Second Ending

1

The room was long and furnished with anonymity, a carbon copy of every other furnished room in New York City. There were two oversize windows at the far end of the room, opening on the brownstone front of the building and West Seventy-fourth Street. A long table which served as a desk rested before the windows. The windows were open now, and a mild spring breeze rustled the sheer curtains as he worked. The room owned a bed, and a sofa, and a chintz-covered butterfly chair, and a mantel and fireplace that had been bricked up many years ago. Opposite the windows, the room angled off sharply to enter into a kitchen and an adjoining toilet. There was nothing distinctive about either the room or its furnishings, except perhaps the two college pennants which hung one beneath the other between the long windows — the orange-and-black one from Princeton (the school he’d wanted to attend) and the lavender-and-white one from City College (the school he did attend).

He had trained himself to concentrate with the radio going, and this was a feat he usually accomplished except when he did not feel like concentrating, and he did not feel like concentrating tonight. He listened to the music, and he watched the fluid movement of the curtains, and he sniffed of the mild breeze, and for the fiftieth time that night he yanked his attention back to the notes.

Hell is a state of mind, the notes said — a statement he thoroughly agreed with at the moment. Milton converts state of mind to a place...

I’m getting groggy, he thought. I can’t tell Satan from Beelzebub without a score card. I don’t give a damn about either of them, and who cares whether or not Milton described the intimate habits of angels? Dr. Mason cares — that’s who, he thought. Dr. Mason cares deeply, and she’s searching for fellow aficionados.

When was the test, anyway?

It was important to know the date and the time of a test, wasn’t it? This could not be called procrastination. This was simply checking the facts. He flipped the spiral notebook closed, studied his own scrawling handwriting across the stiff cardboard-cover front. May 24, 1949 — 9:00 A.M. The 1949 was an affectation, an attempt to record the date of the test for posterity. Hell, everybody knew it was 1949. Or was that the way Dr. Mason had read off the date? Probably. Dr. Mason was a meticulous woman. Dr. Mason would brook no confusion concerning the date of a final exam. Dr. Mason would hear no excuses beginning “I thought it was 1950,” or “You didn’t make the year clear, Doctor.” No, no, Dr. Mason was a careful, careful scholar.

What had she said that time about Satan’s temptation attempt?

Now that had been a good one, and he couldn’t even remember which of the poems it had been in. The business about “Well, Jesus old boy, you’ve got to eat, you know.” And her brilliant reply: “You don’t have to eat!”

Well, not if you were Dr. Mason. Dr. Mason looked as if she didn’t eat much. She and the angels, back to the angels...

Where was I? he thought.

You were procrastinating, he further thought.

Ah, yes, procrastination. Did you know I’d written a pamphlet on the subject?

Come on, now, come on, let’s get back to the notes. Let’s not...

The phone rang.

He rose from the table and consulted the notes briefly, trying to commit a sentence to memory, thinking all he wanted for the course was a “C.” He was overcut, and a “D” would mean a flunk, and a flunk would mean a repeat next semester, and a repeat would throw his carefully planned three-and-a-half-year graduation schedule all out of whack. If Mason came up with a true-or-false or multiple-choice, he was saved. But knowing Mason, he was sure she’d drop some essay questions on their skulls, and good-by Milton, good-by graduation next semester — all right, all right, I’m coming.

He lifted the receiver. “Hello?” he said.

“Bud?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“Carol.”

“Oh, hello, Carol. How are you?” He dropped into the butterfly chair and made himself comfortable.

“I’m fine, thanks. Were you busy?”

“No, no, just... no, I wasn’t busy. What is it?” He was sure they would be essay questions. In Areopagitica, discuss Milton’s views on the censorship of ideas, telling why you agree or disagree with those views. 80 per cent.

“Andy’s with me,” she said.

For the remaining 20 per cent, compare Samson Agonistes with Paradise Regained, using... “What did you say?” he asked.

“I said Andy’s with me.”

“Andy?” he said. “I don’t understand.”

“He’s here with me. Now.”

“Oh.” He was surprised, and he was unable for a moment to grasp the importance of what she’d just said. His head was full of notes for the impending examination, notes he had read and reread and still not understood. He had a long way to go before the notes would become a working part of his mind and...

“Is anything wrong?” he asked.

“No. No, everything’s fine. Bud, he’s been off the stuff for a week now. And he’s got a job audition coming up. He... he looks fine.”

He wet his lips. “Is that right? Well, gee, that’s swell. Swell.”

“That’s why I’m calling you,” Carol said.

“I still don’t understand,” he told her.

“Well, he needs help, Bud.”

“Again?” he said sourly.

“No, he’s really sincere this time, Bud. He’s come a long way, believe me, and he doesn’t want to fall back now. He’s been with his folks for the past week, but he says they’re driving him crazy, and you know what happened last time.”

“Yes,” Bud said. He had begun tapping his foot impatiently, anticipating what was coming, and already figuring on a way of wiggling out of it.

“He doesn’t want to take a place near any of his old friends, either, for fear... well, they’ll find him wherever he is, Bud. You know that. It’s happened before. And if they... well, the point is, I was wondering... I know it’s a terrible imposition... but you do live alone, Bud — I mean you haven’t a roommate or anything — and he does need help, Bud, he really does, and this time he’s sincere about it all.”

“Is he under a doctor’s care?” Bud asked.

“No. You know how he feels about that. He—”

“A doctor is the only person who can help him,” Bud said, stalling for time. “When’s he going to realize that?”

“I think he can do it alone this time, Bud. Really, you should see him. The point is, I thought... This wasn’t his idea, Bud. In fact he opposed it all the way... but I thought you could put him up for a while. The audition is next week, and he thinks he can be in shape by then. It’s a good band, Bud — Laddy Fredericks, the one who—”

“You want an honest answer?”

“Yes, of course.”

“No.”

“He said you would say no, and I don’t blame you, Bud, if that’s the way you feel. But after he’s come so far, it seems a shame—”

“He’s come this far before, hasn’t he? You should know that better than I. He’s come this far, and then he’s slipped back again. What makes you think it’ll be any different this time?”

“I just know it will,” she said.

“Oh, hell, I’m in the middle of finals. How could I—”

“It’s not that you’d have to do anything, Bud — nothing like that. You see, he doesn’t need watching or anything like that. That’s why he wants to get out of his parents’—”

“Answer me one question, will you, Carol?”

“What’s that?”

“Why? Why the hell are you bothering?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said.

“Is he near the phone?”

“Yes.”

“I see. Where are you now?”

“At his house. His parents went to a movie. They... they left him in my care. That’s the whole thing, Bud. They don’t trust him at all. He feels like a prisoner, and this time he’s really determined to break it, so he shouldn’t have two strikes against him to start. Do you see?”

“Sure, I see. But I’ve got exams coming up next week. Jesus, Carol, did he have to pick—”

“Well, if you don’t want to...”

“It’s not that I want to or I don’t want to. It’s just that I can’t believe him, and I happen to be goddamn busy. What would you do in my position?”

“He’s your closest friend,” Carol said.

“Don’t make me laugh,” Bud answered.

“Well, it’s up to you,” she said, sighing.

“You’re really putting me on a spot. I’ve got a lot of studying to do, Carol. I’m graduating next semester, I hope. How can I... You said he has an audition coming up. Does that mean he’ll be practicing?”

“Yes, but he won’t bother you. He just wants to get his lip back in shape. He can use a mute.”

“Oh, hell, I don’t know.” He was silent for a moment, chewing his lip thoughtfully. “He’s right there with you?”

“Yes.”

“You could have called from outside, you know. Now I’ll look like a Grade-A louse if I say no.”

“It’s up to you,” Carol said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.”

“Now you’re getting offended.”

“No, no, it’s completely up to you. Honestly. What do you say, Bud? If it’s no, we’ve got to think of something else.”

“What’ll you do if I say no?”

“I’ll worry about that after you say it.”

“I must be crazy,” he mumbled.

“Bud?”

“Bring him over, bring him over. Damnit, I must be crazy.”

“I appreciate this, Bud. I really do.”

“You’d better be ready to explain it all to me, because I certainly can’t see why—”

“You’re on Seventy-fourth, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Give us about forty minutes.”

“All right, I’ll be looking for you. But I still can’t—”

“I’ll explain when I see you.”

“It better be good.”

“Forty minutes, Bud.”

“All right. So long, Carol.”

“Good-by, Bud,” she said, and then she hung up.

He replaced the receiver and stood staring at the phone for a long time. Idiotically, he tried to tell himself that the call had never happened, that he had dreamed the entire thing, that it was a combination of Dr. Mason and eyestrain. He had not seen Andy in two — no, almost two and a half-years. That was a long time — too long a time. And now he’d picked the worst possible moment to come back from the dead. Any other time but...

He remembered when he was twelve and had gone to confession the week before Easter. He had been full of religious spirit and had wanted to set things straight in the house of his soul. He had said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is one year since my last confession.” He had heard the sullen grumble through the screen, and then the priest asked, “It’s one year since your last confession?” He had answered, “Yes, Father,” and the priest exploded with “And you pick the busiest time of the year to come again!” The experience had shaken him deeply, a major link in the chain of events which had brought him to his current religious feelings or lack of feelings. But reflecting back on the incident in the light of what had just happened, he could understand a little of the priest’s feelings on the matter. It was all right to make a stab at self-redemption, but even salvation can wait a week or two. All right, Andy was trying to pick himself up, but couldn’t he have waited until finals were over? Life was all a matter of timing, by God, and Andy had certainly picked the wrong time this time.

Nor did he honestly believe that this time would be any different than all the other times he’d been told about. They all started with the same fervor, and then Andy always wound up right back where he’d started. The amazing part was that Carol had been taken in again. How had he possibly talked her into that? Why was she bothering? Hadn’t she tried to help him often enough over the past two years, God only knew why? And hadn’t she always been left holding the empty sack? So why was she bothering? Why...

For that matter, he thought, why am I bothering? How on earth did I get suckered into this deal, right smack in the middle of finals, aren’t finals important, too, isn’t my three-and-a-half-year plan important, isn’t it all relative, and isn’t my own damn salvation every bit as important as Andy’s? How, how did I get suckered into it, why couldn’t I have stuck to No, why did I let her talk me into it, why can she talk me into things like that? Friendship, sure friendship, throw the trigger word at me, ring the trigger bell and watch me begin to salivate, friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship, but there’s nothing as dead as last year’s friends. But it had been a good friendship, don’t belittle that, don’t shake the foundations of the universe, because you know it was good, you know it was something you’ve never found again, but who is this new Andy, is this the Andy who was your friend? Was he your friend two years ago for that matter, or had it all died before then? What can we talk about? What’s our common ground now? A dead friendship, is that what we’ll talk about? Can we discuss Milton’s angels? Shall we talk about metathesis? Or how about deferring to the guest and discussing the ratio of sugar to pure heroin in an average injection?

It would be murder. He should have said no. He should have said no and stuck to it, and that was that. But he hadn’t said no, he’d said yes, all right, all right, reluctantly, but yes, and they’d be here in forty minutes and the place looked like a filthy pigsty and Satan was leering between the covers of that spiral notebook, and oh hell, oh goddamnit to hell, anyway.

He began straightening the apartment.

He was immersed in Milton when the doorbell rang. He pulled himself away from the notes, resenting the intrusion because he’d finally achieved a high level of concentration for the first time that night. But the doorbell reminded him of what was ahead, and his concentration shattered like a piece of fragile crystal, and he cursed himself again and then shoved himself away from the table and went to the door, giving a last look around the tidied place.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“Carol,” she answered.

“Second,” he said. He unlocked the door, fumbling with it a little because he didn’t know how to greet a dead friend. What do you say? Hello, boy, how have you been? What the hell do you say? He got the door open, and he threw it wide, and his eyes went to Carol first, the way they always did whenever she was with another person. There was something compelling about her beauty, he realized, something that forced attention to her face. But this time his eyes did not linger. This time they touched her features lightly and then fled to the face alongside hers.

The face was smiling. The smile was a fixed one, and he studied the smile, and then he found the miniature white ring of muscle on the upper lip of the smile, and he grasped at the circle as a means of recognition, and then his eyes traveled upward on the face, using the muscle-ring as a nucleus. His eyes met Andy’s eyes. They were sunken and hollow, two deep pits of despair on either side of a straight, slightly flaring nose.

“Hello, Andy,” he said warmly. “How are you?” He hoped he had not sounded solicitous. He had tried to generate a warmth he no longer felt, and he hoped his voice did not betray the pity or the rich-cousin attitude he really felt.

“Come in, come in,” he said, and when they were inside the door, he extended his hand, and Andy took it in a firm grip, covering the clasp with his other hand so that both his hands were closed in embrace over Bud’s hand. He stepped close to Bud, and those fathomless eyes stared penetratingly at Bud’s face — liquid brown eyes with amber flecks swimming in them, large and round, circled with dark, sick-looking skin, receding dark-brown tunnels punched in the flesh of the face.

“Bud,” he said softly, “how are you? You look great, great.”

He did not release Bud’s hand. He kept holding it between his own hands, and he kept smiling the fixed, pasty smile and staring, staring so hard and so long that the eyes began to frighten Bud a little, like looking into the soul of a maniac, staring, staring as if he were trying to pick Bud’s face with his eyes. “Man, you look great,” he said, still holding the hand, still staring, staring until the stare became a probing, searching, relentless spotlight. And then he began nodding, the nod accompanying the stare like two burlesque performers in a soft-shoe routine, soundlessly nodding, while the pasty smile changed imperceptibly, changed to become a smile with meaning behind it, changed to become a derisive smile of self-mockery.

“And me, man?” he said softly, some of the mockery tingeing his voice. “I look great, too, don’t I?”

“You look fine,” Bud said, trying to sound sincere. He freed his hand and took Andy by the elbow. “Come on in.”

“Sure, great,” Andy said. “Carol, he thinks I look fine. Say, this is a nice place you’ve got here, Bud. You don’t know how much I appreciate this.” He stepped deeper into the apartment and looked around. “I was ready to flip with my parents. Well, you remember how it was. I don’t have to tell you. I really appreciate this, man. You’ve got no idea. Gee, it’s good to see you again. What’ve you been doing with yourself?”

Bud closed the door. “Oh, you know. Work, work, work.”

“You’re still going to school, Carol tells me. That’s a smart move, all right. I should have gone to school, Bud. I wouldn’t have fouled up if I’d gone to school. It’s all environment, you know, and influence that...” He stopped, as if he were unsure of what he wanted to say. A perplexed frown crossed his wide brow, and then he gave a tiny shrug and said, “Well, that’s the way it goes.”

“Can I get you something to drink, Andy? Carol? Anything? Why don’t you take off your coat?”

“Well, I can’t stay long,” Carol said.

“Here, I’ll hang it up.”

She took off her coat, and he asked her eyes a question, but she did not answer. She handed him the light duster, and he took it to the closet. He slipped it onto a hanger and then sneaked a look at Andy. He had changed a lot — not in a way that you could exactly put your finger on, except for the eyes, those eyes, but he had definitely changed. He had not expected so great a physical change. He had expected to see the Andy he had known as a boy.

“So how about that drink?” he asked, turning away from the closet.

“Nothing for me,” Andy said.

“Carol?”

“No, Bud. Thanks.”

He hoped this would not get difficult. It exhibited all the beginnings of a nice session in a funeral parlor. He hoped it would not turn into that.

“This is really a nice place,” Andy said again. “I certainly appreciate this. I’ll try not to get in your way, Bud. I mean it. It’ll just be for a week, anyway. Just until I take that audition. I’m almost okay now, you know. Did you know I was an addict?”

“Yes,” Bud said, thinking, Of course I knew. Are you kidding?

“Yeah, well I was. Pretty good, huh? Some end, huh? Did you ever think Andy Silvera would become an addict?”

“Well, no,” Bud said, embarrassed to hear him talk of it so freely.

“Me neither. Well, that’s the way it is. I look bad, don’t I? Tell the truth.”

“No, you look all right.”

“No, I look bad. You don’t have to lie, Bud. No, I mean it, it’s okay. I can still see myself in a mirror. Jesus, it’s good to see you again. Carol, isn’t it great seeing Bud again? Jesus, you don’t know what this means to me.”

“Sit down,” Bud said. “Take a load off your feet.” There was something very unreal about the whole thing. He tried to find out what was wrong with the picture, and he couldn’t pin-point it. But something was all wrong, the feel of it, the... the feel...

“No, I’d rather stand,” Andy said. “It’s better if I walk around. I mean, you don’t mind, do you? It’s better if I walk. I’ve almost got the thing beat, but I can’t sit still for too long. You know? I’ve got to pace every now and then. Like a tiger, eh, Carol? Well, gee, this is really a fine setup you’ve got here. Say, were you studying or something? I don’t want to bust in like—”

“No, that’s all right,” Bud said, his mind momentarily yanked back to Milton. “It can wait.” He hoped his voice had carried the conviction he definitely did not feel.

“Did Carol tell you about my audition?” Andy asked.

“Yes,” Bud said, “but not all the deta—”

“Oh, it’s a good deal,” Andy said. “Laddy Fredericks. Do you know him? He’s been at the Edison forever. Man, that band never leaves New York. That’s what killed me in the first place, you know — that road business. When I was on the Jerralds band. That’s when I met Rog Kiner, bless him. You remember that, don’t you? You were out of the service then, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that road stuff is nowhere, man. Hey, you sure you weren’t studying? Carol says you’ve got finals coming up.”

“I can study later,” Bud said, resigned to his fate. “What about the audition?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, Mike Daley — you remember Mike? Oh, sure you do. When we had the old band, when we were kids, you remember, don’t you? Man, that was kicks all right, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was...”

“No gold, but a lot of kicks. That was a real happy time, wasn’t it? Well, Mike, I dug him on Forty-second a month, two months ago — sure, it must’ve been at least two months. I’m always all screwed up when it comes to time. Well, I ran into him and I could see like he was a little embarrassed, you know. The word gets around when you’re hooked, and people can’t understand what it’s like unless they’re hooked themselves. Like when I was down at Lexington — I went down there for the cure, you know. Did you know that?... Well, I did. Well, those guys knew the score, dad, said we were all sick — but, Jesus, I couldn’t make that place. Sick, that’s what we are, all right, but people can’t always understand that. That’s because the newspapers run articles on dope fiends — fiends, that’s a laugh — and the people get the wrong idea. Man, those articles are for the birds, believe me. If you ever want the real truth about drugs, just get me talking sometime. I’ll tell you stories about it, but not what the papers said. That was for the birds. Like what they said about marijuana, hell, Buddy, mootah never hurt a fly, I mean it. I know guys who bust a joint before each meal, like taking a cocktail, you know? Are cocktails harmful, do you mind if I pace?”

“No, go right ahead,” Bud said. He leaned forward in his chair and listened to Andy, his brow knotted.

“Sure, that was for the sparrows. Well, anyway, I ran into Mike, and he shifted around and hemmed and hawed and How are you, Andy? and Fine, how are you, Mike? all the time avoiding what was on his mind and in his eyes — that I was a hophead, you understand. In fact, I think I was turned on when I ran into him, but that didn’t affect my thinking any, it doesn’t really make you dopey, you know, like the papers and magazines say, as a matter of fact it makes you kind of sharp, real sharp. Well, he’s been with Fredericks for many moons now, and he told me they’re getting ready to bounce this cat they got blowing second. He asked me if I was still playing and if I’d be interested, and I could see by his eyes that he was just making talk, that he figured I couldn’t blow any more, being a hophead and all, I can read eyes like that, all that goddamn pity in them, you know. His eyes got me sore. I told him sure I was still playing and could he fix an audition, and he hemmed and hawed a little more, which he had no right to do, hell I could always blow rings around Mike, you know that, but he said he’d talk to Fredericks and see what he could swing.

“I gave him the number at my pad, I was living in some crumby dump on Forty-eighth at the time — I think it was Forty-eighth — yeah sure, sure, and Mike gave me a buzz that night. He sounded surprised as hell, but he said Fredericks was interested, that he’d heard some of the sides I’d cut when I was on the Jerralds band. He said he wouldn’t be ready to audition until June first, but he’d give me first crack at the chair then.

“I felt pretty damn good, you know, as if I’d shown Mike. I went to a party that night. I didn’t buzz Helen to come with me because she had kicked the habit already, and this was a real hophead affair, a pass-the-needle ball. We used to go to a lot of them together, you know. I’d give her a ring and then she’d meet me. Well, this place was one big shooting party, and by the time I got there, things were really swinging. Somebody was shooting up, and I walked over, and the guy finished with the spike and he handed it to me, and I loaded it and blew my brains out, and then I passed the spike to somebody else, it was one of those affairs, a community joy ride, you know what I mean? I was up in the clouds, and when I came down, I began to think about Mike and that look in his eyes, and I made up my mind right then and there to kick the junk.

“This must have been about two months ago when I first got the idea. I kept throwing the idea around, but it didn’t do any good, and it’s not an easy thing to make up your mind about the break, you know. But that audition kept getting closer and closer, and I kept remembering that comedown look on Mike’s face, and I kept thinking about what I’d decided that night, when everybody was passing around the same needle, and last week I really made up my mind. No more for me, I told myself, no more of that.

“May I drop dead in the gutter, I told myself, if I ever touch another drop of it.” He knocked the table top and then said, “So far, I’ve got it going. It’s been rough, but I’m on the way. And this Laddy Fredericks is big time, Bud — you know that, don’t you? And I’m sure I’ll be ready for him by the first. He’s got a shmaltzy society outfit, Bud, so I won’t have to blow any tricky stuff for him when I audition, no screech work, nothing like that, hell, he doesn’t even know what a screech trumpet is. I can limber up my lip easily in the next week, the hardest part is over now, you know, even though I heave every now and then, but I’m keeping down a lot more than I used to.

“So that’s the story. Once I land this gig, I’ve really got it made. This is the first break I’ve had in a long time. I was real bad, you know, a real addict.”

“He was taking heroin,” Carol said.

“Yes, I know,” Bud answered, listening to the conversation and knowing he was a part of it, but sensing this something that was wrong with the picture and not knowing what it was.

“It’s poison, man, believe me. Say, you want to hear something interesting? Here’s a fact for you, Buddy. When I was down at Lex — I only stayed two days, man, I couldn’t take that joint. I mean, they do wonderful things down there, all right, but you don’t think of that when you’re there, all you think of is getting a fix — well, anyway, some of the guys there were doctors, how’s that for a fact? I don’t mean the ones who were treating us, I mean the patients. The patients were guys who used to be doctors and who got hooked. Oh, we had all kinds down there, all right, even guys who’d been on the junk for ten, twenty years. Boy, what a place that was. Like they really want you to kick it, you know? I mean, these guys are what you call dedicated, I guess. Except for one shlmozzle, man, I’ll never forget him. All of them are sympathetic, you know? They realize what you’re going through because they see it every day, but they don’t look down on you, they try to help, and they make you feel like you’re not alone. All except this one jerk. I was being examined, and he came over to me and said, ‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’ I said yes, and he just nodded like a wise old owl and said, ‘You’ll be back.’ How’s that for giving a person confidence. ‘You’ll be back!’ Of course, a lot of the guys there were on their fourth and fifth trips, and some of them practically live in the place. They kick it, and they get out and hop aboard again, and wham! right back to Lex. Like a big game. You know they had a bunch of guys in an experimental group down there, the way they have people volunteer to get bitten by mosquitoes, that kind of thing. These guys were the guinea pigs for drug experiments, because those doctors are trying all the time to find out more about it, so they can help, you know? So with these guys, like, they’d raise the fix and keep raising it and raising it, all the way up, so they could study how strong a habit gets. And they’d give it to them right on the dot, like say the first fix was at nine in the morning, then the next fix would be at noon, but right at noon, not a minute before or a minute after.

“And then sometimes they’d hold out on them, to see the effects, things like that so they could help the other guys who are hooked. But these cats in the group, man, they loved it. They were getting all the jive they wanted free, what the hell did they care? And it was certainly a hell of a lot better than that substitute junk they taper you off on, that methadone. Well, I’m glad I cut out of there, that’s for sure. I couldn’t make it, that’s all. I needed a fix. I was bangin’ my head against the wall for a fix. So I took off. They can’t hold you there, you know, even though the full cure is four months. You’re there under voluntary commitment, you know. But I’m telling you, man...”

Bud listened to him rattling on and tried to find something in the man who stood before him that was even remotely related to the boy and adolescent he had known. The features had changed, lengthening into maturity, except for the mouth, which still remained boyish somehow. The eyes had changed most of all, of course, but he knew that was caused by the drugs, or at least he suspected as much. The body, too, was leaner, not as padded as it had been, but he knew none of these things added up to the whole change, the sum of the parts not being equal to the whole in this case. And yet he could not describe the change because it was something he could feel rather than see, and suddenly realizing he was incapable of seeing any real change, he wondered if he too had invisibly changed, if he too sounded as alien as Andy did, and his gaze shifted to Carol as though to reassure himself that some things remain ever and always the same.

Her beauty did not shriek at you, but it demanded attention in a quietly unassuming way. You looked at Carol and your eyes lingered, and you found yourself staring at her incredible beauty, and then wondering why you stared, and then realizing that you couldn’t help staring. You turned away, but your eyes roamed back again of their own volition until you began to feel guilty and a little embarrassed, until you were certain she too was uncomfortable. Only later did you realize that Carol was almost totally unaware of her compelling good looks, that she had learned to live with them the way someone learns to live with the Mona Lisa in his living room.

Her hair was an ash blond, clipped close to her head, casually falling onto her forehead in the front, hugging the nape of her neck in the back. She had wide brown eyes fringed with lashes a shade darker than her hair. Her nose was not a perfect nose, perhaps a little too long for her face, but it blended with the rest of her features so that it seemed an integral part of the whole, a part without which the beauty would have been marred, perfect as it was, though not classically perfect. Her mouth was wide, with full lips that rarely smiled any more.

That’s how Carol has changed, he thought. She doesn’t smile any more. He could remember the brilliance of her smile, and he blamed Andy for taking away the smile and for replacing it with the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.

He wondered why she had tried to help him over the years, wondered why she was indeed trying to help him now, and he realized abruptly that he didn’t know half of Andy’s full story, that probably no one but Andy would ever know that story. And then, simultaneously, he remembered that he would be living with Andy for the next week — no, actually longer than a week, until June first he had said — hell, that was almost two weeks. How had they talked him into this, how in God’s holy name had he got talked into this crazy deal?

“...guys who had used up the tread marks on their legs already, their legs, mind you, and were starting a retread on their arms. Did you ever see an addict’s arm, Bud?”

“What?”

“An addict’s arm. Man, here take a look.” He took off his jacket and threw it onto the sofa, and for the first time Bud noticed what he was wearing. A good jacket, blue flannel, with a DePinna label showing on the inside pocket. He’d always dressed well, but it seemed strange that he’d cling to an expensive jacket. Didn’t drug addicts hock everything they owned? The sports shirt was a cheap one, but it was in good taste, patterned with a simple motif. Andy was rolling up the sleeve now, patiently creasing the folds. He seemed to lose patience with the task almost immediately, and he shoved the wadded material up to his biceps and said, “Here, Buddy, look at this.”

There was something of pride in his voice, or awe, Bud couldn’t tell which. The arm was a tangled stretch of brownish-red puncture marks, blurred together until they resembled a healed burn, the scar tissue of broken and repeatedly rebroken skin.

“How do you like that?” Andy said, and Bud again felt this unwarranted pride, or awe, or boastfulness, or perhaps bravado — perhaps that’s what it was. “That’s an addict’s arm, man. Pretty, huh?”

Bud could only nod dumbly.

“Don’t ever get started on this stuff, man,” Andy said. “I’m telling you, it’s murder.”

“Why’d you start?” Bud asked, the words sounding more accusing than he’d intended them to be.

“You tell me,” Andy answered. “That’s the sixty-four-dollar one, all right. Well, I’m off it now, that’s for sure. I’ve kicked the habit, and it’s going to stay kicked.”

“He means it this time,” Carol said.

“Oh, I mean it, all right. I wouldn’t be barging in like this if I didn’t, Bud. Hell, I know what you must be thinking. Guy pops up after — how long has it been? No, I wouldn’t barge in if I wasn’t serious this time. That’s why this means so much to me. If I’d kept my old place, well, I’d always be running into the old crowd. Not Helen, no, because she’s already kicked it and, man, it’s poison to her. I used to see a lot of her, you know, but not since she kicked it. But all the others, you know. ‘Come on, Andy, let’s scout up the Man’ or, ‘Hey, Andy, how about a fix, man?’ — you know, like that. Hell, there’s always somebody with some of the junk on him, and how can you resist it when it’s right there under your nose?

“This way, I’m cut off from it, not that I even get the yen now, man, I’ve been heaving my guts out for the past week, but even if I did want some, I couldn’t get it, now could I? You don’t keep any, do you, Bud — no, I didn’t think you did. Living with my folks would have been safe, too, but I just can’t make that, Buddy, well you know what a drag that always was. My mother always fussing around me with her waving little hands, and my dad just ignoring me. Hell, I mean it’s not his fault. He was forty-two when I was born, and when a first kid comes unexpected like that, you can’t expect the father to go rolling around on the floor in glee. But that doesn’t make it any less a drag, now does it? So I appreciate what you’re doing, I really do. Once I’ve kicked it for good, once I get on this band, well things are going to be much better.”

There was an uncomfortable silence, during which Bud weighed his earlier reluctance against the sudden title of benefactor which had been thrust upon him.

“Helen kicked it, you know,” Andy said. “She kicked that monkey clear off her back. A good kid, Helen. Say, did you know I was the one got her hooked, did you? Say, look, if you want to get back to your studying...”

“No, that’s all right.”

“I hate like hell to impose on you this way, but I thought...”

“It’s no imposition at all, believe me,” Bud lied.

“Well, I appreciate it, you can bet on that.”

“Would you like some coffee?” Bud asked.

“None for me,” Andy said. “I’m lucky I’ve kept my supper down. I don’t want to tempt the gods.”

“Carol, how about you?”

“If we can have a fast cup. I’ve got to be running.”

“I use instant,” Bud said. “It’ll be ready in an instant.” Andy chuckled a bit, and Carol attempted a smile which didn’t quite come off. Bud rose and walked into the kitchen, filling the pot with water and setting it on the stove. He took down the cups and was spooning coffee into them when Andy started talking again.

“You musn’t misunderstand about my dad, Bud,” he said. “I mean, he’s all right, that’s for sure, but he doesn’t understand about me. I mean, like he never did, you know, even when I was a kid. Never had much time for me, never played ball with me, or cared about what kind of clothes I wore — stuff like that. Funny, I guess. He worries more about me now than he did when I really needed his worry — well, hell, he’s an accountant, how many accountants have addict sons? He sicced a private detective on me once, would you believe it? That was after I went off with my mother’s watch — well, I shouldn’t have done that, I know it, but the watch was just laying there, and, man, did I need a fix, this was the last time I tried to kick the habit, did Carol tell you about it? The dick was a good one, and he stuck with me for four days. I finally shook him at a session up in Harlem. I used to blow at a lot of sessions before I hocked my horn.”

Bud came back into the living room. “You... hocked your horn?” he asked incredulously.

“Yeah, isn’t that the end, though. I haven’t played in — how long has it been, Carol? You remember, I told you before.”

“Six months,” Carol said.

“Yeah. Man, I should cut a disk now. I’d be the greatest since Seven-Up. I’m lucky I can blow a C scale.” He shook his head. “Well, what’re you gonna do? That’s life.”

“What’s life?” Bud asked automatically.

“Huh?” Andy said, surprised. He smiled then and said, “Oh, yeah, sure. Why, Life’s a magazine.”

“How much does it cost?” Bud asked, falling into the old routine, remembering the hundreds of times they’d used it in the old days.

“Twenty cents,” Andy said.

“I’ve only got a dime.”

Andy shrugged. “Well, that’s life.”

“What’s life?” Bud said, and Andy burst out laughing.

“How do you like that? Man, I haven’t heard that bit in ages. Say, how are all the boys? Do you see any of them any more? Frank? Or Reen? Or what about Tony Banner? Old Ahmed Ben Banner? Is he still blowing that ruptured horn of his? Man, he never could play, you know.”

“He’s in Texas with the symphony orchestra there,” Bud said.

“Symphony? No joke? Man, I’m dead! Tony in symphony!”

“He picked up the oboe at Juilliard.”

“And Frank?”

“I still see him at school. There’s nothing there any more, though.”

“Yeah, well, friends drift. What about Reen?”

Bud looked at Andy curiously. “Reen was—”

“Tony blowing the oboe, huh? Damn, if that doesn’t cut it all. Who’d have dreamt he was serious about being a musician?”

“Is the coffee about ready?” Carol asked.

“Yes, it should be. Want to give me a hand?”

“Ah-ah,” Andy said, wagging his finger jokingly. “I don’t trust you two alone together.”

Bud smiled, and Carol tried to smile again, but the smile materialized as a painful parody. They went into the kitchen for the coffee, and Bud whispered, “Now, tell me what this is all—”

“Later,” she whispered back.

They brought out the coffee, sitting and drinking in silence. When they’d finished, Carol said, “Time to climb into the old shebang.”

“I keep forgetting you drive now.”

“She’s a regular cowboy,” Andy said. “You should see her.”

Bud brought Carol her duster and helped her into it. She went to Andy and said, “Be careful now. I’ll bring your horn and your music tomorrow.” She patted his hand and started for the door. “Will you walk me down, Bud? I’m afraid of dark streets.”

“Sure,” Bud said. “Make yourself comfortable, Andy. I’ll be right back.”

When they were in the hallway, he asked, “Now what—”

“He’ll hear you. Wait until we’re downstairs.”

He waited patiently. They walked out onto the sidewalk and then over to where her old Pontiac was parked. She climbed in and rolled down the window on his side.

“All right, what’s it all about?” he asked. “Why are you helping him?”

“I love him,” Carol said flatly.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Bud said.

“I love him now, and I’ve always loved him, and I guess I always will. That’s why — Bud, do you remember when we first found out? I was hurt then, and shocked, and all I could do was condemn. And then I tried to help later — the other times he tried to break it — but I didn’t give him enough. This time I’m going all the way. He’s got to break it, Bud! And I’m going to help him all I can. Bud, they... they say you never break the habit. They say it’s always with you, till the day you die. But I won’t believe that. I know he has to break it. Maybe he can’t do it alone, though, maybe... Bud, I want to help him. I want to see him the... way he used to be.”

“We all do, Carol, but how can we—”

“He’s wasting his life this way, Bud. And he’s wasting his talent. He has such a big talent, so big. I can’t see him waste that. And I can’t see him waste his life, either. Andy’s life is very important to me. He really intends to break the habit this time, and I’m going to help him do it.”

“If he really intends,” Bud said.

“He does. I can feel he does. And I want him to. I want him to so much that I... Maybe I shouldn’t have dragged you into it, but you were the only person I could think of. Do you understand?”

“He’s come this far before, Carol. But he always—”

“Yes, but this time he means it. He’s determined to lick it this time, Bud. You’ll see.”

“I hope so,” he said dubiously.

“I do, too. Oh, God, how I hope so.”

“You’ll be bringing his horn tomorrow?”

“Yes. He gave me the pawn ticket. It was one of the few tickets he didn’t sell.”

“All right, I’ll see you then.”

“Good night, Bud. Try to understand.” She leaned out of the car and kissed him on the cheek, and then she slid over behind the wheel. He waited until she started the car and pulled out into the street. He waved then, not at all sure she saw him.

Reluctantly, he turned back to the stoop of his building and started up the steps. He did not want to be alone with Andy Silvera.

2

Andy was standing by the windows when Bud came back into the room. He wondered if Andy’d been watching the conversation at the car, and he suddenly felt curiously uneasy.

Andy turned and smiled. His eyes did not smile with the rest of his face. His eyes remained fixed and staring, so that the smile seemed grotesque. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Your cheek.”

“Oh. Yes.” Bud fumbled for a handkerchief. “Thanks.” He wiped Carol’s lipstick from his cheek, feeling strangely guilty, knowing he should not feel guilty over so innocent a thing as a good-night peck between friends, and yet feeling this enormous guilt, as if he were cheating with another man’s wife. He knew that Andy should have no doubts on that score, that Carol was simply a good friend and nothing more, and yet this good-night gesture of friendship had nonetheless brought on an embarrassed feeling of having been caught at something forbidden. If only Andy weren’t such a stranger, if only...

“She’s a wonderful girl,” Andy said.

“Carol?”

“Yes.”

“I always said so.”

They stood staring at each other awkwardly.

“Say, I certainly hope I’m not putting you out.”

“No, not at all,” Bud said.

The atmosphere was strained with Carol gone. Carol had been an oasis in a vast dry desert. Both men had approached the oasis with a common desire in mind. They both wanted water to irrigate their dusty, dead friendship. They had approached the oasis from opposite sides of the desert, and their common desire had negated the fact that they did not know each other. The oasis was gone now. They had tracked across a hot, wide expanse of sand and had come face to face with each other and had suddenly realized that they did not know each other, and their thirst had only intensified their plight. The silence was deafening. Even the room seemed strange to Bud, as if he did not really belong in it. He searched in his mind for some means of crashing through the silence. The effort only seemed to intensify the silence. He wet his lips and reached for something to say, but nothing came to his tongue.

“This is a nice place you’ve got here,” Andy said, the attempt as obvious as the sheepish look with which it was delivered.

“Yes,” Bud said, hating himself for saying only Yes, hating anyone and everyone who stifled conversation by giving yes or no answers and cutting short any opportunity for embellishment.

“Are you on the GI Bill?” Andy asked.

“Yes,” Bud said again, thinking, Give him something to work with, for Christ’s sake. Can’t you see he’s trying?

“Listen, if you’ve got studying to do, go right ahead. Just pretend I’m not here.”

“Well, I do have some studying, but...”

“No, go ahead. I know finals are important.”

He could not tell whether or not Andy’s tongue was in his cheek. There was a time when he could almost tell what Andy was thinking by looking at his face, but he found himself incapable of doing that now, and his sudden sterility reminded him again of how alien Andy was to him. He realized quite abruptly that finals were probably very unimportant so far as Andy was concerned. Finals were kid stuff, college-boy-swiping-panties stuff. Andy was, in a sense, undergoing an examination, too, a test that might very well change his entire future. Milton was somehow remote and ridiculous in comparison to Andy’s own struggle. But he had not asked to be included in Andy’s life. And maybe finals were relatively unimportant, maybe finals were downright silly by comparison, but if he did not pass his finals — and, by God, the outlook seemed gloomy at this point — he would have to repeat, and repetition would mean another semester at school, and he didn’t want that, not after all the careful, tight planning he’d done.

In self-defense, he said, “Well, they are pretty important. I’m trying to get through in three and a half.”

“Sure,” Andy said. “Go ahead, Bud, go back to your studying.”

Andy’s calm acceptance made the entire thing seem even sillier. He tried desperately to justify finals in his own mind, and finally said, “I guess this seems like kid stuff to you.”

“Kid stuff? No, no. This is all the foundation, isn’t it? If you’re going to build, you’ve got to have a foundation.”

“Well, I hadn’t thought of it in just that way.” He couldn’t stop feeling inferior. His problem seemed infinitesimal when compared to Andy’s. He told himself he should not blame himself for not having experienced Andy’s misfortune. Hell, that was plain silly — but he could not convince himself. And looking for a stronger weapon of self-defense, seeking to justify the finals which had suddenly become silly and insignificant, he turned to self-belittlement. “Hell, college is all a lot of nonsense, anyway. What I mean to say... well, you must think I’m a big jerk, worrying about a few tests.”

“No, I don’t think that at all.”

“Any other time I’d say screw the tests. But I’m pushing through in three and a half, and so it’s a little important, if you know what I mean.”

“I know exactly what you mean. Man, you don’t have to apologize to me.”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly apologizing,” he said, suddenly miffed by the turn in the conversation, the turn he himself had engineered. What the hell was he doing, anyway? Apologizing to a dope addict for being a college student? What kind of sense did that make?

“I know I’m a forced guest,” Andy said, “so go right ahead and do whatever you’ve got to do. Just show me where I’m supposed to sack in, and show me where the john is, and that’s it.” Andy smiled. “Really, Bud, I know the tests are important.”

“Yes, they are important,” he said somewhat coldly. “I didn’t want you to think I was making a mountain out of a molehill.” He paused, still unreasonably angry. “You can sleep on the sofa, if that’s all right with you.”

“Oh, that’ll be fine,” Andy said.

“I’ll get you some sheets. I... Do you sleep with a pillow?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you can have mine. I’ve only got one.”

“No, that’s okay. I don’t need a—”

“I usually throw it on the floor, anyway. It doesn’t matter to—”

“No, I wouldn’t think of taking your pillow. I haven’t been sleeping well anyway, Bud. There’s no sense in both of us having a bad night.”

“Well...”

“Really. I’m up half the night. You take it, Bud.”

“Well, okay, if you say so. I’ll get the sheets.”

“I’ll get them. Just show me where they are.”

“By the time I show you, I can get them myself.”

He crossed the room to the closet, pulled open the door, and then yanked out a leather suitcase.

“That’s a nice valise,” Andy said.

“Yes,” he answered, knowing it was a good piece of luggage but not feeling like discussing its merits at the moment. He stood on the suitcase, reaching up to the top shelf of the closet. “Want to catch these?” he said.

“Sure.” Andy came over, and he threw the sheets down to him. He got off the suitcase, shoved it back into the closet, and said, “I’ll help you make up the sofa.”

“I can do it alone,” Andy said.

“No, I’ll help you.”

They went to the sofa, a starkly modern slab of wood with a foam-rubber one-piece mattress on it, strongly out of place against the chintz-covered butterfly chair. They shoved it out from the wall so that one of them could tuck the sheets in on that side, and then they began covering it.

“Do you know what this reminds me of?” Andy asked.

“No, what?”

“That time on First Avenue.”

“First Avenue?” He remembered immediately, but he did not feel like getting embroiled in a lengthy discussion. He had studying to do. He could not waste any time reminiscing.

“With those two girls,” Andy said. “What were their names?”

“I don’t remember,” Bud lied.

Their glances met over the sofa. Andy seemed to be going to say more, and then his face took on a pained look, and he continued working on the sofa, not looking at Bud again. And then, as if he could not control himself any longer, he said softly, “Those were the times, all right.”

Bud did not comment. He had finals to worry about. The time on First Avenue had been a long while ago. It had been a hell of a lot of fun, and it was certainly something to remember, but it was dead and gone. He turned down the blanket and said, “Well, there’s your bed.” His voice carried an undercurrent of pressing reality, he hoped. He wanted Andy to know that he could waste no time shooting the bull, not tonight anyway.

“Yeah,” Andy said, staring at the sofa. “I don’t feel like turning in just yet, if you don’t mind.”

“Any time you want to.”

“You go ahead with your studying.”

“All right. I hate to do this, but you know—”

“I understand.” Andy paused. “Say, I could use a cigarette. Have you got one?”

“Sure.” Bud took the package from his pocket and extended it to Andy.

“Funny how I never really got the habit, isn’t it?” Andy said. “I picked up all the really bad habits, but never this one.” He took a cigarette and then the match folder, lighting the cigarette quickly. “I’ve been smoking a lot this past week. It relaxes me, you know. Times when I can’t sit still, I light a cigarette, and everything’s all right. Funny.”

Bud nodded.

“Well, go ahead, do your studying. Don’t worry about me, just forget I’m here.”

“Okay,” Bud said. “You talked me into it.” He walked to the table, thought briefly of the time on First Avenue, and then shoved it rudely out of his mind, only to find it shoving back again just as rudely. He had really enjoyed that night. It had worked remarkably smoothly, and Marcia had really been good. He wondered what had ever become of her. Well, no matter. Back to Milton.

Milton, Milton, he told himself, leave us by all means get back to dear old Miltie. Where was I? What good does it do to know where I was? I’ll have to start from scratch. My memory works that way, from beginning to end, from start to finish, from inception to conclusion. When I get through with these notes, they’ll be photographed on my mind, but to get to any one part of them, I’ll have to start from the beginning and leaf through the photographs until I get to the section I want. Is that total recall? If so, let’s total recall away.

III. Beelzebub’s answer

A. Addresses him not as equal

B. Admits that S. was glorious leader, etc.

C. But — after all — we are defeated, and—

“Do you think the pastrami could have given me that stomach-ache?”

“What?” Bud asked.

“The pastrami we bought. Remember we got up in the middle of the night and made sandwiches?”

“Oh. Oh, yes.”

“Just thinking of it, I feel sick again. I’m sure it was a novena, though. My mother probably used up three sets of prayer beads that night. I’ll bet she prayed her fingers to the bone.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“Look, I don’t want to bother you. Go ahead, study.”

B. Admits that S. was glorious leader, etc.

C. But — after all — we are defeated, and that’s a fact we’ve got to face

IV. Satan’s characteristics

A. Courageous

B. Skillful leader and orator

“You know, I can still remember the color of her pajamas.”

“Yeah?” Bud said absently.

“Pink. Connie’s, I mean. Hey, that was her name, Connie. And yours was Marcia. Pink silk with that little blue flower design on the pocket, right where her left — say, she had a remarkable set, you know?”

“Uhm,” Bud said.

“And smooth, just like all the rest of her. She had the smoothest skin in all the world, smoother even than— Oh, say, I’m interrupting you. I’m sorry.”

“S’all right,” Bud said.

A. Courageous

B. Skillful leader and orator

C. Good psychologist

“What always amazes me is how fast we set that thing up. I mean, we’d only met the chicks that afternoon. Fatal charm, I guess it was.”

D. Heart, enthusi—

C. Good psychologist

D. Heart, enthusiasm

E. Persistence

“I’ll never forget that night, all right. That was really something to—”

“Say, Andy, I hate to—”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry. I won’t say another word. Go ahead. You don’t mind if I pace a little, though, do you? It sounds stupid as hell, but I get restless, you know, and I have to pace. Is that all right?”

“Yes, fine. Sure, pace.”

“Okay, thanks. And I won’t say another word. I mean, this is getting like the comic bit where one guy’s trying to figure out the atomic bomb, and the other guy keeps busting his nuts, isn’t it?”

Bud sighed. “A little.”

“Well, not another word out of me. That’s a promise.”

“Fine,” Bud said.

A. Courageous

B. Skillful leader and orator

Satan’s characteristics, A courageous B skillful leader and orator good psychologist heart enthusiasm persistence Andy pacing pacing behind me courageous skillful leader and orator good psychologist good god! is he going to pace all goddamn night?

Satan’s characteristics, now let’s get them pat this time and then shove off, we’re spending the whole damn night on Satan’s characteristics, Satan’s characteristics: Courage, all right, courage, courage, skillful leader and orator, orator, orator, good psychologist, good pacer, pacer, pacing, pacing, back and forth, back and forth, imagine remembering the color of Connie’s pajamas, could he remember the color of Marcia’s? Marcia was wearing, wearing, pacing, pacing, white background with floral design in red and blue, no, not flowers, something, a small design, bells, were they bells, in red and blue, the small rip in her pajama pants, imagine Andy’s remembering a thing like the color, a tiny tear, still it did show her flesh underneath, and, oh, she had been so good psychologist, good psychologist, psychologist, heart, enthusiasm, heartburn it was it probably was, Andy’s stomach-ache, heartburn from the pastrami, but the pastrami had been good, and the coffee perking on the small electric grill, the deep aroma of it in the small room, and the girls in their pajamas, and Marcia bringing him the sandwich, and then sitting next to him, the curve of her backside tight against his leg, as if they were all married and at some lodge in the mountains and not in a friend’s borrowed cold-water flat on First Avenue where...

Satan’s goddamn characteristics are, my friend, courage, oh, yes, a courageous son-of-a-bitch Satan, a courageous clever little devil, why doesn’t Dr. Mason drop dead some cold and eerie night? Skillful leader and orator, which Dr. Mason is not, I’ll never memorize these, not with him pacing that way, courageous, skillful leader and orator, damn Satan, let’s go to something else, no let’s stick with Satan because she’s just liable to pull that one out of the hat, the bitch — in P.L., using the entire text as a basis for your discussion, evaluate the character of Satan, 60 per cent.

Satan, Satan, satin it was, not silk Connie was wearing, pink satin, Andy should have remembered that, hell, he was the one who undressed her, smooth flesh he said, like satin, Satan...

Pacing, pacing, Satan, Satan, back and forth, pacing, oh, Christ, I’ll never get this done, never in a million years, why did I take him in, why, why, why?

“Can I turn off this light on the end table, Bud? I think I’d like to lie down for a while.”

“Yes, certainly. Go right ahead.”

He heard the click of the light behind him. There was only the circle of light on the table then, and the open notebook before him.

Thank God, he thought.

You haven’t got me yet, Dr. Mason, you old prostitute!

3

The circle of light on the table circumscribed a world of Good and Evil, a world of Heaven and Hell, a world of naked Eves and slithering serpents. On either side of the table, the window curtains fluttered with the early morning breeze, and through the windows the city slept, or tossed restlessly, carried on the lullaby of hushed automobile tires and silently blinking neons. There was nothing beyond the circle of light as far as Bud was concerned. The circle of light was a harsh core of concentration. His own handwriting stared up at him from the lined pages of the spiral notebook, the indelible blue of the ball-point penmanship recording itself on his knotted brain. There were two levels to his concentration. One was a completely automatic level, upon which the major part of his effort descended. This level concerned itself with the purely robotlike task of memorization. The second level was a conscious needle that stabbed at him spasmodically, a needle the prick of which reminded him of the importance of these final examinations.

The first test, the Milton examination, was on Tuesday morning, May twenty-fourth. He had glossed over the notes for every subject he’d studied that semester. He had done that last week, as a part of his habitual study pattern. The notes lay on his unconscious like a group of light sleepers. He was now applying the insistent ring of an alarm clock to these uneasy slumberers. This was Sunday night — no, really Monday morning already. He would thoroughly digest the Milton notes by the end of the day. He would then purify his mind by forgetting the examination and the preparation for it. He would do that by reading a detective story or by going out to see a picture about the Foreign Legion. On Tuesday morning at nine o’clock he would enter the examination room without any notebooks, without even thinking about the exam. He would wait until the proctor passed out the booklets, and he would then fill his fountain pen from the small bottle of ink he would carry to the test, and he would not even begin thinking about the exam until the question sheet was placed face down on his desk by the proctor. When the proctor gave the signal to begin, he would turn over the sheet, and the notes he’d memorized would leap into his consciousness, ready for use. That was the way his system worked, and it had worked well for him thus far. He had no reason to believe it would not work again. He would pass Milton. He would pass all his subjects. He would graduate next semester, a college man who’d made it in three and a half years instead of the more usual four.

After the Milton exam, he had a test Wednesday afternoon, another on Friday morning, and two more on the following Monday. That meant study on Tuesday after the Milton exam, and rest on Tuesday night in preparation for the Wednesday afternoon test. He was not worried. For now there was only Milton to worry about, only Milton to shake out of slumber.

The circle of light aided his concentration. It provided a glaring, merciless ring within which his mind and his body were entrapped. He studied with relish, proud of his memorizing abilities, pleased with the way the notes fell into place. He stopped occasionally, going back to the beginning, silently reeling off everything he’d already memorized. It was going well. He would have it down pat in a few hours, and then he’d hit the sack and relax, putting it all out of his conscious mind.

The scream intruded stridently on his concentration. It was a scream from another planet in another universe, and it took him several moments to realize that the scream had phonetic body and shape. It was a hollow scream, an empty scream, but the scream was a word, and the word was “Helen!”

And then, like an echoed moan in a subterranean torture chamber, the scream came again, and again.

“Helen! Helen! Helen!”

He shoved back his chair, his hackles rising. He whirled abruptly, as if to face an intruder with a shotgun. Andy was sitting up in bed staring into the blackness beyond the circle of light on the table. No sound came from his mouth now. He sat tensed, his knees forming a tent of the sheet, his arms straight behind him, elbows locked, staring into the darkness.

“What is it?” Bud asked. He did not move from the table. He seemed incapable of movement. He looked at Andy, and he wet his lips, and Andy continued staring into the blackness, saying nothing, shaking his head.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Andy said. The word was a parched whisper.

“Can I... can I get you something?”

“No, it’s all right.”

He went to the sofa and flicked on the end-table light. Andy blinked his eyes and then shook his head again.

“I was dreaming,” he said. He wiped the palm of one hand across his eyes. “I’m sorry I disturbed you.”

“Can I get you a glass of water or something?”

“No, no, nothing.” He wiped his eyes again. “I’ve... I’ve got to get up. I don’t feel so hot.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Where’s... where’s the john?”

“Around there, near the kitchen. Come on, I’ll help you.”

“No, go back to your studying. Jesus, I’m sorry about this, Bud. You’ve no idea how—”

“Forget it. Come on.”

He helped Andy out of bed and then brought him to the bathroom.

“You’d better go,” Andy said.

“I’ll stay.”

“No, please go. I’m... I’m not proud when I do this. Please go.”

“All right.”

He went back into the other room, hearing the silence of the apartment, and then hearing Andy in the bathroom, the sound grating on his nerves. He tried to shut out the sound until finally it was all over, and he heard the sound of the water tap replacing the other sick ugly sound. When Andy came out of the bathroom, he was pale and weak-looking. He smiled wanly and said, “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.” Bud paused. “How do you feel?”

“Better,” Andy said.

“Would you like a cigarette?”

“No, I’d better not. I’m all right now. Go ahead, Bud, do your work. Jesus, I didn’t mean to be a pest.”

“The work can wait. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” He squeezed his eyes shut and opened his mouth, sucking in a deep breath of air. “If you only knew how much I wanted—” He cut himself short.

“What, Andy?”

“A fix,” he said. “Oh, God, how I want a fix!”

“Well...”

“No, don’t worry. I haven’t got any. Besides, I’m going to shake it this time. You don’t have to worry. But, Jesus, how I want it, oh, sweet suffering Jesus, how I want it! I’d cut off my arm for it right now, do you know that? I’d cut off my arm and sell the bleeding stump for it, can you believe that?”

“Is it that bad?” Bud asked.

“It’s bad, all right. Not my body, you understand. I think I’ve shaken that. I mean, my body doesn’t scream for it any more. When your body is screaming for it, you’ll do anything. You can’t imagine half the things I did to get the stuff. Filthy things, Bud, things I’m ashamed of now, but they didn’t seem filthy then, they seemed all right then when every goddamn muscle was yelling for the junk. Oh, Jesus, how’d I ever get started, how the hell did I ever get started?”

“Well, that’s all gone now,” Bud said weakly.

“From my body, yes. It’s still up here, though, right up here.” He tapped his temple with his forefinger. “It’ll always be up here. And that’s where it hurts most. You begin thinking, What the hell am I going through this hell for? Why am I putting up with the yawning and the sneezing and the aches and pains and the throwing up my guts? Isn’t it easier just to take a shot? What’s so bad about it, anyway? It’s a habit, all right, so it’s a habit. Smoking is a habit, too, isn’t it? So this habit costs a little more, but I’m healthy, ain’t I? It hasn’t made my hair fall out, and it hasn’t discolored my teeth — opium discolors your teeth, did you know that? — so why should I knock myself out? That’s what my mind keeps saying. And I keep remembering, too. I keep remembering what it’s like when you’re turned on. Euphoria and excitation, the medics call it, Bud. There’s nothing like it. You’re away from everything, everything, oh, Jesus, there are no problems, can you visualize that? You’re just up there someplace and everybody below is just nothing, nothing at all. You feel so wise, Buddy, oh, so wise, you feel the wisest in the world, and there’s nothing to bother you, nothing to touch you. You’ve got a nice warm cocoon around you, and the cocoon has a metal shell, and there’s nobody who can bust into that cocoon, nobody in the world. It’s all your own, and it’s the wildest because there’s music there, too, Bud, music you never hear anywhere else, high, crazy music, discord sometimes, and harmony that’s a little off, but you don’t know where it’s off, better than a bop chorus, because you can follow the chords in a bop chorus and you know the progression, but there’s no progression here, just this harmony that’s not harmony, and these colors that swim around.

“It’s lazy, and it’s clean, and it’s unpolluted, and that’s all there is, nothing else, just you alone in this world where there’s not a thing to worry about, where you don’t have to think about clothes, or cars, or where your next gig is coming from, or who’s going to tell you not to do this or that, or who’s going to chase you, or who’s going to not chase you, none of these goddamn worries, Bud, none of them at all. You can’t imagine what it’s like, Bud, unless you’ve been on it — didn’t I give you a stick of M once? Sure I did, don’t you remember what it was like?”

“I didn’t feel anything at all,” Bud said.

“No, not from M, maybe, and besides it was the first time, the first time you always have ideas it’s going to blow the top of your skull off. M doesn’t do that, the big stuff does, though, in the beginning. I took an opium ride once, Bud, and, man, it was the end, but opium is a trip to the graveyard, I know guys who are on opium and, Jesus, even their skin looks yellow, as if they have jaundice or something. But it was really the end, that time with opium. I only took it once and this was when I was on the Jerralds band, when I was first beginning to piddle with the big stuff, you know. Oh, man, I felt like I was on the back of a great big swan, an enormous swan, do you know, and that old swan was away up there in the sky, and I could feel the clouds against my face, wispy like, and cottony, and a little damp and moist but warm-moist, like a woman, and I could see the houses down below, like little toy houses in a toy village, like you could squash them in your hand, and I was way up there far away from it all, with the people just crawling around like tiny ants, and these warm-moist clouds licking my face, and the sound of the swan’s wings, a whir, whir, whir, up and down, just flapping those big wings, whir, whir, lazy, lazy without a care in the world. That was the time on opium, I’ll never forget that time, but I never went back to that stuff, it’s funny how you get channeled onto one thing, isn’t it, like the way I got channeled onto heroin and then stayed with it, even though I’ve had them all — cocaine, opium, even morphine once or twice, that’s another mean habit to kick, Barney Ross was on morph, do you know that?”

“Yes,” Bud said.

“He kicked it, though, look at the comeback he made. And don’t think it’s easy. And heroin is worse, you know. Heroin is four to eight times as potent as morphine — that’s a fact. Oh, sure. Most of the hop-heads you run across are on H. When I was down Lexington, they told me about sixty per cent of all the addicts use heroin, how’s that for news? It gets you, the goddamn stuff. The habit is right in your guts, right down there hooked into your guts. I don’t get the pains any more, but last week I thought I’d die from them. Worse than labor pains, I swear it, I’ll bet no goddamn woman ever had labor pains like the pains I had last week. They start in your stomach and they twist and they roil until you think you’ve got appendicitis. And they hit you in the back and the arms and the neck, and at the same time you’re sweating like a son-of-a-bitch, and then when the sweating stops, you’re freezing to death, and you got goose flesh all over you, and you look like a plucked turkey. That’s where the expression comes from, you know. Cold turkey. The goose flesh when you drop the junk without a substitute drug. Cold turkey. And all the while that rotten pain is knifing up your insides and you’re heaving and twitching and sweating and freezing and yawning, oh, Jesus, you yawn like a bastard, it’s like you can never stop yawning, and that’s when you wonder most if it’s worth it all, because you know there’s no one in the wide world who gives a damn but you yourself. Sure, everybody says kick it, kick it, like taking off a dirty pair of undershorts. But they don’t know what it’s like, trying to kick it. Only you know, because it’s right there inside your own goddamn stomach, and inside your blood, and inside your head. It’s still inside my head. You think I’ll ever kick it from my head? Do you think Helen kicked it from her head? It’ll always be there, always, the way it’s there now, the memory of it, the memory of what it does. It’s like a disease, Bud, I swear to God. Right now, just talking to you, just talking about the junk, I can feel that itch start inside my skull. I feel like rushing out of here and finding the Man and saying, ‘Daddy, lay it on me, I’m sick.’ That’s just how I feel. I can almost taste the stuff, just sitting here and talking to you.”

“Well, then let’s talk about something else,” Bud suggested.

“No, what good will that do? I’ve got to live with it, don’t I? Am I supposed to pretend there’s no such thing as drugs in the world? What’ll that get me? I’ve got to live with the idea, and I’ve just got to stick to what I’m trying to do, that’s the only way. I’ve got to say the hell with it, I’ve got to. Otherwise, well, Jesus, there’s no end in sight, is there? You see, after a while you need it to feel normal, do you know what I mean? You forget about that when the itch starts. You remember only how great it was in the beginning, when the high was the end, when you got a big charge on a small dose, and when your skull hit the ceiling every time you popped off. But after a while, after you’ve been on the stuff, you need more, and then more, and then you need it to feel normal. Oh, there’s still a boot, I mean you still get a boot, but not like in the beginning. You wake up in the morning, and you’re subnormal, I guess. Then you take the fix, and you’re normal again. You get your small charge, and you’re normal. Just normal. If you don’t get the fix, you begin to claw the damn walls down, but once you get it, once you get that quick boot, and once you begin to nod, you’re just normal, until it’s time for the next fix. You forget that. You remember only the good part, and the good part is the best thing in the world, Bud, better than a woman, you don’t even think of women when you’re on drugs, do you know that? Ah, the good part. That’s what you remember. Not the things you had to do, not those, no, not those, and not that deadline all the time, where’s the next fix coming from, where, where, where? Always scrounging for the buck, not giving a good goddamn about anything but hoss any more, not caring about the horn, or Carol, or anything. The way you start with a world of your own, the world you’re in when you’re high, well that world spreads out until it’s the only world there is. Everybody vanishes. Everybody walking the streets, their problems are nothing. I am great, you are gornischt, you know. Who said that, a friend of yours, wasn’t it, I don’t even remember any more, a guy on the band, Reen? I am great, you are gornischt, my problems are everything, and my problem is the monkey on my back, weighing twenty-five pounds and scratching the hell out of me, and where will I get the loot for my next fix, or do I have enough, or will I score, or, Jesus, suppose the Man isn’t on the scene, or can I grub from Tom, Dick, or Harry, or who has some of the jive, and what can I do to get a fix, what can I sell, what can I hock, what can I steal? That’s your world. It’s all wrapped up in H, a pretty white package, pure H cut with sugar, and it’s wrapped up in a tablespoon, and a match under the bowl of the spoon, that little flame, and a glistening goddamn syringe with a sharp needle, I’m beginning to feel the itch talking about it, would you believe it, I can almost feel that goddamn spike going into my vein. I was mainlining it, you know, even though I started with simple skin pops, mainlining it is the only way, the drug goes straight into your blood stream. There’s a way to build the high, you know, after a while when you’ve built a tolerance. You shoot it into the vein, and then you draw it back into the syringe, mixed with blood, that’s called kicking it, not like kicking the habit, it’s funny both terms should apply to two different things, isn’t it? You kick the stuff, and the more you kick it, the bigger the pop, oh, I can tell you things about drugs, all right, Helen too, Helen knows the score all right, Helen was hooked through the bag and back again. A hell of a wonderful girl, Helen, you could always depend on her. Call Helen, and Helen came. If you needed her, she came. Whenever you needed her. I shouldn’t have got her hooked on the junk, I guess, but I suppose she wanted to, a strange girl, Helen, in a lot of ways. But you could always depend on her, Jesus, what a girl. And she kicked it, by Christ, and if she could do it, I can do it!

“It’s all behind me now, no more of it for me, no more of that, Bud, I swear to God. I’ve got to move around. Jesus, I’ve got to walk around or the goddamn ceiling will close down on me.”

He began pacing the floor. He was wearing striped shorts and a tee shirt, blond hair curling on his legs and arms. The intimacy of the room, of Andy’s costume, of Andy pacing the floor in his underwear, was somehow all out of kilter. Bud had accepted him, expecting a stranger, not feeling any sympathy for the stranger, but doing what he did out of a sense of auld lang syne. The stranger was here now, in his underwear, a stranger who retched in Bud’s bathroom, a stranger who spoke of an alien world, and yet the stranger was Andy, he could see that the stranger was Andy, and seeing this, he felt a little bit sorry, in spite of all Andy had done, in spite of what he’d known Andy had done. He wanted to get back to his notes, but the empathy was strong inside him, and he couldn’t leave Andy alone now, not now, not when Andy’s struggle seemed so intensely magnified.

“Remember how we used to talk about Cadillacs?” Andy asked, abruptly turning from his talk of drugs. “Remember sitting in that sun porch of yours, with your father’s stamps on the bridge table, and all that junk cluttering up the room. Jesus, your father collects everything in the world, doesn’t he? Does he still collect?”

“Yes,” Bud said.

“He always gave me a kick, your old man, a nice guy in his own way, I guess all fathers are all right, if only they could understand, huh? You know, my mother used to bring me my lunch at school whenever it rained, have I already told you this?”

“I think so,” Bud said.

“She used to bring my lunch in one of those metal lunch pails, and my rubbers, every time it rained. She used to embarrass the hell out of me, coming through the rain with that goddamn lunch pail and the rubbers, that’s one of the things I mean, you don’t have that kind of baloney when you’re turned on, none of these little petty things that rankle you, Jesus, I know guys who’ve gone psycho from little things that rankled them, did you ever read The Naked and the Dead? There’s a part there, one of the characters, I forget who, I can only remember Croft, now he was a son-of-a-bitch, wasn’t he, one of the characters who’s married to this broad, and mashed potatoes stick to her upper lip, and that just about drives him nuts, those mashed potatoes clinging to her lip whenever they eat. Well, Jesus, it’s understandable, isn’t it? Mashed potatoes on a woman’s lip, you don’t think of a woman that way, you think of a clean line of lipstick, don’t you? Well, those little things can drive you nuts. Like stockings hanging from the shower curtain, was that Mailer, too? He’s a damn good writer, you know, did you read the book?”

“Yes,” Bud said.

“Well, he is. Well, that lunch pail just above drove me nuts, too, whenever it rained, here comes the pony express with lunch pail and rubbers. To the round house, men! They can’t corner us there! That sun porch of yours was something like a fortress, too, do you realize that? If the Japs had ever invaded this country, all we’d have had to do was bring the militia to your sun porch and have them fire down from those long windows. Those windows are the eeriest. But do you remember how we talked about Cadillacs, and all the things we wanted out of life? I still want a Cadillac, you know. I still can see myself driving a Caddy, with those goddamn fins sticking out in back, well, who knows, maybe someday.”

“I can take them or leave them alone,” Bud said.

“Well, you were always that way. Even back then. But I had a taste of it, and you didn’t. You’ve got to remember that. I know what it was like to have gold in my pockets. I was pulling down good loot on the Jerralds band, Bud, you musn’t forget that. Once you’ve tasted loot you get to hate all the poor slobs around you, all the ants with their ant jobs.”

“Ants,” Bud said. “I remember.”

“Oh, sure, all ants, all goddamned ants. There’s nothing poorer than a man who’s poor. He gets poor all over, in his heart, in his spirit.”

“Poor men...”

“I used to wonder what it would be like to line up all the ants and give them a heroin fix, and then lead them to a hamburger machine and chop them all up to meat. Give them one big heroin fix, one moment of living, and then cut them dead with the memory of that moment fresh in their minds. That’s a crazy idea, isn’t it? You must think I’m nuts.”

Bud was thinking exactly that. “No,” he said. “No, of course not.”

“Well, you get ideas like that sometimes. The biggest men get ideas like that, I understand. Rape, murder, things like that. So with me, it’s grinding up a bunch of ants. Is that so bad?”

“Well...”

“Oh, who gives a damn, anyway? I was just saying, all those talks we used to have, you know, where we used to tell each other how goddamn great we were, how above the herd we were, and here I am a drug addict. That’s a big comedown, all right. Andy Silvera, addict. Ta-rah! Put it in lights on a marquee someplace. Addict! When I think of how I used to blow that horn, boy, what a comedown. What a goddamn comedown.”

There was self-pity in Andy’s voice, and the self-pity suddenly dissolved any sympathy Bud was feeling. He remembered Milton again, remembered it wearily, and he glanced at his wrist watch. Holy Jesus, it was three-thirty!

“I’m keeping you from your studying,” Andy said.

“Well, yes, you are,” Bud said honestly. In his own mind the two struggles had suddenly become parallel ones. It was certainly easy to sit here and listen to Andy talk, as easy as it would have been for Andy to go out and get himself a shot. Milton was painful, but the examination loomed on the horizon like a hairy monster. The examination had to be faced. He wasn’t going to pass it if he kept appeasing Andy with wishy-washy, “Well, that’s all right” answers. He had to make his position clear right now, and he had to stick to it. There’d be no more interruptions. Milton had to be taken by the horns. “I’ve got to get back to it, Andy. Half the night is shot already.”

“Go ahead,” Andy said.

“Are you going back to bed?”

“No, I thought I’d sit around a little. I don’t feel very sleepy.”

“You can put on the radio if you like.”

“Won’t it bother you?”

“No, I can study with it on. Just keep it soft.”

“Remember that time in Tony’s car when we closed all the windows and turned up the radio full blast, with ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ pounding at our ears?”

“Yes, I remember,” Bud said, “but I’ve got to get to work.”

“Oh, sure, I was just saying. I’ve always held that’s the only way to listen to music, the volume up full. It makes you feel as if you’re a part of the band, right in the middle of it. That’s what you’re supposed to feel when music is playing. If you don’t feel that, who needs it?”

“Andy, really, I’ve got to—”

“Kenton is delicious that way. I know guys who keep a stack of Kenton records by the bedside, dropping on the turntable whenever they’re turned on. It’s the greatest — or don’t you dig distortion?” He laughed suddenly, as if enjoying a joke Bud did not understand, and the private laughter annoyed Bud immensely. He suddenly recalled his release from the navy, and that night on Fifty-second Street when Andy introduced him to the bop craze, when Andy kept referring to Bud as “my boy” when a friend of his had come over to their table. Bud had picked up the tab that night, flushed with his discharge money, but the “my boy” had held a sour connotation for him, and he’d been annoyed by it then as much as the private laughter annoyed him now.

“We’d better knock it off,” he said a little harshly. “I’ve got work to do. I’m serious, Andy.”

Andy seemed suddenly embarrassed. “Oh, sure. I’m sorry, Bud.”

“That’s all right,” Bud said, still miffed.

He walked back to the table, seeing Andy moving to the radio from the corner of his eye. Andy twisted the dial and then turned it up a little, and when the radio came on, it nearly blasted the walls loose from the ceiling.

“Jes-us Christ!” Bud exploded, and Andy turned down the volume instantly.

“It just—”

“All right, keep it soft.”

“Would you rather I didn’t—”

“Just keep the damn thing soft, that’s all.”

He sat down and tried to get back to the notes again. Behind him he could hear the radio softly insinuating itself on his ears and his mind. I’ll get by, as long as I, have you... why did disk jockeys rob graves for their early morning shows?... may be rain, and darkness, too... how could he ever get back to Milton?... I won’t complain, I’ll see it through...

“Is this disturbing you?”

“No,” he said.

“If it is, I’ll—”

“I said no.”

“Maybe I should go down and take a walk or something?”

“At this time of the night? It’s almost four o’clock, for Christ’s sake!”

“Is it? Well, that’s all right. I think I’ll go take a walk. I think I need a walk.”

“Where will you go?”

“Oh, just around,” Andy said. He turned his head, and his eyes avoided Bud’s, and it was suddenly very clear to Bud.

“You’re not going to try to get a shot, are you?”

“Me?” Andy said.

“Yes. Maybe you’d better stay here.”

“What for? I’m only going for a little walk.”

“I think you’d better stay here. You’ll be better off.”

“Man, you sound just like my mother. I’ll expect a lunch pail and rubbers any minute. I told you, I’m just going for a walk. Jesus.”

“You’d better stay here, Andy,” Bud said tightly.

“Doesn’t anybody trust me? I told you I was off the stuff, didn’t I?”

“Then why do you want to leave the apartment?”

“To take a walk. Besides, the radio is bothering you.”

“It’s not bothering me. I was going to knock off anyway. I’ll pick it up again after I get some sleep.” He paused. “We can both use some sleep.”

“I’m not sleepy,” Andy said. “I feel like taking a walk.”

“You can walk here, if you like.”

“I want some fresh air.”

“Stand near the windows then. Look, Andy, you’re not leaving this damned apartment. I didn’t ask for you here, but now that you’re here I’m going to see that you stay.”

“Dig the warden,” Andy said, smiling. “Okay, I’ll stay. But I wasn’t going to try for a cop, believe me.”

“I believe you.”

“Okay.”

“Come on, let’s get to bed.”

“You go to bed. I want to walk around a little.”

“All right. You can leave the radio on if you like. But don’t leave the apartment.”

“I said I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” Bud said. He unbuttoned his shirt and then threw it over the back of the butterfly chair. He slipped out of his trousers and then kicked off his loafers and pulled off his socks. “If you need me — if you have to go to the john again — well, you can wake me.”

“I won’t need you,” Andy said.

“Well, if you should. Can I turn out the lights? You won’t mind, will you?”

“No, go ahead.”

He walked to the front door and locked it, and then he turned out the light on the end table and walked to his bed on the wall opposite the sofa and pulled back the covers. He went to the table then and turned out the light there, looking once at the open notebook before he did. He found his way back to the bed in the dark, climbed in, and pulled the sheet and cover to his throat.

“Good night,” he said.

“Good night, Buddy.”

“You’ll be all right, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

He felt compelled to say something more. “Stick with it, Andy. You’ve almost got it beat.”

“I know.”

“Just stick with it.”

He made his head comfortable on the pillow, and then he stretched out his legs. God, he was tired, more tired than he thought. Well, he’d accomplished something at least. Tomorrow — well, it was today already — today, when he got up, he’d knock off the rest of the notes. Did Carol say she was coming again? Yes, with Andy’s horn and music. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, after all. He’d laid down the law, and Andy and he now knew where they stood. He didn’t quite know why he’d given a damn about Andy’s leaving the apartment, but he had. He’d been appointed jailer, much to his regret, and even if the job had been unasked for, it was his, and he couldn’t very well let Andy walk out and get right aboard the merry-go-round again. No, he couldn’t allow that.

The things Andy remembered — that time in the car with the windows rolled up, how had a thing like that stuck in his mind? And his references to Reen, now that was strange all right.

He lay back and stared up at the ceiling, the darkness closing in on him, and he could hear Andy pacing in the darkness, the barefoot, hushed slap-slap of his feet on the wooden floor, back and forth, like a tiger, like a tiger in a cage, probably wanting, wanting, that itch inside his skull, wanting to get out and find a fix, back and forth, back and forth. He listened to the slap-slap, and all desire for sleep suddenly fled.

The ceiling was a black vortex, and he found himself thinking of that time in the car — “Sing, Sing, Sing,” Goodman, Krupa, James, Goodman, Krupa, James, how long ago, how very long ago, with the ceiling a black vortex, a long, black tunnel, and the barefoot slap-slap, pacing, pacing down that long tunnel of blackness, until the room dissolved and there was only the blackness and somewhere far off the sound of music, distant and indistinct, music from a faraway phonograph, distorted, don’t you dig distortion, chorus after chorus of blurred, half-heard music, indistinct, far off down the long black tunnel.

4

first chorus, i

FEBRUARY, 1944

From where Bud Donato sat at the piano he could see all of Club Stardust, and through the rosily distorted cones and rods of his seventeen-year-old vision the place assumed a certain glamour. He wasn’t sure whether it was actually the place itself or just the idea of having a rehearsal hall all their own, but through Bud’s eyes the sign outside Club Stardust did not hang from a rusted bar on rusted hinges. The five-and-dime gilt dust which had been sprinkled onto the letters when the paint was still wet was not that but shavings of pure silver.

The club was not, to Bud, a big square room with a toilet tacked on the wall opposite the entrance doorway. The streamers left over from the Christmas party did not seem limp or faded to his eyes. The naked light bulb hanging over the piano near the windows might very well have been a blazing sun. The subtle aroma of commingled stale beer and fresh urine was an exotic smell, a worldly smell, the smell you might find in a Chinese whore house. All the color and intrigue of an Oriental bazaar were here in Club Stardust. The magically marked and scarred piano (“Meg loves Bill” carved in a heart on the music rack, directly above middle C), the musty smell coming from deep inside the piano, the pennies dropped between the treble keys making several notes unattainable, the empty beer keg squatting stoutly in the far corner of the room, the “Loose Lips Sink Ships” poster tacked near the bathroom door, the crossed American Hags with the large photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt under them, the broken window behind Bud with the shirt cardboard tacked against it, the banked snow in the back yard outside the window, and the clothes stiff with winter clinging to taut clotheslines, the cat meowing to be let in, the sound of the wind and the gentle lap of snowflakes against the windows — all these overlapped, overran Bud’s mind and stirred his body. He was aware of being a part of something, aware in a way that only the seventeen-year-old can know.

The club was set between a butcher shop and a delicatessen on St. John’s Place, and it was a “social” club, consisting mostly of married couples who wanted a place for drinking beer and holding parties. Mike’s uncle belonged to the club, and Mike had talked him into letting the newly formed band play at the Christmas party the club was giving for all the children of the members. The band didn’t get paid for the party, but the agreement with Mike’s uncle was that they could use the club for rehearsals from then on, and the band doggedly kept him to that agreement.

This present rehearsal, even though it was still in its slipshod organizational stages, was as exciting to Bud as all the other rehearsals had been.

Frank was in the john, the door open. Tony was pacing the open stretch of floor between the “bandstand” and the tables on the other side of the room, his sax to his mouth, incessantly puffing up and down scales, pacing and puffing, his eyes closed as if the ecstasy of having a mouthpiece between his lips was altogether too much to bear. Vic was sitting at one of the tables, running a chamois cloth over his trumpet, devoting all his attention to the horn, and not noticing anyone else in the club.

Ox, the tenor man, was standing near another of the tables discussing music with Reen, who was not a musician. Reen nodded impatiently and then said, “Yes, but you’re wrong.”

Ox, a small boy with small hands and small feet and a small body, asked, “How can I be wrong and right at the same time?” His narrow, angular face was plainly confused. He always looked confused. He had pale blue eyes and a thin nose which drew his face downward toward his mouth. At the same time his hair was wavy and long, rising from his high forehead in a series of shelf like combings which stretched his face out in the other direction, giving it a perpetually surprised expression.

Reen looked down from his six-foot-two advantage. “You’re right because Barnett did ‘Cherokee’ and ‘Redskin Rumba’ both,” he said, his eyes intense, leaning forward the way he always did when he was pounding a point home. “But they’re not on separate disks. ‘Redskin Rumba’ is on the back of ‘Cherokee.’ Hell, it’s even a continuation of ‘Cherokee.’”

Ox did not seem convinced. He continued shaking his head, but apparently he could think of no suitable argument to give voice to.

“Look,” Reen said, assuming the patient attitude of a father-to-child relationship, “use your common sense. Even the title is a giveaway: ‘Redskin Rumba.’ What the hell are Cherokees if not redskins? Don’t you get the connection?”

Frank came out of the toilet zipping up his fly. “Reen’s right,” he said.

“Oh, what the hell do you know?” Ox asked, turning, thankful for the intrusion.

“I know Reen’s right,” Frank said. “And you should be ashamed of yourself! A tenor man who doesn’t know ‘Cherokee’ from a pole in the totem.” Frank grinned expansively, obviously having devoted his time in the toilet to concocting this delightful pun. As a matter of fact, he’d lingered longer than usual, desperately trying to find a better word than “totem” to complete the parallel. When his witty attempt went unappreciated by both Reen and Ox, he retreated into a sullen silence and walked over to the drums set up near the piano.

“When the hell do we start?” he asked Bud.

“Soon as Mike gets here, I suppose.”

“And when the hell does Mike get here?”

Tony Banner took the sax from his mouth long enough to say, “He’ll be a little late. He has to wait for his brother to come home with the key.”

“For Christ’s sake, let’s chip in and have another goddamn key made for him.” Frank said. “We hold up more rehearsals because his snotnose brother has the only key to his—”

“He’ll be here,” Tony said, and then he immediately put the saxophone to his mouth again, puffing and pacing like an expectant father with a curved, metallic cigar between his lips. Frank listened to the elementary monotony of the scales, absorbed momentarily, absorbed with a drummer’s absorption, listening to the even spacing of the notes as the scales fell from the bell of Tony’s horn. His interest died as suddenly as it had found life. He searched the closet of his mind for a means of interrupting the monotony, and then he asked, “What arrangements did you get, Tony?”

Tony completed a scale before taking the mouthpiece from his lips. “Some nice ones,” he answered.

“Like what?” Frank asked pointedly. A look of muted understanding passed between him and Bud. The band usually went down to Hub Music en masse. They invaded the shop like a horde of locusts, crawling over every arrangement in the place, pawing through the music to make sure it didn’t feature trombone solos or glockenspiel ducts. They also made sure they didn’t pick stuff too difficult for them, or stuff that would make a small band sound sick. Actually, they were only exercising a stockholder’s prerogative. For whereas Tony Banner was legally the duly appointed leader of the band, his leadership was nothing more than a mock post. He had been chosen because he had the nicest-sounding name, the name that would look best on a stand. His duties did not extend beyond calling off the tempo for a tune and generally supervising rehearsals. Any important decision was made by band vote. The band also chipped in for all the arrangements and were now saving for cardboard stands to replace the unsightly metal music racks they were using. (The advertisement in Down Beat showed four musicians with their trousers pulled almost to their knees, their socks falling, their garters loose, sitting behind the metal racks. Beneath that was a picture of the same musicians behind the sleek, folding cardboard stands, a smooth, music-making machine. The pictorial metamorphosis was most convincing.)

So whereas the stockholder’s prerogative was generally exercised, it had not been taken advantage of that morning. The members of the band had all made previous engagements or appointments (some of which had been skillfully spawned by duty-minded parents) and Tony had been reluctantly sent downtown alone. He’d been sent with much misgiving, not because the boys didn’t like him, but only because they’d suspected he’d return with a pile of numbers featuring solos for the alto sax, which, of course, he played. Frank’s anxiety was reflected on Bud’s face as they waited for Tony’s answer.

“Well,” he said. “I got some real nice ones.” The club suddenly seemed very silent. Reen and Ox abruptly ended their discussion and walked over to the piano. Tony, as if realizing his judgment was about to be put on trial, busied himself with the leather strap around his neck, toying with the hook where it joined the saxophone.

“What’d you get?” Frank asked again, suspiciously this time.

“‘I Dreamt I Dwelt in Harlem,’” Tony answered. Belatedly, he added, “A nice number.”

“I never heard of it,” Frank said. He turned from Tony and began tightening the nuts on his cymbals. Vic, apparently drawn by the talk of the new arrangements, put down his chamois and walked over to the piano, his trumpet hooked over his arm like a shotgun.

“You’ll recognize it when you hear it,” Tony said uneasily. He paused and wiped his hand across his mouth, more unsure of himself now. “I also picked up ‘Stardust.’ I figured we should start buying some standards. We got almost all pops and—”

“That’s good,” Bud said, nodding in agreement.

“What else?” Frank asked.

“‘Trumpet Blues.’”

“Harry James’s?” Reen asked.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll never play that,” Frank said sourly. Maybe he didn’t know that Vic had silently walked over to the piano and was standing there now, thin-lipped, solemn-eyed. Maybe he didn’t know, but Bud suspected he just didn’t give a damn. Bud looked up and caught the quick spark in Vic’s eyes almost the instant it was kindled.

“Why not?” Vic asked quietly. “Why won’t we play it?”

Frank looked up from his cymbals, and he didn’t seem surprised to see Vic there at all. “We’ve only got one trumpet,” he said. “James has six.”

Vic wouldn’t let it go. “So what?” he said.

Frank shrugged. “So that.”

“One trumpet can carry the melody,” Vic said doggedly. “The first trumpet sheet—”

“Are you comparing yourself to James?” Frank said suddenly. Bud felt the shocked silence that greeted Frank’s outburst. He glanced to Vic uneasily, saw Vic bite his lip for a moment.

“No,” Vic said, “I know I’m not James, but—”

“Then what the hell are you talking about?” Frank said, flaring into anger. “You think ‘Trumpet Blues’ is one of your damn C scales?”

“Oh, knock it off, Frank,” Reen said.

“I can play it,” Vic said to no one in particular.

“Play with this a while,” Frank said nastily.

“If you can play the drum part, I can play the trumpet part.”

“I can play the drum part, all right,” Frank said, straightening up from his cymbals. “Don’t worry about that, boy. I can play the drum part fine. There hasn’t been a drum part yet I couldn’t play.”

“Well, I can play the trumpet part,” Vic persisted.

“We’ll see,” Frank said, unwilling to continue with what seemed a pointless argument to him.

Tony Banner, a boy who hated awkward situations of any sort, a boy who’d walk a mile to avoid a scene, listened to the completeness of the silence all around him. He wiped his hand over his mouth again, glanced toward the door hurriedly, and almost thanked the Virgin Mary when he saw Mike entering the room.

“Here’s Mike now,” he said, sighing thankfully. “We can start as soon as you tune us up, Bud.”

“Sure,” Bud said. He watched Vic slouch over to his metal stand and sit in the chair behind it. Vic had thin lips, and he blew from the side of his mouth, and all the boys in the band knew he wasn’t so hot, which was why they were looking for an additional trumpet player. But Bud’s sense of right and wrong could not eliminate the fact that the idea for a band had originated with Vic, and that he’d done the initial legwork, getting hold of Ox and Mike, and later Bud and Frank. It was funny they’d chosen Tony as leader, because he’d actually been the last one to join the band. It was funny to everyone but Vic, Bud knew, and he couldn’t help feeling sorry for the trumpet player. Vic, despite his show of bravado, sensed he was not a very good musician, and Frank shouldn’t have hopped on him like that, especially for no apparent good reason.

Mike Daley came over, his red face even redder from the cold outside, and stamped around and got everyone wet when he shook off his coat. He kept rubbing his hands together while Bud gave Tony and Ox the A. Vic came over to the piano and tuned up, taking longer than the other fellows because his ear wasn’t as good and he was unable to tell whether he was flat or sharp unless Bud prompted him. Frank sat behind his drums, up high on the special box he’d built with the cushion on it. He played a few rolls with his brushes, and Vic put in a cup mute and blew a few scales softly, while Ox and Tony ran up some chromatics together. When Mike came over to the piano with his alto sax, Bud yelled for everyone to shut up and then gave him the A. Mike blew a note, pulled his mouthpiece out a little, and then hit it again, right on the button this time. He warmed up a little, joining Tony and Ox in the chromatics. Reen walked to one of the tables on the other side of the — room, sat down, and then as an afterthought propped his legs up on the table.

“Let’s take ‘Elk’s Parade,’” Tony said, and Bud smiled a little. He’d known what was coming because Tony always chose that number for the warm-up. The band played it better than any of their other arrangements, and it also gave each of the boys an opportunity to solo. It was a jump tune, too, and jumps were always better for warm-ups than something slow and draggy.

Tony called off the beat, standing up to do it, the way he’d seen big-timers do it, Bud surmised. He sat down as soon as the band started playing, and they ran through the number without a hitch, playing it competently if without any particular distinction. When they were finished, Reen applauded, and Tony hammed it up the way he always did, standing up and bowing and smiling and saying, “Thank you, thank you,” as if he were addressing an adulating audience at the Paramount. Frank said, “Come on, let’s get this damn rehearsal over with,” and Tony turned all business, going over to the piano and taking the new arrangements from its top where he’d left them.

He gave out all the parts, saving the trombone sheets, and the guitar sheet, and the second and third trumpet sheets, and the fourth tenor sheet, and the bass sheet for when the band was bigger and needed them. Bud glanced through the stuff Tony handed him, and he had to admit it looked pretty good, with some nice chords in the “Harlem” number. Frank looked over his simple drum parts and then said, “Let’s try ‘Trumpet Blues’ first, Tony.”

A worried look came onto Tony’s face — the look that always arrived whenever he had a decision to make. “I thought we’d try some of the simpler stuff first,” he said.

“Hell, this is simple enough,” Frank answered. “Vic can play it. You heard him say so, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but...”

“Then why not? Come on, let’s try it.”

“I’m game,” Vic said, perhaps a little too loudly. He was sitting alongside Frank, with the three saxes in front of him and with Bud on his left, facing the piano.

“There,” Frank said. “Harry James is game. Let’s try it.”

“Well, all right,” Tony said reluctantly. “I want to number the sheets first, though.” He said this apologetically, keenly aware of his puppet status, knowing he’d been chosen for leadership simply because of his name. Oddly enough — oddly because Tony was Italian — his real name was Tony Banner. Reen had often voiced the opinion that the immigration authorities on Ellis Island had undoubtedly wrangled with a great-grandfather’s Bannalinza or Bannicossoni before resignedly recording it as Banner, but Tony remained noncommittal on the possibility. He made no attempt to reconcile the Anglo-Saxon handle with the obvious Italianness of his features. For even though he had blond hair, the blond was a muddied color which combined with his deep brown eyes and his swarthy complexion to cancel itself out in an over-all impression of darkness. His brows, as if in perpetual disagreement with the accidental light coloring of his hair, were jet black — a combination any young lady in the United States would have envied deeply. There was nothing unmasculine about Tony Banner, though. He was five feet ten inches tall, and he was solidly packed with bulging muscles, of which he was uncommonly proud.

“What’s the number?” Bud asked.

“Twenty-seven,” Tony answered.

“I can remember when we had only three,” Mike said, proudly awed.

“Well, we’ve got twenty-seven now,” Frank informed him. “Come on, let’s number the damn thing and play it.”

Tony passed a pencil stub around and they all scribbled a “27” on the fronts of their sheets. Bud propped his on the rack, spreading it out, testing a few chords with his fingers, but not striking them. Vic was staring at his sheet solemnly, his eyes squinted as if he were reading a Hebrew newspaper.

“We’ll take it slow,” Tony said, “very slow. Ah-one, ah-two, ah-three, ah-four, like that. One, two, three, four. You got that, Frank?”

“I got it,” Frank said.

“And don’t speed it up. This is the first time we’re playing it. We don’t have to sound like stars.”

“The trumpet is the star of this one,” Frank said, deriving a perverse pleasure from giving Vic the needle. Vic looked at him briefly and then turned back to his music.

“Okay,” Tony said, “let’s take it.” He arranged his own sheet on the stand, adjusted the strap around his neck, and then called, “Ah-one, ah-two, a h-three, ah-four; one, two, three four...”

Frank and Bud started with the rhythm, a four-bar introduction with a boogie beat. Vic missed the pickup at the end of the fourth measure, and Tony called a stop and said, “Okay, let’s try it again. Watch that pickup, Vic.”

Vic nodded, ignoring Frank’s grin of superiority, and then Tony counted off again. Bud and Frank took the intro once more, and this time Vic caught his pickup and went sailing into the fifth bar with it. He wasn’t Harry James, and no member of the band doubted that fact. He had a thin, feeble tone, and he gave the trumpet part all the power of a ruptured flea. On the sustained notes his tone cracked and wobbled, and when the business began to get a little tricky, he went completely berserk, playing in a little vacuum all by himself, not listening to the rhythm and not paying any attention at all to the background the saxes were giving him.

“Okay,” Tony yelled, “hold it, hold it.”

They all stopped, and Vic came to a reluctant, preoccupied halt about four beats after the rest of the band. Frank sat at his drums with a big smile on his face.

“Uh, I think we ought to try that again,” Tony said diplomatically. “From [A] this time. You all got that?”

The boys nodded, and Tony said, “Set the beat, Frank. You know what it is.”

Frank gave the boys four beats on the bass drum, using the foot pedal, and then he gave them another four, and they all came in from [A]. If anything, it was worse this time. They started out together, but Vic got lost somewhere in the shuffle, and pretty soon he was back in his little vacuum again, playing for his own private audience, forgetting all about the band, studying his sheet with those solemn eyes of his, blowing his feeble music from the side of his mouth. Bud looked at Frank, and Frank looked back at him, and they kept the rhythm going, both wondering just where Vic was on the sheet. Bud read ahead a little, but he still couldn’t find just where Vic was, and he didn’t know where the saxes were any more, either. Tony and Mike, on first and third altos, were blowing together, but Ox was somewhere up on a cloud, blowing his own carefree way, and Vic had already left the land of the living and was running completely amok.

Bud lost his own place then, what with trying to read ahead and all, and the resultant cacophony was really a marvel to hear. Everyone kept pounding away or blasting away, apparently blaming the guy sitting next to him for playing either ahead or behind. Tony was so absorbed in following his own sheet that he didn’t hear a sound around him. He was probably the best sight-reader in the group, and when he sight-read, he threw all of his muscular five feet ten into it. He finally was blasted out of his unconsciousness, and he stood up suddenly, as if he’d been goosed, and shouted, “All right, all right, hold it!”

If the band hadn’t been playing exactly together, they certainly stopped together. One minute there was this godawful sound that pounded at the walls, and the next there was complete silence. And then, through the silence, even before their ears had grown accustomed to the welcome peace, the voice from the door said, “Buddy?”

Bud swung around on the piano bench, and every pair of eyes in the band swung toward the door at the same time.

A kid with a trumpet case was standing there. He wore a boxlike raincoat and a battered rain hat, and his green trousers were rolled up over his ankles, showing orange-and-black striped socks. His shoes were caked with snow, and he stood there with the trumpet case in one hand and a man’s black umbrella in the other. He searched the faces of the seated musicians, apparently wondering which one of them was Bud’s. He rubbed one finger across the bridge of his nose, cleared his throat, and repeated, “Buddy?”

“I’m Bud,” Bud said, puzzled.

The kid did not move from the door. He seemed afraid to enter, as if he’d stumbled into the Ladies’ Room by error.

“I’m Andy Silvera,” he said.

“Who?” Bud asked.

The kid gulped down something in his throat, grunted after it was gone, and then repeated, “Andy Silvera.”

Bud couldn’t think of anyone he knew by the name of Andy Silvera. He kept staring at the kid and waiting for him to say something else, but Andy Silvera had apparently said all he was going to say. He stood by the door silently, the snow melting under his shoes and spreading in a small blackish puddle. Tony looked at Bud wonderingly, and Bud shrugged slightly and turned back to the kid.

“Well,” he said, “what can I do for you, Andy?”

“My father sent me down,” Andy said, his voice cracking.

“Oh,” Bud said, still not understanding.

“He works in your father’s office. Your father told him you needed a trumpet player.”

“Oh, yes,” Bud said, abruptly remembering. He’d told his father about needing a trumpet player one night at supper. His father had mentioned the kid to him a few days ago, telling him the kid had been playing trumpet for close to eight years. Bud had given his father the address of the club and told him to send the kid down. He looked at Andy Silvera now, figuring him for no more than sixteen and wondering about the truth of that “eight years” business. He got off the bench, walked to him, and extended his hand. Andy shifted the umbrella from his right hand and then reached out abruptly, awkwardly, like someone who is not used to the convention of handshaking. From the corner of his eye Bud could see Reen regarding them with wry amusement. Reen was the one who’d called Tony “Bundler Banner” the first time he’d seen Tony in his mackinaw. As far as Reen was concerned, you either wore mackinaws when you were twelve years old or when you were up in the North Woods. He’d explained this to Tony, whose mother had bought him the bulky red-and-blue plaid job, but Tony — for some obscure reason — couldn’t see any humor in it. Reen observed the orange-and-black socks on Andy Silvera’s feet now, and then his eyes took in the rolled green trousers, and Bud saw his heavy eyebrows quirk upward like individual shaggy grinning mouths.

“Come on in,” Bud said to the kid. “Come meet the boys.”

Andy nodded self-consciously, then smiled self-consciously, and then followed Bud like an uncertain ghost, the black umbrella in one hand dripping a watery trail onto the floor, the trumpet case in the other. Bud led him over to Tony and said, “This is Tony Banner, the leader of the band.”

Tony stuck out his hand, and the kid fumbled awkwardly with the umbrella, shifting it to the hand that held the trumpet case and then taking Tony’s hand. Tony smiled and gave him his special weight-lifter, bear-crusher, bone-cracker, knuckle-gnarler handshake, and the kid just nodded with a pained, shocked look on his smooth, peach-fuzz face. When Tony released his hand, the kid shifted the umbrella back again, looked quickly at the hand that had suffered Tony’s treatment, and then raised his eyes just as quickly, a little guiltily. He had a nice-enough-looking face, Bud thought, with high cheekbones and a good wide mouth, weak still, the way a mouth will be when it hasn’t matured yet. He had ears that hugged his head, and his eyebrows and sideburns were a sandy brown, and his eyes were deep brown, almost black, flecked with chips of amber. His eyes looked intelligent, but they were stabbed with this fear now, and the fear made it impossible to tell anything about them or from them. He had a good nose, cleanly sweeping down from the arch of his brows, unbroken, with wide flaring nostrils that somehow intensified the frightened-animal look about him. His hands looked surprisingly mature for a kid’s hands — wide, with square fingers and well-pared nails, the backs of the fingers curling with blond-bronze hair.

Bud introduced him to all the boys, and the umbrella shift occurred just before each handshake, like a football team going into action after the signal for the snapback has been given. Frank sat at his drums with a curious smirk on his face, and he looked down at the kid from his superior perch, and Bud hoped he wouldn’t hop on him the way he’d hopped on Vic just a little while ago.

Frank acknowledged the introduction without reaching down to shake hands, and then he said, “You play trumpet, huh?”

“Yes,” Andy said. “Yes, I do.” He looked up at Frank as though he were having trouble focusing him properly. He wet his lips, and Bud noticed for the first time the pink, almost white ring of muscle smack in the center of his upper lip, the coat of arms of the trumpet player. It looked like a miniature smoke ring that had slipped out of his mouth and somehow got glued to his lip, hanging there in the bow of his mouth.

Frank, enjoying his elevated position on the cushioned box, enjoying the superiority of advanced age, enjoying just being a bastard, asked, “How long you been playing, kid?”

“Seven years. Well, almost eight years.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Andy said.

“How old are you, kid?” Frank asked, the smirk still on his mouth.

“Fifteen,” Andy said. He didn’t say it with embarrassment, the way a fifteen-year-old will when he wants to be sixteen or seventeen. He said it matter-of-factly, the direct answer to a direct question, and Bud realized he was not yet conscious of the vast difference between fifteen and sixteen.

“And you’ve been playing eight years?” Frank asked, his eyebrows raised in skepticism.

“Yes, almost,” Andy said.

“You ever play with a band before?”

“At... in school,” Andy said.

“Which school?”

“Boys’ High.”

“You go to Boys’ High?”

“Yes.”

“You know a guy named Goldstein? Allan Goldstein?”

“No,” Andy said.

“What term are you in?”

“Fourth.”

“Goldstein plays trumpet. You sure you don’t know him?”

“No,” Andy said. “No, I... I never heard of him. Is he... does he play in the band there?”

“Sure,” Frank said.

“Well, I don’t know him,” Andy answered. “I’m sorry.”

Tony was listening to all this, slightly bored by the conversation. Frank shrugged and retightened the nut on one of his cymbals, dismissing the kid, and Tony said, “You want to warm up over there in the corner, Andy? We’ll run through a number and then you can sit in after that, okay?”

“All right,” Andy said. He looked around, seemingly confused, and then walked over to where Reen was sitting.

“Take off your coat and hat, kid,” Reen said. “You’ll catch peenumonia.”

“Thanks,” Andy said, unsmiling. He made a big production of putting down first the umbrella, then the trumpet case, then taking off the hat, then the raincoat. Reen winced when he saw the kid was wearing a faded red sweater with the green trousers. Andy hung his coat on the rack, unsnapped his trumpet case, and tenderly lifted his horn from its velvet bed. From one of the pockets in the case, he took out a chamois cloth and wiped the horn slowly and gently, passing the cloth over the gleaming surface. He reached into his pocket then and pulled out a mouthpiece in a leather holster. He unsnapped the holster and fitted the mouthpiece to the horn instantly. He put the horn to his mouth, prbb-prbb-ing his lips against the mouthpiece, and then opened the spit valve on the bend of the brass and blew effortlessly, a dribbling of moisture hitting the floor. He closed the spit valve and then worked his fingers over the valves for a few minutes, shaking the cold out of them, and then he began to blow some prolonged warm-up notes, nothing fancy, just long low notes, very softly, to take the stiffness out of his lip. He didn’t sound like much. To Bud’s ears, Vic sounded better when he warmed up. He turned his attention away from the kid and back to Tony.

“Let’s take ‘Elk’s Parade,’” Tony said. He said it offhandedly, nonchalantly, preoccupied with hooking his sax to the strap around his neck. He said it innocently, as if he didn’t know it was the band’s best number, and as if the band didn’t know he was showing off for the benefit of the kid who was warming up on the other side of the room. The boys fished out their music, Tony counted off, and then they went into the number, playing it as well as they always did, maybe giving it a little more get-up-and-go for the benefit of the newcomer.

The kid didn’t seem to pay much attention, though. He just stood back there near the table, his horn pointed at the floor, those long low notes oozing out of the bell. When they finished the number Tony looked at him expectantly, but the kid went right on warming up, not paying any attention to what was going on near the piano. Tony stared at him for a second, and when he called the kid over he used his Angry Voice, the voice he used whenever the sax section was blowing particularly sour.

“You want to come over now?” he said. “Bring a chair, will you?” He worded both sentences as questions, but there was no mistaking they were delivered as orders.

Andy stopped blowing and then picked up a chair from one of the tables where it was stacked upside down. He brought the chair over to where Vic was sitting, and Vic looked up at him from his big solemn eyes, studying first the ring of muscle on his lip and then looking down to the well-kept horn and the fingers holding it. Andy put down the chair, and it was plain to see he was annoying the hell out of Tony, though Bud couldn’t understand quite why. Maybe Tony had expected some hearty applause after “Elk’s Parade,” instead of the indifference Andy had exhibited. Or maybe Tony was annoyed because the kid automatically sat down beside Vic, without waiting to be told where to sit. It seemed to Bud, though, that a trumpet player would automatically sit next to another trumpet player, and he couldn’t see any reason for Tony’s getting angry about that. He was certainly angry, no question about it, and he began sniffing through his nostrils, the way he always did when he got angry.

“Give him the first-trumpet sheet, Vic,” he said, and he sniffed and then dug into the extra sheets he had near his stand, handing Vic the second-trumpet part. He looked at the kid and asked in his Angry Voice, “You ever play lead trumpet?”

“In school,” Andy said.

“Well, you may find this a little different from school,” Tony snapped, and Frank was smirking all over again. “We want to find out how you read, and I’ll be listening to your tone, too, so play the best you can.”

“All right,” Andy said. He looked at the sheet and said, “Oh, ‘Trumpet Blues.’”

“You ever play it before?” Tony asked, sniffing.

“No, but I heard the James record.”

Vic moved over a little, placing his music on the stand so that Andy could share a part of the metal rack. Andy spread his music, reading it as he put it down. Bud gave the kid his A, and Tony looked at him hostilely for a moment and then said, “Take it slow, Frank. We don’t want to confuse the kid.”

“Okay,” Frank said, smile-smirking.

“One, two, three, four,” Tony said, “one, two, three, four...”

Bud and Frank went into the intro, a nice stepladder boogie. They played it slowly, expecting the kid to miss the pickup, the way Vic had done. But he didn’t miss it. He came in right when he was supposed to, and Vic surprisingly came in with him, and Bud heard the sound of the two trumpets and turned momentarily to look at them. Vic was hunched in his chair, studying the sheet intently, painfully, the way he always did — like a Swiss watchmaker with an intricate clock to repair. He had the bell of his horn turned toward Andy’s, and he blew with the mouthpiece on the left side of his lip, off-center.

Andy seemed completely relaxed. He leaned back in the chair, and his feet were spread wide, like Charlie Chaplin’s, a stance which, coupled with the orange-and-black socks, made Bud want to laugh. He seemed to blow effortlessly, playing slowly because the beat was very slow, the way Tony had wanted it. He hit the notes hard and solid, and he got a big round tone from his horn, and Bud got the feeling that he was holding back, so he nodded to Frank, and Frank began speeding up the tempo a little.

The kid picked up the quicker beat right away, and Vic followed him, and the saxes followed the trumpet. Andy just kept following his music, but he began to play a little louder now, as if the increased tempo was what he’d been waiting for. Bud listened to the big notes flowing from the bell of his horn, and he unconsciously began hitting the piano a little harder, and he heard Frank’s footbeat on the bass drum get a little stronger, with more of a drive behind it.

The kid put a solid rock behind that horn of his, and he began riding that rock, tipping the horn up toward the ceiling. The tune began to jump a little because he was like a man behind a pneumatic drill, pushing on those valves, his cheeks only puffed a little, but the pressure flowing from his mouth and through the horn, the notes blasting up at the ceiling, but not blasting with a hard flat trumpet sound. There was a brassy sound, but it was clean brass, brass you could almost taste in your mouth, brass you could almost see glistening. Brass that was almost like gold.

The music was a part of him, and it started with the jiggle of his toes inside those ludicrous orange-and-black socks, and it spread up the length of his leg and into the pit of his diaphragm, and up through his lungs, and out through his lips, and down through the horn, around the brass bend, channeled by the valves, and then floating out of that bell, blooming out of that bell like a big spring flower, bursting into the room big and round, always with that solid rocking beat behind it, always with that full big brass tone. He cut through the tricky business like a scythe in a hay field, and Vic threw in the towel, the going too rough for him now. His solemn eyes watched the kid’s fingering and the kid’s lipwork, and Bud could feel him listening to the sound that came from that horn, and his eyes got even more solemn than they usually were. The saxes hung on, blowing together, catching some of the spirit that the horn created. Andy pointed his bell up at the ceiling, and the Christmas decorations in the hall began to sway a little when he really cut loose.

It was something like a fever. The band heard him blowing back there, and the fire spread to them. Bud felt chords coming to life under his fingers, and he felt warm all at once, a strange warmth that spread through his body, that flamed up around him until there was only the sound they were making, the sound of the band, and being a part of the band, beating the piano like the heart pump of the band, and then listening to that horn take the blood away roaring through the veins. There was no Club Stardust any more, no four walls hemming them in, no world outside anywhere, no universe, no anything but the music they were making. It was like being with a girl, Bud felt, only better somehow because there was a bigger sense of fulfillment, but the same reaching quality, the same straining for something that was always just out of reach.

They rode into the sock chorus like a storm cloud of marauders on strong black horses, riding high up in the sky there, following that Gabriel horn, letting it become a part of them. They heard the blasting back there, and the blasting was a wild kind of unleashed thing that lapped nervously at their roots, a restless kind of music that reached up and kept reaching, and always reached for more, but never quite got there until they wanted to reach up with it, wanted to give it a boost, wanted to play harder, and better, and get up there with that horn, away up there where the horn was, where it was clean and clear and pure and sweet and where their lungs were washed with dry ice and fire. They were in the same kind of vacuum Vic had been in earlier that day, but this was a different vacuum, this was a vacuum they all created, this was their baby, like a real baby squeezed from a woman’s loins, only the woman was a horn, and the baby was a big golden bubble that burst from the bell of that horn, and rose swiftly, and touched the ceiling, and then shattered there into a million golden bubbles that knocked each other around and sped around the room in a dizzying swirl, gleaming hotly, gleaming with the taste of gold-brass, slapping the walls, and then bursting again into millions and millions of bubbles that enveloped them, and floated and rose and descended and rose again, carrying the boys, all around them, inside them. Bud wanted to keep listening to that trumpet, wanted to keep feeling the music as a part of him, feeling it vibrate around the room, showering golden bubbles on him, showering all that restless brassy searching feeling on him, that high shrill climbing, that straining yearning reaching.

But the bubble burst for the last time, and then it was all over, like it’s all over with a girl, and there was a curious emptiness inside Bud, of something that had been almost touched but not quite, something that had been a part of him for just a very little while, and was no more. There were only the echoes around him now, and then even the echoes disappeared, dissipated on the air, leaving only a vast, empty silence, a speechless, wondrous silence.

Reen’s applause came from the back of the room: not the shallow, mocking applause he reserved for Tony Banner’s clowning. Not that at all. It burst from those big hands of his, filling the empty stillness the music had left.

Bud felt tired and weak. He sat at the piano, and he looked at Frank, and the wise-guy smirk was gone from Frank’s face. He was staring at Andy, and Andy sat in his chair with the horn in his lap, out of breath, looking down at the horn and not looking at any of the boys. And Vic sat beside him, the solemn eyes sad now because he was reading the big writing on the wall.

There was another long silence after Reen stopped clapping. Bud could hear his own breathing at the piano, and then Tony stood up and unhooked his sax from the strap, and then he put the sax down across the seat of his chair, and he lifted one leg, resting his foot alongside the sax, leaning over and elbowing his weight onto his knee. He looked at Andy, and he wet his lips, and he asked, “How would you... how would you like to play with us, Andy?”

He said it softly and nervously, his anger all gone now, that harried look on his face, as if he had touched greatness, as if he wanted this kid to play with them very badly, and as if he were afraid the kid would say no.

Andy looked at him, and there was no smile on his face, no apparent knowledge there of what he’d just done. He nodded slowly, and then he said, “All right, I think so.”

5

first chorus ii

FEBRUARY, 1944

The rehearsal had been called for seven o’clock sharp on that February eighteenth.

There was a dance every Friday night at Our Merciful Father on Brooklyn Avenue, and Bud and Frank had got into the habit of attending it, along with Reen and the other boys in the clique before those boys were drafted. Tony hadn’t liked the idea of a too-early rehearsal, but Bud and Frank pounded at his ear, telling him they were going to rehearse tomorrow anyway, weren’t they, so what difference would it make if they started a little earlier and knocked off in time to make the dance?

Tony reluctantly conceded — reluctantly, because he didn’t like to dance himself, even though they’d dragged him along several times. Actually, he wasn’t a very good dancer, having learned from his mother, who’d taught him all the old-fashioned curlicues and none of the basic rhythm.

Bud and Frank went to rehearsal in suits that night, figuring they’d go directly to the dance afterward, saving the time of a trip home for changing clothes. Reen, who’d rather have been shot than appear at any public function alone, went to the rehearsal with them, also wearing a suit. They arrived at Club Stardust at about a quarter to seven, figuring they’d set up the drums and be ready to go at seven on the dot. Vic and Tony were already there, and Ox drifted in at five to seven. Mike came in at about a minute after seven, and by the time everyone warmed up and tuned up the band was ready to start playing at seven-ten. But Andy hadn’t arrived yet.

Bud sat at the piano in his blue suit, feeling strangely resplendent. Frank was on his left, looking very dressed up, looking as strange as Bud felt. They usually rehearsed in sports shirts or collars-unbuttoned, sleeves-rolled-up dress shirts, and Bud felt very stiff and formal sitting at the piano with pressed pants, and tie, and jacket.

Tony was wearing a suit, too. Bud did a little fast calculation and gathered Tony was going to the dance with them — either that or a-funeral or wedding. They hung around making small talk, almost afraid to move because they were dressed to the teeth and they’d never dressed for Club Stardust before, except at the Christmas party, and even then they’d only worn sports jackets.

Frank glanced at his watch, and then Reen glanced at his watch, and then everyone who owned a watch glanced at it, the movement having become as contagious as a yawn. Ox asked, “What are we waiting for?” and Tony said, “We’re waiting for Andy,” and then Tony looked at his watch.

Bud turned on the bench, and his elbow accidentally struck the keyboard, and everyone in the band turned to look at him, as if he’d burped.

“You know, they still haven’t cleared the snow on my street,” Ox said.

“Take that up with the D.S.C.,” Frank said.

“I think my father already has,” Ox said, the surprised expression on his face.

“He’s an upstanding citizen,” Reen said from the back of the room.

Normally, Reen’s comment would have presented an opening for some banter at Ox’s expense. Tonight it was greeted with silence. The silence mushroomed in on itself. In the bathroom the toilet tank gurgled in unusually loud voice.

“It’s hot as hell in here,” Frank said.

“Take off your jacket.”

“And get my shirt dirty? Not a chance.”

“What time is it?” Mike, who did not own a watch, asked.

“Seven-fifteen,” Bud answered. “No, seven-sixteen.”

“Well, we’ve got time yet,” Frank said.

“Yeah.”

Vic began playing some scales, a cup mute in his horn. He dropped the scales abruptly and began slaughtering “Carnival in Venice.” Behind him, in the silence of the room, the toilet tank played a Shep Fields accompaniment, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling. Frank listened to him, fidgeting, running his finger under his tight collar, hounding his watch:

Daaah-dah, daah-dah, daaah-da-da went Vic’s horn.

Urb-ulluh, urb-ulluh went the toilet tank.

Daaah-dah-dah, dah-dah, urb-ulluh, daah-dabbuluh, ulluh, daaa...

“Where the hell is that kid?” Frank exploded.

“He’ll be here soon,” Bud said. “Give him time.”

Vic took his horn from his lips. “We can rehearse without him,” he said.

“Yeah,” Frank said sourly.

“We did it before he came along,” Vic persisted.

“That was before we knew any better,” Frank said.

“What do you mean by that?” Vic asked.

“Well, what the hell does it sound like I mean?”

“It sounds like you’re saying, I don’t know what it sounds like, but I know I don’t like it.”

“Then shove it,” Frank said.

“Now, listen—”

“What the hell do you want me to do, hold your hand for you?”

“You can get off my back, that’s all,” Vic said. “Nobody asked you to stick your nose into this anyway.”

“I only commented on your suggestion. You said we could rehearse without him, and I don’t think we can.”

“Why not?” Vic asked.

“Look,” Tony said, trying to smile, “we’ll be kicked out of here if you guys make so much—”

“Why not?” Vic asked again.

“Why not?” Frank leaned forward over his drums. “You really want to know why not, Vic? You really want to know?”

“Leave him alone, Frank,” Bud said.

“No, he wants to know. He wants to know why we can’t rehearse without the kid. All right, I’ll tell him.”

“Come on, Frank,” Tony said. “Cut it out.”

“What’s the matter?” Frank said, his voice rising. “Can’t I tell him if he wants to know? A guy asks a question, he deserves an answer.”

“Let it go, Frank,” Tony said. “Why do you want to start—”

“I’ll tell you, Vic,” Frank said sweetly, “If you really want to know, why I’ll tell you, Vic.” He sucked in a deep breath. “It’s because you stink in spades, Vic. Not only—”

“Listen—”

“Not only,” Frank shouted, gaining momentum, “can’t you carry the first-trumpet sheet, I don’t think you could carry a two-ounce bag of marshmallows around the block, that’s what I think. Now do you know why we can’t start rehearsal without the kid? Do you—”

“Frank, for Christ’s sake—” Tony started.

“No, let him talk,” Vic said tightly.

“I’m finished talking. I said all I’ve got to say. You stink. Period. You play trumpet like a man with a stomach-ache.”

“You’re God Almighty, I suppose,” Vic said, plainly embarrassed, but still not losing his temper.

“No,” Frank answered, “but at least I can play my instrument. That’s more than you can do.”

“I was taking trumpet lessons before you even heard of the drums,” Vic said ineffectively.

“Then you didn’t learn a hell of a lot. You ought to change teachers.”

“Who the hell died and left you boss, anyway?” Vic asked, his voice a little louder, but the cliché still sounding weak on his lips.

“You don’t have to be boss to know a lousy trumpet player when you see one.”

Vic blinked his eyes for a moment, realizing he was on the losing end of the argument. He rose suddenly, yanking the mouthpiece from his horn. “Maybe you won’t have to see much more of me,” he said angrily.

“What? Are you threatening us?” Frank asked, smirking.

“No, I’m not threatening. I’m quitting. You can shove your band. There are plenty of other bands around.”

“None that’ll have you,” Frank said, still riding him, enjoying his offensive advantage now.

“What the hell do you care who’ll have me or not?” Vic said. He hesitated for a moment, as if he would keep the real cause of the argument hidden. But the real cause burned in his lungs and his throat, and it bubbled out of his mouth like molten lava. “You’ve got your little Golden Boy, haven’t you? What the hell do you care about me? He’s all that counts. Go kiss his ass a little. Go ahead.” He whirled and lifted his trumpet case from the floor beside his chair.

“Look,” Tony said, “there’s no need to quit, Vic. Frank was just—”

“Don’t try to kid me, boy,” Vic said heatedly. “Don’t shovel it at me, boy. You all feel the way he does. You think I’m going to hang around when you feel like that?”

“Vic, we don’t—”

“The hell you don’t! Listen, you think I’m cockeyed? You think I can’t see what’s been going on? First you give him all the hot rides, and then you give him all the sweet solos. What does that leave for me? Harmony? Well, look, don’t worry about me. Don’t worry your head about me. No, just worry about your Golden Boy, he’s the one to worry about. Why don’t you give him sheets for the whole damn trumpet section and let him play six trumpet parts at once? That ought to suit Frank fine. That ought to make you all happy. You should all wet your pants over that one.”

“Vic, we didn’t—”

“Agh, what the hell are you trying to tell me? I should have seen this right from the beginning. From the minute they made you leader.”

“Now wait a minute,” Tony said. “Let’s not start—”

“Who started this goddamn band, anyway? You? Did you buy the first three arrangements? Did you go shagging all over Brooklyn looking for musicians? What the hell did you do except come in when everybody was here already? What right do you have to be leader?”

“The boys chose me,” Tony said. “You know that.”

“Sure, because your name is Banner. So what kind of bull is that? What’s the matter with Vic Andrada on a stand? What’s the matter with that name? Is it any worse than Charlie Ventura... or Vido Musso? Or... or... What the hell difference does a name make?”

“The boys felt—”

“Yeah, the boys felt, the boys felt. Well, I know what the boys feel. The boys feel Andy is better than me, and so do you, so what the hell am I hanging around for? To give him harmony so he’ll sound better? What fun is there in that? I can play harmony with anybody. I don’t have to play it for a snotnosed kid.”

“Especially when he plays rings around you,” Frank said.

“Shut up, you!” Vic snarled, turning and snapping his trumpet case shut. “I don’t have to take anything from you any more.”

“If you’re going, why the hell don’t you go?” Frank said. “You’re stinking up the joint.”

“I’m going, all right. I’m—” He started to walk around Ox, who was sitting at the end of the sax section, and then he stopped when the door opened and Andy walked in. He looked at Andy coldly for a second and then said, “Here’s your goddamn star now. You can start your rehearsal.”

“What’s the matter?” Andy asked innocently, walking over toward the piano.

“Ask your pals what’s the matter,” Vic shouted. “Ask them what it’s all about. Go ahead, ask them.”

Andy looked at the boys, bewildered, and Frank said, “Blowhard is quitting the band.”

“Yeah?” Andy asked. “Gee, what’s the matter, Vi—”

“Damn right I’m quitting,” Vic yelled. “And don’t look so damn surprised, wise guy. Don’t think you’re kidding me any. You can have the limelight all to yourself now. You can play all the solos, all the parts. You can do it all by yourself.”

“What—”

“What are you kicking about?” Frank asked. “You know Andy’s better than you are.”

“Sure I know it,” Vic said, on the verge of wild tears now. “So what? So what am I supposed to do? Are all the trumpet players in the world supposed to drop dead because Andy Silvera picks up his horn? Is that what’s supposed to happen?”

“Oh, knock it off,” Bud said suddenly. “If you’re going, get the hell out.” His eyes held Vic’s steadily, coldly.

“You don’t like to hear it, do you?” Vic said, womanishly. “Why not? Does the truth hurt? So what if he’s good? So what? Answer me that — so what?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Vic,” Bud said. “You’re out of your head.”

“Am I? Why don’t you answer me then? If I’m so out of my head, why can’t you give me an answer? So what if he’s good? Is it worth breaking up a band over? Is it worth—”

“Nobody’s breaking up any band,” Bud said.

“No? I’m leaving, ain’t I? Who’s gonna be next? You think you’ll get a trumpet man to sit alongside him? So he can make a fool out of him? You think you’ll get a trumpet man who’ll be happy to blow background while this bastard shines? You think you’ll get one?”

“Andy never—”

“No, he never, huh? Wait until he finds out how you guys sounded before he came along. Wait until then, and then you’ll see how much of a bargain you’ve got. Boy, I’m glad I’m getting out now, while the getting’s—”

“All right, so get out,” Bud said menacingly, “before I kick you out!”

“Sure,” Vic said tersely, his face white. “Sure.” He picked up his case and started for the door, passing Andy, who still stood bewildered. He stopped about three paces beyond Andy, turned, and looked at him squarely, contempt unveiled in his eyes as he put on his coat.

“Good luck, Golden Boy,” he said, and he made it sound like a curse. He walked to the door, fumbled angrily with the knob, and then slammed out of the room, leaving a deep silence behind him.

Andy stared at the closed door, his back to the band. The band sat at the nucleus of the silence, like a group of people who’d just seen a baseball crashing through a plate-glass window. The shopkeeper may have been concerned solely with his window, and the policeman may have been concerned with examining the baseball, but the psychology of the group turned toward the cause of the broken window, the one who’d hit the ball. Andy had hit this ball, all right. Andy had hit it the day he’d sat in for a tryout. It had taken the ball a long time to smash into the store front, but the window was shattered now, and the boys turned their attention to the batter, wondering what his reaction would be.

There was nothing on Andy Silvera’s face when he turned toward the band. His mouth was expressionless, and his eyes were hooded. Bud tried to read those eyes, but they weren’t telling any secrets. Maybe he was proud of the ball he’d hit, or maybe he was sorry he’d broken the window, or maybe he just didn’t give a damn one way or the other. His face wasn’t telling, and no one in the band was asking.

The silence persisted. It was a thoughtful silence, a silence in which every member of the band relived Vic’s recent explosion. They’d been too involved in experiencing it while it was happening to pay any real attention to it, but they reflected upon it now, and they came to the unanimous, unspoken conclusion that Vic had behaved like a Grade-A bastard. Even if he’d had a legitimate beef, he shouldn’t have attacked it in just that way. He deserved everything he’d gotten, the stupid jerk, and it’s a wonder Andy hadn’t hit him in the mouth.

So went their reasoning, separately calculated in separate minds, separately following separate logical channels to reach a united, sympathetic conclusion: Andy had been wronged. They turned the full power of their collective sympathy on Andy as he walked toward the band, his face still unreadable.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “I missed the bus.”

“That’s okay, kid,” Tony said consolingly.

“About Vic. Gee, I’m sony—”

“Good riddance,” Frank said.

“Don’t worry about him, kid,” Mike said.

“I feel like some kind of heel,” Andy completed. He turned from the band again, looking over at the closed door, over near where Reen was sitting. Reen, his eyes squinched up tight, a frown on his forehead, watched Andy’s face. He kept watching him until Andy finally turned and went back to the band again.

“Forget about Vic,” Tony said. “Tune up, will you? We’re late as it is.”

“Sure,” Andy said, nodding solemnly. He began warming up, and when he went to the piano for his A, Bud said, “Look, don’t let Vic bother you. He was hysterical.”

Andy nodded, and Bud hit the A and kept hitting it while Andy adjusted the slide until he was in tune. He went to sit beside Frank then, at the stand Vic had deserted.

Tony made a big show of looking through the arrangements. Then he cleared his throat and offhandedly said, “All right, ‘Elk’s Parade.’”

6

first chorus iii

FEBRUARY, 1944

They rehearsed for close to two hours, knocking off at about nine-thirty. They didn’t stop for a break all that time, and when Tony finally called a halt they all lighted up cigarettes and just relaxed. It had been a good rehearsal. Vic’s desertion had somehow knitted them together more solidly, as if they’d had to play better to show they really didn’t need him at all. And the sad truth was they didn’t need him at all. Andy was a trumpet section all by himself. It had been a damned fine rehearsal.

They finished their cigarettes and began packing Frank’s drums. Bud unscrewed the cow bell and cymbals and then put the snare drum into its case and fitted the circular piece of linoleum over the skin. He put the cymbals down on top of the linoleum and then began dropping the spare parts into the compartments on either side of the drum space. Reen handed him the high-hat cymbals and then folded the pedaled mechanism itself. Frank had already cleared the bass drum of the foot pedal and wooden block, and he was pulling on its cover.

“What about the kid?” Bud asked. He glanced to the other side of the room where Andy stood, carefully cleaning his horn.

“What about him?” Frank said.

“Should we ask him to come along to the dance?”

“He’s a kid,” Frank said, outraged by the suggestion. “What is he, fifteen?”

“You’d better hang onto that kid,” Reen said. “He’s the best damn thing that ever happened to you.”

“I know it,” Bud said.

“I’ll tell you something else,” Reen said. “He knows it, too.”

Bud looked at Reen steadily. “What do you mean? That business with Vic?”

“That business with Vic,” Reen said. “It won’t be a bad idea at all to ask him to come with us.”

“Yeah,” Bud said thoughtfully. He lighted a fresh cigarette, took a few drags, and then walked over to Andy.

“Hi,” he said.

Andy looked up, surprised. “Oh, hello, Bud.”

“You sounded good tonight,” Bud said.

“Thanks,” Andy said.

Bud had expected more, but perhaps he hadn’t delivered his speech just right. He tried again. “You sounded real good.”

“Well, thanks,” Andy said.

Bud nodded and smiled and watched Andy cleaning his trumpet until he began to feel a little foolish just standing there and smiling like an idiot. Didn’t the kid know how to keep a conversation alive? He toyed with several fresh approaches in his mind, gave them all up, and finally said conversationally, “Say, would you like to come along to the dance at Merciful Father?”

Andy looked up briefly. “I don’t know how to dance,” he said.

“Oh.”

He dropped his eyes again. The chamois cloth ran over the bright brass of the horn. The lights in the wall of the club reflected from the curling hairs on the backs of Andy’s hands. Bud digested the information and tried to think of something further to say.

“Well, you don’t know how to dance, you don’t know how,” he said lamely. “Hell, no crime in that.”

“No,” Andy said.

The silence closed in again like a mailed fist. Why was the kid so goddamn hard to talk to? Jesus, didn’t he ever crack a smile?

“You feel like coming along anyway, you can do that,” Bud said. “I mean, you can hang around, you know, and watch the chicks, or whatever. Lots of guys just... uh... hang around. If you want to come along, I mean.”

Andy did not look up from his trumpet. “I’m not dressed up,” he said. His response surprised Bud because Bud hadn’t thought the kid was aware of clothes. But the response inspired him into continuing with his persuasion. He had a wedge now.

“Well, that’s nothing,” he said. “Frank’ll drop you off, if you want to come, and you can throw on a sports jacket quick.”

Still not looking up, Andy tucked his horn into the case. “I haven’t got a sports jacket,” he said, and then matter-of-factly, “My father says sports jackets are very expensive.”

“Oh.”

“Thanks, anyway.”

“Sure.” Bud paused. He had tried, and he’d lost, and he should have let it go at that. But there had been something exceedingly exasperating about the run of conversation thus far, and it rankled him. He wanted to convince Andy now, dammit. Doggedly, he pressed on.

“How about a suit?”

“I’ve only got my confirmation suit.”

“Oh.” Bud scratched his eyebrow. “One of those blue serge things, you mean?”

“Yes. My father says that’s all a boy my age needs.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not even wearing a tie,” Andy said.

“Yeah. Yeah, I see that.”

“But thanks, anyway. Maybe next time.”

They lifted their eyes simultaneously, as if to end the conversation with a final direct meeting of glances. Bud started to say, “Well, sure, there’s always next ti—” and then the sentence died on his lips because he was seeing Andy’s face for the first time during the conversation, and embarrassment and sadness were mingled on that face. He hadn’t realized until then that the kid might actually want to go to the dance, and that all the talk about sports jackets and suits he didn’t own was probably painful to him. The realization struck home, and he felt like apologizing, but he felt that an apology would be inadequate, and he suddenly became embarrassed himself. And in his own embarrassment he really wanted to... to help the kid now because of something in those sad brown eyes, and because of something inside him which suddenly assumed responsibility for the kid’s sadness and embarrassment. He balked for a moment, unwilling to accept the responsibility. Wavering he thought, What the hell am I about to do? Take a kid under my wing, be a mother hen, what the hell am I letting myself in for?

No, he thought. No, the hell with it.

And then he heard himself saying, “If you just need a jacket and tie... I mean, that’s no problem. Hell, why that’s no problem at all. I can lend you those, if you like. I mean, if you want to come along with us.”

Andy’s face brightened imperceptibly. Cautiously he said, “Well, that’s awfully nice of you.”

“I’ve got a jacket that’s a little small for me, and you’d probably get into it. What do you say? Do you want to come?”

“If it’s all right with you, I guess...”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Bud said, sighing, relieved. “Come on.”

He had never been to a dance before.

He stood on the side of the large room now, in a group with the other boys, but not feeling exactly a part of them, listening to them and hearing their voices, and hearing the muted hum of conversation in the high echoing room, and hearing the music that came from the record player, and seeing the girls in their sweaters and in their dresses, seeing lip-sticked lips and pointed breasts, seeing the priest on the other side of the room standing near where they were selling beer, smelling the heated warmth of the room, and the perfumed air of the room, and the wet-tweed smell of the room, and the resined-floor smell of the room, hearing, and seeing, and smelling, and trying to record it all on his brain, trigger-fast.

“When a band plays soft, that’s pianissimo,” Frank said.

“Yeah?” Reen said.

“And when a band plays loud, that’s fortissimo.”

“So?”

“But when a band doesn’t play at all, that’s Petrillo,” Frank said, smiling and waiting for his laugh.

“That son-of-a-bitch,” Tony said. “I’m getting sick of hearing Sinatra sing with a voice background.”

“It seems,” the record player sang,

   “to me I’ve heard that song bee-

             fore.

               It’s from an old...”

“Look at the one in the blue sweater,” Frank said.

“Where?” Tony asked.

“There. With Bud. The one with the string of pearls.”

Tony looked at the girl’s pointed breasts. “Some string of pearls,” he commented. He looked around and then said, “I see something better,” and he left them and headed for a girl in a black silk dress.

“It’s funn-ee how

       a theme

           ree-calls a

                fav-or-ritt dream...”

“Look what I found,” Bud said, coming over. The girl with him smiled and began toying with her pearls. “Patty, like you to meet Frank, Reen, and Andy.” Patty opened her eyes wide and batted her lashes. “Patty is here with some friends. I told her why doesn’t she bring them over.”

“I bet you’d like that,” Patty said shyly, her hands casually toying with the pearls, drawing attention to the large breasts beneath them.

“We would,” Reen said. “We would indeed like that.”

“Where’d you pick up this character?” Patty said pleasantly.

“We won him on a chance,” Frank said.

“You should have given him back.”

“Go get your friends,” Frank said.

“I’ve only got two friends,” Patty said, glancing quickly at Andy.

Andy felt suddenly uncomfortable. He waited for one of the boys to say something, but they had apparently tossed the ball into his lap. Awkwardly, he said, “That’s all right. I’ve got to get home, anyway.”

“Come on,” Bud said to Patty. “I’ll help you get your friends.”

Frank and Reen watched them walk away. “What do you think?” Reen asked.

“She’s got big teeth,” Frank said.

“I didn’t know you lisped, boy.”

“And she’s bowlegged also.”

“Pleasure-bent, you mean. Listen, if you’re not interested, we’ll get Tony. I mean, if you’re going to foul us up—”

“Who said I was?”

“Let’s get lost,” Vaughn Monroe sang,

               “lost in each others...”

Bud was coming back now, three girls in tow. “Boys,” he said, “I’d like you to meet Frances and Sue. Reen, Frank, and Andy.”

“Reen, that’s a funny name,” Frances said. She had her hair combed into the same high pompadour the other girls sported, but her hair wasn’t as dark, nor were her eyes as brown.

“It’s René Pierre Dumar, to be exact,” Reen said. “When I was in kindergarten, there was a girl named Rena in the class. The kids assumed René was the masculine counterpart. Voilà. Reen.”

Patty blinked. “This one is the character in the click,” she said.

“Clique,” Reen corrected automatically.

“Cleek, shmleek,” the girl named Sue said.

“He’s really all right,” Frank said, smiling.

“Sure,” Bud said. “He reminds me of the man.”

“What man?” Frank asked, going into the routine.

“The man with the power,” Bud said.

“What power?”

“The power of voodoo.”

“Voodoo?”

“Voodoo.”

“Who do?”

“He do.”

“He do what?”

“He reminds me of the man.”

“What man?”

“Aren’t they crazy?” Patty said.

“Come on, let’s dance,” Frank said, taking Sue’s arm.

Andy watched all the boys move onto the floor, wondering what had become of Tony. He wondered, too, if he should leave. He wasn’t very far from home, and the boys certainly wouldn’t miss him.

The room was jumping now. Bodies hopped up and down, arms were hurled skyward, legs flashed, thighs showed occasionally, silk stockings threw back their sheen, bobby-socks glittered white. The floor seemed to rock with the frantic, frenetic movement of the dance. The tiled walls seemed to shake. Hair bobbed, breasts bobbed, pearls bobbed, faces bobbed, bobbed, faces turning, and smiling, and laughing, and bobbing.

“They’re either too young or too old

“They’re either too gray or too gras-eee

                  green...”

He stood there with the sounds and smells and sights unfolding before him, rising before him like a great cloud of strangeness, black in its depth, black with spastic bursts of color, and he felt peculiar. He felt peculiar in a strange way, alone, not the loneliness he felt when walking with his mother and father, when no one spoke, not that, but a peculiar a loneness. He felt peculiar all over now. He felt peculiar in the sports jacket Bud had loaned him, and he felt peculiar in the tie Bud had taken from the rack in his closet — awfully nice of Bud; even his own father never loaned a tie to him. And he even felt peculiar about the knot, which wasn’t like the knot he usually tied — What had Bud called it? A Windsor knot, yes. Bud had said something about a spread collar, but he hadn’t understood that too well, and the knot felt very big now, and if he cast his eyes downward just a little bit, not even enough so that anyone could see him looking, he could see the knot standing out like a big wart on his throat — Windsor knot. Had the Duke of Windsor invented it?

He tried to understand why he was feeling so peculiar because he knew he couldn’t blame it all on the jacket and tie, but he couldn’t find an answer. It was just that everything was so strange, not like his mother’s and father’s solemn grownup world at all, and not like his own quietly regular world, either. It was a sort of in-between thing where kids talked like grownups and acted like grownups and drank beer like grownups, but who didn’t seem like grownups while they were doing all these things. Now that was very peculiar, something like seeing a midget smoking a cigar and thinking, Gee, look at the little kid smoking a cigar, only he’s not a little kid, he’s a man. This was just like that, except in reverse, because these weren’t grownups doing the grownup things. They were kids. Well, that wasn’t quite true either because they weren’t exactly kids. Oh, nuts, he felt peculiar.

“He may be a good dancer,” a girl somewhere on Andy’s right said, “but he dances too close.”

“That’s why he’s a good dancer,” her girlfriend answered.

“Well, I’m just not that kind of a girl.”

“So the wife goes to the closet,” a boy said to a group of three girls standing close to Andy, “and the husband is sitting in the living room, and he hears the paper on the package making a rustling sound, you know?”

“I heard this joke,” one of the girls said.

“Did you all hear it?” the boy asked.

“No, go ahead, tell it.”

“Well, I don’t like the one I got,” a boy in a brown suit said.

“What’s wrong with her?” his friend asked. “Tell me that.”

“She’s a dog.”

“So what? So I never done you a favor? Listen, I really like this girl, I mean it.”

“You say that every week.”

“This week I mean it.”

From the corner of his eye, Andy saw the priest approaching, and for a panicky moment he thought the priest was coming toward him. The panic outlived the moment when he saw the priest actually was heading his way. He tried to shrug closer to the wall, tried to become a part of the coats hanging there, but the priest wasn’t being fooled. He walked swiftly and purposefully, his black robe swirling about his black trousered legs.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned...

“Hello there,” the priest said. “I’m Father Dominick.”

“Hello, Father Dominick,” Andy said cautiously, softly. He had never spoken to a priest before, not close up like this. He had listened to priests delivering the Mass on Sundays, and he had talked to Father Ignatius in his own parish, but then only through the screened opening of the confession box, where he could hardly even see the priest’s face. He felt strange talking to this priest, and he told himself it was all part of the peculiarity he was feeling, but that didn’t stop him from feeling strange. The priest was a short man with a wide round face and a long nose. He had thick black eyebrows that matched the hair curling close to his scalp. His eyes were small and brown, the eyes of a ferret. He was not a good-looking man at all, not the handsome kind of priest who warrants a bewildered headshake and a wondrous “Why would he become a priest?”

“I’ve been watching you,” Father Dominick said.

“H... have you?” Andy asked.

“You haven’t been dancing,” the priest said, smiling benignly.

“No, I haven’t,” Andy said.

“I haven’t seen you around before,” Father Dominick said. “I was wondering if you liked our little gathering.”

“Oh, yes,” Andy said. “It’s fine. Fine.”

“We get a nice crowd here,” Father Dominick said, nodding his head. He was obviously trying to put Andy at ease, and Andy appreciated his efforts, but he still wished the priest would leave him alone instead of contributing to his feeling of peculiarity, God forgive him.

“Yes, it seems like a... nice crowd,” he said, wondering if Father Dominick had seen the three girls Bud had picked up.

“A very nice crowd. Don’t you like to dance?”

“I don’t know how,” Andy said wearily.

“Don’t you?” said Father Dominick. “Well now. Well now.”

“No, I don’t,” Andy said, feeling suddenly stubborn.

“Well, that’s no problem at all,” Father Dominick said. “You just come along with me, son.” He took Andy’s elbow. “What did you say your name was?”

“Andy.”

“Andrew, ah yes, a good name. Andrew. One of the Twelve Apostles.”

“Father, I—”

Father Dominick’s grip tightened on Andy’s elbow. “Now, just come along,” he said kindly, beginning to walk, steering Andy along the wall. “There’s no need for anyone not to know how to dance,” the priest went on. “Not when we have so many nice girls here. And a nice boy like you should know how to dance, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Andy said, “but...”

The priest’s pressure on his elbow was very strong, like the steel jaws of a trap. A trap, he thought, a trap, and the thought strengthened his original panic. He wanted to pull away from the priest’s grip, but he was afraid of offending God, so he allowed himself to be led, thinking, A trap, a trap, all the while.

The priest led him skillfully around the edge of the dance floor, nodding to the boys and girls seated or standing near the wall. They walked together, the priest’s fingers firm on his elbow. I shall walk in the shadow of the valley of death...

“Ah now,” Father Dominick said. “Ah now, here we are.” They stopped walking suddenly, but the priest did not release his arm. “Hello, Rose,” Father Dominick said. “How are you tonight?”

“Hello, Father,” the girl answered. “Fine.” Andy did not look up. The desire to run leaped into his throat, but the priest kept holding his elbow. The priest swung him around now, and he was face to face with the girl, a thin girl in a cotton dress, a thin girl with no breasts, no string of pearls, a boy-girl, not at all like the girl Bud had. The girl was smiling shyly, anticipation on her narrow face and in the forward lean of her body.

“Rose,” said Father Dominick, “I’d like you to meet a very nice young man named Andrew. Andy, this is Rose.”

“How do you do?” Rose said.

“How do you do?” Andy answered stiffly.

“Seems as if Andy doesn’t know how to dance, Rose. Now I told him that was certainly no problem, and I’m sure you’ll agree it isn’t. Am I right, Rose?”

“Oh, that’s no problem,” Rose assured Father Dominick.

“I didn’t think it was,” Father Dominick said, smiling roguishly. “Now don’t you think it would be a good idea for you to teach Andy a few of the elementary steps? He’s a bright young man, Andy is, and I’m sure he’ll learn quickly. What do you say, Rose?”

“I’d love to, Father,” Rose said.

“Good, good.” The priest released his elbow. “She’ll teach you, Andy,” he said. “She’s a very fine dancer, Rose is.”

“Thank you, Father,” Andy mumbled.

“Come on now,” Father Dominick said jokingly, “don’t be bashful. She’s not going to bite you, are you, Rose?”

Rose giggled, and Father Dominick backed off a few paces, leaning against the wall, smiling, his arms crossed over his chest. A new record dropped to the turntable, a slow, moody fox trot.

“Haven’t you ever danced before, Andy?” Rose asked.

“No,” he said viciously, taking his anger out on her, having been unwilling to vent any spleen on a representative of God.

Rose remained happily unaware, like an idiot child with a toy balloon. “It’s really very easy,” she said, smiling.

She has bad teeth, Andy thought. She’s not at all like the girl Bud has. He swiveled his head over his shoulder suddenly, desperately wishing that Bud were not being a witness to all this. God, if Bud saw—

“Just put your arm around my waist,” Rose said.

“Look, Rose, couldn’t—”

“Oh, come on now,” she said, playfully. “You heard Father Dominick. I’m not going to bite you.”

“Rose—”

“Oh, come on, Andy. It’s really very easy. I mean it.”

He looked over his shoulder again, not seeing Bud, thankful for that at least. Rose reached out and took his wrist, and he felt her bony fingers close on his flesh. He heard someone giggle, and he whirled abruptly, sure the giggle had been directed at him.

“This way,” Rose said, pulling his arm around her. “That’s it, just put your arm around me. There, now was that hard?”

“No,” he said, the word choking in his throat, so embarrassed he wanted to cry. He could hear separate gusts of laughter all around him now. He felt his cheeks flame into color, and he would have turned and bolted, pulled away from this trap and run for all he was worth if he hadn’t seen Father Dominick leaning against the wall a few feet away, smiling and nodding his head.

“Now just listen to the music,” Rose said, “and you’ll get the rhythm. This is called a fox trot.”

“I know,” he said.

“Oh, do you? Well, that’s good. Fine. A fox trot has four beats. Do you know what a beat is?”

“Yes, I know what a beat is,” he said tightly. His collar felt rough, and stiff. He could feel the too-large Windsor knot on his throat, choking the breath out of him.

“You go forward with your right foot, then forward with your left foot, then over with your right foot, then close with your left foot. One, two, three, four. Just like that. Four beats.”

“Rose,” he pleaded desperately, “can’t we just—”

“Come on, try it. Forward, one, forward, two, over — no, no, that’s wrong, try it again. You’re doing fine, Andy, really.”

They’re laughing at me, he thought. They’re laughing at me.

His ears plucked laughter from the room. Diligently they plucked laughter, dropped laughter into a quaking hilarious subconscious self-conscious basket.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha

“All right, now let’s try it again.”

Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho

“That’s the way. Now you’re getting it.”

Hee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee HaHaHa H0H0H0H0 HeeHeeHeeHeeHeeHeeHee

“Forward, one, forward, two, that’s it, three, and cross, four. Forward, one, forwaHaHa, two, ovOHoHo, threeHeeHee...”

“Rose, please, please...”

“Cross, foHoHohohohohohohohohoho...”

The laughter crowded in on his Earning face, thundered at his ears, gripped his throat. He felt all the eyes on him, eyes, eyes everywhere, all watching him and laughing, laughing.

“Mind if I cut in?” the voice asked.

He thought he dreamed the voice, and then he felt a strong hand on his shoulder, and the pressure of the hand increased, forcing him back and away from Rose. He looked up at the face.

“Can’t keep all the good-looking ones to yourself,” Bud said. He winked at Andy and then smoothly led the astonished girl onto the floor.

Andy stared after them, shame and relief mingled within him. He ran to the side of the room, shouldering his way through the dancing crowd, running, running past Father Dominick with his small surprised eyes and unsmiling mouth, running past the tiled walls, running to the other end of the room, snatching his coat from the rack, running past the hawk-faced boy at the ticket table, and then outside into the corridor, and to the windowed doors fogged with steam, and then pushing the doors open and running up the long ramp to Brooklyn Avenue, and through the gate in the cyclone fence, pulling on his coat at the same time, reaching the sidewalk and still running, hearing the laughter behind him, and thinking of Bud, and knowing that Bud was the only one who had not laughed, the only one, the one who had saved him.

He ran all the way to Eastern Parkway, and then he stopped running, and the neon glitter of the shops was a kaleidoscopic blur because there were tears in his eyes.

7

first chorus, iv

FEBRUARY, 1944

The boys were in a jovial “full-name” mood that afternoon. It was bitter cold outside, and they could hear the February gusts rattling the windowpanes, moaning under the eaves of Frank’s house. They had never enjoyed inclement weather on Saturdays, and they insulated themselves from the cold by wrapping themselves in a warm cocoon of banter. The radio was tuned to WNEW, and they listened to the music that came from the speaker, but even the music could not drown out the sound of the angry wind.

“It’s your play, René Pierre,” Bud said.

“Thank you, Charles Robert,” Reen said. “I know it.”

The two boys were seated at a small wooden table near one of the windows in the finished basement. The wind seeped through the gap where sash met window, but the heat from the coal furnace in the adjoining segment of basement compensated for the cold blast. The radio rested on a shelf of the cupboard against the opposite wall of the room. Frank stood before the cupboard, his drumsticks in his hands, beating on a rubber practice pad in time to the radio music.

“Are you holding all the queens?” Reen asked.

“No, sir,” Bud said.

“Well, someone’s holding them.”

“It must be Francis Joseph,” Bud said.

“Quiet,” Frank said. “I’m trying to hear the music.”

“You make a lot of noise with that pad, Francis,” Bud said. “Don’t they sell noiseless pads?”

“No,” Frank said, beating harder. “They don’t sell noiseless pads.”

“There’s a fat deuce for you, Charles,” Reen said.

“Thanks,” Bud said sourly. He ignored the discarded deuce and took a card from the pack. “Here’s one for you,” he said, covering the first deuce with the one he’d drawn.

“There must be six deuces in this deck,” Reen said.

“Do you want to hear a paradiddle?” Frank asked.

“What the hell’s a paradiddle?” Bud asked.

“Some kind of bird,” Reen said.

“It’s a drum...”

“I heard it already,” Bud said.

“You heard a ruff. This is a paradiddle. They’re entirely different.”

“All right, Francis,” Reen said, “let’s hear your paradiddle.”

Frank turned down the volume on the radio. “Listen,” he said. He began beating his sticks on the pad, chanting as he played. “Pa-ra-did-dle, pa-ra-did-dle, pa-ra-did-dle.” His chant began speeding up, and his stick beats followed the increased tempo. He stopped abruptly and then turned up the radio again.

“It sounded like a roll,” Reen said.

“You can use it in a roll,” Frank said.

“I prefer ham on roll,” Bud said.

“Yok,” Frank said.

Reen fished another card from the pack. He studied it and then discarded it. “Tell me, Charles,” he said, “what did you think of last night?”

“You want to hear a double paradiddle?” Frank asked.

“I asked Charles a question, Francis,” Reen said.

“Last night was a beaut,” Bud said emphatically.

“It’s different from a single para diddle,” Frank said.

“A beaut, indeed,” Reen said.

“I think we can thank our friend Francis Joseph for that.”

“Thank you, Francis Joseph.”

“What the hell did I do?” Frank asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing at all,” Reen said. “You only fouled up the works.”

“Well next time you can drive,” Frank said righteously.

“I don’t know how to drive,” Reen said.

“Then don’t look a gift hearse in the mouth.”

“Francis is in fine fettle,” Reen said. “Did you catch that last pun, Charles?”

“Oh, I caught it,” Bud said. “It resembled a hearse last night, too.”

“No,” Reen said. “Only the driver was dead.”

“The girl with the driver was dead, too,” Frank said angrily.

“Play your paradiddles, boy,” Reen said.

“You’d have done the same thing if you were driving,” Frank continued.

“I doubt it.”

“What was I supposed to do, make conversation all night? And I thought you were supposed to chip in for gas? What happened to that idea?”

“Your play,” Bud said.

“That’s right, change the subject.”

“How much did you put in?” Reen asked. “A lousy two gallons?” He drew and discarded. “Are you sure you’re not holding the queens?”

“I put in five gallons,” Frank said. “And it was black market, so it cost more.”

“You shouldn’t buy black-market gas, Francis.”

“No? Why not?”

“It’s unpatriotic.”

“Bull. You heard what Four Eyes said when he was in on leave.”

“What did Four Eyes say?”

“He said they use five-gallon drums of gas to start fires with when they’re on maneuvers. If they can’t use ordinary matches, then I’ll get all the gas I want without coupons.”

“Would you deprive our boys of a little heat?”

“No, but why should they deprive me of a little gas?”

“He’s changing the subject, René,” Bud said. “Gin.”

“Gin?” Reen watched Bud as he laid down his hand. “You were saving queens, you bastard.”

“Your deal,” Bud said. “That’s another dime you owe me.” He marked the debt on a sheet of paper. Reen gathered up the cards and began shuffling.

“Who tacked the horsehoe on your behind?” he wanted to know.

“I was born with it,” Bud said.

“It’s chilly in here,” Reen said. “Francis, how about shoveling a little coal on the fire?”

“You crippled or something?”

“I’m not up on the latest furnace designs,” Reen said.

“Get up on this a while,” Frank answered.

“He’s got a filthy mind, you know, Charles?”

“The filthiest,” Bud said.

“You’d think he’d be a little penitent after last night.” Reen shook his head forlornly. “Some people just have no conscience at all.”

“You got in your licks,” Frank said. “What the hell are you kicking about?”

“Oh, it was a big night, all right,” Reen said grandly. “I was home and asleep by twelve-thirty.”

“We don’t get to town offen,” Bud said, “but when we do, row-dee-dow!”

“Next time you can do without the car,” Frank said. “I don’t have to be a chauffeur. You guys think—”

“Did you know Tony was sore last night, Francis?”

“Anthony, you mean,” Bud corrected.

“Anthony, of course. Did you know that?”

“What’s that got to do with the price of fish? He wasn’t sore at me.”

“He was sore at all of us for taking off without him. But you hit him for a buck before we left, didn’t you?”

“So what?”

“That’s adding insult to injury,” Reen said.

“Do you get anything extra tor gin without picking up a card?” Bud asked.

“You’re kidding,” Reen said, appalled.

“I’m kidding,” Bud confirmed.

“Next time just leave me out of it,” Frank said. “Just pick up whoever you like, and do whatever you like, and forget all about me. And the car.”

“He’s holding the car over our heads, Charles.”

“So long as he doesn’t drop it,” Bud said.

“Why don’t you admit you were a bastard, Francis?”

“I was no more bastardish than usual,” Frank said, and then — realizing what he’d admitted — he began laughing. The laughter cleared the air, and Frank was thankful he’d been let off the hook. There was always one goat whenever the boys gathered, and he didn’t relish the idea of being the goat on a cold Saturday afternoon.

“Listen to that wind,” Reen said.

They listened in silence for a moment, the wind magnifying the cold outside. Through the basement window they could see a man struggling to keep on his hat, the skirts of his coat flapping wildly around his knees. The radio pierced the silence with “I Had the Craziest Dream.”

“It’s gonna be a cold winter, McGee,” Bud said.

“Did I ever tell you about the winter of eighty-eight?” Reen asked.

“I was born in that year,” Bud offered.

“Then you remember the snow.”

“Up to our eyeballs in snow that winter,” Bud said.

“Even the horses went berserk.”

“You can’t blame them.”

“Hell, no. ’Twasn’t a fit winter fer man nor beast.”

“Speaking of beasts,” Frank said, hazardously reopening the subject, “you’ve got to admit that Sue wasn’t exactly a prize package.”

“She was born in the winter of eighty-eight, too,” Bud said. “You can’t blame her.”

“She kept telling me about the time she went to the Astor Roof. Now who the hell cares about the time she went to the Astor Roof?”

“Woody Herman is on the Astor Roof, isn’t he?”

“He’d better come inside,” Reen said. “He’ll get blown off with all this wind.”

“What a dizzy chick, I swear,” Frank said, shaking his head. “I wanted to tell her just what she could do with the Astor Roof.”

“She couldn’t,” Bud said. “Not in a million years.”

“Real dizzy,” Frank said, appreciating the boys’ sympathy.

When the knock sounded on the back door, Bud looked up, turning his attention from the cards.

“Somebody at the door,” he said.

“That’s the wind,” Frank said.

The knocking came again, unmistakable this time.

“Mighty talented wind,” Bud said.

Frank put down his sticks. “I’ll get it,” he said, even though neither of the other boys had made a move to rise. He walked past the card table and then through the door into the room with the furnace, glancing briefly at the big metal monster and then moving past the coalbin to the door.

“I’ll take this game,” Reen said, discarding.

“We’ll see.”

They heard the door opening and then the sullen rush of the wind. The debt sheet on the table Sapped wildly as Bud clutched for it, pinning it to the table. They heard Frank say something which the wind carried away.

“That’s the FBI,” Reen said. “My draft board sent ’em.”

“I’ll mail you cigarettes,” Bud said.

The sound of the door closing reached them. Bud released his grip on the debt sheet, and then Frank’s voice said, “Come on in. We were just hanging around.”

Bud turned, interested, as Frank entered the room again. Andy Silvera was behind him.

“Look who’s here,” Frank said. His back was to Andy, and he raised his eyebrows in a shrug that only Reen and Bud could see.

“I came to—”

“Hello, Andrew,” Reen said. “Pull up a Ouija board. The séance starts in ten minutes.”

Andy smiled weakly, wetting his lips, his tongue touching the tiny white ring of muscle and then retreating quickly into his mouth. “I came to return your jacket and tie, Bud,” he said. It sounded weak and thin coming from his mouth. “I... I didn’t get a chance to return it last night, I...” He let the sentence trail. He had mulled over the excuse all morning, and now that he was delivering it he was sure they could see clear through it, sure they would understand his motivation. He shouldn’t have tried to outsmart them. He should have known better than that. “I went to your house first,” he said, “and your mother told me you were here.” Then why didn’t you just leave the stuff with my mother? he thought he could read in Bud’s eyes. “I... well...” He smiled weakly, feeling utterly miserable, knowing he shouldn’t have tried to crash in this way. “Well, here it is!” he blurted.

“Oh,” Bud said, rising from the table. “Thanks.”

Andy held out the sports jacket, holding his flimsy excuse gingerly. Bud lifted it from his hands and tossed it onto one of the chairs, as if recognizing the flimsiness of the excuse and treating it as summarily as it warranted.

“The tie is in the pocket,” Andy said. “The right-hand pocket.”

Bud nodded. “Where’d you disappear to last night?” he asked. “Take off your coat, why don’t you?”

He’d been afraid they wouldn’t ask him to stay, and his relief must have shown on his face. Casually he said, “All right,” and then he hastily shrugged out of his coat, hoping they wouldn’t change their minds before he’d finished. The boys regarded him silently. He felt the silence of the room, and something told him he should try to break it.

“It’s very cold outside,” he said. He looked around for someplace to put his coat.

“There’s a rack in the corner,” Frank said.

Andy walked to the rack and hung the coat on a peg. He turned and began rubbing his hands together, feeling like a discovered stowaway. “Very cold,” he said.

“Where’d you disappear to last night?” Bud repeated, sitting and picking up his cards.

“Well, I went home,” Andy said.

Bud raised his eyes. “I guess it’s not much fun if you can’t dance,” he said softly.

“No. No, it isn’t. I... I went home.”

“We went home, too,” Reen said sourly. Frank glanced at him hastily, expecting more, glad when more did not come.

“How’d you like the dance otherwise?” Frank said.

“It was all right.”

The boys were silent for a moment. Reen and Bud played seriously. Frank leaned against the cupboard, staring out the window across the room. Andy shifted his weight uneasily.

“Listen to that wind,” Frank said.

“It’s very cold outside,” Andy said, feeling foolish as soon as he’d said it. Of course they knew it was cold outside.

“This begins to sound like the Weather Bureau,” Reen said, making Andy feel even more foolish. He picked a card from the discard pile. “Suppose I knock with four, Bud?”

“Try it and see,” Bud said.

“Is that gin rummy?” Andy asked, again feeling foolish, wondering why he’d come here in the first place, wondering whatever gave him the idea he could fit, wondering if anyone would ever welcome him anywhere.

“It ain’t bridge,” Reen said. “You want to play?”

“No. Oh, no, I just wondered.”

“We’re playing for very high stakes, anyway,” Bud said.

“How much do I owe you now, Gaylord?”

“Fifty thousand,” Bud said.

Of course they’re kidding, Andy thought. Are they kidding?

“Merciful Father isn’t much,” Frank said. “We run down to the Dance Palace every now and then. They’ve got a good setup there.”

“Yeah,” Bud said. “A live band. And an older crowd.”

“I prefer records,” Reen said. “Give me canned Barnet to these half-assed local outfits any day.”

“Watch your language,” Bud said. “We’re a half-assed local outfit.”

“You don’t count,” Reen said. “How about knocking with three?”

“Go ahead.”

“You’re probably sitting there with two.”

“Go ahead,” Bud taunted. “Knock.”

“No thanks.”

“If you’d known how to dance,” Bud said carefully, “you’d probably have had a better time.”

“Yes, I guess so,” Andy said. It wasn’t going too badly now. If he just shut up and listened, everything was all right. It was when he opened his mouth that things began getting hard.

“You didn’t dance at all, huh?” Reen asked.

“No,” Andy lied, wanting to forget Rose completely, and then looking toward Bud, hoping he would not be contradicted. Bud said nothing, letting the lie pass, and Andy felt a sudden exultance from knowing he had an ally in the room.

“Yeah, well that’s why you didn’t care for it,” Reen said. “It’s really not so bad. It’s not the Dance Palace, but it’s not so bad.”

“Oh, it wasn’t bad at all,” Andy said agreeably, not wanting them to get the wrong idea. He had, after all, been their guest — sort of.

“You want to take my hand, Frank?” Bud asked suddenly.

“Whose money?” Frank asked.

“Play with mine. I’m ahead, anyway.”

Frank shrugged. “Why?”

“I’m gonna teach Andy to dance,” Bud said matter-of-factly. “You want to learn, Andy?”

Andy felt his heart quicken. He did want to learn. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to learn. But the suddenness of the suggestion took him completely by surprise. Not in his wildest imaginings had he figured they’d offer to—

“Of course he wants to learn,” Reen said. He leaned back in his chair. “This is the best dancer in Brooklyn, Andrew.”

“Sure,” Bud said deprecatingly.

“Go on, teach him,” Reen said.

“What do you say?” Bud asked.

Andy touched the ring of muscle with his tongue. “Well, I... I don’t know,” he said. He tried a smile that froze horribly on his face. “Do you... you want to teach?”

“He taught Gene Kelly how,” Reen said.

“Oh, sure,” Bud answered.

“You taught Alonsobrigazzo,” Frank said, unwilling to accept Bud’s self-belittlement. “Go on, Bud, teach him. I’ll take your hand.”

“Okay?” Bud asked. He raised his eyebrows questioningly and then stood up, putting his cards face down. Frank took his chair quickly.

“All right,” Andy said, hoping he hadn’t said it too eagerly. Their casual complacency amazed him — as if learning to dance were a common occurrence, a thing they did every day of the week. Oh, this was going wonderfully, this was marvelous!

“Show him the fox trot,” Reen said, discarding. “That’s easiest.”

Frank picked up the card. “Once he’s got the fox trot, he can handle anything,” he said. “Gin.”

“What?” Reen said.

“Gin,” Frank repeated, laying down the cards.

“Son-of-a-bitch! I should have knocked.”

“You should have. I just won you a dime, Bud.”

“You deal,” Reen said sourly. “It must be that goddamn seat. You want to change seats, Frank?”

“No changing seats,” Bud said. He turned to Andy. “Do you know anything at all about the fox trot?”

“A little.”

“What do you know?” He went to the radio and fiddled with the dial until he got a slow tune.

“Right, left, over, cross,” Andy said, trying to be offhanded. “Right, left...”

“Bull,” Bud said. “Come on, I’ll show you.” He stepped up to Andy, completely unself-consciously, listening to the music. “I’m the girl,” he said.

Andy expected one of the boys to whistle or wolfcall. He was surprised when they didn’t. He realized then that they took their dancing seriously, and that they’d probably played the girl’s part often in learning new steps. His respect for them increased immeasurably. He gave Bud his undivided attention, not wanting to miss a word he said.

“Your right hand in the small of my back,” Bud said. “Your left hand out here, holding mine.”

“All right,” Andy said nervously.

“Now listen to the music. That shouldn’t give you any trouble at all.”

“Not the way you blow that horn,” Reen said in admiration.

“Now,” Bud said, “instead of starting from a dead stop with both feet glued to the floor, you do this. The minute the girl is in your arms, you dip. That means you pull the girl toward you while you move your right foot back. Try it.”

Andy tried it, his feet tangling up miserably. “I... I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“You’re worrying too much about your goddamn feet,” Bud said. “Forget you got feet. Look, just move your right foot back, that’s all. And a little pressure on the small of my back. Remember that the chick doesn’t know what the hell you’re going to do unless you tell her. You can’t tell her with your mouth. You can’t say, ‘Honey, I’m going to dip now,’ so you tell her with your hand. You just increase the pressure a little, toward you, and at the same time you move your right foot back, and if the chick isn’t a Mongolian idiot, she does the natural thing — she moves forward. Now try it again. Just move your right foot back, arch your body a little, and remember the pressure. That’s it, that’s it. All right, let’s try it again.”

Andy nodded, remembering his ordeal with Rose, thinking how different this was, feeling he was really learning something, the happiness inside him ready to burst out the top of his skull.

“This accomplishes two things at the same time,” Bud said, as they went through the step again and again. “First, it leaves your left foot in the starting position automatically. You don’t feel like a wooden Indian when you get on the floor. And, second, you know just where you stand with the chick, right from go. You start with a dip, and if she gives you her headlights—”

“What the hell are you teaching the kid?” Reen asked, looking up from his cards.

“Only what he has to know,” Bud said professorially.

“You’d better pay some attention here,” Frank said, “or I’ll run away with this one, too.”

“In other words,” Bud said to Andy, “you both know the score right from that first dip. Now you’re still in the dip, with your right foot back, you see? All right, you just slide your left foot forward a little, just a very little because it’s forward already, you see? That’s the first beat. That’s it, that’s the way. And for the second beat, you slide your right foot forward, as if you’re walking, just as if you’re walking, except your feet are flat on the floor, and you’re sliding them. Come on, do it, that’s the only way to learn.”

Andy nodded, unable to keep the smile off his face. He looked at his feet while Bud moved back, actually leading him while playing the follower’s role.

“What are you doing?” Bud asked.

“Huh?”

“Don’t look at your feet.”

“I was just—”

“Don’t look at them. And don’t count in your head. You’re going to have to talk with the chick while you’re dancing, and you can’t talk and count at the same time.”

“I wasn’t counting,” Andy said innocently.

“Good. Don’t start now. Now look, never mind this baloney about going to the side with your left foot and then closing with your right. That’s strictly for the birds. You just keep going straight forward. You got that — in a straight line? Just as if you’re walking, except you happen to have a girl in your arms.”

“Dancing is just walking set to music,” Frank said.

“It is,” Bud said, ready to take offense.

“Dancing is vertical petting,” Reen corrected.

“The hell with you,” Bud said. “Look, Andy, a straight line, remember. Your right foot forward is the second beat. You take a full left step for the third beat, and then you just bring your right foot up parallel to your left foot for the fourth beat, closing off the figure. That’s it, pal. You’re back where you started from. The rest is all repetition — like a second chorus.”

“Gin, you bastards!” Reen bellowed.

Frank looked at the cards he put down. “You still owe Bud half a buck,” he said calmly.

“I’ll cut you for the half, Bud,” Reen said. “Double or nothing.”

Bud released Andy. “All right,” he said, walking over. He tapped Frank on the shoulder. “Take over the dance lesson, Francis.” He turned to Reen. “High card wins.”

“You ever hear of low card winning?”

“Yes, I have. And with you, I want to make sure beforehand.”

“Come on, Andy,” Frank said, rising. “You’re about to learn from a master.” He went to Andy, and together they worked their way up the length of the small room, Andy looking conscientiously ahead, not daring to look down at his feet, not daring to count.

“Cut,” Reen said.

“Ladies first,” Bud answered.

Reen cut the deck, and Bud began laughing.

“A son-of-a-bitchin’ four!” Reen shouted. “Jesus, have you got this deck trained or something?”

Bud cut a king, and Reen swore again, shaking his head violently. On their left, Frank and Andy kept moving across the room.

“That makes a buck even,” Bud said.

“I can add,” Reen answered.

“When?” Bud asked pointedly.

“Listen to this bastard, will you? He wins a few hands and right away he’s J. P. Morgan.”

“When?” Bud repeated.

“Wednesday. How’s that?”

“That’s fine, if it’s Wednesday. Not Thursday or Friday or—”

“You want to chain my mother in the cellar for security?”

“No, but I’ll take your sister,” Bud said, grinning lewdly.

“Seconds,” Frank chimed over his shoulder.

Reen ignored them. He knew he possessed an older, pretty sister, and he didn’t relish a discussion of her obvious assets.

“Did you teach him to turn yet?” Bud asked Frank.

“No.”

“Show him how, Reen,” Bud said casually. “You’re a whiz at turns.”

“First he takes all my money, then he turns me into a dance instructor,” Reen complained.

“Go ahead,” Bud said lightly.

“He’s about got this down pat,” Frank said. Reen shrugged and walked over to the pair. “Never dance with a girl taller than you are,” he said to Andy. “You know what happens then, don’t you?”

“No,” Andy said, smiling, feeling very much a part of the boys even though he knew he was not as yet a part of them.

“You get a bust in the mouth,” Reen said.

“That one has a beard,” Frank said.

The criticism left Reen unfazed. He looked down at Andy and said, “Come, Little One. Let’s see what you know so far.”

A rumba came from the radio speaker, and Frank thoughtfully crossed the room and tuned in another station. Andy exhibited his newly found skill to Reen, and Reen nodded appreciatively.

“Why do we always get lousy weather on Saturdays?” Bud asked.

“It’s a conspiracy,” Frank said.

“You got a date tonight?”

“No.”

“You feel like bowling?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Bud put his foot up on the window sill and stared through the pane of glass. Behind him, Reen was showing Andy how to reverse his direction on the dance floor, explaining he had to know this or else he’d crash right into the wall.

“That tree’s gonna snap right in two,” Bud said.

Frank walked to the window and looked out. “It’ll hold,” he said. He squinted and leaned forward, suddenly attentive. “Hey, who’s that with her skirts blowing up?”

“She’s married,” Bud said disinterestedly.

Frank continued watching the girl. “Give me a young mother any day of the week,” he said.

“Give you any thing any day of the week,” Bud corrected. He turned and added, “Don’t ever get like this guy, Andy. He lives for it.”

Andy smiled briefly, absorbed in Reen’s lesson.

“I got a letter from Freddie today,” Frank said when the girl had passed out of his line of vision.

“Yeah? What’d he have to say?”

“The usual junk. He writes like a Chink, you know?”

“They still working his butt off?”

“Oh, sure. I don’t think he likes the army very much.”

“Who does?” Reen said from the other side of the room.

“You’ll like it,” Bud said. “You’ve got the makings of a good army man, Reen.”

“Up yours,” Reen said. “You want to try that again, Andy?”

“Why’d Tony call off the rehearsal today?” Bud asked suddenly.

“Who knows?” Frank said. “You know that crazy bastard.”

“I’ll bet it’s ’cause he was sore last night.”

“Naw,” Frank said, secretly and guiltily believing that to be the reason.

“I’ll bet all the tea in China.”

“This would’ve been a good day for rehearsal, too.”

“Yeah,” Bud said. He watched Andy silently for several moments.

Then he said, “You’re gonna be a good dancer. You’ve got good rhythm. Next time you come along with us you’ll know what to do, believe me.”

Next time you come along with us.

Andy digested Bud’s sentence, and a smile formed on his mouth. He felt quite guilty, but guilty in a sneaking, proud way, like an OSS man who had sneaked into Berchtesgaden. And then, suddenly, he realized he hadn’t done any of the sneaking at all. It was Bud who’d suggested the dance lesson, Bud who’d subtly and skillfully led the other boys into participating, deftly led them in the first tentative steps toward the acceptance of a newcomer.

Next time you come along with us.

“Liss-en to that goddamn wind,” Frank said, staring through the window.