Gay Place (39 page)

There were two editorials from the magazine that had sent John Tom south. They described how it was with a brave man dying, going after the news in the best tradition … A great loss …

“Crap,” Neil said aloud, and then thinking: John Tom … I’m really sorry as hell. But you have to understand the great soggy heart of the profession. They give you all the glamour and significance of some young pilot going down in flames over France and composing a sonnet in his head on the way … Journalists! They got clabber for brains. Operating with all the logic of Harold Bell Wright … John Tom you would’ve puked. If you’d lived to read your obits.

“Goddam!” he said aloud. “Crap and B.S.!”

“What an awful way to talk,” said the girl from behind him.

He turned toward the voice, still holding the clippings, the more seasoned phrases of contempt poised inside his head. She had not really startled him, but now her appearance caused his pulse to lurch, as from sugar going to the brain. She was dark and sloe-eyed with hair the color of those burnished woods that shone along the walls of Arthur Fenstemaker’s office. She was smiling and seemed to find his presence in the room nothing out of the ordinary.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Excuse me.”

“Just words,” she said, still smiling. “If you had said bloody or perhaps the same thing in Arabic or Hebrew, I might have been surprised. No matter how well one learns another language, though, it’s still just words. The vulgarisms don’t have any real impact.”

“You must be Elsie,” he said. There was no trace of accent in her speech, but he knew this would be the girl Andrea had written him about. She had gone to work in the store earlier in the year, and he had been in touch with the State Department in her behalf. She was an exchange student at the college who did not want to go home. Her father was an English Jew, her mother an Egyptian; they were a Christian family living in Palestine and never quite accepted among either Israelis or Arabs. “… a very sweet, confused young girl,” Andrea had written, “who feels as if she doesn’t belong anywhere … But she’s wonderful in the bookshop and you must help her get a permanent visa …”

In the gloom of John Tom’s office she did not seem particularly confused, however. Sweet — yes — and extraordinarily, darkly beautiful, but there was nothing in her manner to suggest her feeling anything but immediate comprehension and self-assurance. The old loft groaned around them as he stood gaping at the girl.

“Yes,” she said. “Some of the girls at the sorority house where I’m staying think I ought to change it to Elise … More words … I really don’t understand the difference …
Elise … Elsie
…? And you’re Neil? Senator Christiansen, I mean.”

He nodded.

“I appreciate all you’re doing for me.”

“We appreciate your work in the shop,” he said.

“It’s a nice shop,” she said, looking around, as if examining the place for the first time. “In New York, two years ago on my first visit, I worked in a bookstore on Christopher Street. Do you know Christopher Street?”

“No.”

“I worked there for three months in the summer. It was nice, but not as nice as here. I would have liked to know your brother. His male mannequin thing over there fascinates me. And one night I had a party here and filled his terrible crystal punch bowl with orange juice and Smirnoff’s vodka and ice cubes. It was very successful and no one tried to steal books and I think we even sold a few …”

“It sounds like a wonderful party,” he said idiotically. “John Tom never thought of actually filling the punch bowl. He just liked to have it around …”

“It was quite nice. Several faculty members and some older students. I’m older than most, but there are some even more. I would like sometime to visit Washington. Passing through, it is a beautiful city.”

“Yes,” he said. “Sometimes it’s like the outside of an egg — about as interesting.”

“Like what? An egg?” She laughed at the idea. “I think I understand. New York City is like chow mein or some oily Middle East dish …”

Neil nodded. Did she realize they weren’t making good sense? The girl carried a sack from the Rexall’s down below. She set it on the desk and unwrapped a sweet roll. “Would you like some coffee? I have a whole pint of coffee.”

“No,” he said. “I’ve had coffee all morning. And I’m going to lunch in about half an hour. I’ve got to make a speech.”

“A speech? Where? May I go listen?”

Neil was pleased and a little astonished. He had a theory about the two kinds of people who inhabited his world — friends who listened to his speeches and friends who listened to recordings of Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber. Stanley was one of the few who shifted back and forth from one world to the other. John Tom had been another. But the girl defied classification …

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” he said. “A lot of people sitting around belching and me trying to be vaguely statesman. It would probably seem incomprehensible.”

“Oh I like speeches,” she said. “I’ve heard a great many speeches. In various languages.”

He told her where the speech would be. She sat across from him, absorbed in thought, nibbling on the sweet roll. She wore white sneakers without socks, a plain cotton skirt and a mannish-looking blouse with three-quarter length sleeves. Yet she seemed altogether feminine. She was full bodied, her movements easy and graceful, and he wondered if any of the young men in school were ever as shaken as he was at that moment by her exquisite face. Had she a lover? Who and how many and where were they now? What kind of speeches had she heard? He tried to picture her wandering around Washington Square in those white sneakers, staring at folk singers and bearded flits in desert boots pulled along by twin poodles; pausing and listening to endless harangues about Civil Defense alerts, sane nuclear policies, Zen Buddhism …

The girl finished her coffee and opened a textbook. Occasionally she looked up and smiled.

“Do you know German?” she said.

“No … None at all.”

“I’m studying German. By myself. I just bought a textbook and started in. No reason. I thought it might be nice to read Rilke’s poetry in the original German.”

That seemed a good enough reason, he told her. He wondered idly what foreign tongue he should study if he were ever to comprehend what everyone was getting at. Andrea, Stanley, old Fenstemaker, the dark girl across the room from him now and possibly his dead brother on occasion — what had they been saying to him? There were so many dialects, most of them unintelligible, and there was so little real communication. Did Berlitz have a course in mystic English? How to translate one’s own speeches ringing in the ears — those half-coherent interior monologues set to memory but never fully understood?

“… I was looking over these old notes of my brother’s,” he said, pointing to the clutter inside the desk. “Some of them were written just before he died.”

She smiled at him brightly, as if he were telling a wonderfully amusing story. He smiled back for no reason.

After a moment, she said: “Do you think I could find a job in Washington? I’d like to live there. I know several languages.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure we could find something. Soon as we make sure you’re not going to be sent home. How much more school do you have?”

“No more. I’m taking courses, but I can leave any time. I’ve been in college six years, in one place or another. I would leave tomorrow if the opportunity presented itself. Do you really think there would be something for me?”

“Yes,” he said. “I might even put you on our staff to translate my speeches.”

She stood and walked toward him. “Translate … your speeches?” She pulled a chair next to him. “Into what language?”

“English.”

“I don’t …”

“I’m joking … A joke on politicians.”

“Ah …” She did not really understand. But she sat there next to him, smiling, and he felt a sudden compulsion to reach out, to touch, to get through to her in some way.

Instead, not knowing how the thought got across his tongue, he said: “You’re lovely.”

“What?”

“You’re a beautiful woman.”

“You’re joking? Making another joke?” She continued to smile.

“Not at all. An understatement, if anything.”

“You’re very nice,” she said, touching his arm. “Thank you.”

He was going to kiss her then. He could anticipate the lumbering movements toward her and feel her dark face against his. There could be no awkwardness at such a moment; anything could happen in that intimate chamber misted in desire. But as these thoughts passed through his mind, the girl got to her feet and began wrapping books for shipment through the mail. She spoke without looking up.

“Why does Andrea stay here? Why don’t you live together in Washington?”

“… I don’t know,” he said after a moment. His voice was matter-of-fact, emotionless. What was he trying to say? What was she attempting to uncover? Were all of them doomed to a mere blind staggering, guided by random and unexpected flashes of perception? There was never enough light to see …

There was a sound of footsteps in the hall, and he bent down over John Tom’s notes. In a moment he would have to leave.

Stanley’s face appeared in the doorway.

“Hi. I thought I might find you here … Don’t ask me how come.”

“Stanley, this is Elsie …”

“Pivnik,” the girl said.

“… Stanley Elms. You and Stanley ought to get together. He knows all about translating political speeches.”

“Are you going to the speech?” the girl said to him.

“Yes,” Stanley said. “Now all we got to do is get the speechmaker to go to the speech.”

“I’m going,” Neil said. “Let me enjoy my last private, golden moments before the world caves in.”

“You want to know why I’m here?” Stanley said.

“Why are you here? Why do you come looking for me? Have they moved the election up to this afternoon or something? What is it?”

“Old Fenstemaker called me at the hotel. He said you ran out on him.”

“Was he mad?”

“No. Disappointed maybe. There were some moneychangers in his office and they wanted to look you over.”

“I know. Examine my teeth. Poke my ribs. Like a goddam claiming race. I didn’t feel like going through that on this particular morning.”

“Well you ought to call the old man. He’s been paying for all the oats.”

“I will.”

Stanley turned to the girl. “Sell me a book, Elsie,” he said.

“What would you like?”

“Something with pictures. Naked girls or Confederate dead. Cartier-Bresson … Matthew Brady … Bound volumes of
Playboy
…”

“We have a Cartier-Bresson,” she said. “And a Steichen.” She left to get the books.

“I love her,” Stanley said. “And I must have her.”

“All you need to do is get her a job in Washington,” Neil said. “Or you can take her around the world with you. She translates … In six languages.”

“I need only the language of love … Don’t look so put upon. We’ll share.”

Neil got to his feet. “I’d better run downtown,” he said. He paused at the doorway, smiled at Elsie as she passed. Then he spoke to Stanley: “You coming?”

“After while,” Stanley said. “I’ll be there.”

Neil moved out into the hall, passed an empty Christian Science reading room, and walked slowly down the narrow stairs. Coming out of the shadows, he was blinded for a moment by the sunlight. He stood in front of the drugstore for a moment; looking in at the boys and girls lined up at the soda fountain. One of the bobbysoxed girls looked back at him curiously. He shortened the depth of his vision then, and understood why the girl stared. The reflection in the drugstore window showed his dumb smile stretched across a face wet with tears. He turned, shading his eyes, and finally reached the car before anyone else noticed.

Get that young face of yours on the television, he said to himself, remembering Arthur Fenstemaker’s advice. On the way downtown he thought about the orators, the divines, the Great Caesars, the politicians through the years, across the dynasties of the Egyptian gods, the cult of Isis, the passion of Christ — all of them — the unfolding legends. He pressed the prepared speech inside his breast pocket as if assuring himself against its dissolving into thin air.

T
HERE WAS MUSIC COMING
in on the car radio, and he paused outside the entrance to the underground parking facility to listen for a moment. Then there was a honking from behind, and he drove on, the music fading as he steered the machine beneath the hotel and along a tunnel of polished tile and blinking red and green lights that resembled a hospital corridor. Would he never hear the last of that unfathomable melody? Would it haunt him all the day? An Easter-type song. He tried to imagine it sung in the manner of Abe Burrows. The music still hung in the fouled air of the tunnel. He caught another glimpse of his young face in the mirror, grinning barbarously, as a television pitchman signing off. He repeated the words of the song aloud —
I said a prayer and played the jukebox —
and the expression of fey content — the happy clutch of doom — stayed with him as he moved past the parking attendant and the elevator boy, through a crowd of slippered bathers heading for the roof, and a hive of white-badged delegates and expensive women bunched in the middle of the penthouse ballroom. They all stared back but did not recognize him, and for an instant at the head table he wondered if he might have strayed into the wrong convention. Or possibly even the wrong hotel. There was a man bent down over a stack of cue cards who could have been a guest speaker, but then he turned and faced Neil, smiling and extending his hand, and identified himself as the master of ceremonies.

“Senator — we were all disappointed you missed the milk punch party.”

“The what?”

“Well actually it was highballs. But so early in the day and the ladies and all — we tried to play like it was something else.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” Neil said. “I got tied up. Unavoidably.”

The master of ceremonies certainly understood how
that
could happen; he understood perfectly. He was a tall, handsome man of about fifty, big-nosed and engaging, a kind of exalted Cro-Magnon species. He wore a tiny, flowerlike lapel ornament which Neil recognized as the Silver Star. God help me, he thought: my hero brethren. He also recognized the man as a former All-American football player from the thirties, but remembered him even more distinctly as an indefatigable lobbyist for veterans’ bonuses several years before in the Legislature. He remembered the proposition — $500 for a vote; seven-fifty for working over one or two colleagues — and he wondered if the fellow remembered him. Probably not. Surely there were some others that year who must have told him to go screw himself, in precisely those words or even worse. There had to be — there had been enough votes, at least, to get the bill sent back to committee for study. A long goddam painstaking study …