Frank asked, "You understood, didn't you?"
Joyce nodded her head. But that wasn't what she had meant. "Safe ... Nobody bothers you ... Light up ..." But she was ashamed to ask any more questions, ashamed to reveal her ignorance.
The hulking buildings of the university towered dark and blank above them as they entered the bench-lined paths of Washington Square, and the greenery formed a dark tunnel over their heads. Don said, "Ain't Ginger over by the fountain?"
"Yeah," Jerry said. He took his arm from Joyce's shoulder. "You met my new chick, Frankie?"
"I think so. Ginger? Sure. Hey, Jerry, what happened to Bang Morley?"
"My old sax? Out!"
"Why? He was the greatest."
"Got on horse. I don't went nobody on hard stuff. Man that's dangerous. Junkie in the band with all that gauge around? Not for me."
"How's the new guy?"
"He ain't in the same groove. Got a different style like. But I dig him a lot more than Bang and all the time having to worry while he'd shoot the stuff. Man, I like to keep things cool." A girl, sitting on the concrete rim of the big central fountain stood up end came toward them, "Hiya, Ginger."
He went over to her and put his arm around her waist. Ginger had a light, almost golden skin, that glowed in the street lights. Joyce thought she was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen--for a colored girl. Then, after a moment, she amended that in her thoughts. Frank didn't think of people as colored or white, and--well, maybe she shouldn't. And, besides, Ginger was more beautiful than anyone she had ever seen.
They crossed the great open space of Broadway and sat down on a bench in the shadows of the trees.
Jerry pulled a cigarette case from his pocket, opened it and handed it to Ginger, who took one. Then he passed it to Frank. "Going to turn on, man?"
"Why not?" Frank took a cigarette and held it up to his mouth. Joyce thought it looked a little thinner than cigarettes ordinarily did. Don took one and passed the case back to Jerry.
"What about your chick?" Jerry asked. "Don't you want to light her up?"
"I'll have one," Joyce said.
"Wait a minute," Frank said, as Jerry started to pass the case. "You know what that is?"
"No. I--you mean ..." Newspaper stories of jazz musicians floated through her mind. "Is it marijuana?" Her shocked voice startled them all to laughter.
Jerry said, "That's right, honey. That's the grass. It's the greatest."
Frank said, "Hey. Take it easy, Jerry."
"What's the matter, Frank? Will it hurt me?"
"No, honey. It won't hurt you. You haven't had any?"
"No. But ..." It was important that she fit in. Maybe Frank wouldn't like her, if she refused. Maybe he would feel she was too young for him to take out. And suddenly it was desperately important that Frank should feel well-disposed toward her. Now, with Tony gone, there was no one. And besides she wanted to do what Frank was doing--to bring herself closer to Frank. "No," she said. "But I'd like to try it. May I have one?"
Jerry looked at Frank questioningly. "It can't hurt her," he said. "Never did anybody harm."
"I know," Frank said, "But ..." He hesitated. "All right."
Jerry held out the case, and she drew one of the cigarettes from under the band. It was thinner than a regular cigarette. One end had a tiny, spiral twist, designed to hold the marijuana inside the thin paper roll. The other end was flattened, until only the paper remained. She started to put the spiraled end in her mouth.
"Not like that, honey. Watch me," Jerry said. He put the flattened end in his mouth, lighted the spiral with a quick touch of a match and without drawing on it When the tip was clearly aglow he drew the cigarette from his mouth. "Pinch a hole in one corner of the flat end with your nails--like this, and then press on the edge of the flat part so it makes a little hole." She followed his instructions carefully.
"Now, don't put the stick in your mouth. Make a mouth like whistling, and breathe in, holding it just in front of your lips." She did that, too, drawing in heavily. Suddenly the strong sweet odor, like burning hay, filled her throat and lungs.
"Don't cough, Joyce," Frank said. "The next puff wont seem so rough."
She drew again on the stick, more lightly, this time.
"Solid," Jerry said.
She took the stick down from her mouth. "What'll it do to me?"
"Maybe nothing," Frank said. "Some people it doesn't do anything to."
"But what's it like when it does do something?"
"There's only one thing charge does for you, honey," Jerry said. "It makes you feel good. That's all. Just good," He turned to Ginger. "This grass is great. The best. I dig it."
Joyce took two more drags on the stick, watching the little amber fire creep upward on the thin roll. The strange odor and unpleasant taste were gone now. It felt almost as though she were drawing very cold air into her chest. But nothing was happening. She said it. "Nothing's happening."
"Maybe it won't," Frank said, discouragingly.
"Will I do anything funny--I mean silly?"
"Of course not," Frank said. "It's not like liquor. You don't lose control or anything."
She drew again, still aware that it had no effect, then let her hand hang down holding the tiny cigarette. Suddenly she became aware of the night beauty of Washington Square Park. The cross atop the Judson church, glowing against the deep blue of the sky caught her eye, and the streetlamps against the facade of the arch. Each was a detail worth infinite attention. There was a faint, warm haze lying low against the ground, lending the whole park an atmosphere of unreality. Beyond the Square the lighted windows of a row of tall apartment buildings had a crystalline clarity--so clear were they that even from where she sat, nearly a sixth of a mile away, she could see well into the rooms, see the people moving about, see what they were doing.
It was as though every window of those huge apartment buildings were a stage on which a special performance was taking place for her benefit. Even the sky was richer and more velvety ease. How strangely wonderful and lovelier than any she had seen before, with deep-glowing blue stars--all warm and close and friendly--peering down at her. "God!" she said. "It's beautiful here." Then she remembered the stick and drew on it again. She turned to Frank, "But nothing's happening."
"Are you kidding?" he said. "No."
"Look around again. Here. Lean back against me." He put his arm around her shoulders as she sat on the bench and drew her close to him. Her skin was suddenly tremendously sensitive. She felt that she could count the individual strands of the wool in his sports jacket where it touched her shoulders. The warm breeze, more like July than May, caressed her skin, touched her instep, her toes, her ankles--slipped lithe fingers of air over her calves, fluttered her skirt and drifted upward over her thighs, passing over her stomach and chest like a sensual caress. Her body felt weightless, and her mind at complete rest.
Jerry said, "We got to get back for the next set, folks. You coming?"
Frank said, "We'll be along in a while."
"See you," Don said, and the three went off together. Joyce was hardly aware of their going, watching them as they walked through the archway of light formed by the trees. All they had become was part of the absolute, inutterable beauty of the park.
The important thing, though, was the feeling inside her--the wonderful, wonderful feeling. Now, as never before in her life, she felt safe, protected by Frank's arm about her. She snuggled closer against him, and his arm tightened responsively. It was like--like being in Daddy's arms, protected and safe and warm.
She turned, suddenly, and kissed Frank full on the lips.
6 ~ Compulsion
"What time did you get in last night ..."
The sharp voice tore at the lovely fabric of the dream, shredding it into smoky tissues.
"Did you hear me, Joyce Taylor? What time did you get in?"
Slowly, with deliberate insolence, Joyce let herself come awake. She stretched luxuriously and yawned, half-rising on the bed to lend herself greater ease. The covers fell away from her; and there was another, immediate shrill outcry.
"Why aren't you wearing your nightgown?"
"Aunt Priscilla, can't you leave me alone?"
"What is the matter with you, Joyce. You've been acting like a maniac, and you've had that Thrine boy nearly frantic--calling me at one o'clock in the morning ..."
"Oh! Tony."
"Yes, Tony," her aunt said.
"What did he say?" Joyce demanded, suddenly frightened.
"He didn't say anything. He just wanted to know if you had come home."
"What time is it?"
"Eight o'clock. Now tell me, what time did you get in last night?"
"Aunt Priscilla, I don't have the faintest idea. Does that satisfy you? Now I've got to get up." She started to scramble from the bed.
"Don't you dare get out of that bed. I'll get your robe for you. What will the neighbors think?"
"As far as I can see they won't think anything, since they can't see in. All right, give me the robe. I've got to hurry."
"And for what, may I ask?"
"I have an appointment for a summer job, and I have to be there at nine o'clock."
"Oh!" Priscilla Taylor was faintly mollified. "And how do you expect to hold a job if you keep this kind of hours."
"Don't worry," Joyce said. "I'll hold it all right." She was a little proud of the promptitude with which she had come up with this particular lie. Now it occurred to her that she could admit to working afternoons and Saturdays for the Courier preliminary to the end of the school year.
She showered and dressed as quickly as she could, coming downstairs to find her aunt sitting opposite the place on the table where Estelle had arranged her breakfast.
"I don't want any breakfast," Joyce said. "Just a cup of coffee."
"You sit right down and eat your breakfast," Priscilla said.
"All right." The fact was that she was almost starving. She remembered the huge meal she had eaten with Frank and Jerry and Ginger in the early morning before driving back to Paugwasset, and wondered if marijuana could have given her this voracious appetite.
After a while Priscilla said, "Do you or do you not intend to tell me where you were last night?"
"Oh, Aunt Priscilla, why carry on this way?"
"Have you been drinking?"
"No."
"Don't lie to me!"
"I don't care whether I do or not. But I wasn't drinking. You know I don't drink. You'd think from the way you talk I'd been doing something terrible, smoking marijuana or something." She suppressed the laugh that bubbled up inside her. The fact was that she felt particularly well this morning.
"I wouldn't put it past you," Priscilla said. "Well, if you won't tell me I'll just have to talk to that Thrine boy."
"Oh, all right. I had a fight with Tony yesterday so I went into New York last night with a couple of kids. We went to a late show at the Paramount."
"How did you go in?"
"Drove!" Her voice shrilled her impatience.
"Who with?"
"Charlie Case, if you must know--and his sister."
"Doesn't he have a junior license?"
"I don't know."
"Well, I'm sure he does, and he's not allowed to drive in New York."
"All right. Now I have to go." She rose from the table.
"Well," her aunt was weakening, "All right. But if you stay out like that again I'll just have to write and tell your father."
She caught the bus on the corner.
Frank Burdette came out of the front door of his house on Randolph Road wondering why he felt so much like a sinner. After all, looking back on it, he hadn't done anything wrong. What was there wrong with taking a girl to a night club. Nothing. And the marijuana? Nobody in all of history had ever been hurt by marijuana, at least to Frank's way of thinking. There were traps to the stuff, of course, as nobody knew better than Frank: psychological traps, the traps of getting to depend on the stuff to fill psychological needs--the way a person might get to depend too much on liquor or the movies. But there was all sorts of medical evidence to prove the stuff itself was harmless and non-habit-forming and that all the things usually said against it were no more than the meaningless nonsense of ignorance. Take the investigation once sponsored by New York's Mayor La Guardia, and that Academy of Medicine report ... Oh, anyway, anyway, that wasn't it. Not the grass.
No. The trouble was the girl. Something about her touched him and held him. And that could assume the proportions of tragedy. After all, she was just a kid. A beautiful kid, with a body like a dream and a mind that maybe threw off sparks like Einstein on a hot night--but a kid. He turned the key in the lock and went down the steps.
Still, there was something about the way she cuddled up close to you, as though she trusted you--depended upon you for protection--that kind of caught at your heart and made you feel strong and wonderful. But you were a married man. You couldn't let this kind of stuff go to your head.
No. The solution was to have nothing to do with her. But she was working on the Courier. Could you keep the relationship on a nice impersonal basis?
Of course, you could fire her. But that would be a rotten trick. After all, she worked there last year for Harrigan and she did a good job, and yesterday she'd shown she could continue to do one. There was no legitimate reason for canning her; besides, it wasn't her fault if Frank found her attractive.
He waved good morning to George Gernert who was watering his front lawn, and a second later to George Jr. who was watering a corner of the lawn right through his romper.
He called, "Hey George! Junior's sprung a leak?"
And George called back, "Not again! That's the third time this morning."
That was the way to handle things, Frank decided, throwing back his shoulders and inhaling the fine air of early summer on Long Island. Just be firm and responsible and careful and friendly. Never let it get beyond being friendly, because that would be a terrible mistake.
All right, now. That was settled. And here came the bus. Frank stepped out from the curb and the bus pulled up. He got aboard, deposited his money in the receptacle and headed toward the seats. There was only one empty seat and--by heaven.