There was (I knew, Dana knew) nothing very special about our love, except that it was ours and it was good. We floated, we drifted toward a limbo of not-quite irresponsibility, lulled by each other’s presence and the soporific vapors of spring. I was protected from the draft by my student status at Yale, and I was smart enough (Wat Tyler on black-and-white film asserts to his own high intelligence while assorted professors and scientists applaud his modesty) to be able to grapple with whatever old Eli threw at me in the semester to come, confident in short that I could preserve my deferment. Dana was a bright girl and an honor student, and if we slouched through most of our courses, it didn’t show in our grades. We bathed regularly. We wrote or called home even when we didn’t need money. We were a pair of passionate isolationists who sought neither followers nor converts, involved in a love we knew was genuine and true. And since it was ours alone, and since it was so good, we naturally felt free to abuse it.
(This is Wat Tyler’s first screen appearance in color, idol of millions, and he is disturbed by his red-faced image, did he look that way in the rushes? Apart, he wonders how Dana can have caused such rage in him. The flickering frames of film reveal the camera coming in for a tight close shot of his fists clenching and unclenching. The audience Wat Tyler watches the star Wat Tyler as the sound track shrieks under the tense, homicidal hands, “I can’t get no satisfaction.”)
Dana was sitting in the center of Lenny’s bed, eyes averted the way they’d been that first night here in January, partially turned away from me, hands in her lap. She was wearing faded blue jeans and a green sweater. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. There was no lipstick on her mouth. It was ten o’clock on a Friday night. She usually caught the five o’clock train from Boston and was at the apartment by six-thirty.
“Why are you so late?” I asked her.
“I ran into someone.”
“Who?”
“An old friend.”
“Where?”
“In Boston, where do you think? My God, Wat, it’s only...”
“Why didn’t you call?”
“I wasn’t anywhere near a phone.”
“Well, where, what do you mean, there’re phones all over Boston, how could you possibly not be anywhere near a phone? Didn’t you know I’d be worrying?”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Well, I was.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Where were you?”
“By the river.”
“What river?”
“There’s only one undergraduate river in Boston, which river do you think?”
“I’m not that goddamn familiar with Boston.”
“The Charles,” Dana said softly.
“With who, whom?”
“With Max.”
(The close shot of Wat Tyler’s eyes reveals jealousy, fury, fear, unreasoning black rage, all represented by a superimposed fireworks display erupting in each pupil. The soundtrack features his harsh breathing. The Stones’s “Satisfaction” has segued into The Yardbirds’ “I’m a Man.” It is wintertime in the film, the window behind Wat Tyler is rimed with frost, there is the distant jingle of Dr. Zhivago sleigh bells on the icebound street outside. In the room it is May and Lenny Samalson has put flowered Bonwit Teller sheets on the bed in celebration of spring, but it is a dank winter in Wat Tyler’s mind; her body will hardly have deteriorated at all when they find it naked in the snow a week from now.)
“Max,” I repeated.
“Yes. Max.”
“You ran into him.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I didn’t exactly run into him. He called.”
“When?”
“This afternoon. I went back to the dorm to pick up my bag, and Max called.”
“To say what?”
“To say how was I, and it had been a long time, and all that.”
“So how’d you end up by the river?”
“He said he had a few minutes and would I like to go for a walk or something? So I said I was on my way to catch the train to Providence, and he said Oh, in that case. So I felt sorry for him and I said Okay I’ll take a walk with you, Max.”
“So you went by the river for a few minutes, and now it’s ten o’clock at night when you should have been here by six-thirty.”
“We didn’t stay by the river.”
“Where’d you go?”
“Wat, I’m very tired. I really would like to put on my nightgown and go to bed. Can’t this wait until morning? Nothing so terrible happened, believe me.”
“What did happen?”
“We went up to Max’s room, and we had a drink.”
“And then what?”
“And then we had another drink.”
“Did he try to lay you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you let him?”
“No.”
“Why’d you go up there, Dana? Didn’t you know he’d try?”
“No, I didn’t know he’d try. I wanted to see if he’d try.”
“You were sleeping with the guy for a month before we met, did you expect him to get you up in his room and discuss the weather?”
“I didn’t know what to expect. I hadn’t seen him since December, when we ended it, and I was surprised when he called and... I was curious, all right? I wanted to see.”
“See what?”
“I wanted to see if... there was anything there any more.”
“What did you expect to be there?”
“Damn you, Wat, I loved him once!”
“The way you love me.”
“Yes. No. Right now, I hate you.”
“Why? Because I don’t like you kissing around with your discarded boyfriends?”
“We didn’t... oh, all right, yes, he kissed me, all right? He kissed me several times, all right?”
“Good old trustworthy Max.”
“You’re a riot, do you know that? You even expect Max to be faithful to you!”
“I expect Max to get run over by a bus!”
“Go make a little doll, why don’t you?”
“I’ll make two while I’m at it.”
(The image on the screen, the Victorian strait-laced stuffy impossible image of Walter Tyler, Esquire, is amusing even to himself. He cannot believe the soundtrack, he cannot believe that these words are issuing from his mouth, and yet the camera never lies, and he can see his lips moving, he can hear the words tumbling sternly from his prudishly puckered mouth, what docs he expect from her?)
“I expected more from you.”
“More? Than what?”
“Than... whatever you want to call it. An adventure in some guy’s room. Kissing you and... getting you drunk...”
“Oh, crap. Wat, I’m not drunk. Do I look drunk?”