Gay Place (17 page)

“No … There’s plenty here.”

They walked into the kitchen. Ouida found the bottles; Alfred struggled with the ice trays.

“Early in the morning,” Ouida said, “the man comes to fix the automatic icemaker. It always freezes up when there’s no one here …”

“The house looks fine,” Alfred said. His voice banged around inside the kitchen, sounding idiotic. He tried to get control of himself and think of something to say.

“Did you have much to do?”

“The help was here till an hour ago,” she said.

“They’re just down at the bottom of the hill?”

“Yes,” she said. “Just down the hill.”

They sipped their warm drinks and looked at each other.

“Since you’re the first,” she said, “you can have the pick of the rooms … On the boy’s side of the house, of course.”

“I thought being first would entitle —” Rinemiller broke off midway, changing his mind; he searched his head desperately for something else with which to complete the statement.

Ouida did not seem to notice. “Get your bag and I’ll show you around upstairs,” she said.

“… Entitle me to more priority than that.”

What the hell? he thought. If she didn’t want to play this particular game, he should think of something else. Their conversation had always bordered on the ribald, anyhow. After a couple of drinks they’d both be able to ease off and accept one another.

They climbed the stairs, paused for a moment next to the balcony rail, looking down the well at the great center room. “Who was it swung out on the chandelier that night?” he said.

Ouida thought a moment, trying to remember. She shook her head. “I recall the face — a friend of somebody’s. See up there …? The bolts are still pulled halfway out. It’s a wonder he didn’t kill himself.”

“Earle had to pull him back to the rail with the net from the swimming pool.”

Ouida laughed. “We should’ve left him hanging there. Had him stuffed and bronzed. You know? Like baby shoes.
There’d
be a conversation piece.”

They moved in and out of several bedrooms. “This one’s fine,” Alfred said.

“No towels,” Ouida said, looking about the room. “Go ahead and unpack. I’ll get some.”

She left the room and walked down the hall, circling round the balcony and reaching her own room at the other end of the hall. She looked at herself in a full-length mirror and then sat at her dresser and applied fresh lipstick. This, she told herself, was doing a
lot
of good. She looked at herself, make-up half applied. Am I going to discourage Alfred by making myself pretty? No, she thought. But at least she
felt
better.
Damn you Roy.
She said it again.
Damn you!
This could all have been avoided if he’d only … And now there was the problem of keeping Alfred off her spoor for the rest of the night. And probably the morning. Perhaps the whole hideous weekend. I’ll swing, she said to herself, out on that chandelier. And hang there all night long. She finished applying her make-up, humming a few bars of an old song, found some towels and walked back toward the other end of the house.

Downstairs again, they mixed fresh drinks. This time Alfred poured the whiskey and made it doubles. Ouida stirred ice with her finger, put the glass to her lips, swallowed and made a face. But she did not protest. I’ll need it, she decided. Get little tight, think something.

They sat on one of the big sofas and listened to phonograph music, and it was not so bad — not really. It was rather pleasant for a fact. The thought made her feel better. They sat smoking cigarettes, their heads lolling from side to side, talking about some of the weekend parties of years past. Ouida began to talk perhaps too volubly about her early marriage. “God! he was something,” she said. “You don’t know. I was a sophomore and completely dazzled. He’d just graduated and he’d been everything — just
everything
— summa cum all that stuff, president of his club, a boxing champion. He’d even won the short story prize — he’d written this story, first time in his life, don’t think he’s written anything since, and won the college prize. He was a second lieutenant and on his way to Korea and we had met at this party during the holidays in New York. We had a week. My God! I felt like Susan Hayward and Edna St. Vincent Millay. There he was in that uniform, gorgeous, going off to write me sonnets and be killed. I got it in my head he
had
to leave me pregnant. I wanted to leave him something and he would leave me something. Fantastic. And you know Earle — he insisted we get married.
One week.
It was a lovely week, though …”

Rinemiller leaned sideways and kissed the corner of her mouth. Ouida held his hand and looked off toward the empty fireplace. “We were both just too spoiled and self-indulgent and nutty and incapable of forgiveness. Absolution.” She lay back in his arms, feeling a sense of great happy release. She had never in her life succeeded in looking at herself so objectively. It was wonderfully therapeutic — she thought idly of going to an analyst. She smiled, thinking next time she saw her priest they would have a cocktail together. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the feeling was gone, passed in the night, and she was plunged into melancholy; impatience and restlessness nagged at her, imperiled what little there was left in life of pleasure and tranquillity. It was all so damn tragic, she thought, and she began to cry …

Rinemiller had been battling lassitude and wishing he had not drunk so much. He pitched sideways for a moment and then struggled upward, holding on to Ouida, one hand on her breast, hoping he was not going to be sick. Her wet cheeks were against his for the first time, and he pulled back to look.

“Hey …” he said. He had been with women who cried, but he had never regarded Ouida as one of that sort.

“What is it?” he said.

Ouida sat up straight on the sofa, brushing at her cheeks with thin fingers. “Nothing,” she said. “Really. Excuse me a minute …” She walked very calmly up the stairs and down the hall to her bedroom. There, she blotted at her face with tissue and touched up her eyes with dark make-up. She stared at herself in the mirror for a time; her cheeks were scarlet, but the high color was growing faint. She walked across the room and sat on the bed and picked up the telephone. He deserved it, she thought to herself; it would serve him what for, or something, in kind, the selfish, low-geared … Just like Earle with his parachutes and lyric poems and aimless politicking all over the country. Even Alfred, sprawled out on the sofa downstairs, groaning about his future and how it was for him as a small boy, wanting to play Governor and do his lousy good works, all of them so sexy and panting and hirsute and trying desperately to palm off their manhood. Or find it. She’d tell Roy something all right — she’d give him hell. How’d he like to know she was spending the night alone in the big country house with none other than —

“Hello?” Ellen Streeter said.

“Hello,” Ouida said. “Hello? Operator … I think I might —”

“Hello,” Ellen said.

“Who is this?”

“This is Ellen. Who’s this?”

“Ellen who?”

“Jus’ ole Ellen. Who’n the worl’ could this be? Sounds like a divorcée of note …”

“Is Roy there?” Ouida said. “I’m calling Roy.”

“He’s here, but he’s occupied at the moment. Gone to the bathroom.”

“Well how long —”

“Oh not long at all. I shouldn’t imagine. Fifteen, twenny minutes. You like to hold?”

There was a silence. Each of them debated whether to hang up on the other. Ouida said: “What are you doing there?”

“
Me
? Doing
here
?” Ellen giggled.

Ouida was silent.

“Well I’ll tell you,
dearie
,” Ellen said. “You see there’s the swimming and the Junior League and the Cotillion in the fall and water skiing in the afternoons, and then of course there’s Roy. You remember that nice fellow, dearie? Roy? Roy and I screw just about every Wednesday noon …”

“… LILYAN TASHMAN,” ROY SANG
softly, staring at his strange face in the bathroom mirror, “was not kissed by an ashman …”

He relathered and pulled the razor across patches of dark skin. He rinsed his face and the blade. And the whiskers — they lay along the sides of the lavatory, trapped in soap film.
I will free myself,
he said, drawing more hot water, washing the whiskers down.
All worldly attachments … impulses … personal and egotistical …

Saying this, he dropped, one by one, razor, blades, powder, cologne, deodorant, mouthwash, vitamins, styptic pencil, lighter fluid, tincture merthiolate, glycerin suppositories, comb, military brushes — the works — into a wastebasket.

All of it,
he thought.
I shall keep my soul fixed on the Eternal Soul: performing my worldly duties without fear, hesitation, self-seeking or remorse. Divest. Disengage. Krishna, I am come. To stand on head and practice the Yoga. I shall find spiritual elevation. Shall brush teeth in an honest solution of salt and soda …

He shut off the hot water and emerged from the bathroom … bare-chested … disengaged … looked at Ellen Streeter for a moment, and walked into the small kitchen. He explored the empty cabinets, faintly strewn with dust. “Don’t I have any salt?” he said out loud. “Any bicarbonate?” He stood over the sink and looked through a small window at the dark water of the lake.

Ellen followed him into the kitchen. “You don’t have anything in here,” she said. “I was going to fry some eggs. No eggs. Not even a frypan.”

“All I want is salt and bicarbonate of soda,” Roy said, staring gloomily at the lake. “Pretty damn thoughtless of you to come visiting without a little something — little salt, little soda … Just a small gesture — but the kind that’s appreciated.”

“What do you want it for?” Ellen said.

“What? What indeed.” He turned and faced her, spread his lips and rubbed a finger across the enameled surfaces. “My teeth,” he said. “To brush teeth.”

“Use your toothpaste. I saw toothpaste in there.”

“Toothpaste,” Roy said, “is a worldly, egotistical attachment. The symbol of my fall into this state of helplessness. Salt and bicarbonate will release me from all that — clarify my understanding and make my true course clear …”

Ellen smiled and moved back to the front of the cabin. Roy thought a moment, went into the bathroom and retrieved his toothpaste from the wastebasket. He began to brush. He stared at himself in the mirror, touching his face, and then disinterred the shaving lotion. When he was finished, he joined Ellen on the rock porch that overlooked the lake. They sat in canvas chairs and smoked cigarettes steadily, commenting on the record music coming from a club on the far side of the lake. The music blended with the sound of water slapping against rocks and insects droning round their heads.

“What’s open this late?” Roy said. “Think of someplace and I’ll take you.”

“I’m not hungry,” Ellen said, “and there is still some beer in the refrigerator. If nothing else. Ever thought of brushing your teeth with beer?”

“Yes,” Roy said.

“And I’m not dressed to go out. Know what I’ve got on under this robe?”

“Lovely golden legs,” Roy said. “Worldly attachments …”

“Damp bathing suit. It’s going to give me sinus.”

“We could go swimming,” he said, swatting at insects.

“Only in the nude. Otherwise, the damp suit will give me sinus … Or does Ouida have exclusive rights on you in
that
department?”

“The bathing suit,” Roy said, “is a great allegory of man’s spiritual crisis. We keep wanting to crawl back to the sea, to get right with the Lord, achieve eternal union with God. But the bathing suits get in the way. Vain, self-seeking, worldly attachments.”

“I know where most men want to crawl …”

“Worldly impulses …”

“You’ve been making a spectacle of yourself — you know that?”

“Ventures and gains,” Roy said. “One has to run certain risks, defy the social order, to …” The cat came pacing across the concrete and sprang into his lap. “… if one expects to find the ultimate reality of Sam Luchow. Hah yew, Sam?” The cat looked up at him and then began to gnaw on his hand.

“She’s bankrupt — you realize that?” Ellen said. “I’m a bitch and all, but I
have
held on to a few values. Ouida’s worthless.”

He was silent, thinking.

“Is she better than I am? At … lovemaking? Is that it?”

He wished now he could have said he really wouldn’t know about Ouida’s capabilities. “Not noticeably,” he said.

“I’ve never asked you this before …”

“No you haven’t.”

“… but why is it you stopped coming round to see me? I’ve been dropped by others, with even less ceremony, but never by anyone who proposed marriage on one day and stood me up for a date on the next. I wonder about that sudden cooling.”

“You said no.”

“I was young and stupid,” she said.

“So was I.”

“You said you loved me. Change your mind in twenty-four hours?”

“No …”

“Then why —”

“Praise the world but never the inexpressible … I quote somebody … You can never impress the Angel with your splendid emotions. Show him some simple thing that has weathered until … I forget the rest. Snaf-snaf-snaf-snaf. Hem-hem. Hum-hum. Speak to him things. He’ll stand amazed … And so forth. How the hell can I express what’s goin’ on inside my head? I loved you — sure — maybe I still do …”

“Then why? I’d have gone on sleeping with you.”

“That’s unimportant …”

“It wasn’t to me,” she said. “You realize you were the first and there haven’t been any others since? You believe that?”

“Your reputation’s intact.”

“Oh balls.”

“Speak to me of things …”

“Roy …”

“Worldly attachments …”

“We made love twenty-eight straight days.”

“Count ’em — twenty eight.”

“Roy, for God’s sake …”

“And on the twenty-ninth day I rested. And proposed marriage. And you said no. So I packed and moved out here. To forget.”

“Roy, be serious for a minute and —”

“I
am
serious,” he said. “You know why I moved? Because people got in the way. Because there was a foul-voiced woman across the alley who kept saying goddam and goddam and throwing things at her husband and beating her kids. Because there was a fellow appeared at the garbage pile downstairs one day with a boxer dog, looking for rats. Killed thirty-seven rats so far, he told me. Hell of a dog. Crazy for rats. Stick around, he said — the boxer dog sniffing through the Kotex boxes — he’ll find a rat; stay and observe. There was this rich broad lived upstairs, stopped me in the hall one day and told me all about her trip to Mexico. The people, she said, were so wonderful and simple; they had a
verve
and a
zest for life
and a
joy de vee
that she was so completely simpatico
about.
It jus’ cast a
spell
! Because an old Negro woman stopped me on the street one day and asked for a quarter for busfare so she could get to the hospital to visit her daughter. Who was having her womb scraped. Her
womb
scraped! Because there were Mexican kids starving across town and all Fielding and Rinemiller and the others were talking about was how to force Fenstemaker to come out against the loyalty oath for chrissake. Because … How the hell do I know? Because I was a menopause baby and the only boy in the dorm at military school who hadn’t had a circumcision, and we’d made love twenty-eight straight days and you wouldn’t marry me and there was the Mothers’ March on Polio the next night and a debutante party the night after. How can I tell you why?”