Velvet and Apollo

There I lay, wet and quick-breathing from the swim, and she sat next to me, moist and glistening. The world was 19 because I was 19, and the world was 18 because she had said she was 18 though I suspected she was less. Brooklyn's Brighton Beach boiled with teeming proletarian Sunday. About us moved a forest of red-burned legs. Ball-catching children whirred. The whine of mothers sounded, admonishing not to drink while overheated. The air was crowded even with smells: the smells of egg-salad sandwiches, suntan oil, sweat seasoned with salt water, the mustard tang from hot-dog stands. The hurried traffic of bathers kicked up pieces of orange peel along with sand; requests chorused from all sides to please watch people's stuff while they went in for a dip for just a minute.

There we were in the midst of all this and, for the simple reason that I was 19 and she dubiously 18, as inviolable and removed from it all as the sun itself that blazed down from above.

On the blanket we sprawled. I headlong, she leaning against my raised knee. The drops running down her back mingled with those sliding from my calf. When we moved, our wet skins slapped together. She took off her bathing cap and slowly, one by one, removed the bobby pins from her hair till the black shining tower on top of her head leaned, fell, flowed out into the curtain that brushed against her pink shoulders. Each bobby pin, as it was freed, she stuck gravely into the brown wool on my chest. And though the idea was unexpected, hilarious, I pressed back my laughter because she wouldn't laugh, and just nodded soberly in acknowledgment. The mutual forbearance was like a secret code, danced back and forth between our eyes.

Everything danced. The hair on my chest was as brand-new as the breasts straining against the halter of her black bathing suit. We were both nouveaux riches of the flesh, new enough to the joys of our wealth to ignore its stringencies. We weren't in love. But we rejoiced in each other because each dramatized the other's power of attraction; each was the show window of the other's eligibility. I noticed her being appraised by passing men and took in their sidelong envy. And when she saw a girl grow self-conscious under my studied lazy-male glance, she jabbed a bobby pin down proudly, possessively, into my chest-hair coiffure.

No, we weren't "serious." Passion would have been too inconveniently adult, too rigorous, too desperate. But playing at passion was wonderful. It was making the most of immaturity. There were so few people you could do that with. And that's why my discovery of her at the fraternity dance had been so important.

There had been a bright puddle of girls in the gymnasium corner (I couldn't really distinguish faces from afar without my glasses)--she in the midst of it. Her figure and hair were gorgeous by the strictest collegiate standards. I went straight at her. Her face was a bit aquiline. Something struck me about her dress, and a brave phrase jumped from nowhere onto my tongue: "Pardon me, Velvet, may I have this dance?" She was transformed in the instant from a disguised wallflower to a chosen goddess. The skirt of her velvet ensemble fell into sculptured folds, her hand waved a sublime "Toodle-oo ..." to her friends. Wordless and enigmatic, she preceded me to the dance floor, and not until we had touched each other did she, eyes raised, ask:

"Now, how in the world did you ever guess my name?"

"By my sense of touch," I replied, inspired.

"You don't say. What do they call you?"

"Oh ..." I temporized--till the lightning hit me: "Apollo."

"Hi, Apollo," without batting an eyelash.

"You can call me Ap."

The band struck up Sleepy Lagoon and I who had rehearsed the slant of my pipe and she who had probably brooded over what shade of lipstick to wear, we both forgot the awkwardness of adolescence in the playful glory of it. We were Velvet and Apollo floating down a brook of trumpets and sweet violins.

We realized it before the number was over: We were a team. With others you had to work hard to make the boy-girl fun click. With her it came naturally. She could inhabit effortlessly any world of make-believe I conjured up. Somehow we were the same speed.

And so came Sunday, our date.

We had met early when the beach was almost bare. She had come with her bathing suit already on under the cotton print. From her arm hung a lunch basket smelling of pastrami.

We slipped our street clothes off. The sight of my chest made her scream with delight.

"Hairy Apollo! Hairy Ap!"

"Hurry up yourself!"

"Hairy Ap!"

I chased her into the surf. But she was very nimble. A junior lifeguard, she took advantage of the rollers. The explosive, sun-dazzled brine blinded me. I couldn't catch her.

"Look, I'm drowning," I cried craftily, and stuck my arms up. "I demand to be saved."

She saved me. She was up and at me from behind, dragging me roughly by the neck. But not for long.

"Hey!"

I was mute, dead.

"Hey, Apollo! Watch your hands!"

I floated limply.

"Leave off, d'you hear?"

"I am unconscious, dear Velvet. I don't know what I am doing."

"You don't say!"

I was dunked unceremoniously.

Once more I pursued, drowned, and once more was saved and reprimanded. And once more ... By the time we came out panting, holding wet hands, it was past 11. Umbrellas and people had mushroomed around our blanket. We wolfed the pastrami sandwiches, the pickles and the apples in her basket. And we plunged right back into the water, my medical wisdom as a biology major notwithstanding. We couldn't stop. Nor could we stop talking, wisecracking, because it came so easy. It had never come so easy before. We tossed the wet-bright words at each other, like little children who have just learned to throw multicolored balls.

Only once in the effervescent tumbling a mistake tripped us. I caught, kissed her. And all was still. The sea's surge was suspended and a thousand outcries froze. Her mouth lay quiet, appalled next to mine. The somber gluttony of lust overcame us. Burst, our nicknames' fly-by-night beauty. We could no longer play at living; we were caught up in its desperate and ravenous actuality. It reduced us to what we were. Her façade of teenage glamor vanished. Beside me writhed a queasy adolescent with badly shaved armpits. In the thinness of her lips I felt the pressures, the pitifulness of her humanity. Of a sudden I surmised that all her romances had to contend with her mother's wrinkled suspicions, that she had fretted for many minutes over blackheads in her blurred hand mirror.

"No ..." she gurgled.

A wave washed us apart. The sea resumed its tossing, the golden beach simmered in front of me, shoals of voices swam about. Splendid, spangled, our toy-land closed round again.

"You're a masher!" she cried.

And crawled away from me. I followed. We reached a buoy. I wanted to sit on it. She wouldn't let me. She tilted it when I got on top.

"Wait, I'll do the same to you!"

"I don't want to get on it," she said haughtily and swam out farther, I in her wake.

"Shall I teach you the back crawl?" she called after a while.

"Yes, do."

"But you don't deserve it. You're a masher."

"Come on, please, Velvet. 'The quality of mercy is not strain'd ...' "

"A highbrow! An educated masher! Shut up!"

She was treading at my side, taking my wrist.

"Stretch your hand out like this ..."

Afterward we drifted on our backs. I closed my eyes. The sea was a vast cool rocking cradle. On my lids, as on a canvas, the sun painted vibrant darkness. We were so far from the shore, no other swimmers disturbed the ear. Only the oars of passing boats clucked. The beach purred in the distance.

"Say, Apollo, wake up! Are you as hungry as I am?"

I was--terribly and instantly as soon as she had said it. I was so hungry that I won our race back to shore.

"Sneak!" She splashed me from behind. "You started earlier!"

The surf licked warm round our ankles as we ran out. When we reached our blanket we were nearly dry, for the day was in its prime and slammed down its incandescence. I dug into my pockets for change; my stomach clamored. Then we threaded our way through a maze of bodies, sand and Sunday papers. On the boardwalk she discovered that she had forgotten her sandals.

"That wood is hot! Give me your shoes like a gentleman?"

I refused like a gentleman, in very gallant and regretful terms. She began to whine and to bob up and down. Her bosom shook in rhythm with the long black tresses.

"Saint Vitus' dance," I explained casually to passers-by, and she made showmanship out of her indignation, for she had noticed the mild stir she made.

But she forgot her feet when we were in line before the hamburger stand. The slower the line moved, the hungrier we got. And the sounds and the scents! I have never smelled anything like it since: the sharp fine tang of mustard ladled out of porcelain jars; the pungency of catsup soaking into rolls; the toothsome crackle of chopped meat on the hot plate; the cool hiss of sodas being opened. We were starvelings in the desert, we would die if we didn't get ours soon ...

And then we had ours; it sizzled in the hand. I plumped down on the one vacant corner of a nearby bench.

She was beside herself.

"Sadist! Let me sit. You know I can't stand it on my feet anymore!"

Munching, I offered my lap. She was in no position to argue. Legs dangling, she sat across my thighs and fell to. My wet hair tousled down my forehead and moistened her neck. She wiped herself off with the towel that was draped picturesquely round my neck. Occasionally her small snowy teeth raided my hamburger, abducted large portions.

"Hey!"

"That's for being such a sadist!"

I snapped, vainly, at her bun. We laughed, spattered relish on each other, guzzled Coke. She perched, fluttered, twittered on my lap, a red-breasted robin. An old man with a cane paused to look at us. Together, we were a daydream. Since puberty we had been tantalized by the myth of carelessly desirous youth; its icons had glittered down on us in the form of movie stills and deodorant posters. For years we had reached out for it--only to founder in sweaty park-bench maneuvers. Now, at last, it seemed attained.

"Mmmm," she said.

Down we went into the sand again, licking the catsup off our fingers, down through the helter-skelter of bellies and toes to our blanket. For the first time we felt the need for a little rest. She stretched herself out, her ankles locked, the white undersides of her tanned arms opening over her head like the petals of a flower. I cushioned my head on her (concluded on page 226)Velvet and Apollo(continued from page 178) midriff. We blinked lazily at the sun-seething sky.

"I could eat that stuff day and night," she said.

"I wouldn't advise that. It would do things to your duodenum."

"My what?--stop it!"

"I wanted to point out your duodenum."

"I'd rather you wouldn't, thank you."

"Trouble with you is, you have a lot of curves but no scientific bent."

"Ha-ha. Wait, when I'm a junior like you I'll make with the fancy phrases, too. Then I'll challenge you to a duel."

"The weapon I choose is wrestling."

"You biology majors got a one-track mind."

We basked, dozing, humming.

"What are you going to do with your biology, anyway?" she asked.

"Medicine."

"So's my cousin. But he's having trouble getting into med school."

Without warning, her words had converted the lamblike cloud above into an august ream of application blanks. I stiffened. Reality had butted in. Resolute, I kicked it out of the afternoon's golden-blue utopia.

"Who hasn't got trouble?" I said.

That ended our siesta. We were up and about. What to do? About us droned, drummed, news-commentatored, vocalized a pandemonium of portables. And there was a clearing, just vacated by a family of four, as small and precious as a night-club table. We danced on it, ostensibly to Green Eyes which was grinding out nearby, actually to a musical desire to do something together.

"Hey!" cawed a matron with dyed hair. "What are you trying to do, raise a sandstorm?"

"Drop dead," Velvet whispered at her ardently, though into my ear.

We quit. What to do? Amateur acrobats began to practice their art on the other side of the boardwalk stairs and we hurried over. Limbs disported themselves independently in the air. Cathedrals of tanned skin were built. But we weren't content to watch.

"Wait ... no ..." She trembled on my shoulders. "No! I give up!"

"Straighten up!" I panted.

"Help!"

Tingling and throbbing, we toppled together. What to do? We were burning with an impatient passion. The horizon was shrinking toward the sun. In the east the sky was riddled with lavender vanguards of evening. We wanted to shout, laugh, to imprison each slipping second. What to do?

We ran into the high-tide water. I played the game with her, the lovely game of me the drowner and her the rescuer; the water-lapped, wave-confused game of my drifting hands, her chaste protests and wantonly inadequate evasions.

Abruptly the day was gone. The sun had tangled fatally with the roofs of Gravesend. Around us people scampered off the littered sand. The sky grew darker than the amusement park's neon. A breeze sprang up. We had to admit our shivers. We had gone into the water too late. There was no place where we could change our bathing suits, the public lockers being filled up. The wool clung and bit as I pulled my dry pants over it.

We had become silent and tired. We shook the sand out of the blanket, folded it. And as we turned to go, there he stood, the little man.

No telling how long he had waited behind us. He was old, and bent a tired smile toward us. In his brown gabardine suit he looked like a gnarled root that had shot up from the ground--a root yearning for a tree to which it could attach itself and give sap to.

We seemed to be his tree. For when we tried to pass him, he stretched out his arm.

"Would you like to change clothes? Come into my house. I have a shower ..."

His arm sank with his voice, as though he were embarrassed by his own eagerness.

"Well--" I said dubiously.

"But it is only seventy cents. For both of you. What is seventy cents? You can change your clothes. And wash yourself. You see?"

Once more his gray face urged its battered smile on us. Improbably, he did make us see.

"All right," I said, and immediately he swung around and led us past the already lamplit boardwalk, round a corner to his house.

But it wasn't a house. Once it might have been a bungalow. Now it was hardly better than a decaying heap of shingles. We--Velvet and I--looked at the cracked tar roof, at the exposed beams. And looked at each other. And laughed, hilariously. It was the perfect ending for our crazy day. Both the askew house and its askew owner were--how shall I say?--weirdly wonderful. Their very unsightliness was to be enjoyed for a secret, youthful reason peculiar to us.

So we did enjoy it. We could barely restrain our giggles as the old fellow beckoned us with his keen little flourishes through two dank rooms; as he presented us breathlessly with large towels that were, strange to say, quite clean; as he ushered us into a tiny dooryard where an even tinier shack trembled in the breeze.

"The showers ..." gasped our host, as though staggered by the vista. "Hot and cold ... good drainage ... you can use them."

I entered on one side of the partition that separated the shack into halves, Velvet on the other. I peeled off the loathsome trunks, let the cold jet wash the sweat and the sand off my skin. I stretched luxuriously, I soaped, I sang, and Velvet sang back.

"Say!" I cried through the partition. "Apollo the god of music says let's murder a song together!"

"Sure!" she bubbled back.

Together we droned out "Bongo, bongo, bongo, I don't want to leave the Congo," and for a drum I beat out the rhythm against the wall between us.

Then it happened.

A few loose nails dropped on my side. The paper-thin wood gave in to my fist. Not all the way. Just enough to show the upper part of Velvet's back, the spine bones showing because she was bending over, the flesh almost unreal in its white halterless frankness, and displaying on the left side the ripe ruby-red beauty of a birthmark a strap had hitherto concealed. And still the wood gave further.

I don't know what haunted impulse made me hold it up. A tiny desire nudged me, yet I was flooded with fear. She bongo'd on innocently, but I felt the nails loosening all over and I was afraid the partition would crash down no matter how I strained my fingers against the starkness. And then in panic, faucet left on, the soap not even washed off entirely, I grabbed the towel and ran out.

I shivered in the room next door. Outside the window the beach was a paper-soiled waste. My clothes seemed damp as I put them on. I was overwhelmed by the inescapable nakedness of life. The time was coming when all the curtains would tear, and all the gay frauds fall, and I'd have to go through with the business of living and loving down to the ultimate crevasse of mortality, down to the last lusting vulnerability. And I was shocked by my own fear of that, by the rebellion of an unsuspected puritanism. The world, like the sand outside, had turned rank and incomprehensible and wearisome.

"Apollo," she cried that moment, "hey, wherefore art thou?"

"I'm finished, slowpoke," I cried back automatically--for the spell was broken. My hand reached into the pocket and encountered enough quarters to secure the night.

"I happen not to be afraid of showers, the way some people are." She swayed into the room, towel-wrapped tightly from shoulder to thigh, head thrown over her shoulder, an amateur burlesque queen.

"Shake a leg, Gypsy Rose," I said. "We're doing Coney Island."

I gave her my most leering look as she paraded by. And I had already forgotten that a moment before I had felt, for the first time in my life, old.