Ferguson didn’t want it anymore. He was burned out and ready to give up, and after telling himself he was finished half a dozen times in the past eight or nine months and then not doing anything about it, this time he wasn’t going to back down. He had come to the end of what he could endure. Enough of Rochester, enough of the paper, enough of having to live with his eyes permanently fixed on the dark world of meaningless wars and lying governments and spying undercover cops and angry, hopeless men trapped in dungeons built by the state of New York. It wasn’t teaching him anything anymore. Again and again he kept learning the same lesson, and by now he knew the story by heart even before he sat down to write it. Rien ne va plus, as the gamblers in Monte Carlo were told when the wheel was about to spin again. No more bets. He had put his money on number zero and had lost, and now it was time to get out.
He would go to the prison with Gianelli in the morning, he would do the interview with the warden, who would probably tell him everything was under control, and if he asked to have a look around and perhaps talk to one or two of the prisoners, he would doubtless be turned down for security reasons. Then he would write whatever story he was able to write and hand it in to Pittman. But that would be the last one. He would tell Pittman he was through and shake his hand good-bye. After that, he would go to McManus’s office and thank Carl for having given him the chance to work there, shake his hand and thank him for the privilege of having known him, but he wasn’t cut out for this kind of work anymore, he would say, the job was killing him now and he was all washed up, and then he would thank his boss again for being the good man he was and walk out of the building for the last time.
Five o’clock. He picked up the phone and dialed Hallie’s number in Massachusetts, but no one answered after fourteen rings, not even Hallie’s roommate to tell him Hallie was out for the evening and wouldn’t be back until eleven or twelve.
Hallie’s blue eyes looking at him as he looked at her crawling toward him on the bed. Hallie’s fierce little white body pressing up against him. Tell me some of the things you like best, she had once asked him, and he had answered her with a silly, punning joke: The seals in Central Park, the ceiling in Grand Central Station, and the convenience of using self-sealing envelopes. Sí, sí, sí, she had responded. Or perhaps she was saying See, see, see.
At times she laughed so hard that her face turned red.
If he wasn’t going to live in Rochester anymore, where did he want to go? Massachusetts to begin with. South Hadley, Massachusetts, to talk things out with her and come up with some kind of plan. Perhaps rent an apartment somewhere in the neighborhood and work on Villon while she went to school. Or else do that for a while as he decompressed and learned how to become human again and then fly off to Paris with her over Christmas break. Or else wander around Europe on his own and see as much as he could in a month or two months or four months. No, not four months. That would be too long, he wouldn’t be able to stand it. A little apartment in Amherst or some other town. That might be a good solution for the time being, and then off to Europe together for a couple of months after she graduated in June. Anything was possible. By dipping into his grandmother’s fund whenever the urge came over him, all things would be possible this year.
Six o’clock. Scrambled eggs, ham, and two slices of buttered toast for dinner — along with four glasses of red wine.
Luy qui buvoit du meilleur et plus chier
Et ne deust il avoir vaillant ung pigne
Seven o’clock. He was sitting at his desk now and looking at those two lines from Villon’s Testament. Roughly meaning: He who drank the best and most expensive wines / And didn’t have enough to buy a comb. Or: And couldn’t afford the price of a comb. Or: And didn’t have the cash to buy a comb. Or: And lacked the dough to spring for a comb. Or: And was too broke to splurge on a comb. Or: And didn’t have the bread to pop for a comb.
Nine o’clock. He called Massachusetts again. Twenty rings this time, but again there was no answer.
It wasn’t just a new love but a new kind of love, a new way of being with someone that translated into a new way of being himself, a better way because of who and what and how she was with him, the way of being himself he had always aspired to but had never managed to accomplish in the past. No more bouts of morose introspection, no more journeys into the bogs of brooding self-torment, no more turning against himself, which was a weakness that had always made him less than he should have been. GUINNESS GIVES YOU STRENGTH said the signs on the walls in bars. Hallie gave him strength. GUINNESS IS GOOD FOR YOU said the signs on the walls in bars. There was no doubt that Hallie Doyle was good for him.
A quarter to eleven. Ferguson went into the bedroom, wound the clock, and set the alarm for six A.M. Then he returned to the living room, picked up the phone, and called Hallie again.
There was no answer.
IN THE APARTMENT directly below Ferguson’s, Charlie Vincent turned off the television, stretched his arms, and rose from the couch. The tenant upstairs was climbing into bed, the good-looking boy who had been sleeping with the pretty blonde all through the summer, such nice, friendly kids they were, always with a pleasant word on the stairs or in front of the mailboxes, but now the girl was gone and the boy was sleeping alone again, which was too bad in a way, since he had enjoyed listening to the bed shake upstairs and hearing the boy’s grunts and the girl’s yelps and moans, such good sounds they were, so satisfying to the ear and every other part of him, always wishing he could have been upstairs in the bed with them, not as he was now but in the old body he used to have when he was young and pretty himself, the years, the years, how many long years ago had that been, and even if he couldn’t go upstairs to be with them or watch them from a chair in a corner of their room, listening to them and imagining them had been almost as good, and now that the boy was alone there was something good about that, too, such a lovely boy with his broad shoulders and sympathetic eyes, what he wouldn’t give to hold that naked boy in his arms and cover his body with kisses, so Charlie Vincent turned off the television and shuffled from the living room to his bedroom in order to listen to the bed creak as the boy tossed around on the mattress and settled in for the night. It was dark in the room now. Charlie Vincent took off his clothes, lay down on the bed, and thought about the boy as he fiddled with himself until his breath grew short and the warmth spread through him and the job was done. Then, for the fifty-third time since that morning, he lit one of his long, unfiltered Pall Malls and began to puff …
7.2
7.3
7.4
Aunt Mildred saved him from the worst of it. Pulling strings, asserting her authority as chairman of the English Department, cutting through spool after spool of red tape, threatening to quit in protest if the director of admissions didn’t bend to her will, arguing her case over two hour-long meetings with the newly installed, anti-war president Francis F. Kilcoyne, a man known for his compassion and high moral principles, Professor Adler wrangled a spot for Ferguson as a fully matriculating student at Brooklyn College one week before the first semester of his junior year began.