for the stairs—were repeated at one level and then slowly gave way, element by element, to patterns more cramped and twisted. Looking down (accidentally) she could see some of the flights she’d climbed, but not nearly all of them. They zigzagged around like the spoor of a rectilinearity driven crazy by catenary logic. The colors were primitive, the rustproofing orange, the plastic wrappings a baby blue, the wirenuts red and yellow, the conduit green. Farther up, as the pace of the curve increased, she climbed long spiral staircases connected, top to bottom, by narrow gangways with flimsy rods for railings. She might have fallen if she’d stopped to think. She followed Martin. There was metal everywhere, its molten origin apparent in this sealed metallic enclosure, in the literal chill: she could see the steel’s enslavement to form. Threaded, it bit itself in a death grip, bit indefinitely. Gussets like the arms of frozen courtiers held up struts, and the struts held up the gangways, and the gangways Martin. In the past his power had been a reputation, a thing for her to play with. Now, at closer range, from a greater remove (the truth is unfamiliar), she loved him very much.
Blue daylight appeared. They stepped out into the sunlit observation room. And after she’d appreciated the view east and west, after she’d selected a car driving by the Old Courthouse, a red station wagon, and followed its progress through the empty downtown streets, watched it popping in and out between buildings, and caught glimpses of it (she believed) on Olive Street all the way out to Grand Avenue; after she’d jumped on the floor to confirm its solidity; after she’d sat up on the window ledge, her back to the sun and her thighs on warm metal, after she’d kicked off her shoes and Martin had stood between her legs and kissed her: after she’d protested that people could see and he’d assured her that they couldn’t, he unbuttoned her jeans and pulled them down. Then he did it to her on the floor. There were rows of chevrons on the cold steel plates. He mashed and maneuvered her while she tried again and again to sit up. Her shoulders, in spasms, resisted touching down. Did she know this man? She was almost ecstatic. The best thing was, he never smiled.
“Mickey McFarland, author of You and Only You. Doctor, we’re glad you could stop by this afternoon, I’m sure you have a busy schedule—”
“Oh, KSLX has a special place in my heart.”
“We appreciate your coming in. I’m Jack Strom. From three to four I’ll be talking to Dr. Ernest Quitschak, a seismologist who’s going to tell us about three of the biggest earthquakes in American history and the next big earthquake, which could happen any – day—now, right here in Missouri, KSLX-Radio, Saint Louis, it’s – three o’clock.”
Bong.
She slid the three pans onto the top rack of the oven, set the timer, and slumped into a chair. She was bushed. Her ears rang. Mohnwirbel had gone off someplace, leaving the rake in the ivy, tines down.
In New Delhi today Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was among hundreds of thousands of—
At the news of Mrs. Gandhi’s death on Monday Barbara had thought immediately of Jammu, the police chief. Jammu patterned her peremptory glamour so clearly on Mrs. Gandhi’s that Barbara was sure the assassination would leave her harrowed. But when Jammu appeared on KSLX-TV last night to discuss ramifications of the murder, she spoke with her usual poise. “It’s amazing the woman survived as long as she did. She didn’t lack enemies.” The cold smile she gave the interviewer disgusted Barbara.
“You can’t judge from this,” Martin said. “Who knows what she thinks in private.”
Yes, there was no denying no one knew. Barbara would even grant the possibility that Martin, in private, now that his hair was turning gray, feared death. But she would never know. The guiding principle of Martin’s personality, the sum of his interior existence, was the desire to be left alone. If all those years he’d sought attention, even novelty, and if he still relished them, then that was because attention proved him different and solitude begins in difference.
She remembered the election night party they’d had in their house on Algonquin Place, on the night Humphrey lost. The Animals raging in the living room, the undergraduates dancing in the front hall. Barbara had been upstairs checking on Luisa. At the bottom of the stairs she saw Martin talking with Biz DeMann’s young brother-in-law Andrew, a plump law-school student in blazer and tortoiseshell glasses.
“Harvard,” Martin was saying. “… Harvard. Somehow I thought it was a restaurant.”
Young DeMann: “I can’t believe you haven’t heard of it.”
“Listen, Andrew.” Martin put his arm around Andrew’s shoulders and drew him close. “There’s something I’ve always wondered. Maybe you can help me. What does alma mater mean?”
“I don’t know exactly. Something like Our Mother.”
Martin frowned. “Whose mother?” He was doing his dumb act.
“Metaphorically. Like: Harvard is my alma mater.”
“I see. It’s your Our Mother.”
Andrew smiled indulgently. “Sure. Why not.”
“Why not?” Martin took Andrew by the collar and tossed him against the front door. “Because it means nurturing mother, you asshole!”
Barbara, turning white, dragged Martin into the dining room. “Martin, Martin, Martin—”
“I ask the kid where he went to school,” he told her in a caustic whisper. “I’m pretty sure he went to Harvard, I’m just being polite. He tells me: ‘Oh, a little school near Boston.’” He pulled away. “Lemme go kick his head.”
“He’s a guest, Martin.”
She dragged him out to the back patio and sat him down. She realized he wasn’t drunk at all. “All these people,” he said. “All these people, worrying about the poor. They don’t have the faintest idea what it’s like to be poor … All these people studying. It makes me uncomfortable. It seems so … so small. I mean, how do they justify themselves? All these people. All these people. They’ve never in their lives had to work a job they didn’t like.”
All these people were Barbara’s people.
If she stopped trying, she and Martin wouldn’t see them anymore.
She stopped. The parties stopped. She stayed at home; she got a sinus infection. Men were circling the moon, and she sat and rested in a kitchen chair, wishing she could taste. It was the worst infection of her life. In the shower she licked the soap off her lips and found it sweet, like one of the more congenial poisons. Cooking was a chemistry lab. Heated beef turned gray, heated chicken white. Bread had low tensile strength. A liquid could be extracted from an orange, it was volume in a glass, it was 150 milliliters.
The infection continued out of February and into March, but spring was just a change in the light, a dampening of the cold, nothing more. She saw a doctor, who told her it was only viruses, she needed to sleep a lot and let it run its course. Eventually she could breathe freely, but she still couldn’t taste. She started smoking again. The smoke was frosty and almost chewable, and the pain in her throat, divorced from flavor, had an electrical quality, like a leakage of current. Was it possible that people tasted what they spoke? It was possible. Words dwelt in her skull like hammerheads, falling around on their rigid claws. Martin blamed her. “What’s wrong with you?” Go to bell, I have a cold. “You should try to get some sleep.” Go to bell. A steak could be bent. Radishes couldn’t. Every morning she licked at the soap, always hoping, and then, in April, something gave and she realized in her closet that she was smelling No-Moth. It was exactly as she remembered it. But now with each taste she rediscovered there came a sense of private ownership. Tastes and smells no longer seemed like communal stocks of which each person partook according to need and predisposition. They seemed like property. She was reading Sartre, and he hit her like a ton of bricks. She felt wild. She had insides, and at the time they weren’t lonely places. Ask Martin about those years, and he’d tell you a different story. Hers was simple: she’d started to live for herself, not both of them. She’d noticed