The Wine of the Heart. Victor Jay

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СКАЧАТЬ door, debating about a second cup of coffee. Ann looked up at him quizzically, and he wondered if he should kiss her good-bye. How should a husband act when his wife has decided to leave him? He decided, finally, against both the kiss and the coffee.

      “I’m late,” he told her, nodding briskly. “See you tonight?”

      “I think so,” she answered, returning the nod. She was plainly disappointed.

      Outside, Mrs. Devraux was just backing her car out of the garage next door. She waved to him and indicated the seat beside her to ask if he wanted a lift. Glen shook his head no, smiled a “thanks,” and headed for his own garage and the convertible parked there. Funny, he and Mrs. Devraux working at the same school, living next door, and driving separate cars every day.

      He had never even thought of offering her a ride to and from work. But then, he concluded, backing down the drive to the street, it was probably just as well. For all her polite charm, Mrs. Devraux was a busybody, the sort who lived for gossip she could learn about virtually anybody. It wouldn’t be a very pleasant way to start one’s day, he told himself.

      He paused at the curb. Already a warm Midwestern sun was making its way upward into the spring sky. An occasional puff of white, like smoke issuing from unseen cannons, drifted across the blue overhead. He flicked the levers that fastened the convertible top to the windshield, and lowered the top, the sun rushing in upon him eagerly. He pulled away from the curb, heading the car into the morning traffic.

      CHAPTER TWO

      It occurred to Glen, as he drove into the parking lot at Morning Valley Junior College, that he had driven the entire way to work without any conscious awareness of what he was doing. His thoughts, as they were so often, had been directed to his problem—the problem. What did it mean, his inability to perform sexually? Certainly it didn’t mean that he wasn’t sexually excited; there were times when it was all but maddening, his senses churning with desire, his body refusing to do its part, remaining limp and ineffectual.

      He had told Ann the truth, the truth that he had for years tried not to admit to himself. It wasn’t only her. It had always been this way, even as far back as high school. Star athlete, well mannered, popular, he had had his pick of the girls in school, and more than his share of opportunities.

      A few times, with tramps like Carol Steward, everything had been all right—or pretty much so. It had been necessary to drink well past his usual limit, neck and pet almost to the bursting point, but it had worked. The other times, however, had been disastrous. Ironically enough, the inability that had forced him to retire from the campaigns at the crucial moments had earned him a reputation as a “gentlemen,” a “safe” date, and had in turn assured him of even more opportunities.

      Always it had been the same—through college, through his marriage with Ann. He could still not remember their wedding night without a blush of humiliation, all of his efforts, including drinking himself almost to the oblivion, failing to produce the necessary results.

      Pete Jennings was just parking his car when Glen got out of the convertible and started across the school parking lot. Glen waited for Pete to join him, and they started toward the school building together.

      “Another Monday,” Pete announced in his loud, slow voice. “Seems to me like someone could design a calendar without Mondays.”

      “The trouble is with your Sundays,” Glen informed him, his face relaxing into a grin. It was easy for him to relax with Pete, feel comfortable with the burly ex-football player who had barely managed to get through college and get his credentials to teach. “If you’d lay off the wicked life on Sundays, you’d find Mondays a lot easier.”

      “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Pete agreed with a contented grunt. “That’s the price a bachelor pays for his freedom.”

      A bachelor, Glen thought, the word sticking in his mind. That’s what he’d be now, when Ann left, a bachelor again. In a sense, it would be a new experience for him; he’d never really lived by himself. Before, through high school and college, it had been his sister and her husband who had raised him, taking over after the death of his parents. He had lived with them, in fact, right up to the time when he had married Ann. He certainly couldn’t go back to them now, like running home to mother when things went wrong. Anyway, there was the house now, and maybe he’d enjoy being a bachelor.

      “What’s it like?” he asked impulsively.

      “What’s what like?”

      Glen paused, realizing suddenly how silly his question would sound, and knowing that he didn’t want to discuss his marital problems, not with Pete, or anyone else, not just yet. He was trying to think of some logical statement to make when Pete looked beyond him and let out a yell.

      “Okay, okay, what’s the big idea?” he demanded. Glen turned, following his gaze to the young man a few feet from them. “What’s with the cigarette? You know better than to smoke on school grounds, Jerry.”

      Jerry, the young man, dropped his eyes to the ground and let the cigarette fall from his hands. “Sorry,” he mumbled, his voice barely audible despite the short distance. “I forgot.”

      “You’d darned well better not forget again,” Pete boomed, his voice stern and commanding.

      Glen watched the young man quicken his pace and hurry on his way ahead of them toward the school building. Jerry Allen was a student in one of his own classes. There was something about the tense, withdrawn way in which Jerry walked, the shoulders huddled closely together as though in protection from a nonexistent cold, that made him seem somehow forlorn and pathetic. The pretty, almost cherubic face that should have glistened with innocent youth was hardened and sullen, the supple, sturdy young body bent as though under a great weight.

      “That one,” Pete snorted, resuming his own progress toward the faded brick building in front of them. “Someone ought to get hold of that kid and shake a string of knots out of him.”

      “Jerry?” Glen asked. That’s silly, he thought as he said the name, who else could Pete be talking about? He blushed, for some reason he did not understand, and pulled his eyes from the retreating figure of Jerry Allen. “Why is that?”

      Pete grunted again, a gesture that Glen knew from experience could mean happiness or displeasure, or anything in between. “Take a look at him. A young hood, that’s all he’ll be, going around with a king-size chip on his shoulder, all the time goofing off. And the worst of it is, he’s not dumb. Ever seen his I.Q. tests?”

      Glen frowned thoughtfully. If he had thought of Jerry Allen at all in the past, it had been as an unhappy boy, not a young hood. There was, in the very sullenness that he wore so flagrantly, a rather frightening loneliness, a plea almost for understanding that remained, seemingly, unanswered. “No, I can’t say I have. Is he really bright?”

      “Damn right he is. He could have the best grades in this school, if you could get him to do anything but sit and glare at you in class. You have him in English—am I right, or am I right?”

      “You’re right, I guess,” Glen admitted after a moment’s reflection. “He doesn’t do much more than that in my class. Kind of sad, don’t you think?”

      “Sad?” They were entering the big front doors of the building now, Pete’s voice echoing loudly in the halls that were already filled with students. “If it was up to me, that kid’s backside would have blisters on it.”

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