Ellis raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly and threw out his palms. “What do you think brings me down here? I had an uncontrollable desire to see Sammy’s Bowery Follies.”
Ida turned, smiling, still leaning on Vivaldo. “My God. I saw you down there at the bar, but I scarcely dared believe it was you.”
“None other,” he said, “and you know”—he looked at her with tremendous admiration—“you are an extraordinary young woman. I’ve always thought so. I must say, but now I’ve seen it. I doubt if even you know how great a career is within your grasp.”
“I’ve got an awfully long way to go Mr. Ellis, I’ve got such an awful lot to learn.”
“If you ever stop feeling that way, I will personally take a hairbrush to you.” He looked up at Vivaldo. “You have not called me and I take that very unkindly.”
Vivaldo suppressed whatever rude retort was on his tongue. He said, mildly, “I just don’t think I’ve got much of a future in TV.”
“Oh, what an abysmal lack of imagination!” He shook Ida playfully by the shoulder. “Can’t you do anything with this man of yours? Why does he insist on hiding his light under a bushel?”
“The truth is,” said Ida, “that the last time anybody made up Vivaldo’s mind for him was the last time they changed his diapers. And that was quite a long time ago. Anyway,” and she rubbed her cheek against Vivaldo’s shoulder, “I wouldn’t dream of trying to change him. I like him the way he is.”
There was something very ugly in the air. She clung to Vivaldo, but Eric felt that there was something in it which was meant for Ellis. And Vivaldo seemed to feel this, too. He moved slightly away from Ida and picked up her handbag from the table — to give his hands something to do? — and said, “You haven’t met our friend, he just came in from Paris. This is Eric Jones; this is Steve Ellis.”
They shook hands. “I know your name,” said Ellis. “Why?”
“He’s an actor,” said Ida, “and he’s opening on Broadway in the fall.”
Vivaldo, meanwhile, was paying the check. Eric took out his wallet, but Vivaldo waved it away.
“I have heard of you. I’ve heard quite a lot about you,” and he looked Eric appraisingly up and down. “Bronson’s signed you for Happy Hunting Ground. Is that right?”
“That’s right,” said Eric. He could not tell whether he liked Ellis or not.
“It’s kind of an interesting play,” Ellis said, cautiously, “and, from what I’ve heard of you, it ought to do very good things for you.” He turned back to Ida and Vivaldo. “Could I persuade you to have one drink with me in some secluded, air-conditioned bar? I really don’t think,” he said to Ida, “that you ought to make a habit of working in such infernos. You’ll end up dying of tuberculosis, like Spanish bullfighters, who are always either too hot or too cold.”
“Oh, I guess we have time for one drink,” said Ida, looking doubtfully at Vivaldo, “what do you think, sweetie?”
“It’s your night,” said Vivaldo. They started toward the door.
“I’d like to mix maybe just a little bit of business in with this drink,” said Ellis.
“I figured that,” said Vivaldo. “What an eager beaver you are.”
“The secret,” said Ellis, “of my not inconsiderable success.” He turned to Ida. “I thought you told me yesterday that Dick Silenski and his wife would be here—?”
Something happened, then, in her face and in his — in his, wry panic and regret, quickly covered; in hers, an outraged warning, quickly dissembled. They entered the wide, hot street. “Eric saw them,” she said, calmly, “something happened, they couldn’t come.”
“The kids got into a fight in the park,” said Eric. “Some colored kids beat them up.” He heard Ida’s breathing change; he told himself he was a bastard. “I left them waiting for the doctor.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” cried Vivaldo, “Jesus! I’d better call them up!”
“That isn’t what you told me, either,” said Ida.
“They weren’t very badly hurt,” said Eric, “just bloody noses. But they thought they’d better have a doctor look at them and of course they didn’t want to leave them alone.”
“I’ll call them,” said Vivaldo, “as soon as we get to a bar.”
“Yes, sweetie,” said Ida, “you’d better do that. What a terrible thing to have happen.”
Vivaldo said nothing; kicked at a beer can on the sidewalk. They were walking west through a dark wilderness of tenements, of dirty children, of staring adolescents, and sweating grownups. “When you say colored boys,” Ida pursued, after a moment, “do you mean that was the reason for the fight?”
“There didn’t,” said Eric, “seem to be any other reason. They’d never seen the boys before.”
“I imagine,” said Ida, “that it was in some kind of retaliation — for something some other boys had done to them.”
“I guess that must be it,” said Eric.
They reached the crowded park at the bottom of Fifth Avenue. Eric had not seen the park for many years and the melancholy and distaste which weighed him down increased as they began to walk through it. Lord, here were the trees and the benches and the people and the dark shapes on the grass; the children’s playground, deserted now, with the swings and the slides and the sandpile; and the darkness surrounding this place, in which the childless wretched gathered to act out their joyless rituals. His life, his entire life, rose to his throat like bile tonight. The sea of memory washed over him, again and again, and each time it receded another humiliated Eric was left writhing on the sands. How hard it was to be despised! how impossible not to despise oneself! Here were the peaceful men in the lamplight, playing chess. A sound of singing and guitar-playing came from the center of the park; idly, they walked toward it; they each seemed to be waiting and fearing the resolution of their evening. There was a great crowd gathered in the small fountain; this crowd broke down, upon examination, into several small crowds, each surrounding one, two, or three singers. The singers, male and female, wore blue jeans and long hair and had more zest than talent. Yet, there was something very winning, very moving, about their unscrubbed, unlined faces, and their blankly shining, infantile eyes, and their untried, unhypocritical voices. They sang as though, by singing, they could bring about the codification and the immortality of innocence. Their listeners were of another circle, aimless, empty, and corrupt, and stood packed together in the stone fountain merely in order to be comforted or inflamed by the touch and the odor of human flesh. And the policemen, in the lamplight, circled around them all.
Ida and Vivaldo walked together, Eric and Ellis walked together: but all of them were far from one another. Eric felt, dimly, that he ought to make some attempt to talk to the man beside him, but he had no desire to talk to him; he wanted to leave, and he was afraid to leave. Ida and Vivaldo had also been silent. Now, as they walked from group to singing group, intermittently, through romanticized Western ballads and toothless Negro spirituals, he heard their voices. And he knew that Ellis was listening, too. This knowledge forced him, finally, to speak to Ellis.
He heard Ida. “—sweetie, don’t be like that.”
“Will you stop calling me sweetie? That’s what you call every miserable cock sucker who comes sniffing around your ass.”
“Must you talk that way?”
“Look, don’t you pull any of that lady bullshit on me.”