“It’s all behind me now, no more of it for me, no more of that, Bud, I swear to God. I’ve got to move around. Jesus, I’ve got to walk around or the goddamn ceiling will close down on me.”
He began pacing the floor. He was wearing striped shorts and a tee shirt, blond hair curling on his legs and arms. The intimacy of the room, of Andy’s costume, of Andy pacing the floor in his underwear, was somehow all out of kilter. Bud had accepted him, expecting a stranger, not feeling any sympathy for the stranger, but doing what he did out of a sense of auld lang syne. The stranger was here now, in his underwear, a stranger who retched in Bud’s bathroom, a stranger who spoke of an alien world, and yet the stranger was Andy, he could see that the stranger was Andy, and seeing this, he felt a little bit sorry, in spite of all Andy had done, in spite of what he’d known Andy had done. He wanted to get back to his notes, but the empathy was strong inside him, and he couldn’t leave Andy alone now, not now, not when Andy’s struggle seemed so intensely magnified.
“Remember how we used to talk about Cadillacs?” Andy asked, abruptly turning from his talk of drugs. “Remember sitting in that sun porch of yours, with your father’s stamps on the bridge table, and all that junk cluttering up the room. Jesus, your father collects everything in the world, doesn’t he? Does he still collect?”
“Yes,” Bud said.
“He always gave me a kick, your old man, a nice guy in his own way, I guess all fathers are all right, if only they could understand, huh? You know, my mother used to bring me my lunch at school whenever it rained, have I already told you this?”
“I think so,” Bud said.
“She used to bring my lunch in one of those metal lunch pails, and my rubbers, every time it rained. She used to embarrass the hell out of me, coming through the rain with that goddamn lunch pail and the rubbers, that’s one of the things I mean, you don’t have that kind of baloney when you’re turned on, none of these little petty things that rankle you, Jesus, I know guys who’ve gone psycho from little things that rankled them, did you ever read The Naked and the Dead? There’s a part there, one of the characters, I forget who, I can only remember Croft, now he was a son-of-a-bitch, wasn’t he, one of the characters who’s married to this broad, and mashed potatoes stick to her upper lip, and that just about drives him nuts, those mashed potatoes clinging to her lip whenever they eat. Well, Jesus, it’s understandable, isn’t it? Mashed potatoes on a woman’s lip, you don’t think of a woman that way, you think of a clean line of lipstick, don’t you? Well, those little things can drive you nuts. Like stockings hanging from the shower curtain, was that Mailer, too? He’s a damn good writer, you know, did you read the book?”
“Yes,” Bud said.
“Well, he is. Well, that lunch pail just above drove me nuts, too, whenever it rained, here comes the pony express with lunch pail and rubbers. To the round house, men! They can’t corner us there! That sun porch of yours was something like a fortress, too, do you realize that? If the Japs had ever invaded this country, all we’d have had to do was bring the militia to your sun porch and have them fire down from those long windows. Those windows are the eeriest. But do you remember how we talked about Cadillacs, and all the things we wanted out of life? I still want a Cadillac, you know. I still can see myself driving a Caddy, with those goddamn fins sticking out in back, well, who knows, maybe someday.”
“I can take them or leave them alone,” Bud said.
“Well, you were always that way. Even back then. But I had a taste of it, and you didn’t. You’ve got to remember that. I know what it was like to have gold in my pockets. I was pulling down good loot on the Jerralds band, Bud, you musn’t forget that. Once you’ve tasted loot you get to hate all the poor slobs around you, all the ants with their ant jobs.”
“Ants,” Bud said. “I remember.”
“Oh, sure, all ants, all goddamned ants. There’s nothing poorer than a man who’s poor. He gets poor all over, in his heart, in his spirit.”
“Poor men...”
“I used to wonder what it would be like to line up all the ants and give them a heroin fix, and then lead them to a hamburger machine and chop them all up to meat. Give them one big heroin fix, one moment of living, and then cut them dead with the memory of that moment fresh in their minds. That’s a crazy idea, isn’t it? You must think I’m nuts.”
Bud was thinking exactly that. “No,” he said. “No, of course not.”
“Well, you get ideas like that sometimes. The biggest men get ideas like that, I understand. Rape, murder, things like that. So with me, it’s grinding up a bunch of ants. Is that so bad?”
“Well...”
“Oh, who gives a damn, anyway? I was just saying, all those talks we used to have, you know, where we used to tell each other how goddamn great we were, how above the herd we were, and here I am a drug addict. That’s a big comedown, all right. Andy Silvera, addict. Ta-rah! Put it in lights on a marquee someplace. Addict! When I think of how I used to blow that horn, boy, what a comedown. What a goddamn comedown.”
There was self-pity in Andy’s voice, and the self-pity suddenly dissolved any sympathy Bud was feeling. He remembered Milton again, remembered it wearily, and he glanced at his wrist watch. Holy Jesus, it was three-thirty!
“I’m keeping you from your studying,” Andy said.
“Well, yes, you are,” Bud said honestly. In his own mind the two struggles had suddenly become parallel ones. It was certainly easy to sit here and listen to Andy talk, as easy as it would have been for Andy to go out and get himself a shot. Milton was painful, but the examination loomed on the horizon like a hairy monster. The examination had to be faced. He wasn’t going to pass it if he kept appeasing Andy with wishy-washy, “Well, that’s all right” answers. He had to make his position clear right now, and he had to stick to it. There’d be no more interruptions. Milton had to be taken by the horns. “I’ve got to get back to it, Andy. Half the night is shot already.”
“Go ahead,” Andy said.
“Are you going back to bed?”
“No, I thought I’d sit around a little. I don’t feel very sleepy.”
“You can put on the radio if you like.”
“Won’t it bother you?”
“No, I can study with it on. Just keep it soft.”
“Remember that time in Tony’s car when we closed all the windows and turned up the radio full blast, with ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ pounding at our ears?”
“Yes, I remember,” Bud said, “but I’ve got to get to work.”
“Oh, sure, I was just saying. I’ve always held that’s the only way to listen to music, the volume up full. It makes you feel as if you’re a part of the band, right in the middle of it. That’s what you’re supposed to feel when music is playing. If you don’t feel that, who needs it?”