Play the saxophone, jazz, he went on, and he held his hands up, one above the other, gripping an imaginary instrument and wiggling his fingers. Jazz, jazz, jazz. New York, Chicago, maybe Los Angeles. I’m going to be famous.
At first she thought he was joking; it had never occurred to her that a man could have such an ambition, that wealth and fame could be studied, rather than simply stumbled upon by those with improbable access to the unreal. Oh, you are? she said teasingly, and she saw him wince. I’m sure you have the talent, she added hastily, and you certainly look the part. But isn’t it difficult to break in?
Sure it is, he said. He paused. I’ve got a little luck, he admitted. My father, over in Atlanta—he has some money. He stopped again, as if he was suddenly embarrassed by the rarity of his fortune. My father is what you might call … a wealthy man. He doesn’t much approve of what I’m trying to do, but he’s willing to support me for a little while.
Then why did you come to Charleston?
My grandfather had a house here, he said. When he died, he left it to my parents, but they never use it. So I came up here to get away, to practice—you know. To get myself ready.
Ready, she thought. Odd syllables. Was she ready, herself? The more she thought about the word, the stranger it became.—And here was the waitress with the check, it was time for him to take her home.
Things about him that she loved: He was tender and devoted. He was funny, and though she’d never actually seen him on stage she was sure he was very good, and so dedicated that he was bound to be successful. He needed her in order to be happy, and he never hid the fact. He never hid anything: he wore all his emotions on his face—ambition, amusement, amorousness. He had that odd, faintly extravagant style, not just in his clothes but in almost everything he did, from the drink he ordered—a martini, bone dry, three green olives, on the rocks—to the language he used when he was excited. He was optimistic all the time, and negotiated the world with an ease that couldn’t be gainsaid.
Things about him that she never could be comfortable with: He spoke to her as if he were trying to coax her over a cliff. He judged the world immediately around him severely and without sympathy. He was moody. He had no other friends but her. Many things had come easily for him—money, for example, and self-confidence, and a sense of purpose—and he didn’t understand that those things didn’t come for her at all. He could be stubborn and impatient. He was more sure of his feelings for her than he should have been, and there was no reason why he might not change his mind. He was a field in which disappointment grew.
In later days they would go to the movies, and afterward he would do imitations of all the parts, the leads, the character actors, bit players, the women too, his voice cracking comically as he reached for the higher notes. Some of his impressions were startlingly accurate, and some of them were just terrible, and the worse they were the more she adored them. Then he would drive her back to her apartment, and, because she had no radio, they would sit outside her building, listening to swing while they kissed under the shadows of a tree—once for such a long time that the battery ran down, and when it was time for him to go home he couldn’t get the engine started, and he had to call out a truck to come help. After that he made sure to start the car every half hour or so, letting it idle for a few minutes while they went on with their talking, necking, talking, their raw rubbing at each other.
Oh, how much she loved that car, the shallow, intoxicating smell of its upholstery, the chrome strips—like piping on a dress—that bordered the slot where the window sat, the white cursive lettering on the dashboard and the fat round button that freed the door of the glove compartment. These were elements with which she shared her sentiment. Did he ever know? His keys hung from the ignition on a chain that passed through the center of a silver dollar, the thick disk spinning when the car shook; it was emergency money that his daddy had given him back when he first learned to drive, though when she pointed out that it might not be spendable with that hole in the middle, he just smiled as if she’d deliberately said something amusing.
He might have had some money but he had no telephone, so he would call her from a public booth in town, not always the same one; he would be standing by the railroad terminal, in the library, on a street corner. She couldn’t call him at all—she never quite knew where he was—and she grew more and more frustrated with waiting. She tried to show him but he didn’t seem to notice. He called her at home on a Thursday night at nine. I can’t talk right now, she said. Let me … she sighed. Well, I can’t call you back, can I? she said pointedly. Call me tomorrow.—And with that she hung up on him and went back to her reading, though the page in whatever it was trembled, and the letters shook themselves out of order. When he called her at work the next day, from a phone booth in a filling station, he never asked her what had kept her from him the night before. Wasn’t he curious? Didn’t he care? All that evening she was in a sullen mood: All right, she said shortly, when he suggested another movie; she sat upright in her seat in the theater, and neither stopped him nor responded when he put his hand on her arm and then slid his fingers down to her wrist, from her wrist to her knee, her knee to her thigh. He started up between her legs and still she didn’t move at all, so he withdrew.
He took her to a cocktail bar afterward; she hardly said a word the whole way there and sat across from him, rather than beside him, in the darkened booth. Are you all right? he said. He was wearing a beautiful grey shirt.
I’m fine, she said, her fingertip playing distractedly across the lip of her martini glass. She waited a moment, and then she said, I don’t think we should date anymore.
He widened his eyes and slumped back in his seat. No? he said.
I’m sorry, said Nicole. I just don’t think we should.
No? he said again, as if he was hoping that No said twice might mean Yes. Will you tell me why?
He was hurt, and whatever gratitude she might have felt for his exhibition of caring quickly gave way to guilt, so she drew back from her anger and offered him a deal. She couldn’t bear to wait by the phone, but they would be fine if he would call her regularly, at work just before noon to make plans for the evening, if plans were to be made; at home before nine if there was nothing to say but hello.
It was their first bargain, and he kept his end carefully, mornings and evenings. There was nothing romantic about the routine, not at first; it was just John calling the way he had promised he would. And then it was romantic, after all, and October turned into November.
Now tell me, because I don’t know, she said one afternoon. Where do you live? He had arrived at her door in his car again, and it had occurred to her, not for the first time, that she didn’t know where he was coming from. He seemed to prefer it that way; anyway, he never volunteered to tell her. If she had to ask, she would ask: Where do you live?
He shrugged. Up in the woods, a few miles out of town, west. She waited. It’s just a little house. He traced an invisible house in the air with his fluid hands. Up in the pines, about ten miles from anywhere. At night it’s so quiet, all you can hear is the wind and the wolves carrying on.
Is that right? she said with a smile. She wasn’t sure what to believe, but that was how she thought of him from then on: John-of-the-Pines when he was being quiet and sweet, John-of-the-Wolves when he had his long tongue in her mouth and his hands all over her. That was a world, and a town, and a
