They came roaring out of Sally’s apartment at close to two o’clock, heading for the roof of her building. Jesse wanted to carry the girls up the steps, but Sally — in her good, — sensed, cautious, sex-conscious, drunk-conscious way, wanting to preserve this marvelous high, wanting the high to go on and on and never end until they were joyously exhausted and naked — took Jesse’s hand in her left hand and then grabbed Buddwing’s hand in her right, and the three ran laughing up the staircase together, leaving Tina behind on the landing below. They stopped just outside the door to the roof, and Jesse yelled, “Hey, where’s Tina?” and then dropped Sally’s hand and ran back down to scoop Tina off her feet, struggling and giggling, and then climbed and staggered back with her in his arms to where Sally and Buddwing stood just outside the fire door.
“He’s a kook,” Sally said, and then kissed Buddwing firmly and teasingly on the mouth and laughed again, and kissed Jesse as he put Tina on her feet before them, and it was then that Buddwing realized the four of them would end up in the same bed together. Laughing, they pushed open the door and lurched out onto the tarred roof where the city suddenly opened beneath them like a cracked piñata, spilling its bridges and spires, its ribbons of asphalt and water. The view was overwhelming; it almost sobered them on the spot. But Jesse had thoughtfully remembered to bring a bottle of bourbon from the apartment, and he lifted the front of his jumper now to reveal it where it was tucked into the waistband of his trousers. He pulled the cork and tilted the bottle to his lips, and then passed the bottle to Buddwing. Sally urged him to drink — “Go ahead, sweetie, take a swig” — even though he needed no urging, touching him expertly and casually, never forgetting that sex was a part of this marvelous, experience they were sharing, sex was the ultimate goal, but prolonging the sex in an ever-conscious, hand-touching, thigh-flashing, high-giggling way which Tina shyly approved’ with a faint, excited, drunken smile.
“Hey, looka these birds here!” Jesse shouted, and he ran across to the other side of the roof where a meshed pigeon coop rested against a parapet. “Hey, birdie, birdie,” he said, “hey, sweet birdie, birdie,” poking his finger through the mesh while Tina giggled and Sally fell against him laughing.
“Get away from those birds!” a man on the roof opposite yelled, and Jesse burst out laughing.
“Why? They your birds?” he shouted back.
“They my friend’s birds,” the man answered. He was Chinese and his voice was high and angry, and he waved his fist up at them as he spoke.
“Screw you and your friend’s birds,” Sally said, and she suddenly threw open the door to the coop and yelled, “Shoooooosh! Everybody out! Everybody out!”
Laughing, Jesse plunged his hands into the coop and yelled, “Just for that, ever’body out!” and the pigeons flapped frantically into the air while the Chinese man on the roof below waved his fist and yelled, “I get the police! You see!”
“You get the bird, man, tha’s what you get!” Jesse shouted, they all burst out laughing.
Sally’s hands were in constant motion; she touched, she persuaded, she never let any of them forget what was in store if only they could preserve this miraculous high. Tina’s blouse was unbuttoned — Buddwing had unbuttoned it in the apartment — and she fumblingly tried to rebutton it as they stood laughing on the roof in the glare of the afternoon sun, listening to the angry Chinese man, and then gave up the task and said, “The hell with it.” Sally said, “Attagirl,” encouragingly, and tilted the bottle to her lips, managing to lean against Buddwing at the same time with a strong full-fleshed thigh pressure against his crotch.
His lust was turning to a dull ache inside him, and running beneath the constant ache was an insistent warning. He was very much a part of this drunken spree that he was sure would turn into a drunken orgy, but at the same time the little warning trill kept sounding over and over again, and it told him they must not get into trouble with the police because he had no identification, and because he was Edward Voegler, an escaped maniac. He wanted to get off the roof, wanted to go back to Sally’s apartment before the Chinese man made good his threat to call the cops. He was possessed by the wildest sort of fantasy, wherein Sally stood spread-legged in the center of her living room with the beaded curtains behind her, and he seized the hem of her dress in his hands, and then ripped it upward along the line of the slit, kept ripping it up past her hips and her waist and her breasts until she was standing in only her slim Chinese undergarments. At the same time, drawn to Sally because she made it impossible to forget her, he was intrigued by the drunken, smiling, seeming virginity of Tina, and further excited by the notion of the four of them together in the same bed. The entire feeling, he realized, was somehow wrapped up with L.J. and Beethoven and Red Vest, whom he had not seen since the war began. And then, with drunken clarity, he realized that he was much excited by the idea of getting into the same bed with Jesse as he was of getting into that bed with the girls. The notion startled him and almost tore the drunk to shreds. He had awakened this morning knowing nothing at all about himself, and it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he was a fag.
With recognition of the word, with full-bodied acknowledgment of the word and of the image it instantly brought to mind, that of a painted, marcelled, mincing homosexual faggoty fruity queer, the drunk came dangerously close to evaporating entirely. To preserve the drunk, he took the bottle from Sally’s hand and swigged mightily from it, and then to preserve his masculinity, to reassure himself that what he wanted to do was climb onto Sally while Tina somehow climbed onto him, he handed the bottle to Jesse and put his arms around both girls, clear around Sally so that he could touch one small rounded breast under the silk Chinese dress, and only partially around Tina so that he could pat her behind in the tight blue wool American skirt, and he said, “Come on, Sally, let’s go back to the apartment.”