Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

“I guess so,” Paul agreed heartily, unsure of what was meant.

“That’s the way it is. What minority group do you represent?” Walter turned his head and looked at Paul.

“Well, I,” Paul said. “I guess none.” He realized that he was making it worse. But Christ, he couldn’t do more than apologize.

“Oh no,” Walter said slowly. “Can’t be. You’ve got to belong to some underprivileged order, or Ceci wouldn’t be interested. That’s her kick, see. I thought maybe you were a Jew. But hell, of course she’s already had a Jew. Funny.” He stared impassively but insolently at Paul, who thought, well, I insulted him, now I suppose he has to insult me.

Leaning against the shiny fender of the car, Walter eased a cigarette and a folder of matches out of his trunks, and lit up without offering Paul anything. “How are you making it with Ceci these days?” he said suddenly, in a friendly voice.

Paul flinched. “All right.”

“She’s a real cool chick,” Walter continued, in a tone almost of self-parody. “She really is.” Paul thought he recognized a move towards establishing masculine solidarity, but he didn’t want to get together with Walter over this topic. He said nothing. Walter looked at him; then he went on, “She’s always on some new kick. You met that Tomaso yet, that crazy Mexican runner?” Paul shook his head stiffly. “A long-distance runner, man. He’s big in the track world. Like he’s broken all kinds of records for endurance.” He gave Paul a malicious smile.

“Never heard of him,” Paul lied briefly. (O’Connor, Wong, Tomaso.) “Hey,” he said. “How’s the muffler?”

Walter stared at Paul, his face impassive again. “It’s the best, man,” he said. “Dual straight-throughs with scavenger tail-pipes.”

“I think I’ll take a look at it,” announced Paul.

“Yeah,” Walter said. “Why don’t you do that?”

Paul lay down in the dust and gravel of the parking lot, and awkwardly eased his head and shoulders under the side of the Ford. As he looked up at the underside of the car, he heard the door open, and metal grate against metal. Suddenly he had the conviction that Walter was going to release the brake so that the car would run over him—he would say afterwards that it had been an accident. In a panic, as fast as he could, he scrambled out from underneath.

He got up. Walter was standing on the opposite side of the car, leaning against the open door. His face was expressionless, but he raised his eyebrows as he saw Paul. “Wow,” he said. “What happened to you down there?”

Paul became conscious of a stinging pain in his right shoulder and arm; he saw that he had scraped it raw against the gravel and cinders, while the rest of his body was blotched with dust and grit. He tried to brush himself off, thinking that it was possible that Walter had just been trying to frighten him. He said nothing.

Watching Paul, Walter began to smile. “Hey!” he said. “I get it now. I know what group you represent. You’re a square.” He laughed. “That’s it, man.”

Paul felt that he had never disliked anyone in his life as much as he now disliked Walter Wong. If he hadn’t really wanted the Ford he would have walked round it and hit him. “Oh, fuck it,” he said. “You want me to buy this heap, you better knock off that kind of talk.”

For a moment they faced each other across the open engine, with the expressions of enemies. Then Walter put on an innocent Oriental houseboy air, and turned his hands out, palms up. “What you want, man?” he asked. “I talk to you the way I feel. You want me to give you some used-car-lot pitch, ‘Oh, you’re such a hot guy, boss, such a great cat, I love you so much I want you to have this fine car, this colossal deal’?” He shut the door of the Ford: blam! Then he walked forward and shut down the hood with a crash so sharp that Paul, already in fantasy its owner, feared he would hurt the finish.

“All right,” Paul said. “How much does he want for it?” Walter turned and looked at him, his hands still resting on the hood of the car. Then, very slowly, he smiled. “What’s it worth to you?” he asked.

After sitting on her towel for a little while longer, Katherine got up and walked towards the ocean—partly to escape the continuing stares of the large bearded man and the girl in the bikini, partly to have an answer for disagreeable Dr. Einsam, who would be sure to say to her: “Did you go into the water?”

She picked her way through the heaps of rubbery wet seaweed, and down a slope of coarse brown sand. In front of her the ocean flung itself again and again on to the beach, lifting a solid heap of dark green salt water which broke into foam against the sand, then another. A shallow sheet of cool water came up and licked her feet after each attempt. Reassured, Katherine took a few steps forward. As the water went out, each time, it left a crust of pebbles and bubbles on the shore, and sucked grains of sand down the slope and over Katherine’s feet. The rhythm was restful. She forgot for the moment that she was Mrs. Katherine Cattleman, thirty years old, a native of Worcester, Massachusetts, an employee of the University of California, a sufferer from chronic sinusitis. She looked out to sea; her eyes rested on the long peaceful horizontal line where air and water seemed to meet. Nearer in she could see the waves rising and advancing towards her, growing larger.

She walked forward; her knees were wet now, and now her thighs; she felt spray on her face. Suddenly the sea came up and pulled at her. Katherine tried to step back, but the ground was uneven, and the undertow had already buried her feet in sand. With a great effort she freed herself and, almost falling, struggled back out of the ocean.

11

A DAMP NIGHT. FOG blew in from the sea steadily, smothering the beach towns; the neon lights along Venice and Washington Boulevards smoldered, sending out plumes of colored smoke. Ceci clung to Paul’s arm, but it was he who had to be guided as they made their way through the black alleys behind the beach.

“Here.”

She stopped before a shabby store-front, so dimly lit that Paul would have passed it by without a second look. The windows were heavily misted; here and there drops had gathered and run down, leaving a crack through which yellow light seeped.

They entered. A long, very dark room, a jumble of wooden tables and chairs, walls scrawled from floor to ceiling with drawings and writings, all obscure in the gloom. On every table a squat candle, the kind lit in churches, burned in a glass container—each soft flame flickering in a pool of colored wax.

“We’re early,” Ceci said, looking around at the empty tables, on some of which games of chess were set up ready for play.

“It’s ten-thirty.”

“Mm. This place doesn’t really heat up till around midnight. Well.” She slid onto a bench by the wall.

Paul sat beside her and looked about. In the rear corner two men in shirts and sweaters were playing chess. A small dark girl, with curly black hair that hung over her face like a poodle’s, sat with them. Otherwise the room was empty. Paul removed his raincoat. He had dressed for the occasion: the chino pants spattered with house paint were his own, but the oil-paint-stained sweatshirt had been borrowed from Ceci. She had even dug up a pair of sandals for him, a little too small, but not much. As a final gesture, he had decided not to shave that morning. It was wonderful how much difference it made to get out of the tight case of fabric he usually wore. In these old clothes he felt as if he could really move, swing his arms, jump, run.

“Hiya, Dinny,” Ceci greeted the girl with the poodle haircut, who had come over to them. “This is Paul.” Dinny smiled prettily at him, but said nothing. As nearly as you could tell in the gloom, she was wearing only a pair of orangish tights and a baggy gray sweater. “Who’s winning tonight?” Ceci asked. “Is Leo beating again?” Dinny shook her head. “Cool. Expresso, I guess. What d’you want, Paul? ... Two expressos. You want something to eat?”