Chapter 16
I sat around in my new room-which hadn't been painted in about six years-until the afternoon started to end and night began to drop. I just felt too beat to do anything but sit. I kept thinking about how good we had it, all of us with all those women, all those jugs to hold and all those warm bodies to snuggle up with, and now it was all exploded because Chuck Gordon had been dumb enough to bring Carol over.
I was seized by a powerful curiosity. I wanted to know what had happened to the rest of my fellow expellees-where they were going, how they had reacted, whether they planned to do anything. Most of all I wanted to know about Carol.
So about five in the afternoon I went out in the hall and put a dime in the phone and dialed the number of her dormitory, and asked for her. I didn't really expect her to come to the phone. That was why I was so surprised when she did.
Her voice, remote, hollow, said, "Hello?"
"Carol?" I gibbered.
"That's right. Who's this?"
"Jeff. Jeff Burnside."
"Oh," she said. I expected her to slam the receiver down on me the way everybody else seemed to be doing today, but to my surprise she didn't. "Why do you call, Jeff?"
"I-I just wanted to find out how everything was. I mean, I haven't seen you since Saturday, and I was wondering-whether there were any repercussions-that is-" I stopped, not knowing what to say.
'Repercussions?" She laughed bitterly. "I'm packing my things."
"Why?"
"I was invited to withdraw from the college," she said in a weary voice.
"You mean they expelled you?" I gasped. "But that isn't fair! You weren't in control of yourself that night. You-"
"They didn't expel me," she said. "All the other girls were expelled. I was simply invited to withdraw."
"What the hell's the difference?"
"The difference is that I'm eligible to go to some other college, if I want to. The other girls are blackballed at any good school."
"But-why? You weren't involved."
"I was there, Jeff, and I had my clothes off. The fact that I was drugged has nothing to do with it. Presumably a Chesley girl has sense enough not to get herself drugged. So I was scandal-tainted enough to be persona non grata on campus. They asked me politely to leave, the way they ask a girl to leave if she gets pregnant and isn't married."
"And suppose you had refused to withdraw?"
"They would have made it very tough for me here, then," she said.
"Oh. So you were railroaded out. What are you planning to do now?"
"I'm not sure. For the time being I'm going to live with Marge Halloran. We've got a little place in midtown. I don't know if I want to go back to college or not. I spoke to my parents, but they're pretty bitter about the whole thing and just about washed their hands of me-"
"Same here."
"Maybe I'll try to get into the theater," Carol said. "I was always interested in that. What about you?"
"Don't know. I'm living down here on the East Side now. I got hell from home. I don't know where to go next."
And that was about where our conversation ended. She didn't seem to have much enmity toward me about the incident in my hotel room, and she didn't seem to think I was responsible for her downfall at the sex club. I gave her my phone number, finally, and told her to keep in touch, though I knew she wouldn't.
When I hung up, I invested my remaining dimes in phoning other people. And, bit by bit, I began to piece together the fates of the others. Most of them had left New York already, to go home to a no doubt stormy welcome. Haberman and Felks were entering the Army. Helene Wallace was talking about becoming a nun, but no one took her very seriously. I talked briefly to Fred; he said he was sorry to get me into trouble, but I should have known better in the first place-and anyway, he had only been interested in saving Carol from a fate worse than death, etc. He said he didn't feel he could stay at Metropolitan any more, so he was transferring to an all-male college in Oregon. He had no plans for staying in touch with Carol; he knew she had never loved him, and after the incident Saturday night he didn't want to see her again. He explained that the ugly memory would always remain, so it was impossible to think of marrying her.
Nobody I spoke to seemed to know where Chuck Gordon had gone. It was just as well; I couldn't care less about that louse.
So that was the way matters stood. I spent the next two days looking for a job, and finally found one-a forty-seven-fifty-a-week job for a magazine distributing company, sorting and baling magazines. Dull work. Every time I had to give my name in connection with anything, I expected the reply to be, "Burnside? Are you the fellow that got kicked out of college for that sex club thingr" But no one actually said it. I came to realize that nothing gets forgotten faster by the public than last week's scandal. My name meant nothing to the eight million. But I would remember, forever.
The story could just about end here, I guess. A whole bunch of careers shattered, lives twisted from their courses, me a forty-seven-fifty worker instead of a pre-med student, me an outcast from my family and my town and friends, drifting along into the gray, bleak years ahead. New York is full of bums and drifters who started out heading for better things, but got short-circuited.
Like I say, it could have ended there, with nothing but drifting ahead. For a whole week I did my job, came home exhausted, cooked a little meal, read for a while, and went to sleep. I had no friends, I saw no one, I spoke to no one. I had woven a cocoon around myself, and inside the cocoon I was trying to repair the damage that had been done to my life. Without succeeding.
And I knew that here and there over the country there were about thirty other people in the same boat. Girls who had thought it nice fun to get made, and who now would probably become call girls or something, unless they became nuns. College guys who thought they had had it made, and who didn't. And one girl who hadn't deserved what she got. Also Don Hammer, who had escaped. Well, I wasn't angry about Hammer. At least he had had the brains to run while the running was good. But I didn't envy him having to live with his conscience all the rest of his life, thinking about the friends of his that got expelled while he went walking away free.
And then, a week after it happened, more or less, I got this phone call from Carol.
I hadn't figured to hear from her ever again. She had reason enough to hate me, after all that had happened. But the phone rang. It was Tuesday night, and I had eaten and was lying in my room, not even reading, just lying there thinking about what a lousy life this was. In addition to everything else, I was feeling hard up for a woman. I had been living it up high for weeks, and now for a solid seven days I had had nothing. That hurt. I was debating whether or not to go out and find myself a floozie when the phone rang.
I walked out into the hall and picked it up. I heard a whispering female voice say, "Jeff?"
"That's right. Who's this?"
"Carol."
"My god, how come-"
"Shh. Listen to me. Can you get up here and make it fast? I'm scared stiff. Marge is drunk and she's talking about suicide.
So that was why she was whispering. "Suicide? Hell, can't you tie her down?"
"She's stronger than I am, Jeff. And she says she's going to jump out the window. She just found out she's pregnant, and-oh, hurry, Jeff!"
In a situation like that I wasn't going to stand around gabbing. I got the address, a hotel on West Fifty-eighth Street, and got my shoes and got going. The subway would have been much too slow, so I hailed a cab. It cost me a buck and a half, but what the hell-
And even so, I wasted my money. I reached the hotel some twenty minutes from the time Carol had called. Their room was on the ninth floor, and I fidgeted as the old elevator creaked its way up.
I found the room. Nine-o-seven. I knocked.
"Who's there?" Carol's voice.
"Jeff."
She opened the door. In the same instant I saw Marge, stark naked, go wobbling across the room toward the window. I pushed Carol out of the way and made a dash for Marge just as she got the window open.
Too late.
She scrambled over the ledge just as I got there, and I stabbed out wildly, caught the fleshy part of one buttock, gripped it tightly-
And then she fell.
Automatically I looked out the window. I saw Marge plummeting toward the ground, belly first, her limbs flapping in different directions, her bare body clear against the gray concrete below. Then she landed.
I got up, closed the window, staggered to the washbasin, and lost my dinner. When the vomiting was over, I looked up. Carol had thrown herself down on one of the rumpled beds, and was having hysterics. She was wearing only a white housecoat that had come unbelted, and I could see the whiteness of her thighs and the soft roundness of her belly and breasts as she lay curled up. But just then I wasn't even aroused by her nakedness. I felt too sick.
I went over to her. I felt shaky as hell. The room was filthy, and there were liquor bottles everywhere, and it smelled of liquor. I held Carol tight for a moment, trying to keep myself from going hysterical too. Burned into my mind was the image of Marge's naked body floating downward and....
After a moment I picked up the telephone that was on the night table between the beds, and when the desk answered I said, "Hello. I'm in Room nine-o-seven. A drunken girl just jumped out of the window here."
I heard yelling in the lobby-evidently they had just discovered the fact down there too. The phone went dead. Carol was still waiting.
"Get hold of yourself," I said. I made her sit up, and I drew her housecoat tight and belted it. She continued to sob, and I slapped her. That calmed her down.
"Marge-she just-jumped-"
"Yes. Try to be calm, Carol."
"She was drinking all week," Carol said in a monotone. "Said she was disgusted with herself, said she wanted to die-and then she missed a period, you know, and yesterday she went to the doctor to get a test, and today he called back and said yes, she was pregnant-"
People started to pound on the door. I left Carol and let them in.
Within ten minutes, the room was jammed with policemen, hotel people, reporters, curious bystanders. We told the story over and over again. Expelled from college; drunk; despondent; pregnant. Suicide. We must have gone through the routine a hundred times during the next hour and a half. The police counted the liquor bottles, asked a million questions.
Finally they left, after warning us both to remain available for further questioning. It was nearly nine o'clock at night.
Carol was icy calm by then. I was pretty frayed around the nerves, and it was startling to think that there was a good chance that Marge had leaped to her death with my child in her belly. It wasn't very pleasant to think a thought like that.
"So she's gone," Carol said in a tight voice. "She was talking about it, and then the moment you walked in, there she went-"
I put my hand on her wrist. "You mustn't keep going over and over it like this."
"I have to. I have to get it out of my system."
"She was a very confused girl," I said. "An unhappy one. She was heading for destruction."
We were silent a long while. Then Carol said, "By the way, Jeff, I don't want you to think I'm still angry about that business in your hotel room. It was silly of me to get so excited."
"It was stupid of me to make a pass like that."
"We'd better forget all about it."
"Okay," I said.
I looked at her, as she sat there with her soft cheeks puffy from tears, and I remembered how she had looked, a drugged puppet, at that final catastrophic party. And if Chuck Gordon had been within reach just then I would have hurled him from that window.
She said, "Fred told me all about you, Jeff. How mixed up he thought you were. He said you tried to help me, when Chuck brought me to the party."
I shrugged. "At least I carried you out of the way when the fighting started."
"Tell me honestly-what did I do that night?"
"You came in looking like a robot. Chuck made you do a striptease. He was about to-to seduce you when Fred came busting in."
"But that was all that happened? I mean, Chuck didn't actually do anything to me?"
"No. He didn't get the chance."
She nodded gravely. "It doesn't matter, I guess. I got hanged for a lamb, anyway." She shook her head. "Tell me something, Jeff-why did you join that club?"
"For excitement, I guess. Adventure. I hadn't ever slept with a woman before September, you see. And I was kind of curious about what it was all about. So Chuck sort of led me into it-"
"Chuck kept trying to lead me into it too," she said. "And finally he did, only he had to drug me first."
"Let's not talk about the club," I said. "Let's talk about now."
"I'd rather not. The present isn't very pretty and the future looks worse."
"Are you going to stay here?" I asked.
She shrugged. "I can't stay in this room any more, of course. I don't know. Maybe I'll room up with one of the other girls who got expelled. Nothing matters much, does it?"
"Yes,' I said. "One thing matters."
"What's that?"
I was silent for a moment, looking at her, radiantly lovely even after all the torment she had been through. Unjustly expelled, grossly treated by her parents, by Fred, by Chuck. I pitied her. She had just been trying to be a good girl, and the universe had caved in about her. It almost made it look like there wasn't any percentage in trying to be good.
I said, "I love you, Carol."
She looked at me as though I'd just said something in Albanian or Hungarian. "What?"
"I said I love you," I repeated. "I always have-right from the start, from the day I saw you in Holman Quad. But first you were Fred's girl, so I didn't dare get involved, and then I was mixed up in that club thing-and after the mess I made of things in my room that day, I didn't have to say anything to you-" I reddened. "I guess I don't have any business saying this. I'd better leave."
I started for the door, but she caught me and held me, pressing her body up against mine.
"No-don't go. Stay here. Don't leave me alone, Jeff."
I took her in my arms. "Do you believe me when I say I love you?"
"I believe you, Jeff."
"And-and-"
"I love you too, Jeff. I think. We hardly know each other."
We kissed, slowly, then more intensely. When it was finished Carol said, "I hope we get to know each other a lot better, though."
I stayed there that night. She was afraid to be left alone in this room where Marge had lived. But, at my insistence, we slept in separate beds-because I had had enough cheap sex for one lifetime, and I didn't want to spoil anything by jumping the gun. So I kissed her tenderly on the mouth and on each rosy nipple, and turned up the covers, and then I undressed and got into Marge's bed myself.
There's nothing like suffering to teach you self-control. The expulsion, Marges suicide, the disgrace-all of these things will remain in our memories, of course. But they are fading. Carol and I will be married next month, and after our honeymoon I'll go into the army. As a soldier's wife, she'll be able to follow me once I'm through with basic training.
In two years I'll be out, and I'll have Carol. As for what happens then, quien sabe? I want to become a writer. After what I've been through, I should have something to write about. And Carol wants to do something in the theater. And we'll have each other. They say you can't live on love, but I'd like to try.
Right now I don't worry too much about what's going to happen two years from now. I'm confident that we'll be able to rebuild our lives somehow. The only future event that interests me right now is the event that takes place three weeks from today. Well be married then. And three weeks from tonight will be our wedding night, when all of that blonde loveliness is going to be legally mine. I don't know how I'm going to wait twenty-one whole days, but somehow, I'll manage, because I don't want to spoil anything. This isn't any quickie shack-up job, and it isn't any sordid campus affair. We've both been through a lot, and we take both love and sex more seriously now. At least, I take it more seriously. Carol always did. And that's why I'm waiting. I want everything to be perfect. After all, this time it's for keeps.