Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

“No, sir.”

The terrible, pulsing silence fell between them, and Mr. Burns let out a deep, despairing sigh and left the room. Sonny wished himself dead.

The next afternoon Gunner called, sounding as casual and friendly as if no time had passed at all, and said he’d come by to pick Sonny up in an hour or so. When Sonny got dressed, his clean khakis were so tight in the waist he didn’t know if he could even get down a beer.

Gunner wasn’t in the brooding mood that Sonny last saw him in, and in fact seemed on top of the world. When they settled at a table over at the Key, Gunner explained the whole thing. He’d been seeing Marty every night, and he hadn’t been home in the afternoons because Marty was giving him painting lessons. She even had her own studio, a top-floor room in a crumbling old apartment building down by the Herron, equipped with an easel and all the crap you needed to paint with, and even a hot plate so if you got inspired you could keep right on going and heat up some coffee or something and not even have to go out until the fit of creativity had passed. Gunner said that even though he’d taken an art course and messed around with sketching, he had never painted with real oils, and that’s what Marty was showing him.

“I doubt I’ll be any good or anything,” he said, “but I get a charge out of it. Just holding the brush, mixing the paint on the palette. The whole bit.”

Sonny felt even more loggy and good-for-nothing, sitting around all that time on his dead ass while Gunner was out mastering a whole new field of artistic activity. The bastard seemed to give out waves of enthusiasm when he talked about painting, almost like one of the religious nuts giving you the Christ line. But even though Sonny was impressed and curious about Gunner’s progress in art, he couldn’t help wondering how he’d progressed in other areas; like, for instance, the area between the luscious thighs of his new art teacher.

Not wanting to come right out and ask about it, Sonny just made the subtle observation that “I guess she didn’t think you were a dumb jock after all, huh?”

Gunner grinned. “Well, who knows,” he said modestly. “The whole problem was, I was playing defensive ball. When I first met her. You remember. Jesus.” Gunner grasped at his head, embarrassed for himself. “I played it all wrong. Even when I first took her out. You know where the hell I took her?”

“Where?”

Gunner laughed disparagingly. “To a goddam foreign movie. At the little art movie theater they got now, down around Thirtieth and Capitol.” He shook his head at what he obviously felt was his own stupidity.

“What was wrong with that?” Sonny asked.

“Shee-it, man. A truly bad call. I was trying to play her own game, you see? I was trying to be more intellectual than she was, worrying about whether I was coming off like a dumb jock. It was awful. She kept putting me down, naturally. But I was hooked, and when you’re hooked you can’t think straight. I could feel what was happening—I knew I was playing the loser, but I couldn’t snap out of it. Like when you’re trying to wake up from a dream and can’t do it.”

Sonny swigged anxiously from his beer. “So what happened?” he asked.

Gunner popped a cigarette out of a pack of Chesterfields and struck a match from a folder using only one hand. “I got pissed off,” he said.

“At her? You mean at Marty?”

“Right. It’s the only thing that saved my ass.”

“How?” Sonny asked, feeling stupid as hell.

“Well, she invited me in for a drink after the movie, and we’re sitting in this little den kind of room they have, and some serious music is on the record player, and she’s being bitchy as hell. Just like the way she was that day at the drugstore. Remember?”

“Yeh, yeh.”

“I was trying to talk this big game, a lot of intellectual shit, and she kept shooting me down. Every now and then she’d yawn, which was getting me more and more pissed. Then she made some crack about how boring the people were in the Midwest, and that’s when I flipped my lid. Thank God. I just didn’t give a damn anymore, and so I said what I really thought, not giving a shit if she liked it or not.” Gunner sipped at his beer, smiling.

“What was it,” Sonny asked, “that you said?”

“I said to her, ‘Look, bitch, I didn’t go to college in the East, and I’m no intellectual. I’m just a big dumb jock, but I know a couple things you don’t know, or don’t want to know, like I know I want to fuck you and I know you want it too.’”

“Jesus, what happened?”

Gunner made the sharp, popping snap of his fingers. “She was jelly,” he said.

“Goddam,” Sonny whispered in awe.

Sonny couldn’t imagine himself ever doing anything like that, except with a girl like Buddie, who he already was sure of and thus didn’t care too much about. But he knew that the mean, tough-guy approach really worked, and not just for Gunner. Sonny had avidly studied an article in a recent Life that explained how different movie actors appealed to women. It said there was a surprising number of women who were hot for Richard Widmark, the guy with the madman grin who made this crazy little laugh whenever he hurt someone. Sonny had seen the movie where Widmark knocked off a poor old lady in a wheelchair by pushing her down a long flight of stairs, which sent him into a real peal of his crazyman laughter. Life ’s analysis of why so many women were attracted to the fiendish little actor was that “cast in his first movie in a sadist role, Widmark appeals most to women who want to be treated cruelly. This may be a larger group than is recognized.…”

You bet your ass, Sonny thought. He figured he would never be able to appeal to women that way and consoled himself by Life ’s analysis of why so many women creamed over Frank Sinatra: “According to considered Hollywood judgment, Sinatra’s popularity is based on his appeal as a mixed-up character whom women want to take care of …”

Sonny felt that was his own best hope.

“I even brought home my first canvas,” Gunner was saying, having lost interest in the trifle of his sexual conquest. It seemed like now that he’d found some nice new pussy he could afford to be interested in higher things, like art. Sonny felt guilty for thinking that but he couldn’t help it, even though he knew he was probably just jealous. He said, of course he’d like to see the canvas, and Gunner drove them out to the Meadowlark, steering with one hand and beating a little jazz rhythm on the outside of the car with his other hand.

It was really hard to find much to say about the canvas, and Gunner helped out by explaining, “It’s more like an exercise, a way of getting the feel of paint.”

It was mostly just swatches of blue and green, laid on very thick, and all Sonny could think of was the finger paintings you did in grade school, but he didn’t mention that.

“It looks like the real thing,” he commented.

“Well, it’s the real material, anyway,” Gunner said and leaned the small canvas against a lamp on an end table. He put on a lively Brubeck LP and got them a couple cans of beer. Just as Gunner settled on the couch, the doorbell rang and he got up to answer.

“Is that your mother?” Sonny asked, hoping it wouldn’t be.

“Don’t know why she’d ring,” Gunner said. “Maybe she forgot the key.”

After the buzzer from downstairs there was a knock at the door, and Gunner opened it. Instead of his mother there was a middle-aged guy in a rumpled light-blue sport coat and slacks that drooped down in folds around the tops of his canvas rubber-soled shoes.

“Mr. Thomas Casselman?” he asked.

“That’s me.”