Gay Place (7 page)

“Excuse me,” Harris said, setting his jaw and moving off in short strides toward the men’s room. He was actually a very attractive young man. He was out of law school by a year or two, and when he was not involved in someone’s political campaign, he worked in used car lots, selling on commission. It did not much matter where Harris found employment. His family had a good deal of money and could be depended on for generous contributions to anyone’s campaign for whom Harris might have a special affection at the moment.

The girl looked at the dancers on the slab for a time and then lost interest. She turned to Willie and said: “What did he say your name was?”

“Wilton England.”

“Wilton …?”

“Wilton
Jubal
England, matter of fact.”

“I thought he called you Willie.”

“Guess he did.”

“Willie England?”

“Yes.”

“Oh!”

“Hmm?”

“You’re the one with the newspaper,” the girl said.

“That’s right,” Willie said. “You read it?”

“Sometimes.”

“You shouldn’t bother.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a bore,” Willie said. “It’s like a prayer meeting.”

“I don’t think it’s so bad,” the girl said.

“I’m worn out from editing those awful ambivalent essays the faculty members send me. About the human situation and all. Even worse is having to read my
own
copy. Proofs. And corrected proofs. And corrections of corrected proofs. We’ve got lousy printers, but they’re sincere liberals.”

The girl smiled and said: “Feel better now?”

“No,” Willie said. “You like teaching?”

“It’s all right. “I’m on a fellowship — working on my master’s.”

“I’ll bet you’re brilliant,” Willie said. “I can tell about these things.”

“I was Phi Beta Kappa,” the girl said. “Would you believe it?”

“Sure.”

“But an absolute cultural vacuum. I really don’t
know
anything. All I do is memorize … You want something from memory?” She did not wait for Willie’s reply but started right in:

Come let us mock at the great

That had such burdens on the mind

And toiled so hard and late

To leave some monument behind,

Nor thought of the levelling wind.

Come let us mock at the wise;

With all those calendars whereon

They fixed old aching eyes,

They never saw how seasons run,

And now but gape at the sun.

Come let us mock at the good …

“And so on … See? That’s Yeats.”

She had spoken the lines without expression, running them past, uninspired, one behind the other like passing freight cars. She smiled brightly. Willie murmured approval. Harris returned to the table with George Giffen trailing him. Giffen sat next to them, his face twitching.

“Hey, you hear about Rinemiller, Willie?” he said.

Willie said, no, he hadn’t heard.

“Rinemiller’s runnin’ for the Speakership. Takin’ pledges already. I just pledged him my vote.”

“That’s real good,” Willie said.

“You know what I
think
about all the time?” the girl said.

“What?” Willie said.

“Rinemiller make one hell of a good House Speaker,” Giffen said. “Don’t you think so?”

“Yes,” Harris said.

“Sports cars,” Cathryn said to Willie. “I sit around grading themes in my office and my mind’s not on comma blunders or run-on sentences at all. I have little fantasies about riding around town in a red roadster with my hair flying, looking chic and adorable …”

“Like in the magazine pictures,” Willie said.

“Yes,” the girl said.

“You say you got a roadster?” Giffen said.

“No,” Cathryn said. “I say I
want
one.”

“I got a new Alfa,” Giffen said. “You want a ride in it?”

“Harris is my date, George,” Cathryn said. “But I suddenly find you irresistible.”

“Go ahead,” Harris said, gripping himself. “I’m willing to make any reasonable sacrifice to get Giffen away from this end of the table.”

“Come on … Come on …” Giffen was saying. He stood behind the girl and held her chair. She finally got to her feet. Giffen put his arm around her and kissed her neck. “Hey!” he said to her. “We’re good friends, hah?”

“Can I drive it?” she said to Giffen. She looked around uncertainly at her date. Harris continued to concentrate on conversations at the other end of the table.

“I’ll check you out on it,” Giffen said. “It’s Italian. You can’t beat foreigners for workmanship. It goes like a bomb …”

Cathryn and Giffen moved off toward the parking lot. After a few moments, Harris rose and moved down to the other end of the table. Willie sat alone, thinking about money.

There was an argument underway at the opposite end. Rinemiller, Huggins, and some of the others had ambushed a state senator who had been drinking with friends on the inside. It was like a gang war — someone from the enemy camp had wandered onto alien ground, and they were giving him a terrible time. Willie could hear most of it from where he was sitting. The older man was flushed in the face. He held on to his glass of beer and looked off into the trees. “You want a Soviet America?” he kept saying.

Ellen Streeter came round from the other end. “Hello, Harris doll,” she said. She looked at Willie. “You left me,” she said.

“It’s not true — quit demagoguing,” Willie said. “You just got taken over by a mob of admirers. One of them took my chair.”

Ellen Streeter smiled and touched his hand. He wondered if he ought to start dating her again. It was like high school, when boys and girls had crushes on each other from one semester to the next. Except that now the subject of his secret desire had developed faint wrinkles round her nice neck.

“Who’s your girl?” she said to Harris.

“Teacher at the college.”

“She has nice legs,” Ellen said. “You don’t see good horsy legs like that any more.”

“Don’t be unkind,” Willie said. “You don’t need to.”

“I’ve got to,” Ellen said. “Here that girl is already out of college and teaching — and I thought she was just some defenseless little freshman about to be seduced by Harris.”

“I will … I will!” Harris assured them.

“Harris is a real snake,” Ellen said. “You know that, Willie? He took me out one night and I was nearly deflowered. It all happens before you know it. He’s a snake — honest to God he is.”

“I’m passionate,” Harris said.

The two of them got up to dance, and Willie sat alone again. George Giffen and the new girl, Cathryn, returned to the garden, appearing almost simultaneously with Roy and Ouida. There was terrible confusion for a moment while introductions were made. Giffen leaned over and kissed Ouida. He explained how he had just taken Cathryn for a ride.

“Tell them how it goes, honey,” he said.

“Like a bomb,” Cathryn said. She thought a moment and added: “I forget how it corners.”

Harris and Ellen Streeter returned from the dancing slab, and there was another great shifting about while an effort was made to introduce everyone and find additional table space. When they were settled, Ellen Streeter sat across from Ouida and began to talk:

“I saw Earle today. I thought he looked a lot better.”

“Everybody saw Earle today but me,” Ouida said.

“You haven’t seen him yet?” Ellen said. “Heavens! You’d think a man would want to see his family the minute he got into town.”

Conversations sagged a little all around them; people left off in mid-sentence, struggling in the gathering silence to find words — any words — with which to crutch the moments. Even the inanimate world seemed to connive at focusing attention on the one clearly understood conversation at the table: one record expired on the jukebox and another was not immediately put to vibrating the evening air. Ellen Streeter went on: “I suppose you’re meeting him here, then? He told me at lunch he was coming out.”

Willie searched his empty head for some subject with which to engage Ellen Streeter in conversation. Roy turned in his chair and considered retreat to the men’s room. The new girl, Cathryn Lemens, not yet among the
cognoscenti,
was almost immediately aware, all the same, of unease at the table. She tried to think of something to say, but she could only join the others, mute and disabled, her mind gone blank even as concerned sports car capabilities. She looked at Harris, who was beginning to smile fiercely in anticipation. Harris had no favorites — it was just that he liked to go with winners, and Ellen Streeter at the moment seemed far and away ahead of the others. Alfred Rinemiller’s was the last voice going at full volume, and now even the intensity of his remarks began to flag. He ended one of his favorite political stories and attempted to begin another, but no one was listening.

“He’s coming here, is he?” Ouida said.

Ellen Streeter laughed with wonderful assurance. “Oh yes,” she said. “Did he tell you about his plan?” She looked at the others. “Earle wants to have a tennis tournament while he’s in town. Out at the ranch over the weekend. He was calling it the Egghead Mixed Doubles Invitational Tennis Tournament and Civil Rights Conference. He didn’t tell you any of this?”

“Not that I recall,” Ouida said.

“Well you’ll hear all about it tonight. He’s all excited.” She paused for a moment, considering, and then went on: “He’ll be pleased Roy brought you out — he’s been so busy all day.”

It seemed at first that Ouida was addressing someone else at the table. “I remember,” she said, “a really weird experience we had in Europe. Earle had fallen in love with this lady parachutist, and we were separated for about a month and we were talking about a divorce. So he called me for lunch one day and brought the girl. She was English and jolly and all and something of a bum. She talked constantly at lunch, patting Earle’s hand and giving me the business.
‘Dearie,’
she would say. ‘
Dearie,
I know this is terribly difficult for you, and I’ve been worried whether you’re having any fun. I mean are you really
doing
anything — alone as you are in a strange country.’ I tried to remember how all those brave women look in the television soap operas, and finally I said, ‘Oh, yes,
Dearie,
there’s lots to do. There’s the swimming and the tea dances and the parachute jumps and the Red Cross work, and of course there’s still Earle. Earle and I screw every Wednesday at noon …’ ”

There was a gasping for air all round the table, and then things started up again. A record came on and a singer whooped about the romantic problems of sixteen-year-olds. Cathryn Lemens began to giggle; Willie sat back in his chair, positioned in a half-sprawl, head lolling, staring at the treetops and smiling; Harris McElhannon laughed and beat the table with the palm of his hand and showed his good white teeth. Rinemiller began another story and George Giffen smiled wanly. Giffen had not quite understood the point of Ouida’s remarks, but he cared deeply for Ouida and knew enough to smile. Roy stared at Ouida for a long moment, grinning, vastly pleased. Willie still could not think of anything to say, but he succeeded in getting Ellen Streeter away from the table by asking her to dance with him. A waitress arrived and they all ordered steaks.

Ouida smiled back at Roy. “Let’s all dance,” she said. “Let’s do a mambo or the dirty boogie.”

T
HEY MOVED ROUND IN
the small space of the concrete dancing slab, holding each other lightly. Willie danced with Ellen Streeter; Roy with Ouida. Harris came along and asked Ellen if she would go out back and neck with him, and Ellen said she supposed she might, and Willie went to the tables and returned with the new girl named Cathryn. The music was harsh, thumping in their ears. Occasionally, they could hear Rinemiller’s laughter from across the garden. George Giffen skulked about the edges of the dancing space, telling himself this was the way life really was. They did some crazy steps and changed partners and then changed back again. They were all a little tight, stiff-tongued and slack-jawed; aggressiveness sagging into an uncharacteristic sentimentality. They changed partners again, perspiring a little in the warm evening air. Willie danced with Ouida; she seemed uncompromisingly happy.

“You and Roy …” Willie began.

“What?” Her warm breath was in his face, smelling faintly of spearmint gum and expensive cosmetics. The interruption muddied his thoughts, and for a moment he forgot what it was he had started to say. Then he remembered.

“… are my favorite people. All-time favorites.”

Ouida smiled and kissed him on the mouth. “Me too,” she said. “I am my all-time favorite. Then Roy, then you.”

“Am pleased,” Willie said. “Happy and content by that ranking.”

“Why is he so low-geared?” Ouida said. She had her eyes on Roy, but Willie had to ask to make sure.

“Who?”

“Roy —” she said, “how come he’s so low-geared?”

“We’re just good friends,” Willie said. “I never inquired about his gears.”

“I mean he could practice law or help in his family’s business or run for an office that would keep him busy the year round,” Ouida said. “Is he a good politician?”

“I think he’s pretty good,” Willie said. “It’s not a compulsion with him like with some of the really good ones. He practices law occasionally. He gets on the phone once a week and tells his brother how, at least, and he takes a case sometimes on holidays. He tried one last Easter. Or maybe it was Palm Sunday — I forget.”

He stopped talking and concentrated on the dancing. Ouida had her arm up over his shoulder and her hand touching the back of his neck: an intimacy which rendered him nearly inoperative. Harris and Ellen Streeter returned and began to dance: in the small space of the slab they constituted lethal objects. Harris barreled past Willie and Ouida, singing to himself: “Chantilly lace and uh prutty face an’ uh pony tail an’ uh
everthang …
” Willie and Ouida steered away from Harris and changed partners with Roy and the new girl named Cathryn.

Willie danced with Cathryn, taking her hand and placing it at the back of his neck. “Do that,” he said. He held on to her and they moved round the slab; he negotiated variations on the box step he’d learned in junior high.