Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“Because you’re too young,” Stan David says while the band plays on. “Because you think you know it all, and you don’t know anything. My God,” he says, “just look at the slave bracelets and school rings and fraternity pins twinkling in here. You’d think it was the midsummer night’s sky, another solar system. Those are the fairy lights of crush and puppy love. You think you know what it leads to. You don’t. You’re in the dark about this stuff. Is it vine-covered cottage in your guts? It’s the projects. Is it moon and June? It’s a high of thirty, a low of twelve. It’s all glum drizzle and the engine won’t turn over in the street and the kid’s spitting up and there’s maybe two eggs in the house and a heel of stale bread. The zip’s gone out of the three ounces of open Coke standing in the fridge and your nose is running and your throat is sore.

“Sometimes I think maybe me and the guys are in the wrong business. We’re ruining lives here, confusing you with bad signals. Excuse me, Mr. L., but I’ve got to say what’s on my mind. It would trouble my conscience as a musician if I didn’t.

“Most bandleaders — Mr. Lodt can correct me if I’m wide of the mark — most bandleaders tell you you’re playing for keeps. Heck, it’s what the songs themselves say. That every love’s true, till the end of time guaranteed. You can keep track of it on the 18-karat gold watch, the 17-jewel movement. But figure it out. Stop to consider. How could it be? This is stuff you should have learned in the home. It ain’t something you should have to hear from a bandleader. You’re young. Get some experience under your belt. Don’t be so serious, play the field, there’s other fish in the sea. Have some fun, please.

“ Change partners!

“—The theme from Moulin Rouge, ladies and gentlemen.”

George is the first to let go. He pushes off from Louise as if it were a maneuver in water. Louise reaches out for him. “It’s part of the show,” she says.

“No,” George says.

“If you cut in on anyone right now you’d be laughed right out of the Delgado. Or get punched if the fellow isn’t in on the joke. It’s part of the show, I tell you. He does that to instigate. It’s part of the show! ”

“You don’t know, Louise.”

“Sure I know,” she says. “Sure I do.”

“I mean you don’t know what’s up. You don’t know what’s what.”

“He’s got his eye on you. Can’t you see that? He’s smirking at you, just waiting to see if you’re going to cut in on somebody.”

“I’m not going to cut in on anyone. I haven’t got the patience for this stuff, Louise. You’re a nice person but I haven’t got the patience for this stuff.” Suddenly he is trying to tell her why. They are dancing again. She has brought this about by falling forward on him. She is leaning on him with all her weight and he staggers into a kind of tango. He is trying to tell her why.

“ Haven’t you ever been in a nightclub? ” she asks forcefully. “Weren’t you ever in a nightclub and the comedian sees someone who has to go to the washroom and then he singles that person out and him and all the guys in the band and even the people in the audience sing ‘We know where you’re going, We know where you’re going’? Haven’t you ever been in a nightclub? ”

“No,” George says, “never. I was never in a nightclub.”

“It’s part of the show. It’s all part of the show.”

Everything is part of the show, George thinks.

[Maybe everything was part of the show, I thought.]

[“Maybe we ought to sit down,” Louise says.]

[I was this musical comedy lout, an oaf of vaudeville, the hick from history. But was Louise any better? Virgins were a sort of lout, too, I thought. Oafs of the ovulate, hicks of hemorrhage. I should have told her, “No, sweetheart, I’ve never been to a nightclub, but I’ve been in a bar.” I should have told her, “No, lady, never in a nightclub. In the back seats of cars. I ain’t talking lovers’ lanes, some place the cops stake out with their flashlights and warnings. I’m not talking drive-ins or all the clubby, sanctioned green belts of love, fairways and parks and a view of the falls. I’m not talking cozy, I’m not talking snug. Where voices don’t carry, the moans muffled. Alleys, vacant lots, rooms the bed ain’t made days.” I should have told her, “No, sister, but I been where nothing’s part of the show, where the calls and rasps, the yelps and barks, the bleats and brays and blatter and whines and grunts, the neighs and howls and cackles and hisses ain’t even noise, they’re just vocabulary. How ladies talk when they’re in a hurry and trying to slip two or three of their fingers, and for all I know maybe the whole damn hand itself, in there with my tool!” I should have asked her outright, “Are you cherry, Louise?”]

Mills tries to explain again how he hasn’t the patience or craft, but somehow it seems he is saying how formidable she is. She interrupts him.

“Say, are you married?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I’m not Catholic or anything, but are you divorced?”

“No.”

Her friends join them. Ellen Rose and Herb think they should all go out afterward for pizza and want to know how the rest of them feel about it.

“I’m trying to watch my figure,” Louise says, glancing at Mills.

“Aw, come on, Louise,” Herb says, “George’ll watch it.”

The Olivers want ice cream. Ruth has a yen for a dish of maraschino cherries and whipped cream.

Ray knows the manager of this White Castle who’s on duty tonight. “You met him, Bern. Pete McGee.”

“Oh, yeah,” Bernadette says, narrowing her eyes, remembering. “That guy with the tattoo. He’d be kind of cute if it wasn’t for the tattoo. I don’t know why guys disfigure themselves like that. Oh. Me and my big mouth. I beg your pardon, sir,” she tells George. “You may be tattooed yourself.”

“I’m not tattooed.”

“Is he, Lulu?” Charles Oliver asks, winking.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know.” Now Louise is blushing. “No one’s asked George what he feels like. What do you feel like, George? Pizza or hamburgers or ice cream?”

“I don’t care.”

“He’s very polite,” Ruth Oliver says.

George listens as they make the arrangements. It is the committee work of friends and very complicated. He understands that Herb is to phone ahead and arrange the pizza which he and Ellen Rose will pick up. Ray and Bernadette will see Ray’s friend, Pete McGee, about the White Castles, and Ray will try to talk him into taking a break for an hour or so and joining them all at Crown’s Ice Cream Kitchen, but Sue will have to talk Carol into coming along as Pete’s date.

“What’s going to happen to Sue?” George asks, genuinely interested.

“Sue has her car,” Ellen Rose explains.

“Sue’s a good sport,” Louise says.

“Oh God, yes,” Ray and Bernadette agree.

“Would you and Louise go down to Crown’s and reserve a table for eleven?” Ruth Oliver asks George.

“I don’t have a car,” George says.

“Twenty-five minutes,” Herb says. “I ordered one large plain and one large pepperoni with mushroom. And one medium anchovy. I figured that way everyone would be happy. Did I do wrong?”

Ellen Rose tells him he did exactly right.

“I figured everybody’d be happy. This way, people who don’t like spicy can have plain. Is George getting us a table for eleven?”

“George doesn’t have a car,” Ray says gloomily. Two or three of the others look stymied, and it seems to Mills that everything is about to collapse because he has no car.

“How far is this place? Maybe I could walk,” he says.