Dan Wakefield - Going All the Way - A Novel

Sonny was alone in the dimly lit room with Gail, and the passionate gypsy music was building to another climax. He got up and poured more whiskey in his glass, then sat back down and tried to think of something to talk about for a while. He wanted to talk some more before trying anything, so he would feel more sure of her wanting him to do it. They had already, at dinner and at the dance, got through the usual crap about what did you major in and what are you going to do (she majored in English and wanted to get an Interesting Job), plus the kind of extras you throw in like Do you remember what you were doing when you were a kid and Franklin D. Roosevelt died, and how older people didn’t understand The Catcher in The Rye either because things had changed so much since they were kids or else they didn’t remember, and how Adlai Stevenson was a brilliant man but seemed too wishy-washy for most people to trust him being a great leader; all the preliminary shit.

Sonny had really enjoyed the preliminary shit with Gail, though, because she seemed so feminine and sexy and impressed by his opinions, and looked him right in the eyes, and ran her tongue over her lips a lot, and laughed whenever he said something he meant to be funny. He gulped the hot solace of his new drink, thinking, Oh, God, oh, Jesus, maybe this is It, The Answer, the Great Girl who will make everything O.K., the perfect combination of sex and intelligence that every man is supposed to find, that is his rightful due, as stated by the United States Constitution itself, which promised Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, making it an actual law that was right on the books! Sonny sometimes wondered if the catch was in the word “pursuit” of happiness; suspected that the acquisition of it wasn’t really promised, just the chase, and that you might have to keep pursuing it until you keeled over and couldn’t even sue the government for your rightful share.

“Do you really think you might go to New York?” Gail asked. Sonny had been talking big about the GI Bill and him and Gunner maybe going to Columbia and getting interesting jobs in New York. Gail had said she was going there herself in the fall, maybe to look for a job in a publishing house, which her background in English qualified her for, and so Sonny had been more positive about the possibility of New York than he actually felt; but with the saying it he began to believe it. A whole life had bloomed in his mind, with him and Gunner and Marty and Gail having a youthful, sexy, fascinating life in New York, skipping hand in hand as a foursome down the Great White Way, like in those color musical movies about backstage life on Broadway, where people from little towns lived on spaghetti and wine in the basements of the big city until they were discovered and became great stars with their name in lights.

“New York is really the only place, when you get right down to it,” Sonny said. “Don’t you think?”

“Well, there’s San Francisco, they say.”

“I guess. But it’s not New York.”

“No,” she sighed, “it’s not,” nestling closer against Sonny. He guzzled down the rest of his new drink and got up to pour some more.

“You like some more?” he asked.

Gail shook her head and got out a cigarette. When Sonny sat back down, she put her hand on his knee and whispered, “You won’t drink too much, will you?”

“Oh, no,” he said and laughed. “I got a large capacity.”

“I’m having such a wonderful time,” she said.

Sonny gulped so much from his glass that he almost choked.

He rubbed at his eyes and said, “Jesus, me too.”

“I’m glad.”

Sonny took another burning swig of the whiskey and said, “You know, really, I’d like to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

She looked up into his eyes, and inhaled her dizzy perfume.

“Well, what I want to say is, you’re—” He took another fiery gulp, then set down his glass. “Fantastic,” he said. “I mean, Jesus, you’re everything, you’re incredible, I never knew anyone. I’d do anything for you. I’d—”

She drew her head back off his shoulder and said, “You don’t even know me.”

“Yes I do! No kidding, I mean, I know what I feel, I feel—I don’t know how to explain it. Everything.”

“Shhh,” she said and put a finger very gently on Sonny’s mouth. She moved her own mouth up to about a hair’s distance of his, and he leaned down just a little and tasted her lipstick, like some wonderfully sour jam, and then he put both his arms around her and they were kissing, really kissing, her sharp little tongue flicking at his teeth and in between them, and he started mashing his left hand all over her firm little tits and then reached down and felt her ass and she cuddled into him, biting at his lips, digging her nails in the back of his neck, and he suddenly pulled away.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, her eyes searching.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” he said.

He had been scared shitless he was going to come, and he felt if he could only take a piss he could get a new start. Gail moved back and primped some of the hair into place that was falling in her eyes.

“Oh,” she said coolly.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Go ahead, for God sake!”

Sonny got up and went to the downstairs bathroom. After he pissed he looked at himself in the mirror and brushed his hand through his messed-up hair. Most of the pancake stuff was rubbed off his nose, leaving the pimple red and sore-looking, with awful brown flakes from the makeup around it. He figured anything he did would only make it worse, and he just washed his hands and tried not to think about his nose. When he went back to the den he poured more booze in his glass and sat down. Gail had turned the gypsy record over and the fucking Spaniards were stamping and yelping again.

“I’m sorry,” Sonny said.

“About what?”

“That I had to go to the bathroom.”

“Don’t be sorry ,” she said, kind of disgusted.

Sonny felt panicky, like he was in a bad dream where he did and said all the wrong things and couldn’t stop. He had done all this before with girls he liked, practically slobbered over them until they demanded to be taken home, and he couldn’t understand what had happened, why they didn’t accept his trembling declarations of love, but now it was worse because he knew he was doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, but he couldn’t stop, couldn’t break out of the nightmare he was making for himself on the spot. He wanted to explain but it was too complicated, and he reached out and took Gail’s hands in his own.

“Listen,” he said, “I wish I could make you understand. I love you. I am hopelessly and madly in love with you.”

She closed her eyes and said, “Get me a drink.”

Sonny jumped up and fixed the drink, and when he placed it in her hands, he said, “Here, darling.”

He sat down and lit a cigarette, trying to steady himself. He knew he should be like Richard Widmark, or at least like Gunner, and say he wanted to screw her whether she liked it or not and hump her like a goddam maddened stallion, fucking her senseless.

“I’m sorry I said that stuff,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have said it. About being in love with you and everything. But it’s true. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

She took a healthy swallow of her own drink, which Sonny had made strong as hell, and said in a very even, quiet tone, “If you don’t stop being sorry, I’m going to scream.”

“I’m—” He stopped himself and wavered up to slosh some more booze in his glass. He spilled some, and it dripped down his debonair white-linen slacks.

“You’re drunk,” she said.

“I’m not!” Sonny shouted, and he felt that was true, or partly true. The part that made his hands shake and made the room waver and her face go fuzzy right before his eyes was drunk, but somewhere, below all that, some part of himself saw everything soberly clear.