Читать книгу Compulsion - Meyer Levin - Страница 21

EVEN THOUGH THERE were only the three of them at the table, Judd’s father, neatly carving the roast, gave the meal almost a formal air. This was the way of the Pater. In everything always so certain of how he measured things out. So he must have been in the early days, with Grandfather in the woolen business—measuring with his yardstick, the solemn, upright young Judah Steiner. And so with his honest yardstick he had measured the growth of the woolen house as it was drawn along with the growth of Chicago’s garment industry, and with his yardstick he had measured what family to marry into, and purchased woolen mills, and measured his real estate, and his honorable place in the world.

Yet tonight Judah Steiner was trying to speak in a lighter mood to his sons. There was Max’s engagement party; next week his fiancée would arrive from New York. Aunt Bertha must see to it, the house should be filled with flowers; it must no longer look so gloomy, so much like a bachelor’s den.

Max was sitting there quite proud of himself for the fine piece of merchandise that had been selected for him by brother Joseph in New York, a Mannheimer, no less.

Could it be, actually, that neither of them had heard of the sensational crime? That neither had seen the headlines? Judd considered bringing it up—the topic would be normal enough: the kid had been snatched from Twain, almost across the street. But now the old man was turning to him. Was Judd ready for his exam tomorrow? “A Harvard law entrance should be taken seriously, even by a genius.” He chuckled, wiping his mustache. Judd could watch every move in his mind, each word reached for as though it were something in a filing cabinet.

“Huh, he’ll probably spend the night chasing tramps with Artie,” Max remarked. “That’s how a genius prepares. Me, I had to bone.”

“Even a genius can trip up sometime; look at the tortoise and the hare,” said the Pater. “And how would a genius like to spend the summer preparing for Harvard instead of touring Europe?”

“Try and stop me. I’ve got the ticket!” Judd said, and all at once like a hand coming down on him was the thought that he really might be stopped in the two weeks before sailing. Should he try to get an earlier boat, leave immediately after tomorrow’s exam? Pass the test brilliantly so the old man would . . . He’d go up and glance at his notes. He had them typed up, a complete set, from the session a few weeks ago with Milt Lewis and the fellows. The old man would have his Harvard lawyer to brag about. Step right up folks and see the youngest, smartest LL.D. in the universe, Harvard cum laude—Judah Steiner, Jr., son of Judah Steiner, the merchant prince of Chicago! What if a cop stepped in right now to make the arrest? Are these your glasses? What if the old man were told his Junior had achieved the greatest crime in the world? Could he ever understand such a conception? Could he comprehend that there was as much greatness on one side as on the other? Indeed, more. For the crime had to be created against the grain, à rebours, and law was with the grain. Judd felt a shivery, perverse wish that the arrest would come, and come that very instant.

His father was passing the pickles, remarking that he had stopped at the delicatessen for them himself. The staff forgot such things since Mama Dear had passed away. “Now Italy—” the old man was saying. “It might be advisable to avoid Italy in these unsettled times.” Judd let him talk. The pickles were good. At least this taste they had in common.

“Oh, Italy isn’t so bad since that fellow Mussolini took charge,” his brother declared. “The country is under control.”

“You never can trust the Italians,” said his father. “The Italians are a violent and lawless people, with their Black Hand. Even here in Chicago, all the bootleggers are Italians. With their law amongst themselves, their killings, they give the city a bad reputation.”

“Sure, only the Jews are perfect,” Judd found himself snapping.

“At least we Jews are law-abiding, and engaged in respectable businesses and professions,” his father said.

“All the Italians gave us is Dante and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo and Raphael,” said Judd, “Cellini and Aretino.”

“Maybe they were a fine people once, but today they are only gangsters.”

Max cut in. “I hear this Mussolini is a real leader, bringing back the glory that was Rome—a kind of superman.” Judd was startled by Max’s use of the word. But Max wore a smile, to show he was for once trying to use his kid brother’s intellectual language. “Judd, maybe you can get in to see Mussolini.”

“Why, yes, I can give you letters to some important people in the shipping line in Italy. We do business with them,” his father said, adding proudly, “You could speak Italian to them.”

In Judd’s mind, the word superman was echoing. The sullen, angry, god-furious figure of Artie, getting out of the car. Yes, Artie was the superior one! Yesterday he had proven it completely. Superior to all emotions. If Artie were through with him now, because of the glasses . . . If Artie turned to Willie . . . The fear came over Judd—Artie leaving him alone. Like last time, before New Year’s. The trouble hadn’t been his fault then either. Artie had been ready to blame him, and go off with Willie and some girls for New Year’s, the one night, the most important night. He would have. Only Judd’s letter had kept him. A letter saying everything, analyzing everything, explaining. Now, too, Judd would write a letter. In his mind, Judd began to form the words, showing clearly why the spectacles had to be counted as a shared mistake. Just as the entire experience was shared. For if Artie were really through with him, if Artie started chumming with Willie . . . Christ, he couldn’t! They were bound together now, like when kids take an oath in blood . . .

Instantly, the blood image welled up, the pulsing spurt, sickening. It was himself, a child. He’d be sick . . .

Just then the phone rang. Papa gave him a look and emitted a half growl, his usual objection to telephone interruptions during meals.

The maid came to say it was for Junior. Judd’s heart bounded. It was Artie, he was sure. He hurried out of the dining room.

When Artie got home from the frat, he noticed quite an assembly still in the dining room, and remembered that Mumsie had wanted to show him off to one of her chums visiting from the East. He walked in, just to have a look at the biddy.

“Arthur!” There was the usual loving reproach in his mother’s voice, but relief, too, that he had appeared at last. She was looking wan tonight, a bit overethereal in her greenish dress. The New York woman had bangs and horse-teeth; she was from far back, from that Catholic school of Mumsie’s. The brothers were present, too—James, and even Lewis, complete with his recent bride. Full show.

“Arthur, dear, I was beginning to get frightened,” his mother said after the introduction.

“Now who would kidnap me?” He laughed.

His father said, “It isn’t exactly anything to joke about.”

Artie dropped his lip to look contrite. “I know,” he said solemnly, and even felt a touch of sorrow. “Poor Paulie. Just the other day I took him on for a game, on the court. You know, for a kid his age he was real good—real strong arm muscles, had quite a smash. He must have put up a real fight with those fiends. I even asked him about buying a racket like his for Billy. Where’s Billy? Upstairs? How’s he taking it?”

“I tried to keep him distracted,” his mother said, drawing in her breath sharply. “But it was such an upsetting day I gave him his dinner upstairs. I’m taking Billy to Charlevoix first thing in the morning. I’m getting him away from here; there’s no telling what kind of madman is loose!”

At her words, Artie felt alive, glittery. On the table, they had their dessert: fresh strawberries. Mumsie hadn’t touched hers. “Hanging is too good for a fiend like that!” she was saying, her eyes fiery with indignation. “I don’t believe in capital punishment, but in a case like this, if they catch him, I think he ought to be tarred and feathered and then strung from a lamppost! Oh!” She shuddered at her own words. Artie reached for her dish and helped himself. “Artie!” But her little sigh admitted her adoration for her incorrigible Artie, admitted that she had ordered the early strawberries especially for him. “At least sit down! Did you have any dinner?”

“I ate at the house. I’m sorry,” he apologized to Horse-teeth. “I guess I was upset and excited about this case.” He told all about his frat brother, the reporter who had identified the body.

“Poor Mrs. Kessler, she’s prostrate, I read,” Lewis’s bride put in, her cowlike eyes on Mumsie.

Horse-teeth remarked that it was the war, the destruction that had taken place in the war. Life meant nothing any more.

“Sure, after all that mass killing, human life becomes only an abstraction,” Artie pronounced, feeling Jocko would have enjoyed this, and diving into a second dish that Clarice had set before him, without neglecting to brush her bosom close to his face.

“What do you know about mass killing?” Lewis, the war veteran, demanded of Artie. “You were just a kid.” Big hero.

“That’s exactly when the effect is strongest,” Artie replied, glittering at the guest. Bet she’d wet her pants before he was through. “What did we play?” he demanded rhetorically. “Kill the Huns! Mow them down! We even had a scoreboard at school, how many Huns were killed! Hey! I forgot to tell you—I’ve got the inside news! They arrested a couple of the teachers! Steger and Wakeman! It isn’t in the papers yet. Sid Silver told me.” He gazed around, reaping their reactions. “I think they’re on the right track. You better watch out for Billy, Mums. That school is full of perverts.”

“Kiddo! Watch it,” his older brother Lewis sniffed, while his father looked pained. James, however, gave him a funny, keen look. James knew too damn much.

His father reminded Artie that it was unfair to come to hasty conclusions merely because a teacher was being questioned. It could have been any stupid brute.

“Oh, no! Take the ransom letter in the paper,” Artie exclaimed. “That’s no illiterate crook! That’s the letter of an educated man, also of someone who can type. Say, they ought to check every typewriter in that school!”

And in that instant, Artie saw the goddam portable still sitting in Judd’s room. Gobbling a last spoonful of strawberries, he leaped from the table.

“Date?” his mother asked.

“Yah. Just remembered.”

“Lucky girl,” Mumsie smiled. “You at least remember your engagements with her.”

“That’s the way it is; we’ve got to resign ourselves.” Horse-teeth joined in a tolerant sigh over the younger generation.

“Myra?” his mother asked. “Or would it be violating the etiquette of our flaming youth for a mother to ask?”

“It’s a new frail; you don’t know her,” he said. And on the spur of the moment added, “Ruth Goldenberg.” That way she couldn’t check up. “Brilliant babe—all A’s, and a good dancer. Folks are nobodies.”

He rushed to the phone.

Only to hear Artie’s voice, breathless, talking in their private code, gave back to Judd a sense of life; even if there were danger, it relieved the caged feeling he had had at the table—the sense of being defenseless there, alone, open to be caught. “I saw a bargain in portable typewriters,” Artie was saying, and Judd felt alert again, to match Artie, to catch the hidden meaning. “Thought you might want to pick one up with me, two blocks south of Twelfth Street.” That meant two hours before twelve, Artie would be over. And portable typewriters? Judd gasped. Another error! His! And Artie had spotted it. The portable on which he’d typed the ransom letter, Artie leaning over him, suggesting phrases to make it sound real businesslike. The typewriter could give them away! If the glasses were traced to him, and the house searched, the portable found . . . They’d have to get rid of it tonight.

“Thanks,” he said. “I was thinking of getting rid of my old portable at that. Two south of Twelfth. I’ll go along with you.”

As Judd came back into the dining room, preoccupied, Max remarked, “Your chum again?” Max never let up about him and Artie. “You two guys are like a couple of gabby dames. Spend the whole day together and the minute they get home they’ve got to call each other up! I never could figure out what two guys have got to call each other up about all the time. Weren’t you with him all day today? And yesterday?” Max said it jovially, but there was that smutty look back of his eyes. Ever since a certain story had got out about Judd and Artie, a couple of summers before, at the Straus’s summer place in Charlevoix, Max had never let up. “What were you guys doing all day long?”

“We went birding.”

“I’ll bet. Chickens,” he said with his fat chuckle, but with an air of letting it go. After all, Judd would be off to Europe soon and that would finally separate him from Artie. Max put a big cigar in his mouth, like the old man, and the two of them resumed talking business.

Judd looked at them, his father and brother, feeling acutely the “who are you?” that he sometimes wanted to blurt out. When his mother had been alive, there had at least been someone for him, at the table, when the “men” got off on their business dealings.

Sure, that same old story about himself and Artie was why the old man had been so easy about the trip to Europe. What a joke it would have been on them if the ransom had been collected and Artie had joined him abroad! Not that Artie still couldn’t do it if he wanted to—Artie certainly had the money.

“Too bad Artie isn’t going with you,” Max’s voice banged in; it was frightening how that stupe seemed to sense his thoughts. “You two could have gone birding all over the place. I’ll bet you’d have picked up some rare specimens.”

Judd didn’t answer; but as Max, chortling, went back to the business talk, the whole scene of yesterday flooded Judd’s mind. Birding, yes, birding for a rare specimen. Parking the rented car under the tree shade where the branches hung low to give a natural cover, so that from the school entrance the kids could hardly see anyone sitting in the car. And sitting motionless, hushed, just as when birding, until you are part of the landscape itself—a bush, a tree, not hidden really, but a natural part of the environment. Sitting quietly in the car you became part of the street, and you waited for the flock to pour out of the school doors like a flock whirring up suddenly out of a thicket, when quickly you snagged your specimen.

Waiting. “All set?” Artie’s eyes flicking, checking the pockets of the car. “All the equipment on hand?” Nothing forgotten, of the items they had planned, so many evenings, planning this.

In the pocket on Judd’s side, handy, the ether cans. The length of clothesline. Artie had wanted a silken cord, but at the last moment they couldn’t find one. In the other pocket, on Artie’s side, the chisel and the hydrochloric.

What made this the day?

Again Judd saw the last test of the train. “Perfect! Let’s set the day!” And even then he had thought of something. What about the car? If someone spotted his car? Artie had the answer—cover up the license, smear mud on it the way bootleggers did, running stuff in from Canada. Anybody’d know the Stutz, Judd objected. Then Artie wanted to make it a stolen car, but Judd said no, that would only increase the danger of apprehension. To make it a perfect crime, the car had to be unidentifiable.

There it hung. Artie became sullen. But driving down Michigan, passing the Drive-Ur-Self place, Judd suddenly had the idea. A rented car. This proved he still wanted to do it, and Artie came partly back. A shitty idea, he argued; if they trace the car, they trace who rented it. You can’t just use a fake name; they check references. Okay, Judd had said, we establish a fictitious identity—with references!

That brought Artie back entirely. Shifting closer on the seat, Artie plotted an identity. A fake name. You could open up a bank account. And register in a hotel. Then the personal reference. That was easy. “You give them a number where I’ll be waiting, and I’ll answer. Why, I’ve known Jonesey for ten years. He’s a fine, upright citizen!”

Great! Judd slapped Artie’s knee. Another thing, Judd said. Better take the car out at least once before, so there would be no suspicion.

Artie gave him a glance. Was this more stalling?

It was a whole chain of things, then. It stretched from one week into the next; could it even have stretched till the day never came, till he sailed with the thing undone? Had he really meant to do it?

There was the going down to the Morrison Hotel, Artie throwing a suitcase into the Stutz, the one he claimed he always had ready for registering with a girl. The suitcase felt too light, and Artie threw a couple of books into it, a history from the university library, and H. G. Wells—that made it heavy enough. And what about a name? J. Poindexter Fish, Artie offered, and how about P. Aretino, Judd proposed, and that led to a great game, each outdoing the other. Jack Ripper, Mark Sade, D. Gray, and Peter Whiffle. Or how about making it someone they knew, like Morty Kornhauser, the prig, for causing all that trouble at Charlevoix? Or Milt Lewis, the ponderass? But then, settling down to it, they chose a name from a store window—Singer Sewing Machines. Artie signed James Singer in the register, and they went up, and laughed and laughed in the room, and had a drink and fooled around, and then Artie said, “Come on, how about renting the car?”

Leaving the suitcase, they drove up Michigan, and Judd said, “Wait, don’t forget the bank account for Mr. Singer.” Artie put in three hundred, signing James Singer, Morrison Hotel at the Corn Exchange Bank. And then, how about some mail at the hotel for Mr. Singer? They wrote a couple of letters, crazy stuff: How about a jazz, Jimmy dear? My husband is out of town. Your devoted Cuddles. It was getting better and better! Next, they would meet Mr. James Singer coming out of the Morrison!

Then, the reference. A name: Walter Brewster. Then, stopping at a lunch counter on the corner of 21st, Judd taking down the number in the phone booth, leaving Artie sitting at the counter, waiting. It was smooth, perfect.

Selecting a Willys at the Drive-Ur-Self. “What business, Mr. Singer?” . . . “Salesman.” . . . “Any references in town, Mr. Singer? You know, we are required to have at least one business reference.” . . . “Oh, that’s all right, you can call—Mr. Walter Brewster.” And giving him the number. Then waiting while the dope called. “We have a Mr. James Singer here, to rent a car . . . Yes? Yes, thank you, Mr. Brewster. Any time we may be of service to you, sir.” . . . And driving out with it, picking up Artie at the lunch counter—smooth as silk.

“Okay, let’s set the day.” Not too soon after the first car rental. So the rental guy wouldn’t remember you too clearly. A week must pass, at least. That would be past the middle of May.

And the day his steamer ticket came, Judd had to show it to Artie. Artie’s eyes, wise to him, until Judd had to say, “How about writing the note tonight?” That made it so close, it had to happen. The ransom letter ready—Dear Sir—and the blank envelope waiting for a name to be written on it. The specimen to be selected. That was it. Life and death, pure chance. The day itself a random choice, yet descended from a million determinants, from the days of testing the train, the days of establishing identity, until Artie said, “Friday?”

And Judd said, “No, I’ve got the lousy Harvard Law exam.” And if it waited past the exam, and past the week end, it would already reach the week before his sailing. Then, Max’s engagement party . . .

“All right” Artie gave him that cunning look, and pinned him, moving the date forward instead of farther away. “Wednesday.”

And Judd could say nothing except, “Hey, we were supposed to have lunch with Willie.”

“The nuts!” Artie said. Willie would be an alibi, ready-made. Wednesday, then. Yesterday.

After his ten-o’clock, driving down Michigan with Artie. “I had one of your cars out, once before. James Singer. Just got back into town.” And then the two cars driving back south, Artie ahead of him in the Willys, pushing the speed, and himself racing the Bearcat, nose to tail, as though the cars were magnetized. Then, picking up the last things. The hydrochloric, though he wasn’t entirely sure—maybe sulfuric would work faster. But hydrochloric should do it. The first drugstore didn’t have it in quarts. Two drugstores, without any luck. At the third, Artie going in, otherwise too many druggists might remember the same short, dark young man with the unusual request. Artie, bringing it. And finally the chisel. A hardware store on Cottage Grove. Artie knowing the kind that was best, the kind with the steel going all the way up through the wooden head.

And then stopping to get Max’s boots. And remembering—a silken cord. Artie tramping through the bedrooms. “Hey, how about this?” The cord from the old man’s dressing gown. Great!

“No, he might miss it.” Then, Artie: “All right, the hell, any piece of rope. Buy some clothesline. Wait, don’t forget to pick up the goddam adhesive tape.” In the medicine chest.

And then just time enough before lunch to stop in Jackson Park, Artie showing him how to wind the tape around the chisel, thick around the blade—tape makes a perfect grip.

Thus, all set. The lunch at the Windermere, and Willie the dope, Willie the Horrible Hebe with his oily dark face, trying to act real clever, quoting from Havelock Ellis, flashing his medical-student sex-anatomy knowledge, trying to play up to Artie, and never knowing, never having the faintest idea what was going on between his luncheon partners, never in his thick head being even capable of imagining what was in the car they had outside.

And after a long gay luncheon, it was nearly time. Coming out, they ducked Willie, so he wouldn’t see the car they were using. Then, on the way to the Twain School, Judd went into his house once more. From the bottom drawer in Max’s room, he took the revolver. Artie already had his own, in his pocket.

Even when they were ready on the spot, waiting, so close to the school, it still did not seem that the thing was happening and that the plan would after all be carried out. The school doors opened, and a flock emerged—first a few, then the thick mass of them, spreading over the street. Judd saw himself as he had been among them only a few years ago, the spindly-legged crazy bird, smaller, younger than anybody. “Hey! Genius!” a redheaded comedian would call—“Hey, Genius, I saw a funny bird, right on Ellis Avenue.” And, falling for it, “What was it like?” “A Crazy Bird!” and the comedian would be pointing at him, and the whole gang howling. The punks, the snots! Why, even at that time he could name and identify over two hundred species! Judd saw himself, Crazy Bird, hurrying, scuttling across the street, to get away—away from everyone, away from the shrieking, flapping, shoving crowd. He saw himself, that spindly-legged, large-headed kid, and he loathed that genius kid. Yes, Crazy Bird would have been a victim easy to pick off, one kid all by himself on the street.

And maybe picking up one of these punks today would be a kind of revenge for his miserable years in this miserable school. Today’s flock, or the flock around him four years ago—all crowds were the same, raucous humanity, stupes . . . .

But coolly, Judd checked himself. What he was doing today was not for revenge. He must have no feelings about those days. Even then, as a kid, he had known that he must not feel anything. That way, nothing could hurt. The stupes couldn’t hurt you.

Therefore, no revenge. No emotional connection. This was an exercise in itself, a deed like a theorem, begun and carried out according to its own premise.

“Hey, ixnay.” Artie gestured for him to drive on. Too many of these kids were coming toward the car. Some might know them. Artie slid down in his seat, while the car rolled around the block. By then the flock was already broken up. A few kids walked with maids who always called for them, and some lingered in small groups, girls especially, twittering, stopping, starting. Several big cars rolled past, each with a kid or two in the back seat. Then Artie nudged, pointing his chin. “Richard Weiss.”

A good one. A cousin of their pal Willie, and a grandson of Nathan Weiss, the biggest investment banker in Chicago, the financier behind all their family fortunes, the Strauses, the Hellers, the Seligmans. Little Richard Weiss was turning into 49th Street; the entire block ahead of him was clear. “After him!” Artie tried to grab the wheel. It took a moment to make the U-turn, and by the time they came to 49th Street, the kid was not in sight.

“Where does he live?” Judd asked. “In this block?”

“No, on Greenwood, I think. Maybe he cut across someplace.” Artie leaned forward. “Step on it. Let’s double ahead of him.” They cruised on Greenwood. Their prey had vanished. Cursing, Artie hopped out at a drugstore to look up the exact Weiss address.

In that momentary interval, the whole thing went down again in Judd. Perhaps losing the kid was an omen that it wouldn’t really be done. But Artie came loping out, waving for him to move over from the wheel, then shooting the car three blocks down, on Greenwood. “Where could the little punk have gone?” he muttered angrily, as if the kid had double-crossed them by failing to play his part of the game. They coasted up and down. “The hell with him,” Artie said. “Let’s go back to the school.”

If by now the school street was clear, then today’s chance would have been lost, and tomorrow Judd could say he really had to get ready for his exam.

“Hey!” Judd followed Artie’s glance. Across from the school, on the play lot—a whole flock of them. “Watch me!” Boldly, Artie walked across to the lot. Judd sat staring, feeling a kind of awe. This was the way of a man entirely above normal fears and rules. So bold an impulse would never have occurred in himself, Judd knew.

Artie walked casually onto the lot. Judd saw him stop and put his arm around his kid brother, Billy. Would he really bring Billy! Not with everybody watching!

He was leaving the lot alone. Judd pulled the car ahead a short distance to get out of sight of the kids. Catching up, jumping into the car, Artie said excitedly, “There’s a whole bunch of good ones. Mickey Bass.” His old man owned the South Shore Line. “And the Becker kid—but he’s pretty husky.”

“How about Billy Straus?” Judd suggested. “His old man is the richest Jew in town.”

Artie grinned. His knee swung back and forth. A cinch to get that kid into the car. Then he shook his head. “How would we collect? Cops would be all over the house; I couldn’t make a move.” He looked back toward the lot. “I’ll tell you. Let’s make it the first good one that leaves the ball game.”

They waited. Artie became restless. Motioning Judd to follow, he dodged around behind the play lot; from the alley they could watch the kids—birds with their random movements, stirring on the vacant lot. One runs suddenly. Others hop. They hop and run about on the flat open area, and there seems a kind of pattern, a ritual. Now they all stand attentively. One circles his arm. Another waves a stick and runs. On the field, another may run, while a few move restively on their legs, or stoop and touch the ground. Then a whole little group will converge, join together, and move toward the end of the field, while another group will run out over the field, scattering. To detach a specimen . . .

Artie dodged forward to a closer telephone pole. He was getting dangerously close. And yet not near enough to recognize one kid from another, especially those at the distant end of the field. They seemed to go on endlessly with their ball game. Wait—one kid was leaving. “I think it’s Mickey Bass.” No, Mickey was still on the field. “Damn it,” Judd said, “you need field glasses.”

“Hey! You’re a genius!” Artie squeezed his arm. “Let’s go!”

“What?”

“Let’s get your goddam glasses!”

Fleetingly, Judd wondered, was even Artie at that moment giving the whole plan a chance to collapse? Allowing a chance for all the kids to disappear while they went back for the field glasses?

The house was quiet. Up in Judd’s room, Artie went straight for the Bausch and Lomb, grabbing the case. “Take it easy!” Judd cried. “They’re delicate!”

Standing by the window, Artie focused. “This is the nuts!” You could see part of the playground. “Christ, you could reach out your mitt and grab one of them!”

Judd stood close to Artie. It was one of those moments, perhaps because of being safe together in the room, and yet in the midst of their wild game—one of those moments when he could almost groan with excitation.

Artie turned to let him use the binoculars. And from the look in Artie’s eyes, that almost mocking look, Judd knew that Artie knew. “Come on!” Artie laughed, bounding for the stairs. “We’ll miss them!”

Into the car again, and back beneath the tree. They took turns with the field glasses. It was so strange, watching a kid as he bent to tie his shoelace, then stood up, waiting. Like a bird, preening, lifting his head, listening.

Artie said, “One’s coming!” Judd started the motor. Then Artie shook his head. “No. I dunno.” They waited, the motor running. Judd felt Artie’s hand on his thigh, warm, tense, ready. Anything, anything to have times like this with Artie.

A squeeze would be the signal.

On the field, the boys had formed in a knot; it was an argument. Perhaps the game was breaking up.

“The ump,” Artie muttered. “I think the ump quit.” Then, elatedly: “He’s coming! It’s the little Kessler punk. Hey! He’s just right!”

“Who is he? You know him?” Judd’s voice went suddenly high. “They got dough?”

“They own half the Loop. Old man used to be a pawnbroker.”

Somehow, with that, the boy seemed the right one. Exactly the right one.

The squeeze came, on his thigh. Let out the clutch, slow, easy, crawling. Let the boy walk ahead a bit, lead your bird.

Artie climbed over to the back seat. They had four blocks to work in, he said; the kid’s house was near his own. “Street’s clear,” he observed happily.

Now they were almost even with the boy. Judd waited for a truck to pass, then coasted along the curb. “Let me handle this. He knows me,” Artie whispered, leaning across to the front door. “Don’t honk.” And as they drew abreast: “Hey, Paulie.”

The kid turned. Judd slid the car still nearer to the curb. Conditions were right.

Judd’s father’s voice cut in, “Thinking about your exam?” The memory images braked, halting sharply. Judd looked up. “I guess I’ll do Harvard the honor of glancing at my notes,” he said, rising.

Upstairs, he even took out the typed notes. And as he went over them, entire pages of text were revived complete in his visual memory. His hand fell on the Bausch and Lomb, brought upstairs last night; Artie had neglected to put it back in its case. Even in Artie, sloppiness irritated Judd. As he arose to set the glasses away, he thought of the boy they had watched through these sights. Was the image still on the lens? Like the story about the last image on the retina of a murdered man . . .

Judd tried to bone again, and then the sexual excitement came. Always, always when he sat trying to study. He was oversexed, he was sure. Images intruded: a slave, a slave rewarded by his master.

With a little gasp, almost a groan, Judd gave himself over to the fantasy. His master was extended on a stone couch, drinking from a silver cup. His splendid muscular torso was bare, the skin golden, glistening, not oily but luminous.

The slave was no common slave, but had been purchased because of his learning. He was crouched, reading to his master, and the master laughed at the tale, a witty account of an ass, making love to a woman.

As Judd read, he looked up to his master, and saw the half smile, the beginning of excitation. The master’s arm lay free, and a short whip dangled from Artie’s hand. Artie caught his slavish eyes, and laughingly commanded him, “All right, you bastard, you sucker,” and flicked the whip. The slave put aside his parchment and . . .

Then a tumult. An attacker plunged into the room, more, three, five, a dozen assassins. Judd leaped up, defending his master, with his bare hands wresting the sword from one of the villains, charging them, forcing them backward, plunging the sword.

Excited beyond endurance, Judd arose, circled the room, trying to keep away from the bed. It would be an hour before Artie came. Then, making sure the door was closed, he lay down.

He let himself slide completely into it, without fixing on any one image, letting the images come one upon the other: a street in Florence, and figures in capes and tight trousers, a young man, blond—Artie—rushing into a shadowed alleyway, a grinning backward, inviting glance, and then it was yesterday and the little girls scattering in twos and threes on the street, and why had Artie always been against making it a girl? Maybe that would finally have rid him of the need, but now he still had something left over that he must do. The girl . . . and there came the image of the Hun and the girl, the war poster in the hallway when he was at Twain—the young Frenchwoman with the dress half torn crouching against a wall, her arm up in defense, and the Hun with the slavering mouth coming toward her, then grabbing her by the hair and doing it to her. Then the almost naked body of the woman, the limbs all awry, broken, in a field of grass . . .

With an effort, Judd pulled himself up from the bed. The typewriter. It was standing against the wall, beneath the glass cases of his mounted birds. Picking up the portable, Judd held it undecidedly, set it on his desk, removed the lid. For this second terrible mistake, Artie would be through with him. Artie would erase all their times together, as though they had never met.

It had been one of the last occasions when Mother Dear had been well enough to go out. Indeed, she had probably overstrained herself, Judd imagined, in arranging the visit for his sake. He had known it was a little plot, of the kind Mother Dear and Aunt Bertha loved to arrange, in their little schemes to manage other people’s lives.

For a long time he had been aware of their whispery worryings about him. Poor Judd, he ought to have more friends. He’s alone with his books too much. And even when he goes out birding, he’ll drive off with the chauffeur on a Saturday afternoon and leave the car to go way out someplace all by himself.

Poor Judd, they meant, the kids all hate him. The kids all think he’s conceited. But poor Judd, they said, all the boys in his class are three years older than he is, and at that age three years makes a great difference. And he’s really not interested in baseball and such things. If we could only find someone . . .

And then they had cooked up the meeting with Artie. Of course Judd knew about Artie, the paragon who had skipped through Twain a year ahead of him, and was even a few months younger. He would have got to know Artie at Twain, most likely, if Artie hadn’t transferred to University High in his last year, to go right into the university at fourteen.

But when people talked about Artie Straus, the brilliant prodigy, Judd always remarked that entering a university at fourteen was not necessarily a criterion of intelligence. Any parrot with a large enough medulla oblongata could absorb the kind of knowledge that was required in a classroom. Judd could easily have done it at fourteen instead of fifteen, if he had not been out of school with his terrible skin rashes and boils, for weeks at a time. And besides, Artie Straus, as everyone knew, had had special tutoring from his governess.

Yet Judd admitted to himself a certain curiosity about Artie Straus. He therefore accepted the pretense that it was just a casual afternoon bridge party at the Strauses’, to which he was escorting his mother and aunt. And if there had been hushed telephone calls between the ladies, to arrange this meeting for the two brilliant boys who really ought to be great friends, he pretended not to have noticed. Judd disregarded too the thought that although his own family was worth several million dollars, his mother and aunt would consider it advantageous for him to become the close associate of one of the Strauses, with their ten million and their palatial new mansion with the private tennis court. Only the best, as his father always said.

There was another uneasiness about meeting Artie. While Artie was brilliant like himself, Artie was more. He was an athlete, a fellow who had fun with the crowd. Tall, a lively figure on the tennis court—instead of a bookworm.

Still, Judd was aware that on his side he was supposed to exert a steadying influence on Artie, because the moment he had got into the university, young Straus had started running wild, with collegians who were several years older than himself. And recently Artie had had a bad smashup in a car.

It was a warm, sweet day in May, and as they left the house Mother Dear paused to sniff the air—she could catch the scent of the lake, she said. Judd offered her his arm, and she gave him her smile, the Madonna smile. The smile he had identified far back in childhood when his Irish nurse had taken him into a church with stained-glass windows. “Is this Heaven?” he had whispered, and of the glowing Lady in the window: “Is she God’s wife?” Then the nursemaid had told him who the Madonna was. The Mother of God. And though as soon as he began to grow up he knew himself an atheist, the Madonna image persisted as someone in whom he believed, and as his mother; even the most empirical of scientists, he told himself, retain certain curious irrational beliefs.

That day of the bridge party, as Judd helped his mother down the cement steps to the walk, his aunt gushed about the fine-appearing pair they made. Mother Dear was in something gray, gray silk—he wished he could recall precisely—and he, nearly fifteen, was still in knickerbockers, although they were tailored wide, to look more like golf plus-fours.

“You will meet Artie Straus,” Aunt Bertha insisted again. “I asked Mrs. Straus if Artie would be home. You know, Judd, dear, Artie can give you lots of pointers about the university, what teachers to take.”

“Professors,” he corrected her.

Aunt Bertha had come in her electric, and now gave him a chance to drive it the few blocks to the Straus mansion. Driving the Edison always gave Judd a kick, though he already could drive a regular car and was campaigning for the old man to get him his own sportster for graduation. If he came first in his class, it was a half promise.

“I hear Artie is a nice fun-loving boy, and I hope you will become friends,” his aunt kept on, not realizing how a remark like that could push a fellow in the other direction. Especially if they were working on Artie the same way.

But Artie came running out of the house as the electric drove up. With a politeness that might have had some mockery behind it, he opened doors.

At first sight, Judd felt disappointment. It was an instant feeling that Artie wasn’t for him, Artie wasn’t the one. His long narrow face was like tallow. And everything about him was too long—his arms, his neck, his fingers. Even before emerging from the car, Judd knew he would scarcely reach to Artie’s shoulders. A shrimp in any crowd, beside Artie he would look like a midget.

And at that moment Judd found himself thinking of Rocky, his camp counselor the summer before—the bronzed and muscled Rocky, whom he had pictured, every night as he lay in his bunk, as his king of slaves . . . Artie would never be anything to him. Judd even felt a kind of triumph that he had come along as Mother Dear and Aunt Bertha wished, but had proven immune to their plotting. He would remain his solitary and superior self.

Artie was charming to the ladies; he had those manners. Helping Mother into the house, he said he would park the electric—he loved electrics; his own aunt had one exactly like this, the same model, and he made a joke about all aunts coming equipped with Edisons. Then Judd saw Artie spin the machine around the curve of the driveway, as if it were a speedster.

It was a small bridge party of ladies, several of whom Judd had seen at his own house—Mrs. Seligman, Mrs. Kohn with a K, and Artie’s mother, a thin, energetic-looking woman, with great, clear blue eyes. Judd remembered that she was not Jewish and was always held up as an example, when Hyde Park talk turned on mixed marriages, of a Catholic who fitted very graciously into the South Side Jewish circle—indeed, took the leadership.

There were three tables. Mrs. Straus warned everybody that Artie was a whiz, a shark. Oh, yes, since the two brilliant boys were going to be partners, the ladies had better watch out!

Judd wished they would settle down to the game—he couldn’t stand chitchat, all the ladies clucking over him and trying their bits of French and Italian on him because they had heard he was such a genius at languages. He got aside for a moment to glance over the titles in a bookcase, but it was just the usual stuff, sets of Thackeray and Dickens. Mrs. Straus was said to be a highly intelligent woman and a great reader; indeed, she was the moving spirit of the Hyde Park Literary Circle, where famous authors like Theodore Dreiser had lectured. A copy of the new sensation, Main Street, lay on the table.

“Why don’t you take Judd up to your room? We’ll call when we’re ready,” Mrs. Straus suggested to Artie, who motioned—“C’mon!”—and took the stairs two at a time.

The room was as a collegian’s room was supposed to look, with pennants and sports stuff on the walls—tennis rackets and even crossed fencing foils. Immediately, Artie lighted a cigarette, and offered his Caporals to Judd. “Smoke?” Judd accepted one, remarking that his own preference was for the Turkish brands.

It was too bad he was going to register at the U. of C., Artie told him at once. That was no good because you had to live at home and you couldn’t fool around too much—they had their eye on you. He himself was going to switch to Michigan, to Ann Arbor, in the fall. Another thing, the girls at the U. of C. wouldn’t put out. “You interested in girls?” And in the same moment, Artie opened a heavy atlas that was on his desk. “I keep them in here so the spies won’t get wise.” And he handed Judd a packet of postcards.

They were French cards. Judd had never seen any before, but he made it his rule always to be inwardly prepared for anything. He didn’t flicker. The cards were certainly unaesthetic, particularly the females—the way their half-removed clothing dangled and dripped. In one, the man was nude. Muscular, he made Judd think of Rocky, poised for a swim. Handing back the postcards, he said, “Not bad,” and Artie said he could get Judd into Alpha Beta, only they were a bunch of sissies, the whole gang—he’d bet a ten-spot half of them were still cherry. “You cherry?”

Judd grinned ambiguously. He was saved from the need to answer further by Mrs. Straus calling from downstairs, “Boys, we’re beginning.”

“Hey, I got an idea,” Artie said. “You want to have some fun with these hens? Let’s have some signals.”

That was the first spark between them; the idea of defrauding these clucking women was pleasant to Judd. Artie proposed finger signals, but Judd feared even those dumb females might catch on. His own idea was word signals. Let the first letter of the first word you spoke represent the suit, say, for clubs, any word beginning with a C. Then the number of words in the remark would be the number of cards of that suit. His mind leaped ahead, even to word signals for the high cards, but Artie said he had a better system. He would tap Judd’s toe under the table—that’s what long legs were good for. Once for spades, twice for hearts, and so on. Then you tap the number held in each suit.

“What if they catch you?”

“They never catch me.” Artie laughed, and his mother called again, and the boys went downstairs.

As the foot reached, pressing on his toes, Judd felt an odd combination of mischievousness and tense excitement. He lost count of the taps. He messed up the bidding. But Artie played with bravado and brilliance, and fished them out of the mess. Afterward they got a little better at it. Then they got so good, the women ooed and aahed, and Judd found himself giggling with the secret fun. Then Artie’s mother made a remark about how nervous he was, his legs rattling all the time, and Judd got scared and drew back his feet, holding them under the chair. He gave Artie a meaningful look.

They came out winners, nearly five dollars apiece, and during the coffee and French pastries, Artie took him upstairs again and produced a hidden flask of gin. Then Artie wanted to try Judd’s aunt’s electric to see if it could get up any more speed than his own aunt’s Edison.

In the driveway, the two electric cars were lined up. Aunt Bertha’s still had the key in it. And Artie suddenly had a thought. He tried the key in the second car. It fit. All those Edisons must have the same key!

And so it started. Artie came over for bridge one evening, Judd and Artie trimming Aunt Bertha and Mother Dear, using Judd’s word system this time. Then Artie borrowed Aunt Bertha’s electric, and, while he was out, had a duplicate key made. Artie was car crazy, but since his accident, his family very strictly wouldn’t let him drive.

One afternoon he said, “Hey, how about some fun?” And he and Judd walked into a garage on Harper and tried the key in an Edison, driving the buggy right out. The garageman’s face fell open half a yard as they passed him—what a riot! But after a few blocks he was chasing them in his repair truck. You couldn’t get any speed on an electric, Artie cursed, so he slewed it against the curb and they both leaped out, lamming down an alley and dodging across a vacant lot, Artie pulling Judd quickly behind a shed. Artie held up the key he had saved, and they laughed.

It was there in the sun, laughing, pushed up close together against the wall, that Judd first saw Artie differently. His face was no longer pasty but alive, his eyes shone, and his body had suddenly a lanky grace. And that night in his imagining, when Judd waited for Rocky, the king, to come into his fantasy, it was Artie.

Every afternoon they were together. They swiped another electric and whizzed down Cottage Grove. Then, while they were in an ice-cream parlor, a cop looked in and asked if anybody belonged to that electric. Judd almost piped up, but Artie kicked his foot. A stolen-car alarm must already have gone out. They kept their faces in their sodas until the cop departed.

Electrics were too risky, too slow, Judd said. Anyway for graduation he would have his own car, a red Stutz Bearcat. Artie was almost more eager than Judd for that day.

There it was, sitting in the driveway when he came home from Twain’s silly, juvenile graduation exercises. Red as a fire engine, and with a rumble. Artie must have been waiting around the corner, for he appeared at once, tested the horn, sprang open the rumble. “Just right for picking up gash!” he said. “Ideal for two couples.”

Immediately after dinner, Artie was back at Judd’s house. It was a moonless night. Max haw-hawed, and even Mother Dear joked about the two young men going out to do the town. Judd could imagine their remarks after he had left. “It’s a good thing for him to have some fun; he’s much too serious.” Or: “Let him sow a wild oat or two,” Max would declare grossly, using every cliché in the book. “Artie may not be any older,” Max would say, “but he’s been around. He’ll show Judd a good time.”

So the family stood in the doorway waving them off on their adventure, with admonitions to be home early, now, and don’t do anything wild.

The first thing Artie did was to stop at a drugstore on Stony Island where he said he could get the real stuff. “Your share is three bucks,” he told Judd when he came out with the pint. Judd knew that Max never paid more than three dollars a pint, so this was the entire price he was paying; but he gave Artie the money, telling himself this way he would have something on Artie, even while Artie thought he was being fooled.

Then Artie wanted to take the wheel, but Judd decided to establish firmly from the first that it was his car, and he would be the driver. Artie shrugged.

In the park they had a few swigs, then Judd said how about a fond farewell to the institution? They drove down to Twain, gazing upon the brick castle, dark and solid as a prison. “Why is it the tradition that one is supposed to look back upon one’s Alma Mater with affection?” said Judd. “All I experience is relief at no longer having to have daily contact with those imbeciles.”

Artie climbed out of the car. A pile of bricks was lying there, where a wall was being repaired. He picked up a few, handing one to Judd. There was a corner window, where old Mr. Forman always stood, whirling his watch fob.

“Here’s to Old Foreskin!” Artie saluted. They heaved, and glass rained down. Climbing into the car, they roared off. Judd was actually laughing out loud. “Too bad he wasn’t standing behind the window as usual!” He nearly doubled over the wheel, finding the image so funny.

Artie still had a brick in his hand. Judd drove to Lake Park. It was a crummy street, with few lights. A good street for gash, Artie remarked, though mostly professionals, and he didn’t want to get himself another dose just yet. Of course Judd might as well get the experience, he taunted; Judd was cherry, and never even had a dose. But it wouldn’t be long now . . . There was a pair! Slow down!

And so they coasted and blew the horn, but no dice, and they went through the same routine with other pairs. Then at one moment Artie spied a perfect store window and heaved his brick; the Stutz had wonderful pickup, roaring away from the clattering, collapsing glass.

They circled, stopped a block off, and sauntered over. Two men were struggling to block up the window—it was a shoe-repair shop—and a dozen rubbernecks had already assembled, giving each other versions of what had happened.

The owner kept telling how he ran down from upstairs. “Who do this to me? Why anybody do this to me? I work hard—”

“Maybe it was the Black Hand,” Artie suggested. Turning to Judd, he said, “Looks like a typical Black Hand job to me. This is just a warning.”

“That’s right,” Judd said. “The next time they give him the works.”

Police arrived and scattered the crowd. Back in the car, Artie and Judd laughed themselves silly, Artie mimicking the terrified cobbler: “Black Hand! I don’t know no Black Hand!” And the most wonderful part of it, sensed for the first time there, was that they two together were a kind of secret power, like their own Black Hand—they could stand right there in the midst of the crowd, and nobody could even suspect they were the ones.

For Judd, this was a kind of proof. When you were a kid, parents tried to make you fear an all-watching God, and ever after that you felt a kind of fear that if you did something, people might somehow see it on you. But there was nothing! Nothing showed! You did whatever you damn pleased. And that was Artie’s philosophy.

They drove downtown, came back up Michigan, and passing 22nd Street, Artie said, “Hey, how about going to Mamie’s? Come on, I bet you never even had a piece. Tonight’s the night.”

Judd felt the blood flooding his brain. He wanted to get it over with, and yet something in him was repulsed. “I don’t like to pay for it,” he said. “I’d rather pick something up.”

“Yah, you’ll pick something up all right.” Artie laughed, but they tried a few streets. Garfield Boulevard he said was good for gash hunting. They drove up and down the length of it, a few times spotting pairs of strolling girls, and once coasting slowly while Artie went through a long conversation with two stupid gigglers. The whole time, Judd’s head was pounding with scenes from Fanny Hill, which Artie had lent him to read. Despite his excitement, he wanted to roar away from the two females, with their smeared mouths. Why should a man have to demean himself to make vapid remarks to such brainless creatures, merely for biological release!

He had never allowed himself to develop a crush. The girls in his classes were all older than he. They treated him like a flea. There was a cousin, a year younger, whom he had taken to the prom, a wispy, fairy-waist girl, but she had talked all the time about who was in love with whom, and when he had said it was merely a biological impulse, and had kept on referring to girls as females, Alice had announced that she didn’t think his line was clever at all; it was simply disgusting.

But it was biological. And that was what dragged a man down. From way back, from deep in childhood, Judd had the feeling that the entire female mechanism was nauseating. Somehow he knew about the blood, from far back with that fleshy fat governess, Trudy. Occasionally at night the almost suffocating sense of her came over him. More often it was the girl in the war atrocity. In different ways—dragged out of her bed, or huddling in a barn. And dark female blood. Over her, the stiff-necked officer in uniform. Sometimes it was like the military-school uniform Max wore, buttoned to the chin, when he came home for the holidays. And lately Artie, he and Artie running from the cops, the cops firing after them, and Artie pulling him behind the telegraph post in the alley, laughing. And there in the alley, the girl from the war poster . . . Judd would surrender himself to his excitement, at the same time cursing the terrible need that nature had forced upon an intelligent being, the tormenting, relentless sex need . . .

That first evening in the car they didn’t have any luck. But one night just before Artie and his folks were going up to Charlevoix for the summer, they connected.

The pair they picked up were on 63rd Street, just west of Cottage, where the street gets dark under the El. After the girls got into the car you could see they were a little older; they had creases in their necks. Judd’s girl put her hand on his knee right away, and from behind Artie called, “She wants to know if we carry a blanket!” All four exploded with merriment. Still laughing, Judd’s girl lifted his right hand from the wheel and placed it on her thigh. One-arm drivers were her favorite, she said.

He drove straight out on 63rd, beyond the new airfield there, and on the way the girl said she hoped he wouldn’t get the wrong idea about her, though she and her friend loved to be taken places, and of course every girl loved to receive presents, but she hoped he wouldn’t get the wrong idea. Then she tilted back her head and sang “Margie,” and he was relieved, not having to make conversation.

When they parked, the girls got out on different sides of the car, as if by habit. They kept calling to each other with suppressed but shrieky laughter. It was a sultry night and there were mosquitoes on the field; Judd kept getting bitten. He felt angry at the need in himself to do this. Just as he embraced her, the girl looked into his face in a serious way and said, “You all right? I never had anything, honest; I swear.” It took him an instant to realize that she meant the disease. “Sure, I’m okay,” he gasped, but he was completely invaded by fear, wanting to quit, for probably she did have it, and he thought of Artie on the other side of the car—Artie not caring if he gave the girl a dose, and sure, that was the way to be—the hell with all females—and even as the girl guided him, Judd’s mind was filled with images of Artie giving it, with godlike anger and vengeance, to the twat.

Judd’s climax came instantly. The girl emitted a low, surprised “Hey?” and then an odd little laugh. He didn’t want her to look at him. There was light enough so that he could see every particle of powder on her face; and her bangs had been brushed back, disclosing her low, sloping forehead—practically no forehead at all, apelike. He had read about the feeling of after-disgust. But he was sure that what he felt was more, much more. Utter nausea. He had done it quickly, to have the least possible contact with her, yet she was trying to hold him to her, to be playful. He couldn’t find a word to say to her. Instead, all the while, he was trying to hear, to see, Artie. Laughter and squealing came from the other side of the car, and then silence, and his own girl giggled at what must be going on there. And then they heard Artie’s partner. “You had too much gin, sonny.” And then that girl had jumped up, shaking straight her dress, and Judd’s girl stood up as at a signal.

Suddenly the girls began jabbering gaily again, and suggesting places to dine and dance, calling them “sports.” It was as if the intercourse itself had been some minor preliminary. But he didn’t want to go anywhere with them; he didn’t even want to be in the car with them driving them back to where they had been picked up. Judd managed to conceal his distaste while returning up 63rd Street. The girl sank back into her singing, but now, over and over again, it was “Constantinople.”

Judd finally remarked, “You think you can spell it now?” and she said, “Say!” Then her partner called from behind, “How about going to the show at the Tivoli? Pola Negri’s playing.” Artie quickly made up a big story in his bootlegger role about having to meet a certain connection in a certain spot in Little Italy. No dames.

Judd pulled up at the corner, and just as the girls were beginning to look angry, Artie slipped his a ten-spot, saying that would take them to the show and maybe the Stutz would be waiting when they came out, if he finished his deal.

Judd’s girl, smiling, offered her mouth, repeating, “I hope you won’t think we’re that kind.” He couldn’t stand to kiss her; he zoomed the car away before Artie was half settled beside him.

Artie shook his head, laughing. What a pair of bags. With a bag like that he never could get really excited.

Only then Judd understood that Artie hadn’t done it. And suddenly his own nausea was gone. Artie kept on talking. It was no kick with a cheap slut, a semipro. And Judd said females were disgusting anyway; all of them were disgusting. It was a foul trick of nature to make a man need to consort with the creatures. They took a swig to get the taste out, and then Artie had an idea for some fun. Back on 63rd were some sheds, and he had an idea.

They drove west again and Artie picked out a shed at the end of a vacant lot, just an old shed—couldn’t hurt anybody. He got out of the car and went to the back of the lot and found some old newspapers and cardboard. He lighted a little bonfire against the wall of the shack. They waited till it caught on, then circled the block, coming back to see the whole shed ablaze.

Artie put his arm on Judd’s shoulder, watching. Judd felt cleansed. He wished he had thought of this himself. How Artie’s eyes glittered! He felt the wine of full friendship in them at last.

Soon they heard the fire engines coming.

Lying on his bed, one ear cocked for footsteps, Judd restrained himself. He wouldn’t give himself to the final exciting imaginings, for at any moment Max or his father might come upstairs. If he locked the door they might suspect, and that would be worse. At last he heard them on the stairs, talking; Max was going to drive downtown to a show, and would leave the old man for a card game at the club, picking him up after the show.

Good! They wouldn’t be here when Artie came.

And the image was upon him, of the first time with Artie. On the train going up to Charlevoix to be Artie’s summer guest. It was an overnight ride, and Artie had taken a compartment, and once they were in it Artie had unloaded a bottle and a deck of cards—this would be one big night. They had scouted the train looking for a couple of bims, but all the time Judd had felt sure they wouldn’t really find any; it would be themselves, the two of them in the compartment.

Judd had taken along the Perfumed Garden in French, and he translated a few of the best parts to Artie while they played a couple of hands of casino, a nickel a point, Judd winning. And all the time they were drinking, and Artie was getting looser, the way he had of clowning so you couldn’t tell exactly whether he was tight or only pretending to be tight. Artie talked of all the girls they would have in Charlevoix—he had them lined up; he knew some terrific lays on the farms around there; it would be a great summer—and all the while Judd kept feeling freer and bolder, and the pounding was in him.

He hardly knew how—perhaps he was half drunk himself, maudlin—they were patting each other. “Old pal.” Maybe singing. Then they started to go to bed. Artie lost the toss for the lower, but refused to abide by the decision. He dove into Judd’s bunk, and Judd started to push Artie out; and then horsing around like that, wrestling, they lay extended together to catch their breath, and when it began Artie made no sign, pretending to be half-drunkenly half asleep. Then Artie laughingly muttered a few dirty names, and let it happen as if he were too drunk to know or care.

In the morning they said nothing about it, both pretending to have been drunk. The Straus car was at the station for them, and they drove up to the place, the terrific showplace the Strauses had on the bluff over the lake, a reproduction of a castle on the Rhine.

They had adjoining bedrooms.

“Junior,” Max called from the hallway, and Judd leaped up from the bed and went to the door, to be told about their going downtown. Then he forced himself to sit at his desk again and look at his law notes while waiting for Artie.

As he hung up the receiver after calling Judd, Artie experienced one of those dark surges of feeling, a wave of deathliness, as if he could have sent a wave of death through the telephone and seen Judd stricken by it, paralyzed, turned to stone. Electrocution by telephone. That would be a good mystery-story idea, and it might sometime even be possible. Himself, the master criminal. He’d call up his enemies, and then they would be found dead, telephone in hand.

He saw Judd, sitting like that. And picturing it, Artie felt a flash of comprehension: Judd wanted to be caught and executed. For if you left things around like that, the glasses, the typewriter, you wanted to get caught. Like the kind of girl that leaves hairpins all over the back seat. She wants it to be known.

So Judd was a terrible danger to him. Rage and grief shuddered through Artie. Spoiled, spoiled, why did that punk bastard have to go and spoil the whole thing! All the other things he had done, the things he had done by himself, were done without a trace. Artie himself could not prove that he had done them. The last one in winter, the ice-cold night, the upturned coat collar covering the face, the tape-wound chisel in his pocket, hard against his hand, then the body falling off the pier into the lake. Had he done it, or only pictured it to himself?

That was the sad part of doing things all by yourself, on your own. You lost them. You really needed someone else to be in a thing with you: so that the deed stayed alive between you.

Then all the little things he and Judd had done together, the fires and the thing at the frat house in Ann Arbor—all those things rose up in Artie and pleaded for Judd. Pleaded for dog-eyes Jocko. But Artie wasn’t sure. He would decide about Judd after they had got rid of the typewriter. Perhaps, if the feeling came over him . . . He put his automatic into his pocket.

Artie did not fail to call out good-bye to the family, flashing a charming smile at Mumsie’s guest. Then, though it was the wrong direction for Judd’s, he walked past the Kessler house. Only one police car was parked there now.

In that house, were they getting any clues leading to him? Ah, let them follow him now! Instead of leading them to his accomplice, he would throw them off the track! And Artie turned up Hyde Park Boulevard, toward Myra’s. Let Judd sit waiting, worrying.

Suddenly Artie felt keen and light. He laughed out loud, thinking of Judd sitting under his glass cages of stuffed birds, gnawing his fingernails.

• • •

In the gilded lobby of the Flamingo there sat the usual two groups of little ladies in retirement, and Artie could sense the buzz among them as he passed toward the elevators: there goes the brilliant Straus boy, youngest university graduate, they were saying, and surely plotting about catching him for their nieces and granddaughters. This always gave him a kick; he loved the old biddies, ready to lay out all their girlies for him.

Myra’s mother herself opened the door, welcoming him, but with an air of confusion. “Why, Artie! Hello, Artie. It’s so nice to see you, but you know Myra’s just going out.”

Myra bubbled out from her room; she had not quite finished dressing, and was holding a sash for her beaded green frock. He and she always laughed as soon as they saw each other, a kind of surprised and even silly laugh—Well, look at us! And a kind of guilty conspiratorial laugh, like the times as kids when they were almost caught playing doctor. Yet despite the laughter, Myra’s eyes were always melancholy, befitting a poetess, and she talked in breathless rushes of words, curiously like Artie.

Her date was a goof, she said, a football player. She had been roped in, but “When he is silent, I can imagine he is a Greek god. Oh, I want to have lots of lovers, like Edna St. Vincent Millay.”

Her mother, assuming a calm knowingness, always let Myra run on, sure it was all mere talk. And while Myra rushed back to her room to find a poem she had just written, Mrs. Seligman managed to inquire conventionally about his family. How was his mother? How was his father’s blood pressure?

Fine, Artie said, everyone was fine, but Mumsie was rushing to Charlevoix tomorrow morning with little Billy, because of that terrible crime—wasn’t it a monstrous thing? And spying a huge box of candy, Artie poked his finger into one of the chocolates. “Aha! Liquor!” he cried, sucking the finger, and then poking it down the entire row of candies while Mrs. Seligman giggled in horror—“Really, Artie!”

“He’s wacky!” Myra called. He walked into her room.

Myra thrust herself up against him and kissed him briefly, moving the tip of her tongue, and gyrating her abdomen to show she knew how to be wicked. She broke off and pulled back, looking at him intently with her huge brown eyes. “Is anything wrong, Artie?”

The girl made him impatient sometimes with her understanding looks. He said, “Nah, I just got the willies,” and she said he had to hear her new sonnet. She always sent her sonnets to the Line O’Type column in the Tribune, signing them “The Dark Lady,” and occasionally they were printed. The new one lay on her desk, over an open copy of Baudelaire, in French; Myra was trying some translations.

“My Unfaithful Lover” was the title; Artie picked it up and read out loud. “I share my lover with the wingspread sail—”

She shared her lover with the sleet, the gale. He said it was swell.

They were, of course, not lovers. And yet she was in love with Artie; she had loved him since she was a little girl. They were remote relatives, fifty-eleventh cousins they called themselves, Myra always explaining, with a bubble of laughter, that anyone whose family owned Straus stocks was a cousin. Her father had been one of the founders.

She called Artie “lover,” as a kind of promise within herself that it would one day be he. She was sure she knew the Artie others didn’t know; she knew an Artie who was not always shining and being smart, but who was torn. This she cherished as a love secret. Sometimes when they were out together, Artie would admit to having the blues; he would drop his air of good-time frenzy for a despondent silence, and then Myra would feel that he was hers, that she was the only one with whom he could act this way, and she would be sure Artie was much deeper than he let on.

So now he said there was nothing wrong, he just was sick of the world, had a touch of the blues, and that reminded Myra of a terrific place she had heard about, downtown, where they had a wonderful blues singer. It was in a cellar on Wabash. Why not go there tomorrow?

He agreed; maybe they would make it a double date.

Myra groaned. Not Judd.

Well, he had sort of agreed to help Judd celebrate his Harvard exams tomorrow. Why did she always have to pick on Judd?

“Maybe I’m jealous.” Myra laughed without meaning anything. But she simply couldn’t see why he let that dreary drip hang around.

It was not a new argument. Especially if you went in a crowd, she said, Judd was so unlikable, with his conceited ideas, and his eyes that never blinked.

Aw, Artie told her, Judd was a brilliant little sonofabitch, and the reason he was so unpopular was that people knew they were inferior to him.

“I don’t care how brilliant he is, he gives me the creeps,” she said, trying to pin on her sash.

Well, Artie admitted, maybe he let Judd hang around so much partly out of pity because the guy had no friends.

“So you nearly get yourself thrown out of your fraternity for his sake.”

Anyway, Judd would be going abroad in a few weeks.

The bell rang; it was her date. Artie grabbed the sash from Myra, and holding it around his waist, shimmied into the other room. Her mother had just opened the door, and Artie swayed toward the young man there, announcing, “I’m your date. Myra has just been kidnaped.”

“Don’t mind him. He’s my wacky cousin, just dropped in from Elgin,” Myra said, taking the sash, and then Artie solemnly declared that he was sorry he couldn’t join them on their date—he had an appointment to hijack a shipment from Canada. He seized Myra and gave her a passionate kiss in front of the young man and her mother. “Don’t drink any wood alcohol,” he admonished, whisking out of the apartment, laughing.

Why did he let Judd hang onto him? Her question resounded as he walked. Certainly he had been too damn softhearted in letting Judd hang on. Ever since the beginning, every piece of trouble had been on account of Judd, and now Dog Eyes had brought him to the edge of real danger.

Walking on Stony Island, purposely past the police station, Artie was now conducting the trial of Judd Steiner. All-powerful, in his hands was the life-or-death decision.

Take the second summer Judd came up to Charlevoix. They hadn’t seen each other much that year, because that was the year Artie had transferred to Ann Arbor. Morty Kornhauser, from the Ann Arbor chapter of Alpha Beta, was visiting him just then, too.

Sunday morning, Judd had to walk into Artie’s room through the connecting bathroom, to wake him up. They were going canoeing to an island where Artie knew a couple of girls—fishermen’s daughters. As Judd started pulling him out of bed, Artie made a playful grab, and then they were wrestling and fooling around.

And Morty had to walk in. They didn’t even hear him. Morty had a sneaky way of slipping around, with a look of apologizing for intruding. Who the hell knew how much he had watched, before Judd finally noticed him standing there with his mouth open like at some goddam stag show?

Artie made the best of it and said, “Want to join the fun?” But that prig Morty said, “No, I don’t indulge, excuse me”—and walked out.

For a while they lay silent, except for that silly giggle Judd had. There was nothing to laugh about; Morty was the biggest tattler at the frat. Then, when they were putting on their trunks, Judd remarked, “Hey, didn’t that sonofabitch say he can’t swim? It might be dangerous for him in a canoe.”

Their eyes caught, and Judd let out his giggle. The day before, when they had all gone down to the lake, Morty had indeed remarked that he didn’t swim. With three boys in a canoe, anything could happen.

They hurried down to breakfast, so as not to give Morty a chance to talk to anyone. Then, rather sullenly, he walked down with them to the boathouse.

When they were a good way out on the lake, Artie stood up, complaining, “For crissake, Judd, you don’t know your paddle from your asshole,” and Judd insulted him back and started a scuffle. Before Morty knew what was happening, they were all in the water.

They saw the bastard come up thrashing. He glared at them, and with his mouth full, sputtered, “. . . on purpose!” and then went under, thrashing. They swam away. But Judd looked back, treading water. Morty was flailing, but keeping his head up.

Artie saw it, too. The whole damn thing was Judd’s fault, he swore. He’d heard the bastard wrong. “I don’t swim” didn’t mean “I can’t swim.”

Morty came ashore some distance from them, and they hurried over to him solicitously. Panting, he gasped out, “You did it on purpose. I know, you filthy degenerates!” His eyes were narrow, meaningful. He wouldn’t walk back with them, but trailed, slowly, by himself.

All day, they stuck to him. When they told the story of the accidental overturning of the canoe, he was silent. And that night he discovered he had to cut his visit short and return to Lansing.

Then the bastard wrote his letters.

He sent them to their brothers. One to Max Steiner, and one to James Straus. They were neatly typed, sanctimonious letters—“unpleasant as the subject may be, I feel it is my duty” and “by chance came upon an exhibition of unmentionable character” and “not my place to give advice but perhaps you are unaware of—”

Brother James brought it up on the tennis court, just before starting to play. “Say, Artie, what was your friend so sore about when he left here, that Kornhauser kid?”

“Why? Has Morty been telling any stories?”

“Well, he wrote me a letter.”

“That stinking little crapper. Sure he was sore. We took about forty bucks away from him, shooting craps, up in my room, Saturday night, so he got mad and the little bastard even tried to suggest the dice were loaded—”

James had on his knowing smile.

“Is that what he wrote about?” Artie demanded.

“Oh, it was some junk about you and Judd.” In the look James gave him, everything was included. All the things James had covered up for him—the swiped things, the dose. But he wouldn’t spill this either; James had to imagine himself a real guy, protecting his kid brother. “It’s all a dirty lie!” Artie exclaimed. “Morty’s just a dirty troublemaker!”

James said, “Listen, Artie, this is for your own good. That Judd’s a freak. You know, funny. Maybe you fellows had better not be seen so much together. People make up all kinds of stories. Maybe there ought always to be somebody with you if you go with him—”

“Why, that dirty-minded lousy— Why, for crissake I know what it is he made a story out of. Why, we were just horsing around.”

“You try to let Morty drown?” James asked coolly.

“Why, he fell out of the canoe. Why, that—” Their eyes met. Artie grinned. James shook his head, but could not hide the beginning of a smile as he thought of Morty flailing in the water.

It was lucky the letter hadn’t been sent to Lewis, because Lewis would have insisted it was a matter for Momsie and Popsie, a matter, Christ, affecting the family reputation. But James, Artie felt he could handle. James didn’t like trouble. He liked a good time himself. And he couldn’t have already told anyone, or he wouldn’t be bringing it up like this. Christ, if the family knew about this one, it would be worse than that time with the car accident.

Artie took it easy with James, giving him the boyish wink, and letting him win the set.

But that was a mark against Judd, Artie told himself, turning down 49th Street toward Judd’s house and casting quick glances right and left. Ha, that elderly woman walking her dog might be a secret police agent. He would give her the slip. And he curled his hand around the barrel of the automatic.

Judd’s fault, that time with Morty. First, being such a damn fool as to start playing around, with the door unlocked. Hell, he himself didn’t get any special kick out of it, but he let Judd play around just for the hell of it. Judd was the one who started all that stuff. And then, once Morty had seen them and once they had got him out in the canoe, and when they saw he had tricked them about not being able to swim, they ought to have held the tattler’s head under water. If you start something you should go through with it. If Judd hadn’t been so scared, scared pissless, Morty would have been taken care of right there.

Instead, they had let him leave. So he not only had the story to tell of catching them fooling around, but, even worse, about their trying to drown him. Morty told everybody he saw that summer. Then, instead of coming back to the frat in the fall, he had to spend a year in Denver, with TB—the reason he didn’t exert himself swimming.

Even with Morty Kornhauser away from the frat, Judd should never have insisted on coming to Ann Arbor. That was another mistake to charge up against Judah Steiner, Jr. First he had to go and make a whole issue of it with his brother Max, who had received the same kind of dirty letter as James. Instead of simply gabbing his way out of it, Judd had to make an issue, declaring that just for that, the family had to show they trusted him by letting him go to Ann Arbor even though Artie was there.

And then another mistake. Mr. Judd Steiner had to insist he wanted to get into the frat! Morty heard about it and wrote one of his letters from Denver: to Al Goetz, president of the chapter. “Do you want to have a real pair of perverts, right in the house?”

The president took Artie aside for a man-to-man talk. Hell, it was so bad, Artie even had to get James to come up, casually, like for a football game, but to remind Al Goetz of a thing or two. And hell, Al finally admitted everybody knew Artie was okay—why, Artie helled around in the Detroit cat houses with the rest of the boys; they knew he was regular. As James said, he’d even caught a dose at fifteen. But after James was gone, Al told Artie, Why not face the facts? The thing wasn’t only because of Morty’s tales. Judd simply was not well liked, so why make an issue of getting him in? “Oh, I know he’s your friend. You get along with him because you’re both brilliant young bastards. But let’s face it, Artie, there’d be more than one blackball. Why should he want to get his feelings hurt?”

At least—a point for the defense—Judd didn’t push it. He suddenly was against fraternities. He even made a Hebe question out of it. A principle.

The fact was, the Delts had taken him for a ride. For a couple of days he had the idea he was going to show up Alpha Beta by getting into a real gentile fraternity. Some Delt had made the mistake of inviting Judd over because of his being a genius prodigy and a millionaire too. But then they dropped him cold, and Judd suddenly made a principle out of it. He was against the idea of Jewish frats and non-Jewish frats. Being a Jew was simply an accident of birth. So now he was anti-fraternity. He would never join a Hebe frat either, on principle. Moreover, frat men were all a bunch of rubber stamps, Judd declared. They would come out a bunch of Babbitts. He would drop over to the house and spout this stuff, and some of the fellows would laugh, but a lot of them didn’t like it. They started telling Artie to keep his friend away from the place. On account of Judd, he’d almost become unpopular.

Artie walked a little faster. He thought of an idea that suddenly made him feel bubbly, even gay. He would go in through the basement and up the back stairs. He would give Dog Eyes the scare of his life.

Judd was sitting erect, unable to study. He detested being at the mercy of a physical need. It seemed never to leave him. Others didn’t have it so bad. Artie didn’t have it so bad. Those two years at Ann Arbor, near Artie, had nearly driven him crazy.

None of the coeds would put out. At least, not for him. The cat houses weren’t enough. He had to have it all the time—oversexed, he guessed.

And that was the time when the image of Artie began to get in the way. Even when he was with a girl. Inside himself he would be saying to a drunken, laughing Artie, “You goddam whore! You goddam whore!” And he would be tearing at Artie; whoever she was, he would make her into Artie, and he would be tearing in a rage at his own bondage, at having to have it, at the flesh being stronger than the intellect.

The times he had waited, in agony like tonight, always waiting for that capricious bastard—“See you at nine”—and you’d wait, getting more and more excited, imagining what you would do to him as soon as he came in.

Then, like some damn girl, Artie would behave as if the two of you had never done it at all, as if an idea like that never entered his thoughts. The bastard didn’t need it. He was like the girls who didn’t really need it the way a man did.

The house was safe now. If only Artie would show up, they could be alone to themselves in the house, in this room. For two hours, even longer, without the worry of someone walking in.

Artie was already late. You could never be sure with Artie. He could be precisely on time if it was for carrying out a plan. Or else he could stand you up. But under Judd’s fretful impatience there was an almost gratified feeling. Artie, superior, should acknowledge no convention of punctuality.

Judd touched the typewriter. He felt a dreadful reluctance to part with it, to destroy it. It was the one thing he had kept from all they had done together; it was like a token of their pact. Perhaps instead of getting rid of it, they could hide it somewhere? The brawls they had had over this machine! Artie, every time he came over, claiming by right it should have been his!

Judd had an impulse, tender and tragic, to write a farewell note on the machine, a lone confession, taking all the blame. He could mail the note and then disappear. They would recognize the typing. If one could vanish, vanish without an act of death and yet somehow cease to be, truly vanish, dissolving into nothingness as though never even born! Would Artie feel regret? Would Artie appreciate what he had done?

For, caught or not, Judd had a heavy presentiment that it was over now between Artie and himself. And parting with this machine would be like closing the circle.