Boys and Girls Together Page 2

  ‘You’d think it was the same thing,’ Ellen said. ‘You’d think being a barber and being a writer was the same kind of thing.’

  ‘Shut up, please,’ Charley said cheerfully. ‘I’m drinking and I’m happy. I know being a barber isn’t the same as being a writer, but neither is being anything else. Am I right, Dick? And since nothing is the same as being a writer, it’s just as much fun for a writer to compare notes with a barber as it is with anybody else.’

  ‘Except maybe with another writer,’ Ellen said.

  ‘No,’ Charley said. ‘Dick don’t like talking to other writers. How do I know? I read it in one of his books, the one you gave us for Christmas, Dick, It’s right in there some place. You come right out in there some place and say you don’t give a shit for writers. Pardon the expression, Ellen.’

  ‘You just shut up or talk clean,’ Ellen said. ‘Just don’t get too smart just because Dick’s not like other famous people.’

  ‘Shut up, for God’s sake,’ Charley said. ‘I was only quoting Dick. Am I right, Dick? I never knew writers used words like the words barbers use, but I know different now. I know at least one writer who uses the words barbers use. Dick is the one who said he don’t give a shit for writers. It wasn’t me.’

  ‘Now you just stop it,’ Ellen said. ‘It’s one thing for Dick to write something and another for you to say it. He probably meant something you don’t understand.’

  ‘What did you mean, Dick?’ Charley said.

  The man laughed, although he wished to God Daisy hadn’t gone to work and asked them over tonight, because here they were, like two earnest and comic characters in a bad movie, each of them a little too impressed by his name because it was so often in the papers and because a name in the papers signified so much to them, and he said, ‘To tell you the truth, you’re both right about that crack I made, but let’s talk about something that makes sense. Ellen, tell me about Ronald and Greta.’

  ‘Oh, they’re the same as ever. God, the things they say, the things they do. Greta gets up from her nap this afternoon and says, “Mama, why do girls have those?” You know what she means—up here—so I been reading them damn books that tell you all about everything and I figure I’ve got to tell her the real reason, but I just can’t remember it, so finally I tell her it’s so you can tell girls from boys, but she comes right back and says she’s a girl and not a boy, so where’s hers and she starts squawking because she hasn’t got hers. Them damn books.’

  ‘You could tell her girls have them because they’re pretty and because boys like girls to have them, couldn’t you?’ Charley said.

  ‘All right, wise guy, so if I said that, wouldn’t she still come right back and say she wanted hers now? What good would it do to say that? That doesn’t make her any happier than what I told her.’

  ‘Ah, you could have told her girls have them because boys like to see them and take hold of them, couldn’t you?’

  ‘You just shut up. And don’t stare at mine like a damn calf.’

  ‘You think they’re yours,’ Charley said. ‘They’re mine, little woman. You just carry them around for me. And all the rest of it, too. Am I right, Dick? Just because I run a four-chair barber shop that’s all paid for don’t necessarily mean I don’t have a kind of half-assed philosophy of my own, you know. I gave a lot of time to thinking once I got out of high school, and I came to a lot of pretty good conclusions. I may be wrong in a few of them, but only a little wrong. I didn’t stand on my feet cutting hair for fifteen years for nothing, you know. I learned a thing or two on my own without any help from any books, and what did it finally boil down to? Them two things.’ Charley roared with laughter. ‘Them two, and the two on the other side, and the depot out front, and all of it together in one small package that gets bigger and bigger the more you try to think it isn’t anything. Sure you get kids out of it, and headaches, and bills to pay, but so what? It’s worth it.’

  Now Ellen burst out laughing because she was so thrilled about the things her husband had said and the impression he had made on the writer, and because he never seemed to come alive so boldly as when they were visiting the writer and his wife.

  ‘You just shut up,’ she giggled.

  ‘You know you love it,’ Charley said, controlling his voice so that he would not be giggling, too. ‘You know damn well what it does to you. The thing Gable used to do to you when you were a little girl going to the movies with a half-dozen other little girls.’

  ‘Hey!’ Daisy called from the bathroom. ‘Wait for me. I want to get in on the fun, too.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the writer called to her. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from. Am I right, Charley?’

  ‘Palenty,’ the barber said.

  ‘I’ll go get you another.’ He took the barber’s empty glass.

  ‘Small, though. At least smaller. I start out fast but I can’t keep it up for long.’

  The man went to get the barber another drink.

  Chapter 5

  By the time Daisy came out of the bedroom, where she had her fixing-up table and her junk, the barber and his wife were singing a favourite song of the barber’s, the one about Maggie, when she had been young, and the old man who’d got her for his wife had been young, too. Daisy was really fixed up, she wasn’t going to let the arrival of the barber and his wife spoil anything for her, not even if they didn’t have sense enough to get up and go until one or two in the morning. She was fixed up and knew it, and the man knew it, and the barber had to stop singing a second to whistle his admiration, but he went right on singing after the whistle. Daisy and Ellen met one another as girls like to do and touched cheeks, and then Daisy said, ‘Well, what about me, where’s my drink?’

  ‘Go and get it,’ the man said, because he wanted her to know he knew all about how fixed-up she was. He wanted her not to get too important because she knew how good it made him feel to see her so fresh and young and pretty and eager about the sport that was always there to be had between them.

  She gave him the limpid look that always meant the same thing, that always meant all you got to do is tell me what to do and I’ll do it, just tell me and it will be done, and then when she knew the man had got the message she lifted her head in an imitation of aloofness and went off for her drink while the singing went right on. When she didn’t come back after she had had time enough to fix two drinks he knew what she was up to, so he went after her while the barber and his wife asked one another what else to sing. And there she was as he knew she’d be, her back to him but knowing he’d be there in a moment, the empty glass before her and everything ready to be mixed but nothing mixed. He went to her and took her in his arms and held her very tight, then moved his hands all over, slowly and softly. She lowered the zipper so he’d not have cloth in the way, but he lifted it and said, ‘Don’t be rude to your guests.’ And then very loudly so that they’d hear him he said, ‘Never mind sneaking an extra drink in here, Daisy. Get right back where you belong.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ellen said, ‘we’ve only had three each, and Charley’s drooling already.’

  ‘And you know what I’m drooling for, too,’ Charley said.

  The man fixed his wife a big one and twisted her head around and held his open mouth to hers after she’d had a sip and the tongue jumped up and tried to take up all the space, but he turned her around and they went back into the living-room together to find the barber and his wife kissing.

  ‘Well,’ the barber said, getting up, ‘we’ll be going home now, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Ah, sit down,’ Ellen said.

  ‘O.K., you asked for it,’ the barber said to his wife, ‘but you know damn well one more drink and when I hit the bed it will be dreamland for me and nothing else.’

  ‘Won’t be the first time,’ Ellen said as if she were saying the right thing.

  ‘You’re darn tootin’ it won’t,’ the barber said proudly. ‘Well, Daisy, I guess you know you look like something bad little boys dream
about. I guess you know that. Am I right, Dick?’

  ‘Any woman can do it if you’ll give her a tub and some hot water to bathe in and enough time to believe she’s got it, and a few kind words.’

  ‘Yeah,’ the barber said, ‘that’s all they really need, a little soap and a few kind words. I get a kick out of the way I can always get the little woman to think she’s got anything Betty Grable ever had and a few little things she ain’t got.’

  ‘It happens,’ Ellen said, ‘I happen to admire Betty Grable and have no delusions about myself. I happen to know I’m younger than Miss Grable and I also happen to know I went further in school than she did.’

  ‘What else do you happen to know?’ the barber said. ‘She knows a few other things, too. I think it has to do with the kind of people she comes from.’

  ‘My family wasn’t rich,’ Ellen said, ‘but they kept out of jail.’

  ‘They were pretty religious, too, weren’t they?’ Charley said. ‘Hell, tell Dick and Daisy how religious they were.’

  ‘They went to church every Sunday,’ Ellen said, ‘and I happen to think it did them no harm.’

  ‘No, no,’ Charley said. ‘Tell them how they were in the Presbyterian Church for maybe thirty or forty years.’

  ‘Maybe more,’ Ellen said. ‘Anyhow, they were always good Presbyterians.’

  ‘What she’s trying to say,’ Charley said, ‘is that they were better than my people, who were Lutherans.’

  ‘No,’ Ellen said earnestly, ‘that’s not what I’m trying to say at all. It happens that I happen to think rather highly of the Lutherans, although to be perfectly honest I don’t know what they believe.’

  ‘They believe having kids is the duty of every married couple,’ Charley said, ‘but I guess you know why they believe it.’

  ‘They believe it because it’s in the Bible,’ Ellen said.

  ‘The hell they do,’ Charley said. ‘They believe it because they know what you’ve got to do to get kids.’

  ‘Say,’ Ellen said suddenly, ‘is he laughing at me or something? Is he, Daisy?’

  ‘You and your religion,’ Charley said. ‘I’m your religion and you ain’t nothing without me. Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘I suppose you are something without me,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Just a barber without you,’ the husband confessed, ‘but with you … well, you and me know, don’t we, chicken?’

  ‘Yeah, we know all right,’ Ellen said trying to get sober and trying to get Dick and Daisy into the fun. ‘What we know you could put in a nutshell and have room left over for the Encyclopaedia Britannica or something.’

  The telephone bell rang and the man answered it. He had to stay on the line almost ten minutes. During that time Daisy and Ellen went into the kitchen together to get fresh drinks for themselves and another for Charley, even though Ellen had been warned he’d fall asleep the minute he got home, and Charley wandered around in the living-room talking to himself and trying not to hear what the man was saying on the telephone, but of course he knew the call was from New York and the talk was about a play. They were back in the living-room when he finished talking.

  ‘Cooper. He thinks he’s got a producer for the play. An old play, Ellen. Something I had to drag out of the trunk because Daisy thinks we’re too poor. Does Ellen make you do things like that, too, Charley?’

  ‘Does she? First I had two chairs and I was making a good living, but she said that wasn’t enough, so I put in another, but that wasn’t enough either, so I put in a fourth one. Well, do you think that satisfied her? Hell no. Now she wants me to rent the empty store next door, break down the wall and make it an eight-chair shop. So what am I going to do? I’m going to make it an eight-chair shop. I’ll say she gooses me. She gooses me all the time. Is it a good play?’

  ‘I think it stinks, but Daisy doesn’t care about that. She’s crazy about money, that’s all.’

  ‘And boys,’ Daisy said.

  ‘She doesn’t care if I ruin my name, she just wants to see more money.’

  ‘What’s the name of the play?’ the barber said.

  ‘It used to be called The Idiots, but Daisy said nobody would go to a play with a name like that, so I changed it to Free For All.’

  ‘That’s a pretty good name for a play, too,’ the barber said. He was pretty well gone now, but he was trying not to be, and his task was slowing down and getting serious and a little self-conscious. He seemed in fact to be a little unhappy in a kind of vague way, the way it is when the top of the alcohol happiness has been reached and a man knows he’s sinking fast, sinking into the lonely sleep of a small boy who expects a lot some day and is pretty sure he expects too much.

  ‘Free For All,’ the barber said. ‘What’s it about, a fight?’

  ‘Well, yes, in a way.’

  ‘A writer don’t like to tell what everything he writes is about,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Daisy said to Ellen. ‘Dick loves to talk about his writing. He drives me crazy talking about it all the time, morning, noon and night.’

  ‘Well, anyhow,’ the barber said, ‘is it a kind of brawl in a saloon or something like that, a free for all, the way we used to have them sometimes when I was in the Army and we were in a little town and the Navy came in and tried to take over? Is it something like that?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Jesus,’ the barber said, ‘one time there I took a hell of a beating. I thought I was going to get killed in the saloon instead of in the war, but I didn’t feel so bad because I knew they’d say I died a hero and Ellen would get the insurance and decoration.’

  The man half-listened to his wife and the barber’s wife go after themes of their own, kids and schools and nurses and baby-sitters and groceries and all the rest of it, and then he and Charley went after fresh drinks and stayed in the kitchen until Charley began to nearly fall over now and then, and then the barber said: ‘Jesus, Dick, I wish to Christ I knew how to write because the God-damn stuff I know would make a hell of a book. I wish to God I’d taken it up instead of barbering, not that I ain’t doing all right. I own the shop, I’ve paid for the house, Ellen’s got clothes from Magnin’s and the other good shops … she’s got something from Ransohoffs that cost a hundred bucks … and I’ve got a few bucks put away for the kids, for college, I mean, but hell, if I’d taken it up I wouldn’t have to hang around a barber shop all day talking to a lot of bums. I’d be in my damn studio writing books.’

  The man moved back into the living-room and Charley said: ‘Come on, chicken, bedtime for the old man now. And listen, Daisy, it sure was nice of you and Dick to ask us over. I’ll have a hangover in the morning, but it was worth it. I haven’t had so many laughs in a long time. Will you come over to our place Saturday night?’

  ‘Sure,’ the man’s wife said the way she always did.

  ‘We’ll try,’ the man said. ‘Daisy’ll phone Ellen Friday afternoon about it.’

  ‘O.K.,’ the barber said. ‘I’ll have a new bottle of black label to open.’

  After a minute they were gone, and the man said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t invite everybody you run into to come here quick—real quick, the way it was tonight—you could have said day after tomorrow, couldn’t you, so I could get out of it?’

  ‘I thought you had fun,’ the woman said.

  ‘I did, but I’m starved and drunk and bored to death and the night’s shot to hell, and there you are looking real crazy.’

  The woman didn’t say anything. She put out all the lights except a little one and then zipped her clothing straight off and laughed, and the man began to take off his.

  ‘Look at the fool I’m making of you,’ the woman said, holding her arms out and dancing slowly. ‘Shall I stop?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What a crook.’

  ‘No, I mean it.’

  ‘O.K.’

  The man looked at her a moment, and then he said: ‘I stink. I’ll get in the shower. You go right on dancing
.’

  ‘Don’t be funny.’

  ‘O.K., then, get some chili.’

  ‘Chili? Are you crazy?’

  ‘Hell no, starved! I’ve got to get something besides Scotch inside my gut.’

  ‘You mean you want to eat?’

  ‘Hell yes!’

  ‘You want me to put my clothes back on?’

  ‘Who said anything about that?’ Out of his clothes now, he lifted himself into shape, lifted the bulge at the belly, so it wouldn’t be so noticeable. The woman looked at him and laughed.

  ‘Look at you,’ she said, pointing and laughing. ‘Just look at you, and you want to eat. God, are other men like that, too?’

  ‘Just get me some chili. And dance a little more before I go.’

  The woman danced saying: ‘You dog, you just won’t ever get completely helpless, will you? The way other men do?’

  ‘No,’ the man said. ‘I’ll be out in a minute. There’s a box of crackers somewhere, too.’

  He went to the bathroom and the woman went to work in the kitchen.

  Chapter 6

  He felt good in the shower and was full of smiling inside because she was something at that, she was as nearly something as any woman he had ever known and probably more nearly something than any wife he could think of, anybody’s wife he could think of, even though she was a lot that was a pain in the ass if the kids weren’t asleep and the day wasn’t over and she hadn’t had a bath and he hadn’t had a couple to drink and the going was another kind of going; she was a lot like that, too much like that if she ever wanted to know the truth about herself, a nagging nuisance until it was a time like this, and the most astonishing kind of crook he could imagine, and she could get so ugly he’d have to either hit her or get out of the house and walk somewhere in a hurry, talking to himself, hating her, hating her stupid mother, her stupid grandmother, her stupid father and her stupid grandfather. If it weren’t for the kids, he’d have thrown her out long ago, he’d have told her to hit the road, which was what she had coming, get the hell back to where she came from and not bother him any more, just because she had it, just because it was good. If it weren’t for the way the little girl’s bare bottom made his soul rejoice every time he saw it sticking up in her crib and the way her thoughtful face made him love her even more than he loved the boy, he’d have told her to get up and go back where she belonged, he would have told her to marry somebody she deserved, not him, because she just didn’t go with him, she just couldn’t, he had to carry her every minute, he had to give her lies and her ugliness all sorts of values they weren’t entitled to, he had to do it all the time, just because she happened to have it good, and they happened to have the two kids. If it weren’t for the way the boy winked with his expression when he was satisfied and liked the absurdity of being alive, didn’t know any better because Papa was there to look after him, and Mama was there to smell good to him and feel good to him when she hugged him, and his little sister was there for him to be nice to the way Papa was nice to Mama, tolerating her ignorance and her selfishness and her bad manners, letting her be his little bride, letting her nag at him for things that were his, letting her put her arms around him when she was sorry about something, letting her tell him she was sorry, if it wasn’t for the way the boy liked the whole idea of all of them being together and fighting it out, he would have told her to hit the road and go out and make a name for herself walking the streets or peddling it out of a call house or getting famous in the movies by spreading it around among the fat old men who help a girl along. It would be another story if it weren’t for the kids, but she was something at that, she was very nearly something just the same, and now he was full of smiling inside about her, even though he hadn’t forgotten the truth about her, either, or about himself, either, the lousy truth about both of them.