The Losers (5 page)

“I don’t know,” she said, falling into step beside him, “but it seemed to me that he evades the issue.”

“He does seem a little too pat,” Raphael agreed.

“Glib. Like someone who talks very fast so you don’t have time to spot the holes in his argument.”

They had stopped near the center of the broad lawn in front of Eliot Hall.

“Pardee seems to think a lot of him,” Raphael said.

“Oh yes,” the girl said, laughing slightly. The vibrance of her voice pierced him. “Mr. Pardee studied under Karpinsky at Columbia.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“My sister found out. She took the course a couple years ago. Mr. Pardee won’t mention it in class, of course, but it’s a good thing to know.” She suddenly mimicked their instructor’s gruff voice and deliberately antigrammatical usage. “Since he ain’t about to accept no disrespect.”

Raphael laughed, charmed by her.

She hesitated and then spoke without looking at him. “I saw you play in that game last month,” she told him quietly.

“Oh,” he said, “that. It wasn’t much of a game, really.”

“Not the way
you
played, it wasn’t. You destroyed them.”

“You think I overemphasized?” he asked, grinning.

“I’m trying to pay you a compliment, dammit.” Then she grinned back.

“Thank you.”

“I’m making a fool of myself, right?” “No, not really.”

“Anyway, I thought it was really spectacular—and I don’t like football very much.”

“It’s only a game.” He shrugged. “It’s more fun to play than it is to watch.”

“Doesn’t it hurt when you get tackled like that?”

“The idea is not to get tackled.”

“You’re a stubborn man, Raphael Taylor,” she accused. “It’s almost impossible to talk to you.” “Me?”

“And
will
you stop looking at me all the time. Every time I look up, there you are, watching me. You make me feel as if I don’t have any clothes on.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ll start making faces at you if you don’t stop it,” she warned. “Then how would you feel?”

“The question is how are you going to feel when people start to think your gears aren’t meshing?”

“You’re impossible,” she said, but her voice was not really

angry. “I have to go home and study some more.” She turned abruptly and strode away with a curiously leggy gait that seemed at once awkward and almost childishly feminine.

“Marilyn,” he called after her.

She stopped and turned. “What?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“No, you won’t. I’m going to hide under the table.” She stuck her tongue out at him, turned, and continued across the lawn. Raphael laughed.

Their growing friendship did not, of course, go unobserved. By the time it had progressed to the stage of going for coffee together at the Student Union Building, Flood became aware of it. “Raphael’s being unfaithful to you, ‘Bel,” he announced on one of his now-infrequent visits to the lake.

“Get serious,” Raphael told him, irritated and a little embarrassed.

“Don’t be a snitch, Junior,” Isabel said quite calmly. “Nobody likes a snitch.”

“I just thought you ought to know, ‘Bel.” Flood grinned maliciously. “Since I introduced you two, I feel a certain responsibility.” His eyes, however, were serious, even calculating.

“Our relationship isn’t that kind.” She still seemed unperturbed. “I don’t have any objections if Raphael has other diversions—any more than he’s upset by my little flings.”

Raphael looked at her quickly, startled and with a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Oh, my poor Angel,” she said, catching the look and laughing, “did you honestly think I was ‘saving myself for you? I have other friends, too, you know.”

Raphael was sick, and at the same time ashamed to realize that he was actually jealous.

In bed that night she brought it up again. She raised up on one elbow, her heavy breast touching his arm. “How is she?” she asked, “The other girl, I mean?”

“It’s not that kind of thing,” he answered sulkily. “We just

talk—have coffee together once in a while, that’s all.”

“Don’t be coy,” she said with a wicked little laugh, deliberately rubbing her still-erect nipple on his shoulder. “A young man who looks like you do could have the panties off half the girls in Portland inside a week.”

“I don’t go around taking people’s panties off.”

“You take
mine
off,” she disagreed archly.

“That’s different.” He moved his shoulder away.

“Why is it different?”

“She’s not that kind of a girl.”

“Every
girl is that kind of a girl.” She laughed, leaning forward so that the ripe breast touched him again. “We’re all alike. Is she as good as I am?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, ‘Bel. Why don’t we just skip all this? Nothing’s going on. Flood’s got a dirty mind, that’s all.”

“Of course he has. Am I embarrassing you, sweet? We shouldn’t be embarrassed by anything—not here.”

“What about those other men?” he accused, trying to force her away from the subject.

“What about them?”

“I thought—well—” He broke off helplessly, not knowing how to pursue the subject.

“Are you really upset because I sleep with other men once in a while? Are you really jealous, Angel?”

“Well—no,” he lied, “not really.”

“We never made any promises, did we? Did you think we were ‘going steady’ or something?” The persistent nipple continued its stroking of his shoulder.

“I just didn’t think you were—well—promiscuous is all.”

“Of course I’m promiscuous.” She laughed, kissing him. “I had you in bed within twelve hours of the moment I met you. Is that the sort of thing you’d expect from a nice girl? I’m not exactly a bitch in heat, but a little variety never hurt anyone, did it?”

He couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Don’t sulk, Angel,” she said almost maternally as she pulled

him to her again. “You’ve got my full attention at the moment. That’s about the best I can promise you.”

His flesh responded to her almost against his will. He’d have liked to have been stubborn, but she was too skilled, too expert.

“You should try her, Raphael,” Isabel said almost conversationally a couple of minutes later. “A little variety might be good for you, too. And who knows? Maybe she’s better at it than I am.” She laughed, and then the laugh traded off into a series of little gasps and moans as she began to move feverishly under him.

vi

The idea had not been there before. In Raphael’s rather unsophisticated views on such matters, girls were divided into two distinct categories—those you took to bed and those you took to school dances. It was not that he was actually naive, it was just that such classification made his relations with girls simpler, and Raphael’s views on such things
were
simplistic. He had been raised in a small, remote city that had a strongly puritanical outlook; his Canadian mother had been quite firm about being “nice,” a firmness in part deriving from her lurking fear that some brainless sixteen-year-old tramp might unexpectedly present her with a squalling grandchild. Raphael’s football coach at high school, moreover, had taught Sunday school at the Congregational church, and his locker-room talks almost as frequently dealt with chastity as they did with the maiming of middle linebackers. Raphael’s entire young life had been filled with one long sermon that concentrated almost exclusively on one of the “thou shalt nots,” the only amendment having been the reluctant addition of”—with nice girls.” Raphael knew, of course, that other young men did not make a distinction between “nice” girls and the other kind, but it seemed somehow unsporting to him to seduce “nice” girls when the other sort was available—something on the order of poaching a protected species—and sportsmanship had been drilled into him for so long that its sanctions had the force of religious dictum. Isabel’s sly insinuations, however, had planted the idea, and in the weeks that followed he found himself frequently looking at Marilyn Hamilton in a way he would not have considered before.

His relationship with the girl passed through all the normal stages—coffee dates in the Student Union, a movie or two, the first kiss, and the first tentative gropings in the front seat of a car parked in a secluded spot. They walked together in the rain; they held hands and they talked together endlessly and very seriously about things that were not particularly significant. They studied together in the dim library, and they touched each other often. They also drove frequently to a special spot they had found outside town where they parked, and in the steamy interior of Raphael’s car with the radio playing softly and the misted windows curtaining them from the outside, they partially undressed each other and clung and groped and moaned in a frenzy of desire and frustration as they approached but never quite consummated the act that was becoming more and more inevitable.

Flood, of course, watched, one eyebrow cocked quizzically, gauging the progress of the affair by Raphael’s increasing irritability and the lateness of his return to their room. “No score yet, I see,” he’d observe dryly upon Raphael’s return on such nights.

“Why don’t you mind your own damned business?” Raphael would snap, and Flood would chuckle, roll over in his bed, and go back to sleep.

In those weeks Isabel became a virtual necessity to Raphael. With her he found a release for the tensions that had built up to an almost unbearable pitch during the course of the week. She gloated over the passion he brought to her, and sent him back to Portland on Sunday nights sufficiently exhausted to keep him short of the point of no return with the girl. The knowledge that Isabel was there served as a kind of safety valve for him, making it possible for him to draw back at that last crucial instant each time.

And so autumn ground drearily on with dripping skies and the

now-bare trees glistening wet and black in the rain. Isabel grew increasingly waspish, and finally announced that she was leaving for a few weeks. “I’ve got to get some sun,” she said. “This rain’s driving me up the wall.”

“Where are you going?” Raphael asked her.

“Phoenix maybe. Vegas—I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet. I’ve got to get away from the rain for a while.”

There was nothing he could say. He knew he had no real hold on her, and he even welcomed the idea in a way. His visits had become almost a duty, and he had begun to resent her unspoken demands upon him.

After he had seen her off at the airport outside Portland, he walked back to his car almost with the sense of having been liberated.

On his first weekend date with Marilyn he felt vaguely guilty—almost like an unfaithful husband. The weekends had always belonged to Isabel. He had not been entirely honest with Marilyn about those weekends. It was not that he had lied, exactly; rather, he had let her believe that Isabel was elderly, an old friend of his family, and that his weekly visits were in the nature of an obligation.

After the movie they drove to their special spot in the country and began the customary grappling. Perhaps because the weekends had always been denied to her and this evening was somehow stolen and therefore illicit, Marilyn responded to his caresses with unusual passion, shuddering and writhing under his hands. Finally she pulled free of him for an instant, looked at him, and spoke quite simply. “Let’s,” she said, her voice thick and vibrant.

And so they did.

It was awkward, since they were both quite tall, and the steering wheel was horribly in the way, but they managed.

And afterward she cried. He comforted her as best he could and later drove her home, feeling more than a little ashamed of himself. There had been some fairly convincing evidence that, until that night, Marilyn had been one of the girls one would normally take to a school dance.

The next time they used the backseat. It was more satisfactory, and this time she did not cry. Raphael, however, was still a bit ashamed and wished they had not done it. Something rather special seemed to have been lost, and he regretted it.

After several weeks Isabel returned, her fair skin slightly tanned and her temper improved.

Flood accompanied Raphael to the lake on the first weekend, his eyes bright and a knowing smile on his face.

Raphael was moody and stalked around the house, stopping now and then to stare out at the rain, and drinking more than was usual for him. It was time, he decided, to break off the affair with Isabel. She was too wise for him, too experienced, and in a way he blamed her for having planted that evil seed that had grown to its full flower that night in the front seat of his car. If it had not been for her insinuating suggestions, his relationship with Marilyn might still be relatively innocent. Beyond that, she repelled him now. Her overripe figure seemed to have taken on a faint tinge of rottenness, and the smooth sophistication that had attracted him at first seemed instead to be depravity now—even degeneracy. He continued to drink, hoping to incapacitate himself and thus avoid that inevitable and now-disgusting conclusion of the evening.

“Our Angel has fallen, I’m afraid,” Flood said after dinner when they were all sitting in front of the crackling fireplace.

“Why don’t you mind your own business, Damon?” Raphael said, his words slurring.

“Has he been naughty?” Isabel asked, amused.

“Repeatedly. He’s been coming in with claw marks on his back from shoulder to hip.”

“Why don’t you keep your goddamn mouth shut?” Raphael snapped.

“Be nice, dear,” Isabel chided him, “and don’t try to get muscular. My furniture’s too expensive for that sort of foolishness.”

“I just want him to keep his mouth shut, that’s all.” Raphael’s words sounded mushy even to him.

“All right then.
You
tell me. Was it that girl?”

He glared sulkily into the fireplace.

“This won’t be much of a conversation if you won’t talk to me. Did she really scratch you, Angel? Let me see.” She came across the room to him and tugged at his shirt.

“Lay off, ‘Bel,” he warned, pushing her hands away. “I’m not in the mood for any of that.”