Come and Join the Dance (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

S
HE HAD WALKED
the six blocks to 110th Street and seen no one, although she had even—but only out of habit because she did not really want to meet anyone—looked into all the windows of the luncheonettes and peered into the gloom of the Riverside Café, where the floor was being mopped and all the chairs were standing on the tables. It was two o'clock, and of course people would not come out for coffee until four and it was much too early for beer. She would have to be alone this afternoon. That might even be what she wanted. In fact, when she had passed Schulte's she had seen a girl at the counter with Kay's ragged dark hair and dirty raincoat and had not gone in. It was odd not wanting to talk to Kay—she would understand something like not being able to wave back at someone who was waving at you. “All right,” she would shrug, “so you did it. It's done.” Kay's acceptance would have absolved her; maybe all the brown-haired, spectacled, thin young men on the street would have ceased to look like Jerry. But Schulte's was two blocks behind her now. Should she continue walking downtown, or should she cross Broadway here as she always did and walk the six blocks back to the college on the other side of the street? I have habits, she thought bitterly, like an old woman.

She wondered what habits she would develop in Paris. Perhaps Paris would be big enough to get lost in. She had always had a horror of losing herself in unfamiliar streets. New York was a comfortable size—only six blocks long.

It had often amused her that there were no photographs of these six blocks in the brochure the college sent to prospective students. “New York will be your classroom, your laboratory,” the writer promised. Susan remembered how avidly she had studied that brochure four years ago, sitting in her little pink room in Cedarhurst. She had been almost seventeen and had taken every word of it very seriously, wondering if she would ever have the tailored ease of those girls in the photographs, smiling in front of paintings in art galleries, smiling outside theaters before curtain time, smiling against the skyline. New York was to become hers when she started college. She would know more of it than its department stores and the Radio City Music Hall; she would no longer have to catch the five-o'clock Long Island train and be back in her parents' dining room in time for dinner.

She hadn't known that her New York would be even smaller than Cedarhurst—six blocks that had no scenic interest. Susan remembered seeing them for the first time—a grayness of drugstores, butcher shops, luncheonettes, bars, laundries—it had hardly seemed worth the effort to learn her way through them. But the streets had since taken on color, had slowly accumulated layers of significance. By now they even had an odd glamour. Susan wondered what she would find if she ever came back—perhaps there would only be grayness again, as though Broadway had faded.

She pictured herself someday saying ruefully to a faceless, bored young man: “It's really a depressing place, isn't it? What on earth did people do there?” Perhaps by then it might be difficult to remember, or necessary to pretend not to. She had often, without being able to stop herself, chipped off little pieces of her past and added other little pieces—a fascinating game but the meaning of it had begun to scare her. What if you lived your entire life completely without urgency? You went to classes, you ate your meals, on Saturday nights a boy you didn't love took you to the movies; now and then you actually had a conversation with someone. The rest of the time—the hours that weren't accounted for—you spent waiting for something to happen to you; when you were particularly desperate you went out looking for it, you spent an evening in the Riverside Café, you walked down to 110th Street.

This year she had found herself taking certain risks—especially­ after Kay had quit school and moved out of the dorms into the Southwick Arms Hotel. She had kept library books out for months, she had handed in her term papers late, she had cut a dangerous number of gym classes—it was all very unnecessary, but something had made her want the feeling of living a little close to the edge; perhaps she had chosen to feel frightened rather than feel nothing at all. For the last two months she hadn't picked up her Student Mail. She was somehow unable to. She knew what would be in it—notices of events that had already taken place, terse administrative warnings: “… the books you borrowed on 2/25 are now overdue … you have not paid your assembly fine … you have not registered for tennis … ” Perhaps there was even one note that began, “You have not picked up your Student Mail for some time.” It had been sort of a private joke at first; now it was a secret source of terror. She would go out of her way to avoid meeting the postmistress—Mrs. Prosser, with her spectacles dangling genteelly from a ribbon, and her timeless gray dresses, and her sad, disdainful puzzlement over any behavior that was out of the ordinary. Why should she be afraid of Mrs. Prosser? Why should she have to make “plans” to pick up her mail some vague day when Mrs. Prosser was not on duty? She would have to confront her before graduation. There was only one week left now… .

Should she go uptown? Should she go downtown? She had no reason, no desire to go in either direction.

All around her people were being carried to their destinations. There was a stout man on the corner shouting, “Taxi! Taxi!”; busses stopped to absorb passengers; the subway rumbled beneath her feet; and each pedestrian was marching to an unknown, inevitable door. She was the only one in the street who walked aimlessly—except for the young man a few feet ahead of her, who was waiting now for the light to change.

She had watched him for several blocks. He had paused at every newsstand to read the same headlines, had lingered in front of shop windows that couldn't possibly have interested him, and he too had methodically peered into all the luncheonettes. He had a loping, undecided walk, and a head that hung forward as if it were too heavy for his shoulders. She felt a curious tenderness for him, for the back of his head, at least—she had not seen his face, but perhaps if he turned around they would recognize each other. Sometimes you came face to face with someone you didn't know, yet found yourself and the stranger exchanging a look of recognition. It seemed wasteful that she and this unknown young man were not walking together. Soon he would be across 110th Street, and she would be walking on the other side of Broadway back to the college, since after all there was no other place to go. But she wanted to see his face. She almost cried out to him, “Turn around, please!”

Just before the light changed, she saw him step forward as a car swerved around the corner. He stepped back almost casually and watched the car disappear. It was then that he turned toward her and she realized he was someone she knew—Kay's friend, Peter. Kay had met him just a few weeks before she left school, and lately she seemed always to be going over to his apartment. Susan found herself running to catch up with him.

“Hello!” she called loudly. “Hello, Peter!” When he turned, he had the look of someone startled out of sleep. “I'm just taking a walk,” she said, feeling unbearably foolish. Why was he studying her so gravely? Could he tell that she had been running? “Somehow I always meet people on Broadway.”

He smiled at her uncertainly. “I'm just taking a walk myself. Where are you headed?” he asked.

She shrugged and laughed a little, feeling that she would choke if she answered him.

“Would you like some coffee?” he said.

“Oh … ” she said. “Well, yes.”

He had an amused look—she must have sounded awfully eager. “How about the College Inn? Is that all right?”

“That's fine,” she said.

They turned and began to walk back uptown. There was a silence between them that contented her, although she usually found silence uncomfortable, a kind of failure, especially if she was with someone she did not know very well. She barely knew Peter, although she knew a lot about him because of all the things Kay had told her. Kay had taken her to some of his parties, and a few times when she had met Kay at the Riverside, Peter had sat at their table. Yet she had scarcely spoken to him. This was the first time they had ever been alone together.

When they passed Schulte's Kay was still there, sitting all by herself at the counter. Susan almost said, “Oh, look—there's Kay,” but without quite knowing why, she didn't; the silence was left intact. When they were halfway up the block she wondered whether Kay had seen them pass, not that Kay would have minded—she was beautifully unpossessive of people, and just because she talked about Peter so much, it didn't mean that she was in love with him; Kay had never said so… . Why should she have the uneasy feeling that she had done something wrong?

They were the only customers in the College Inn. They sat down in a booth near the window, considered the menu and ordered coffee. For a while, Peter stared at her across the table. His eyes were gray, deep-set, almost blank at times. His mouth was very thin when he wasn't smiling.

“Susan,” Peter said abruptly, “do you have a quarter?”

“I think so.”

“Well, find it. We can have some music.”

She began to search through her pocketbook obediently, as though young men had always asked her for quarters, and she heard Peter impatiently beating out a private rhythm on the table. “Here's one,” she said at last, dropping it into his hand.

“Excellent.” He walked to the jukebox, read the titles of all the songs, then turned to her. “What would you like to hear?”

“I don't know.”

“Are you being polite when you say that, or don't you care?”

Was he attacking her? She had a moment of panic. “I guess I don't care.”

“It's your quarter,” he said in mock reproach. “But since you're not interested, you're at my mercy.” He pressed three buttons and walked back to the booth. There was a roll of jungle drums over the loudspeaker, then a woman began to shout ferociously about love. “Don't you like music?” Peter asked anxiously. They both began to laugh. “Listen, Susan,” he said, “I'm completely broke. I can't even pay for your coffee. Does that matter?”

“Oh, I can pay for everything,” she found herself saying.

“My check probably came yesterday, but I haven't been back to the apartment yet. I spent all my money on gasoline.” He sounded apologetic, defensive, as if she had asked him for an explanation.

“I've really got lots of money,” Susan said.

“You're young—you don't have a mailbox full of bills.” His laugh was bitter. “I don't know why I came back to New York this time,” he said.

“You've been away?”

“Oh, I disappeared for a few days—I do that now and then.”

“Where do you go when you disappear?”

“This time I went to Chicago… . You've never seen my car, have you?”

“I don't think so,” she said.

“Well, you ought to come and see it. It's beautiful. A big black Packard—1938. It's the only beautiful thing I own. It's starting to fall apart now.” He sounded very sad when he said that; the car seemed to be more than just a car to him. “I should have made this trip a long one—God, I felt like it!”

“Why didn't you?” she asked shyly.

He took a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. “No money, for one thing,” he said in a flat voice. “Obligations—I'm supposed to finish my thesis next semester. I can't keep getting checks from home for the rest of my life.”

“Are you almost finished?” she asked.

“I've been ‘almost finished' for the last five years.”

“Maybe you don't want to finish. I mean, maybe you don't want to find out what's going to happen to you next… . ” Peter was silent. She felt terribly embarrassed. Why on earth had she said that to him?—he was someone she hardly knew.

But then he said, “Maybe I don't,” and she could tell he wasn't angry. He leaned toward her across the table with a sudden eagerness. “You know, Susan, I've never heard you say anything before. You come to my parties with Kay, you sit on the sofa, you listen to someone very dutifully, and every now and then you tell a story or a little joke—and that's all.”

She laughed painfully. His description was accurate. “Isn't that enough?”

“I don't know—is it? Is it enough for you?”

Carefully, she folded her paper napkin into a triangle. “I really don't want this conversation,” she said.

“Of course you don't,” she heard him say.

“I don't see why everybody has to be so terribly warm and interested in everyone they meet just because they're afraid they'll be caught being trivial.”

“But is that what we're doing?” he said quietly.

“I don't know.” She had a feeling of helplessness, of vast ignorance. “I never really know whether or not I mean what I'm saying anyway.”

“By the time you're my age you'll know even less.”

“Your age! You're not that much older than I am.”

“I'll be thirty in October.”

“
You
thirty?” She laughed in disbelief.

“I thought you knew,” he said.

She realized that of course she had known it all along—Peter's age, a piece of information. She had taken it for granted and then forgotten it, perhaps when she had seen him talking politics excitedly with Anthony Leone, who was only eighteen, or when he had been a little drunk at a party once and had done a crazy, disorganized dance in the middle of the room to please a girl and then had followed her around saying, “Listen now, don't be that way,” while the girl giggled nervously. She looked at him again now and saw that he was indeed almost thirty; his face was hollower than Jerry's would be for many years. She remembered Kay telling her that Peter had once been married; she remembered hearing someone refer to him as “that perpetual student.” Five years was a long time to work on a thesis. There was a desk in his living room with piles of manuscript and journals on it, all thick with dust.