The Fundamentals of Play (12 page)

When I had the two drinks made, I elbowed my way back through the jammed kitchen. At the refrigerator I met Delia Ferrier all in black wedged between the open door and a wall.

“For me?”

“No,” I said thoughtlessly, “they’re for Lombardi.” I ought to have taken that as a sign—that with her, I would never get a decent line off.

“Harry can take care of himself,” she suggested.

“I meant yes, by the way,” I said, and handed her a drink.

“I know you did.”

“Harry brought you?”

“Invited me. I brought myself.”

“How’d he happen to—”

“He thought we might get along.”

“He’s smarter than he looks.”

“If you haven’t learned that yet, I can’t help you.”

“You probably can’t help me, anyway,” I said.

She had great teeth when she smiled.

T
he party peaked and went inevitably downhill. Toff had invited an unsavory bunch of people from the law firm who kept turning the television on. Daniels got trashed and made further apologies to me while hitting on Robbins’s date. A handful of girls, including Cara, wanted to dance in the helplessly determined way that drunk girls want to dance, and they were dragging people off the couch to dance with them. And in the early hours of the morning Harry had, as it turned out, a final request: “Borrow a pen.” He held up a gnawed ballpoint. “You got a pen? Mine’s out.” I had finally gotten Delia Ferrier onto the couch with me, and I shook him off two or three times. But he was as persistent as a mosquito in a silent room. Excusing myself finally, I went into Toff’s bedroom and rummaged around on his desk, a great pen repository, and found one of the cheap Parkers he liked to use. When I came out I saw that the party had thinned to practically no one. The few that were left had the stupefied air that overtakes a party at which there is nothing left to drink.

Delia was reclining on the couch, watching one of the remaining pockets of people with her eyebrows raised in a detached air. Her face in repose wore a curious, ready expression; she looked as if she were going to be delighted or appalled by whatever happened next.

It was painful to watch the other two women interact, or rather fail to. Cara was trying to get her arms around Harry’s neck while he, awkwardly, with both hands on her forearms, attempted to keep her from doing so. “I wanna dance, Henry!” she was yelling. “Come on, le’s dance! Wha’s a party if you don’t dance?” Beside them Kate was standing quite erect, quite sober, with a pleased expression on her face which indicated: “This has been such a nice party, George. I’m so
glad
I came—it’s really been fun!” She said as much to me, as I joined them and, leaning close to my ear, murmured, “Where did you find him? He’s
unbelievable
.”

“Gotta get your number,” Harry asserted. I handed him the pen. Cara took the opportunity of his lowered guard to get her arms around him. “Let’s dance, Henry! I wanna dance!”

“I don’t give out my number,” Kate said.

“Address, then.”

“It’s no party if people don’t dance!”

“One-ninety East Sixty-sixth Street,” said Kate.

Harry sat down to write out the address on the back of a business card, squeezing himself onto the couch with Delia and me; Cara moved with him, sitting as he sat, settling for the arm, glowering up at Kate.

“Apartment fourteen.”

He didn’t know how to use the pen. He held it too tightly, the way a child holds a crayon, and pressed down hard, so that the point scratched and the ink came out unevenly. It was a small thing but it embarrassed me, and I looked away, the way I’d pretend not to notice when Daniels scraped up his food with his knife at our “team” dinners.

“Now I’m afraid I must fly.”

“Coach turning into a pumpkin?” Delia Ferrier remarked.

“Never,” I asserted. “That will never happen.”

“Walk out with you,” offered Harry.

“Oh, no—no, no—I’m gone.”

He stood up with Cara like a poncho around his neck. “I wanna dance, Henry!”

“Kate.” It was the first time he said her name to her, and I seemed to hear it anew, all dentals and stops—it was a clean, hard name. “Kate, are you doing a share or anything this summer?” he got out.

“Am I—? What did you say? Am I ‘doing a share’?” She turned around with a studious frown. “Is that something financial?” I walked her to the door. “I think my investments are sound! At least,” her haughty voice came back to us from the hallway, “they ought to be!”

When she was gone, we seemed to have lost all impetus for conversation.

“Good riddance!” said Cara, and no one bothered to reprimand her.

I was the host and I ought to have broken the silence, but no appropriate comment came to mind.

Cara seemed to take our silence as an insult. “Fine!” she snapped. “Go home alone!” She stalked off to Toff’s bedroom, whence another quarrel presently arose, followed by Toff’s emerging, saying nothing, walking directly to the front door, and closing it behind him. In the bedroom Cara began to sob.

Harry, breathing heavily through his mouth, and alternately tucking the business card into his breast pocket and then removing it to gaze on it further, didn’t even seem to hear her.

“Kate Goodenow strikes again,” remarked Delia Ferrier coolly, from her corner of the couch.

I very much wished she had not said that; it was a deal breaker for me, that kind of comment about Kate.

“It’s just—I’ve met her before,” she added.

“Oh, well, you can’t blame Kate,” I said.

“Hmm …” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

“No, but you can’t,” I said, wishing I could explain myself without making the situation worse. So many girls, so many people who knew her, thought Kate was a bitch, and would have released a litany of complaints if I had ever indicated the slightest sympathy to their position. She was thought to be shallow, a snob, overprivileged, rude, cold. But Kate herself had hardly any criticisms to make. Occasionally I had slipped, with an offhand remark, disparaging someone we both knew. “You think so?” Kate would say doubtfully, if she even acknowledged the comment. Her mind simply didn’t work that way. She had one litmus test, which she herself was subject to: she hated it when people got in the way of having a good time. The worst indictment Kate could hand down was that someone was “un-fun.” Over the years this had come to seem rather profound.

Of course, as I have already observed, I was twenty-three. And even at the time, it could be hard to explain to other people, to other girls.

“I took four classes with her, and she thinks we met in the elevator.”

“No, but you know what I mean,” I persisted miserably. “You can’t
blame
her for something like that.”

“Oh,” said Miss Ferrier. “
I
see.” She sat forward and gave Harry’s arm a tap. He started in his seat. “Huh.”

“Shall we share a cab?”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You bet. Drop you off on the way home.”

I showed them to the door, and she and I looked at one another across the threshold for an unhappy moment. Lenhart! Lenhart! What kind of an idiot defends one girl to another? Defends a girl like Kate to a girl like Delia Ferrier? My kind, the evidence overwhelmingly indicated.

The elevator came. Delia got in and Harry made to follow her when suddenly he remarked, a little too loudly, “You know what? I forgot my jacket.”

I almost laughed in his face. He was still telling bald-faced lies without any embarrassment at all.

“We’ll hold the elevator,” Delia said, with the forcibly patient intonation of one who has endured much for a friendship.

Harry appeared momentarily stumped, as if he hadn’t thought of this possibility. “Uh … you know what? Don’t bother. It might take me a while to find it. George—could you, uh …?”

“Come on, I’ll put you in a cab,” I volunteered equally impatiently. I always did feel that his rudenesses were reflected onto me.

It wasn’t until Delia and I were riding down in the elevator that I realized I owed him for this second chance—this moment alone with her. I took her down and a bit too solicitously got her tucked into a taxi: that was easy to do.

“Listen, can’t I call you?” I said.

“I’m in the book.”

“Really?”

“Really—Ferrier on Ninth Street.”

“So this wasn’t a total fiasco.”

She was kind. “Hardly,” she said.

“Then we have Harry to thank.”

“Inadvertently.”

“No, I mean for right now.”

“So do I.”

“But he must have gone back to … give us a moment alone,” I suggested.

“You think so? I’m sure he’s gone to seduce your friend.”

“Kate?” I nearly cried, at once losing all the ground I had regained.

I still remember her expression, full of comprehension and foresight, and a touch of a kind of pity I had no interest in but would have to take. I had betrayed myself again.

“No, George,” Delia said. “Kate’s gone home. I was talking about your homecoming queen.”

Indeed I met the two of them coming out of the elevator, Harry and Cara, she triumphant, cozy, Harry licking his chops until he saw me and dropped her hand guiltily. That he could on the same night meet Kate Goodenow, after five years of anticipation, and leave with Cara McLean—but perhaps that was the key to his triumphs on the Street. He set his sights high but took what he could get.

“Heya, Georgie—
great
party,” Cara said.

“Yeah,” Harry corroborated, eyeing his watch nervously, wanting to be on his way, “good effort. Good call on the tequila shots. Oh, and hey,” he added, not meeting my eyes, “sorry it didn’t work out with Delia.”

“Didn’t work out?” I repeated. “But I just met her tonight.”

Harry shuffled nervously. “Some girls take a while …”

“Hey!” Cara gave his arm a friendly whack with her handbag.

“They like to be taken out to dinner,” Harry went on, grinning now. “You’ll learn, you see. Just takes time. It’s different from college.”

“Thanks, Harry,” I said, as Cara snuggled into his arm, “for the advice.”

Up in the apartment, I walked through the beer bottles and ashtrays to the kitchen, trying to remember the misguided inspiration that had given rise to the party. The place seemed strangely deserted, and I realized that what was missing was, of course, Chat—not so much at the party, but at the end of it. At the fraternity parties I’d arranged he would always stay till the bitter, bitter end; you could count on that; you could count on him. He wouldn’t help clean up, but he would sit and talk and smoke cigarette after cigarette and fix himself drink after drink, if there was anything left, and when he finally got down to the desperate measures he would say, “Gin and orange soda—is that a drink? I think that’s a drink,” and he’d mix one up for each of us. I’d sit down and have a cigarette—I smoked about one a month—and we’d get into an argument about what the temperature of the water was when the
Titanic
sank and where the Donner
party went off course and how long you could survive if you had all the beer and water you could drink but you had to drop acid every day. When the sun rose he’d rise and lean on the windowsill like an old man and say, “It’s going to be a great, great day. Think of all the goddamn lazy Lombardis who are going to sleep the day away”—because Harry would sleep all day if you let him—and then, “Dining hall opens in two hours. Quick hand of gin?”

The thought of college gave me a mellow feeling, and I must have fallen asleep, because when I awoke, it was three or four in the morning and Toff was coming in the door.

“George.”

“Geoff.”

He went to bed. I decided to turn in, too, but about a half an hour later, the buzzer rang. Cara was, unbelievably, back. I couldn’t ignore the ringing, but I didn’t want to deal with her, so I left the door ajar and went back to bed. Presently, half-consciously, I became aware of someone crying, and I realized it was coming not from my dreams but from our bathroom.

Cara was half sitting, half sprawled on the floor for maximum effect, in her T-shirt and underwear. She raised a red face to me, distorted by alcohol. “Geoff threw me out and then he locked me out! Geoff locked me out of his room!”

When I didn’t respond at once, she cried, “He hates me! He’s evil! He hates me! He’s evil! He hates me!”

I knocked on his door, rattled the doorknob, said his name halfheartedly, but it was no use. It never was any good arguing with people like Toff. There was nothing to do but give her my bed and take the couch. I got a pillow and my trench coat and a couple of bath towels and cleared off the cushions and lay down. I desperately wanted to go to sleep, more than I ever had in my whole life. Cara called me back to thank me, tearfully. “You won’t hold this against me, will you, George? You promise you won’t!”

“I promise,” I said.

“ ’Cause you and I have always gotten along so well. I love you so,
so, so, so, so much, George! I know this sounds awful—but sometimes I think I love you more than Geoff. We have something, you and I—a rapport, you could say—and he can’t take it away.” She called me back a second time; this time I stayed where I was. Nevertheless she made her point. “Your friend Henry Lombardi still likes me!” she proclaimed into the trashed room, into the cigarette air. “I know he still likes me! I know it! I would have stayed over tonight if it hadn’t been for my having a boyfriend!
And
for my being too loyal to wake up in another man’s bed! It was never just about sex with Henry and me! Never! And that”—she struggled briefly for the insult—“that
girl
is all wrong for him. I know! You know how I know? George? Are you listening?”