Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

“Hey, Josie.” Steve addressed the heap of blankets. There was no response. “We had a big night last night,” he said. “Didn’t break up till about three, four o’clock. You should have been here. Where were you, anyhow? Wow, am I beat.” He blinked his eyes.

“You want us to cut out?”

“No, stick around. I’ve got to get up anyhow. Hey, Josie. Company.”

A sound came from the heap of bedclothes. “Tell ’em t’go away.”

“It’s Ceci.”

“Ceci.” The blankets moved. A thin, pretty blonde girl with nothing on sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes. On seeing Paul, she pulled the end of the sheet up over herself, but without haste or any exclamation of surprise. “Hi.”

“Hey, Josie, this is Paul.”

“Oh, hi!” Josie did not inspect Paul as her husband had done. Her face opened; she smiled warmly. Paul felt that he would like her.

“I’m sorry we disturbed you,” he said.

“Aw, no. That’s all right. Got to get up sometime and feed the kids. You want some coffee, or lunch or something?”

“Anything you’ve got,” Ceci said, smiling. “We haven’t had breakfast.” Paul wondered if she was telling Josie that they had just been in bed together. But Josie didn’t seem to react. Maybe it was just her way; but more likely the Tylers already knew that Ceci was having an affair with him and all about him, whereas he hadn’t even heard of the Tylers’ existence before this morning.

“I’ll make the coffee,” Steve offered. He swung his legs over the far side of the mattress and sat up. Paul realized that he too was naked. Turning his long, brown back to them, Steve pulled on a pair of blue jeans. Josie continued to sit in bed holding the edge of the sheet loosely against her breasts. Paul felt that if she knew him just a little better she would have got out of bed to dress. It was all innocent and natural. But he wasn’t used to so much nature yet. He turned back into the other room; Ceci and Steve followed him.

“Where’s all the kids?” Ceci asked.

“Oh, they’re around somewhere.” Steve began to clean out a huge coffee-pot. “I guess maybe Starry took them down to the beach.”

“How old are your kids?” Paul asked.

Steve smiled, as if this question pleased him. “Let me see. Well, Psyche, that’s her there, she’s about nineteen months. Nathaniel’s four, and Ezra’s six. So Freya must be seven, no, eight now; and Astarte’s ten and a half.” He held the coffee-pot under the water tap of the sink. As at Ceci’s pad, a mere trickle of brown liquid came out. “Hey, siddown, why don’t you?”

Ceci sat, and so did Paul, on one of the long wooden benches at the kitchen table. He began to feel easier; he decided he liked this place.

Ten and a half. Either Steve and Josie were a lot older than they looked, or they must have been married pretty young. “Unusual names,” he said.

“Nathaniel’s for Hawthorne. Ezra’s Pound, of course. The girls are all called after goddesses. That was her idea,” he added, grinning at Josie, who had just come into the room. She was wearing old blue jeans like her husband’s, with the addition of a white T-shirt which clung to her small, pointed breasts.

“Hey, I hear you had a party last night,” Ceci said to her.

“Yeah.” Josie began to take food out of a dilapidated refrigerator with COOL, MAN painted in large letters across its door. “It was kind of a great scene. You should have been here. Angus came over with some new sides, and Becky; and John was here with his guitar; and we had some beer, and everybody was singing like crazy. And then later, must have been about two, Walter fell in. How’s about pancakes?”

“Walter,” Ceci said. It was not a question.

“Mm. Matter of fact, he might still be here. He passed out last night, and he wasn’t up yet when I blew the kids’ breakfast. Let’s see.” Josie walked towards the front part of the room. “Yeah! Here he is.”

Paul looked where she pointed. On the floor, in a dark corner behind the hi-fi speaker, was what he had dismissed as a heap of blankets and coats. Now he identified a man lying face down among them, with most of his head covered.

“Hey, Walter,” Josie said gently. “Do you dig some pancakes?” Paul tensed himself for the encounter.

But the man on the floor did not move. “Leave him sleep it off,” Steve advised. “Hey, I’ll play you the new Adderly side Angus brought over last night. Cool.”

He put the record on. A medley of jazz sounds in a lazy, complicated rhythm began to issue from the speaker. Ceci and Steve sat down on one of the mattresses to listen to it. Paul sat down too, in a position where he could see if Walter Wong was waking up, by turning his head just slightly. Every time he did this, he became more uncomfortable. He didn’t want Wong to catch him staring. On the other hand, he didn’t want Wong staring at him.

He tried to concentrate. His enthusiasm for and knowledge of jazz had stopped about 1952; he found it difficult to follow this music. Anyhow, the etiquette of listening to jazz was something he hadn’t caught on to yet. It was going all the time at Ceci’s; sometimes she would stop everything and listen, but sometimes she wouldn’t. Sure, it made a good background. There were a couple of records, for instance, that Ceci liked to make love to. One called “Walkin’” especially. Sometimes, if she were already up when Paul came, she would put it on the player before she got back into bed. It had a slow, uneven beat that she said really sent her physically. By now, it had the same effect on Paul.

He had lost track of what was playing again. Ceci and Steve were still following closely; now and then they would exchange a smile, or Steve would say to them, “Get this.” The baby sat in her playpen sucking her thumb and listening docilely. Back in the kitchen part of the room Josie was mixing up pancake batter and frying bacon. It was a pleasant domestic scene; except that there on the floor in the corner, not moving, out cold, lay Walter Wong.

They sat down to eat. Josie had made a big stack of hot pancakes, and there was syrup, jam, honey, and cheese. Another record was playing, or maybe it was the same one, but now nobody seemed to be paying much attention. They talked about music, about the different kinds of great pancakes they had ever had all over the United States and in Mexico and Europe, and about the poetry readings at the Gashouse. They discussed the troubles they were having with the local cops. The Gashouse might be closed down; one friend’s studio had been condemned as unsanitary; another friend had been picked up for questioning because he was walking on the beach at five A.M. He had been taken to the station house, shoved down half a flight of stairs as if by accident, and released covered with bruises.

Paul would have liked to join in, to ask questions; but the silent presence of Walter Wong made him uneasy. They spoke of cars; Ceci told the Tylers that Paul was thinking of maybe buying one. Yes, he said, he thought he would. The car he had now was a “drag,” he said, testing their language; what he wanted was something more alive. He was going to go on, but he looked over his shoulder as he reached for the syrup, and fell silent. Nobody pushed him; maybe they knew what was bothering him, he thought.

“Hey, where’d you get the sea serpent?” Ceci asked between mouthfuls.

“Walter brought it over last night for the kids’ Christmas present,” Josie said. “I guess he lifted it somewhere.”

“Aw, come on,” Steve objected. “You couldn’t lift a thing like that. It’s too big. Even Walter couldn’t get away with that.”

“Walter can get away with anything.” Ceci poured syrup. “You know how he got that hat Becky wanted so much out of Jax.” Everyone smiled.