“Yeah. How you doing, baby.”
“Fine, just fine. Peter, God, it’s good to hear from you.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute, just got stoned out of my mind on her voice, on the sound, knowing that in a few days the sound would be next to me and not coming through a piece of plastic that demanded more money every three minutes. Then I said, “Listen, honey. I’ve just been talking to John.”
“John?”
“Yeah, you remember, my friend John back here, the guy I scored the bricks for when I was in Berkeley?”
“Oh.” It wasn’t noncommittal. It was just that she was beginning to understand. I had to keep it moving.
“Well, you remember that conversation we had, after my exam?”
“Yeah, I remember. Is this where John—”
“Just listen, honey, just let me finish. Things haven’t been going too well for me around here. I mean, I’ve been trying to get some bread together so I could come out and see you again, or so you could come out here—you know, like the summer’s getting here, and if we could get together we could do up the summer—”
“I’ll do it, Peter.” That was all she said.
“You don’t mind? I mean, you know what I’m talking about—”
“I’ll do it. I mind, but I’ll do it. I want to see you.”
I took a deep breath and it felt good. The chick was very, very together. “Okay, beautiful, honey, that’s beautiful. That’s so beautiful, I can’t even tell you. Listen, soon as you get here I’ll take care of things, you know, a place to stay and eat and that whole riff, you don’t worry about it, I’ll work it all out. And then if you dig it around here we can do up the summer, you know, and—”
“Don’t, Peter. You’re blowing my mind. Just don’t talk like that till I’m with you, okay?”
I knew what she was saying. “Okay, yeah, okay, you’re right. Well, listen, I’ll be sending the bread out to Musty tomorrow, and Musty’ll know the details so he’ll lay that end of it on you. The only other thing is that I won’t be able to meet you at the airport.” I had expected her to wonder about that, but all she said was, “That’s cool.”
“Out of sight. John’ll meet you, he doesn’t want me around ’cause of the bust but John’ll meet you, and as soon as you get back to Cambridge I’ll see you.”
“That’s cool.”
Suddenly I didn’t have anything more to say. I just wanted to see her, and talking business like this was only making it worse.
“Well—” I started to lay down something mindless, but she cut me off and said, “Peter. Take care of yourself.”
I laughed at that. “I will baby. You do the same.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “You just be good.” And then the operator was demanding more bread and she was saying goodbye and it was over.
As soon as I got back to the room I asked John where he’d put the dope.
“Gonna can the studying for a bit, Peter-old-boy?”
“Not can it, just enjoy myself before I get back on it.”
John laughed. “Enjoy yourself, huh? You already look like you’re enjoying yourself. You look like you just balled a nun, for Chrissake.”
34
I WAS BEING SHAKEN, QUITE hard, not a friendly shake at all. I opened my eyes and there was Annie Butler, all dressed up and looking very pretty except for her face, which was turned down.
“You’re late,” she said, as I opened my eyes.
“What?” I rubbed them.
“Late, you’re late.”
“What time is it?”
“One o’clock.”
“Christ.” I fell back in bed and groaned. I’d been up all night doing a paper and hadn’t gotten to bed until dawn. I was wrecked.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Going back to sleep.”
“But the party,” she said.
The party, Jesus. It all came back to me. I’d been so intent on finishing the paper, so I wouldn’t have to mess with it while Sukie was around, that I’d almost managed to forget about the party, the Piggy Club, the whole mess. I sighed.
“I’ll wait in the living room while you dress,” Annie said, and walked out. I sat up again and coughed. That’s Annie. Three months later, she’ll wait outside while you dress.
“Are you getting up?” she called from the living room.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You going to shave?”
“Yeah, I’m going to shave.”
“Good. You need it.”
Charming as ever, dear Annie Butler. I went into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
“There isn’t time for a shower, we’re late already.”
“I always shave in the shower,” I said.
“Then hurry,” Annie said. And finally, trailing afterward, like a dropping from a lame duck: “Please.”
The garden party was held on a huge, rolling lawn, fenced in from the street and sheltered from its noise and plebeian curiosities by thick bushes. It was a gay scene, full of good cheer, and well stocked with food and drink. The lawn was dotted with colorful tables of food and booze; there was also a small army of polite, discreet, red-jacketed caterers.
The whole scene made me want to blow lunch. Since everyone in the Club knew that Annie Butler was Percy Pratfall’s honey—or whatever the hell his name was—we’d had to make a great show of trotting around, greeting everyone, just to make sure they all understood on what grounds she’d managed to get in. She held my arm just tightly enough to show that I was her escort, and just loosely enough to show that I was her escort only for the afternoon. The pressure on my arm never changed, except when I would come out with something particularly obnoxious, when she’d give me a little squeeze of reproof. But I didn’t really give a damn after the first half hour, since by then I had lost Annie and was doing my single-handed best to break the Piggy Club’s liquor account wide open. And from the acid looks that the older members gave me, I knew that my efforts were not going unnoticed. After I’d discreetly managed to knock over five open hooch bottles and watched them gurgle and seep into the grass, one of the older members came over to demand that I produce my invitation card. This happened a number of times in the course of the afternoon—more often than would have been considered polite, in fact—and each time I produced my card, said something about boorish manners, and walked off. I got very drunk and a number of the members got very red in the face, and that was how it went. But I didn’t mind the embarrassment of feeling that I didn’t belong there; in fact, I rather enjoyed it. For the occasion I was wearing a pair of greasy blue jeans, a rumpled, plasticly-freaky shirt I’d gotten in the Village a few years before, a tired old blazer, and sneakers. Annie didn’t care much for that, of course, but then, she could always have chosen not to go. She’d made her decision, and I’d made mine.
But as the afternoon wore on, the fun of hassling the old dudes wore off, and I was forced to hunt the really big game, which were the chicks. The chicks were all there, colorful dots on the rolling green lawn, just like the tables—and set up with the same cunning social design: to look so good that you’d want to take a bite, without knowing what you’d really bitten into. It was their only hope of survival, these chicks; they were like the kinds of insects you read about who have no natural defense except their bodily camouflage.
So I’d wander over to one of these chicks, and she’d go through her whole I’m-so-polite-and-interested-in-you routine, pausing to Ohh and Ahh whenever I said something that she figured was supposed to rate an Ohh or Ahh, and asking me if she could get anything for me at the buffet? This went on for as long as I could tolerate it. Then I would break down and start in on the old routine. It’d start when one of them stared at my clothes—politely, you understand, painfully politely, as though I’d been selected top boy in my Head Start class and been awarded an invitation to the Piggy Club Garden Party—and it would go on from there.