"Nope. Never. Sorry I didn"t."
"That"s my idea of a goood place," the man tells him.
"I"d like to go someday. I really would. Probably never will, though."
"Don"t say that, young buck like you, and your cute little lady."
"I"m not so young."
"You"re yungg," the man absentmindedly insists, and this is so nice of him, this and handing over the key, people are so nice generally, that Janice asks Harry as he gets back into the car what he"s grinning about. "And what took so long?"
"We were talking about Santa Fe. He advised us to go."
The door numbered 17 gives on a room surprisingly long, narrow but long. The carpet is purple, and bits of backlit cardboard here and there undercut the sense ofsubstance, as in a movie lobby. A fantasy world. The bathroom is at the far end, the walls are of cement-block painted rose, imitation oils of the ocean are trying to adom them, two queen-sized beds look across the narrow room at a television set. Rabbit takes off his shoes and turns on the set and gets on one bed. A band of light appears, expands, jogs itself out of diagonal twitching stripes into The Dating Game. A colored girl from Philly is trying to decide which of three men to take her out on a date; one man is black, another is white, the third is yellow. The color is such that the Chinese man is orange and the colored girl looks bluish. The reception has a ghost so that when she laughs there are many, many teeth. Janice turns it off. Like him she is in stocking feet. They are burglars. He protests, "Hey. That was interesting. She couldn"t see them behind that screen so she"d have to tell from their voices what color they were. If she cared."
"You have your date," Janice tells him.
"We ought to get a color television, the pro football is a lot better."
"Who"s this we?"
"Oh - me and Pop and Nelson and Mom. And Mim."
"Why don"t you move over on that bed?"
"You have your bed. Over there."
She stands there, firm-footed on the wall-to-wall carpet without stockings, nice-ankled. Her dull wool skirt is just short enough to show her knees. They have boxy edges. Nice. She asks, "What is this, a put-down?"
"Who am I to put you down? The swingingest broad on Eisenhower Avenue."
"I"m not so sure I like you anymore."
"I didn"t know I had that much to lose."
"Come on. Shove over."
She throws the old camel loden coat over the plastic chair beneath the motel regulations and the fire inspector"s certificate. Being puzzled darkens her eyes on him. She pulls off her sweater and as she bends to undo her skirt the bones of her shoulders ripple in long quick glints like a stack of coins being spilled. She hesitates in her slip. "Are you going to get under the covers?"
"We could," Rabbit says, yet his body is as when a fever leaves and the nerves sink down like veins of water into sand. He cannot begin to execute the energetic transitions contemplated: taking off his clothes, walking that long way to the bathroom. He should probably wash in case she wants to go down on him. Then suppose he comes too soon and they are back where they"ve always been. Much safer to lie here enjoying the sight of her in her slip; he had been lucky to choose a little woman, they keep their shape better than big ones. She looked older than twenty at twenty but doesn"t look that much older now, at least angry as she is, black alive in her eyes. "You can get in but don"t expect anything, I"m still pretty screwed up." Lately he has lost the ability to m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e; nothing brings him up, not even the image of a Negress with nipples like dowel-ends and a Hallowe"en pumpkin instead of a head.
"I"ll say," Janice says. "Don"t expect anything from me either. I just don"t want to have to shout between the beds."
With heroic effort Rabbit pushes himself up and walks the length of the rug to the bathroom. Returning naked, he holds his clothes in front of him and ducks into the bed as if into a burrow, being chased. He feels particles of some sort bombarding him. Janice feels skinny, strange, snaky-cool, the way she shivers tight against him immediately; the shock on his skin makes him want to sneeze. She apologizes: "They don"t heat these places very well."
"Be November pretty soon."
"Isn"t there a thermostat?"
"Yeah. I see it. Way over in the corner. You can go turn it up if you want."
"Thanks. The man should do that."
Neither moves. Harry says, "Hey. Does this remind you of Linda Hammacher"s bed?" She was the girl who when they were all working at Kroll"s had an apartment in Brewer she let Harry and Janice use.
"Not much. That had a view."
They try to talk, but out of sleepiness and strangeness it only comes in spurts. "So," Janice says after a silence wherein nothing happens. "Who do you think you are?"
"n.o.body," he answers. He snuggles down as if to kiss her b.r.e.a.s.t.s but doesn"t; their presence near his lips drugs him. All sorts of winged presences exert themselves in the air above their covers.
Silence resumes and stretches, a ballerina in the red beneath his eyelids. He abruptly a.s.serts, "The kid really hates me now."
Janice says, "No he doesn"t." She contradicts herself promptly, by adding, "He"ll get over it." Feminine logic: smother and outlast what won"t be wished away. Maybe the only way. He touches her low and there is moss, it doesn"t excite him, but it is rea.s.suring, to have that patch there, something to hide in.
Her body irritably shifts; him not kissing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s or anything, she puts the cold soles of her feet on the tops of his. He sneezes. The bed heaves. She laughs. To rebuke her, he asks innocently, "You always came with Stavros?"
"Not always."
"You miss him now?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"You"re here."
"But don"t I seem sad, sort of?"
"You"re making me pay, a little. That"s all right."
He protests, "I"m a mess," meaning he is sincere: which perhaps is not a meaningful adjustment over what she had said. He feels they are still adjusting in s.p.a.ce, slowly twirling in some gorgeous ink that filters through his lids as red. In a s.p.a.ce of silence, he can"t gauge how much, he feels them drift along sideways deeper into being married, so much that he abruptly volunteers, "We must have Peggy and Ollie over sometime."
"Like h.e.l.l," she says, jarring him, but softly, an unexpected joggle in s.p.a.ce. "You stay away from her now, you had your crack at it."
After a while he asks her - she knows everything, he realizes -"Do you think Vietnam will ever be over?"
"Charlie thought it would, just as soon as the big industrial interests saw that it was unprofitable."
"G.o.d, these foreigners are dumb," Rabbit murmurs.
"Meaning Charlie?"
"All ofyou." He feels, gropingly, he should elaborate. "Skeeter thought it was the doorway into utter confusion. There would be this terrible period, of utter confusion, and then there would be a wonderful stretch of perfect calm, with him ruling, or somebody exactly like him."
"Did you believe it?"
"I would have liked to, but I"m too rational. Confusion is just a local view of things working out in general. That make sense?"
"I"m not sure," Janice says.
"You think Mom ever had any lovers?"
"Ask her."
"I don"t dare."
After another while, Janice announces, "If you"re not going to make love, I might as well turn my back and get some sleep. I was up almost all night worrying about this - reunion."
"How do you think it"s going?"
"Fair."
The slither of sheets as she rotates her body is a silver music, sheets of pale noise extending outward unresisted by s.p.a.ce. There was a grip he used to have on her, his right hand cupping her skull through her hair and his left hand on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s gathering them together, so the nipples were an inch apart. The grip is still there. Her a.s.s and legs float away. He asks her, "How do we get out of here?"
"We put on our clothes and walk out the door. But let"s have a nap first. You"re talking nonsense already."
"It"ll be so embarra.s.sing. The guy at the desk"ll think we"ve been up to no good."
"He doesn"t care."
"He does, he does care. We could stay all night to make him feel better, but n.o.body else knows where we are. They"ll worry."
"Stop it, Harry. We"ll go in an hour. Just shut up."
"I feel so guilty."
"About what?"
"About everything."
"Relax. Not everything is your fault."
"I can"t accept that."
He lets her b.r.e.a.s.t.s go, lets them float away, radiant debris. The s.p.a.ce they are in, the motel room long and secret as a burrow, becomes all interior s.p.a.ce. He slides down an inch on the cool sheet and fits his microcosmic self limp into the curved crevice between the polleny offered nestling orbs of her a.s.s; he would stiffen but his hand having let her b.r.e.a.s.t.s go comes upon the familiar dip of her waist, ribs to hip bone, where no bones are, soft as flight, fat"s inward curve, slack, his babies from her belly. He finds this inward curve and slips along it, sleeps. He. She. Sleeps. O.K.?
The End