Come and Join the Dance (12 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

T
HEY WERE IN
a part of the city she had never seen before. “The rear end of New York,” Peter called it. They had driven through Harlem, crossed an ugly bridge that squatted over an ugly, sluggish river, and now there were signs that said they were near Yankee Stadium. It had stopped raining hours ago, but there was a grayness here that was dense, smoky.

She had a feeling that everything was going to go wrong, that somewhere in one of these desolate streets a bitter point was going to be made—and the car had to be sold, left here; they could not turn it back and drive away. Its machine-gun sound was louder than ever, louder than the radio Peter had just turned on, louder than Peter's voice that had suddenly begun to talk away at her about how they were going to find the right place, get the best deal. He didn't have to sell it to a junk dealer. He didn't have to settle for forty dollars. The car was worth more, he kept saying, more. She wanted to shut the radio off, press her hand against his mouth. On the road, before, he hadn't been afraid of silence.

Because they were looking for the right place, they didn't stop anywhere. They drove slowly down every block—Used Cars! Used Cars!, cars that were dead
, Useless
Cars!, useless toy hulks piled one on top of another waiting to be burned, reduced to metal. Then they found themselves passing the bridge again. “Well, looks like we're going around in circles,” Peter said. “Not much point in that, is there? Is there?”

“I guess not,” she said softly.

They stopped for a red light and Peter looked at his watch. “It's getting late—almost ten. What time do you have to get your things out of the dorms?”

“Oh, twelve,” she said, “one—don't worry about it.”

“You have to get back,” he said. The light changed. Peter jammed his foot down on the gas pedal and the car jolted forward. “Sorry,” he muttered, but he didn't slow down. He stopped the car at the first car lot they came to. “We'll try this one,” he said. “They're all crooks anyway. You wait here—all right?” He touched her arm.

“All right,” she said.

“Better if I go in alone.” He got out of the car and slammed the door; the sound the door made, the clash of metal upon metal, kept ringing in her ears. Now he walked in front of the window, now he crossed the pavement, now he was going across the lot, a man walking all by himself between the rows of cars; now she sat in the front seat of the intricate, doomed machine that belonged to him and waited; she was somewhere in the Bronx and it was morning and the radio was playing its particular music—and the only strangeness about it was that none of it seemed strange at all.

They didn't want the car, he told her—“The bastards! Stupid bastards!” There was a flatness about his anger. He sat in the front seat staring straight ahead.

“Tell me what happened.” Oh, Peter, look at me, she thought, look at me… . “Wouldn't they give you enough money?”

“I told you,” he said, “they didn't want it. They didn't offer me anything. Not a cent. Nothing. Don't you understand?”

She was silent. Then she said, “That was only the first place.”

“The car has no value,” Peter said quietly. Suddenly he reached forward and turned the volume dial of the radio all the way up. “The next bastards will hear us coming!” And then the car was moving again.

On the next block there was another place. “We'll see what
their
story is,” Peter said grimly. But after they pulled up, he just sat at the wheel for a while smoking a cigarette. A dog was barking wildly and there was the stench of burnt rubber in the air. She saw a man sitting in front of a trailer in an enormous decrepit armchair. Above the man's head, there was a large sign:
MATTY'S SQUARE DEAL AUTO LOT. USED CARS! AUTOMOBILE PARTS!
At the bottom of the sign, in smaller letters were the words:
Beware of the dog!

“Peter,” she said, “don't try this one. Let's go somewhere else.”

“But we're here.” He stabbed his cigarette again and again into the ash tray.

“It's not a good place!” she cried. “I know it's not!”

For the moment that his eyes met hers, she saw the pain in them. Then he put his hand on the door. “It won't take long,” he said.

The dog was barking and barking. The man waited in his enormous chair.

When Peter came back to the car, he shut off the radio. “It gets better,” he said. “It gets better and better.”

This time she asked no questions.

After a while, he turned to her. “Susan,” he said, “open the glove compartment, will you? I've got a hammer in there.”

“A hammer?” she said.

“Go on—open it.”

“Are you going to fix something, Peter?”

He took the hammer from her. “No. There's something else I want to do.” He got out of the car and walked behind it.

“Peter … ”

He struck the rear window with the hammer, shattering the glass, struck it again after a moment, then again, then one of the side windows, then he walked around to the window on the other side… . It was all done without violence, as if he were performing a ceremony. Then he dropped the hammer on the pavement and got back into the car. “It's still mine,” he said to her.

Unable to speak, she nodded.

He said, “I'm sorry if I frightened you.”

“I wasn't frightened.” She hadn't been frightened at all—only sad, sad … but he wouldn't want to know about her sadness—she had come with him “just for the ride.”

Peter turned the key in the ignition. “Well, I guess we'll find a junk yard.” The machine gun began to fire again. He was backing the car into the street. “That man over there,” he said, “actually had a sense of humor. He said if he had a car like this he wanted to get rid of, he'd just drive it over a cliff.”

The old man who had come out to look at the car said, finally, “To tell you the truth, mister, I can't give you much for it. I can give you five dollars.”

“Five dollars … ” His eyes half-closed, Peter slowly shook his head. “Five dollars … ”

That was worse, she thought, than nothing at all. Much worse. A flat five dollars. If only he wouldn't settle for that—but he was going to. She knew he was going to. But the car could still run. It was big, black, powerful. It hadn't died yet. It could still carry them away from here back over the bridge. And its radio played so well. Peter could drive the car to the other side of the bridge and then abandon it.

“Ain't much demand for these here parts—an old car like this.”

“They don't make cars like this any more,” Peter said—the last time he would say that to anyone, she thought.

“That's why there ain't no demand for parts. Got to settle for scrap value. See all the scrap I got here right now, young lady?” Now the old man addressed himself to her, gesturing with a stiff arm. “Can't even get a good price for it these days.”

Peter was taking a long look at the yard, the half acre of dismembered, rusting machinery.

“Listen, mister, I ain't trying to cheat you!” the old man called out to him.

Peter was staring at the car now. “No,” he said slowly. “As a matter of fact, you've made the best offer yet. Don't you think so, Susan?” But she knew he didn't expect an answer; he hadn't taken his eyes off the car. “All right,” he said. “Sold for five dollars.”

The old man said fine, he'd be right back with the money and the papers—there were papers to fill out. Everything had to be legal. Peter said, “Just don't forget the cash,” and the old man went off laughing. Then they stood and waited, and Peter told her that if she'd left anything in the car she'd better get it, and she said she had everything.

The old man came back with the papers and Peter started to fill them out and sign them. “If you ain't legal, you're heading for trouble—right?” said the old man, and winked at her. “Hey, mister,” he said. “What about all this stuff you got back here in the car. You going to take it?”

“No,” Peter said curtly.

“You got a lot of stuff.”

“I won't be needing it. You can take your papers,” he said.

“Here's your five,” said the old man.

Peter didn't put the bill in his pocket; he kept crumpling it up in his hand. The old man was already busy taking the license plate off the car with his screwdriver. “Let's go,” Peter said to her at last. “Let's go.” He started walking fast; she followed him.

“Wait, mister!” the old man shouted.

“We're in a hurry.”

“I gotta give you your license plate.”

“Forget it!” Peter walked a little faster.

“Hey,
mister
!” The old man caught up with them. “You gotta take your license plate, mister.”

Peter stopped and faced him. “Why don't you just melt it down!” he cried. “It'll melt!”

The old man stared at him in bewilderment. “It's the law, mister.” Angrily he thrust the plate at Peter. “You do what you want with it, but I gotta give it to you.”

For a moment, Peter stood frozen, motionless. Then he reached out and took the plate.

“Okay, mister. Take it easy now.” Once again, just before he walked off, the old man winked at her.

Holding the license plate, Peter stood alone, staring back across the junk yard at the big black car with the smashed windows that had been his. In a short time he would stop looking, would turn away. He would take the license plate downtown with him and put it in a drawer in his apartment. She would not be there in the apartment with him; before that they would have said good-bye. How far away from her he had chosen to stand, how separate they were from each other. But I know who you are, she thought, I know who you are. I see you, Peter.

They walked until they came to the bridge. They found a taxi there. “The first stop will be One hundred sixteenth and Broadway,” Peter told the driver. “Then I'll be going down a little farther.”

They were sitting side by side in the back seat, and the taxi was taking them over the bridge. If there were something she could say … Suddenly she couldn't bear not telling him in some way that she was here with him, that she hadn't come just for the ride, couldn't bear not touching him. She was no longer afraid. She turned to Peter and put her arms around him, held him close to her. “Susan … ” she heard him say. He buried his face in her hair.

The taxi went on, west through Harlem, then all the way downtown. When it stopped on 116th Street in front of the dorms, she sat very still. Peter looked at her a long time. “Are you getting out?” he said.

“No,” she said softly. “Not here.”

At 111th Street, the meter read four dollars and twenty-five cents. Peter gave the driver the five-dollar bill and told him to keep the change.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I
T WAS TIME
to go.

They lay beside each other on the bed in silence. Only their hands touched, Peter's hand covering hers, pressing it down flat against the mattress—her fingers had started to ache a little. His other hand held a cigarette. He had gotten out of bed before to get it, had walked all the way across the room to the chair where his jacket was, and she had almost cried out, “No! Not yet!” but the end had already begun. Now she lay watching the wisps of smoke drift up toward the ceiling. The world was returning to her—coming in through the open window. She remembered that she had a train to catch, suitcases to pick up four blocks away, and a door to close for the last time. She was slipping away from Peter, just as he was slipping away from her. This was the end of something that had been completed.

If only there were time enough she would have liked to have fallen asleep. But it was almost two. She would get up and go quickly before there were too many words. Words would have such a heaviness. There had only been one moment when she had felt strange, unsure—it was when they first lay down on the bed together. He had looked at her before he touched her and said, “You've taken everything off.” She had known then that it wasn't going to be the same for him.

But when his mouth was on her mouth there had been a rightness about it, a rightness when his body had entered hers … and then there had come a time when she had felt herself becoming flooded with light, and she had floated up, up—toward something she had almost reached.

Slowly, she slid her hand from Peter's.

“Is it getting late?” he said.

“I'll have to get dressed.”

They lay beside each other for a moment longer. Suddenly he sat up. Turning away from her, he put out his cigarette. “I'll walk you back to the dorms,” he said. There was a hollow, remote sound about his voice.

“Peter, why don't you stay here?” she said gently. “Maybe you'll go to sleep.”

His eyes were ice-colored when he looked at her. “Maybe that is what I want.”

Letting the sheet slip away from her, she sat up.

“Susan.” Peter said her name half to himself, as if there were something he was trying to remember. Then he touched her hair. “Your hair is quite long,” he said, “after all.”

But who do you think I am? she thought. “Goodbye,” she whispered, because that was the only thing left to say now.

She got out of bed and put on her clothes—the white bra, the white slip, the white pants, the white dress. It didn't take very long. She went to the mirror that hung above the bureau and began to pull a comb through her hair. There was a girl in the mirror with a clear-eyed, still look, who didn't smile this time. She could see Peter in the mirror too—sitting up alone in the bed, watching her. It was he who had tangled her hair, given her a different face. She felt an aching sadness for him, but none, none at all, for herself. It was hard for her to think the word “love” without shyness, but maybe there were other names for love. Maybe even “good-bye” was a name for it.

“I'm ready,” she said at last, putting the comb down.

He had gotten up for another cigarette—was he afraid his face would be naked without one? Now he walked over to her and took her hand. “You're in such a hurry,” he said. “Shall I say
bon voyage
? Is that appropriate?” His hand tightened on hers. “I suppose you'd hate me if I said thank you.”

“Yes,” she said, “I think I would.”

He laughed a little painfully. “I didn't even take you to a beach,” he said, “though it wouldn't have been much fun in the rain.” For a moment he was silent. Then he said, “I didn't even make you come—I wanted to do that.”

“It was good anyway,” she said. But his face had gone blank and she knew he didn't believe her. “It was what it meant,” she said. “I knew what it
meant
.”

“Let me at least walk you to the door,” he said.

They walked out of the bedroom and down the hall and neither of them tried to say anything. He was still holding her hand. At the door, she turned and faced him and he kissed her. “Good-bye, Peter,” she said.

He let her go, opened the door for her. But just as she was leaving, he cried out, “Susan! You don't regret it, do you?”

She looked at Peter for the last time and didn't answer.

“You know,” he said, “you must never regret any thing.”

“I know,” she said.

And then she went.