Stanley Elkin - George Mills

“The pizza is going to be ready in twenty-five minutes,” Bernadette says, and though George doesn’t understand how this is an objection he knows that it is.

“I don’t think I better,” Carol says quietly. “Go without me.”

“I ordered all that pizza,” Herb says.

“You mean you gave them your real name?” Charles Oliver says.

“Hey, I thought it was all set,” Herb says defensively.

“Oh Carol, he’s the manager of the place for gosh sakes,” says Sue.

“Sure,” Carol says, “the night manager.”

“It’s when they do most of their business, Carol,” Charles Oliver tells her. “Isn’t that right, Ray?”

“What? Oh. Yeah, absolutely.”

“How can he get off then?” Carol asks. “If it’s when they do most of their business, how come he can get off for an hour?”

“Well he’s the manager. I already told you.”

“Gee,” Carol says, “I don’t know. Don’t tattoos itch?”

“Do they, George?” Charles asks.

“I’m not tattooed,” George Mills says.

“It’s just too creepy,” Carol says. “Go without me.”

“If you’re not going I’m not going,” Sue says resolutely.

“Herb’s ordered the pizza,” Ellen Rose says. “Two large and a medium in his own name.”

“A Sweetheart Dance,” Stan David announces. “I’m calling a Sweetheart Dance.”

Two thirds of the couples walk off the dance floor.

“It’s the Sweetheart Dance, Herb,” Ellen Rose says.

“We’ve got twenty minutes to get there.”

“We’ll dance two minutes and leave in the middle.”

“I’ll phone for a taxi,” George says.

“What for?” asks Ray.

“To take us to Crown’s to reserve a table for eleven.” He’s pleased to have thought of the idea of the cab and wants to make additional arrangements now that he begins to understand not the mechanics, and perhaps not even all the principles, but the theory itself who had entered this community cold, who for the seven years it took him to get from Cassadaga to St. Louis had entered all communities cold, like a beggar at the back door, presenting himself at foundling homes, orphanages, and, during the war years, sometimes actually passing himself off as a refugee, who had been born, it may be, with no ear for complication, with no gift for the baroque, but who has begun to see that youth — he himself is already twenty-seven — will try anything, say anything, in order to salvage its plans, which are never plans of course, never goals and their concomitant procedures, but the blatant articulation of whims, the accommodation of which involves the overriding and placation, if that was the order, of other, contrary whims. It is a kind of power, and he has never before felt its urgency, never before wheeled and dealed in the arbitrary.

“You been to Crown’s?” Ray asks.

“No.”

“It’s booths. It’s booths and stools at the soda fountain. They got a loose booth they let you move if nobody’s in it and you’re a party of ten. Pete McGee won’t come without Carol, and Sue won’t come unless Carol does.”

“But Sue’s a good sport,” George says petulantly.

“Carol said I should go without her. A good sport doesn’t do that.”

“Your folks!” George says. He is still planning, tuning solution. “Your folks, Louise. That would give us ten.”

“I told him I came with my folks,” Louise says.

“He’s not from around here,” Bernadette says.

“Until a girl knows what a fellow’s like, George, she tells him she’s with her folks,” Louise says.

“Louise’s folks,” Ruth Oliver says, and giggles.

“What’s so funny?” her husband asks. “They have a car.”

George Mills doesn’t understand any of this. He doesn’t understand why it’s necessary to get the roving booth at Crown’s, or why Pete McGee should join them, or why Carol thinks tattoos itch, or what makes Sue such a good sport. All he knows is that the pizzas are burning and that Ellen Rose and Herb, who have returned from the Sweetheart Dance, have made no move to leave. “The pizzas,” George says.

“Is everything settled then?” Herb asks.

“Nothing’s settled,” Ruth Oliver says bitterly. “Not a damn thing.”

“The pizzas?” George says again.

“Screw the pizzas,” Herb says. “You don’t think I gave them my real name, do you? A medium and two large? What’s the matter with you? You lost? Ain’t you from around here?”

“I don’t know if I’m from around here,” George Mills says miserably.

“Herb’s the only one with a car,” Louise tells him.

George looks up. “What about the Olivers?”

“In the shop,” Charles Oliver says.

“Ray?”

“Bernadette’s folks went out tonight,” Ray says.

He is beginning to understand. “Pete McGee has a car,” he says.

Ray nods, Bernadette does.

“Pete McGee has a car but he doesn’t like to lend it.”

“Pete’s okay. It isn’t broken in yet.”

“And he certainly wouldn’t let me drive it. A total stranger.”

“Probably not.”

“So I was going to drive Sue’s car?”

“Not exactly.”

“No,” George says, “that’s right. Not exactly.” It’s like being a little drunk, he thinks. There’s just that edge. Or no. It’s like having the one bottle to their three advantage, the glass-and-a-half to four ratio that accounted for his inspiration in the bars while he was pumping change into the jukebox and his science into their heads and all the while listening to what the song was saying about their lives. “Because you thought all along that I’d have one, a twenty-seven-year-old guy like me. But it was all right even when I didn’t. Because the more the merrier. There’d be six in one car and five in the other. That’s when I was going to drive Sue’s car. We were going to make the switch at Crown’s, and Sue would drive Pete McGee’s like a good sport. Crown’s was just the staging area. The only thing I don’t really understand is Sue. No. Wait. Sure I do. Sue’s spoken for, right? I mean she’s here tonight but she’s spoken for. The guy’s in the army or off somewhere making his fortune until he can send for her, and they’ve exchanged pledges, oaths.”

“He’s in Texas,” Sue says. “He’s stationed in Texas.”

“But just because you’re promised and can’t have a good time yourself, that doesn’t mean you can’t hang around those who can. It might even be good for you.”

“He’s with his buddies,” Sue says.

“Sure,” George Mills says, “sure he is. It was the cars,” he says. “It was the cars, it was the cramped quarters. It was the necking in the cars.” He stops and looks at them. “But you’re married,” he says helplessly. “Ruth’s pregnant. Louise tells me Bernadette’s in her fourth month. Herb is Ellen Rose’s fiancé. Why do you need this stuff? School’s out for you people. You graduated high school. Your diploma hangs on the wall with the prom bids, or’s shoved in the drawer with your underwear.”

The men look shamefaced. They stare at the buffed tops of their dancing shoes. Ellen Rose picks absently at her corsage. Bernadette and Ruth seem suddenly tired. Only Louise and Carol’s energies seem unimpaired, Sue the grass widow’s.

“Bernadette’s folks are out tonight. Oh,” George Mills says, “oh.”

Because only now, years after he’s moved into it, does he comprehend the stability of the neighborhood. He perceives with horror and the communicated shame of the wives and husbands what he’s gotten into here, the force fields of wired intimacy he has somehow penetrated. Discovering, he feels discovered. Like a child rolling Easter eggs on trespassed pitch. He’s not from around here, but it’s as if he’s never lived anywhere else. If he intuits their customs it is done joylessly, with no pride in his cleverness. He has the solution now, of course. To invite them home with him, to open his apartment to their terrible honed occasion, to fetch them pizzas, White Castles, imperial gallons of Crown’s ice cream, the syrups and sweet, auxiliary garnish of their ceremonial cravings.