"Glad to hear it."
"For half an hour that woman spewed up her filthy soul," Dr. Richards
said, shivering. "Finally I had to ask her to leave the colony.
I should never have admitted her in the first place. She needs
psychiatric help."
"She's going?"
"She's gone. She packed in a hurry and we saw her off five minutes
before we came to dinner." He frowned. "She promised not to make any
trouble for us. I hope she keeps her word."
"What kind of trouble?" I asked.
"Her kind of personality reacts to what she considers an insult with
hatred."
"I know."
"Hatred and lies. She might get in touch with some newspaper and tell
them that there are wild and drunken sex orgies going on out here."
Richards scowled. "Most of the people of this state believe that's what
goes on here anyway. And if someone who's actually _been_ here says so,
there could be all kinds of trouble. A police raid, photographers, bad
publicity, everything. We've had to struggle for acceptance all these
years, and if Bonnie decides to stir up a hornet's nest she could come
close to ruining us."
As I walked away, I wondered what effect a police raid might have on
my job. "_Also arrested and charged with indecent exposure and lewd
behavior was Alfred Fieldston, 34, a copywriter for the advertising
firm of_...." That sort of stuff. If it ever got into the Chicago
papers, I might very easily find myself right out on my nudist butt,
lenient easy-going management and all. The top brass had a relaxed
attitude, all right, but they were still advertising executives,
which means they were highly conservative people. Anything that
might conceivably offend a client--such as eccentricity among the
underlings--was to be shunned. A copywriter who grew a beard was
likely to get a polite note from J. D. telling him to get rid of it
"for the sake of the team." A copywriter who got his name--and the
agency's--into the papers on whatever charges they might hang on a
nudist was sure to get the axe.
$14,000 a year, goodbye.
Expense account, goodbye.
All on account of a bugeyed bit of neurotic tail who was miffed at my
refusal to sleep with her? No. There wouldn't be any justice in the
universe if Bonnie's jealousy cost me my job.
I spent a pretty uncomfortable evening worrying about the possibilities
thereof.
There was no formal program scheduled for that night. The weather
turned cool again, and by half past eight it was downright chilly,
and everyone was not only fully dressed but bundled up in jackets as
well. I wandered around, seeing what was going on. In the music room,
half a dozen people were gathered around Ted Nichols, who had a banjo
and was singing folk-songs. Off in the corner, some of the older folks
were having a quiet game of bridge. A few people were in the library,
catching up on magazines and newspapers from the remote outside world.
A couple of brave souls were even watching television. It was a
typical quiet night at any country resort. Dancing in the social hall,
basket-weaving for the artsy and craftsy, table tennis in the rec room.
I drifted around from one group to another. I was too restless--after
the scene with Bonnie--to feel much like settling down in any one place.
Joanie was in the crafts room, finishing up a professional-looking pair
of leather sandals. She smiled warmly at me, but obviously was much
more interested in finishing the sandals than in talking to me. I left
after a little while.
Meehan had already dropped his fruitless pursuit of Mary Kinowski and
had taken up the chase of Naomi Gardner. I spotted them in the social
hall, Meehan looking his usual rumpled self in clothing, Naomi looking
chic and gay and _very_ happy to have her body covered again for the
time being. They waved to me as they came dancing by the door.
Both Sandra and Harriet were occupied with fellows. Sandra had snared a
newcomer named Davis, an architect in his middle twenties whose face,
all planes and angles, looked like it had come from some surrealist's
drafting board. As for Harriet, she was with the new kitchen man, a
hatchet-faced friend of Riccio's who had come up to work here when the
influx of guests made more help necessary in the kitchen.
I hoped he would make her very happy. In the way that she liked to be
kept happy.
With both Sandra and Harriet occupied and with Bonnie gone, I felt
very much at loose ends with myself. Everybody else seemed to be right
at home, busily involved in whatever he or she wanted to be doing,
and here I was floating from place to place. I wanted to be alone
with Joanie, but I didn't know how to go about getting through the
impervious layer she surrounded herself with. She was working on crafts
tonight, and that was _all_ she planned to do. Since I was a hopeless
dub at anything more complicated than tying my shoes, I didn't feel
like joining her in the crafts shop, and I didn't know how to get
her away. So I wandered back to the social hall and danced with the
wall-flowers for a while.
Meehan and Naomi slipped away around half past nine. I was dancing
with Margaret at the time, and not particularly enjoying the experience.
I realized I had been pretty dumb; I had had the inside track on Naomi
this afternoon and hadn't followed things up. I had been too busy
daydreaming about Joanie, who couldn't be had, and I had let this
girl--who probably could be, with the right persuasion--fall into
Meehan's waiting hands.
Well, I couldn't begrudge her to Jack. But I told myself glumly that I
could very well be exploring the contents of her sweater now, instead
of dancing with fat giggly Margaret.
Human beings are weirdos, aren't they? Bonnie, Sandra, and Harriet
climb all over me, and I brush them off. Then a perfectly luscious
young dish, shy and virginal and ripe for seduction, appears on the
scene, and despite an initial advantage I fail to capitalize. And then,
after I see someone else ploughing the pasture, I get regretful. We're
never happy with what we have. We only want what can't be had, or what
someone else has taken.
Filled with brooding of this sort, I wended my lonely way back to the
cabin shortly before ten and got into bed. I wondered idly whether
Sandra would come slithering into the sack with me again in the small
hours. I hoped not. I was tremendously depressed, for no really good
single reason, and I just wanted to be left alone by Sandra and any
other eager tail in the vicinity.
Sandra didn't bother me. I slept the night through without interruption.
When I woke, a little before seven, it was raining. The thump-thump on
the cabin roof woke me up. I went to the window and looked out into a
gray morning. Rain was falling in enormous drops. The volleyball court
was a muddy shambles, and little pools of water were collecting on the
lawn.
I turned around and got back into bed. But after listening to the
pounding of the rain for half an hour, I heard the breakfast gong
ringing right on time. I went to the window again. Dr. Richards was
standing on his porch with a megaphone, and he was yelling to us to
stay where we were, that everyone would be picked up and taken to the
mess hall by car.
I woke Meehan up and we got dressed--warmly, because it was miserably
nasty outside. Dr. Richards was going around with a big gray
station-wagon that belonged to the camp, picking people up. We made it
on the second trip. Breakfast was a welcome thing that morning--good
hot oatmeal and plenty of scalding coffee.
It rained all day. For the people of Sunland, it was by way of being a
major tragedy; it meant a day of fidgety boredom indoors, growing paler
by the minute. Don Riemann conducted his morning calisthenics class in
the social hall, and it was announced that various sessions of singing
and dancing would be held during the day.
I wasn't interested. I rode back to the cabin after breakfast and set
up the typewriter.
I thought it would be easier to work in complete privacy than out in
the open on my porch. But I was wrong. The cabin was cold and drafty
and not very well lit, and the melancholy drumming of the rain on the
roof added to the general greyness of the day. I read through the
chapter I had written in such a white heat the previous afternoon, and
then tried to get started on Chapter Two. But getting started was hard.
I typed out an opening sentence and stared at it for fifteen minutes
before I could figure out what I wanted to say next. After half an hour
I had managed to string one entire paragraph together, no more.
The rain and the chill depressed me. I began to think that the chapter
I had written yesterday was no good. I came close to tearing it up.
Then, for a while, I decided that the whole book was no good--a
hopeless waste of time on which I was expending a hell of a lot of
unpaid weeks, at a net cost of better than $250 a week in salary I
wasn't earning. That's a stiff price to pay for a hobby horse.
It took me fifteen minutes of staring out into the rain to get me off
that kick.
I got back to work, and things went a little easier. I typed for
an hour, slowly and haltingly but without any real interruption of
thought, and when I stopped to rest I found I had written three and a
half pages. I settled down into my chair and began to type some more,
adding one word after another. By noon I had done half of the second
chapter.
The station-wagon picked us up again for lunch. The spirits of the
colonists were as damp as the lawn. One day without sunlight had left
them all pretty unhappy and irritable.
At the table some of the old-timers were reminiscing about the weather
in past years. Joanie cited one year when there hadn't been any rain
at all, except a sprinkle or two, during all of July and August. That
had been hell for the surrounding farmers, and it had left the Sunland
lawns looking brown and crisped, but the colonists had never had so
much sunshine before.
Dr. Richards countered with a recollection of one of the years in
the late '40s when there had been a solid week of rain. "It started
Sunday night, and it didn't let up again until the following Saturday.
Sometimes it was only a drizzle, sometimes it came down in buckets, but
it wasn't dry that whole week. We thought we'd get floated away."
Something like that would be pretty grim, I thought. These cabins
weren't built for lengthy occupancy. They were designed as places to
sleep and hang your toothbrush; the rest of the time you were supposed
to be outdoors soaking up Vitamin D.
Meehan disappeared right after lunch. Whether it was to while away the
hours with Naomi or just to do some research in the colony library, I
never found out. But I went back to the cabin alone and plunked myself
before the typewriter.
It was a long while before I could get warmed up and started again.
Writing a novel, I kept telling myself, was tough work. I wondered
about the people who wrote books for a living. Every day of their lives
they had to go through what I was going through right now: the awful
moment when you apply the seat of the pants to the chair before the
typewriter, roll a sheet of paper in, and command yourself to _produce_.
It was so easy just to get up and walk away and _not_ produce. I
began to be grateful I was swaddled in the protective warmth of an
advertising agency, call it prostitution or no. I didn't see how I
could take the pressure of writing novels for a living, knowing that I
had to produce or there'd be no cigarettes or drinks or steaks or shoes
for the baby. And facing the possibility of earning absolutely nothing
for your efforts. I figured I'd be happy enough to get this one book
written--and, maybe, published--and then I'd get back to the Wacker
Drive womb, pick up those nice fat checks every Thursday, and to hell
with creativity. Let Faulkner and Cozzens and O'Hara write the novels;
I'd be content to read them instead of writing my own.
But I plugged away anyway.
One word after the next after the next, telling my story, letting my
hero speak out. The important thing to remember was that I had to get
the book _written_. I had to tell the story from beginning to end, from
page 1 to page 250 or wherever. There was time afterward to go pack
and polish things up, and time after that to worry about getting it
published. But the rough draft had to be there before any of the later
steps could come about.
I didn't look at my watch, and I didn't get up out of my chair, and I
didn't stop typing. And almost before I knew it I was rolling along
toward the end of Chapter Two. Twenty-five pages of manuscript sat on
the table, thirteen of them written today, and I knew now that the
hardest part of the job was over. I was under way, and momentum would
carry me on.
In fact, I was making damned good time. I had budgeted myself to do
three chapters a week, and here were two chapters done in two days. But
I knew I couldn't keep up that kind of pace. Later on, the story got
a lot more complicated. I would have to work things out in advance,
then write the passages a few times until they made some sense. Still
and all, I had five days left to get Chapter Three done. Which meant I
could loaf if I felt like it--or, if the rain continued, I could get
ahead of schedule and do my loafing later on.
I looked at my watch. Half past four. I had worked the whole afternoon.
My clothes were soaked with perspiration, my legs felt cramped, my
backside sore. I got up and walked to the window.
What I saw out there was a scene out of pagan mythology. A dozen naked
figures dancing in the rain, their heads thrown back in joy, their
tanned bodies bare to the winds and the rain.
Joanie was there, and Ted Nichols, and Don Riemann, and most of the
volleyball set. Their hands were joined and they were going round and
round on the grass in one of those Palestinian folk-dances where you
run six steps to the left, kick your heels, run back to the right,
kick your heels again, leap in the air, shout, run into the center of
the ring, hands in the air, shout, run out, run to the left again. I
watched them for a moment. They were having the time of their lives,
and the rain wasn't bothering them a bit.
I had to admire them. They were making the most of lousy weather and
having a high old time of it. A month before, I would have said they
were all lunatics for dancing in the rain. Now I was eager to join them
myself.
I got out of my clothes in a hurry, shivering a little in the draft. I
toweled some of the sweat off, so I'd be less likely to catch pneumonia.