Boys & Girls Together (60 page)

Authors: William Goldman

Jenny, you’re unavoidable, Charley thought.

—his faithful secretary, who’s this great sweet girl who loves him from afar but in the end he stays with his wife on account of the kids and ... Charley began thumbing through the book. Then he said “Bingo” out loud because he found the first sex scene between Pete and Helen, his faithful et cetera. Charley started reading after the dot-dot-dot double space:

“I wanted that,” Helen said. She cradled him in her arms.

Pete looked at her. “God,” he said. “God.”

“I hate her,” Helen said then, and there was no denying the passion in her voice. “That wife of yours. That Doris. I wish she were dead.”

“Why didn’t I meet you before?” Pete said. He grabbed her long black hair. “Darling.” His lips bruised hers ...

Charley rubbed his mouth. Our dialogue was better, he thought, Jenny’s and mine, and he closed his eyes, remembering what they had said. Well, he admitted then, when you come right down to it, our dialogue wasn’t all that hot either. There’s not much you can do with the moment; everybody’s read it before, so it’s best just to hurry on by. Charley flicked a few pages farther in the book until Pete Fletcher was walking by himself at three o’clock in the morning, staring moodily at the Hudson River and ...

I’ve got no patience with you, Pete. Not with you, not with me. I’ve edited this scene fifty times in my life and every time I edit it I have no patience with the damn man and his breast-beating, because this is a world in which you get what you pay for, so just forget what you did, because Jenny has by now, probably, and if she has, she’s smart, so you be smart too. You’re not the office stud like Archie Wesker. It may kill you to admit it, but you’ve done some things you can be proud of.

You’re not a bastard! We know that already!

What he wanted, suddenly, was somebody to hit, hard, except he didn’t do that kind of thing, but he wanted to anyway, the feeling was there, so naturally he thought about the night he first met Connie. He was living all alone in a cell of an apartment between Tenth and Eleventh in the West Forties, and his one and only novel, his bad book about the war, had just begun its string of rejections. He was just six months out of the University of Chicago and when he got the invitation to the Covington Academy reunion he decided not to go several times before he went. The reunion was set for a room in the Yale Club, and as he sat in his cell and fingered his invitation Charley felt very alone and wildly poor. The loneliness he was used to; the loneliness he could cope with.

Not so the poverty.

True, he had been born poor, poor in a rich kid’s world, but that was all so long ago. Nobody cared in the Army and nobody cared at Chicago, and when he came to New York to live the shock of being poor again was sudden and cold and lingering. So he decided not to go, but then he changed his mind, and as he entered the room at the Yale Club he realized how right he had been the first time. He would have left then, turned and slipped out, except someone said “Charley” and took his arm and steered him into the crowd at the bar. Everyone was very well dressed, but so, he told himself, was he. Didn’t he have on his good suit? Besides, from the outside, who could tell a thing about the lining? Charley ordered a Scotch and looked around. There were a number of pretty girls, some of them wives, some just girls, and the men were sleek and handsome, so Charley moved quietly to the edge of things, standing alone, watching all the rich kids play. When the totally unfamiliar girl began walking toward him he tried frantically to remember who she was, but he couldn’t. “You’re Charley Fiske,” she said.

“How are you, you look marvelous, great to see you,” Charley said, feeling completely phony and blissfully at home in the Yale Club.

“No,” she said, and she flushed. “No, we’ve never met. I watched you play, though. You were the fullback.”

“I’m sorry,” Charley muttered.

“Forget it.”

“No, you don’t understand, coming on the way I did. I don’t do things like that.”

“Except you just did.”

“Except I just did.”

“I’m Connie Donaldson. I’m here with Timmy Brubaker.”

That surprises me, Charley thought. Because you’re not pretty enough, and until you told me who you were here with, I thought you might be nice. “Good old Tim.”

“Yes. Well, he sent me here to fetch you.”

“Good old Tim.”

“Yes. Well, he’d like to talk to you but he’s all tied up with that group over there and he can’t get away.”

“Consider me fetched,” Charley said. They moved across the room. “What’s Tim doing nowadays?”

“Nothing. I mean, he’s in his father’s business. I don’t know what he’s doing. Ask him what he’s doing. What are you doing?”

Charley said nothing. Then Timmy Brubaker stood before them, tall and casual, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, chatting quietly with the Keeler twins, Ronald and Donald, who flanked him on either side, a mirror Army. Several others milled around Timmy, who was, to Charley’s disgust, both better- and richer-looking than anyone had any legal right to be.

“Hello, Fiske,” Timmy Brubaker said when it was Charley’s turn.

Charley nodded, wondering if Timmy remembered the day when he said, “That isn’t real suede.”

“What are you up to these days?”

Charley shrugged.

“School?”

“Chicago. University of. The.”

“Excellent.”

“Thank you. I’ll write Bob.”

“Bob?”

“Hutchins.”

“Ah,” Timmy said. “A joke.”

I may just kill you, Charley thought.

“How was your war?” Timmy asked.

“My
what
?”

“You were in, weren’t you? Did you fly? I flew.”

“Yes, I was in. No, I didn’t fly.”

“I heard you did well.”

I believe it, Charley thought, and he looked around at the room in the Yale Club because it helped him envision the world where one man might say to another, “Do you remember Fiske? The football ox, the janitor’s son? I hear he did well in the war.”

“I really don’t like you,” Charley said, and as he said it he thought, I’ll bet you don’t hear me.

“Good to see you, Fiske,” Timmy Brubaker said. “You’re looking well.”

“Bingo.”

“Pardon?”

“I made a bet with myself and I won. So I said ‘bingo.’ ”

“Ah.” He got ready to turn. “Perhaps we’ll run into each other again.”

“I’m unfetched?”

“Pardon?”

“Do you remember a jacket of mine? A suede jacket?”

“Yes. It wasn’t real.”

Charley unloaded. He was a trifle overweight at the time, two hundred and thirty, but he was by no means fat, and his hands were hard, and Timmy Brubaker said “Oof” as Charley’s left entered his stomach, “Ahh” as Charley’s right contacted his chin. Then he fell into the arms of Ronald or Donald Keeler.

“Hey!” the free Keeler cried.

“And that goes for your cat too,” Charley said, and he swung from his heels and connected and as his opponent slumped Charley whirled, thinking he had best get the hell out because he had caused a disturbance at his prep-school reunion and he didn’t do things like that.

He walked back to the bar and ordered another Scotch. Then he moved to a chair and sat down. He sipped his drink, staring at Timmy Brubaker, who, visibly distressed, was lying sprawled in the middle of the floor in the middle of the room in the middle of the Yale Club.

Charley beamed.

“How can you smile like that?”

Charley studied Connie Donaldson a moment. She seemed to be angry, so he stopped looking at her face, which was all right, not a great face, not bad, and concentrated on her body. But she was wearing one of those black dresses that make it hard to tell.

“What did Timmy Brubaker ever do to you?”

“He insulted ...” My poverty, Charley was about to say. “He insulted me.”

“He did not. I was right there. I heard every word he said. When did he insult you?”

“Twenty years ago.”

“Twenty—”

“I’m very moral. I believe in punishing the bad guys whenever possible. Sometimes it takes a while.”

“I think you ought to apologize to Timmy Brubaker.”

“What was your name?”

“Connie. Connie Donaldson and I think you ought to apologize to Timmy Brubaker.”

“Oh,
screw
Timmy Brubaker.”

She looked at him for a long time. “He is kind of awful,” she said finally.

“What are you doing out with him?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing out with him?”

“Just what I said. What are you doing out with him?”

“He asked me! I’m twenty-four years of age and I’m single and when a boy asks me to go out with him, I go!”

“Any boy?”

“Within reason.”

“Am I within reason?”

“I think so.”

“Then go out with me.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“But I’m with Timmy Brubaker.” She looked at Charley for a long time. “Oh,
screw
Timmy Brubaker,” she whispered finally and, immediately thereafter, blushed. Then she said, “I’m embarrassed, so please ...” And then she said, “Except I don’t want to make a thing out of it. I don’t like that. Do you like that? People who make things out of things? I don’t. I don’t even know quite what I’m saying, but I’d most enjoy going someplace with you except that if I think about it I probably won’t, because I shouldn’t, so get me out of here.”

Charley got her out of there.

They spent the next few hours exploring Grand Central Station, because it was right across the street and because you could explore it for nothing and because, most of all, Charley had always planned on someday spending an evening exploring Grand Central Station. They did not take sixteen trains which traveled eventually through a total of thirty-seven states and would have cost them, had they been married and gone in style, more than three thousand dollars, not counting meals.

When they finally did take a train it was the shuttle, across town to Times Square, where they transferred to the uptown Broadway express, getting off at 96th Street, walking quietly to Connie’s apartment, on the top floor of a five-story brownstone on 94th Street, between Broadway and West End. Her place was bigger than his, but still small, and the furniture, though in good taste, was obviously Salvation Army Modern. Before he said good night he asked her out for the following evening, Monday, and she graciously accepted, and on Monday evening he asked her out for Tuesday, on Tuesday for Wednesday. They continued, nightly, to go out, but after Wednesday he stopped asking; there didn’t seem to be any real reason to ask. They both assumed that when they had free time they would spend it together, and together they endured the winter, welcomed the spring.

What he liked about her, among other things, was that she was poor. Among the other things were: a certain attractiveness, a certain wit, a definite desire to be kind. But the main thing was her poverty. They were poor, the both of them, so he didn’t have to be embarrassed if his collar was frayed, his sports coat slightly out of style. And when he was able actually to
spend
some
money
, on a steak dinner or a balcony seat at a play, she
appreciated
it.

What he didn’t like about her, among other things, was that she was poor. Among the other things were: she admired him too much and excited him too little, though the former bothered him only occasionally, the latter less than that. But the main thing was her poverty. He respected her and her aims. He had known many who claimed an interest in social work, but Connie was the only one who actually did it for a living.
What kind of a living
,
though?
Charley plagued himself with that question. He had no money, neither did she, so whenever he thought about the kind of future they might have together he quickly changed the subject.

All in all he liked her a great deal more than not. She liked him too, or so he assumed, but the exact extent of her caring was something he more or less ignored until the day she said, obviously embarrassed, that she thought it might not be a half bad idea, if he didn’t mind, for him to meet her parents. He didn’t mind—why should he mind?—so it was arranged for the following Sunday.

Late Sunday morning, precisely on schedule, he picked her up, and she kissed him full on the mouth, which surprised him, since she ordinarily didn’t do that kind of thing. He told her she looked very pretty, which was almost true, and she examined his clothing with quiet concentration before finally nodding, one time, and kissing him again. They walked down the five flights and when they reached the street she took his hand and kissed it, explaining that although she ordinarily found him irresistible most of the time, she found him particularly irresistible on warm Sundays in April, but that he shouldn’t be at all surprised, since it was a trait that ran in the women of her family, finding men particularly irresistible on warm Sundays in April and—

“What are you so nervous about?” Charley said.

“I’m not nervous. Who’s nervous? Just because I’m babbling doesn’t mean I’m nervous. Some people babble when they’re perfectly relaxed and I’m of that ilk. Did you know I was of that ilk? ‘Ilk’ is a funny word. Don’t you think ‘ilk’ is a—”

“Your folks won’t hate me. I’ll charm them or die in the attempt.”

“I know you will. But that’s not what I’m nervous about.”

“Then what is?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“Forgotten.”

“Listen, the thing is I’m rich.”

“Rich?”

“That’s right.”

“You mean really rich?”

“I guess so.”

“You mean you’ve got money?”

“Yes. I’ve got money. I’m rich.”