violence, didn’t merit the prestige of page one. She turned the page, feeling a strange and desperate affinity for the unknown person who might, at this moment, be reading in loneliness and terror and with God knew what futile regret the page one account of his cardinal transgression. She had never before been compelled to feel compassion for a murderer, though she had felt in her life many things good people are not supposed to feel, and she thought, looking for the report of her own crime, that her corruption was now surely complete.
Nothing on page two. Nor three. Turning the pages methodically, examining each page with the same column by column thoroughness, even through finances, sports, and entertainment, she gave up only at the classified section. Then, folding the paper as compactly as possible, she dropped it to the floor and returned to her coffee. What did it mean? That the body of Angus Brunn hadn’t yet been discovered? That it had been discovered and was being kept under wraps by the police for reasons of their own? She doubted that it was the latter. She knew nothing about police procedure, but she doubted that a thing like that would be done in the case of a relatively unknown and unimportant man like Angus Brunn. No, the reasonable assumption was that the body had not been found. Then she began to think, what if it isn’t found for a long time, not until someone is led to it by the nose? She visualized the body, over an extended period, bloating and decomposing and beginning to stink, and she shuddered violently, lifting her cup quickly to take more heat into her stomach.
She sat drinking and smoking, alternating swallows and inhalations. She had a feeling of waiting, of being incapable of doing anything else, as if nothing remained but to let the disastrous effects of grim causes catch up with her. When her cup was empty, she ground out the butt of her cigarette in the saucer and found another dime, which she placed on the counter. The young man with swept-around hair came down to her on the other side.
“More coffee, lady?”
“Yes, please.”
He supplied it and lingered, and she realized with exaggerated resentment that he was about to exercise his charm. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want to talk with him. There was something about him that disturbed her even beyond the degree of her usual abnormal reaction which she had long ago come to accept as normal. “Big night?” he said.
She looked at him coldly, quickly. “I beg your pardon.”
He grinned. “All the coffee. No food. I figured you must be trying to work one off.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“No? Okay, if that’s the way you want it. You take my word for it, though, there’s nothing like a good old Seltzer. You like to try one?”
“No, thank you.”
“Don’t be like that, sweetheart. I’ll make it on the house. Don’t be like that.”
“Let me alone. For God’s sake, let me alone.”
His vanity bled in his face, changing it to a dull, ugly red, and his mouth sagged in an expression of angry sullenness. “Sure, lady. Pardon me for living. Pardon me, all to hell.”
He moved off behind the counter, but his words had shattered her defenses against the past. Don’t be like that, he’d said. That silly expression. Someone else had said it to her a long time ago, and its repetition now cued the recollection of an experience she did not want to remember.
Christ! she thought. Kenny Renowski!
And now that she had remembered, it seemed to her that there was even a subtle physical similarity between Kenny and the counterman. Kenny was younger, of course, at the time she remembered him, and his hair was darker, and he wasn’t so tall, and maybe he was a little better looking, though she was a poor judge of that, but there was something common to both of them, and she decided it was the silly arrogance, the nasty little bloated ego that could be heard in the voice and seen in the eyes and in the way the head was carried.
Where was Kenny now, she wondered. In what dull town, working at what dull job, married to what dull, impossible girl? Probably the same old town. Probably doing one of the petty, dreary jobs that seemed to be, for some obscure reason, essential to the existence of people in a town like that. Probably married to one of the girls she used to know when she was there.
Jesus, how she had despised him. Him and all the other strutting, revolting little cocks so proud of their fussy masculinity, just beginning to be conscious of the weight of their genitals between their legs. And the girls had been no better, for that matter. They were just as bad with their secret little yens, their secret little knowledge, their frightened, frantic attempts to give a nauseating spirituality to what was no more than an ache in the groin. Oh, Jesus, what a relief it was to get away from them after each horrible day of school and get back to the beautiful, exciting company of Stella. To return each day from their gray fringe existence to the clean and shining center that was Stella.
But it hadn’t been that bad at first. At first it was actually almost all right, because then, in the early years, it was right and normal for like to prefer like. But then, later, one somehow crossed an intangible demarcation line, and once you were across it, it was no longer normal for like to prefer like, but it became necessary and normal for like to prefer unlike, and what had been normal back on the other side of the line now became abnormal, and if you didn’t make the change at the time it was supposed to be made, you were in a hell of a fix. You were left, as she had been, with a growing sense of detachment and loneliness in a kind of emotional isolation resulting from the blurred perception of your own oddness. And it would have been worse than it was, worse than It was later to become, if it hadn’t been for the great compensating constant of Stella. Stella was the poetess-priestess of an island sanctuary, and if there were imperfections in her role of Sappho, there were also subtle mechanisms of the mind to reject recognition of them.
The men, for instance. God, the constant flow of panting men! Even they had been reduced by the devious mind to fantasy figures without body or place in the real scheme of things. One could even ignore, thanks to the adroit mind, Stella’s imperception, her insensitivity to the true character of the relationship of which she was part—her pretty, inept confusion when she tried, on rare occasions, to understand Kathy’s failure to display the orthodox signs of transformation beyond the intangible demarcation line.
“Kathy,” she’d said, “why is it you never go places like the other girls? You’re much prettier than any of them.”
“But I do, Stella. I go lots of places.”
“Please don’t be obtuse, darling. You know what I mean. Why don’t you go out with a nice boy once in a while? You’re old enough now. It would be good for you.”
“I’m not interested in boys, Stella.”
“Well, that’s the point. You ought to be interested in boys. And I happen to know that there are a great many boys who are interested in you. It isn’t that you don’t have opportunities. Look, darling. It isn’t natural for a pretty girl to be alone all the time. Will you please tell me why you have no interest in boys?”
And Kathy’s heart cried out in silence, Oh, Stella, can’t you see that I’m not alone at all? Can’t you see that I can’t be alone while I’m with you, and that I’m with you every minute of my life, because even when we’re physically apart I’m still with you in my mind, and that I can never be alone so long as you are here to touch or to think about? Oh, Stella, Stella, sweet shining Stella, can’t you see anything or understand anything or share with me just a little this feeling that I have?
But all she’d said was, “I don’t know, Stella. I’m just not interested.”
Then Stella had shrugged and laughed and looked prettily frustrated, because naturally she had this intimation that everything was not quite as it should have been, but she never knew, never actually knew, and it was fantastic, looking back, that she could sense this thing but never actually recognize it until it was much too late.
Kenny. Kenny Renowski. What right did he have to come filtering back after all this time from the dark and distant March day when he had been fixed