“Where does everybody sleep? In those big buildings?” Instinctively she hushed her voice. She felt a little as though she were treading on a village green in Nazi Germany.
“No, in cottages back up among the trees. The men over to the left, the girls behind us. That large building with the glass front is the dining hall. Good food only on weekends for the big rush of guests, otherwise garbage. The other is the administration building where—”
A piercing whine filled the air. In unison all the oak trees croaked, “Bernice Flamm—long-distance call in the office. Bernice Flamm.” Another whine, a click, and silence.
“Goddamn loudspeakers,” said Marsha. “They go all day and all night. Drive you crazy.”
“What separates the men and the girls? A fence or something?”
“Just foliage, dear, and upbringing,” Marsha said dryly. “They’re big boys and big girls, you know.”
“Must make for some wild times—”
Marsha gripped her arm. “Oh, Christ. Just our luck. Greech. Coming out of the social hall. Straight at us.”
Marjorie saw a little man in white knee pants descending the steps of the social hall. Her legs became weak. “What do we do, turn and run?”
“Don’t be a jackass. Keep right on walking. Don’t look at him. Just walk. And for God’s sake don’t look guilty.”
Marjorie became aware of her hands dangling at the ends of her arms, and suddenly it seemed to her that there was no guiltless way to hold one’s hands. She slipped them behind her back, each clutching an elbow. The figure in white knee pants drew nearer, walking with an odd side-to-side motion, half swagger and half wobble. Marjorie tried to avert her eyes; but like a child irresistibly drawn to peek at the monster in a horror movie through spreading fingers, she kept glancing at Mr. Greech. He was staring at the canoes as he walked, counting them, it seemed. In his left hand he swung a flashlight as long as a club. Suddenly his head turned and he was looking right at Marjorie. She thought she would faint. His eyes paused a moment, then flickered to Marsha; his mouth drooped a little, and he walked past them without a word.
After a few seconds Marsha said, in a tone of forced gaiety, “Well, dear, see? The bad dragon didn’t eat us.”
Her throat constricted, Marjorie said, “I thought you said he knows you.”
“He does, very well.”
“But he looked straight at you. Through you. He didn’t say hello. He didn’t say anything.”
“Sugar bun, do you talk to the dogs you pass?”
“He—you know, he does look like Satan? He really does. It’s amazing.”
“He would be offended if he heard you, dear. Satan looks like Max Greech.”
The high square doorway of the South Wind Music Hall was bordered in bronze with geometrical patterns. Over the entrance was a flat bronze female nude with streaming hair, puffed cheeks, and pursed lips. “Lady South Wind,” said Marsha, pointing. “The staff has another name for her. Not fit for your innocent little ears.” She went up the steps, pushed open the redwood door, and beckoned to Marjorie. “What’s the matter with you? Come on.” Marjorie could not have said why she was hesitating. She ran up the steps and through the door.
The lobby was decorated with posters of past shows—South Wind Vanities, Wonderful Times, South Wind Moon, I’ll Be Seeing You, South Wind Scandals. She followed Marsha into a brightly lit auditorium where hundreds of yellow folding chairs were racked around a bare dance floor. On the stage was a very fake-looking setting of palm trees, with a red cardboard moon hanging in the background. Karen Blair, wearing a jungle costume, was swaying her hips and her upraised arms as she sang, in a sultry beguine rhythm,
Moon madness
Now at the flood
Moon madness
Burns in my blood….
The rehearsal pianist, a fat man chewing a cigar, began to pound louder. A pair of dancers in jungle costume came stamping out and did an angular dance full of sexy gestures. Marsha waved to Carlos Ringel, sitting in back of the auditorium beside a thin man in a black turtle-neck sweater. “There he is,” she said, “with Carlos.”
“Noel Airman?”
“Himself. When the number’s over I’ll introduce you.”
The dancers wriggled off, locked in a desperate embrace, and the blonde repeated the song.
“All right, Karen, stand by,” called the man in the black sweater. “We’ll try the lights before we strike it.” He rose and came forward.
Marjorie stared, stupidly fascinated; she had never seen a handsomer man. He was amazingly tall and slender. If there was one flaw in his features, it was that his jaw was too long and curved too far forward. But what did that matter? The straight nose, broad brow, deep-set eyes, long bones, and shock of reddish-golden slightly curling hair gave him the look of a Greek god, she thought. She had heard the phrase often; about Airman it was true.
“Is he really as thin as he seems, or is it that black sweater?”
“Oh, Noel’s a rail. The girls keep him trained down.”
“I can well imagine.”
“Come on over and say hello.”
“No, no,” Marjorie said in panic. “They’re busy.”
“Nonsense, we can’t hang around the rehearsal without his permission.” As Marjorie still held back Marsha snapped, “My God, act your age,” and propelled her out on the floor by an elbow. With her free arm Marjorie frantically felt at her hair. Carlos Ringel, whom she was seeing for the first time in the light, looked very old indeed: quite bald, except for a fringe of gray-sprinkled red hair, with a seamed and pitted fat face, and gnarled veins on his hands. He nodded at the girls. “Ah, the spies from overseas.”
Airman turned. His eyes, deep in their sockets, were an extraordinarily bright blue. He needed a shave; the thick stubble along his jaw was redder than his hair. His arms were hugged together, and he was rubbing his left elbow with a palm. “Hi, Marsha.”
“Hi, Noel. Can we watch for a while? This is a friend of mine, Marjorie Morgenstern.”
“Of course.” He was uninterested.
“Margie’s the dramatic counselor at my camp.”
Noel Airman smiled at Marjorie, and his somewhat forbidding ironic air softened. “Well, well, a colleague. You’re entitled to the courtesies of the profession.—Wally! Couple of chairs.”
A pimply boy in black glasses looked out of a wing of the stage. “Right, Noel.”
Marjorie said, “You embarrass me. I don’t know anything about the stage.” He was so terribly tall, she was thinking. She had packed low-heeled shoes in her hurry, and that made it worse. She felt like a little girl.
“Marjorie, to tell the truth, I don’t know very much myself.—Thanks, Wally.” The pimply boy came running with two folding chairs, which he opened and placed before the girls, looking hard and hungrily at Marjorie. It was the familiar look of a smitten sophomore at a dance. She judged him to be perhaps seventeen.
Airman called out an order to the electricians as she sat. Suddenly bathed in colored light, the stage took on a new look. The moon seemed less like cardboard, more like a moon. The palm trees, the monkeys in the tops, the lions peeping through the trunks, lost some of their smeary flatness. “Oh, I like that lighting,” Marjorie blurted.
Airman looked down at her absently, lit a cigarette, and began talking to Ringel in a rapid jargon: phrases like bringing up the ambers, killing number three, flying the scrim. Marjorie cursed herself for speaking too soon and with such asinine enthusiasm. As Ringel and Airman called out orders, the lights kept modulating, and at each change the stage picture took on depth and prettiness. The boy called Wally went clambering up an iron ladder in the back of the auditorium to a catwalk cluttered with spotlights, where he shifted the colored slides. Airman walked back and forth, hugging his elbow, suggesting changes to Ringel in a calm, pleasant tone. At last he said, “All right, let’s see how she really looks. Kill the house.” The auditorium was thrown into darkness. The setting glowed forth, bril
liant and exciting. The eyes of the monkeys and the lions gleamed; the painted sea on the backdrop rippled and glittered; the moon shone dull-red beams through the palm trees. “Oh, it’s just beautiful,” Marjorie exclaimed.
There was a silence during which her voice seemed to echo in the air, squeaky and childish. “What do we do about that hot spot next to number four, Carlos?” Airman said. There were more changes, and then he called out two or three swift final orders. The lights altered subtly, a transparent curtain came down before the set, and a shimmer of magic life seemed to pass over the stage. “Well, that’ll have to do,” he said.
Marjorie was crushed. She had been earnestly studying a book on lighting for weeks, and had fancied her effects in Peter Pan were professional. “Come on out, Karen, Bert, Helen,” Airman called. The singer and the dancers looked unpleasantly, weakly white under the lights. Airman, pacing past Marjorie, unexpectedly stopped and said to her, “They’ll be in brown body makeup, of course.”
“Oh yes, sure, naturally,” Marjorie babbled.
“Cigarette?”
“Why, yes, yes, thanks.” Her hand shook as she took the cigarette, and her puffing at the flame of his lighter was sickeningly long and inexpert.
“Strike the set,” Airman said to Ringel, as she puffed. “It’s okay.”
The lights came on again. He went to the piano and called Karen to the apron of the stage. “Couple of things, dear, in the chorus—listen.” The rehearsal pianist leaned against the footlights, stolidly puffing his pipe. Airman’s long black-clad arms and arching thin fingers danced back and forth on the keyboard; he threw his head back, nodding and shaking it vigorously as he sang. He was a far more exciting singer than Karen, thought Marjorie, and he obviously played better than the pianist. She whispered, “What else can he do, for heaven’s sake?”
Marsha said, “Well, let’s see. Plays better chess than Carlos, and Carlos is a club player. Sings and plays whole operas by heart: Mozart, Verdi, in Italian. Knows about seven languages. Knows more philosophy than any prof alive. That’s what he really wanted to be, a philosophy prof, or so he says. You never can tell when he’s serious. History, literature, art, it’s all at his fingertips. But you’d never know it until some phony highbrow starts up with him. Then he shrivels them like a flame-thrower. Oh, just incidentally, he’s the best dancer alive.”
“For heaven’s sake,” Marjorie said, “there’s no such person.”
The cigarette was embarrassing her. She was afraid to inhale because it made her dizzy, and afraid to puff smoke out of her mouth because she felt that looked adolescent unless it came gray from the lungs. So she exhaled through her nostrils, but it stung her nose terribly. As soon as the cigarette was burned halfway down she crushed it out with her toe.
The boy Wally appeared at her side, holding out a gold case. Marjorie had seen him on the spotlight catwalk a second or two before. The apparition so startled her that she accepted another cigarette. He grinned happily as he lit it for her. Lank black hair hung to his eyes when he leaned over. He had a high bulging brow, hollow cheeks, and a big nose, and his eyes gleamed with a peculiar mournful keenness behind the glasses. But the most striking thing about him was immaturity. It seemed to be fuzzed all over him like a chick’s down. Every gesture was awkward, every expression too eager. Marjorie had stopped bothering with this sort of smudge-eyed pimpled lad more than a year ago. “Your first visit to South Wind?” he said.
“Mm,” said Marjorie, looking at the stage. She drew on the cigarette and grimaced. It tasted like a cough drop.
“Mentholated. Hope you don’t mind,” said Wally.
“Not at all.” He made her feel as calm and superior as Noel Airman made her feel small and flustered. She looked him full in the face, smiling. His Adam’s apple jerked. He muttered, “Well, they’ll be screaming for me backstage,” and ran off.
Musicians in white coats and black ties began to straggle into the hall with their instruments, mounting the bandstand in a far corner. Airman left the piano and came to Carlos, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside Marsha. “Carl, the thundering herd will be here in a few minutes. We’re in good shape. Let’s call it and have a few beers.”
“With pleasure.” Carlos rose, taking Marsha’s hand.
Airman smiled at Marjorie. It was a wonderfully warm, intimate smile; it seemed to say that Noel Airman and the person he was smiling at were equals, rather better than most people, and sharers of some secret knowledge that was at once ironically amusing and a little melancholy. “Won’t you join us, Marjorie?”
She was enchanted with the Sirocco Bar, as with everything at South Wind. It was a narrow room running along the lakeward side of the social hall, decorated with fish netting, coconuts, seashells, and paper palm trees, and lit with murky amber light from tortoise-shell lanterns. Broad plate-glass windows looked out on the rainbow fountain and the lake. A late orange moon was rising, and on the black water the lights of the swimming dock were reflected in long rippling red and green streamers.
Airman took his beer to a little red-lacquered piano and played Broadway show tunes and old South Wind songs. Marjorie sat among the show people in a crowded cubicle, listening to Airman, and at the same time, despite herself, eavesdropping on the salty South Wind gossip. The guests were swarming across the lawn toward the social hall. She could hardly keep from laughing at the epithets the staff used in referring to the guests: the cattle, the peasants, the thundering herd, the lynch mob, the locusts, the Jukes and Kallikaks. For the women guests there were special names: the dogs, the beasts, the witches, the sacks, the pigs. Contempt is such a contagious feeling that within an hour Marjorie was also regarding the guests with scorn, though at first they had seemed to her a rather attractive crowd of young adults.
She was thinking that she had probably never had a better time in her life—Airman at the moment was playing and singing his hit song, It’s Raining Kisses—when Marsha tapped her arm and pointed through the window. “Cheese it.” The little man in white knickers was wobbling across the lawn directly toward the bar, swinging his flashlight.
“Oh God,” Marjorie said.
“Come with me.” Marsha led her out through the social hall, where dancing couples filled the floor, to a dark porch in back overlooking the lake. “All we have to do is lay low here for a few minutes. He never stays long in the bar, he has an ulcer.”
Marjorie was surprised at the brisk wind whipping across the lake, and the black clouds tumbling in front of the moon. She glanced at her watch; it was ten past twelve. “Maybe we’d better go back—look at the weather—”
“Are you nuts?”
“It’s late—”
“It’s barely midnight, puss. We’re here for some fun.”
“I’ve had enough for one night. It’s been wonderful. Come on, before the lake gets too rough.”
“No.” Marsha’s lip was lifted and she looked very unpleasant, all at once.
Marjorie said with a qualm of loneliness, “Well, when do we go back?”
“Oh, later.” Marsha glanced toward the bar. “Okay, I think the coast is clear.”
“But if Greech—”
“Good grief, are you fourteen? I’m not going to dodge around the whole damned night, you know. Can’t you handle yourself with an old baloney like him? Just tell him he’s a good dancer or has a nice tan, and he’ll swoon with pleasure. Or else do as you damn please. I’m going to the bar.” Marjorie followed, of course; she was in Marsha’s hands.
Wally was playing the piano now, his lips pursed, his brow wrinkled in concentration, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. The sounds he made were thin, heavy-handed, and tinkly after Airman’s expert jazz. Nobody was paying attention to him. Greech wasn’t in sight. Ringel quickly pulled up two chairs for the girls.
Noel Airman, at the head of the table, was sipping a highball and arguing with good-natured authority, against everybody else, that Cole Porter was the best living songwriter. The girl who
had done the jungle dance objected that Porter was precious.
“Precious!” Airman said. “Of course he is. Who was more precious than Gilbert, the best of the best for all time? My dear girl, popular songs are light verse. Light verse is a precious form. Before it can flourish there must be a leisure class to support it, refined, easily bored, with a taste for nuance, and—”
“Hell, Noel, the leisure class in this country doesn’t support popular songs,” Ringel said. “What do the capitalists care about jazz?”
“Capitalists! Carlos, you’re haunted by Marx. The capitalists have no leisure whatever. They all kill themselves with scheming and worrying to make more money. No, the leisure class that supports popular songs is the high school and college kids. It’s a transient class but a solid one, several million strong. It lives off the sweat of parents just as callously as the French aristocracy lived off the sweat of peasants. Eventually they marry and they’re gone, but the new crop keeps coming along. And so—”
“Precious and popular are contradictory words,” said the dancer. She had a pale face and black bangs. “We’re talking about popular songs.”
“True,” said Airman, with his peculiarly gracious and winning smile, “but we’re also talking about excellence. The most popular verse in English, so far as I know, is
A man’s ambition must be small,
To write his name on a privy wall.
It’s much more popular than
What is love? ’Tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter…
Nevertheless it’s not as good. It’s doggerel, honey, not light verse, you see. Most popular songs are doggerel—vulgar or stupid or pleasant or ingenious, as the case may be. Porter writes light verse.”
“What would you call Moon Madness?” the dancer said.
“Why doggerel, of course, trash of the worst sort. But please remember I wrote it in about three minutes when you and Bert showed up with that jungle dance. I can do slightly better.”
He slouched very low in his chair, with one arm hung over the back, making his points with short graceful gestures of a lean hand. He spoke with conviction, yet with a gentlemanly lightness, almost a negligence, as though to cancel any tone of dogmatism or intentional smartness in his words. His pronunciation was free of New York tones. If anything, it had a slight British fall of pitch and slur of r’s, but it seemed entirely unaffected.