Second Ending

8

It was morning somehow.

Somehow it was morning, and somehow Bud’s thoughts had found voice, and they had talked the night away, and now the traffic sounds of a new day beginning were crowding the open windows, and the sunlight streamed through and patched the wooden floor with long golden rectangles.

“Morning already,” Bud said.

“It’s amazing the way time goes,” Andy said. “You sleep and then you get up, and then you sleep again, and your whole life is being rushed away.” He paused and shook his head. “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons — do you know that one? Carol is a bug for poetry, you know. Before our show closed she used to read a lot of poetry to me aloud. Only with me it’s tablespoons, not coffee spoons like the poem says. Tablespoons piled high with heroin. You cook it in a spoon, Bud, the hoss. I have measured out my life with tablespoons.” He was silent for a moment, the self-pity that had crowded his voice now spreading to his eyes and his mouth. “You know, this may sound crazy, but sometimes I feel the drug part of my life never really happened. It’s almost as if I crawled into somebody else’s skin, and that guy happened to be a junkie. Does that sound crazy?”

“No,” Bud said.

“Well, I know it does,” Andy said, “but that’s the way I feel.” He shrugged. “It’s real peculiar, too. Like... like I keep remembering things from when we were kids, as if that were the only really important part of my life, as if this other part never happened at all. It’s probably my unconscious at work — a guilt complex or something.”

“Maybe,” Bud said.

“Sure, I guess that’s it. Or maybe my memory is just crazy. But... well, like I wonder about it sometimes, about the way you get on channels, like me with heroin. Do you believe in fate, Bud?”

“No,” he said.

“I think I do, sometimes. You know, what makes somebody go down a certain path? We all start the same way, don’t we? So what’s the answer? For example, Bud, I gave you marijuana once. Once, was it? Twice, that’s right. You had it twice, and look at you now. You’re not an addict, are you? So why am I an addict? I had marijuana, and you had marijuana — I hate that word, don’t you? It makes you think of something lurid, a goddamn Oriental den or something, with everybody laying around in a cloud of smoke, and naked girls with those sheer pantaloons on, doesn’t it? Hell, you can bust a joint right on the street now without the cops tipping, I mean you don’t need a smoke-filled den or anything like that, that’s for the comic books. Why, the first time I gave you a joint, it was right on the street, wasn’t it? Sure, near the church. Oh, no, you don’t need a shooting gallery for a stick of M. Was that after you got out of the service? It’s hard to remember time exactly. Sometimes I think time is in one big conspiracy against me.”

“It was after I got out,” Bud said.

“Sure. You didn’t want the stuff, I remember, but I forced it on you. That’s an occupational disease, you know, with addicts I mean. Christ knows how many times I tried to get Helen on the stuff before she tumbled. A stick of M, and then a sniff of C, and then on to the White God. You see? That’s what I mean. Helen tumbled, but you didn’t. Hey, remember when I used to buy those Benzedrine inhalers and crack them open and then swallow the Benzedrine-soaked paper? That was after you got out of the service too. No, no, it was while you were gone. What the hell made me do that? Kicks? Hell, it wasn’t so great. Oh, it hopped me up and gave me the jumps, but it wasn’t a grand kick, not like the big stuff is. So what made me do that? And even after all the guys kept saying it was poison. You know, you can’t get a Benzedrine inhaler any more. They got this substitute called Benzedrex. Benzedrex, methadone — nothing’s like the real stuff.” He shrugged again. “But that’s what I mean. I was swallowing Benzedrine-soaked paper, and you were—”

“Everybody takes bennies now and then,” Bud said. “I know lots of kids at school who take it to keep awake when they’re studying for exams.”

He remembered Milton abruptly. Milton shoved itself into his mind, and he sighed involuntarily. He had not studied, and he had not slept either. And the test was tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning at nine.

“Sure, sure, but they’ve got reasons. I did it — what for? Do I know? Do you know? Hell, I just did it, that’s all. Like M. Somebody gave me a stick, just the way I gave you a stick. I dug it; I went back to it. You didn’t dig it at all. Now I’m an addict, and you’re a college boy. Fate. Channels.”

“I might have gone back to it,” Bud said thoughtfully. “You never can tell. But it just didn’t affect me one way or the other.”

“Oh, it affected you,” Andy said. “The first time, anyway. I know it affected you because I was watching you, man. Don’t try to snow me.”

“It didn’t affect me,” Bud insisted.

“You said the street got longer, didn’t you?”

“Only because you suggested it. You kept saying, ‘Look back over your shoulder. Doesn’t it seem like we’ve come miles?’ After a while I began to believe you.”

“So? So there you are, man. All it does is increase your... your... oh, what the hell would you call it? When somebody suggests something and you’re receptive to it. That. It increases that. You also said the buildings seemed to be tilting. I remember, man, believe me. My memory is the longest. So don’t bring the stuff down. Admit it was crazy, will you?”

The pride had crept into Andy’s voice again. Whenever he spoke of the power of drugs, the pride sneaked in like an assassin in a black robe. And yet, the self-pity was always there, too, behind the pride, like a white-clothed Lady Macbeth steering the hand with the knife. It was a peculiar combination, and it rankled Bud.

“Well,” he said reluctantly, “maybe I did say the buildings seemed to be tilting.”

“Oh, no question about it! And you also giggled like a bastard at everything we said.”

“That was a release of nervous energy,” Bud said. “I was actually afraid. I had this feeling of doing something that was dangerous.”

“Nervous energy, my foot. That was Mother M, daddy, good old Mother M. All right, I’ll grant you it didn’t knock you out. It never does the first time. But it sure as hell affected you, now don’t tell me it didn’t.”

Bud felt as if he were being backed against the wall. The memory of the incident was hazy in his mind, anyway, and he had no reason to doubt the accuracy of Andy’s recollection. In self-defense he tried to channel the course of conversation elsewhere. “The second time,” he said, “nothing at all happened.”

“Well, that’s ’cause you shared the joint with that friend of yours from school — what was his name?”

“He was your friend, too,” Bud said. “He went to Boys’ High with you.”

“Davidoff,” Andy said. “David Davidoff — what a hell of a name. Like Newton Hooton. Played oboe, didn’t he? It was funny your running into him at college, wasn’t it? Sure, David Davidoff. He had a great sense of humor, you know? Oh, not that I was real buddy-buddy with him or anything. Hell he was a senior when I was just a soph, I think. But it was funny I knew him at all, and then your running into him at college.”

“I still know him,” Bud said.

“Yeah, well that’s what I mean. Channels, fate. He was scared that night, though. He was really scared. I think the only reason he lit up was because he was afraid we’d call him chicken.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Bud said. “He was just curious, the way I was. You hear so much about it you want to know what all the shooting’s about.”

“But he was scared. Man, I’ve seen them when they’re scared. Maybe he was curious, too, but he was mostly scared. That’s because we were in the men’s room, and maybe that wasn’t the best place in the world to light up. Man, I was stoned! But you shared the joint with him, so it didn’t affect you at all. It didn’t affect him, either. He kept shrugging, as if it were a big disappointment, but man I think he was relieved he could still think straight. There’re lots of guys like that, you know, guys who’re afraid they won’t be able to think straight, and who’re afraid of what they’ll do when their minds aren’t their own. Do you remember the movie we saw that night? Something with ‘night’ in the title — Dead of Night? Yes, a British film. About this guy who keeps thinking he’s lived through all this before, and the ventriloquist, and the room in the mirror, don’t you remember? A real crazy picture, and it was even crazier because I was stoned. But what I’m driving at is that you had a taste of it. Hell, even Davidoff had a taste, and here you are, and here I am, and never the twain shall meet. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, I think so,” Bud said.

“Just talking about it makes me itchy,” Andy said. “I shouldn’t have tried to fool you last night, Bud. Man, I really wanted to cut out of here and scare up something, though — anything — just to take that itch out of my skull.”

“Well, don’t start getting the itch now.”

“No, no, I was just saying. Oh, I feel a little of the itch. I guess I’ll always feel that. I mean, like I could bust a joint now if I wanted to, but nothing serious. I guess I’ll always take a reefer or two, now and then, even when I’m off the big stuff for good.”

“That doesn’t sound very smart,” Bud said. “If you’re going to get off it, you should get off it completely.”

“Oh, sure, sure, I will. But a sip of tea never hurt anybody. Hell, I could blast right now, and would you believe it, it wouldn’t affect me at all? Except maybe to soothe my nerves a little, that’s all. Man, when I was just taking marijuana, I had it completely under control, what I mean, completely. I could have stopped any time I wanted to.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

Andy shrugged. “Search me. I just didn’t. I got on the bigger stuff.”

“Why?” Bud asked.

“If I knew that, man, I’d be oh so wise.”

“Well, let’s not talk about it. The more you talk about it, the more you’ll want it. Let’s get some breakfast, okay?”

“Fine,” Andy said.

They both got out of bed and dressed quickly. Bud went into the kitchen and Andy followed him there. They were looking into the refrigerator when the phone rang.

“I’ll get it,” Bud said. He glanced at his watch. “Kind of early for anyone...” He let the sentence die, shook his head, and walked to the phone, lifting the receiver.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hello, Andy?”

“No, this is Bud.”

“Oh. Oh, hello, Bud. How are you?”

He did not recognize the voice. “Who is this?” he asked.

“Helen. Helen Cantor.”

He felt suddenly warm. He tried to think of something to say, but nothing came to his mind. The line was silent for several moments, and then he said softly, “How are you, Helen?”

“Oh, I’m fine, thanks, Bud. May I speak to Andy, please? He is with you, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is,” Bud said. “How did you—”

“He called me yesterday, before he went over there. It’s awfully good of you to do what you’re doing, Bud.”

“I... yes,” he said.

“May I speak to him now, please? He’s all right, isn’t he?”

“Yes, yes, he’s fine. Just a moment.” He cupped the receiver. “Andy, it’s for you.”

Andy came out of the kitchen. “Who is it?”

“Helen.”

“Oh.” He nodded abstractedly and went to the phone, taking the receiver from Bud. “Hello,” he said. “Yes, I know, Bud— What?... No, I’m fine, Helen... Well, it’s been bad, but you know how... Yes, yes, I am... No, this time it’s for good, Helen... I know I’ve said that before... Look... Look, Helen... Yes, I will...” He sighed heavily. “I haven’t got any of the stuff... I haven’t even got the works... I’m telling you. Helen? Helen? Oh, I thought you’d... No, go ahead... All right, all right, I promise... Helen, it’s for good this time, I promise you that... Yes, yes, have you been all right?... Good... What?... Oh... Well, I don’t know... I mean, it’s not my place, Helen.”

“What does she want?” Bud asked.

“Just a minute, Helen.” He cupped the mouthpiece. “She wants to know if she can come over.”

“Now?”

“Did you mean now, Helen?” Andy asked. “Oh, well just a minute.” He turned to Bud again. “Tonight, she said. After work.”

Bud hesitated. He did not know if he wanted to see Helen again, and especially under these circumstances. “I’ve got a test tomorrow,” he said lamely.

“Helen, he’s got a test tomorrow,” Andy said into the phone. “What?... Well, gee, Helen... all right, just a minute.” He did not bother cupping the mouthpiece this time. “She wants to know when she can come, Bud. Look, if you don’t want—”

“After my test,” Bud said. “Tomorrow night.”

“Helen? Can you come tomorrow night?... Look, I don’t even see why... Yes, tomorrow... all right... about six?... Just a minute, Helen... Well, for Christ’s sake, I have to check it, don’t I?... Now just a second.” He turned to Bud again. “Six all right?”

“All right,” Bud said.

“All right,” Andy said. “Do you know where it is? Oh, okay. I’ll see you tomorrow then. Take care... I’ll be all right, don’t worry... Fine... Yes, tomorrow at six... Okay, Helen, so long.” He hung up and then wet his lips. “She knows where you live,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” Bud answered.

“How... I mean...”

“She’s been here before.”

“Oh.” Andy hesitated. “Nice kid, Helen. Still checking up on me, even though... well, like I hardly see her any more, you know.”

“You called her yesterday, didn’t you? You just said—”

“Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, like you owe it to people, don’t you? Like if... if they’re interested, you know, you shouldn’t just sort of drop dead on them. I thought she’d like to know I was making the break, see, and I guess she does. Like her calling just now. Wants to make sure I stick to it this time, I guess. Nice kid.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t mind her coming over, do you? Look, if you’ve got any objections, I can call her back.”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“I mean, I never did get it straight between Helen and you so I don’t know what the story is. I know she didn’t talk about it, and whenever I brought it up—”

“She’s welcome here,” Bud interrupted.

“Just like that,” Andy said. “Whenever I brought the subject up, she interrupted with something. What was it with you two, anyway?”

“Nothing,” Bud said.

“It wasn’t that first time, was it? You know, when I—”

“No,” Bud said.

“Something when I was on the road then?”

“Well,” Bud said. “Look, I’ve no objection to Helen’s coming here, believe me.”

“I always got the feeling... well, never mind. We’ll let it ride.”

“Let’s let it ride,” Bud agreed. “Come on, we still haven’t had breakfast.”

They went into the kitchen together and back to the refrigerator to pick up where they’d left off when the phone rang.

“No eggs,” Bud said.

“I never eat eggs in the morning, anyway,” Andy said.

“I do. I’d better run down for a dozen. Is there anything else we need? I wasn’t exactly expecting company.”

“Cup of coffee and a slice of toast is good enough for me,” Andy said.

“You should eat more than that.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to give it back again.”

“Well, I’ll get some eggs. I think a few quarts of milk, too. Do you still drink a lot of milk?”

“Not so much any more. Look, if you’re going on my account—”

“No, I want the eggs. I usually get breakfast near the school, but exams—”

“Oh, sure.”

“You’ll be all right while I’m gone?”

“Yes,” Andy said.

Bud looked at him for a moment. “Maybe you ought to come with me.”

“No, I’ll be all right.”

“You won’t—”

“No, don’t worry. I’ll be here when you come back.”

Bud nodded. “There’s a record player in the living room, and I’ve got some good Kenton. You like Kenton, don’t you?”

“Man, are you kidding? I love the lad.”

“Well, good, make yourself at home. I’ll be right back. I’m just going over to Columbus Avenue.”

“Fine. Take your time.”

Andy walked him to the door, and before he left Bud said, “Maybe you can get the coffee water going. I won’t be long at all.”

“All right, I will,” Andy said.

He left the apartment, and it took him three minutes to get to Columbus Avenue and another two minutes to get to the grocery store he usually bought at. There was one woman ahead of him in the store, and she took seven minutes to complete her purchase. It took him exactly four and a half minutes to get the eggs, the milk, and a loaf of rye bread. The walk back to the apartment took another five minutes. He could hear the record player as he started up the steps, and he thought it was a little too loud, and he told himself he’d have to remind Andy about playing it so loudly. “Artistry in Rhythm” was on the turntable, and he found himself whistling to it as he walked down the hall to his apartment. He threw open the door and went directly into the kitchen, not stopping to look into the living room, dropping the groceries on the kitchen table.

“Hey, Andy,” he called, “you’d better lower that.”

When there was no answer, he poked his head into the living room. “Andy?”

The record player was spinning at 78 r.p.m.’s, but no one was sitting in the living room listening to it.

He looked around the room quickly, panic starting inside him. He rushed to the bathroom and threw open the door.

“Andy?”

He went in quickly and pulled back the shower curtain. Andy was not in the tub. Andy was not in the apartment.

9

He was out.

He was out, and he could feel a feverish excitement within him. The fever had started with the Kenton records, the wildness of them stirring memories somewhere deep within him. The four walls had moved in on him, ready to crush him, and he had stood suddenly, unreasonably frightened, wanting to get out. He had felt small and insignificant, caught in the slashing power of the music, trapped within the four walls which were closing in on him, moving closer, and closer and closer until he had to run, run or be crushed. He had to be big again. He had to stop being so small the walls could crush him.

And now he was out, and he had the bag in his hands, and it was a good bag, and it would bring bread. And when he had the bread, he could cop. No, he mustn’t think of that. He was off the stuff, off it for good. Then why had he taken the bag from the closet? Why had he rushed to the closet and taken the bag when he knew he was off the stuff for good?

I’m going on a trip, he lied to himself.

I’m going on a trip to the moon. I’m growing as I walk. I’m getting taller and taller and taller, and I won’t need a rocket ship because pretty soon my head will be in the clouds, and then my nose will touch the moon, and I’ll nibble green cheese, and I’ll climb up there, dragging my long, long legs up through the atmosphere and the stratosphere and the any-sphere, and I’ll lay down in my bigness on the moon and just nibble green cheese and look down at the ants far below on earth and spit a big glob of spit at them.

They won’t be able to touch me up there until they build a rocket ship to catch me, or a space station or something, and then I’ll fool the bastards by going on to Mars. Will I gas those Martians. I’ll tell them earthside jokes, and they’ll give me a loincloth and the Martian equivalent of an opium derivative, and I shall blast my brains out every hour on the hour while the Martians come around me with their feelers. I’ll be the God who came from earth, and they’ll build me a shrine, and they’ll send Martian dancing girls whose skins are green to dance for me with their feelers.

But first I have to hock the bag.

Don’t argue with me, because I have to hock this mother-loving bag. What the hell use does Buddy-boy have for a leather bag like this one, anyway? Sitting in his closet, doing nothing. No good at all. It t’aint no good, it t’aint no good, a purse ain’t good if it’s got a hole in it. No hole in this goddamn bag, and no sense its sitting in the closet not going anywhere. Bags were made for trips, and this bag is now going on a trip.

Straight to the hock shop.

It has to go to the hock shop. It has to go, so shut your mother-loving tater trap and make your feet move. This bag is going to market, and then I will...

Will what?

Will whatever. And that’s enough for you, for now. I will whatever I want to, and nobody can stop me. I’ll climb Mt. Everest or I’ll go down to the bottom of the sea. Or I’ll head for the Union Floor, and maybe I’ll see somebody I know, and maybe he’ll ask me how would you like to blow with Harry James, or Stan Kenton, or T.D., and I will say what’s the salary, Sam? And then I will tell him to go to hell.

And in the meantime I’ll look for somebody else, because once I hock this bag, I’ll have loot, lots of loot, how much will the bag bring, five, ten, fifteen? No, not fifteen. Well, maybe fifteen, what the hell are you, a goddamn pessimist?

Say fifteen.

Okay, fifteen. Now what can we buy with fifteen crisp hot little bills?

Fifteen bills will buy a fairly decent alligator belt, you know, if you’re in the market for alligator belts. As it so happens, I am a most humane cat who could not stomach the idea of some poor horny alligator losing his skin to hold up my pants.

So I guess we won’t be able to buy an alligator belt, eh George? Well now, that’s a goddamn shame, and my heart bleeds for the alligator merchants, every last son of them. But what’re you gonna do, Jack, when a man belongs to the A.S.P.C.A., eh?

We’ll look for something else to buy. Must be dozens of things a man can buy with fifteen crisp juicy lettuce leaves.

Especially now that the man has kicked the habit.

It’s a grand wonderful feeling, all right, not having to worry about spending that fifteen bucks on anything illicit, provided it amounts to fifteen bucks, which it might not, you know. But no matter what it amounts to, it sure is a wonderful free feeling to know that no one and nothing is forcing me into spending that pile on H. Now there’s no better feeling in the world than that, all right, and there sure as hell must be a lot of worth-while things you can buy with fifteen bucks, and I’m sure I can think of some — given time — but in the meanwhile the important thing is to find the three balls and get rid of this bag. Once we get rid of it, we’ll have the dough, and then we can decide on how to spend it.

With no one forcing us to the Union Floor to see if we can spot anyone we know there who might be holding.

No one forcing us to do that at all, especially now that the habit is kicked. Well, it wasn’t even a really bad habit when you get right down to it, not if you can kick it clean away in a week. How bad can a habit be if you can shake it so easy? It might not even be called a habit at all, if you can just drop it like that. Why, right now — would you believe it — I don’t feel any need for the stuff, just a need to hock this bag, so how bad could the habit have been?

Hell, there are people who can’t even break the smoking habit in a week!

Of course, this is an entirely different kind of habit, naturally. If you could call it a habit at all.

Well, it doesn’t matter what you call it because I am no longer an addict, anyway. All I have to do is hock this bag of Bud’s, a fellow shouldn’t leave an expensive bag laying around in his closet, this is a damn fine-looking bag, maybe it’ll bring twenty, Christ, what twenty couldn’t buy, enough stuff to last me a few days — if, of course, I was interested in buying stuff, which I’m definitely not. I’m only interested in hocking this bag.

Why?

Why, to have a few bills in my pocket, that’s why. What’s a man without a few bills in his pocket? Nothing.

So let’s find Honest John and get rid of this bag, it’s getting heavier as I go along, this goddamn bag is burning a hole in my pocket — how’s that for a mixed metaphor, Buddy-boy?

Aren’t there any hock shops at all in this crumby neighborhood? Don’t people hock things around here? Do I have to go all the way downtown? Well, it doesn’t matter because I’ve got to go to the Union Floor, anyway, after I hock the bag, but it seems as if a man should be able to hock something in his own neighborhood if he wanted to, not that it’s my neighborhood, I wouldn’t have it if you handed it to me with a golden key and a lifetime pass to the RKO Palace.

He walked up Seventy-second Street, and he passed the Provident Loan Society, and he wondered if he should try hocking the bag there, but he decided against it in favor of the shops with which he was familiar. He caught a train on Broadway, and he sat in the car and watched the faces around him, and he thought, They know I’m going on a trip.

I’m wearing a good jacket, and I look pretty good, in fact I look pretty damn good, and they see this expensive bag at my feet and they’re thinking, Look at that lucky bastard, heading down for Penn Station, probably going on a short vacation somewheres, or maybe a fifty-million-dollar business trip, picking up a few oil wells here or there, or a brassiere factory, or something. Envying me like crazy because their ant jobs pay thirty-two-fifty per, and they couldn’t afford a vacation right now — even if they had the money.

He got off the train, and he walked down toward Sixth Avenue, wondering why anyone would want to mutilate such a sweet-sounding street to “Avenue of the Americas,” and wondering if anyone except the mayor ever called it that. The pawnshops were lined up in a row, eeny-meeny-miney-mo.

He put on his best Rich-Man-Needing-Some-Pin-Money look and walked into the closest shop. The shop was small. He felt at home in it immediately. This was where he belonged, a big businessman making a deal for an expensive piece of luggage he’d picked up in Venezuela. God, there were so many things in a pawnshop! The jetsam of a vast army in retreat, the Army of Humanity, fleeing from the enemy, Life. Guitars and trumpets and accordions and cameras and projectors and fishing rods and knives and guns and watches and rings and bracelets and coffeepots and chamber pots and chafing dishes and fish dishes and fifty-dollar German gold pieces and feelthy pictures, Mac? Sorry, wrong pew.

The proprietor was a small, lean man with a cast in one eye. He walked sluggishly to where Andy stood, and his good eye studied Andy, and then he said, “Yes?”

Andy swung the bag up onto the counter. The proprietor studied it.

“Yours?” he asked.

“Of course,” Andy said.

The proprietor ran his small hands over the leather. His mouth kept working as his hands moved, as if he were grumbling silently to himself, as if this were the worst piece of luggage he’d seen in his entire lifetime, as if he would throw Andy out of the shop at any moment. He clicked open the snaps and then looked inside the bag. His nostrils twitched, his mouth worked. He was very upset, this man. This man needed Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Andy thought, in huge quantities.

“How much do you want?” the little man asked.

“How much will you give?” Andy said.

“Five dollars.”

Andy took the bag from the counter without saying a word. He was starting for the door when the little man called, “Hey, wait a minute.”

Andy walked back to the counter.

“Where you going?” the little man said, his head tilted, the cast in his eye giving him a gnomish look.

“You said five dollars,” Andy said. “The bag cost a hundred new.”

“You’re a liar,” the man said, “but I’m used to liars.”

“And you’re a crook,” Andy said, “but I’m used to crooks.”

“Listen, you want five?”

“Do I look crazy?”

“How much do you want?”

“Twenty,” Andy said, figuring the little man would come down to fifteen.

“You have heat stroke,” the man said. “I’ll call an ambulance.”

“When I want tired jokes, I’ll try television,” Andy said, pleased with the way the bargaining was going, enjoying the bargaining as much as he’d enjoyed anything in the past week.

“Six dollars,” the man said, “and I’m not making a cent.”

“Good-by,” Andy said.

“Just a minute, just a minute. You look like a nice young feller, need a few dollars to take in the city. Okay, I’m a man who’ll help you out. I was new in town once myself, had to hock my luggage, too.”

“Mister, I was born and raised in Brooklyn,” Andy said.

“Why didn’t you say so?” the man answered. “For a native New Yorker, I’ll go to seven-fifty and lose a few bucks on the deal.”

“You’ll go it alone, friend,” Andy said.

“I can’t do better than seven-fifty,” the man said, shrugging.

“Well, it’s been nice,” Andy said, and he started out of the shop. He waited for the man to call him back, but there was no further offer. He opened the door, and the bell tinkled, and he stepped onto the sidewalk and into the moving stream of pedestrians.

That cheap cockeyed bastard, he thought. Seven-fifty. Took me for a hick from Squaresville at first, and then jacked his price a big two and a half bucks when he figured I knew the score. Seven-fifty! I can get more for the bag if I sell it to a necktie salesman.

Disgustedly, he walked into the next shop. He had been happy with the bargaining, but only while he thought he would get his price. Fifteen dollars would set him up fine. Fifteen dollars would be the ticket, all right, and the more he thought of that ticket the more anxious he was to conclude the deal, get this goddamn bag off his back. What does a guy have to do to get a little gold, anyway? Hock his mother? He was angry even before the new owner came out of his cage. A small plaque on the cage read “M. Daniels.” Andy digested the name and then digested Daniels as the man walked past the array of junk behind his counter. He was a tall man with loose bones, a man who seemed somehow unhinged as he ambled toward Andy, a bright smile on his face.

“Morning, young man,” he boomed cheerily. “What can I do you for, eh?”

Andy swung the bag up. “Good morning. I need a little ready cash,” he said.

“That’s what I’m here for, eh? Nice bag you’ve got there.”

“I know.” He did not want to bargain any more. He wanted to hock the damn bag and get the hell out of here and over to the Union Floor. There was an overwhelming and sudden desire within him, a desire which had been there all along but which he could no longer deny, a desire which urged him to get some money and get out, get over to the Union Floor, get what he needed, and get it fast.

“Good leather,” Daniels said. “Must have cost you a bit, young man.”

“It cost me plenty,” Andy said harshly. “How much?”

“Ten,” Daniels said.

“This street is lined with stick-up artists,” Andy said, more irritated now. “I want fifteen.”

“You won’t get it here, son.”

“How much will I get?”

“Ten,” Daniels said. “I give a price, and I stick to it. I don’t underquote and then wait to be jacked up.”

“You said ten?”

“That’s what I said.”

Andy hesitated. “This is a good bag,” he said weakly. His feet were beginning to tap. He wanted to get out of here very badly, he wanted to get out of here and over to the Union Floor, where he might contact Rog or somebody — somebody who could help him get what he wanted and what he needed.

“Assuredly, it’s a good bag. I’m thinking of resale if you don’t claim it. People don’t like to buy second-hand luggage. They like their luggage new.”

“Who you trying to kid?” Andy said. “I know guys who wear secondhand suits.”

“Yes, but these are not the people who need luggage. A man who needs luggage is a man who travels. And a man who travels is a man who can afford a new bag. How do I know what you kept in this bag?”

“Ten dollars is your price?” Andy said.

“My only and final price.”

“For ten dollars I can tell you what I kept in this bag.”

“And what was that?” Daniels asked.

“Horseshit,” Andy said. He yanked the bag from the counter and started for the door. Daniels did not call him back. He banged out of the shop, walking blindly into the crowd, really angry now, and desperately wanting to get rid of the bag. Why should a guy have so much trouble? Why were they all against him? For Christ’s sake, what was a guy supposed to do, penned up in a rattrap apartment, watched all the time, everybody watching as if he were a prisoner or something, and now these lousy bastards trying to con him out of the bag, taking him for some damn idiot.

He opened the door of the next shop, and he heard the bell tinkle, and the tinkle irritated him. A fat man in a worn overcoat was trying to hock a bellows camera, shaking his head at each new price the proprietor quoted. Finally, the fat man said, “No, I’m sorry, Mr. Taller. I am very sorry, but you are not doing my intelligence justice. I’m sorry, Mr. Taller, but after all these years, I think I must take my business elsewhere.”

Taller, a man who was almost as fat as his potential customer, cocked his head philosophically. “Mr. Peters, I am sorry, too, believe me.”

Peters picked up his bellows camera and the remnants of his dignity and walked proudly out of the shop, his head high. Taller waddled over to where Andy was standing.

“Yes, sir?” he said.

“I want to hock this bag,” Andy said. “I want fifteen bucks for it, and I know it’s worth that much, so don’t give me a song and dance.”

Taller looked at Andy carefully, an expression of mild surprise on his face.

“You get right down to business, don’t you?” he said.

“I do. What do you say?”

“Slow down,” Taller said. “That’s what I say. You’ve been in here before, haven’t you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“You’ve been in so many hock shops, you can’t remember which you’ve been in?” Taller asked.

“Look, will you give me fifteen? Yes or no?”

“Maybe,” Taller said, shrugging. “I got to look at the bag first, don’t I? You won’t deny me this privilege?”

“Go ahead, look at it.”

“You’re in a hurry?” Taller asked.

“Yes, I’m in a hurry.”

“Then maybe you should take your business someplace else. I’m a fat man. I don’t like to move fast. Of course, the bag may be worth fifteen dollars. I’ll have to examine it. Carefully.” He eyed Andy expectantly.

For a moment Andy wanted to grab the bag and get the hell out of the shop, show this fat slob he didn’t have to take any guff from him. But the possibility of getting fifteen bucks outweighed the necessity for proving himself superior to this tub of lard.

“I’ll wait,” he said. “Look the bag over. Take all the time you want. Get out your magnifying glass if you want to. Only, let’s get on with it.”

“Younger generation,” Taller said, shaking his massive head. “Always in a rush. Going to bum out your engine before you’re thirty, you know that, don’t you?”

“I’ll worry about that when I’m thirty,” Andy said. “Do you think it’s worth fifteen?”

“I haven’t looked at it yet.”

“I was hinting subtly,” Andy answered, trying a smile, but knowing he was incapable of a smile. Suppose he missed Rog? Suppose Rog was there, and he missed him? What the hell would he do then? Come on, Fatso, get off your dead rump. Move!

Taller took the bag between his beefy fingers. Carefully, cautiously, he began turning the bag, his eyes scrutinizing every square inch of it.

“You need this money bad?” Taller asked, turning the bag.

“What difference does it make?”

“I look at my customers like humans. The necessity sometimes determines the loan.”

“I need it bad.”

“What for?”

“That’s none of your...” Andy hesitated. He did not like Taller’s playing with him this way, did not like the careful, methodical, minute attention Taller was giving the bag. But Taller might have fifteen dollars to give him, and once he got that he could get some of the stuff, and if Rog were around he could borrow a spike. “That’s my business,” he amended.

“And loaning money is mine,” Taller said lazily. He pushed the bag across the counter with one pudgy forefinger. Andy panicked.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“You’re not very friendly,” Taller said. “I like customers to be friends.”

“What the hell do you want?” Andy said. “My life history? I only came in here to hock a bag.”

“Who cares about your life?” Taller said. “I ask decent questions. I expect decent answers. What am I — a pariah?”

“I don’t know what the hell you are,” Andy said. “I thought you were a loan shark, but I think you’re Mr. Anthony instead.”

Taller smiled. “Okay, keep your business to yourself. I’m just curious.”

“I just need the money, that’s all. What difference does it make what I need it for?”

“Okay, okay,” Taller said. He shrugged and began turning the bag again, looking at it. Andy felt immense relief, and he cursed Taller again for his teasing game, and he wiped his hand across his mouth and watched the fat loan shark.

“A nice bag. I’m surprised you’d want to get rid of it.” Taller looked up suddenly, his eyes tightening. “It isn’t stolen, is it?”

“No,” Andy said.

“I can check against my stolen goods list, you know.”

“Go ahead, check,” he said confidently. Even if Bud had already discovered the theft, which was unlikely, he probably would not report it. And even if he reported it, it was much too early for it to be showing on any police pawnshop list.

“Well, you don’t look like the type of fellow who would steal a bag,” Taller said. “Except from necessity, huh?”

“Nobody hocks anything except from necessity,” Andy said.

“I didn’t say ‘hock.’ I said ‘steal,’” Taller said.

“I didn’t steal the bag, so get off that kick,” Andy said.

“Are you a musician?”

“Yes.”

“What do you play?”

“What difference does it make?”

“Trumpet or trombone?”

“Trumpet. How—”

“You have a muscle on your lip,” Taller said shrewdly.

“You win the gold star,” Andy answered. “Do I get fifteen?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you think you’ll know in time for Christmas?”

Taller smiled. “I might.”

“I can’t wait that long. Decide now.”

“What’s your hurry?”

“Oh, the hell with this,” Andy said. He reached across the counter for the bag, and Taller pulled it back farther, and as Andy stretched his arm, his jacket pulled back slightly, and there was a sudden spark in Taller’s eyes, and then Taller reached out quickly, unbelievably fast for a fat man, his fat fingers clamping on Andy’s wrist. He brought his other hand around, clasping the material of Andy’s jacket, and then he shoved the jacket and the shirt, and Andy felt the button at his wrist snap, and then the shirt and the jacket together were moving up the length of his arm, his hand imprisoned in Taller’s firm, fleshy grip.

“What the hell...” he started, and then he glanced down at his arm, and he felt sick inside all at once because Taller was looking at the exposed arm, too, and the exposed arm was the arm of a drug addict, unmistakably so, irrevocably so.

“I figured,” Taller said.

“Let go of my arm,” Andy warned.

“You’re a hophead. What’s the matter, kid, you got an itch? You got an itch for a couple of caps of the crap? Is that why you want the fifteen so bad? Is that why?”

“Listen—”

“You figure you come in here and con an old fat man into giving you fifteen bucks for a bag you probably stole, huh? Con an old fat man who can hardly get around he’s so fat into giving you fifteen bucks so you can go out and shoot yourself full of poison, huh? Well, son, you picked on the wrong fat man this time. I get your kind of vermin all the time. I get your kind of filthy animals all the time. And do you know what I do with them? I take whatever they bring and throw it down at their feet.”

He viciously swept one hamlike hand across the counter, knocking the bag to the floor. Andy scrambled for it, picking it up, frightened by the intensity in the fat man’s eyes.

“I throw it down on the ground, down to their level,” Taller said vehemently. Andy was standing up now, backing away from the counter.

“And then do you know what I do?” Taller shouted, his fist clenched, his breath coming hard. “Do you know what I do to these rotten, grubby parasites?”

Andy stared at him, incapable of movement, paralyzed by the trembling, furious hulk before him. Taller drew back his head and then brought it down in a sudden movement that took Andy completely by surprise. In a second he understood, but in that second it was too late. He saw Taller’s pursed lips, and he flinched when he realized what was going to happen. When it happened, he stood there stunned for several seconds, and then he reached for a handkerchief and wiped Taller’s vile spit from his face.

“I spit at them!” Taller screamed. “I spit right into their faces, and I tell them to take their filthy trade someplace else. I spit at them!” he screamed. “I spit at them!”

He fled from the shop and out onto the sidewalk, stopping outside Daniels’ shop to catch his breath. He went in to see Daniels again then, fully expecting the price to have dropped, surprised when it was still ten dollars.

He pocketed the bills and went out onto the sidewalk. He had to get to the Union Floor now.

He began walking quickly.

10

The musicians were congregated in the street outside Local 802, even though a sign inside the building warned them that such assembly was a violation. They stood close to the curb, their backs to the street, and they talked. The people passing by paid them scant attention. The musicians wore suits, or sports jackets, or dress shirts, or sports shirts, or tee shirts. They seemed to enjoy each other’s company. They talked a lot and they laughed a lot. Some of them carried their instruments with them. Most of them carried nothing but a small engagement book in which they recorded future job dates. They looked like men in the garment district discussing whether they should cut Shantung or corduroy. They looked like men on the television circuit standing outside casting studios and discussing bit parts on Montgomery or Kraft. They looked like any group of men discussing the intimate aspects of their businesses. Music was their business, and though they sometimes asked, “How’s your wife?” they mostly asked, “Are you booked for this Saturday?”

He scanned them quickly, looking for Rog, not seeing him, and then starting up the long flight of steps that led to the Exchange Floor. He passed someone he knew on the way down, and the musician nodded and said, “Hi, Andy,” and he nodded back and said, “Hi,” not remembering the man. He stepped onto the Floor, and he was immediately engulfed in a huge wave of sound. The Floor was enormous and bare. The Floor was thronged with men and women, and every man and woman was talking, and the sound of their voices joined to form a crashing crescendo that reached up for the ceiling and bounced down again in a smothering storm of mumbles.

“I went away for Passover. I got matzos coming out of my ears. You know those nice little seeded rolls? The only reason I go away. What? Is the loot so good? I go away for the seeded rolls, and all I get is matzos. But look at that waistline. I must’ve lost twelve pounds. This hardtack is wonderful. They should put it on the market.”

“The only way to reduce, Sam. You try a starvation diet, you wind up with functional disorders of the liver, the heart, and the intestinal tract. Are you booked this Saturday?”

He shoved his way through the crowd, listening to the babel of sound, and above the disjointed, mingled mumbles the harsh boom of the microphone paging people to the desk.

“Johnny Fillera. Johnny Fillera. Michael Storey. Michael Storey. Amos Dale. Amos Dale.”

Somewhere in the blurred faces around him there might be Rog. He was interested in none of the faces but Rog’s. Rog might be here, and if he were...

“I told him, ‘What the hell, you want a trumpet player or a slave coolie?’ I picked up my ax and almost brained the son-of-a-bitch. But that horn cost me two bills, so I just told him I was gonna report him, that’s all, and then I walked out.”

“David Bergen. David Bergen. Skippy Fried. Skippy Fried.”

“He was getting forty-three as leader, and he was trying to get side-men for fifteen. I told him to shove his goddamn piccolo.”

“Flip Callabia. Flip Callabia.”

“You should have let me know sooner. I’m booked solid for the next three week ends. Jesus, Harry, you know I like your outfit.”

“Well, I didn’t see you. Where you been hiding?”

“Anybody has checks due from Stan Bowles, come and get ’em. Anybody has checks due from Stan Bowles, come and get ’em.”

He saw a face he knew, and then the face was beside him, a round cherubic face, and a hand was extended toward him, and he took the hand unconsciously, the sound around him smothering him until he wanted to shout for air, and then a hole opened in the face, and the hole was framed with teeth, and the face said, “Hey, Andy, long time no see.”

“Hey, boy, how are you?” he mumbled.

“So-so, can’t kick. You still blowing?”

“Oh, sure, dad.”

“I’m supposed to meet some creep who’s got a gig at White Roe for the summer. So I’ve been paging the bastard for the past hour, and he still ain’t showed. You know him, maybe?”

“What’s his name?”

A card appeared in pudgy fingers. The hole in the face opened again. “George Mackler. You know him?”

“Piano?”

“Yeah.”

“I know him. He’ll be around. He likes to be late. It makes him like a leader.”

“Leaders should be hung. And I mean by the—”

“You see Rog Kiner around anywhere?”

“Who’s he?”

“Tenor man. Used to be on the Jerralds band with me. You see him?”

“No, I don’t even know what he looks like. Hey, was you on the Jerralds band when he had that shakedown in Sioux City?”

“What shakedown?” Andy asked, avoiding the curious eyes.

“You know, man. When a couple of the guys was—”

“Listen, I got to cut out. You see Rog, you tell him Andy’s looking for him.”

“Yeah, sure, but I don’t know him.”

He shoved away, colliding with a man holding a box of ties, bow ties in blacks, maroons, blues.

“Need a tie, cousin?” the man asked.

“No.”

“Good ties. Cheap. Come on, cousin, you need a tie.”

“Get the hell out of my way.”

“Sensitive artist,” the salesman snarled.

He pushed through, almost knocking the salesman down. Where the hell was Rog? What time was it? He had ten dollars in his pocket now, ten hot, itchy dollars, and he wanted to spend them, and he knew what he wanted with that ten, and he had to find Rog — or somebody else, somebody he knew, but preferably Rog because he had to borrow a spike, too, why the hell had he thrown away his spike, what had ever possessed him to do such a goddamn foolish thing?

You did it because you’re off it, he reminded himself. Yes, I know, I’m off it, and I realize I’m off it, and this doesn’t mean I’m going back on it, this is just something to calm me down a little, maybe Rog’ll be holding some mootah, the mootah won’t harm me, or maybe even just a sniff of the bigger stuff, that doesn’t mean I’m going back aboard, it doesn’t mean that at all, if only I could find Rog, he ought to be here somewhere, Jesus Christ, where is he?

He had to get out of the sound.

The sound was deafening, and he remembered back to a time when the sound had been an exciting thing to him, just stepping onto the Floor had been an exciting thing, seeing the people you knew, feeling a part of the music business, a real part of it, telling jokes, and booking jobs, with the mike booming in the background, and the murmur of voices like a big swelling wave of warm water. But it wasn’t that now, it was only noise now, and he had to get away from the noise or he’d bust. He pushed his way through the crowd again, ants, ants, and a girl vocalist he’d seen around raised one shapely leg and said to the man standing with her, “Do you like my new shoes?” and then she took off one of the shoes and handed it to him, and he studied it like the mastermind of the leather industry.

He reached the steps and he climbed upstairs rapidly, walking past the sign which said, “These doors will close at 3:00 P.M.,” and then into the office itself, and past the booking and contract windows, and then over to the bulletin board, looking for Rog at the same time, never stopping his search for Rog. A few musicians were standing near the board, and he looked at them and then glanced at some of the notices not really reading them, just wanting the printed words to blot out the memory of the noise below, wanting the well-ordered typewritten notices to obliterate the disorderly chaos he had just left.

And below that:

He scanned the unfair notices, and then he turned away from the bulletin board and walked toward the dues windows, searching the faces of the members waiting in line. A huge white sign stood to the right of the windows, the black letters on it blaring:

My fellow member is Rog, he thought, and where the hell is my fellow member? Jesus Christ, do I have to go down into the arena again? He shook his head disconsolately and then started for the stairs. The sound rushed up the stair well, distant now and almost pleasant. It grew in volume as he got closer to it, and then he was in the center of it again, and the voices were all around him, and he squeezed his eyes shut tightly, trying to blot out the sound that way, knowing he was being foolish, you see with your eyes, you see with your eyes.

“You stupid son-of-a-bitch! What did he give you? Three Saturdays in a row, right? I warned you about this. I warned you about that bastard! He’s got you tied up for three Saturdays, and what else did he give you?”

“Well... nothing so far. He just...”

“Nothing! Gornischt! And that’s all you’re going to get. And you’ll be lucky if the son-of-a-bitch doesn’t farm you out someplace. You think he’s giving you those Saturdays because he loves you? You’re a bass man who can sing, so he’s saving on a vocalist. I can get you all the Saturdays you want, you dumb jerk. What about the Fridays and the Sundays? None of those, huh? And do you know who’s gonna get dropped first if the job gets cut? You! Goddammit, this burns my ass. Because I warned you, I warned you!”

“Well, how was I supposed to know...”

“Because I told you, that’s how. Try to get out of those jobs. Go ahead, just try. See how easy that’ll be. You’re a sucker! A plain, damn-fool sucker.”

He spotted Rog.

He spotted him, and his heart leaped up into his face, and he called, “Rog! Hey, Rog!” but the sound drowned out his voice, and he cursed the sound, and he cursed the crowd and he began shoving his way through to where Rog was standing.

“Tie clasp, cuff links, Mac?”

“No,” he said. He glanced at the array of jewelry on the cardboard box, copper tie clasps and cuff links, each decorated with a G clef.

“Buck for the clasp, buck and a half for the links, two bucks for the set, Mac.”

“No,” he said again, and he pushed past and shouted, “Rog! For Christ’s sake, Rog!”

“Meyer Koenig. Meyer Koenig. Alfred Bunn. Alfred Bunn. Shirley Carp. Shirley Carp. Paul Sidio. Paul Sidio.”

He pushed through, feeling as if he were swimming on a sea of crawling flesh and sound, swimming toward land. He felt as if he would cry, and then Rog was standing beside him, and he reached out and touched Rog’s shoulder, and Rog spun around.

He was a dark boy with dark hair and dark eyes and a sallow complexion. His face broke into a smile when he saw Andy, his lips skinning back over even white teeth.

“Hey, dad,” he said. “How are you?”

“Great.” Andy smiled, relieved. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Oh?” Rog said. His voice was high and reedy. He studied Andy for a moment and then turned to the girl he’d been talking to. “Monica, meet Andy Silvera. She blows piano.”

“Hi,” Andy said. “Can I talk to you a minute, Rog?”

“Why sure, dad. Talk.”

“I meant... you know.”

“Cool it, dad,” Rog said, and he turned again to Monica. “It’s not often you get a pretty chick at the piano,” he said.

Monica smiled. She was a tall girl with a full bust and glowing brown eyes. She wore her hair long and flowing past her shoulders. Her fingers were narrow, tipped with crimson teardrops. “Why, thanks. That doesn’t help next Sunday, though. Are you booking or just looking?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, honey,” Rog said, “I’ve been using a pickup band and the results are pretty good, you know? But this piano man I’ve got, he’s a bit corny, do you know? He hits it, but he’s not with it. I use him because he doubles on accordion. You blow accordion?”

“Nope.”

“Well, that don’t matter actually. I mean, so long as the piano stuff is good, and I’ve heard a lot about your playing, you dig?”

“Mmm-huh,” Monica said.

“So let me have the number, and I’ll buzz you sometime next week, and we’ll see.”

“I’m here to book next Sunday,” Monica said. “I can’t wait until sometime next week.”

End it, Andy thought. End it. Goddamn it, end it!

“Well, look, if you get something today, you get it. Otherwise I’ll give you a buzz, okay? No harm in giving you a buzz, is there?”

“If I get a booking, no. No harm at all.”

“Okay, so what’s the Ameche?”

She gave him the number and then whirled as an old friend embraced her. She returned the embrace, and they walked over together to where a group of men were chatting.

“Why the snow job?” Andy asked. “You know you don’t have a pickup band.”

“I like to keep my finger in the pie. What’s with you, dad? Long time no see.”

“I been... well... you know...”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Whoever left a guitar case up at the desk, pick it up. Whoever left a guitar case at the desk, pick it up.”

“If that son-of-a-bitch doesn’t close his mouth,” Andy said viciously.

“This is Doublesville,” Rog said, smiling. “He says everything twice. He goes home to his wife, he says ‘I love you, I love you. What’s for supper, what’s for supper?’” Rog began chuckling. “Hey, you dig that?”

Andy did not smile. “He’s driving me nuts. Can’t we get out of here?”

“What’s the rush?” Rog said airily. “I like it here. So where you been?”

“With a... a friend of mine. I been... you know.”

“You been what?”

“You holding?” Andy asked suddenly.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, you stupid jerk?” Rog answered vehemently.

“I’m askin’ a question. I’m—”

“You see the guy in the pink shirt? He’s a bull. He’s lookin’ for some damn stupid fool like you, so just cool it.”

“I’m sorry, I... I didn’t realize... I... can’t we get out of here?”

“Damn jackass,” Rog said, smoldering. “What’s the matter, you sick?”

“Not bad. I just want a calmer. I been—”

“Don’t say it. Come on downstairs.”

They walked to the fringe of the crowd and then worked their way toward the steps.

“Frank Cippio. Frank Cippio,” the mike blasted.

“Bastard,” Andy muttered.

They walked down the long, cool, dim flight of steps, the sound retreating behind them. It was suddenly quiet, and he could think again, and when they stepped into the street he sucked in a deep draught of air.

“You want some coffee?”

“Okay,” Andy said.

“You got loot?”

“Ten.”

“I’ll buy the coffee. Why haven’t you been around, stranger?”

“I’m kicking it.”

“Hah!” Rog snorted.

“I am.”

“Sure. Like I’m kicking it. What do you want to know if I’m holding for?”

“I need a calmer. I’ve been going it cold turkey, and it’s murder.”

“Sure.” Rog smiled. “Why the sudden reform?”

“I got an audition coming up.”

“No bull? Who with?”

“Laddy Fredericks.”

“Yeah? Good deal. And he don’t go for junkies, huh?”

“That ain’t it. I can’t... well, I got to brush up, you know?”

“Sure, kid, I know. So you’re going it cold turkey, and now you just want a little pick-me-up, huh? Sure, I understand. You sure you want that coffee?”

“I... if you want some.”

“Yeah, I can use a cup.”

They crossed the street together. Andy felt a lot better now, even though Rog had not said he was holding. But even if he wasn’t holding, Rog would know where to get some, and that’s what counted. He felt a strange pang of guilt when he’d mentioned the Laddy Fredericks audition, but the guilt had passed quickly. This was not really going back to it. This was just something to steady his nerves, just something to tide him over the next few days. His body was not screaming for the stuff. Back in Bud’s apartment, with the records going full blast, he had felt this sudden desire for a fix, but the desire was not as strong now, not as strong at all. He only wanted a pick-me-up now, just a little of the stuff to tide him over, that was all.

They went into the cafeteria, and Rog went for the coffee, and when he returned to the table, he said, “What’s Helen doing with herself these days?”

“She kicked it,” Andy said simply.

“You never kick it, dad,” Rog replied. “You only think you do. When the chips are down, you rush right back into its ever-loving arms.”

“That’s not true,” Andy said. “Helen kicked it.”

“Sure. Until she needs it again.”

“She won’t need it again.”

Rog raised one eyebrow. “No?”

“No,” Andy said firmly.

“Sure,” Rog said. “How about you, son? How long you been off?”

“About a week.”

“Nice progress. It was rough, huh?”

“Very.”

“So then why do you want more?”

“Just a little,” Andy said. “You know.”

“Sure, I know,” Rog said.

“I need a spike, too. I got rid of mine. When I decided to kick it.”

“You need a spike, too, huh?” Rog said, whispering now.

“Yes.”

“I haven’t said I was holding yet.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t play games with me, Rog.”

“Who’s playing games? It’s just I don’t know if I should corrupt an upstanding citizen. Not after he’s made so much progress.”

“You bastard, you’re the one who first started me on—”

“Nobody starts unless they want to start!” Rog said, raising his voice. “Just remember that, Junior.”

“Okay, I’m remembering.”

“Okay.”

“Are you holding?”

“Maybe.”

Andy sipped at his coffee. He was possessed of a sudden desire to reach across the table and strangle Rog. He knew that Rog might have some junk on him, though, and so he restrained the impulse. Rog had the right idea, all right. Rog had a habit like John Silver, but Rog fed that habit by peddling the stuff, and the peddling gave him enough jive with plenty left over for the little luxuries of life. A smart cookie, Rog. A bastard, Rog.

“So how about it?” he asked.

“How about what?”

“Come on, Rog.”

“You’re on H, huh? I keep forgetting.”

“You know what I’m on,” Andy said tightly.

“Sure, but that was before. I mean, you’re not on any more, are you? You’ve kicked it, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Sure. So what was it you wanted?”

“What’ll I get for ten?”

“A sixteenth,” Rog said softly.

“What!” Andy said, outraged. “Are you kidding?”

“This is good stuff. I’ve been getting from the Coast. Very good stuff. By China way. Cuts this Italian and Lebanese stuff all to hell. You know something, Andy? In Frisco they’re pushing it eighty-five per cent pure. And we’ve been getting it watered to fifteen per cent. You buying or not?”

“Come down to eight bucks.”

“Can’t do it. What do you say?” Andy hesitated, wetting his lips. Then, reluctantly, he nodded. “Come on back to the piss-wah,” Rog said.

He stood and began walking toward the back of the cafeteria and then down the flight of steps to the men’s room. Andy followed close behind him.

“You been blowing?”

“A little.”

“Laddy Fredericks, huh? Good deal,” Rog said. He shoved open the door to the men’s room. Two men were at the urinals, and he waited for them to clear the room. When they were gone, he whispered, “Where’s the ten?”

Andy reached into his pocket and handed him the wad of bills. Rog counted them slowly. He reached into his jacket pocket then and palmed something into Andy’s hand. “There’s your stuff. A sixteenth. Cheap at half the price.” He reached into his inside pocket. “Here’s the spike. I want it back, pal.” He handed Andy the syringe.

“I’ll return it.”

“You’d damn well better.”

“Sure.”

“It’s a real pleasure dealing with you,” Rog said, smiling. “It ain’t often I sell to somebody who ain’t an addict.”

Andy stared at him for a moment. “I’ll see you,” he said, and then he walked out of the lavatory.

He hated Rog. He hated Rog because it had been he who first introduced Andy to the drug, and he hated him because they no longer shared the fraternal spirit of the addicted. Sure, Rog still had a habit, but Rog was now the Man, and so Rog was a person to be respected and feared and loved and hated. Rog was the man with the key, the Man, and without that key, there was nothing. And so Rog was loved, but he was also despised because he knew the ways of the addict, and sometimes the addict crawled to Rog, and Rog enjoyed the crawling immensely.

Andy walked to the silverware trays, took a tablespoon from one of them, glanced around him briefly, and then put the spoon into his jacket pocket.

He had copped.

He had the junk in his pocket, and all he had to do now was shoot up, and then he’d be all right, then everything would be much easier. And the Fredericks gig, well, hell, this wasn’t going to hurt that any, was it? Even if Rog was a bastard, he’d come through, he’d even lent a spike, hell what other pusher would do that? Still, he was a bastard, pulling a tease like that, taking all his sweet—

“Andy?”

He heard Rog’s voice behind him, and he whirled. Did he want the stuff back? Had he changed his mind about the syringe?

“What is it?”

“You got any change?”

“What?”

“Pin money. Here.” He crushed two folded bills into Andy’s palm. “I’ll see you when you return the outfit,” he said, and then he walked out of the cafeteria. Andy stared at the money in his palm. Two dollars. Well, now how the hell do you like that? Rog parting with money! Will wonders never cease? I’ll be goddamned!

He pocketed the money and stepped onto the sidewalk. He walked to the curb, wondering where he could go, and then he had a sudden idea.

He raised his arm. “Taxi!” he called.

11

For a moment Bud didn’t know quite what to do.

He stood looking into the tub, then it registered on his mind that Andy had left the apartment, and he felt a curious mixture of relief and responsibility. The relief was short-lived. It fled almost instantly under an enormous guilt feeling, and he rushed back into the living room and picked up the phone, dialing Carol’s number quickly. He waited impatiently, drumming his fingers on the arm of the butterfly chair. The phone rang five times and then someone said, “Hello?”

“Carol? This—”

“No, this is Louise. Who’s calling, please?”

“Hello, Louise. How are you? This is Bud. May I speak to Carol, please?”

“She’s already left for work,” Louise said.

He glanced at his watch quickly. So late already. Goddammit, why hadn’t he thought of that?

“Louise, do you have the number at her office? This is pretty important.”

“Is it about Andy?” Louise asked.

“Yes,” Bud said.

“Why can’t you leave her alone? Haven’t you caused my family enough grief with that bum?” Louise asked. “My mother—”

“Look, Louise—”

“Hold on, I’ll get the number,” Louise said coldly. She was gone for several moments. When she came back on the line, she said, “Columbus 5-1098. I don’t see why—”

“Thanks, Louise,” he said, and he hung up quickly. Columbus 5-10... He lifted the phone and dialed rapidly, waiting for the rings on the other end.

“Benson and Parke, good morning,” a sweetly innocent voice said.

“May I speak to Miss Ciardi, please?” he asked.

“What extension is that, sir?”

“I don’t know.”

“One moment, plee-yaz.”

He waited again, his feet jiggling, his fingers dancing nervously.

“That’s extension fifty-one, sir,” the voice came back. “Will you make a note of it for future—”

“Yes, would you ring it, please?”

“One moment, plee-yaz.” He heard the hum of the switchboard on the other end of the line, and then another phone was lifted.

“Bookkeeping,” a voice said.

“Miss Ciardi, please.”

“Second.” He listened and he could almost feel a hand coming down over the mouthpiece on the other end. And then, filtered through the fingers of that hand, the muted voice shouting, “Hey, is Carol around? Hey, Carol, telephone.” The hand was removed from the mouthpiece, and the voice came through clearly again. “She’s on her way. Hold on, will you?”

He waited, and when her voice came onto the line, he almost leaped at it.

“Carol?”

“Yes, who—”

“Carol, he’s gone. I went down for some eggs and stuff, and when I got back—”

“Is anything missing?” she asked quickly.

“What do you mean, missing?”

“Your watch, your typewriter, your toaster, anything he might hock. Take a look, Bud, quickly.”

His watch was on his wrist. He’d looked at it a few moments before, so he knew Andy had not taken that. The typewriter — that was on the top shelf of the closet, but Andy could hardly know it was there. Still, he may have searched the apartment and possibly — goddammit, he was awfully fond of that typewriter — why... He put down the phone and went to the closet, opening the door.

He reached in automatically for the suitcase that rested on the floor, and when his hand grasped empty air, he stepped back and looked curiously at the floor of the closet. He checked again, looking where it should have been, and then looking to the left and right, and then running his hands over the dusty closet floor.

The suitcase was gone.

It had cost him sixty bucks less than three months ago, the time he’d gone up to see... well, it was gone now. How much would a hock shop give for a sixty-dollar bag? He went back to the phone.

“My suitcase is gone.”

“All right,” she said, “all right, now let me see. Oh, God, he could have gone anyplace. You’re on Seventy-fourth... let me see, let me see. He’ll probably try the Union Floor first. Do you know where that is, Bud?”

“Yes.”

“He’ll probably stop to hock the bag, but he can do that any place. And then he’ll head for the Union — that’s closest to where you are — and he’s bound to meet someone there who’s holding. How much of a head start does he have?”

“About a half hour.”

“Oh, then you’d better leave right away, Bud. Take a cab, will you? And when you find him, stop him — if it’s not too late. Stop him even if you have to hit him.”

“Hit...?”

“Go, Bud, please. I’ll be waiting to hear from you. Call me, won’t you? Either... either way.”

“All right,” he said. “Good-by.”

He hung up, checked his wallet to see if he had enough money for a cab, and then locked the apartment and left. He ran all the way up to Columbus Avenue and finally hailed a cab on Seventy-second Street. “Fiftieth and Sixth,” he told the cabbie, and then he sat back and tried to relax, telling himself there was nothing he could do until he found Andy. And even then, even after he found him, there might be nothing he could do. The streets were not very crowded, and he was grateful for that at least. He looked through the cab windows, watching the late-arriving executives in their gray pin stripes and black Homburgs. What had Andy been wearing? Had he taken the sports jacket with him? He hadn’t even thought to look. Did Andy have a hypodermic? No, no, he didn’t. He’d have to get that, and unauthorized possession of a hypodermic was illegal, so where... one of his friends, maybe, or maybe even his contact — what had he called him — the Man... There was a title for the son-of-a-bitch, all right. The Man, in capital letters... like God. Hell, he could get a hypodermic, no question about it. If he could get the heroin, he could get the hypo to go with it. Jesus, was it as easy as all that? Did you just go up to someone and hand him some money, and there you were? Was that all there was to it? Did he already have the stuff? Was he crouched in an alley someplace, right this minute, now, with the needle poised over his vein, the drug ready to enter his blood stream? Or would he go to an alley, no not an alley, someone’s house, maybe, or someplace where he wouldn’t look furtive or suspicious, oh, Jesus, why the hell was this all like some Grade-B melodrama, what was there about the entire subject of drugs that made it sound like purple passages from a cheap paperback? The illegality of it? In a country like America, where crime was synonymous with adventure and suspense, was that what made drug addiction sound so exotic? What the hell exotic was there about Andy? What the hell was Andy but a little man, like all the other little men who plodded to their offices every morning, the ant complex, oh, Christ, I’m getting the ant complex, but how was he any different, except that he took drugs, and did even that set him apart? If he chewed licorice or betel nut, would anyone give a good goddamn? If he—

“This it?” the cabbie asked.

“What?” He looked through the window, recognizing the drugstore on the corner. “Yes, yes right here’ll be fine,” he said.

He stepped onto the sidewalk, taking out his wallet, thinking Andy can be shooting his arm full of heroin in the time it takes me to pay off a goddamn cab driver. He paid the cabbie, and then he looked up and started down Fiftieth Street, and then he stopped cold in his tracks and did a classic double take, staring across the street.

Andy!

He saw him, and the name registered on his mind, and he opened his mouth to yell, and then he saw what Andy was doing. Andy was getting into a cab. He shook his head for a moment, as if to clear it, and then the name bubbled onto his lips, “Andy!” but the cab door slammed shut on his outburst, and he saw the cab pull away from the curb and head for Seventh Avenue. His own cab pulled away at the same instant, and he made an abortive stab at the door handle, swore, and then immediately, involuntarily, shouted, “Taxi!”

This is a goddamn Marx Brothers movie, he thought. Twelve midgets are going to climb out of the next cab that stops. Twelve midgets, each carrying hypodermic syringes. Oh, Jesus, this can’t be real.

“Taxi!” he yelled again, and a cab pulled up in front of him, and he climbed in hastily. “Follow that cab,” he said, and he almost laughed aloud at the absurdly urgent tone of his voice.

This is ridiculous, he told himself, but this is real. Either I’m crazy, or this is real. I am in reality sitting in a cab which is following another cab, and there is a drug addict in that other cab, and that addict’s name is Andy Silvera, and my name is Bud Donato, and this is all real. It’s all crazy, too, as crazy as a son-of-a-bitch, but it’s real, I’m going nuts, I must be going nuts.

He leaned forward, looking through the windshield, watching the retreating rear of Andy’s cab.

“Can’t you hurry?” he said.

“Relax,” the cabbie answered. The cabbie was used to these jerks who piled into his load like a house on fire.

“For God’s sake, don’t lose him,” Bud said.

“You going to pay the fine if I—”

“Hurry,” Bud said. “Please hurry!”

“Always rushing around, everybody always in a goddamn rush,” the cabbie said, but he sighed and pressed his foot tighter against the accelerator. There seemed to be more traffic in the streets now. Where the hell did all the traffic come from all of a sudden? All we need now is a truck coming across our path, Bud thought, just like in the movies, and we’ll squeeze past, or maybe carom up onto the sidewalk and crash through a plate-glass window and then come out with the steering wheel disconnected and in our hands, didn’t Abbott and Costello pull that routine once?

He could see Andy’s cab up ahead, and then the cab suddenly stopped, and he thought, Good, a red light, until he saw the door open and Andy stepping out. He looked past the cab and past Andy, trying to ascertain his whereabouts, and then he suddenly realized where they were. Central Park. Andy was heading for the park. He was—

“Anyplace here,” Bud said. “Pull over, can’t you?”

“With this traffic? Jesus, Mac—”

“Just let me out then. Here.” He handed the cabbie a dollar bill and shoved open the door.

“Thanks, Ma—” the cabbie said, surprised, and Bud slammed the door shut on his voice and then backed up against the metal side of the cab when another car shot past him. He gingerly danced his way to the sidewalk and then rushed to the corner, crossing Central Park South. He could see Andy up ahead now, walking briskly, just entering the park.

“Andy! Hold it!” he yelled, running across the street, trying to watch the oncoming traffic and Andy at the same time. This is insane, he told himself. This is some kind of goddamn nightmare, and I’ll wake up any minute — are my pants on? — I’ll wake up laughing to beat all hell.

“Andy!” he yelled again, and this time Andy heard him, and this time Andy stopped and turned, recognizing Bud. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then he whirled and began running, and then he stopped and looked back at Bud once more, and then he broke into a fast trot, running deeper into the park.

A horn tooted, and Bud pulled in his backside, almost slamming into the fender of a parked car. An old man on the sidewalk selling salted pretzels started laughing insanely, and Bud glared at him heatedly and then ran to the park entrance. He could still see Andy up ahead. Andy had stopped again, several feet away from a water fountain. He was staring across the distance that separated him and Bud, staring indecisively. And then, as if he had made up his mind for the last time, he whirled and ran swiftly, turning the bend in the path, turning. Oh, Christ, I’ll lose him, I’ll lose him around that bend.

Bud ran past the water fountain and then headed for the bend in the path. He rounded the bend quickly, out of breath now, his throat burning. Andy was nowhere in sight.

“Andy!” he shouted. “Andy, it’s me, Bud!”

A governess walked by pushing a baby carriage. She stared at Bud curiously and then hurried past with her charge.

“Andy!” he screamed, his throat hoarse.

Where, where? he thought. Where could he be? Where do you go to hide? Anywhere on either side of the path, yes, yes. Which side? Eeny, meeny, miney, max. Which side of the path? He must have got the drug and a syringe. And a spoon, yes, I have measured out my life with tablespoons. Where, which? He considered for a moment and then rushed off the left side of the path and then onto the steeply sloping grass, plowing his way into the trees.

“Andy!” he yelled again, craning his neck, twisting this way and that, climbing, searching, watching. He spotted the high rocks, and he immediately thought, Behind the rocks, and he climbed faster, beginning to sweat freely now, the sweat running down his chest, his undershirt sopping it up. He reached the big gray boulders and then ran around to the other side of them.

Andy was sitting on one of the rocks.

His head was bent and his arms dangled down between his knees, one hand tight around a syringe, and Bud thought, I’m too late, he’s taken it.

“Andy,” he said softly.

Andy looked up suddenly, as if someone had jabbed him in the ribs. A snarl suddenly appeared on his mouth. “Relax,” he said harshly. “I didn’t shoot up.”

“You—”

“I didn’t shoot up, bloodhound! Goddamnit, I didn’t shoot up.” He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, and the snarl left his mouth, a real animal snarl that suddenly vanished to be replaced by the immature lips again.

“I was going to,” he said softly. He did not seem to be talking to Bud. His hands were clenched together, the syringe between them, and his head was bent, as if he were praying. The words were almost whispered. “I could taste it. I could taste the rotten stuff right in my mouth. But I didn’t shoot up. I didn’t.”

Bud kept staring at him saying nothing.

“Don’t you believe me?” Andy shouted. “Goddamnit, don’t you believe me? Doesn’t anybody ever believe me? Look!” His voice rose to a strident scream. “Look, you skeptical son-of-a-bitch! Look!” He lifted the syringe to Bud’s face. “Here’s the goddamn syringe, now do you believe me? It’s empty, can you see that, can you see it, now do you believe me?”

“Andy...”

“Shut up!” He turned his head quickly, but not before Bud could see the tears in his eyes. “I copped on the Union Floor,” he said softly, his rage spent. “The works, Bud. The H, and the spike, and the spoon. You don’t need a spoon, you know. You can use a bottle cap, too. You take the cork out of it, and you cook the jive in that — if you haven’t got a spoon. But a spoon is cleaner, so I grabbed one in the cafeteria, have it right here in my pocket, and I’ve got the stuff, too, all ready to knock the top of my skull off, and the spike... you see the syringe right here... Jesus, Jesus...”

He was suddenly sobbing, deep sobs that started somewhere down near the pit of his stomach and shuddered up into his throat.

“I suddenly realized what a big stupid jackass I was being. I all at once thought of the Laddy Fredericks gig, and I told myself, ‘Go ahead, you dumb jerk, go ahead shoot up. Shoot up, and you shoot this audition straight to hell!’ I almost threw the spike down into the dirt there. I almost threw it down like it was a snake. I would have stepped on the goddamn thing, but I borrowed the works from a guy on the Floor, and I’ll have to return it. Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, when am I gonna learn, when the holy hell am I going to learn? I hocked your bag, Bud, forgive me for that, forgive me, please.”

“That’s all right,” Bud said softly.

“I got ten bucks for it, and I blew the ten on this junk here in my pocket. But I’ll sell it, Buddy, I’ll sell it and redeem your bag. When I return the works, I’ll sell it to the guy loaned it to me. Not today. Maybe tomorrow or the next day. I don’t want to chance being left alone again, you understand? I want to make sure. Then I’ll return the works, and I’ll sell the H, and I’ll redeem your bag, believe me.”

“Maybe you’d better give me the stuff,” Bud said.

“No, no, I’ve got to sell it.” He had stopped sobbing. He reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief and then he blew his nose noisily. “Don’t worry, Bud. If I didn’t take it this time, then I’ve seen the light. I swear to Christ, I could taste it. You went down for the eggs, and I put on some Kenton, and just listening to him I began to think of other times and, man, I could taste it, I could just taste the stuff. But I didn’t shoot up, Bud. I’ve still got it, right here in my pocket. And here’s the syringe, right in my hand, but empty, empty. I’ve had it, man. I’ve seen the light, daddy.” He sighed and shook his head.

“You sure you don’t want to return the syringe now?”

“No, he’ll live without it. He wouldn’t’ve laid it on me if it was his only outfit, anyway. He’ll wait.”

“Shall we go back to the apartment, then?”

Andy nodded. He put the syringe into his pocket and then said, “All right, let’s go.”

She was waiting in front of the building when the cab pulled up. Andy looked through the window and said, “The welcoming committee.” They got out of the cab, and he went directly to Carol and said, “Relax, I didn’t shoot up.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Carol said. “Besides, I can see you didn’t.”

“Is that my horn?” he asked, seeing the trumpet case on the stoop.

“Yes. I was going to bring it over later, but I thought—”

“Gone, gone,” he said. He walked up the steps quickly, lifted the case to one knee, and opened it. “Man, look at the mother-lover,” he said. “Oh, look at it.”

Bud came up onto the stoop. “Hello, Carol,” he said.

“Hello, Bud.”

“We had quite a chase. But he’s all right.”

“I’m glad. I was going to wait at the office for your call, but I just couldn’t. I begged off a few hours, and I came right here. Thank God he’s all right.”

“Can you use some breakfast?” he asked her.

“I think so.”

“I feel as if I haven’t eaten for ten years,” Bud said. “There’s nothing like a sprint around Central Park for working up an appetite.”

“And there’s Arban’s!” Andy said. “Christ, that old brown cover. Carol, you’re an ever-loving— And what’s this? Oh, gone, gone. All my books. Where’d you get them, Carol? My mother’s place?”

“Yes. I went by last night. I thought—”

“Oh, this is great, great. Man, I can hardly wait to start blowing. Make way for the Boston Symphony!” He laughed aloud, and then he snapped the case shut and threw one arm around Carol’s shoulders. “Honey, you’re a doll. Did I ever tell you that? And I passed the fix by, honey, how’s that for will power? I’ve got the jive right here in my pocket, but I didn’t touch it. Now, sweetheart, is that will power, or is it? Come on, answer me? Is it, or is it?”

Carol smiled weakly. “It is,” she said. Her brow wrinkled. “You still have the stuff?”

“Sure. Got to sell it so I can redeem Bud’s bag.”

“Give it to me,” Carol said. “I’ll redeem Bud’s bag.”

“Oh, no,” Andy said. “No, no, sweetheart. I hocked it, I redeem it. Besides, this is a challenge. Right here in my pocket, you dig me? Right here where I can grab it any time I want it — but I’m not even sniffing at it. Honeydoll, that’s will power. Baby, I’ve got it licked, I tell you.”

“I’d feel happier if—”

“Now, come down, Carol, come down. You’re beginning to sound like Mama Silvera. No, doll, I’m going to sell it. Now, let’s go upstairs and get some food. I could eat an elephant.”

He seemed quite happy. He whistled as they went up the steps, and when they came into the apartment, he said, “Somebody forgot to turn off the phonograph.” He walked to the record player and lifted the arm. “Sorry, Stan,” he said to the machine, and then he put the trumpet case down on the sofa and opened it, pulling out the books. He reached into his pocket for his mouthpiece, took the horn from the velvet bed, and put the mouthpiece on it. He put the horn to his lips, puffing them out against the mouthpiece.

“Man, does this feel strange,” he said.

“I’ll get the eggs going,” Bud said.

“I can do it,” Carol said.

“You can help if you want to.”

“I wonder if I should start from scratch,” Andy said. “Here, man, dig this garbage. ‘Studies on Syncopation.’ Tu, tu, tu, tu, tu.” He turned some pages and then stopped. “Oh, man, look at this. Tu, tutututu, tu, tutututu, tu... I wonder if I can blow it.” He turned more pages. “Ah, ‘Studies on the Slur,’ hey, dig this, the date is here, the date I first had the lesson, July twelfth, now how’s that for something? Look here, in pencil. ‘Use diaphram.’ Sounds like advice to newlyweds, doesn’t it?” He laughed aloud, and said, “Forgive me, Carol,” and then he laughed again. “All half notes. Say, I can play this standing on my head.” He began singing the notes. “Eff-ay, gee-bee, ay-cee, bee-dee, cee-eee, dee-eff, eee-gee, efffffff. Oh, simple, man, simple. Where’s all the hard stuff? This is Andy Silvera, man.”

“Come on,” Carol said. “Let’s get those eggs.” They went into the kitchen together, and they could hear Andy leafing through pages in the living room.

“We had a close call,” Bud whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Carol said. “I honestly didn’t think he needed watching. I’ll stay today.”

“No, it’s all right. You get back to work. I can keep an eye on him. I’ll be in all day, anyway. But I’ve got a test tomorrow. Maybe you’d better come stay with him, then.”

“All right, that’ll be best. I appreciate this, Bud.”

“Ah, now, here’s the stuff,” Andy called. “‘Triple Tonguing.’ Ah, that’s for me. That’s what a shmaltz outfit like Fredericks goes in for. Tu tu ku, tu tu ku, tu tu ku — ah, that’s the stuff, man. Man, I can’t wait to start blowing.”

“Go ahead,” Bud said. “Everybody’s awake by now, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Andy said. “Yessir. Ah, here they are, all the old ones I used to practice. ‘Robin Adair,’ and ‘Loving, I Think of Thee,’ and, oh, here’s a sweet one, ‘Bluebells of Scotland,’ dahhh, dee-dee, ahhh, dah, ee-ah, dah-dah-dee-dah, dahh... oh, man, do I remember these.”

“Let’s hear one of them,” Bud called from the kitchen.

“Here comes the tricky stuff,” Andy answered. “‘Ernani’ and ‘Traviata’ and ‘Il Crociato,’ ah, and here’s the one, man, here it is, right here at the end of the book, ‘Fantaisie and Variations on the Carnival of Venice.’ Man, you know I could play this one from top to bottom at one time? And, man, does this get crazy! Just take a look at this. He’s got thirty-second notes here, and flipping up and down a full octave. You can bust your lip with this one, man! Man, I can’t wait to tie into it.”

“Well, the eggs are almost ready,” Bud said. “It’ll have to wait.”

“Oh, sure, lots of time. This is real crazy, you know that? Here’s ‘Caprice and Variations,’ that’s another one I liked. This Arban gets the wildest arrangements, you know? He can really twist these tunes. Here comes Silvera, man, make way!” He started laughing again, and then he came into the kitchen with his horn hooked over his arm. He put one hand on his hip, and he tilted his nose ceilingward, and he said, “Dig this pose. ‘Andy Silvera, bandleader of distinction, prefers BVDs because they fit so snug and allow his diaphragm to breathe easily.’” He laughed hilariously, and Bud laughed with him, amazed at the transformation that had come over Andy with the acquisition of his horn.

“Oh, man, I tell you I’m going to get with it again. I’m going to blow down the goddamn walls, believe me. Man, it’s going to be like the old days again. Carol, I could kiss you for bringing this sweet little baby to me.” He picked up the horn suddenly and kissed the bell. “Honey, why’d you want to stay away so long, huh? Honey, now don’t you ever do that again, hear?” He scolded the horn with an extended forefinger, and then he began laughing again. “Right after breakfast I’m going to knock the windows out of this joint, you wait and see. The cops’ll think it’s a riot. Man, the cats’ll come stampedin’ down the avenue when I cut loose with this mother-loving ax of mine.”

“Meanwhile,” Bud said, “here’re the eggs.”

They brought the eggs and coffee to the table, and they sat down to eat, just as if it were old times, just as if nothing had happened to any of them during the past two years. They were three friends sitting down to a late breakfast, and the warmth of the situation touched Bud immensely. Andy sat with the horn in his lap, and he talked of what he was going to do with that horn, and listening to him, there was no doubt in Bud’s mind. By Christ, he would do it this time. This time he’d break the habit, and he’d really blow that horn, and people would sit up and take notice when they heard the name Andy Silvera, and that’s the way it ought to have been always. They enjoyed their breakfast, and when Carol got up to phone her office, Bud was a little sorry it was over. She made her call, and then kissed them both on their cheeks, and when she was gone he and Andy turned to the task of clearing up the dishes.

Andy would not calm down. He talked enthusiastically, the words bubbling up out of his mouth. He talked of what he was going to do with that horn of his, and Bud nodded and listened, and after a while he began to lose interest. And as abruptly as he had lost interest, Andy changed the subject, changed it so subtly that Bud didn’t realize for a moment what was going on. And when he did realize, he was a little disappointed because Andy was going back again, back into the past, back on the one-tracked mind of his, almost as if he still lived in the past, almost as if the present were an unreal thing.

“Man,” he said, “I really could blow in those days, now admit it, couldn’t I? I could blow the end, the very end, that was me. And you guys did a lot for me, whether you realize it or not. Oh, you probably didn’t even know what the hell you were doing, I mean you did but the others didn’t consciously set out to help me, I know that now. Like I don’t think the guys even knew what I was doing, or at least what I thought I was doing. For me, it was a kind of an invasion, you know? My getting into the clique, I mean. For example, when I asked you to come along and help me pick out a new sports jacket, why, man, I thought I was putting something over on you. For all I know, you may have had nothing else to do that afternoon. Or Frank helping me buy some slotted-collar shirts. Hell, that son-of-a-bitch just loved to shop, but did I know that? No, I thought I was being tricky. It doesn’t really make any difference because I did get the clothes, one way or another, and that’s what counts, I mean you guys really taught me how to dress.

“And the dancing, well, without the boys I’d have been lost. And without knowing how to dance, I wouldn’t have stood a chance with Carol. For that matter, even my meeting Carol came about through the boys. Oh, not directly, I suppose. I mean, what the hell, it wasn’t the boys’ fault that the electricity got turned off in Club Stardust and we had to get another rehearsal hall. Mike’s uncle always struck me as a jerk, anyway, but imagine a club without enough money to pay their electric bill. Jesus! But what I mean, you know, it was Tony’s suggestion that we try some of the teen-age cellar clubs off Eastern Parkway, and if we hadn’t stumbled into Club Beguine, and if Carol hadn’t been there, and if I hadn’t known how to dance.”

12

second chorus i

MARCH, 1944

Their expedition that night, from a business viewpoint, was a dismal failure.

They worked their way from club to club, scouting either side of Carroll Street. They found only two clubs which possessed pianos, and they drew blanks at both. The president of the first club said he didn’t like the idea of strangers rehearsing there in the absence of members. The second president informed them that the landlord of the house would not like a lot of noise during the daytime. As a matter of fact, the members even had to be careful about the volume of the record player at night. Tony Banner had not appreciated the president’s use of the word “noise.” He did not consider his band a noisemaking outfit. But he resigned himself to the fact that his idea had been a dud, and the boys settled down to enjoying an evening of dancing and prowling.

They would not have remained at Club Beguine — a cellar club which obviously took its name from the numerous plays the Artie Shaw record received that night — if Bud had not recognized a girl he knew there. The club in itself was nothing fancy to look at. You entered through a doorway at the end of the driveway, and you stepped down into a finished, furnished basement room. The finishing was confined to blue-whitewashed walls and a canopy affair covering the ceiling pipes, plus paneling which covered the iron lolly columns holding up the first floor of the private house. The girl members of the club had sewn curtains for the tiny basement windows as an addition to the furnishing, which consisted of several wooden lawn chairs, a wooden lawn lounge, and a table upon which rested the record player. A door was at the far end of the club, and through the doorway a circular, homemade bar was visible, together with a second door to the right of which a sign hung. The sign read: Here It Is.

The rule of the club, as the boys knew from their previous excursions that evening, was two free dances. After that, if you decided to stay, a club member casually sauntered over and said, “Hello, fellows, will you be with us a while?” If you were going to be with them a while, you paid the club member twenty-five cents per head. If you were not going to be with them a while, the club member made sure you knew where the door was, and he smilingly told you to “drop in again sometime.”

Considering its furnishing and finishing inducements, the boys would have abandoned Club Beguine instantly. Some of the other clubs they’d visited had boasted stuffed sofas and easy chairs, indirect lighting, even a juke box (into which you didn’t have to dump coins) at one place. The only lure Club Beguine offered was Helen Cantor, and Bud spotted her the moment they stepped into the small room.

“I know that one,” Bud said, and he headed for her instantly. Tony and Andy walked across the room and toward the toilet door. (“Here it is,” Tony said, reading the sign. “Here it goes,” Andy answered.) Reen went to the record player and began thumbing through the stack of records, much to the annoyance of a blond, pimply-faced club member who stood near by. Bud didn’t pay any attention to the goings or comings of his friends. Bud walked swiftly toward Helen Cantor, his most charming smile on his face.

He felt somehow strange as he crossed the room. Being seventeen, and never having read the Rubaiyat, he nonetheless felt as if he were keeping a prearranged assignation. He knew this was sheer nonsense, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something terribly important was about to happen to him, and that this important thing had been ready to happen for a long time, awaiting only the principal players and the setting.

He knew Helen from school, and he had danced with her at a good many of the school dances, and he had liked dancing with her, and he had liked talking to her, and he wondered now why he had never asked her out, and he knew as he walked toward her that he would ask her out, and he didn’t question the knowledge which had come with sudden adolescent clarity. She had not seen him yet, and he felt that this too was all a part of the plan, her not seeing him, and he felt that he already knew the exact moment when she would look up and see him, and he felt he already knew the expression that would be on her face when she did that. He studied her as he moved closer, focusing the picture that was already in his mind, wondering why the picture was there, superimposing the real picture of Helen over the vague image that nudged his consciousness: her long black hair, straight, turned into a pageboy at the nape of her neck; her green eyes, slanted slightly, faintly Oriental; her lips bright with lipstick, the contour spoiled a bit by the infinitesimal protrusion of her upper front teeth; the slender suppleness of her body — and his eyes candidly roamed over the trim suit she wore, lingering on the nylon-sleek exposure of knee where her legs were crossed. He remembered the way she danced, the pressure of her body against his, the narrowness of her waist, the way his arm completely circled that waist, the insistent nudging of her small, well-shaped breasts against his chest. He remembered these things, and they formed a strange part of his awareness.

And then she looked up.

He knew what would be on her face. He saw her lips round into a small O of surprise, and then lengthen into a smile. She seemed about to speak, but he was still too far from her, and so she stood perched on the ledge of articulation, her eyes holding his, drawing him to her.

She extended her hand when he came to her, as he knew she would, and he took it and squeezed it, sensing that neither of them felt this to be a handshake, knowing that she had held out her hand to him across a gulf, and that he had taken it and was now being led onto a narrow span high above treacherously swirling waters. He could not look down, and he could not look back. Helen Cantor was at the other end of that bridge, waiting.

“Hi,” he said, amazed by the everyday sound of his voice. “What are you doing here?”

“I was waiting for you,” Helen answered glibly, and they both started to smile, but suddenly the smiles died, as if she had said exactly what she was supposed to say, and as if they had both known she was going to say this, both somehow anticipating it and dreading it, and now that it was spoken, there was no turning back. The bridge had truly been crossed.

“You look pretty,” he said. His eyes did not move from her face. He had always prided himself upon the smooth flow of his line, and he knew his opening words were too sudden and too abrupt and too baldly stated to have any effect, but they seemed the right words to say now, the true words. He was surrounded with a clear, fragile, shimmering ball of sudden truth. They were alone within this crystal, and their words were unheard by anyone, and their eyes were unseen. They still held hands, as if the contact preserved the privacy and intimacy of their secret pristine glade.

“Thank you,” Helen said. The pressure of her fingers tightened slightly.

“Do you belong to this club?” he asked.

“No. I just came down. With a friend.”

“A girlfriend?”

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s good.”

“Yes.”

“You look pretty.”

“I feel pretty. You make me feel pretty. You’re staring at me.”

“I know I am.”

A tall boy in a brown suit sauntered over to them. “Welcome to Club Beguine,” he said. He looked at them curiously. Helen stood up and smoothed her skirt, and then she went into Bud’s arms, and he knew they were about to observe the convention of dancing, but he felt she would have come into his arms even if they were standing in Macy’s window.

He was suddenly very happy. The room behind Helen was a dull blur. Only Helen stood out in almost painful detail, blinding almost. Helen filled his eyes and his mind, and he pulled her close to him. She leaned her body against his, and the reality of her coincided with the memory, and he smiled stupidly, his cheek against hers, and she felt his facial muscles move in the smile, and she pressed closer to him. They did not talk while they danced. When the record ended and a lindy screeched into the room, they went back to her chair, and he did not release her hand. The boy in the brown suit came around at the end of the lindy, subtly hinting that Bud should show up or shove off, and he happily paid his quarter. From the corner of his eye he saw Tony and Andy emerge from the bathroom and enter the room with the record player. Tony moved easily about the room, a dark wraith with a wide enameled grin, and Andy clung to him like an animated shadow. He watched them, holding Helen’s hand all the while, waiting for Tony to break the ice. Reen was immersed in the record collection, not interested in anything going on around him.

Tony stopped near two girls and began talking, introducing himself and Andy. Andy smiled and nodded acknowledgment, and Bud felt a sudden sympathy for the kid. He had so much to learn, so much to realize. One of the girls was an attractive blonde who smiled prettily and began talking to Andy enthusiastically. Bud tried to place her, but he couldn’t, and he watched her for a moment, realizing that her attractiveness was a clever trap that lured one into a full appreciation of her startling beauty. He examined her dispassionately, the way he would a lovely bit of jewelry in a store window, and then he turned his full attention to Helen.

“Dance again?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

They went onto the floor again. She was a good dancer, light on her feet, responsive to every subtle pressure of his hand and body. He held her close, and she pressed her cheek against his, and her cheek was very smooth, and he could smell the faint scent of perfume in her hair, a lilac scent, a very innocent scent.

He was consciously aware of their youth in that moment, the slender body in his arms, the music floating from the phonograph, the scent in Helen’s hair, the smoothness of her cheek, the ease with which they glided over the Boor. There was something powerful in their youth, and he wanted it to be springtime and not winter outside, and he wanted Helen Cantor to be the girl he had longed for, hoping she was the girl, wishing it were so, ready to accept her as such, wondering if the vague picture he carried in his mind would ever assume real flesh-and-blood shape, thinking of their youth at the same time, feeling the surge of strength that coursed through their bodies, feeling life beating there, pulsing there wildly.

He was only vaguely aware of the other dancers, vaguely surprised to see Andy on the Boor with the vibrant blonde, moving quite smoothly for a beginner. The strength and power of his youth was overwhelmingly heady. He wanted to fly up there in the sky with Helen, wanted to crash the sky with wings of youth, feeling he could crash the sky. And, absurdly, he wished he could hear Andy playing his trumpet now, right this minute, wished the clean gold-brass would carry him and Helen up there where he wanted to be, bursting into the blackness of the sky with wings of youth. He wanted to say, “Helen, let’s crash the sky,” but instead he said, “Helen, let’s take a walk,” and he was not surprised when she answered, “All right.”

He went to get Helen’s coat from the cloakroom near the makeshift bar, noticing that only soft drinks were being served by a club member. When he started back toward Helen, Reen winked at him obscenely. He did not return the wink. He went for his own coat where he had draped it over the back of Helen’s chair, still feeling this heady drunkenness inside him.

The stars outside were crisp and austere. The night was very cold, and she took his arm firmly and moved closer to him, and he felt that he would burst because this sudden movement was something very familiar and very intimate, and he could not banish the persistent feeling that he and Helen had walked into the cold like this before, that she had looped her hand through his arm and then moved close to him, and that the movement had somehow built a solid front against the onslaught of winter, against the cold, against the forbidding stars — against the world.

“It’s cold,” she said, her breath pluming out ahead of her, her voice small and almost echoing in the hollow bowl of the sky.

“Yes.”

“Do you think we ought to go back?”

“No.”

They walked silently beneath the bare branches of the trees, automatically falling into step. Helen’s hand clutched his biceps tightly, and her head moved to his shoulder, and they walked without speaking, and neither of them questioned the thing they knew was happening. They were seventeen, and anything that happened was right, and anything that happened was unquestioned. There was still enough of the child in them to suspend a disbelief in fairy stories, just enough of the adult to hold a healthy respect for the suspension of such disbelief. And so the magic of their meeting, and the magic of their wordless walk, and the steady hush of the world around them, and the hollow clatter of their shoes on the pavement, and the warm intimacy of her hand on the tweed of his sleeve, and the brittle vapor that rushed out of their mouths, all went unquestioned. The adult in each of them urgently whispered that it did not happen this way — but there was youth strong within them, and the song of youth was high and keening and curiously nostalgic of an uncluttered, untroubled existence, and the song of youth crooned its warm logic: It is happening this way.

“Do you want to go back?” he asked.

“No, it’s all right.”

“If you’re cold, we can sit in the car.”

“Do you have a car?”

He would ordinarily have lied about proprietorship. Now he said, “My father’s.”

“All right,” she answered.

He led her to his father’s car, and he held open the door for her, and then he slammed the door shut. He walked around the car hastily, as if the sound of the slam were an intrusion from a real world where magic did not exist, as if he expected her to have vanished when he entered the car. She was still there, and he sighed and then moved closer to her on the seat. He kissed her instantly. She tightened her arms around his neck, and then she pulled away from him, a faint smile on her mouth. He pulled her gently toward him again, and she turned her head and whispered, “My lipstick.”

“Do you want to take it off?” he asked softly.

She stared at him curiously, her green eyes wide, as if she wanted to memorize his face. She touched his cheekbone with one hand, and then turned and reached for her purse. He watched her in the semidarkness of the Chewy, and there was something so sadly feminine in the gesture, something of such completely wonderful girlish surrender in it that he wanted to pull her to him and hold her close, protected in the circle of his arms, unmolested. He watched her solemnly, thinking. She is such a girl, she is only a girl, she could be only a girl, nothing else, only a girl. She dabbed at her lips with a tissue, and he watched the motion of her hand, loving the motion of her hand, feeling closer to her in that moment because the act was an intimate one, loving the girl-business of removing lipstick, feeling more manly because of the feminine way in which she moved, loving everything so delicately female about her, the softness of her hair framing her face, the slope of her eyes, the small tilted breasts beneath the suit jacket, her delicately crossed feet.

She turned then and faced him, waiting, her head raised slightly, her eyes calmly studying his face. He wanted to touch her tenderly. Her knees brushed his, and he was conscious of the touch of nylon and he looked into her eyes, and in that moment he knew that he loved her.

He kissed her gently, and the tenderness of the kiss reached her, and she pulled back her face slowly, wonderingly, looking up at him, her eyes puzzled. He kissed her again, brushing his lips against hers, feeling her full upper lip where her teeth gently nudged it, thinking, I love you, Helen, I love you, Helen, loving her in that moment with a fierce, painfully sweet love.

“Bud,” she said, “Buddy, Buddy, what’s—”

“No,” he said softly, covering her lips with his fingers.

She shook her head, and a frown clouded her brow. She moved closer in the circle of his arms, wanting to be very close to him, and the tenderness enveloped her until she wanted to kiss his hands, kiss his throat, suffocate him with her kisses, possess him with her kisses. She reached for his hand, and she moved it to her breast, wanting the tenderness to stay with them, wanting his hand close to her, the way his mouth was close to her.

He did not misunderstand. He kept his hand lightly on her breast, her own hand covering it, and they sat silently in the automobile, and he wanted nothing more from her in that moment, nothing more than her proximity. If she had offered herself to him, he thought in his mind that he would refuse, now he would refuse, now was not the time for it, now was a time for a different intimacy, the intimacy of discovery, the long-awaited discovery. He felt a soothing peace spread within him, as if he had come down a long dark tunnel and found a warm, quietly pulsating brightness at the end of it. And suddenly he wanted to tell her what he thought, wanted to share it with her, and he said, “You know...” meaning to say more, puzzled when the sentence ended as a stark declaration of fact, and somehow not surprised when she answered simply, “I know.”

Andy kept his right hand in the small of her back, the way Bud had taught him, and he held his left hand extended, cupping hers, not out stiffly, but slightly bent at the elbow, so that he wouldn’t seem to be drilling for oil. He saw Bud helping the girl with the dark hair into her coat, and the girl smiled up at Bud, and her buck teeth showed when she smiled. She was not really a pretty enough girl for Bud, and he was surprised that Bud would bother. Well, maybe her teeth weren’t very bucked, but certainly enough so to push her upper lip out a little. Bud deserved a girl like the one he was dancing with, a really pretty girl.

“...Andrew?” she said.

“What?” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“I said is Andy short for Andrew?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”

“I wondered. I know some boys named Angelo who call themselves Andy.”

“No, my name is Andrew.”

“Andrew is much nicer than Angelo, anyway.”

She had a very soft voice, and she lifted her head when she spoke, so that her eyes met his, so that all her attention seemed to be focused upon what she was saying. Her eyes were very brown, and her skin was very fair, and her hair was a golden blond, not like the brass of a trumpet, a soft gold, maybe the way a trumpet begins to look when the acid of your hand eats at the finish. But not tarnished, not that at all, just paled sort of, a very pale sort of blond with warm alive brown eyes.

“You have a nice name,” he said.

“Carol?” She laughed somewhere deep in her throat. “Do you really like it? I think it’s a silly name.”

“No, it’s not silly at all. I mean, it’s very pleasant. The sound of it. Carol.”

“Carol Ciardi,” she said, pulling a face. “The last name spoils it. You should put a name like Manning or Winston or Danville with it. Carol Manning.” She paused and got in step with him. “What’s your last name?”

“Silvera,” he said.

“That’s as bad as mine.”

“Well, it’s Italian-sounding. But it could be worse, you know. Ox’s last name is Castagliano.”

“Who’s Ox?”

“Oh, one of the boys in the band.”

“Do you play in a band?”

“Yes,” he said. “Didn’t you know? I thought Tony mentioned it.”

“No. At least, I didn’t hear him. What do you play?”

“Trumpet,” he said.

“Oh, not really. Do you really?”

“Yes.” He frowned. “Is that bad?”

“No, it’s good. I love the trumpet. Do you really play it?”

“Sure I do.”

“Are you good?”

“I’m pretty good,” he said modestly.

“I mean, are you as good as, you know, the big trumpet players?”

Andy smiled. “You’ll have to judge for yourself, I guess.”

“Can you play ‘You Made Me Love You’?”

“I guess so,” he said. “If I had the music, I could play it.”

“The way Harry James does?”

“Well, maybe not exactly the way he does. But I could play it.”

“I love that record,” she said.

“I like it, too. I like James a lot.”

“I used to listen for all his new releases,” she said. “And almost every week Martin Block would pick one of his records as the best. Do you remember when he did ‘Music Makers’? And ‘Sleepy Lagoon’?”

“Those are old ones,” Andy said.

“Yes, but I mean I was a fan of his even then. Can you really play ‘You Made Me Love You’?”

“Sure, if I had the music.”

“Is it hard to read music?”

“Well... gee, I don’t know. I suppose in the beginning it is.”

“I wish I were a man. I’d play trumpet if I were a man.”

“Girls play trumpet, too, you know. Woody Herman had a fine trumpet player, a girl named Billie Rogers.”

“I know, I know,” she said. “But the idea of a girl playing trumpet or saxophone or— What’s the thing you push up and down?”

“The trombone?”

“The trombone, the idea is sort of disgusting, isn’t it? I think a girl should play piano, and that’s all.”

“Do you play piano?”

“Oh, no, I was just saying.”

“Bud plays piano,” Andy said. “He’s pretty good.”

“Who’s Bud?”

“I don’t think you met him. He was talking to the dark girl over there.”

“Oh, Helen. Yes, I saw him.”

The conversation suddenly lapsed, as if it were lying down to catch its breath. They circled the floor wordlessly, and he thought, She has a very good face. High cheekbones, and a straight nose, and a full mouth. They did not speak to each other until the record ended. He thanked her for the dance, but she did not release his hand.

“Let’s see if we can find some James records,” she said.

“All right,” he answered.

They walked to the record player, and Reen looked up as they approached.

“Are you in charge of the music?” Andy asked.

“Did you have anything special in mind, sir?” Reen answered, pretending he didn’t know Andy.

“Well, I don’t know. We were hoping you had some James records.”

“James? A trumpet player? All trumpet players stink,” Reen said.

Carol looked up at him, a frown puckering her forehead.

“You don’t belong to the club,” she said pointedly.

“No, I don’t,” Reen said. “Do you?”

“Yes, I do,” she said firmly.

“Congratulations,” Reen answered. “Now then, sir, you said you—”

“Only club members are supposed to handle the records,” Carol said. “Can’t you read the sign?”

“What sign?”

Carol looked at the front of the phonograph where two slivers of transparent tape still hung. “Well, there was a sign,” she said, as if she believed Reen had taken it down.

“Are you looking for trouble?” Reen asked, a sparkle in his eyes. “Are you trying to get me into a fight with your boyfriend?”

Andy caught on instantly. He took a slight step forward, balling his fists. “Now look, fella,” he said, “let’s watch the way we’re talking.”

“Your girlfriend says I can’t handle the records,” Reen said. “Does she know I was once a disk jockey in Kansas City?”

“I don’t care if you—”

“It was me who gave Guy Lombardo his start,” Reen said.

“Watch your language,” Andy said. “There’s a lady present.”

“I’m going to get the president,” Carol said.

“Now just a minute,” Reen said, “just a minute. There’s no need to call in Roosevelt on this. After all—”

“I didn’t mean—” Carol started.

“Are you accusing me of dodging the draft?” Reen asked seriously.

“You’re probably 4-F,” Andy said.

“I am!” Reen bellowed. “And proud of it! My father was 4-F, and his father before him, and my great-great-great-grandfather was a shirker during the Revolutionary War. He later became a general, purely by accident. Perhaps you know his name? Arnold? Benedict Arnold?”

“It sounds familiar,” Andy said, “but don’t drag in your family tree. We’re talking about records here.”

“This is all part of the record,” Reen said.

Carol was beginning to catch on. She looked at Andy suspiciously, and then her eyes narrowed.

“Your family’s record doesn’t interest me,” Andy said. “If you’re trying to cloud the issue by—”

“No one can belittle my family’s issue,” Reen said. “My grandmother had twelve children, all boys, all 4-effers. It’s all on the record.”

“Who issued the record?” Andy wanted to know, seeing the smile form on Carol’s mouth.

“Bluebird,” Reen said. “And later we switched to Decca.”

“Can we switch to Columbia now and get some James stuff?” Andy asked.

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Reen answered. “Who’s your belligerent friend?”

“Carol,” Andy said, “I’d like you to meet Reen.”

“How do you do?” Carol said. “You really had me going for a while.”

“I like to bait pretty girls,” Reen said.

“Why, thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Has the Little One been telling you what a great trumpet player he is?”

“No, he hasn’t.”

“Well, he should. He makes James look sick.”

“Oh, come on, Reen,” Andy said.

“He’s modest,” Reen said matter-of-factly. “Truth is he can charm the birds out of the trees with his horn.”

“Orpheus with his lute,” Carol said.

“Huh?” Reen asked. “Oh, oh, yes. ‘Making trees and mountaintops that freeze bow their heads when he did sing.’ I thought I was the only one in the world who knew that.”

Andy didn’t recognize the reference. He stood by while Carol smiled up at Reen, wondering if he were going to lose her after things had started out so well. He did not want to lose her.

“We’re still waiting for some James,” he said.

“‘You Made Me Love You,’” Carol said.

“I kind of like you, too,” Reen answered. He turned his back and began thumbing through the records. “‘Swingin’ on a Star’? How about that?”

“No, thanks,” Andy said.

“‘There Are Such Things’?”

“Nope.”

“‘Pistol-Packin’ Mama’? Ouch! Here’s a James. ‘Mister Five-by-Five.’”

“‘You Made Me Love You,’” Carol insisted.

“All right, all right, all right,” Reen said. “You sure you’ve got the damned record?”

“We’ve got it,” Carol said.

“Ah, here it is,” Reen said. “Get out there on the floor, and I’ll play it.”

“You coming, Andy?” Carol asked.

“Sure,” he said.

They walked to the center of the floor, waiting for the record to begin, Carol standing in the circle of Andy’s arms. When the record started, he dipped automatically, not even listening to the music.

“That’s not...” Carol started.

He turned his attention to the phonograph, hearing the honeyed tones of Bing Crosby. Reen stood at the side of the room, his arms folded over his chest, a big crud-eating grin on his face.

“‘Swingin’ on a Star,’” Andy said.

“Oh, well,” Carol sighed. “It’s not really a bad song.”

“No. It got the Academy Award, you know. Did you listen to that the other night?”

“No, I didn’t. I read about it in the papers, though.”

“I don’t think Going My Way should have got it, do you?”

“Not at all. Did you see Gaslight?”

“That was a good picture,” Andy said. “Well, she at least got the award for it.”

“She’s one of my favorites,” Carol said. “I go to see anything she’s in.”

“Ingrid Bergman? Yeah?”

“Well, why not?”

“No, it’s just that... well, you’re such different types. I mean, she’s pretty in a different way than you. So I thought...”

“My, we’re full of compliments tonight, aren’t we? First your friend, and now...”

“Oh, I wasn’t trying to... Well, gee, you know you’re pretty, don’t you?”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, sir,” Carol said, smiling.

He didn’t know what to answer, so he concentrated on his dancing, listening to “Swingin’ on a Star,” wishing it were “You Made Me Love You.” The Crosby record had a slight jump to it, and it didn’t blend too well with the fox trot steps he’d learned. Some couples on the floor were Undying to it.

“Did you see Laura?” Carol asked.

“Yes. That was another good one.”

“I think it should have won.”

“It did get something,” Andy said.

“It did?”

“Well, one of the stupid things. Photography, screenplay, something like that.”

“Dana Andrews was very good in that,” Carol said. “Better than Bing Crosby. He should have got it.”

“I don’t think he was even nominated.”

“We should have been in charge of the awards,” Carol said.

“I’d have given it to Mickey Mouse,” Andy said, smiling.

“Do you go to the movies a lot?”

“Yes. Do... do you?”

“Oh, yes.”

How do you ask a girl to go to the movies with you? he wondered. What do you say?

“Maybe... maybe we...”

The record was coming to an end. He summoned up all his concentration and went into the final dip, holding the dip as the record played its final chord. He saw Reen at the player, and then, instantly following the first record, the golden tone of Harry fames reached up for the canvas canopy of the club, and Reen smiled and winked.

“‘You Made Me Love You,’” Carol murmured.

“Reen’s all right,” he said out loud, wanting to think it. “He just couldn’t find it before.”

They did not speak at all during the record. They listened to the music, and they moved over the dance floor. She danced very well, or at least she danced very well as far as his knowledge went. She was the first girl he’d ever really danced with, and he certainly appreciated her more than he had either Frank or Reen or Bud. He held her in his arms, wanting to draw her closer to him, but afraid to. She was just a little shorter than he, and his cheek touched hers once, but he pulled it away rapidly, not wanting her to get the wrong idea. The wrong idea, of course, was the right idea because there was nothing he’d rather have done than put his cheek against hers. He kept his hand in the small of her back, and he could feel the firm flesh on either side of her spine through the thin blouse she wore. She was very well built, he thought, slender, but not with that skinny look about her, that awkward skinniness that makes a lot of girls look like slobs.

She had good hips, and nice breasts, maybe not as big as that girl with the string of pearls, but bigger than the girl Bud was with tonight. What was her name? Helen.

He could feel her breasts against him whenever he dipped, but he didn’t dip too often because he didn’t want her to think he was dipping just to feel her breasts. He could also feel the very slight bulge of her stomach whenever he dipped, and he hoped he wouldn’t get excited, so he didn’t dip at all after that. He tried the breaks Reen had taught him, and the first time he broke, his hand went too far around her back so that his fingertips could feel the sideward swell of her breast. He pulled his hand back quickly, but she hadn’t seemed to notice, and he wondered if he should try it again.

He wondered what Bud would do in a situation like this, and he wondered if he should ask Bud about it, and at the same time he wondered how he could ask her to go to the movies with him. But he didn’t want to start talking again because there was something very nice about just dancing with this girl, Carol, Carol Ciardi — he rolled the name on the tongue of his mind — just having her in his arms like that, as if he owned her, as if she were truly his, Carol Silvera. He felt like a good dancer with her, and he enjoyed the feeling, and he enjoyed the easy way they talked, though he certainly wished he could think of some way to ask her to the movies.

The record was running out, like the sands of time, and he felt that this might be the very last time he would ever dance with her. Suppose she left right after this record? Suppose she went home and he never saw her again, never in his whole life? Suppose the boys wanted to leave now? My God, suppose this girl should get away?

“Carol...” he said.

“Yes?” She looked up at him, and he drowned in the brownness of her eyes.

“Carol...” What now? How do I ask? How, how?

“Yes, Andy?”

“Tomorrow. Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“Yes?”

“I... are you... well... Carol... could you... would you like to go to the movies with me tomorrow? Afternoon?” He swallowed the panic in his throat.

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said eagerly.

“I’m awfully sorry, Andy. I already have a date for tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

“But some other time, perhaps.”

“Sure. Sure, some other—”

“Will you be coming down to the club again?”

“I... I don’t know... it’s hard to say.”

“Why don’t you come down again next Friday? We’ll talk some more then.”

“Well... maybe,” he said, knowing he wouldn’t dare come down without the boys, and not sure whether or not the boys would want to return. “We’ll see.”

“And Andy... I really do have a date for tomorrow. I’m not giving you the fast brush.”

“Oh, I didn’t think you—”

“I just wanted you to know.”

“All right,” he said.

“Try me next week.”

“All right,” he said.

“Is that a promise?”

“Yes. It’s a promise.”

Carol smiled, listening to the music that came from the phonograph. “Your friend is really Mama’s little helper, isn’t he? ‘You Made Me Love You’ again.”

Andy smiled and took her into his arms.

13

second chorus, ii

MARCH, 1944

The day that Tony Banner thought he’d achieved full stature as leader of the band was coincidentally — and perhaps consequentially — the same day that Andy thought he’d achieved full stature as a member of the clique. Neither could have been more sadly mistaken.

It was preceded by the news, on the Sunday before, that Tony had booked the band for its first paying job. The fact that the booker was one of Tony’s maiden aunts who’d finally managed to lure a man into marriage did not in any way detract from the joy with which the announcement was greeted. A wedding job was a wedding job, and who cared which slobs were tying the knot? The band was to be paid a total of fifteen dollars for six pieces. (“We’re asking twenty,” Tony had said, shrewdly businesslike, “but we’ll settle for fifteen.”) Of the fifteen, a five-dollar deposit was left with Tony, and Tony suggested that the total, when received, be used for the purchase of new arrangements. The band, quickly calculating that a division of the total would give them each only two-fifty, unanimously agreed to the suggestion.

Since the wedding would not come off until the Sunday after Easter, the boys had a fairly respectable amount of time in which to brush up on their music-making. They were eager to make a good first impression, but their eagerness was somewhat dimmed by the dimmed lights at Club Stardust. Knowing they could no longer rehearse there, they began avidly seeking a new rehearsal hall and were finally forced into giving up two fifths of the five-dollar deposit, a loss they suffered with pained souls. It was Tony who secured the new rehearsal hall, on the understanding that it would be a one-shot until they could get something better. Two dollars an afternoon was a little steep for the boys at this stage of the game.

The rehearsal hall was actually the gymnasium belonging to St. Joseph’s on Utica Avenue. The gymnasium was a monstrously large affair, built behind the pleasant stone-and-wood structure which was the church. It had large windows, a highly polished floor, and bleachers and basketball hoops, all of which combined to give the place exactly the atmosphere undesirable for a rehearsal. But it did have a stage at one end of the room, and the stage had a piano, and even though the price was two dollars, Mike Daley (a staunch Catholic) insisted it was for a good cause.

The rehearsal was called for Saturday, March twenty-fifth. On Friday, March twenty-fourth, the boys had made another sortie into Club Beguine, a sortie which had left Andy Silvera with his head in the clouds and his feet an appreciable distance off the ground. Carol Ciardi had agreed, on that Friday night, to accompany Andy to the movies the following Sunday. He could not have been happier, and his happiness led to a sort of cockiness which was perhaps responsible for what happened on the day of the rehearsal.

Considering the small rehearsal fee, the boys should not have been surprised to discover the gymnasium was unheated. They were, nonetheless, surprised. They were also a bit uncomfortable, mainly because the temperature on that March day — a March which five days before had boasted the crash of a bus in snow and sleet through a bridge railing in Passaic, New Jersey — inconsiderately dipped to a very low low. They were cold. They were goddamned good and cold. The gymnasium was a big echoing chamber, and the wind blasted at each of the long windows, and they felt the wind, and each time they complained about it, their voices bounced off the high walls and jeered back at them. They tried to warm up, both physically and musically, but their hands were cold and their horns were cold, and Frank’s bitter insistence that Tony Banner had pulled another boner did not help the situation any. Tony, in self-defense, suggested that the boys take a few laps around the gymnasium, and the boys, eager for any diversion from the cold, accepted his suggestion.

They ran around the long gymnasium grimly at first, their shoes clattering on the cold wooden floors.

“Hup-tup-tripp-fuh!” Reen bellowed, standing on the side of the room and clapping his hands over his head. “Hup-tup-tripp-fuh!”

The boys took up the chant, hup-tup-tripp-fuhing it around the room. Their voices bounced off the high ceiling, and their earlier sour mood slowly gave way to a sort of resigned joviality. Frank went to his drums and began playing a fast march beat, and the rest jogged along to the rhythm of the drums, their spirits and their body temperatures rising. By the time Andy arrived, the boys were all very warm, and they were in the process of warming up their respective instruments by marching around the room with them, blowing incessantly, tramping their feet.

Andy stood in the doorway and watched the exhibition, an amused grin on his face. Anything would have struck him funny on that day. He had still not adjusted fully to the miracle of Carol Ciardi’s acceptance of his movie proposition. Last night had been an altogether fine experience. He had loved being with her, and she had somehow heightened his confidence. He had felt extremely fast and witty, and he’d actually exchanged a good five minutes of repartee with Bud, whom he considered the master of the funny comment. The confidence had slept with him, and it had awakened with him, rested and much stronger. He felt he could match wits with the best of them. He felt he’d arrived, and it was unfortunate that his social arrival (for such was what he considered it) happened to coincide with his arrival at the rehearsal hall, a sub-zero rectangle of jogging, laughing, tramping musicians. He shook his head in amused amazement and walked over to the drums, where Frank excitedly kept up the march tempo.

“All we need here is a few hanging sides of beef,” he said.

Frank laughed aloud, absorbed in the rhythm, watching the boys jog along to his drumbeats. Andy appreciated the laughter, and he smiled contentedly, analyzing the humor in his comment. He had not said something as dull and plodding as “This place is like a refrigerator.” He had simply drawn a visual picture of a butchershop icebox, allowing Frank to draw his own conclusion from the inference. The result was excruciatingly comic, he felt, and — of course — there was also something riotously amusing about naked sides of beef. He was quite pleased with himself. Out on the floor, Ox was beginning to sound a little better. He started a Sousa march, and Tony joined in with him.

“Tony pulled a boner, all right,” Frank said, smiling.

If Andy was pleased before, his pleasure soared ecstatically now. Frank had provided him with a perfect straight line. And feeling like the gagman’s gagman, he immediately pounced upon it.

“Boner Banner,” he said, and Frank — vastly enjoying the excitement and vigor of the marching spectacle — laughed heartily. Andy, encouraged, laughed along with him and then put down his trumpet case and took out his horn. He did not take off his coat, and there was something paralyzingly humorous about the idea of rehearsing with your coat on. Damn, if this wasn’t the funniest experience he’d ever had in his whole life. Happily smiling, he rolled his mouthpiece around between his hands for a while, trying to heat it, and then he fitted it onto the horn and began blowing his long, low warm-up notes.

“My lip is as stiff as a board,” he said to Frank, and Frank burst out laughing, even though there was nothing whatever to laugh at. Frank kept pounding away at the snare, his eyes bright, and Andy watched him for a few moments and then tried to warm up again, amused by the awkwardness of his fingers on the valve buttons.

“Okay!” Tony yelled from the floor. “That’s enough. Let’s tune up now and get started.” He began walking back toward the stage, spotting Andy. “Hi!” he called, waving, and Andy impishly tilted his horn a little and blew a short note which sounded something like “Hi!” drawing a laugh from Tony. Bud climbed the steps to the stage, rubbing his hands together briskly.

“Welcome to the Arctic Circle,” he said, and Andy appreciated the humorous comment immeasurably. He sought in his mind for a witty comeback, but when none presented itself, he simply asked, “Are we really going to try to rehearse here?”

“Sure,” Tony said. “Why not? This cold is invigorating.”

“In other words, you pulled a boner,” Andy said, smiling.

“Take a few laps,” Tony said, smiling back. “You’ll see how fast you warm up.”

Andy shook his head sadly. “Boner Banner,” he repeated wonderingly, and Bud exploded in a laugh, and Tony — exhilarated by his run — laughed too. The boys clambered up to the stage and crowded around the piano, taking their A from Bud and then going to their places behind the metal stands. Bud gave Andy the A, and Andy blew a corresponding B on his B-flat horn, and Bud said, “You’re flat.”

“Like a sewer lid,” Andy replied, getting another laugh from Bud. God, he was witty today. Today he was the wittiest. And tomorrow, tomorrow he’d see Carol again. He pulled in his slide a little and blew again.

“You’re still Bat,” Bud said.

“I’m not warmed up yet,” Andy said. “This isn’t going to do any good.”

“You’ll be okay,” Tony said happily.

Bud kept striking the A, and Andy kept hitting his B until they struck some sort of compromise. The other boys kept blowing heartily, moistening their reeds, keeping their fingers active so that the cold would not attack them again.

“Okay,” Tony said jovially, “let’s take ‘Elk’s Parade’ for a warm-up.”

“Now there’s a surprise,” Andy said, and Bud and Frank laughed, and the other boys plowed through their music, putting “Elk’s Parade” on top of the other sheets, ready to start playing.

“Ah-one,” Tony said, “ah-two, ah-three, ah- four. Ah-one, two, three, four,” and the boys began playing.

They’d have sounded bad in any case, considering the cold and considering the breaths they’d just exhausted in running around the gym. They sounded worse because the acoustics were terrible, and every note they blew ricocheted and then re-ricocheted. Andy didn’t help the situation at all. There was a lot of trumpet work in “Elk’s Parade” and a lot of tricky syncopation with drum and trumpet, and Andy’s lip was still stiff. He blew halfheartedly, the collar of his coat pulled high on the back of his neck, the horn huddled close to his chest. He could not help being amused. There was something terribly ludicrous about the whole situation. In his own mind he could not convince himself that they were seriously rehearsing — not bundled up this way like Eskimos. No, this was too much. This was some kind of a burlesque routine.

When they finished the number, Tony cheerily said, “Well, that was lousy,” and the boys agreed, their voices scattering around the gym and charging back at them like a Mongolian horde on horseback. Even the acoustics amused Andy. He listened to the echoing voices, shivered against the cold, and said, “Why don’t we give it up?”

“You should take a few laps,” Tony said.

“The only lap I want right now is Carol’s,” Andy answered. The boys all laughed, and Andy felt again this pleasurable feeling of belonging. Simply having a girl had done that for him, simply getting a date with a girl. He could now joke with the boys on that level, too, and the knowledge that he could do that was gratifying indeed.

“No, really,” Tony said. “Go ahead, we’ll run through a sax chorus meanwhile.”

“No, thanks,” Andy said. “Thanks a lot, but no, thanks.”

“Okay, suit yourself. Let’s take a slow one, yes? ‘It Can’t Be Wrong’ looks good. Number seventeen.”

“Do you know what George Washington said to the Indian when he was crossing the Delaware?” Andy asked.

“What?” Bud supplied, knowing the punch line.

“Far-may noo gatz-iddo freedo,” Andy answered, butchering the Italian.

Frank laughed idiotically, and Bud leaped in with, “Do you know what the Indian answered?”

“No, what?” Andy said.

“Tu anche sei ’taliano?” Bud said, laughing.

“I don’t get it,” Mike Daley said blankly.

“Wait till you’re sixty-five,” Frank said, remembering the Social Security gag, but not realizing it didn’t fit here. “You’ll get it then.”

“Tony’s used to all this cold,” Andy said, ignoring Frank. “I think he was born at the North Pole.” He did not remember that Reen had originated this particular gag only a week before.

“He’s a real Eskimo,” Bud said, still laughing.

“Mukluk Banner,” Andy said, always surprised and delighted by the infinite variety of first names which sounded good with Tony’s surname.

“Come on,” Tony said, still cheerily, “let’s rehearse.”

They took the number, and Andy felt his lip loosening a bit, but he could still not take this mock rehearsal seriously. He blew with half his normal power, knowing he sounded better than Vic Andrada would have sounded, but knowing too that he wasn’t playing for all he was worth. When they’d finished the tune, Tony turned and asked, “What’s the matter, Andy?”

“What’s the matter what?” Andy said.

“You’re not blowing, boy.”

“I’m blowing.”

“Well, try to give it a little more, will you?” Tony said pleasantly.

“I’m freezing to death here,” Andy said, “and he wants me to give it a little more.”

“We’re all freezing to death,” Ox said, annoyed by all this delay.

“Except Tony,” Andy said. “He’s an Eskimo. Look at his complexion, there’s the tip-off. Black Banner.”

“Ha-ha,” Tony said mirthlessly. “Come on, let’s take ‘I Dreamt I Dwelt.’”

“Let’s take a long break,” Andy said.

“Oh, come on,” Tony said, “cut it out, Andy. We’re trying to get something accomplished here.”

“Couldn’t you get a place with steam heat?”

“This is the best I could do. Come on, ‘I Dreamt I Dwelt.’ That’s thirty-one.”

“Mukluk, the Black Banner,” Andy said, smiling.

“Since when are Eskimos black?” Ox asked, irritated, wanting to get on with the rehearsal.

“You’re right,” Andy said. “This is Swahili Banner.”

“Okay, get it all out of your system,” Tony said patiently, “and then maybe we can rehearse. Any other names, Little One?”

“That’s all for now,” Andy said.

“Andy’s feeling his oats,” Bud said. “He’s got a date tomorrow.”

“Can we rehearse now?” Tony said wearily.

“Let’s rehearse,” Andy said, smiling.

They took the “Harlem” number, and the sax section gave it everything they had, but Andy was still not blowing. He was blowing, of course, but he was not providing the brass spark the band needed, and in a driving number like “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Harlem,” the result was disastrous. Tony called a halt before they got to the change of key.

“Hey, look, Andy,” he said, “how about joining us?”

“I’m blowing,” Andy said. “I’m just cold, that’s all.”

“Then take a few laps, will you?”

“I’m not that cold.”

“Then start blowing the way you know how to blow.”

“I’m blowing the best I can. I know my part, anyway.”

“The saxes know their parts, too,” Tony said. “But this happens to be a band rehearsal.”

“Oh,” Andy said. “I thought it was a polar expedition.”

“All right, kid around if you want to,” Tony said. “We’ve got a job to play three weeks from now, though. I hope you know that.”

“I’ll make out all right,” Andy said.

“You want to take ‘Trumpet Blues’? You think that’ll put you in the mood?”

“Take anything you like,” Andy said, enjoying all the attention that had suddenly been focused on him, feeling the social equal of the boys, feeling almost a little superior to them.

“All right,” Tony said. “‘Trumpet Blues.’ That’s twenty-seven.” Ordinarily he’d have lingered on the “Harlem” number, playing it and replaying it until all the kinks were ironed out. But he seemed to sense that nothing would be accomplished that day until Andy snapped out of it, and so he’d offered “Trumpet Blues” as something of a bribe, hoping Andy would come alive during the number and continue to stay alive for the remainder of the rehearsal.

Andy did not come alive. He still regarded the entire setup as a convulsively comic fiasco. The idea of everyone’s sitting around and rehearsing in overcoats and mufflers was too much for him to bear. It was all so terribly funny, and he felt so wonderfully witty, and he also, curiously, felt good-looking and cocky, but most of all he felt amused. And in keeping with the humorous slant of the occasion, he played “Trumpet Blues” as humorously as he knew how. His musical humor was a spontaneous combination of: A. Guy Lombardo; B. German brauhaus; C. Hillbilly. The result was devastatingly comic. “Trumpet Blues” was a swinging tune when it was played properly. The boys all knew Andy could play it as properly as the best. But Andy was being comical, and so he played with a sort of oom-pah lilt, interspersed with staccato rat-ta-tah passages, sounding alternately like a high-society shmaltz trumpeter, a burgher playing a tuba, and a hick struggling with a Civil War bugle. Ox was the first to break. He spit out his laughter and his mouthpiece simultaneously, his horn making a funny ounnk sound when he finally exploded. Mike followed suit almost instantly, collapsing in gales of uncontrolled laughter. Andy kept right on playing.

Ta-a-a-raaaah-ta-tah, ta-rah-ta...

“All right, all right,” Tony yelled, taking his horn from his mouth. Bud and Frank stopped playing, and Andy kept up his staccato riveting for two additional bars before coming to a halt.

“What the hell are you doing, Andy?” Tony said.

“What do you mean?” Andy asked innocently, smiling.

“Look, if you feel like clowning around, sit out a few minutes, will you? Now I’m not kidding. I want to rehearse today.”

“Okay,” Andy said, seemingly sobered. “I’ll play straight.”

“I’m freezing my ass off, too,” Bud said. He exhaled his breath, and a plume of vapor trailed from his mouth. “Look at that, will you?”

“Let’s take ‘I Dreamt I Dwelt’ again,” Tony said, a little annoyed now. “And for Christ’s sake let’s take it right this time.”

“Just a second,” Frank said. He reached into the pocket of his coat and pulled out a pair of fur-lined gloves which he pulled on promptly. “My hands are ready to drop off.”

“You lucky bastard,” Mike said. “I wish I could put on gloves.”

“You just play the wrong instrument, boy,” Frank said, smiling. He picked up his sticks again and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

Tony called off the beat, and the band went into the number. Andy played it straight during the trumpet chorus, and it seemed like smooth sailing until the arrangement came to the sax chorus, during which Andy had a long rest. The saxes played their chorus, and when Andy came back in again, something sounded terribly wrong. He was hitting the notes sloppily, faking a lot of notes, and simply missing a good many of those he should have been playing. Tony glanced curiously over his shoulder and then pulled his horn angrily from his mouth, standing up and whirling, glaring heatedly at Andy.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he shouted.

“What’s the matter?” Andy asked, smiling.

Bud turned on the piano stool, wondering what was wrong. He saw what was wrong then, and he understood the sloppy playing Andy had been doing. Andy was wearing thick woolen gloves, gloves he’d apparently put on during his trumpet rest.

“Look, Andy,” Tony said, “I’m through kidding around. Now take off them goddamn gloves.”

“Frank has gloves on,” Andy said perversely.

“Frank doesn’t have to worry about fingering.”

“Well, my hands are cold,” Andy said. “Hell, Mukluk, we’re not all Eskimos.” He had expected a laugh, and he smiled in anticipation. When no laugh came, he glanced quickly at Bud, and the smile turned pasty on his mouth. Bud was sitting quite solemnly at the piano.

“And let’s knock off the name-calling, too,” Tony said, his anger rising.

Andy was still high on the crest of his amused feeling. “Now, now,” he said, striving for a smile from Bud or a chuckle from Frank. “You worry too much, Mukluk. Honestly.”

“I said knock it off!” Tony shouted.

“Hey!” Andy said, surprised by Tony’s anger, wondering how such a simple bit of clowning around had gotten so out of hand. “I—”

“You going to play straight or not?” Tony roared.

“Well...” Andy paused. The humor of the situation had somehow slipped away from everyone, but something else had replaced it. Andy weighed the something else, knowing he’d been called, and knowing he should not back down with Bud and Frank watching him. But at the same time he did not know how to handle Tony’s unexpected anger.

“Take off those goddamn gloves,” Tony said, “and let’s cut out the kidding around. I got enough on my mind without—”

“My hands are cold,” Andy said stubbornly, unwilling to give in.

“Well, my hands are cold, too! Now, look, you little crumb, are you going to—”

“Now watch that,” Andy said. “Just watch that, Banner.”

“Watch what? What the hell are you going to do about my watching it?”

The situation had become alarming now. He did not want a fight with Tony, but there seemed no other way out. Unless, unless he could swing things back to being funny again. If he could do that...

“Look, Swahili,” he started, spreading his palms, smiling.

Tony dropped his horn onto the chair seat. The dropping horn made an ominous clatter, and the clatter echoed from the high-ceilinged room. Before Andy fully realized what was happening, Tony’s fist was twisted in the collar of his coat. He felt himself being yanked to his feet, felt his horn slipping off his lap, and then he saw Tony’s other fist cocked and ready to fire.

“Hey! What the hell—” he started, but Tony threw the fist, and it caught him on his cheek and sent him falling back into the chair, the horn falling and crashing to the floor.

“My horn!” he shouted, and he stooped to retrieve it, but Tony had his hand twisted in the collar again, and Andy’s fingers scrabbled for the horn as Tony yanked him upright, and he couldn’t reach or touch the glistening brass. He wondered why Bud or Frank didn’t stop what was happening, wondered why they weren’t moving from where they sat, and he thought suddenly of his lip, wishing Tony’s fist would not damage his lip, panic smashing into his mind as he visualized a split lip. He stumbled forward, pulled by Tony, expecting the blow at any moment, tensing himself for the sharp impact of the knuckles. The blow did not come. Tony pulled him very close, almost mashing his nose against Andy’s, but he did not hit him.

“Look, you bastard,” he said. “I’m leader of this band, you understand? That means what I say goes. I say we’re here to rehearse, and if you don’t like what I say, you can get the hell out. Now is that plain enough for you?”

“It’s plain enough,” Andy said tightly. “Let go my coat.”

“If you want to—”

“Let go my coat!” Andy shouted.

“If you want to rehearse with us, you—”

Andy shoved out at Tony’s chest, surprising him, breaking the grip. He whirled, pulling away and rushing to where his horn lay on the stage. He lifted the horn and examined it carefully, holding it tenderly, like a mother with a new baby. Satisfied it was not damaged, he stood up, swung his trumpet case onto the seat of his chair, and unsnapped it. He did not speak until he had packed the trumpet away. He did not speak because the anger inside him made it impossible to speak without stuttering. Frank and Bud had deserted him. The thought kept pounding at his mind, and simultaneously he remembered the day Vic Andrada had quit the band, and the memory became large in his mind, taking on importance now, significance he had missed when it happened. They had let Vic go in his favor. They’d been willing to let Vic walk out, for him! There was still a chance. There was a chance they’d still come to his rescue, Bud and Frank, sitting there solemnly. He had to be careful. He did not want to sound the way Vic had sounded, but he wanted to brandish his weapon, and his weapon was talent.

“This is it, Swahili,” he said tightly.

Tony balled his fists, ready to jump forward again. Andy wet the muscle ring, hoping he was playing this right, anticipating the apologetic interference he felt sure would come.

“I warned you—” Tony started.

“Swahili, I don’t give a damn what you—”

“You’d better shut your mouth, Andy. You’d just better—”

“Blow it out, Swahili,” Andy said. “You’re leader of the band, huh? Well, okay, leader. Rehearse without a trumpet! Play your goddamn wedding job without a trumpet, leader!”

“What are you talking about?”

“What does it sound like? You made it plain, and now I’ll make it plainer. I’m leaving. If you don’t like the way I blow my horn, that’s too goddamn bad. There are a lot of outfits who’d like it fine.”

Tony paled. Placatingly, he said, “There’s nothing wrong when you—”

Andy pressed his advantage. “You ever hear of Artie Parker?” He knew they’d all heard of Parker. Parker’s band was not big time, but it was a well-known local outfit which played at most of the weddings and dances in the neighborhood. “Well, Parker asked me to go along with him,” Andy hurled. “I told him no, but that was last week. I’m beginning to change my mind now.” He waited for some reaction from Frank or Bud. Frank’s mouth was compressed into a tight line. Bud seemed to be studying the situation, waiting for something, waiting for what, what? And now even Tony called the bluff, apparently figuring all was lost, anyway.

“Parker’s welcome to you,” he said flatly. “Good-by, quitter.”

“Damn right he’s welcome to me,” Andy said, still trying. “You go get Vic Andrada, Tony. He’ll do a lot for the band’s sound.”

“Get out of here, you little bastard,” Tony said whitely.

“Strong man,” Andy mocked. “Muscles Banner.”

“Get out!” Tony roared. “Get out of here!”

“You’ll bust a blood vessel,” Bud said suddenly, quietly. “Relax, Tony.”

Tony whirled on Bud. “I don’t want him around any more. I don’t want this little crumb anywhere near me.”

Bud’s eyes did not leave Tony’s face. It was almost as if Andy were no longer in the room. Quietly, coldly, he said, “Then I guess you don’t want me either, Tony.”

“What?” Tony said. “What?”

“If Andy goes, I go,” Bud said.

“What!” Tony blinked his eyes. “What? What?”

“Come on, Andy,” Bud said. Andy swung his trumpet case up, astonished. He followed Bud off the stage. Slowly they walked to the door, a vast silence behind them. The gym was very quiet and very cold. Andy could see his own hurried breath pluming whitely from his mouth. Bud opened the door, and they stepped outside, and then Bud whirled, pulling the door shut with one hand, grasping Andy’s collar with the other.

“Now listen to me, you stupid bastard,” he said, his eyes blazing. “We’re going back in there! We’re going back in there, and you’re going to apologize to Tony, and you’re going to play that goddamn horn the way you know how, or I’ll personally break it over your head. Have you got that?”

“But—”

“You were wrong, dead wrong, and the only reason I saved your miserable hide was because I happen to want to see this band stay together. If you’d walked out of there alone, he’d never have taken you back, never in a million years. With me gone, he’s losing a friend, too — and Tony respects friendship.”

“Gee, Bud, I didn’t—”

“You didn’t what? You didn’t know you were behaving like a smirking little wetpants? Grow up, for Christ’s sake! I’m not going to be here holding your hand forever!”

“I’m... I’m sorry,” Andy said. “I didn’t realize. I was just—”

“You think I like this?” Bud hurled, his eyes blazing. “You think I like having you on my back every goddamn minute of the day? I’ve got my own problems, my own damn life to lead. When the hell are you gonna grow up?” He paused and then said, “Get in there. Get in there and eat dirt, and eat it a mile long and a mile wide.”

Andy swallowed hard, nodding stupidly. A panic was growing inside him. He did not want to enter the gym alone, did not want to face Tony again. He wanted to turn and run from where they stood. The panic grew, mushrooming onto his face.

Bud’s hand released his collar. He smiled suddenly. “All right, inside. And stop looking so goddamned pained. I’m still your friend.”

The words hung between them, as brittle as the air around them. He felt the panic leaving slowly. He nodded and pulled back his shoulders. Then he opened the door, and, together, they stepped into the gym.

14

second chorus, iii

APRIL, 1944

White streamers trailed across the ceiling of the hall on East New York Avenue. A large white crepe-paper wedding bell hung from the center of the ceiling, providing the focal point from which the streamers radiated. The groom was short and squat and dark, a corporal in the Air Corps. The bride, with all due respect for Tony Banner’s family on his mother’s side, was tall and thin, with features strongly reminiscent of Seabiscuit’s.

The band played “Here Comes the Bride” first, reading from sheets which incorporated such versatile old stand-bys as “Hatikvah,” “Irish Washerwoman,” “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and “Happy Birthday to You.” The owner of the hall, rushing about as an improvised master of ceremonies, led the wedding party around the floor while both families beamed, exuding sympathy and joy simultaneously. The boys went into “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” and the bride danced with the groom alone until the M.C. led the best man and the maid of honor onto the floor, followed by the ushers and the bridesmaids. The best man then switched partners with the groom, and then everyone switched partners, and then all the spectators ringing the floor moved onto the floor and began dancing, and the reception started. Bud modulated from “Let Me Call You” into “Sleepy Lagoon,” and the band took that all the way through and then, for lack of any other waltzes in their repertoire, played “Let Me Call You” again. When they ended the waltz set, they went into “The Man I Love,” having decided upon that as their theme song. Bud and Frank played a moody, heavy introduction, and then Andy came in with a theme-songish trumpet solo, backed up by the sax section’s harmony. The rest of the evening, except when a fattish lady of forty came over to the piano with some music she wanted Bud to transpose while she sang, was a breeze.

The wedding was of the type the boys later referred to as “The Genoese Brawl.” None of them had ever been to Genoa, of course, but the expression served to typify the scores of Italian weddings they were to play in the weeks and months that followed. The Genoese Brawl was not to be confused with what they considered a high-class catered affair. They played several of those jobs, too, but those jobs were duck soup, and quite refined when compared to The Genoese Brawl. The Genoese Brawl was not a catered affair; it did not give the members of the wedding a meal, and whisky, and what-have-you.

It gave the members, instead, beer and sandwiches. The beer was drawn from kegs behind a bar at one end of the hall. Several members of the bride’s or groom’s family usually served as bartenders, drawing the beer and passing out the sandwiches. The sandwiches were kept in a large cardboard box, wrapped in waxed paper. There were usually two boxes because there were usually two different kinds of sandwiches: ham, and ham and cheese. The members of the wedding crowded the bar and shouted, “Two beers and two hams and cheese.” Soda pop was also stacked in an ice-filled sink behind the bar, but no one drank soda pop except children and pregnant women.

There were a good many children at a Genoese Brawl, and almost as many pregnant women. The children spent their time running across the highly waxed floor, putting on the brakes, and then skidding for a good twelve feet. They also spent their time chasing other children in and out and around the dancing couples when they could not slide. They also spent some of their time falling, or knocking over pitchers of beer, or spitting, or stepping on the train of the bride’s gown, or simply behaving as bastardly as only children who were habitues of this type of wedding knew how to behave.

The pregnant women sat at the tables around the hall and smiled Madonnalike, wondering how pretty the bride would look in six months when she’d been “caught.” They occasionally smoothed their silken maternity jackets over the bulge of their maternal abdomens. They sipped at their soda pop and ate their ham and cheese sandwiches, watching their husbands dance with young and heavily rouged distant cousins from Red Bank, New Jersey.

The bride and groom sat at a long table, usually to the right or left of the bandstand. The members of the wedding filed past the table, kissing the bride and shaking hands with the groom. An envelope was usually passed during the ritual, sometimes to the groom (who instantly handed it to the bride) and sometimes directly to the bride (who instantly dropped it into a large, sacklike white silken purse she carried, pulling the drawstrings tight.) The envelopes contained currency of the United States in denominations of from five to twenty-five dollars. No one dared give less than five. (A catered affair called for ten.) No one but the principals’ parents ever gave more than twenty-five.

A little before the bride and groom departed for points unknown to share their first night of nuptial bliss, they went around the hall with a tray piled full of macaroons, cookies with cherries, cookies with chocolate, and just plain cookies — a tray which had been in evidence all night on the long table behind which the bride and groom sat. Someone usually accompanied the couple on their circuit of the hall, and this someone carried small white thin cardboard boxes which contained candy-covered almonds, or as the Genoese called them, “Confetti.” The boxes usually carried the inscription “Wedding Bells” or “Congratulations” or, in the cases of more affluent principals, “Mr. and Mrs. Genoese.” The cookies and confetti were distributed (and beware the wrath of any member who was missed during the distribution) and later carried home to those unfortunate enough to have missed the brawl.

Sometime during the evening, before the bride and groom departed (and there were always the jokes about “Hey, Harry, when the hell are you going to leave? Getting anxious, Harry?” To which Harry always shrugged stupidly and smiled a nonchalant above-such-petty-sex-habits smile), the M.C. put the couple and the entire assemblage through the primitive torture of the Grand March. The Grand March was a not-so-grand march around the hall, first two abreast, then four abreast, then eight abreast, then under-the-hands arch, then this way and that way until the floor and the party resembled a college band doing a complicated maneuver on a football field between halves. The Grand March invariably ended in stark confusion, with the M.C. rushing to the bandstand and shrieking for some dance music to untangle the knot he’d woven.

The bride and groom “sneaked” away later while everyone cheered and whistled. The band played on for an hour or more after that, depending on whether or not there was overtime. The best man paid the band with the money the groom had left him (if the groom had not already paid the band before departing), and the crowd began to thin out along about midnight or one A.M. The band played “Good Night, Ladies,” and distant relatives kissed distant relatives resoundingly and longly, the kiss having to last until the next wedding. The boys packed their instruments, left, had ice-cream sodas, and went home.

Such was the pattern of The Genoese Brawl.

The pattern became quite familiar to the Tony Banner boys after their first job. With remarkable rapidity, more bookings came on the heels of, and as a result of, the first booking. And then, at almost every job they played, they were approached for a future job, until virtually all their Saturdays and Sundays were occupied with weddings, beer parties, dances, or Republican Club socials. Naturally, they dragged the girls along with them whenever they played, and neither Helen nor Carol minded very much except that their game was a patiently feminine waiting one, and there was nothing particularly exciting about a Genoese Brawl.

So when a week end popped up in which there was no booking, Helen leaped upon it with a suggestion.

“You’re not playing tomorrow,” she said to Bud, “so I have an idea. My parents have a place. A cottage in the Rockaways, not right on the beach, but with a private sandy walk leading down to it. I thought we might ride out there tomorrow.”

This was a Friday night, and they were sitting in the back of Frank’s car outside Club Beguine. She was cuddled against him, her legs curled beneath her on the seat. His hand idly toyed with the back of her neck. He felt very drowsy and very comfortable. He always felt comfortable with Helen. And proud. Secretly proud of her, bursting proud. She moved with such grace and femininity that there were times when he wanted to scoop her up no matter where they were, hold her close, kiss her, stroke her hair, trace the outline of her lips with his fingers. He loved everything about her, loved it with the deep unbending Jove of adolescence. But above all, and part of it all, was the sense of contentment he felt whenever he was with her.

“Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” he said.

“You’re not playing tomorrow, are you?”

“Not tomorrow, and not Sunday either,” he said lazily.

“Then do you think...” She stopped. “Bud, are listening to me?”

“I was thinking about you.”

“Don’t think about me when I’m talking,” she scolded. “Would you like to drive out to the Rockaways tomorrow?”

“Okay,” he said idly.

“That’s what I call a burst of enthusiasm. Can you get your father’s car?”

“I think so. Why? What’s at the Rockaways?”

“My parents have a cottage. I think I can get the key. We’ll pack a picnic basket. If it’s too windy on the beach, we’ll eat inside. Does it appeal?”

“It appeals.”

“Greatly?”

“Enormously.”

“That’s what I love about you. You’re so difficult to get along with.” She paused. “I’d better tell my parents I’m going with some of the girls. They wouldn’t understand.”

“They never do. We sure have it rough.”

“Do you love me?”

“Nope. I’m toying with you.”

“I’ll break your nose,” she said, laughing.

He seized her roughly, pulling her to him. “How’d you happen to come my way, Helen? How’d such a wonderful bundle drop into my lap?”

She turned her head away in mock aloofness. “Your technique is barbaric,” she said. “My other lovers treat me gently.”

“Bah!” he snorted. “Your other lovers are milksops! I am the great Genghis Khan, ruler of the Orient! What are all these peasants compared to me?”

“You frighten me, sire,” she said, her voice quavering.

“I will eat you in one swallow!” he shouted.

“Ears and all?”

“Ears especially! Mmm, you have beautiful ears,” he said.

He moved his mouth toward her ear, kissed it, and she squirmed away with a small tremor.

“You give me the chills,” she said.

“The better to gobble you up, my dear.”

“Can you get the car?”

“Car?” he shouted, carried away. “A blazing chariot drawn by a thousand white horses!”

“I love you,” she said happily.

“No wonder,” he replied smugly. “Ruler of all the East.”

“I adore you.”

“What time, concubine?”

“Tennish?”

“On Saturday? Gad!” He paused. “Make it a quarter after tennish.” He paused again. “Tennish, anyone?”

She put her hand over his face, shoved him down on the car seat, and then said, “You idiot!” and kissed him.

The beach was quiet and deserted.

The waves rolled toward the shore, slender white furrows in the distance, growing in power as they came closer, expanding, roiling, building in stature, and then rising to full height and folding in upon themselves, curling under in a green-and-white cascade of fury, and then rushing shoreward, Battened and dissipated, dissolving into white, bubbly foam, rushing onto the beach, absorbed by the sand, and then retreating leisurely, pulling the remnants of their tattered foam-robes behind them. A lone sandpiper skirted the aftermath of the breaking crests, skittering like a stiff old maid at the water’s edge, pulling up her skirts with each new watery rush.

There was a strong wind blowing off the water, smelling of salt and ocean life. It caught at her hair, sent the black strands whipping about her head like an enraged gorgon. She wore a peasant blouse and skirt, over which she’d thrown a white cashmere sweater, unbuttoned. The wind lashed at her skirt, molding it against her firm legs and thighs. She tilted her head up and licked her lips, squeezing her eyes shut tightly. He stood with his arm around her, feeling the shudder of her body as the wind lunged against her. He looked down at her closed lids and the smile on her mouth, and then he focused on the eyes alone, squeezed tightly shut now, the short black lashes curled, the laugh wrinkles at the corners.

Her eyes popped open suddenly, startling in their greenness, seeming to capture a deeper green from the ocean.

“I caught you,” she said, and then the eyes crinkled at the edges, crinkled in sheer pleasure, and he wanted to kiss her eyes, and he did not know why. “Look!” she said suddenly, her eyes opening, a spark of pure excitement in them. She turned partly toward him, her eyes not leaving the ocean, her fingers clutching his arm. “Buddy, look!”

He turned from her face reluctantly, scanning the ocean. He saw the fish then. It leaped out of the water in a graceful arc and then was gone.

“A dolphin,” he said.

“A porpoise,” she corrected. Her eyes snapped at him, and he felt the challenge in them. They sparked for an instant, daring him to pick up the gauntlet.

“A dolphin,” he repeated.

“Look! Again!” The fish leaped from the water, and her eyes were a little wider as she watched, excitement in them again. “A porpoise, Buddy! Buddy, you know it’s a porpoise.” She turned toward him. The excitement had left her eyes. They looked up at him questioningly now, almost pleadingly, and he forgot what question they were asking as he discovered her eyes and the expressiveness of them.

“Isn’t he?” she said.

“Yes, he’s a porpoise.” He could not tear his gaze from her eyes.

“Buddy, he’s having so much fun!” She watched the lunging fish, watched the arc of its body as it leaped from the water and then submerged again to reappear a moment later. Her head moved only slightly. Her eyes were alive in her face, darting anxiously, watching the movement of the porpoise.

She moved out of his protective embrace suddenly, ran to the water’s edge and impulsively threw back her head, stretching her arms out to the sea. She leaned down and caught at the water as it pressed onto the beach, the bubbles hissing lightly as they submerged her hand.

“It’s warm, Buddy!” she shrieked, and when she turned to him, her eyes were wide in childish wonder. “Let’s go in!”

She was sitting almost instantly, pulling back her skirt, kicking off her shoes, rolling down her stockings. He watched her, seeing the clean line of her legs as the protective tint of the nylons disappeared to expose their warm ivory coloring. She stood, pulled up her skirt, and went into the water, and she shrieked again as the bubbles lashed her feet.

“Come in, Buddy! It’s won-derful!”

He watched her, smiling, unaware of the smile. She romped girlishly at the water’s edge, chasing the retreating foam, rushing back onto the sand whenever a new breaker roared its thunder and split into a crashing cascade of dissolving white and green. She laughed aloud, unaware of his presence now, losing herself in the game of chasing the bubbles and being in turn chased by their big brothers. Down the beach the sandpiper stopped its conscientious patrol, its head erect, staring at the intruder.

He felt a peaceful unity of sand and sky and water and Helen. They were alone on the beach, and her laughs fought the thunder of the waves, and she turned to him and waved limply, her eyes smiling. And then there was sudden shock in her eyes, painful almost, and she said, “Oh!” and then pressed her body toward him, and then another “Oh!” and he saw her backing into the ocean against her will, the strong undertow catching at her ankles. She struggled for balance, bent over now, the peasant blouse moving away from her body. He began running toward her, aware of the gathering power of a new breaker.

“Helen!” he shouted.

Her arms were flailing. Behind her the ocean gathered its might, building into a solid wall of green that steam-rollered toward the beach. The wave broke over her, and she vanished in the green and white foam. He kicked off his shoes at the water’s edge, desperately looking for a sign of her. Her head popped to the surface, and he plunged in, feeling the cold sting of the water, diving almost instantly, a shallow dive close to the surface, his arms slicing the water in a powerful crawl. She was under again, and he looked for her anxiously, and then her head appeared, and he saw her eyes first, and the eyes were a brilliant green, and the eyes were laughing. Her mouth was open, he realized, and he heard her pleased laughter above the sound of the waves, and he smiled in relief and then laughed with her. He came close to her, and she dived under again, and he went after her, catching her leg. She kicked at him, and his hand slipped, and he tried for another grip, and his fingers closed on her thigh, and his other hand captured her narrow waist. Her lips were suddenly on his, and they surfaced together, locked in the kiss, and then a new breaker caught them, and they clung to each other as it hurled them shoreward, threw them onto the sand, and then burst its glistening, foaming bubbles around them.

She was on her feet instantly, her eyes challenging him, daring him to go on with the game. He lay on the sand, sodden, exhausted, breathing heavily. He looked up at her then. Her clothes were wet through, clinging to her body, molding every line of her. His eyes moved to her face. She was still laughing, and then the laugh left her eyes, and they turned knowledgeable and aware, aware of her near-nudity.

She shivered suddenly, and he felt the cold at the same moment — a sharp, knifing wind that blew in off the Atlantic.

“We’d better get inside,” he said. He picked up his shoes and then the picnic basket, and she stood watching his back for only a moment, her eyes puzzled and uncertain, and then she followed him.

The cottage was small and white, green-shuttered windows carrying out the theme of ocean. They pushed open the door and stamped into the living room, trying to dislodge the caked sand from their feet. Helen was shivering now. He took off his jacket and shirt and went quickly to the stone fireplace in the center of the room.

“This is nice,” he said.

Helen’s teeth were chattering. She embraced herself, running her hands over her bare arms.

“You’d better change while I get a fire going,” he said. She nodded and went into the bedroom. There was a wood box alongside the open mouth of the fireplace, and he dug into it, grateful for the old newspapers and heavy pieces of timber. He laid the fire carefully, and then he went to his jacket, beginning to shiver himself now, amazed by the deceptive, comparative warmth of the water, disappointed when he found his matches were wet. He went to the kitchen end of the cottage and rummaged around on the stove. He found a box of wooden matches, brought them back to the fireplace, and started the fire.

“I’m freezing,” he said.

From behind the closed door of the bedroom Helen called, “There’s only one robe. Do you want it?”

“Do I look like a cad?”

“I can’t End the sash,” she said.

“I’m still freezing.”

He heard her looking through the drawers in the bedroom. “Here’s a pair of my brother’s khakis,” she said. “He’s fatter than you, but any port.” She came out of the bedroom wearing a white chenille robe. She held the robe closed at the front. “There’s no sash or belt or anything,” she said. Then, apologetically, “We hardly use the place, except in the summer.” She handed him the khaki trousers and shirt, and he walked past her into the bedroom.

“A nice fire,” she called.

“I used to be a Boy Scout.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Wasn’t the water grand?”

“No,” he shouted.

“It was, too,” and he could picture her eyes sparking with challenge again.

“Why don’t you spread the food?” he called.

“I want to toast for a while.”

“Drink one for me.”

“I meant at the fire, stupid.”

He came out of the bedroom. “Who’s stupid?” He stood with his hands on his hips, the khakis large for him.

“You look nice,” she said.

He looked at her then. Her legs were spread toward the fire, the robe exposing them where it fell open. “You do, too.” She pulled the robe closed, and her eyes turned to him, and there was no embarrassment in them, only a mute question.

“Shall I get the food?” she asked softly.

“If you want.”

She rose quickly, and the robe fell open, and she clutched at it and said, “Oh, goddamn this thing!”

“Take my belt,” he said.

“Your pants’ll fall down.”

“Take it.”

He pulled the belt through the loops and handed it to her. She took the belt and began wrapping it around her waist. The belt slid from her fingers, and she reached down for it, and he saw that her hand was trembling. Her hair cascaded over her face as she bent, hiding her face and her neck, and the open robe where her skin lay naked. Her fingers closed on the belt, and then she lifted her face and tossed her head back, and the hair lifted like a silken black curtain, and her breasts stood firm and erect in the opening of the robe, and he looked at her curiously, and then their eyes met, and there was nothing in them now but puzzlement and something else, something he could not identify because he had never seen it in her eyes before.

“Buddy,” she said, looking up at him, not touching the robe. “I’m frightened.”

He went to her and caught her gently by the shoulders, pulling her erect. He bent down and picked her up then, and she pressed her head into his shoulder, and her hair was still wet from the ocean. Her lips touched the side of his neck, and she could taste the salt on his skin, and she shivered again and said, “I’m frightened,” and he answered, “No, no, don’t be, darling,” and he carried her to the other room.

He would never forget her eyes: alert with fear at first, the pupils almost black against a narrow rim of green. The fear gradually leaving them, the lids softly closing, opening occasionally. The green turning a softer shade now, a pale jade, the eyes seeming more Oriental as a smoky opalescence claimed them. The spark of sudden passion, with the black eyebrows swooping down like earth-bound hawks, a deeper jade, a denser green, the green of a jungle, and her fingernails raking his back, and her eyes narrowing, narrowing, waiting, apprehensive, and the sudden shocking star-shell explosion of green stabbed with yellow, the hollow scream in the small room, the eyes filming, and the tears Hooding them, covering the green, spilling down her cheeks, and then the faint shaking of her head, her arms holding him tighter, her eyes adjusting to shock and pain, her teeth clenched, her eyes clenched too, closed tightly shut in excruciating agony, her head continuing to shake and nod alternately, bearing the pain and the shock with more than patience, more than willingness, the agony fleeing for an instant as her eyes reassured him, and reassured him again, and then the sudden unclenching, her head back on the pillow now, “I love you, Bud, I love you, Bud,” the light film of sweat on her upper lip, her eyes brilliant, patient now, unsatisfied but content, alert and awake to every sight, darting with every sound in the room, the distant breakers on the beach.

“I’m sorry, Helen,” he said.

“No, please.” Her eyes were warm and wide with sudden pleading. “I wanted it this way, Bud. I wanted it.”

“I love you, Helen,” he said, and she pulled him close to her, his head cradled on her breasts, and said, as she had said a long while before, “I know.”

She called her parents after they had eaten. She said the girls had decided to stay overnight, and she would be home sometime tomorrow afternoon, and would that be all right? Her father had staunchly upheld a righteous dignity in complaining about young girls who spent the night alone at a cottage on the beach, but her mother said, Yes, dear, it’s all right. Are there enough blankets?

They drove back to Brooklyn late on Sunday afternoon. She sat close to him on the seat of the old Chewy, and he looked at her face often, and her eyes were filled with deep womanly contentment.

15

second chorus, iv

MAY-SEPTEMBER, 1944

They walked home from the club together, hand in hand, idly chatting. It was a wonderful May night, with a mild breeze on the air, a canopy of stars in the near-moonless sky overhead. When they passed beneath the shade of a heavy maple, the area of sidewalk was suddenly thrown into complete darkness. Andy stopped, holding Carol’s hand so that she stopped, too. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, holding the kiss so long that she finally pulled away gasping.

“I’ve got to get home,” she said breathlessly.

“What’s the hurry?” He tightened his arms around her again, kissing her firmly. She was wearing a sweater, and he felt the warmth of her body through the wool. His fingers strayed up to her breast, and she clamped her hand onto his and pulled it away, a scolding, smiling look on her face when she looked up at him.

“Now, no,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because I say so.”

She reached up to peck him on the cheek, to show him her scolding was a thing of necessity, to show him she really liked him even if he did have wandering hands. Andy pulled her close and turned the light peck into a production number.

“Andy,” she said more sternly, pulling her mouth and his hands away. “Now, stop it.”

“Carol—”

“Just stop it,” she said severely.

“Carol,” he said awkwardly, “I love you.”

“Andy, Andy,” she said, cupping his face tenderly. “I know, Andy, but really we can’t just—”

“Carol,” he said again, kissing her, his hands roaming wildly over her back, finally seeking her breasts again, cupping her breasts until she pulled away from him angrily.

“I want to go home,” she said.

“All right,” he answered, the excitement still raging within him, his veins gorged with blood. “All right, Carol. Carol, I’m sorry, I...”

She had already begun walking. He caught up with her, and they strolled in silence to her house. He could not put down the excitement. He was trembling with the fever of it.

They climbed the front steps to her house. The porch was in deep, dark shadow.

“Good night, Andy,” she said, turning and taking his hand.

“I’ll see you Sunday?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Carol—”

“Now kiss me good night,” she said. “I have to get to sleep.”

He kissed her eagerly, and his hands went to her breasts again. He could not resist trying. He wanted to hold her breasts so desperately, wanted to touch them. She did not stop him for a few minutes. He began trembling violently, and only then did she take his hands tenderly and move them away.

“Good night, Andy,” she whispered.

“Good night, Carol. Carol, do you have to rush in? Can’t we—”

He heard the rasp of a window opening. He glanced upward guiltily.

“Carol, is that you?” a voice called.

“Yes, Louise,” she answered.

“Who’s with you?”

“Andy.”

“Don’t you think it’s time you came inside?” Louise asked.

“In a minute,” Carol said. She turned to Andy again. She kissed the palm of her hand and pressed the kiss to his cheek. “Good night,” she whispered.

He waited on the porch until she was inside. He was still trembling. He climbed down the steps and began walking toward Eastern Parkway, wondering if he should go home, not wanting to go home because the excitement was still high inside him. Maybe the boys would go for a ride later. Maybe the ride would calm him. God, how he loved her, how warm her breasts had felt, how soft and how warm. On Eastern Parkway he caught a bus, getting off at Schenectady Avenue and walking toward the club.

They stood in the driveway outside Club Beguine, in the shadow of the tall hedges marking the property line. Even in the semidarkness he could see the wild anger in her eyes. There was almost no trace of green in her eyes now. They seemed like two glistening black balls of fury, heatedly glowing beneath black winged brows.

“Who is she?” Helen asked. She was trying to control her voice, but she could not hide the fury.

“Somebody I knew a long time ago,” Bud answered.

“How long ago?”

“When I was a kid.”

“You’re still a kid! How long ago?”

“Twelve, thirteen, how the hell should I know? Frank and I used to date them. Her and her twin sister. Shirley and Bernice.”

“I thought her name was Bunny!” Helen almost spit the word.

“Well, they call themselves that. Sunny and Bunny. Look, Helen—”

“Don’t look me, Mr. Donato. Get away from me.”

“Well, for Pete’s sake, what did I do?”

“Nothing! Oh, nothing at all! You’re perfectly innocent!”

“You’re raising your voice.”

“It’s my voice, and I’ll do whatever I want with it.”

She paused, banking the fires of her fury. “Why don’t you go back inside to her?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“It seemed like you wanted to a few minutes ago. It seemed like you wanted to plenty.”

“What the hell did I do, anyway?”

“You kissed her!” Helen hurled.

“Who?”

“You! Now, look, Bud, don’t try to get out of this with that baby-blue-eyed stare. I saw you, and I’m sure the whole damn club saw you, too!”

“You’re crazy,” he said mildly.

“Oh, Buddy, please,” she said disgustedly. She paused for a long while. The driveway was very silent. “Why don’t you go back in?” she asked softly.

“I don’t want to. Helen, I—”

“Don’t touch me!”

“Helen—”

“I said don’t touch me! I’ll kill you if you touch me!”

“For Pete’s sake, a lousy kiss—”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just—”

“Why? Because she’s got ‘tail’ stamped all over her, is that why?”

“She hasn’t got anything stamped all—”

“Buddy, Buddy, you know what she is, and I know what she is, so let’s not kid ourselves.”

“You sound catty as hell.”

“I am catty as hell! Don’t deny to me why you kissed her, Bud. For God’s sake, if I can’t even go to powder my nose without—”

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “You’re imagining all this.” He was deeply troubled by her outburst, more troubled because everything she’d said was true. He did not know why he suddenly decided to renew a forgotten acquaintance with Bunny, or why he’d impetuously kissed her. God, right on the edge of the dance floor, right where everyone could see them. The kiss had been nothing more than that, pallid in comparison to what he’d known with Helen, and he’d felt immediately ashamed of himself even while performing the act. And then Helen had come into the room, and he’d felt her presence and looked up, and he’d seen the pain stab her eyes, the irises crumbling, and then the lids gently closing to hold back the pain. He’d have given his life not to have witnessed that look on Helen’s face, or to have seen that pain in her eyes. He’d turned to her, and she’d walked past him and outside, and he’d quickly abandoned Bunny. When he found Helen in the driveway, her pain had given way to a cold, unreasoning anger. His only salvation seemed to be in denial, and now that he was on that path he could see no way of turning back. He had a vague notion that the argument was terribly important, but he didn’t for a moment believe he was about to lose her.

“You’re a hell of a guy, all right,” she said. Her anger seemed to be dissipating. “The moment I turn my back, and then you lie about it! That’s what gets me! The lying!” The anger was returning. “How can you lie like that to me? What did you see in her? For God’s sake, are you blind? Can’t you see she’s just a painted tramp? Is that what you want?” She paused, her voice breaking, and he saw from her eyes that she was ready to cry, and he reached out his hand to her, but she turned her back on him. He stepped around her, saw her face crumble, and then she was sobbing soundlessly, trying to keep the silent tears back.

“Helen, I’m sorry. I—”

“Sorry isn’t enough!” she snapped.

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“Shut up! Just shut up and leave me alone.”

“All right, I lost my head, all right? I’m sorry.”

“Lost your head? Over what? For God’s sake, Bud, is that all we mean to each other? That a chippie can step in and—”

“She’s not a chippie, Helen. We happened to—”

“Don’t defend her, or I’ll crack you across the face!”

“I’m not defending her. I’m just trying to show you that it meant nothing. That it—”

“They why’d you do it?”

“I don’t know why.”

“You’ll have to do a little better than that.”

“What the hell do you want me to do?” he asked, becoming a little angry himself. “Get down on my hands and knees?”

“Yes.”

“I apologized. I said I was sorry. I’ll be damned if I’m going to—” He stopped. Her sobbing had found voice now. “Helen, look, for Christ’s sake, can’t we—” He pulled her to him, and she stood stiff as a board, not moving.

“Don’t,” she said. Her voice was bitter cold.

“Helen, can’t you see how much you—”

“Don’t. Bud, don’t, don’t, don’t!”

She pulled away from him, cupping her face. He heard the sobs erupt into full-fledged misery. He sighed heavily.

“I’m... I’m sorry I annoy you,” she said through the tears.

“You don’t annoy me,” he said patiently.

“I know I do,” she said, crying.

“All right, you do. Listen, can’t you stop that crying?”

“No,” she sobbed.

“Come on, I’ll take you home.”

“No, I don’t want you to take me home.”

“Then what the hell—”

“Take your Bunny home. Take her home and finish what you started, you bastard!”

“Then how’re you going to—”

“What do you care?” she said, her voice rising. “Why don’t you leave me alone? Why don’t you just leave me alone?” The tears came freely. She could not control them, and she did not try to control them. “Just leave me alone. Please, please, for God’s sake, leave me alone.”

“Helen...”

He heard footsteps at the end of the driveway. He peered into the darkness and saw only a figure silhouetted by the street lamp.

“Someone’s coming,” he whispered.

“I don’t care.”

“Well, can’t you stop crying? For Christ’s sake, someone’s—”

“Bud?” the voice called. “Is that you?”

“Andy?”

“Yeah.”

Helen took a tissue from her sleeve and dabbed at her face with it. Andy walked closer to them.

“Hi,” he said. “Some night, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Bud said quietly.

“I’m not breaking up anything, am I?”

“No,” Bud said.

“Will you take me home, Andy?” Helen said suddenly.

“Huh?” Andy glanced hastily to Bud tor confirmation.

“You heard her,” Bud said tightly.

“Well, gee, I don’t know. I mean... is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Helen said. “Will you take me home?”

“Take her home, kid,” Bud said. “There’s someone I have to see.”

He hesitated only long enough to see the pain register in Helen’s eyes, hating himself for hurting her that way, but protecting his adolescent pride. He turned his back then and walked toward the far end of the driveway, turning at the corner of the house and stepping down into the club. Andy watched him go, feeling quite awkward, knowing something had happened, but not knowing quite what.

“Did you have a fight?” he asked.

“Yes,” Helen said quietly. “We had a fight.”

They walked to the end of the driveway and then turned left toward Rochester Avenue. She dried her eyes again, not wanting her crying to show when they reached the lighted sidewalk.

“It’s a nice night,” Andy said awkwardly.

“Yes,” she answered. “Lovely.”

“What’d you fight about?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

They kept walking, stopping on Rochester Avenue, across the street from Somers Memorial Park. “Do we take a bus or what?” he asked.

“Let’s walk a little,” she said.

He hesitated a moment. “All right. Which way?”

She began walking without answering him, crossing Rochester Avenue and heading for the park. He walked with her, not wanting to leave her because Bud had, in essence, asked him to see her safely home. At the same time, he was not enjoying himself. He wished she were Carol, and the thought of Carol fanned the excitement that still smoldered within him.

“Your friend is a bastard,” she said.

“Huh?” He had never heard a girl use that word before.

“Bud. He’s a fourteen-carat bastard.”

“Well, gee,” Andy said. “I never thought that. You’re just sore. Because you had a fight.”

“‘There’s someone I have to see,’” she said, quoting Bud. “That rotten bastard.” She was getting angry again, just thinking about it. He had hurt her badly that night, and the hurt was beginning to fester inside. She nursed the hurt, coddled it while her anger grew. They walked into the park, passing couples hand in hand, walking beneath the spreading trees, walking on the shadow-filled concrete path that wound leisurely through the spring greenery.

“Tasteless,” she said vehemently. “Completely tasteless. I wouldn’t spit on someone like her.”

He did not answer. He let her talk.

“What am I supposed to do? Chain him? If you can’t step out of a room without someone... someone...” She clamped her mouth shut, the vision of the kiss flooding into her mind again. She could see the girl’s swollen backside in the purple silk dress. Bud’s arm around her, her painted face lifted for his kiss. Everyone watching. He cared a lot, he did. Making a fool of her that way. Advertising to the world that Helen Cantor was a lovesick kid who... “He doesn’t want love,” she said aloud. “I know what he wants. I know what he wants, the bastard. I wish I didn’t love him so much. Is love like this, Andy? Does it always hurt so goddamned much?”

“I don’t know,” he said, thinking his own love was sweet and painless. Suddenly she began crying again. She hated herself for crying, and the self-hatred sought a source, and the source was Bud. She hated him viciously in that moment, loving him at the same time, the tears scalding hot on her cheeks.

“Let’s sit down,” she said, weary all at once. “Let’s find a place to sit.”

They walked, looking for a bench, not wanting to sit next to lovers. They gave it up finally and walked onto the grass, sitting in the black shadow of a big tree, far from the concrete path.

When she stopped crying, with the hatred tears still wet on her cheeks, she asked, “Is he your best friend?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You picked a good friend.”

“He’s a good guy,” Andy said. “You just misunderstood him, Hel—”

“No, I didn’t misunderstand him.”

“Helen, he probably—”

“I could kill him,” she said tightly. “I could kill him.” Fresh tears flowed, tears of self-sympathy washing over the hatred tears, mingling with them until she could not tell the self-sympathy from the hatred. She Sung herself at Andy, burying her head in his chest, the sobs wracking her body. He tried to comfort her, but she would not be comforted. The hatred rose, and with it the self-sympathy, stronger than the hatred, choking her until she felt desperately uncertain of herself and everything around her. She sobbed against his chest, and his hand moved to her back, and he could feel the taut muscles there, and his fingers somehow tingled with the touch. She turned sideways, and he felt the electric warmth of her breast, and he pulled his hand back as if he had been burned. She was looking up at him.

“Andy?” she said desperately, her eyes wet, “does he love me?”

He did not hear what she said. He saw only her mouth, and her mouth was pleading with him, pleading for something, and he reached down and kissed her.

He pulled back suddenly, staring at her in confusion, hesitating, remembering Carol, thinking in his heart this would be unfair to Carol. She was staring up at him, surprised, and her face was a little frightened now, as if she were faced with a situation she didn’t know how to handle. He kissed her again, and she drank assurance from his mouth, and he was surprised to feel the earlier excitement Hare into life under his skin. He felt the excitement guiltily, thinking of Carol, thinking of the soft warmth of Carol’s breasts, thinking this was unfair to Carol, but pressing against Helen anyway, losing himself in her mouth.

His excitement surprised her. When he’d kissed her, she had felt only uncanny disbelief at first. And then hatred lay gleaming like a naked skull on the desert, and she thought, This is his best friend, his best friend, his best friend, and when his lips had reached tor hers the second time, she’d given them willingly, nurturing the woman’s revenge, feeling a sweet pleasure from knowing she was striking back at Bud.

His arms tightened around her, and she felt a sudden panic.

“Andy,” she said, “don’t. Bud—”

He was forcing her back onto the grass, breathing heavily now. He put his lips against hers, forced open her mouth, and thrust his tongue against her teeth. He grasped her more tightly, pinning her shoulders to the ground, and she thought desperately, What’s he doing? I’m Bud’s. I’m Bud’s! and then she felt his fingers tight on her breast. She tried to free herself, but there was a wild strength in him. She turned, and his hand caught at the buttons of her blouse, and they came free, and she felt fingers catching at her breasts, felt the nipples come unbiddenly erect.

“Andy!” she said hoarsely. “Stop! Please, you’re—”

She felt her skirt go up, and she kicked out at him blindly, and then his legs covered hers, holding her pinned to the ground, and she started to scream, but his mouth was over hers, and then his hand was under her skirt, and she moved her head from side to side, trying to dislodge his mouth, and she kicked, and suddenly she froze with the realization of what was happening in that instant, and she threw her hips up, trying to free herself, trying to get away from him, horror-stricken when her efforts helped him instead of hindering him. She lay still as a stone then, hearing the rasp of his breath, feeling the hardness of his body against her, and feeling completely dead within herself, dead and cold, dead white until he was finished with her body, and then she still lay dead, his stone’s weight upon her, the dark secret of their tangled alliance between them, dead to the strangely cruel alliance they had forged.

Frank was the first to know.

Andy stammeringly told him the story, seeking advice, wanting to know how he could possibly explain it all to Bud. Frank was the first to know, and Frank told it all to Bud, leaving none of the details out, a curiously gleeful expression on his face as he spoke. And Bud listened while Frank skillfully twisted the knife, and he wanted to punch Frank’s face, wanted to see Frank bleeding and raw, wanted to rip apart the world with his bare hands. And when Frank said, “I’m telling you this because you’re my friend, Buddy,” he sobered slightly, and he thought, Yes, Frank is a friend, a true friend, not realizing that Frank’s sole motivation had been jealousy, and not realizing that even Frank didn’t clearly understand his own motivation.

And when Frank left him, he sat alone in the sun porch with his father’s assorted collections strewn over the bridge table, with the sunlight slashing through the windows, and he wondered what to do.

And he thought, She’s to blame.

And he thought, No, he’s to blame.

And he didn’t know whom to blame because he loved them both in different ways, and the two people who’d meant most to him had seized the haft of a dagger together and conspired to stick it between his shoulder blades. He thought of going to Andy and hitting him and hitting him until Andy babbled for forgiveness, until the air was clear between them. He thought of calling Helen and concealing his hurt and his hatred, calling her and asking her what happened. Her number ran through his mind like mountain lava. He went to the phone, and he picked up the receiver, and he started to dial the number and then put the receiver back into its cradle, and then he went into the sun porch again, and the sun was just as hot, and the sun illuminated an ugly, ugly day, and he wanted to cry.

He went into the living room, and he sat at the piano, and his mother came in from the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel, her head cocked to one side, her eyes moist because her son was playing softly, the way she liked him to play.

When he left the house, he didn’t know where he was going. He walked aimlessly, and he decided to see Andy, and then he decided against it, and he decided to call Helen and went as far as the phone booth before changing his mind again. He went to see Reen because Reen was wise, and Reen was kind. But Reen had received greetings from the President of the United States, and the greetings told Reen he would be drafted in a few weeks, and Reen had headaches of his own, so Bud told him nothing.

What do I say to them, what do I say to either of them, what can I do, why did they do this to me? he thought. And he walked.

When he got home, his mother told him a girl named Helen had called. He rushed to the phone, and he started to dial, and again he didn’t know what he could say to her, and so he didn’t return her call. She called six times the next day. He did not speak to her.

At the end of May the boys gave a farewell party for Reen, and they presented him with a sterling-silver identification bracelet that night. The initials R.P.D. were inscribed on the face of the bracelet. The inscription “To the biggest and the best, from the Boys” was on the back. The boys drank a lot of beer and told a lot of stories and did a lot of reminiscing, and Andy came to Bud at about eleven o’clock, and Bud looked up from his beer and then turned away from him.

“Bud—”

“Get the hell away from me!”

“Bud, I’m sorry. Buddy, please, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Buddy,” and Bud looked up to see him crying. He reached out tentatively and then pulled his hand back, and he felt his own face beginning to crumble, and he bit down hard on his lip, and he tightened his hand around the beer glass until he thought it would shatter.

“Cut it out,” he said harshly. “The guys’ll see you. Goddamnit, cut it out!”

Andy’s shoulders heaved, and the tears streamed down his face, and then he extended his hand, and Bud squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to take the hand, not wanting to, no, no, no, and then he put out his own hand and took Andy’s and said very softly, “Forget it. It’s done with now.”

Perhaps it would have been better if, in his drunkenness that night, he had gone to the telephone and called Helen and told her that he loved her. But Andy was there, and there was Andy’s need, and the stone of responsibility was heavy within Bud, and he could see no way in his adolescence of reconciling his love for Helen and his friendship with Andy. So he had taken Andy’s hand, and Andy had stopped crying, and they drank beer and ate potato chips together, all the boys, locked in arm-in-arm camaraderie. Reen said, “I’ve only got one thing to say to you, boys,” and everyone shouted, “Speech, speech!” and Reen held up his hands until there was quiet, and then his eyes focused on Andy and Bud, and his eyes were curiously solemn, and he said, “Now, jus’ remember this. A li’l hair around the balls doesn’t make a man. Now jus’ remember that,” and everyone laughed and sang the old songs and toasted Reen and toasted Reen again, and Reen was the only one of the lot who seemed somehow sad about the whole occasion.

He left for the army the next day, and he began his training as an Infantry rifleman.

It was June, and then July, and then the summer was upon them, and one by one the boys were leaving. For Andy, this was the happiest time he’d ever known. For Andy, this was pure happiness, happiness that knew no bounds. To be with Carol and Bud, to be with his sweetheart and his best friend, this was complete happiness. If he could have chosen a time to end his life, if someone had given him the choice, he would have unhesitatingly replied, “After all this. Let the ending come after all this. Let this be the first and the only ending. Let there never be a second ending, let my life end now, after I’ve experienced all this, after all this happiness, now.”

Bud left for the navy on September eighteenth. He kissed Carol on the cheek, and then he clasped hands with Andy. He went then to join the other boys with their overnight bags in the milling line waiting for the train.

There were tears in Andy’s eyes. The tears were there because his best friend was leaving. He did not know, nor could he have known, that the end of summer was — for all practical purposes — the real end of his life.