But one day I’d forgotten him, tooting away, thinking I was lovely, I was in the stars in my own Milky Way. Somebody grabbed my ears and jerked them outwards painfully. I could smell the aspirin on his breath.
“Aren’t you hearing all those bad notes? Don’t you know you must have ears to be a musician? You’ve been out of tune on every note above middle C for the last fifteen minutes.”
“Get your hands off my ears.”
Then there was nothing between Dudi and me. I didn’t care if he had believed in my promise ever since hearing me at the contest in Shreveport, that I was supposed to transmute into a genius under this care. Just no more hands on my ears, please. Stuff his care. Some afternoons I sat in the cell and stamped out as many cigarette butts as possible in front of the wire stand with the page of music Livace set up for me. Sometimes he’d insult me by putting up some whole-note exercises from the Baldwin primer; next it would be a piece so black with runs it was impossible, in a freakish key, five flats and such. When I felt like it, I’d just play jazz, play the blues loud and watery with the door open. Dudi gave up then. I’d hear him locking up with great assertion; lights went out in the nearby rooms. When I heard him on the stairs, I moved out to the top of them and bellowed and blatted to give him a fine sopping echo—“La Cosa Nostra Blues,” had he asked me. Probably he was afraid to ask about my progress in the Jackson Symphony.
Patsy Boone had not given up on me. I took her out. One night in the parking lot of the Dutch Bar, having kissed most of her visible body and bored to tears, I was lying dismally face-down in her hair. She told me how she missed me at rehearsals, she told me she wanted me and me only in her hair. I poured off some of the beer over her head. “Oh, my valentine, anything!” as I fell into the matted strands.
I was Romeo of the Roaches again, eating the lamb patties of her hands, licking her yellow hair. I grabbed her thigh ruthlessly, put my hand around the ankle of the other leg. I need you, I said. Bored, but having at it as the male of the species. I’d been trained. My owner was crying, Get out there and perform, you simple hairball; finger out of the nose, now, no lifted hindfoot, no dicking off! Everyone’s paid to see you! Up on the trike! Ride! Be a man. Flick of the whip there about the scrot to give yer a little spirit. El Humanoido, the trained link of evolution! I’d fallen into the floor pedals and was sprawled over the gear-hump of the T-bird, yanking at her skirt Not here in the parking lot with the top down, she cried. Besides, it was starting to rain.
On the way to her apartment, she had second thoughts. She told me she was virginal and wanted to have passion with me in the clear light of reason. It should be no drunken thing like this. Touching was too precious. I should come to see her on Sunday. The light in her room would be on and she might bring in other lamps.
It seems I exuded an exotic melancholy — her words — that undid her. When I’d played the “Habañera,” sob, she’d kissed my heart. How long she’d been trying to meet her eyes with mine! She’d gone out with another boy who sort of looked like me. But he had no heart like she wanted to put her tongue on.
“And then many nights I’d think of you while I was lying in bed, and I’d have an erection,” she said.
I just turned my face and looked up in the blue night when she said that. I didn’t know about going to her place Sunday, although I was flattered to the point of torment by her confession of love. I let her out at an old white house on Titpea, off North State, and she ran, like an injured lark, alone, to her apartment, as she said she wanted to.
Back at the dorm, I asked Fleece what possibly she could have meant. He was so avid to know everything he didn’t even laugh. I think he sort of fell in love with Patsy, hearing about her. He said she was just a little mixed up in her terms, was all.
“Do you remember in Peter’s letter, ‘the lush vigilant digit of your clitoris’?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well then.”
He gazed off amazedly. “She said that?”
Exam time came around the next week. Fleece’s parents went to Europe for four months. General Creech wanted to live in all the places he’d helped shoot to pieces, said Fleece. He imagined Creech all blown up like a toad with his memories. Fleece’s board was paid for at the college through summer and fall, and the house was locked tight, but we broke in and set up. The grass was already high in the yard, high around the cool mimosas, which were every-where. It was a ranch home, with bricks and green boards. Fleece felt terribly good, at first, being in the place. He read like a monk. We had the air-conditioning and the free telephone. For me it was free board for the summer. I was finished with college music and thought I might indeed try medicine. Fleece made it sound easy, and at the same time glorious. The idea was that his own knowledge was so large that just being around him, enough would rub off on me to make the basics, even starting from scratch. Beyond that, there was only memory work, and my memory had always been fine when it needed to be. So I was going into chemistry, German, and algebra this summer, and I felt like a swashbuckler of the mind.
Saturday evening I called Patsy and Fleece was on the extension.
“I’m going into pre-med,” I told her.
“My baby a doctor?” said Patsy. “Then you can come right over and cure me! I’ve got bruises everywhere where you grabbed me the other night. Honey… no!.. I love all my bruises. You were my poor drunk Harry … I love you more! When I see your face tomorrow.”
“Darling, do you want to have intercourse with me?” I said.
“Yes! Yes! I’M FAINTING WHEN YOU SAY THOSE WORDS. Oh, darling. I didn’t know you loved me enough to say intercourse and darling to my face!” I was doing all this for the benefit of Fleece, of course. She was a great joke.
“Now that I’ll be in medicine, and thinking of what you said the other night about our act, you know, in the clear light of reason, I think now I should say words like intercourse and, well, vagina and penis. And feces, even, certainly!”
“Oh, yes! And our children, too, well teach them that! All of the Latin words! My honey Harry. Let me ask you this. Will you not smoke, will you not bring your cigarettes tomorrow? I don’t want those clouds of smoke coming from my darling’s mouth. We don’t want the room cloudy or smoky in any way, do we?”
“For you,” I volunteered.
“Would you let me call you something that is not very scientific? I saw a movie once, I know it’s girlish, but you with the horn … when I saw you and heard you playing that Mexican solo — please, I know, I hope you’ll go on playing your horn. But—”
“What?”
“My Apache Valentine!” She sighed. “T’ve said it.” She hung up. Now, I knew what Fleece would do with this, and I did wish she hadn’t said that. She had peered in so close to me that she’d gotten as close as the right tribe.
I waited a while, but he was still in his parents’ bedroom, holding the phone. He looked askance at me through his horn-rims. His sideburns were wet and curling.
“Ain’t she keen? Does she come on strong?” I said.