While Mortals Sleep_ Unpublished Short Fiction - Kurt Vonnegut [53]
“I don’t know what happened,” said Robert, crimson. “I never did a dance right before, and I just kind of went crazy. Like flying.”
“Consider yourself shot down in flames,” said Mr. Brewer. “This isn’t Coney Island, and it isn’t going to become Coney Island. Now go apologize to your mother.”
“Yessir,” said Robert, shaken.
“Looked like a damn flamingo playing soccer,” said Mr. Brewer. He nodded, pulled in his tongue, closed his teeth with a clack, and stalked away.
Robert apologized to his mother and went straight home.
Robert and I shared a suite, bathroom, sitting room, and two bedrooms, on the third floor of what was known as the Brewer cottage. Robert seemed to be asleep when I got home shortly after midnight.
But at three in the morning I was awakened by soft music from the sitting room, and by the sounds of someone striding around in agitation. I opened my door and surprised Robert in the act of tangoing by himself. In the instant before he saw me, his nostrils were flaring and his eyes were narrowed, the smoldering eyes of a sheik.
He gasped, turned off the phonograph, and collapsed on the couch.
“Keep it up,” I said. “You were doing fine.”
“I guess nobody’s as civilized as he’d like to think,” said Robert.
“Lots of nice people tango,” I said.
He clenched and unclenched his hands. “Cheap, asinine, grotesque!”
“It isn’t supposed to look good,” I said. “It’s supposed to feel good.”
“It isn’t done in Pisquontuit,” he said.
I shrugged. “What’s Pisquontuit?”
“I don’t mean to be impolite,” he said, “but you couldn’t possibly understand.”
“I’ve been around long enough to see the sort of thing they get exercised about around here,” I said.
“It’s very easy for you to make comments,” said Robert. “It’s easy to make fun of anything, if you don’t have any responsibilities.”
“Responsibilities?” I said. “You’ve got responsibilities? For what?”
Robert looked about himself moodily. “This—all this. Someday I’ll be taking all this over, presumably. You, you’re free as the air, to come and go as you please and laugh all you like.”
“Robert!” I said. “It’s just real estate. If it depresses you, why, when you take it over, sell it.”
Robert was shocked. “Sell it? My grandfather built this place.”
“Fine bricklayer,” I said.
“It’s a way of life that’s rapidly disappearing all over the world,” said Robert.
“Farewell,” I said.
“If Pisquontuit goes under,” said Robert gravely, “if we all abandon ship, who’s going to preserve the old values?”
“What old values?” I said. “Being grim about tennis and sailing?”
“Civilization!” he said. “Leadership!”
“What civilization?” I said. “That book your mother keeps saying she’s going to read someday, if it kills her? And who around here leads anything anywhere?”
“My great-grandfather,” said Robert, “was lieutenant governor of Rhode Island.”
For want of a reply to this thunderclap, I started the phonograph, filling the room with the tango once more.
There was a gentle knock on the door, and I opened it to find Marie, the young and beautiful upstairs maid, standing outside in her bathrobe.
“I heard voices,” she said. “I thought maybe there were prowlers.” Her shoulders were moving gently in time with the music.
I took her easily in my arms, and we tangoed together into the sitting room. “With every step,” I said to her, “we betray our lower-middle-class origins and drive the stake deeper into the heart of civilization.”
“Huh?” said Marie, her eyes closed.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Robert, breathing shallowly and quickly, was cutting in.
“After us the deluge,” I said, loading the record changer.
Thus began Robert’s secret vice—and Marie’s, and mine. Almost every night the ritual was repeated. We would start the phonograph, Marie would come to investigate, and Marie and I would dance, with Robert looking on sullenly. Then Robert would rise painfully from his couch, like an arthritic old man, and take her from me wordlessly.