so he could let it down quietly when he pulled the Elmer Layden out.

Luke Matthews tossed a little and made a honking kind of snore sound. Sonny stood perfectly still, then after a minute or so of silence he tiptoed out of the room, holding the game steady so the dice wouldn't make any noise. He stopped outside the bathroom door, listening for sounds from his parents' bedroom right across the hall. All was quiet. He went in the bathroom and closed the door before switching on the light. Then he flipped the little lock on the door handle. Settling himself on the toilet seat, he carefully lifted the top off the Elmer Layden Official Football game box and set it on the floor. His heart was starting to beat a little faster in anticipation of the possible trove of erotic treasure just below the playing field. He reached his finger between the bottom part of the box and the cardboard playing field, lifting it off to reveal—nothing.

The secret storage place was empty. He must have burned the last batch of magazines in one of his fits of nauseous, self-hating zeal. He put the top back on the box and held it on his lap, trying to think of something. He was hornier and more frustrated than ever now. He set the game on top of the toilet bowl and eased himself onto the floor. There was a little round mat that was dark-green and probably wouldn't show the jizm too badly if he managed to get his rocks off. He lay down with his cock out on the mat and pressed his body over it, moving back and forth, picturing again the way Marty the Jewish girl picked the little fleck of ash off her arrogant lip. He imagined licking it off for her with his own tongue, thought of eating her tight little arrogant cunt until it got wet and inviting, then ramming in the full throbbing head of his cock. But nothing worked. He couldn't even get up a semi. After a while he realized it must be because he felt guilty, imagining that stuff with a girl that his good friend was hot for. Marty was Gunner's girl, or at least he wanted her to be, and Sonny felt like he was betraying his friend by imagining all this sexy stuff with his buddy's girl. What a shit he was.

Exhausted and guilty, Sonny tucked his cock back in his undershorts, picked up the game, and crept back to his bedroom. When he opened the door, the little reading light above Luke Matthews' bed was on, and Matthews was propped up in bed on one elbow, blinking and staring at Sonny.

“What's going on?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Sonny said. “I'm going to bed.”

“What's that thing—that box you're carrying?”

Sonny let out a long breath and said flatly, “It's a game.”

“A game?” Luke asked, rubbing at his eyes. “What kind of a game?”

“It's Elmer Layden's Official College Football Game,” Sonny explained, and stuck it back in the closet.

“Oh,” Luke Matthews said, “I see.”

Sonny climbed up the little ladder and flopped on the bunk, burying his head in the pillow. Luke turned off the bed light and said, “Well, good night, son.”

“Good night,” Sonny murmured into the pillow.

Aching and sweaty, his mind was tormented by the mouths of beautiful women that pursed to a kiss and then faded into blackness, sudden glimpses of silken thighs that crossed themselves into his consciousness with a whisper and then were gone, breasts that burst at his brain through the lacy constriction of their tight brassieres and suddenly evaporated.… Thrashing and scratching, he became uncomfortably entangled in the sweaty sheet, too tired to extricate himself, too dispirited to care, until finally, as a gray dawn turned the flat sky the color of soiled linen, he passed to the blessed void of a dreamless sleep.

3

Sonny woke up around one o'clock in the afternoon, feeling as if he'd been drugged and beaten on. Everything ached, especially his head. The only consoling fact was that Luke Matthews had taken off, probably in pursuit of more salvageable souls. Little wonder. The craggy old bastard wasn't any dunce, and he no doubt decided that a college-grad Army vet who kept bad company and played kid football games in the bathroom late at night was a more complex spiritual problem than his convict-holy-man training had prepared him to deal with. He could probably make more headway with your simple, ordinary murderer-rapist. Sonny at least respected him for realizing when he was out of his depth.

Mrs. Burns didn't mention Luke Matthews anymore, and Sonny accepted an unspoken truce on the matter. The only reminder of the departed Holy Man was his book, which still lay on the coffee table like an unexploded bomb, a dud of the salvation-literature armory. Though Sonny resisted the temptation to bitch about Matthews' visit, he became even crabbier and more irritable with his mother, and she became busier baking and cooking, turning out an orgy of cream-filled pastries, butterscotch rolls, and fresh berry pies. Sonny sat around the house stuffing in the goodies and despising himself, becoming more flabby and sullen all the time. He had quit calling Gunner in the evening for fear of getting Mrs. Casselman and having her snap at him, and nobody answered anymore when he called Gunner's place in the afternoons. He stopped getting hopefully excited when his phone rang because it usually turned out to be for his mother. Once when his mother answered the phone and said it was for him, Sonny quickly licked some butterscotch icing from his fingers and rushed to the upstairs phone where he could talk in private, figuring it must be Gunner. It only turned out to be Buddie Porter, though, calling, she said, just to see how Sonny was. Sonny said he wasn't feeling too well, but crossly refused her offers to take him for a ride or bring him some new magazines. He promised to get in touch with her if he thought of anything at all she could do for him.

When almost a week went by without any word from Gunner, Sonny began imagining all kinds of things that might have happened to his pal. He might have been turned down flat by the sexy Jewish babe and rolled up to Chi to take the job with the advertising agency. He might have decided to leave Indianapolis without even saying good-bye to anyone, even his friends. Or maybe, worst of all, he didn't think of Sonny as a real friend after all; maybe he'd got bored with Sonny and gone back to his old crew of big-timers, wondering how he'd ever got mixed up with a nobody like Sonny Burns.

Sonny's moping around got so bad that his father came into the den one evening while Sonny was watching TV and drinking a Pepsi, and rubbed his thumb against the tips of his fingers in an awful, discomforting sign that he was about to “have a talk” with his son.

“You ought to get out of the house, get some sun,” Mr. Burns said.

“Yes, I will,” Sonny mumbled.

Mr. Burns cleared his throat and made the little nervous forward motion of his knees, as if trying to make sure of his stance. His face was flushed and frowning. “You can't let yourself get
down
” he said.

“No, sir.”

The terrible, pulsing silence fell between them, and Mr. Burns let out a deep, despairing sigh and left the room. Sonny wished himself dead.

The next afternoon Gunner called, sounding as casual and friendly as if no time had passed at all, and said he'd come by to pick Sonny up in an hour or so. When Sonny got dressed, his clean khakis were so tight in the waist he didn't know if he could even get down a beer.

Gunner wasn't in the brooding mood that Sonny last saw him in, and in fact seemed on top of the world. When they settled at a table over at the Key, Gunner explained the whole thing. He'd been seeing Marty every night, and he hadn't been home in the afternoons because Marty was giving him painting lessons. She even had her own studio, a top-floor room in a crumbling old apartment building down by the Herron, equipped with an easel and all the crap you needed to paint with, and even a hot plate so if you got inspired you could keep right on going and heat up some coffee or something and not even have to go out until the fit of creativity had passed. Gunner said that even though he'd taken an art course and messed around with sketching, he had never painted with real oils, and that's what Marty was showing him.

“I doubt I'll be any good or anything,” he said, “but I get a charge out of it. Just holding the brush, mixing the paint on the palette. The whole bit.”

Sonny felt even more loggy and good-for-nothing, sitting around all that time on his dead ass while Gunner was out mastering a whole new field of artistic activity. The bastard seemed to give out waves of enthusiasm when he talked about painting, almost like one of the religious nuts giving you the Christ line. But even though Sonny was impressed and curious about Gunner's progress in art, he couldn't help wondering how he'd progressed in other areas; like, for instance, the area between the luscious thighs of his new art teacher.

Not wanting to come right out and ask about it, Sonny just made the subtle observation that “I guess she didn't think you were a dumb jock after all, huh?”

Gunner grinned. “Well, who knows,” he said modestly. “The whole problem was, I was playing defensive ball. When I first met her. You remember. Jesus.” Gunner grasped at his head, embarrassed for himself. “I played it all wrong. Even when I first took her out. You know where the hell I took her?”

“Where?”

Gunner laughed disparagingly. “To a goddam foreign movie. At the little art movie theater they got now, down around Thirtieth and Capitol.” He shook his head at what he obviously felt was his own stupidity.

“What was wrong with that?” Sonny asked.

“Shee-it, man. A truly bad call. I was trying to play her own game, you see? I was trying to be more intellectual than she was, worrying about whether I was coming off like a dumb jock. It was awful. She kept putting me down, naturally. But I was hooked, and when you're hooked you can't think straight. I could feel what was happening—I knew I was playing the loser, but I couldn't snap out of it. Like when you're trying to wake up from a dream and can't do it.”

Sonny swigged anxiously from his beer. “So what happened?” he asked.

Gunner popped a cigarette out of a pack of Chesterfields and struck a match from a folder using only one hand. “I got pissed off,” he said.

“At her? You mean at Marty?”

“Right. It's the only thing that saved my ass.”

“How?” Sonny asked, feeling stupid as hell.

“Well, she invited me in for a drink after the movie, and we're sitting in this little den kind of room they have, and some serious music is on the record player, and she's being bitchy as hell. Just like the way she was that day at the drugstore. Remember?”

“Yeh, yeh.”

“I was trying to talk this big game, a lot of intellectual shit, and she kept shooting me down. Every now and then she'd yawn, which was getting me more and more pissed. Then she made some crack about how boring the people were in the Midwest, and that's when I flipped my lid. Thank God. I just didn't give a damn anymore, and so I said what I really thought, not giving a shit if she liked it or not.” Gunner sipped at his beer, smiling.

“What was it,” Sonny asked, “that you said?”

“I said to her, ‘Look, bitch, I didn't go to college in the East, and I'm no intellectual. I'm just a big dumb jock, but I know a couple things you don't know, or don't want to know, like I know I want to fuck you and I know you want it too.'”

“Jesus, what happened?”

Gunner made the sharp, popping snap of his fingers. “She was jelly,” he said.