Everything went wrong the next day. The fading light of afternoon found the two of them slumped and staring in a bleak workingman’s café near the railroad station, barely speaking to each other. It was a day that had started out unusually well too— that was the trouble.
They had slept till noon and gone to the beach after lunch, for Ken didn’t mind the beach when he wasn’t alone, and before long they had picked up two American girls in the easy, graceful way that Carson always managed such things. One minute the girls were sullen strangers, wiping scented oil on their bodies and looking as if any intrusion would mean a call for the police, the next minute they were weak with laughter at the things Carson was saying, moving aside their bottles and their zippered blue TWA satchels to make room for unexpected guests. There was a tall one for Carson with long firm thighs, intelligent eyes and a way of tossing back her hair that gave her a look of real beauty, and a small one for Ken—a cute, freckled good-sport of a girl whose every cheerful glance and gesture showed she was used to taking second best. Ken, bellying deep into the sand with his chin on two stacked fists, smiling up very close to her warm legs, felt almost none of the conversational tension that normally hampered him at times like this. Even when Carson and the tall girl got up to run splashing into the water he was able to hold her interest: she said several times that the Sorbonne “must have been fascinating,” and she sympathized with his having to go back to Denver, though she said it was “probably the best thing.”
“And your friend’s just going to stay over here indefinitely, then?” she asked. “Is it really true what he said? I mean that he isn’t studying or working or anything? Just sort of floating around?”
“Well—yeah, that’s right.” Ken tried a squinty smile like Carson’s own. “Why?”
“It’s interesting, that’s all. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person like that before.”
That was when Ken began to realize what the laughter and the scanty French bathing suits had disguised about these girls, that they were girls of a kind neither he nor Carson had dealt with for a long time—suburban, middle-class girls who had dutifully won their parents’ blessing for this guided tour; girls who said “golly Moses,” whose campus-shop clothes and hockey-field strides would have instantly betrayed them on the street. They were the very kind of girls who had gathered at the punch bowl to murmur “Ugh!” at the way he looked in his first tuxedo, whose ignorant, maddeningly bland little stares of rejection had poisoned all his aching years in Denver and New Haven. They were squares. And the remarkable thing was that he felt so good. Rolling his weight to one elbow, clutching up slow, hot handfuls of sand and emptying them, again and again, he found his flow of words coming quick and smooth:
“… no, really, there’s a lot to see in Paris; shame you couldn’t spend more time there; actually most of the places I like best are more or less off the beaten track; of course I was lucky in having a fairly good grasp of the language, and then I met so many congenial …”
He was holding his own; he was making out. He hardly even noticed when Carson and the tall girl came trotting back from their swim, as lithe and handsome as a couple in a travel poster, to drop beside them in a bustle of towels and cigarettes and shuddering jokes about how cold the water was. His only mounting worry was that Carson, who must by now have made his own discovery about these girls, would decide they weren’t worth bothering with. But a single glance at Carson’s subtly smiling, talking face reassured him: sitting tense at the tall girl’s feet while she stood to towel her back in a way that made her breasts sway delightfully, Carson was plainly determined to follow through. “Look,” he said. “Why don’t we all have dinner together? Then afterwards we might—”
Both girls began chattering their regrets: they were afraid not, thanks anyway, they were meeting friends at the hotel for dinner and actually ought to be starting back now, much as they hated to— “God, look at the time!” And they really did sound sorry, so sorry that Ken, gathering all his courage, reached out and held the warm, fine-boned hand that swung at the small girl’s thigh as the four of them plodded back toward the bathhouses. She even squeezed his heavy fingers, and smiled at him.
“Some other night, then?” Carson was saying. “Before you leave?”
“Well, actually,” the tall girl said, “our evenings do seem to be pretty well booked up. Probably run into you on the beach again though. It’s been fun.”
“Goddamn little snot-nosed New Rochelle bitch,” Carson said when they were alone in the men’s bathhouse.
“Sh-h-h! Keep your voice down, Carson. They can hear you in there.”
“Oh, don’t be an idiot.” Carson flung his trunks on the duck-boards with a sandy slap. “I hope they do hear me—what the hell’s the matter with you?” He looked at Ken as if he hated him. “Pair of goddamn teasing little professional virgins. Christ, why didn’t I stay in Paris?”
And now here they were, Carson glowering, Ken sulking at the sunset through flyspecked windows while a pushing, garlic-smelling bunch of laborers laughed and shouted over the pinball machine. They went on drinking until long past the dinner hour; then they ate a late, unpleasant meal together in a restaurant where the wine was corky and there was too much grease on the fried potatoes. When the messy plates were cleared away Carson lit a cigarette. “What do you want to do tonight?” he said.
There was a faint shine of grease around Ken’s mouth and cheeks. “I don’t know,” he said. “Lot of good places to go, I guess.”
“I suppose it would offend your artistic sensibilities to go and hear Sid’s piano again?”
Ken gave him a weak, rather testy smile. “You still harping on that?” he said. “Sure I’d like to go.”
“Even though he may prostitute himself?”
“Why don’t you lay off that, Carson?”
They could hear the piano from the street, even before they walked into the square of light that poured up from the doorway of Sid’s place. On the stairs the sound of it grew stronger and richer, mixed now with the sound of a man’s hoarse singing, but only when they were down in the room, squinting through the blue smoke, did they realize the singer was Sid himself. Eyes half closed, head turned to smile along his shoulder into the crowd, he was singing as he swayed and worked at the keys.
“Man, she got a pair of eyes. …”
The blue spotlight struck winking stars in the moisture of his teeth and the faint thread of sweat that striped his temple.
“I mean they’re brighter than the summer skies
And when you see them you gunna realize
Just why I love my sweet Lorraine. …”
“Damn place is packed,” Carson said. There were no vacancies at the bar, but they stood uncertainly near it for a while, watching Sid perform, until Carson found that one of the girls on the bar stools directly behind him was Jaqueline. “Oh,” he said. “Hi. Pretty good crowd tonight.”
She smiled and nodded and then craned past him to watch Sid.
“I didn’t know he sang too,” Carson said. “This something new?”
Her smile gave way to an impatient little frown and she put a forefinger against her lips. Rebuffed, he turned back and moved heavily from one foot to the other. Then he nudged Ken. “You want to go or stay? If you want to stay let’s at least sit down.”
“Sh-h-h!” Several people turned in their chairs to frown at him. “Sh-h-h!”
“Come on, then,” he said, and he led Ken sidling and stumbling through the ranks of listeners to the only vacant table in the room, a small one down in front, too close to the music and wet with spilled drink, that had been pushed aside to make room for larger parties. Settled there, they could see now that Sid wasn’t looking into the crowd at large. He was singing directly to a bored-looking couple in evening clothes who sat a few tables away, a silver-blonde girl who could have been a movie starlet and a small, chubby bald man with a deep tan, a man so obviously Murray Diamond that a casting director might have sent him
here to play the part. Sometimes Sid’s large eyes would stray to other parts of the room or to the smoke-hung ceiling, but they seemed to come into focus only when he looked at these two people. Even when the song ended and the piano took off alone on a long, intricate variation, even then he kept glancing up to see if they were watching. When he finished, to a small thunderclap of applause, the bald man lifted his face, closed it around an amber cigarette holder and clapped his hands a few times.
“Very nice, Sam,” he said.
“My name’s Sid, Mr. Diamond,” Sid said, “but I thank you a lot just the same. Glad y’enjoyed it, sir.” He was leaning back, grinning along his shoulder while his fingers toyed with the keys. “Anything special you’d like to hear, Mr. Diamond? Something old-time? Some more of that real old Dixieland? Maybe a little boogie, maybe something a little on the sweet side, what we call a commercial number? Got all kind of tunes here, waitin’ to be played.”
“Anything at all, uh, Sid,” Murray Diamond said, and then the blonde leaned close and whispered something in his ear. “How about ‘Stardust,’ there, Sid?” he said. “Can you play ‘Stardust’?”
“Well, now, Mr. Diamond. If I couldn’t play ‘Stardust’ I don’t guess I’d be in business very long, France or any other country.” His grin turned into a deep false laugh and his hands slid into the opening chords of the song.
That was when Carson made his first friendly gesture in hours, sending a warm blush of gratitude into Ken’s face. He hitched his chair up close to Ken’s and began to speak in a voice so soft that no one could have accused him of making a disturbance. “You know something?” he said. “This is disgusting. My God, I don’t care if he wants to go to Las Vegas. I don’t even care if he wants to suck around for it. This is something else. This is something that turns my stomach.” He paused, frowning at the floor, and Ken watched the small wormlike vein moving in his temple. “Putting on this phony accent,” Carson said. “All this big phony Uncle Remus routine.” And then he went into a little popeyed, head-tossing, hissing parody of Sid. “Yassuh, Mr. Dahmon’ suh. Wudg’all lak t’heah, Mr. Dahmon’ suh? Got awl kine a toons heah, jes’ waitin’ to played, and yok, yok, yok, and shet ma mouf!” He finished his drink and set the glass down hard. “You know damn well he doesn’t have to talk that way. You know damn well he’s a perfectly bright, educated guy. My God, on the phone I couldn’t even tell he was colored.”
“Well yeah,” Ken said. “It is sort of depressing.”
“Depressing? It’s degrading.” Carson curled his lip. “It’s degenerate.”
“I know,” Ken said. “I guess that may be partly what I meant about prostituting himself.”
“You were certainly right, then. This is damn near enough to make you lose faith in the Negro race.”
Being told he was right was always a tonic to Ken, and it was uncommonly bracing after a day like this. He knocked back his drink, straightened his spine and wiped the light mustache of sweat from his upper lip, pressing his mouth into a soft frown to show that his faith, too, in the Negro race was badly shaken. “Boy,” he said. “I sure had him figured wrong.”
“No,” Carson assured him, “you couldn’t have known.”
“Listen, let’s go, then, Carson. The hell with him.” And Ken’s mind was already full of plans: they would stroll in the cool of the Croisette for a long, serious talk on the meaning of integrity, on how rare it was and how easily counterfeited, how its pursuit was the only struggle worthy of a man’s life, until all the discord of the day was erased.
But Carson moved his chair back, smiling and frowning at the same time. “Go?” he said. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to stay and watch the spectacle? I do. Doesn’t it hold a certain horrible fascination for you?” He held up his glass and signaled for two more cognacs.
“Stardust” came to a graceful conclusion and Sid stood up, bathed in applause, to take his break. He loomed directly over their table as he came forward and stepped down off the dais, his big face shining with sweat; he brushed past them, looking toward Diamond’s table, and paused there to say, “Thank you, sir,” though Diamond hadn’t spoken to him, before he made his way back to the bar.
“I suppose he thinks he didn’t see us,” Carson said.
“Probably just as well,” Ken said. “I wouldn’t know what to say to him.”
“Wouldn’t you? I think I would.”
The room was stifling, and Ken’s cognac had taken on a faintly repellent look and smell in his hand. He loosened his collar and tie with moist fingers. “Come on, Carson,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s get some air.”
Carson ignored him, watching what went on at the bar. Sid drank something Jaqueline offered and then disappeared into the men’s room. When he came out a few minutes later, his face dried and composed, Carson turned back and studied his glass. “Here he comes. I think we’re going to get the big hello, now, for Diamond’s benefit. Watch.”
An instant later Sid’s fingers brushed the cloth of Carson’s shoulder. “Bzz-z-z, bzz-z-z!” he said. “How’re you tonight?”
Very slowly, Carson turned his head. With heavy eyelids he met Sid’s smile for a split second, the way a man might look at a waiter who had accidentally touched him. Then he turned back to his drink.
“Oh-oh,” Sid said. “Maybe I didn’t do that right. Maybe I got the wrong shoulder here. I’m not too familiar with the rules and regulations yet.” Murray Diamond and the blonde were watching, and Sid winked at them, thumbing out the IBF button in his lapel as he moved in sidling steps around the back of Carson’s chair. “This here’s a club we belong to, Mr. Diamond,” he said. “Barflies club. Only trouble is, I’m not very familiar with the rules and regulations yet.” He held the attention of nearly everyone in the room as he touched Carson’s other shoulder. “Bzz-z-z, bzz-z-z!” This time Carson winced and drew his jacket away, glancing at Ken with a perplexed little shrug as if to say, Do you know what this man wants?
Ken didn’t know whether to giggle or vomit; both desires were suddenly strong in him, though his face held straight. For a long time afterwards he would remember how the swabbed black plastic of the table looked between his two unmoving hands, how it seemed the only steady surface in the world.
“Say,” Sid said, backing away toward the piano with a glazed smile. “What is this here? Some kinda conspiracy here?”
Carson allowed a heavy silence to develop. Then with an air of sudden, mild remembrance, seeming to say, Oh yes, of course, he rose and walked over to Sid, who backed up confusedly into the spotlight. Facing him, he extended one limp finger and touched him on the shoulder. “Buzz,” he said. “Does that take care of it?” He turned and walked back to his seat.
Ken prayed for someone to laugh—anyone—but no one did. There was no movement in the room but the dying of Sid’s smile as he looked at Carson and at Ken, the slow fleshy enclosing of his teeth and the widening of his eyes.
Murray Diamond looked at them too, briefly—a tough, tan little face—then he cleared his throat and said, “How about ‘Hold Me,’ there, Sid? Can you play ‘Hold Me’?” And Sid sat down and began to play, looking at nothing.
With dignity, Carson nodded for the check and laid the right number of thousand- and hundred-franc notes on the saucer. It seemed to take him no time at all to get out of the place, sliding expertly between the tables and out to the stairs, but it took Ken much longer. Lurching, swaying in the smoke like a great imprisoned bear, he was caught and held by Jaqueline’s eyes even before he had cleared the last of the tables. They stared relentlessly at the flabby quaver of his smile, they drilled into his back and sent him falling upstairs. And as soon as the sobering night air hit him, as soon as he saw Carson’s erect white suit retreating several doors away, he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to run up and hit him with all his strength between the shoulder blades, one great chopping blow that would drop him to the street, and then he would hit him again, or kick him—yes, kic
k him—and he’d say, goddamn you! goddamn you, Carson! The words were already in his mouth and he was ready to swing when Carson stopped and turned to face him under a streetlamp.
“What’s the trouble, Ken?” he said. “Don’t you think that was funny?”
It wasn’t what he said that mattered—for a minute it seemed that nothing Carson said would ever matter again—it was that his face was stricken with the uncannily familiar look of his own heart, the very face he himself, Lard-Ass Platt, had shown all his life to others: haunted and vulnerable and terribly dependent, trying to smile, a look that said Please don’t leave me alone.
Ken hung his head, either in mercy or shame. “Hell, I don’t know, Carson,” he said. “Let’s forget it. Let’s get some coffee somewhere.”
“Right.” And they were together again. The only problem now was that they had started out in the wrong direction: in order to get to the Croisette they would have to walk back past the lighted doorway of Sid’s place. It was like walking through fire, but they did it quickly and with what anyone would have said was perfect composure, heads up, eyes front, so that the piano only came up loud for a second or two before it diminished and died behind them under the rhythm of their heels.
Out with the Old
BUILDING SEVEN, THE TB building, had grown aloof from the rest of Mulloy Veterans’ Hospital in the five years since the war. It lay less than fifty yards from Building Six, the paraplegic building—they faced the same flagpole on the same windswept Long Island plain—but there had been no neighborliness between them since the summer of 1948, when the paraplegics got up a petition demanding that the TB’s be made to stay on their own lawn. This had caused a good deal of resentment at the time (“Those paraplegic bastards think they own the goddamn place”), but it had long since ceased to matter very much; nor did it matter that nobody from Building Seven was allowed in the hospital canteen unless he hid his face in a sterile paper mask.