Penny’s forced merriment got them through most of the meal. She produced a book from her handbag and pressed it on him. “It’s the new Phil Dick.”
He glanced at the lurid cover. The Man in the High Castle. “Haven’t got time.”
“Make the time. It’s really good. You’ve read his other stuff, haven’t you?”
Gordon shrugged off the subject. He still wanted to talk about New York, for reasons he could not pin down. He compromised by relating to Penny the contents of his mother’s latest letter. That distant figure seemed to be getting used to the idea of him living “in flagrant sin.” But there was a curious vagueness about her letters that bothered him. When he first came to California the letters had been long, packed with chatter about her daily routine, the neighborhood, the slings and arrows of Manhattan life. Now she told him very little about what she was doing. He felt the void left by those details, sensed his New York life slipping away from him. He had been more sure of himself then, the world had looked bigger.
“Hey, c’mon, Gordon. Stop brooding. Here, I brought you some more things.”
He saw that she had planned a methodically joyous evening, complete with door prizes. Penny produced a handsome Cross pen and pencil set, a western-style string tie, and then a bumper sticker: Au + H2O. Gordon held it between thumb and index finger, suspending it delicately in the air over their table as though it might contaminate the veal piccata.
“What’s this crap?”
“Oh, c’mon. Just a joke.”
“Next you’ll be giving me copies of The Conscience of a Conservative. Christ”
“Don’t be so afraid of new ideas.”
“New? Penny, these are cobwebbed—”
“They’re new to you.”
“Look, Goldwater might make a good neighbor—good fences make good neighbors, isn’t that what Frost said? Little lit’rary touch for you, there. But Penny, he’s a simpleton.”
She said stiffly, “Not so simple he gave away Cuba.”
“Huh?” He was honestly mystified.
“Last October Kennedy signed it away. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers energetically. “Agreed not to do anything about Cuba if the Russians took their missiles out.”
“By ‘anything’ you mean another Bay of Pigs.”
“Maybe.” She nodded sternly. “Maybe.”
“Kennedy’s already helped out quite enough fascists. The Cuban exiles, Franco, and now Diem in Viet Nam. I think—”
“You don’t think at all, Gordon. Really. You’ve got all these eastern ideas about the way the world works and they’re all wrong. JFK was weak on Cuba and you just watch—the Russians will give them the guns and they’ll infiltrate everywhere, all over South America. They’re a real threat, Gordon. What’s to stop them from sending troops into Africa, even? Into the Congo?”
“Nonsense.”
“Is it nonsense that Kennedy’s chipping away at our freedoms here, too? Forcing the steel companies to back down, when all they did was raise prices? Whatever happened to free enterprise?”
Gordon raised a palm in the air. “Look, can we have a truce?”
“I’m just trying to shake you loose from those ideas of yours. You people from the east don’t understand how this country really works.”
He said sarcastically, “There might be a few guys on The New York Times who mull it over.”
“Left-wing Democrats,” she began, “who don’t—”
“Hey, hey.” He raised his palm toward her again. “I thought we had a truce.”
“Well… All right. Sorry.”
Gordon studied his plate for a moment, distracted, and then said with dawning perception, “What’s this?”
“An artichoke salad.”
“Did I order this?”
“I heard you.”
“After the veal? What was I thinking of?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“I don’t need this. I’ll flag one of those funny waiters.”
“They’re not ‘funny,’ Gordon. They’re queer.”
“What?” he asked blankly.
“You know. Homosexual.”
“Fags?” Gordon felt as though he had been deceived all evening. He dropped his signaling hand, suddenly shy. “You should’ve told me.”
“Why? It doesn’t matter. I mean, they’re all over La Jolla—haven’t you noticed?”
“Uh, no.”
“Most of the waiters in any restaurant are. It’s a convenient job. You can travel around and live in the best spots. They don’t have family obligations, most of the time their family wants nothing to do with them, so…” She shrugged. Gordon saw in this gesture an unaffected sophistication, an ease with the world, which he suddenly envied very much. The way their conversation had shifted from topic to topic this evening bothered him, had kept him off balance. He realized that he still could not get a grip on the real Penny, the woman behind so many different faces. The comic Goldwaterite lived right alongside the literature and arts major, who in turn blended into the casual sexual sophisticate. He remembered opening the bathroom door at a faculty party last year to find her seated on the toilet, her blue gown crescenting the bowl like a wreath of flowers. They had both been startled; she held a square of yellow tissue in an upraised hand. Her heels dug into the grouting between the triangular brown tiles of the floor, so her toes canted cockily into the air. The low seat made her seem bottom- heavy. Between pale thighs he saw the unending oval yawn. A dark sheath of hose swallowed most of her legs, yielding only to the descending tongues of her garter belt. His jaw had sagged open with indecision and then he stepped in, mouth closing on the possibility of faux pas. The mirror on the far wall showed a startled stranger, puzzled. He shut the door behind him, drawn to her. “You can see this at home,” she said impishly. With a studious deliberation she patted herself, unmindful of him, and let the yellow paper flutter into the mouth of water below. She half-turned on the seat, pressed the chipped ceramic handle. An answering gurgle took away her business from his prying eyes before she arose. Standing, smoothing her dress, she was taller and somehow challenging, an exotic problem. In the bleached, tile pocket she appeared luminous with purpose, a Penny he had not known. “I couldn’t wait,” he said with a warmth that sounded strange to himself, considering that it wasn’t true. He edged by her, unzipped. The mildly pleasurable gush: release. “Getting domestic, aren’t we?” Penny raised one edge of her lipsticked mouth in the lyric curve of a half-smile, seeing the mood in him. “I guess so,” he said lazily. Outside, his colleagues were discussing superconductivity while their wives made shrewd observations on local real estate; the women seemed to have a better grip on what was real. Penny’s smile broadened and he concluded with a quick spurt that narrowly missed the seat. He gave himself a wobbly drying shake, tucked himself in and dried the seat with more of the yellow- tissues. He had never felt this simple and open with a woman before, in such a rich, enameled air. Not wanting to hang on to the moment for fear that it would burst, he kissed her lightly and popped open the door. Outside, Isaac Lakin leaned against the wall, studying the Breughel prints in the shadowed hallway and awaiting entrance to the bathroom. “Ah,” he said as they emerged together. “Up to something.” A simple deduction. Lakin’s eyes moved from one to the other as though he could glimpse the secret, as though he had just seen a new facet of Gordon. Well, maybe he had. Maybe they both had.
“Gor-don,” Penny urged him back into the present. “You’ve been going off like that all evening,” She looked concerned. He felt a sudden spurt of irritation. The dream Penny was soft and womanly; the one before him was a nag. “If you’re going to do that, why not just talk about it?”
