12
second chorus i
MARCH, 1944
Their expedition that night, from a business viewpoint, was a dismal failure.
They worked their way from club to club, scouting either side of Carroll Street. They found only two clubs which possessed pianos, and they drew blanks at both. The president of the first club said he didn’t like the idea of strangers rehearsing there in the absence of members. The second president informed them that the landlord of the house would not like a lot of noise during the daytime. As a matter of fact, the members even had to be careful about the volume of the record player at night. Tony Banner had not appreciated the president’s use of the word “noise.” He did not consider his band a noisemaking outfit. But he resigned himself to the fact that his idea had been a dud, and the boys settled down to enjoying an evening of dancing and prowling.
They would not have remained at Club Beguine — a cellar club which obviously took its name from the numerous plays the Artie Shaw record received that night — if Bud had not recognized a girl he knew there. The club in itself was nothing fancy to look at. You entered through a doorway at the end of the driveway, and you stepped down into a finished, furnished basement room. The finishing was confined to blue-whitewashed walls and a canopy affair covering the ceiling pipes, plus paneling which covered the iron lolly columns holding up the first floor of the private house. The girl members of the club had sewn curtains for the tiny basement windows as an addition to the furnishing, which consisted of several wooden lawn chairs, a wooden lawn lounge, and a table upon which rested the record player. A door was at the far end of the club, and through the doorway a circular, homemade bar was visible, together with a second door to the right of which a sign hung. The sign read: Here It Is.
The rule of the club, as the boys knew from their previous excursions that evening, was two free dances. After that, if you decided to stay, a club member casually sauntered over and said, “Hello, fellows, will you be with us a while?” If you were going to be with them a while, you paid the club member twenty-five cents per head. If you were not going to be with them a while, the club member made sure you knew where the door was, and he smilingly told you to “drop in again sometime.”
Considering its furnishing and finishing inducements, the boys would have abandoned Club Beguine instantly. Some of the other clubs they’d visited had boasted stuffed sofas and easy chairs, indirect lighting, even a juke box (into which you didn’t have to dump coins) at one place. The only lure Club Beguine offered was Helen Cantor, and Bud spotted her the moment they stepped into the small room.
“I know that one,” Bud said, and he headed for her instantly. Tony and Andy walked across the room and toward the toilet door. (“Here it is,” Tony said, reading the sign. “Here it goes,” Andy answered.) Reen went to the record player and began thumbing through the stack of records, much to the annoyance of a blond, pimply-faced club member who stood near by. Bud didn’t pay any attention to the goings or comings of his friends. Bud walked swiftly toward Helen Cantor, his most charming smile on his face.
He felt somehow strange as he crossed the room. Being seventeen, and never having read the Rubaiyat, he nonetheless felt as if he were keeping a prearranged assignation. He knew this was sheer nonsense, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something terribly important was about to happen to him, and that this important thing had been ready to happen for a long time, awaiting only the principal players and the setting.
He knew Helen from school, and he had danced with her at a good many of the school dances, and he had liked dancing with her, and he had liked talking to her, and he wondered now why he had never asked her out, and he knew as he walked toward her that he would ask her out, and he didn’t question the knowledge which had come with sudden adolescent clarity. She had not seen him yet, and he felt that this too was all a part of the plan, her not seeing him, and he felt that he already knew the exact moment when she would look up and see him, and he felt he already knew the expression that would be on her face when she did that. He studied her as he moved closer, focusing the picture that was already in his mind, wondering why the picture was there, superimposing the real picture of Helen over the vague image that nudged his consciousness: her long black hair, straight, turned into a pageboy at the nape of her neck; her green eyes, slanted slightly, faintly Oriental; her lips bright with lipstick, the contour spoiled a bit by the infinitesimal protrusion of her upper front teeth; the slender suppleness of her body — and his eyes candidly roamed over the trim suit she wore, lingering on the nylon-sleek exposure of knee where her legs were crossed. He remembered the way she danced, the pressure of her body against his, the narrowness of her waist, the way his arm completely circled that waist, the insistent nudging of her small, well-shaped breasts against his chest. He remembered these things, and they formed a strange part of his awareness.
And then she looked up.
He knew what would be on her face. He saw her lips round into a small O of surprise, and then lengthen into a smile. She seemed about to speak, but he was still too far from her, and so she stood perched on the ledge of articulation, her eyes holding his, drawing him to her.
She extended her hand when he came to her, as he knew she would, and he took it and squeezed it, sensing that neither of them felt this to be a handshake, knowing that she had held out her hand to him across a gulf, and that he had taken it and was now being led onto a narrow span high above treacherously swirling waters. He could not look down, and he could not look back. Helen Cantor was at the other end of that bridge, waiting.
“Hi,” he said, amazed by the everyday sound of his voice. “What are you doing here?”
“I was waiting for you,” Helen answered glibly, and they both started to smile, but suddenly the smiles died, as if she had said exactly what she was supposed to say, and as if they had both known she was going to say this, both somehow anticipating it and dreading it, and now that it was spoken, there was no turning back. The bridge had truly been crossed.
“You look pretty,” he said. His eyes did not move from her face. He had always prided himself upon the smooth flow of his line, and he knew his opening words were too sudden and too abrupt and too baldly stated to have any effect, but they seemed the right words to say now, the true words. He was surrounded with a clear, fragile, shimmering ball of sudden truth. They were alone within this crystal, and their words were unheard by anyone, and their eyes were unseen. They still held hands, as if the contact preserved the privacy and intimacy of their secret pristine glade.