The dancer said, “What exactly is the difference between light verse and doggerel?”
“The difference between a real apple and a wax one,” said Airman. “Or the difference between art and craft, if you will, or the difference between an actress playing Juliet on stage and yanking her girdle off in the dressing room. I’m being very fuzzy, I know. When a man spouts metaphors it’s usually because he’s having trouble with plain English.—Listen.” He sauntered to the piano. “Wally, stop abusing that instrument and let me at it.”
The boy slid off the stool without a word and shambled to the table, hands in pockets. Airman played Love for Sale. Then he went over it again line by line, pointing out the values of vowels and consonants at each turn of the song, showing the structure of the imagery, underlining the irony of the phrases. After that he began to play the most popular song of the time, a jigging ballad about a brokenhearted lover. He seemed to render it with all seriousness, yet soon everybody around the table was laughing. He emphasized the wrongly placed vowels, the cheap words, the grammatical errors, with faint elegance, and the contrast was killingly funny.
Marjorie laughed louder than anyone. She was transported with pleasure at her own acuteness in understanding Airman. She felt she had come into the circle of wit and charm in the world that she had always dreamed of. Airman was a fantastic being in her eyes. She found it hard to believe that she was sitting in the same room with this man, breathing the same air. She perfectly understood why women were as insane about him as Marsha said. She had no thought of flirting with him, of ever being any more to him than a blurry adolescent visitor. She would as soon have thought of flirting with a cardinal.
Wally got out of his chair and dropped into the one beside Marjorie. “Care to dance, Miss Morgenstern?”
“Well—a little later, do you mind? I love the way he plays.”
“Sure,” said the boy with deep gloom. “Plays like a streak, doesn’t he? I’m taking lessons.”
“You’ll get there, I’m sure. Say, have you seen Marsha and Carlos Ringel? Know where they are?”
“Gosh, no.” Wally hugged his elbow in a ludicrous unconscious caricature of Airman’s gesture. He held his head a little to one side like Airman too, but with an entirely different, ungainly effect, because his head was big and his shoulders narrow. “Maybe they’re dancing. If we took a turn on the dance floor we’d see—”
“All right,” Marjorie said with a weary sigh.
“Do you go to Columbia?” she said when they were shuffling among the tanned brightly dressed couples. Marsha was not in sight.
“Yes,” he said, surprised. “How—”
“You dance that way.” She did not add that his dancing was a stumbling parody of Sandy Goldstone’s style.
Airman was no longer at the piano when they came back to the bar. Two guests, a man and a woman, were on the piano bench together, playing Chopsticks. “Looks like everybody’s taken off,” said Wally. “Care for a drink?”
Marjorie’s watch read quarter past one. “Well—I guess I’d better, till Marsha shows up. Thanks.”
They sat at a table by a window. The floodlights were off; the night looked very black; the moon was gone. She noticed that the glass was smeary. “Lord, is it raining?”
“Sure looks it.”
At a quarter to two she was sleepy, angry, and full of loathsome suspicion of Marsha. Wally’s answers to her questions were growing feeble. “Another beer?” he said, in a lull of their makeshift talk about Broadway shows.
“No, no, thanks. Look, could you show me the way to Karen Blair’s cottage?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s go.” She was out of the chair and slipping through the door before the boy stood. Wet grass brushed her ankles, soaking her stockings. The air was full of an unpleasant drizzle, blown slanting by a strong wind.
Wally said in the darkness at her elbow, “You need a raincoat.”
“No, don’t bother.” But he led her around through the foyer to the gloomy empty auditorium, ran up into the stage, and returned in a moment with a yellow slicker. They walked out into the drizzling night, and her feet made slushing noises in her shoes. “I don’t envy you the canoe trip back,” Wally said. He stopped when they came to the trees. “You go about fifty feet and turn sharp left—”
“Well, come along.”
“I—well, I’d better not. It’s the girls’ side, they walk around with nothing on in those cottages.”
Marjorie smiled and held out her hand. “Thanks for being so helpful.”
“Helpful? I—” He seemed to choke. “Suppose you don’t find Marsha? Would you like me to take you back in a canoe? I’ll be glad to.”
“But Marsha’s bound to show up.”
He lit a cigarette with an odd furtive gesture, hunching over the flame to protect it from the drizzle. “Well, listen, you’re going to change, aren’t you? I’ll wait here. If Marsha hasn’t come by the time you’re ready I’ll take you back.”
“You’ll get soaked—”
“I am soaked. It’s warm. It’s very pleasant. Go ahead.”
The singers’ cottage was empty. To put on the orange and green uniform again gave Marjorie a turn of disgust, but she did so quickly. She was closing her bag when Marsha came in, streaming rain, her hair in streaks, a man’s tan raincoat over her shoulders. “Well, well, beat me back, hey? I looked for you in the bar.”
Marjorie busied herself over the clasps of the bag. She knew, though, that Marsha was standing still and staring at her. After a moment the fat girl threw off the coat, stretched and yawned. “Well, time to go back to Devil’s Island. This is the part I hate. Seems it rains half the time when I’m going back.—But it’s worth it, don’t you think?”
Marjorie swung her bag to the floor and walked to the doorway. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Where are you going?” Marsha stepped out of her skirt.
“Oh, not far. Wally Wronken is waiting in the rain to paddle me across the lake in a canoe. He wasn’t sure you’d show up at all.”
Marsha laughed lightly. “So, you wound up with Wally. Sugar bun, really, you can do better than that. Almost at random. Poor little Wally.”
“What’s wrong with Wally?”
“Oh, really, pet. That sad imitation of Noel he does, like a monkey with glasses. And he’s just a little young, don’t you think?”
“It’s sometimes an advantage to have a young date. They expect less.” She opened the door.
Marsha strode at her. “Just a minute, dear. In a bit of a temper, aren’t you?” Her tan flesh bulged like dough around the tight edges of her pink brassiere and girdle and over the tops of her stockings.
Marjorie said, “Am I supposed to ignore the fact that you vanished for hours?”
“Look, pet, I owe you no accounting for my time and you owe me none for yours. I don’t know what you’ve been doing with little Wally. I couldn’t care less. I brought you here to have yourself some fun. What you did with your time is no—”
“You and I were supposed to be here together—I thought.”
“I didn’t undertake to wet-nurse you through the evening, girl. Or believe me, I wouldn’t have asked you to come.”
How ugly this fat girl was in her straining underwear, with her lip lifted in the strange mirthless grin, Marjorie thought. “Where have you been, Marsha?”
“Are you sure you’d like to know?”
Marjorie felt a little panicky at the shiny staring look of Marsha. “I daresay I wouldn’t—let’s go back to camp.”
She turned toward the door, when Marsha’s hand grasped her elbow and spun her around. “No, just you wait a bit, sugar bun.” The fat girl was grinning openly. “What you’re apparently thinking is that I’ve been in bed with Carlos all this time.”
“Look, Marsha, I don’t want to—”
“Sweetie, when you grow up just a bit you’ll learn that it doesn’t take hours. I’ve been in bed with Carlos, all rig
ht, but just for the last half hour or so. Fun, too. Do you mind so terribly much?” She stared at Marjorie’s blank face impudently, yet there was something sad, something wistful in her expression. “The rest of the time we were at a drunken brawl in one of the staff bunks. I knew it would offend your tender sensibilities, that’s why I didn’t drag you along. Is it all clear now?—No comment? Well, dear, I’ll tell you one thing more and we’ll consider the subject closed. His wife is a monster, see, a psychotic white-haired hag. He’d marry me in a second if his wife would die or get a brainstorm and let him go. I cried myself to sleep for months on end because the hag wouldn’t divorce him. And now, d’you want to know something, I’m beginning to be glad. Carlos is all right, but I’m not at all sure I want to marry him.”
Marjorie could hardly look at the other girl. The conversation was weirdly dreamlike—Marsha in her underwear in the bright light in the strange room, rain clattering on the roof, herself in Klabber’s green bloomers and orange blouse, her eyes smarting for sleep, her whole body trembling. “Marsha,” she said with difficulty, “I’m not sophisticated, I know, but it’s wrong, isn’t it? I mean, he’s a married man, and—”
Marsha uttered a foul obscenity. Then she laughed in a surprisingly good-humored way. “Oh Lord, now you will think I’m depraved.” She dropped on to a bed, and her look was quite friendly. “I’ve been so careful with my language around you, too, haven’t I, now? Honey, all I can tell you is, you’ve got so much to learn that I pity you. Really, your folks have given you a terrible upbringing. You seem to live in some pink-and-white dreamworld where all the men are Galahads and all the girls are lily maids of Astolat except they eat kosher food. Margie, you’re an infant. The world is all like South Wind, just a lot of eating, maneuvering, guzzling, and fornicating, and everybody is like me and Carlos, loused up, grabbing what fun we can. Nothing matters as much as it seems to, sugar bun, believe me—nothing shakes the world, it just goes on and on in the old ways.”
There was a heavy rush of rain on the roof. Marjorie said, “Wally’ll drown. I have to go chase him off—”
“Sure, do that. Carlos is waiting for us in the boathouse.” She added as Marjorie opened the door, “I hated to shock you, baby, but really, it had to come sooner or later, and I think it’ll do you good.” She had wriggled swiftly into the camp costume. She stood now under the electric bulb in her baggy blouse and bloomers, her arms akimbo, a forlorn puckish smile on her face.
She looked like an overgrown schoolgirl, Marjorie thought. It was impossible to connect her with the grand conception of adultery. Marjorie’s irritation melted in an impulse of pity. She said, “I’m shocked, yes. It’s all new to me. And he’s—he’s old, Marsha, you know. But it’s none of my business, and—come on, aren’t you about ready? I’ll wait.”
They arrived back at Tamarack soaking wet, and nauseous from the tossing of the wind-whipped water. Marjorie climbed the hill to her cabin with lead-heavy limbs, dried herself, fell into bed, and slept till noon. The sun blazing in her face woke her. She sat up, blinked at the light, and peered out of the window; and she saw, on the far shore of the azure lake, the lawns and towers of South Wind, green and golden in the sunshine.
PART THREE
Sodom
Chapter 12. WALLY WRONKEN
Maxwell Greech sat in his New York office on a gloomy afternoon of the following March, going through his accumulated mail, mostly bills. Scrawled on his calendar of appointments were two names:
Wally Wronken
Marjorie Morningstar
Though a noisy steam radiator kept the narrow room roasting hot, his neck was wrapped in a worn brown muffler. Outside the rattling window snow whirled, seagulls screeched, and steamships slipped past the Statue of Liberty with melancholy howls. Greech had leased this office in a tall old building overlooking New York Bay in his early years as a lawyer. He had drifted into the managing of South Wind as a result of the bankruptcy of its first owners; now he had all but abandoned the law, and the camp was his career, his passion, his life. Everybody at South Wind hated him, but he loved South Wind.
Bored by the mail, he glanced at his calendar for the afternoon, and grunted with glum pleasure. Greech had encountered some tough opponents during the morning—a wholesale butcher, a delegate from the waiters’ union, the mortgage manager of a bank—and he looked forward to the relaxation of breaking a couple of butterflies. He flipped a switch on his desk. “Anybody out there yet?”
The speaker answered tinnily, “Wally Wronken just came, sir.”
“Send him in.”
In a blue overcoat flecked with melting snow, clutching a pigskin briefcase, Wally looked older than he had in the summer; but not old enough, Greech decided at a glance, to give any trouble. The boy said he wanted to be a writer this year, not a mere stagehand. Eagerly he pulled his new credentials from the briefcase. There was a clipping from the Columbia Spectator:
Wronken Varsity Show
Chosen by Judges
also a program of the show, with a full-page picture of Wally, pale and owlish and seeming about fifteen years old. Some of the comic songs he had written were reprinted in the program. Greech looked them over; they were surprisingly smooth and clever. “Well, well, this is all fine, but a college show isn’t a South Wind show—”
“I realize that, Mr. Greech, but honestly, I wrote this whole show, book and lyrics, in three weeks. Noel will probably have to throw out a lot of my stuff, but I’ll write tons, tons!”
Greech pursed his lips and shook his head. “Now, Wally, I don’t doubt that, but trouble is, I need an assistant stage manager on the lights and props and all, same as last year, and I don’t need a writer. I’m up to my belly button in writers.”
“Why, I’ll do the lighting, Mr. Greech, and all the rest too, that won’t bother me, providing it’s understood that primarily I’m working as a writer—”
While he spoke Greech was pleasurably calculating that he could now do without the sarcastic sketch writer, Milt Quint, who cost him two hundred dollars a year. Wally obviously had enough talent to write skits. He said sorrowfully, “Well, no, Wally, I’m afraid it’s impossible.” He waited a moment to let the dejection deepen on the boy’s face. “Fact is, have to let you in on a little confidential secret, I’m not even hiring Quint this year. I’m planning to use old show material. I can’t pay a writer this year, that’s the point.”
“Oh.” Wally paced, hugging his elbow. His look became very sad. “You can’t pay anything at all?”
“Nothing.”
“But—well, frankly, I knew I wouldn’t get as much as Quint, but—I don’t know, can’t you even pay fifty dollars?”
“I can’t pay fifty cents, Wally.”
The boy sighed, picked up his briefcase, and put the papers back into it. Greech had a moment of worry. At fifty dollars Wally was a bargain. He said, “It isn’t that I don’t admire your progress, Wally. Those songs are fine. Looks to me that we have a big South Wind writer coming along in you, maybe a big Broadway writer.” Gratitude and delight shone on Wally’s face. “For all I know, if things get better next year and you have the experience of one season under your belt, you may be worth two hundred to me easily. Or three hundred or a thousand. After all, Noel isn’t going to direct South Wind shows forever. In fact I’m lucky to have him this year. He’s outgrowing us. Grooming the next social director is what I’m mainly interested in—”
Wally burst out, “Look, I’ll work for nothing. Provided that my official title is writer, and that I sleep in the writers’ cabin this year, not with the caddies.”
Greech picked the big flashlight off the desk—it was his trademark at the camp, his mace, and he kept it in the city office half as a joke and half as a token of his majesty—and slapped it against his palm, staring out of the window at the whirling snow. The radiator hissed and the windows rattled. “You’ll do everything you did last year around the stage—lights, props, and such?”
“Yes.
Can I—will you pay my railroad fare this year? Seeing I’ll be doing all this writing, too—”
Greech smiled and held out his hand. “Well, Wally, we won’t quibble about details. You’re in the writers’ cabin. If you work out as a writer, why, come in and see me at the end of the season about the fare.”
Wally smiled uncertainly, shook hands, and left. Greech put the flashlight down with satisfaction. Not a bad interview; at the price of a cot in a staff bungalow he had a writer for the season. It was not even going to cost railroad fare.
Coming out of Greech’s office, Wally was amazed to see Marjorie in the waiting room, sitting bundled in a beaver coat. She was much prettier now than she had been in the summer, and he had thought her then the prettiest girl alive. “Gosh, hello! Aren’t you Marjorie—Marsha’s friend?”
She smiled, a little nervously. “I’m Marjorie. How are you, Wally?”
“Fine! Glad you remember my name—Say, what brings you to the gates of hell?” He dropped his voice, glancing at Greech’s stenographer.
“I’m trying for a job as an actress.”
“Why, that’s great—that’s marvelous! Hope you make it. I’m going back this year. I’m going to be a writer.” He said it with exaggerated nonchalance.
“I thought Noel Airman wrote the shows—”
“He writes the songs, mainly. Also occasional skits. There’s always been at least one skit writer. Sometimes other songwriters, too—”
“Is—ah, is Noel coming back this year?”
“Noel? I guess so. He has this musical comedy, Princess Jones, that may get produced—but not this summer, I don’t think. Say, can’t I see you some evening? Are you in the phone book?”