Fridays at Enrico's (16 page)

“I was raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn,” Marty said. “This is heaven.”

“What brought you out here?” Stan asked.

“Reed College.”

Charlie came out, carrying a can of beer. “Come on, you guys,” he said, and led them down a trail between the trees. In a couple of minutes they were out of range of the house, and all Stan could hear were the birds in the trees and the sounds of their feet on the soggy ground.

“Watch out for large furry animals,” Marty said.

It was hot and muggy in the forest, the green undergrowth up to their knees and the ground mushy underfoot. Charlie led them to a clearing. In it stood a few scraggly rows of small yellow-green plants. Charlie pointed proudly. “Marijuana,” he said. “The crop of the future.”

“My goodness,” Marty said, grinning. “Isn't it illegal to grow this stuff?”

“It's not mine,” Charlie said blandly. “Although I plan to smoke it.”

“Whose is it?” Marty said stupidly.

“Hey,” Stan said to him. “Cool it.”

“Should be ready for plucking in about a month,” Charlie said.

“Keep me informed,” Stan said with a sly smile. He had smoked a little reefer. He loved it.

“If they catch you smoking this stuff,” Marty said, “they make you go to Lexington, Kentucky, to be cured.”

“Don't be afraid,” Stan said. He winked at Charlie, who winked back. “Don't be afraid” was one of their favorite lines from
The Enormous Room
, which Charlie had loaned Stan a month ago. The walked back to the house and Stan was emboldened to say to Marty, “You know not to say anything, don't you?”

Marty looked at him. “I keep forgetting you're a criminal.” But he smiled as he said it.

28.

“You have no character,” Linda told Stan. They squatted down next to Charlie's marijuana plants. She reached out to touch his cheek. “No lines of character. Nobody ever told you how to be. You're fresh clay, Stan. All you need is molding.”

He blushed angrily, caught out. Of course he didn't have any character. But why bring it up now? Because he'd shown her Charlie's marijuana? He hadn't meant to.

“Where did you boys go?” she had asked. She took his hand and they walked off into the trees. She seemed to be leading, but they ended up at the clearing. “God, how great,” she said, squatting down.

“I didn't mean to bring you out here.” Her touch burned his cheek.

“You need a mentor,” she said. “Somebody to guide you. And Charlie's the one.”

“He's my teacher,” he said stupidly.

“Charlie's a great man,” she said, and took back her hand, sitting on the ground. Stan sat and immediately felt the wet seeping through his pants. She was beautiful. She had on a light blue men's workshirt tied at the waist, and cutoff jeans, showing a lot of white skin. She kept on about Charlie, what a great writer he was going to be, and what a good man he already was. She was making Charlie sound like Jesus Christ.

“Did you know he was a war hero?” she asked.

Stan shook his head. He was beginning to wonder if Charlie and Linda weren't lovers after all. She seemed to know a lot about him.

“I guess you wish he was here instead of me,” he said, and immediately regretted it. The words just slid out of his mouth, and he watched her to see the curl of contempt. But she smiled at him sadly and put her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him in for a kiss, her tongue sliding into
his mouth, the smell of her filling his mind so that he couldn't think, only feel. He took hold of her unthinking and pushed her to the ground. They kissed passionately, and then she was lying on top of him and he could feel her breasts. She moaned heavily, kissing his face. His cock was hard and getting harder as she pushed her pelvis into his, and with a feeling of complete freedom he realized they were going to make love, right here in the woods, under the sky, Stan and Linda.

But no. She pulled back, panting, and sat up. “Oh God,” she said. Stan sat up. His pants and shirt were wet and dirty, and he started brushing himself off. He panted a little himself, and could hardly believe that she'd pulled away just at the moment he was certain she wouldn't. She had sticks and wet leaves stuck to her, and he helped brush her off, too.

“Uh-oh.” She gestured and Stan saw they'd rolled on some of the little marijuana plants. Linda laughed, and tried to upright the plants, but some were crushed flat. “Good thing we didn't fuck,” she said. “Or the whole crop would have gone.” She laughed again, a bright sharp laugh, and held out her hand. He scrambled to his feet and pulled her up.

“Just one of those passionate moments,” she said to him as if it hadn't meant much, but then she took his hands and kissed them. All his mixed-up emotions calmed at once. “Thank you for not taking advantage,” she said, and they walked back to the house. Charlie was going to know somebody had been rolling around on his marijuana, but Stan hoped he wouldn't find out who. Actually, he didn't give a damn. Caught rolling around with Linda? Guilty.

The party went late. Stan had been going to catch a ride back to town, but Charlie said, “Hell, spend the night. I'll take you back tomorrow.” And so Stan spent a quiet Sunday with the family. He slept in Charlie's office, sleeping bag on a cot, but comfortable, and at some point during the night the little kitty jumped up and slept on him, purring loudly at first and then falling asleep pushed up against his legs. Stan was afraid to move. He didn't want to irritate the cat. In the morning he was the first up, but after sitting at the kitchen table by himself for twenty minutes, afraid to make coffee for
fear of waking anyone, Edna came to the door wrapped in a pink bathrobe. “I'll make coffee,” she said, and started right in. Soon they all sat around the table, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. The radio was playing classical music and Jaime was feeding the baby in her high chair. Stan and Charlie both admitted having headaches from drinking all that beer. But Charlie didn't have to write that day. They didn't write on Sundays. “You have to take one day off a week,” Charlie said. “Or you go crazy.” Charlie wrote every morning for at least an hour, and Jaime wrote at least an hour during the day. What discipline, Stan thought. None of that “inspiration” crap, just turn it out, scribble scribble, every day but Sunday.

They really did nothing. Picked up the house and put all the beer and wine bottles in the garbage. For lunch Jaime cooked fried chicken, and they sat out in back at the picnic table and talked about what vegetables they would grow this summer. It was time to plow and plant. Stan immediately volunteered to help with the truck garden. “If you need somebody to pull weeds,” he said. Maybe he'd gone too far, but no, Charlie grinned and said, “You can come out here any goddamn time you want to pull some weeds,” and Jaime said, “You're welcome anytime anyway,” and Charlie said “Of course,” and they all smiled at each other. Stan felt like a member of the family. He napped in the afternoon like everybody else (he imagined Charlie and Jaime were making love, because Edna had the baby back in her apartment behind the garage). The kitty came and slept on Stan again, helping along that family-member feeling.

Charlie drove him home, and by ten that night they were sitting in the Volkswagen outside Stan's apartment building, a slum building in a slum neighborhood after a day in Lake Grove. The two sat side by side, smoking. Charlie had turned the motor off, so Stan knew he wanted to talk. Stan waited.

“Are you still stealing?”

They'd never discussed it before.

Stan nodded. “I know, I oughta quit.”

“I'm not going to get moral on you,” Charlie said. “But I'd hate to see you end up in jail.”

“Well,” Stan said. He had nothing to say. He knew perfectly well he shouldn't be a thief. Except he was.

“I know it's stupid to tell you to get some job somewhere. Hell, I don't like hard work any more than you do.” Charlie explained about all the shitty jobs he'd held over the years. “Hateful shit, but God, man, better than jail.”

“I don't know,” Stan said. “Jail's not bad.” He tried to make a joke of it. “Jail's just jail, man.”

“I've been in jail,” Charlie said. “I was a POW for fourteen months.”

“Jesus,” Stan said.

“I just wanted to say, if you need my help getting a straight job, just let me know. You're my best student.”

“I mostly make it gambling these days,” Stan lied, to let Charlie off the hook. “I play the card rooms up in Vancouver, you know?”

“You must be a great poker player,” Charlie said in a flat voice, and dropped the subject.

29.

Sneaking through the woods was something Dick Dubonet was very good at. Like an Indian he did not step on the snapping twig, nor brush the random branch. Silently he tracked Stan and Linda through the trees, his heart still, his mind alert. Then he watched them in the clearing, just out of earshot. He didn't want to move any closer, and various birds were making a lot of noise, so he could only watch. When they started kissing and rolling around on the ground, Dick got so excited he almost cried out, and he urgently wanted to jack off. He was in an anguish of jealousy and so turned on he wanted to shriek. He'd come out to Lake Grove expecting to be jealous, but not of Stan Winger. Winger wasn't handsome, he wasn't muscular, he owned nothing, and at heart he was a cheap criminal. What's to be jealous of?

Yet here he watched Linda and Stan like a voyeur through a window. To his relief and disappointment they didn't strip and make love right before his eyes. He heard Linda's peals of laughter, and when she and Stan started back for the picnic Dick froze and let them pass within ten feet of him. He waited until they were beyond hearing, then moved toward the clearing. It was as he had thought. Marijuana, about half the plants squashed into the ground. Without thinking, Dick squatted down and tried to restore the plants. They'd probably straighten up by themselves. Dick had never smoked marijuana, but he was willing to try, so he plucked a few of the bigger leaves and stuck them in his pocket. It was very hot in the clearing, and sweat popped out all over his body. He'd smoked some opium once, in Naples, while in the army. The opium had made him vomit, but then provided the sweetest dreams he could remember. He wondered how the marijuana would compare. All he knew was that Negroes and musicians used it a lot. So it must be great.

Nobody had noticed his absence, certainly not Linda, who was in the house when he returned. Dick sat at the picnic table with Jaime and the little girl. He'd been prepared to dislike Jaime, since she was even better-looking than Linda and belonged to Charlie. She looked funny with her hair half red and half blonde, but it was also sexy, and Dick wondered if there was a chance. Not that he wanted a chance. But he was so afraid of losing Linda to Charlie that he thought about deliberately trying to seduce Jaime. A revenge seduction. Trouble was, he liked her. She'd been a lot of fun at the party at his house, and now at her own she was gracious, sweet, very nice to Dick, telling him how much she'd enjoyed reading his
Playboy
story, which quite frankly not many of his friends had done. Marty Greenberg had almost sneered, since the story was no competition for Dostoevsky, but this lovely sophisticated San Francisco girl had made a point of mentioning that she liked it, and as far as Dick could tell there wasn't a hint of patronage. Of course, maybe she and Charlie sat alone together and laughed and slapped their knees at his stupid little commercial story. But he didn't think so.

There was a big quilt on the back lawn at their feet, with a tarp beneath
it to keep the damp out, and Jaime and the little girl sat on the quilt, Jaime holding her daughter's hands up as she tried to walk.

“She's never taken a step,” Jaime said to Dick. A burst of rude laughter came from the house, where Charlie was holding court.

“Is she supposed to? She seems awfully little.”

“Any time now,” Jaime said.

Dick lowered himself to the quilt and sat cross-legged a few feet from little Kira. He drank from his beer bottle and then dangled it before the girl. She smiled at the bottle and started walking toward it. Jaime let go of her hands and Kira toddled—that was the right word—over to Dick and fell on her butt. She laughed up at Dick and his heart broke. He picked her up and cuddled her in his arms and when she squealed with delight he felt like the King of England.

“You're magic,” Jaime said. Her eyes glowed. Dick passed the wiggling child over to her mother. “What a nice child,” he said softly. He'd been so touched. He had no idea. Jaime grinned at him, bouncing Kira. “It's something, isn't it?”

“Yeah.”

“When are you and Linda going to have a baby?”

“If this is what they're like, soon.”

“Will you watch her? I want to tell Charlie his daughter took a few steps and he missed it.”

“I'll be careful,” Dick said. Jaime handed Kira over and the child immediately started yelling, her face red and angry. Smiling, Jaime took her back and went into the house, leaving Dick to himself.

An emotional day. It got no better driving home later than night. Linda talked all the way about Charlie's novel, which she had taken a peek at.