Chocolates for Breakfast Page 10

  There were dead leaves in the swimming pool. He climbed the stairs to his apartment, and unlocked the door. The living room was dim; evening came early these days.

  “Hiya, Barry.”

  “George! My God, what are you doing here?”

  He came out of the bedroom, wearing his Levi’s low on his hips, the Levi’s that left no part of his body to the imagination, and a tee shirt. His leather jacket was on the couch, beside a can of beer.

  “I couldn’t find that Western I left by the couch,” he said, settling himself with the can of beer. “Apartment looks very clean,” he continued. “She’s been cleaning it, I suppose.”

  “Now, look, George—”

  ‘You’ve been eating in,” he went on. “Not eating at Schwab’s any more. She a good cook, this broad?”

  “For Chrissake.”

  “You haven’t called,” he said, finally angry. “You haven’t called in almost three months. I’ve checked my answering service every day to make sure. No call from Mr. Cabot. No call, because Mr. Cabot has been making it with a little girl. A snotty kid. He’s ashamed of me, Mr. Cabot is. He’s trying to forget he knows me, or that he ever knew me so well.”

  “I’ve been working,” Barry floundered. “I’ve been busy as hell.”

  “Busy making love, you little sonavabitch. No time for me any more. The hell with all those months when you were broke and I supported you. And the time you went on that binge and I found you in a bar downtown with a fever of a hundred and three, and brought you home and took care of you, got a doctor and brought you your meals. You’ve forgotten all that, and you’ve forgotten the nights when you could sleep and you weren’t afraid, because I was here. I don’t mean anything to you any more.”

  “George, you’re wrong. She doesn’t mean anything to me. She’s just—a convenience.” Christ, where had it gone, his courage, his manliness, his loyalty?

  “Then why haven’t you called me? I sit home alone, and there isn’t any call, there isn’t anything. And I’m broke, I live on spaghetti for Chrissake, and there isn’t even any call from you.”

  “George.” And his face was solemn and tender. “George, look. I didn’t mean to hurt you, God damned if I did.”

  “You know that when you don’t call, and everybody knows you’ve got this little broad and I’m a laughing-stock—”

  “Everybody knows!”

  “Well, all right, they don’t, but they know you’ve got somebody, because you just aren’t around any more.”

  “George. Look, George, listen.” My God, she was going to be here any minute, she would walk in, and what a helluva thing for her to go through, finding George here, this lovely young girl, and he had wanted to keep this ugliness from her.

  “George, I’ll call you tonight, and you come over for a drink, and everything will be all right again. I’ve been a son of a bitch, okay, but I’ll explain it to you and I honestly—believe me, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “You trying to get rid of me.”

  “No, it isn’t that, it isn’t—for Christ’s sake, I’ll call you, but I can’t talk to you now!”

  “She’s coming. She’s coming here and you’re ashamed of me. You’re always ashamed of me.”

  “Get the hell out of here.” He spoke quietly, the quiet voice in anger that he was famous for, the controlled and dangerous voice. “I said, get out of this apartment. I don’t care if you have a key, this is my apartment, and get out of it.”

  George stood up in a fury, his husky body tensed. Barry was afraid.

  “George, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean it, George.” Maybe he could call her—but no, she was on her way. Maybe he could stop her before she came in, tell George he was going for a walk. No, that was crazy. There wasn’t a thing he could do.

  George smiled at the fear in the other man’s face.

  “I’ll go, Barry.”

  Thank God, Barry thought.

  “I’ll go,” George went on, “and I won’t call you or come here again. I won’t embarrass you in front of her, she’s so Goddam special to you. But you’ll wish to Christ you hadn’t done this. You’ll wish to Christ.”

  Courtney passed him on the street as she came to Barry’s apartment. He was wearing his leather jacket, and he was sweating. He pretended not to see her. When she passed him, she ran, past the swimming pool with the dead leaves and up the pastel stairs, to Barry’s apartment.

  He was sitting with a water glass full of gin, drinking it very quickly.

  “Barry. Darling.”

  She had never called him “darling” before, a simple term; she had never used words of endearment. It slipped out. She went to him and put her hand on the glass to take it from his so that she could hold him in her arms.

  “Let me alone. Let me alone, for God’s sake.”

  He took her wrist with a grip so hard it hurt her, and he threw her hand down.

  “Barry, don’t drink like that. You’re on the verge of another binge, a real bender. I thought you’d stopped that. Don’t drink like that, I’ll have a drink with you, and we’ll make love—”

  “I said let me alone.”

  She got up and went to the kitchen. She took the gin and started to pour it out.

  He came in and took the bottle from her and he slapped her, three times, in his fury and confusion. At that moment he would have fought her for it.

  She ran into the bedroom and shut the door, and she lay on the bed and cried uncontrollably. In a while she had quieted herself. She would leave when she had stopped crying completely, she would run through the living room where he was sitting so that he wouldn’t talk to her, and she would leave him alone because there was no place for her here. If only she could stop crying. The room was so dark, the room was so ugly. She buried her head in his pillow. In his pillow. In the room, on the bed, where they had made love, and the room was so ugly, and she wanted to leave. If only she could stop crying.

  A hand was on her shoulder, a strong and gentle hand.

  “Court.”

  “I don’t want you, Barry.”

  He turned her on her back, almost angrily, with his hands on her shoulders.

  “It’s all so ugly, Barry.”

  He took his hands away and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I didn’t want you to see this,” he said softly.

  “It isn’t just him, Barry. I knew about that even before I met you. It’s me, too. It’s getting on the bus and looking around when I get off and coming here and making up stories to tell Mummy.”

  “Everything would have been all right if George hadn’t come here. But I sent him away. And now it can be just the way it was before.”

  She sat up and took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. She had stopped crying now.

  “It’s gray. It’s gray and dim. Do you know what I mean? It’s dead leaves in the swimming pool and smoke in the bedroom. But I guess that doesn’t make any sense to you.”

  “Yes, darling, it makes sense to me. But life just isn’t clear-cut and bright colors. There’s the ugliness everywhere, and we just pretend not to see it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be like that. I won’t settle for its being like that. I won’t live in the ugliness and subterfuge and making love just because we like it, and being so careful so that I won’t get pregnant, and perverting everything.”

  “We’re not perverting anything. It isn’t like that with us.”

  “Oh, Barry, just stop talking.”

  “What do you want, darling? Do you want to stop?”

  “No. No, I don’t. But I don’t want to live this way. Yes, I do want to stop, because it isn’t young any more. It’s middle-aged and gray and confused. But I don’t want to stop coming here. Maybe I could just come and we could talk and—”

  She looked at him, sitting on the edge of the bed, and she knew that it could never be like that. He wasn’t looking at her, he was staring out the window at the naked branches of the winter trees and th
e room was dark and still.

  “I need you,” he said. “Help me.”

  “Help you. Help you to stop loving young men. Give myself for that. I’m worth more than that.”

  She didn’t know why she spoke to him so angrily, why she wanted to hurt him. He sat in silence and then he turned to her, and his face was as it had been when he slapped her. He leaned across her body and held her wrists so tightly that it hurt her.

  “You bitch,” he said. “You whore.”

  Chapter 12

  It was a very cold day, and Courtney was wearing her Scaisbrooke polo coat. She was glad that school was out for the day; perhaps when she got outside and left the stuffy classrooms she wouldn’t feel so sleepy. It had gotten worse again, the sleepiness that frightened her. She would walk to the bus stop, and go down to Barry’s apartment. Not because she wanted to. It was a habit now, a hollow habit. They had never regained what they had had in the beginning, the discovery. It was no good any more; not the love, the love was always good. But she would go down there and they would pretend to talk to each other. It was as she walked down the steps with these thoughts, apart from her schoolmates, that she saw Al.

  He was standing beside his car at the front of the steps. He had been waiting for her because, when she came down, he opened the car door.

  “Al! How great to see you!”

  “Get in.”

  “Well—”

  He shut the door and got in the other side and started the car; he didn’t turn toward Sunset but headed straight downtown.

  “I’m taking you to dinner. I imagine you haven’t had a good dinner in quite a while.”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you, Al, but I’m afraid I have another date.”

  “Not tonight you don’t.”

  “What’s this bit?”

  “I have a great deal to talk to you about.”

  “To me? What’s wrong?”

  “Look, we’ll talk after we’ve both had a drink and we’re sitting down. Not now.”

  Well, what the hell, thought Courtney. Maybe it would be good for Barry to sit and wait for her and not have her arrive, for a change. Al certainly had something on his mind. He was right, too, that she hadn’t had a good dinner in weeks.

  The restaurant was large and massive, with a lot of heavy wood, and they brought the cuts of roast beef around for their approval before cooking them. This wasn’t so bad, after all. She was sure that she was going to get a lecture of some sort, but at least she would get a good dinner.

  “All right, Al. We’re both fortified with our drinks. What’s the lecture?”

  “It’s not a lecture. I just want to get some things straightened out, and maybe get you straightened out.”

  “What about? I may not be doing much work at school, but I have a B average. I haven’t had any fights with Mummy, I’ve been living within my allowance—”

  “It’s about Barry Cabot.”

  “What about Barry Cabot.” She took another sip of her dry martini.

  “You know George what’s-his-name, the guy Cabot had this thing with.”

  “I met him once, why?”

  “I was having dinner at Googie’s last night, and he sat next to me. Now, this is a guy I never talk to, because he’s just the sort of guy I never have dealings with if I can avoid it, and I usually can.”

  “Mmm.” She sounded bored because she was worried.

  “So he started to talk to me, and I didn’t object because I have learned that it does not pay to be rude to anybody in this town. You never know when someone comes in handy.”

  “Yes, well get to the point.”

  “So he started to talk about your mother, and how he never saw her around any more, and he guessed she was broke. I thought, knowing I am her business manager, that he was trying to find some gossip, so I just said, ‘Yes, she has left the Garden; she’s living in Beverly Hills because her kid goes to school there.’ I was not going to give him any satisfaction because I do not like the guy.”

  “So?”

  “So he started to say what a great person she is, and right away I knew something was funny, because he doesn’t know her particularly and I always thought he didn’t like her. He doesn’t like any woman Cabot likes. But I said, ‘Yes, she is a great person,’ to see what he was leading up to.”

  “You’re taking an awfully long time on this story.”

  “So then he said, ‘It’s a shame her kid turned out the way she did.’ Well then I had an idea of what he was going to say, because he knows I know your mother very well and take a kind of personal interest in you two. So I asked him what he meant. So, he said in a real offhand way, ‘I mean the way the kid has been living with some actor.’ Right away I shut him up. I said, ‘I’m sure that’s some lousy rumor,’ and he had finished his coffee and saw I was not a good target for his gossip, so he kind of shrugged and pretty soon he left.”

  “Well, Al, you know what these fags are like. He doesn’t like Mummy, and he has never liked me, ever since he saw me that night when I had a drink with Cabot at the Thespian, last summer. They’re real bitchy, these fags.”

  “Look, kid. I’m no fool. I’m not Sondra Farrell. I know this actor he was talking about was Cabot, only he was too jealous to admit you were having an affair with him. Remember, I predicted this several months ago. George expected me to run to your mother and tell her, but I’m not that kind of a guy. Now, I want you to give it to me straight.”

  Courtney finished her drink.

  “I’d like another, Al.”

  “You drink too much, for a kid. One is enough.”

  “Are you trying to legislate my drinking?”

  “Somebody’s got to legislate something.”

  “I said I wanted another drink.”

  “All right,” he sighed. He signaled to the waiter.

  “Another round.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a silence. Al looked at Courtney. Five years he had known her, almost six. There was no question any more about her being a woman. She looked like a woman, even though she was sixteen. The waiter never questioned her being twenty-one. Well, she had the body, and she had that look, the absence of the hardness and unsureness of a kid.

  “Yes, Al. You’re right I have been having an affair with Barry Cabot. But I haven’t been living with him,” she added hastily. “I’ve just been having an affair with him.”

  “Sweetie, I thought I told you not to pin your need on a guy like Cabot. I thought I told you that.”

  “Yes, you did, Al. That day when we were moving out of the Garden. But you were wrong. I did pin my need on him, and he filled it.”

  “That bastard. A kid like you.”

  “No, Al. That’s what I thought you would say. People always think a girl’s first lover takes advantage of her. But I wanted it, nobody took advantage of me. You could almost say I instigated it. I don’t know what this myth is about men seducing innocent young girls. It isn’t that way at all.”

  “Look, doll. I can see this a little more clearly than you can. I saw the same thing, I saw the same young woman. But when I kissed you, I knew you were a kid, a moral, innocent kid, a little wooden doll. And I cared too much about you as a person to change that. This guy saw the same thing; don’t kid yourself that you looked like a femme fatale. You looked like a helluva sexy kid. So he made love to you, this faggot, because if he was lousy, you wouldn’t know the difference.”

  “Al, don’t talk like that. He isn’t that way at all. You’re a man, and men hate him because he’s a fag, but he isn’t really—I used to think I knew what a fag was, but now I don’t know at all. I don’t know how I would have—I mean, I needed him. Not just anybody, I needed him. And he’s a man, you know, my lover. He’s a fag but I found that doesn’t mean anything, it just means he’s more sensitive, and he—well, he needs me. That’s what’s important to me. He needs me.”

  The waiter brought their drinks.

  “Look, what you say ab
out the guy’s virtues doesn’t interest me. You’re obviously in love with him, for some reason. If you know what it’s all about.”

  “I’m not a kid any more, Al.”

  “Yes, you are. Even though you’ve made love, you’re still a kid. That doesn’t mean anything, you know. Well, yes it does, but it isn’t any indication of maturity, even sophistication. Other girls your age make out with boys, you just happened to go to bed with a guy.”

  “It makes a great deal of difference. Mostly with Mummy. I’m so conscious of being not her daughter but another woman.”

  “No. No, it won’t make any difference in you yet. But it will if you go on with this. You know, it isn’t any good for you, this bit. You aren’t the kind of kid who can get away with it. You’re too much of an idealist to do something shoddy.”

  “It isn’t shoddy, Al.”

  He looked at the girl, his Manhattan part way to his lips.

  “Well, all right. It is. You know me too well. But I tried to stop, Al, honestly I did.”

  He took a sip of his drink.

  “I don’t like it. It only increases the loneliness that made me start the whole thing. And worrying about getting pregnant, and watching the date, and all that grubby bit, that shabby, lonely bit. I don’t tell Barry about that, I don’t feel I can. I feel the worry and the guilt are my problem, and I have no right to inflict it on him.”

  “You have a lot of guts, Court, you always have had. Why don’t you just pull yourself together?”

  “Pull myself together! Pull myself together. That’s a lousy line, it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I mean, stop hurting yourself. Because you are, you know. People are going to find out, and even if they don’t, you’ll know you have something you have to hide from people, a part of yourself that you can’t let the world know about. It’s easier to conform.”