Strange Are the Ways of Love

5

It was Saturday morning. Jan woke up slowly, stretching and yawning like a cat, slowly pushing the bedclothes back and pulling herself out from under them.

It was late, almost noon. She sat up in bed, unconscious of her nakedness, her mind slipping back to the previous evening.

She remembered leaving The Shadows, half walking and half running along Macdougal Street and Third Street and finally reaching her apartment, exhausted. She threw herself headlong upon the bed without bothering to remove her clothes, trying desperately to sleep, shutting her eyes and saying sleep, sleep, sleep, over and over to herself. But she couldn’t.

So she read, lying on her bed and racing through a book and starting another book when the first one was finished. The books came from Ruthie’s bookshelf, but that was all she could remember about them now. Titles, plots and characters escaped her completely. She only remembered that she had read swiftly, with a vengeance, attempting to bury herself in the books, to think about nothing else, to lose her mind completely in the rhythm of the prose and the flow of the narrative.

It had worked in the past. She discovered reading the year her mother died and had read everything, racing through libraries, reading not books but complete works of her favorite authors, reading totally incomprehensible poetry for the sound and meter alone. Reading constantly, forgetting everything but the book in her hand, even shutting out the world and the light and the presence of other persons in her room.

But last night it did not work. She plowed on and on through the books, turning pages automatically. Her mind kept wandering back to the coffee shop and to the bar, and suddenly she would catch herself, realizing that she had read three or four pages without noticing a word or remembering what they were about.

Mike Hawkins, who frightened her with the invitation in his deep eyes. Who scared her with the promise he made, the empty promise of fulfillment she could never find with him.

Peggy or Laura. The beautiful Lesbian who could bring her the pleasure she wanted but was afraid to accept.

In one night she had met two fires, two persons who attracted her and repelled her and frightened her at once. In one night in Greenwich Village she had been awakened severely.

She almost longed for Indiana. She almost ached for its emptiness and loneliness, for the fresh air and two-story buildings and quiet people who never did anything, who never made her think about anything more upsetting than whether or not it might rain that night.

She almost craved this emptiness, and then, just before sunrise, she fell asleep.

Now she was awake and hungry. She was also naked, and she realized this fact with a start, flushing with embarrassment and thinking that someone was watching her, that somewhere a pair of eyes watched her, burning over her skin. It was ridiculous, of course. There was no one near and no way for anyone to see her. Her window faced a blank wall and the door to her bedroom was shut.

What was she afraid of?

She wasn’t sure. She stood up abruptly, taking a deep breath and holding it in her lungs, throwing her shoulders back, expanding her chest. She released the air in a rush.

Naked, she walked to the bathroom and turned on the shower. When the water reached the right temperature she stepped into the tub and soaped herself thoroughly, working the lather into her skin. Then she stepped under the shower, enjoying the way the water beat down on her, hard, pelting her skin and waking it up.

She soaped and rinsed again. Then she rubbed the soap into her long black hair and rinsed it and soaped and rinsed, repeating the process until her hair squeaked between her fingers.

When she had rubbed herself dry with the heavy white towel, she returned to the bedroom and began to dress. The shower had intensified her hunger, and she wished that Ruthie had left food in the refrigerator, or that she had had sense enough to buy breakfast food the day before. At least Ruthie left a houseful of staples — sugar and salt and flour and all the rest, and a full stock of pots and pans and dishes. That was something.

She ate at the diner again — ham and eggs and orange juice and black coffee. It was good, but when she paid the bill and tipped the counterman she realized that eating out was costing much too much money, that she would have to do her own cooking from now on. She could always get a job, but that would be a great waste of time.

She had little enough time as it was. Three months, and that wasn’t nearly enough time for a city like New York, not at all enough time to explore it and get to know it, to go every place and do everything there was to do. It would be foolish to waste eight hours a day working.

Let her father pay for it. Let the old bastard pay and pay and pay—

Sure, she thought. Another indication, another typical reaction.

My father.

I hate him.

He’s good to me and he loves me, but I hate him. He was good to mother, but I can’t help feeling he killed her.

Another sign. Another complex the doctors could label. Another clue.

Why didn’t she give up? Why didn’t she quit fighting and join the three of them in The Shadows and go home with one of them and find out, finally? Why?

She hurried out of the diner and walked to the supermarket down the block. She pushed a cart up and down the long aisles, filling the basket and deciding while she shopped that she wouldn’t cook dinners at the apartment. There were so many restaurants to try. Economizing on breakfasts and lunches was enough.

She’d be spending enough time in the apartment anyway.

She shopped slowly, buying a large quantity of food. She stocked up on eggs and coffee and bacon, and bread and sandwich meat for lunches, and fruit juices and milk and everything else that caught her eye. Shopping could be an end in itself. She had learned long ago that it could provide as perfect an escape as reading, that a person could lose sight of herself completely when she tried on pair after pair of shoes or pushed a market basket or simply stared into store windows.

The hell with it, she thought angrily. The hell with it, whatever it was. I don’t care what I am or who I am, but I can’t go on escaping forever. I can stand it, whatever I am. But I can’t stand running, always running.

The hell with it.

Back at the apartment she unpacked the groceries and put them away. The refrigerator looked better now, filled with food and ready for use. The shelves were not so empty any more. She put a pot of water on the stove for coffee and made the bed while she waited for it to boil.

The apartment was beginning to feel more and more like home. Somehow the mere act of working in an apartment, of straightening it up and buying food for it, made it seem to belong to her. It had been Ruthie’s and it would be Ruthie’s once again when Ruthie returned to the city, but now it belonged to her, and she lived in it.

She’d buy more books, she decided. Books that she wanted. And some decent curtains for the front window. And a good-looking table cloth for the kitchen table instead of the red and white checkered rag that was on it now.

She put a spoonful of instant coffee in a cup, poured water in, and sat down in the living room to drink it.

I’m here, she thought. I’m here, but where do I go from here?

The time passed. She started another of Ruthie’s books, an obscure novel that didn’t sell well but had been reviewed favorably in several of the literary quarterlies. The characters remained quite shapeless after the first fifty pages, and she put the book down unfinished, knowing she would never return to it.

She sat motionless in her chair for several minutes. Then she rose and walked to the kitchen to re-light the burner under the pot of water. While it boiled she brushed her hair before the bathroom mirror, letting its glossy blackness flow over her shoulders and down her back. She put on fresh lipstick and smiled at herself in the mirror — a fast smile that left her face before she was out of the bathroom.

She made more coffee and returned to the chair in the living room and pulled another book from the shelf.

It was four-thirty.

It was five-thirty when the bell rang.

The bell startled her, for she had never stopped to realize that there actually was one for her apartment, that a person might visit her and might press the button in the vestibule. She got to her feet, setting the book down on the arm of the chair and walking to the kitchen. There was an answering buzzer for her to press, she knew, but she didn’t have the faintest idea where it was. She hunted around for several minutes before she located it under the light switch. For a moment she hesitated; then she pushed the buzzer and heard the door open in the hallway.

“Who is it?” she called, but there was no answer. Then there was a knock on her door and she opened it.

It was the folksinger, the boy called Mike. “Hi,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”

She took a step back and he walked through the kitchen to the living room, sat down on the couch. She sat across from him in her chair, wondering how he had found her and what he wanted.

“Saw you walk home last night,” he explained, answering her question before she had a chance to ask it. “Just wanted to drop over.”

“Why?”

He looked very relaxed in a flannel shirt and faded blue dungarees, as if he was already at home in her apartment.

“Why? Oh, I wanted to get to know you.”

“What do you mean?”

He leaned forward, resting his chin in one hand and looking at her intently. “New York’s a funny town,” he said, slowly. “It’s the only town worth living in, but there are some problems. For instance, it’s impossible to start a conversation with someone like you. Know what I mean?”

She shook her head.

“I’m from a little hick town upstate that nobody ever heard of. There was never anything much to do, but if I ran into anyone new on the street I could say hello.

“Here it’s different. Suppose a gal and a guy bump into each other on the subway. She looks interesting. She’s pretty, she looks bright — so the guy’s interested. What can he do?”

“I don’t know.”

“He can’t do a thing. Whatever he does, he comes across as a guy on the make. If she’s a tramp he’s set, but suppose she’s a nice gal. Then she rides to her stop and he rides to his stop and they never see each other again.”

“Unless—”

“There is no unless.” He leaned back, crossing his legs and smiling. “There’s nothing he can do.”

“He can follow her home and drop over the next day,” she said. “And then he can tell her what’s the trouble with New York.”

He grinned. “All right,” he said. “I’m interested in you. Now you know.”

I knew that, she thought. You didn’t have to tell me. I knew that from the way you looked at me.

“I tried last night,” he went on. “I started a conversation, tried to get you talking. And you assumed I was on the make and cut out.”

“I didn’t think—”

“Of course you did. I’m not blaming you; it’s the way things go around here. But I would like to talk to you and I’m not on the make. If you want I’ll get out now, but—”

“No,” she said, slowly. “No, stay.”

“Thanks.” She couldn’t tell whether or not he was being sarcastic.

“I mean... you’re right. I don’t know anyone in New York and I should. I should get to know people.” Her words sounded mildly ridiculous, but she was talking as much to herself as to him, getting things straightened out in her mind. At first she had resented his visit but now she was glad he had come, glad there was somebody for her to talk to.

“Good. Let’s get to know each other.”

On the surface his words seemed to flow easily, but she sensed that the conversation was hard for him, as hard as it was for her. It seemed as though he hadn’t played this particular scene before and was unsure of his lines. Maybe the unsureness was part of his line, a line he had used dozens of times before. But she doubted it.

“How do we start?”

“Anywhere. Tell me who you are and what you’re doing here and anything else that seems to fit in. Okay?”

“Okay.” She smiled suddenly, warming to the game. Then she lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it.

“I still don’t know where to begin.”

“At the beginning. Don’t worry — I’ll stop you if it gets boring.”

She began to talk — guardedly at first but more openly as he drew her out and she began to relax. She told him about her home and her parents and the school she went to and the classes she took and the books she read and the people she knew. She left out a lot, but what she omitted didn’t matter.

And he helped her along. He seemed to know everything, to have read all the books and have been to all the places. He wasn’t much older than she was, but he talked as if something had made him grow a great deal in a short time. As he talked his body relaxed more on the couch.

She learned about him. She learned how he’d left home before finishing high school and how he had travelled all up and down the Eastern seaboard, winding up in New York three years ago. He’d been there ever since.

Once in a while he worked. He had pushed a garment truck on Seventh Avenue for a few weeks, clerked in book stores and drugstores, bussed tables in cafeterias and slung hash in a beanery once. He had seaman’s papers and twice he had shipped out for short cruises along the coast as a deckhand.

He’d learned the guitar six years before in Virginia. It accompanied him wherever he went. He learned new songs constantly and he sang them all — at parties, in Washington Square on Sunday afternoons, at folksings and, when he was lucky, at folk music concerts.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Keep singing.” He smiled.

“Will you keep on like this? I mean—”

“You mean will I always be a bum with a guitar? I hope not. I’m sick of starving for my art, Jan. You hear people talk about starving in a garret as though it was a treat, but those people never missed a meal or lived in a cold water flat with roaches for company.

“It’s only romantic for the first week. Then you’re too tired all the time to think how noble it all is, and you feel as though you have lead in your shoes, and you stay out all night and sleep all day because at night your room’s too cold to sleep in.

“Did you ever live like that?”

She shook her head.

“Of course not. But I have. For awhile I was the only person in the Western world who was starving to death and eating caviar every day. Know why?”

“Why?”

“Because it was very nourishing and the cans were small enough to fit in my pocket without bulging. Besides, there was something poetic about it.”

“Were you ever caught?”

“No, but I was hoping they’d catch me, just like in all the jokes. Then they’d put me in a nice warm cell and give me food. It was a hell of a way to live.”

He paused. “I’m through with that,” he said. “I want to make enough money to live on. Not a fortune, but enough.”

“How?”

“Singing.”

“Is there money in folksinging?”

He laughed. “Not much, but it’s there. It’s tough — you keep on singing and you keep on trying and you let people listen to you, and you get a few plugs in mags like Caravan and get heard by the right people. If you’re lucky you cut a record.”

“For a special record company?”

He nodded. “Elektra, Folkways, Tradition, Comet — some label like that. The record date pays a little with more coming in if the record sells. And when people buy the record you can get lucky and play a few concerts and club dates, and if you make it big you cut a pop record or do a bit in Hollywood. People like Bikel and Seeger made it that way.”

“Would you want to record popular songs? I thought—”

“You thought that would be the so-called act of prostituting my art? Hell, I’d be happy to prostitute my art. That’s another expression the people who never starved come up with. They think Art is playing the guitar in your room with the door closed. That’s not the way I want to sing.”

“I like the way you sing,” she said. “I only heard one song last night, but I’d like to hear more sometime.”

“Would you? Well, that could be arranged.” He grinned.

She didn’t say anything.

“Jan,” he said after a moment, “I’m not on the make. Really, I’m not — but would you come to a party over at my pad tonight? It’s not a big thing, just a few people dropping in. There probably will be a mob by the time it gets rolling, but nothing much doing but singing. Would you like to come?”

“I don’t know, Mike.”

“Why not? Look, you don’t have to come as my date or anything. Just drop over whenever you feel like it. I’ll have the guitar there and a few other singers’ll be around. We’ll have an easy-going evening and you can get to know some people. Why not come?”

“I’m busy tonight.” The minute the words were out of her mouth she realized how phony they sounded. “I—”

“See? It’s impossible to get to know anybody in this damned town. They always think—”

“It’s not that.”

“Then why don’t you come?”

Why not? And she said, “All right. I’d like to come, then.”

He smiled.

“You see,” she went on, “it’s not easy for a girl either. A guy could think she’s... on the make.”

“I don’t think that.”

“I know.”

For a moment neither of them said anything. Then he said, “I’ve got to cut out now.” He stood up and started to the door, and she noticed that his eyes did not look as tired as they had before.

“Eight-thirty or nine will be about right,” he said. “Want me to pick you up?”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “I’ll be going out for dinner anyway.”

“Okay. My pad’s on Cornelia Street north of Bleecker. Know where that is?”

She nodded. She had passed that street last night on the way to Macdougal Street.

“Twenty-four Cornelia Street. It’s on the third floor.”

“I’ll remember it.”

He stood with his hand on the door knob looking down at her and she realized how tall he was, how he towered over her. He seemed to be searching for something more to say.

“Well,” he said at length, “I’ll see you then.”

He opened the door and walked down the hall and she stepped to the doorway to watch him leave, following him with her eyes until he was out of the building and gone. Then she closed the door, slowly and almost absently, and went to the bedroom. She sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette, watching the smoke rise to the network of cracks in the ceiling.

She liked him; he was handsome and honest and interesting and perceptive. Not entirely honest, of course — he was on the make, but on the make in a nice way.

He could be a friend.

He could introduce her to New York and to some of the people in it, and he could teach her things and take her places.

And, if she let him, he could make love to her. And, afterwards, she could lie back on the bed, alone and empty and sick. Then she would be a virgin twice removed, a little girl from Indiana who tried it once and didn’t like it and didn’t have the brains to quit.

She was afraid of him.