of a dry wound that had obviously never known the sound and shape of laughter. This was no more than the final deception of a monstrous fraud, this waxen figure in the form of Stella, the final stroke of God’s cruel whimsy. She stood for several minutes looking down at the face, thinking that if this were really Stella she would surely feel more than she felt, should feel more than this even in response to a bitter joke—sadness or anger or anything at all instead of this strange, numb impotence.
Replacing the sheet, she turned and left the room, walking as she had sat on the chair in the hall, her head and torso rigidly perpendicular, as if she feared that excessive motion would topple her off balance. Passing the waiting doctor, she walked down the hall without pausing or speaking, and she didn’t respond when he spoke to her from behind. He asked her if she was all right, if she would like a bed to lie down upon, but she made no sense of the words at all. Passing the elevator, she found the stairway and descended, leaving the hospital by the front entrance and walking down the broad concrete approach to the street.
She paused there under the trees, not so much wondering where to go as sensing, without ever giving specific thought to the sense, that there was really no place to go at all. Not home certainly. There was a reason, if she could think of it, why she couldn’t go home. Then she recalled that it was because Stella had gone away. Stella had gone away, and she had said that she wouldn’t be back for several days, and so it was, of course, impossible to go there until Stella returned. Why was that? She asked herself why it was, and she couldn’t quite find an answer. It had something to do with a man and a prayer and the unpredictable caprice of God.
The moon had vanished on its way around the earth. The earth continued on its way around the sun. Across the street, a sign said hamburgers.
She went across and into the all-night lunch counter and said, “Coffee please.”
The waiter supplied it. He was fat, very fat, with three chins, and he could smell the ether on her. He thought that she looked like she was in a state of shock, and he thought that someone had died on her or was about to die on her, and he felt sorry for her, because he was a man of compassion.
Then she remembered that she had no money and stood up. “I have no money,” she said.
“Forget it,” he said. “Drink your coffee.”
She sat down again, wondering if he would be so kind to her if he knew that she had just been punished by God. Looking down into the coffee cup, she faced the truth for the first time. She formulated the truth with her lips and put it into words.
“Stella’s dead,” she said.
Her breath stirred the surface of the coffee…
CHAPTER 8
“…Coffee,” said the bald It.
The aroma of the black brew drifted into her nostrils. Raising her head, she slanted a look upward.
“What?” she said. “What did you say?”
“I said, here’s your coffee, lady. Drink it, you’ll feel better.”
“I feel all right. Just a little strange, that’s all. Whimsical, I mean. I feel very whimsical.”
“Sure, lady. Coffee’s good for that, too.”
“Really? Coffee’s good for whimsy? With all respect for coffee, I find that hard to believe. I’ve found in my own experience that nothing is good for whimsy. Have you checked your facts?”
“What say we just try it? Just drink some while it’s hot.”
“Oh, yes. While it’s hot. It is necessary to strike while the coffee is hot. That means you must act at the psychological moment. At the right time. I did something because I thought it was the right time, but it didn’t turn out to be the right time at all, and now I can see that no time would have been the right time.”
She caught herself up and stared at him slyly through her hair. Although she couldn’t remember at the moment precisely what it was she had done, she knew that she must be careful not to tell this agreeable It too much. She had great faith in him, but it didn’t pay to place too much faith in faith. She had had personally some very unfortunate experiences in that respect. If you had too much faith, someone was quite likely to get whimsical with you.
“Tell me, It,” she said. “Did you ever pray for something?”
“Will you please drink your coffee, lady?”
“Of course. Naturally. By all means. If you answer my question, that is. I’m willing to make that bargain with you. You answer the question, I drink the coffee.”
“All right. So I’ve prayed.”
“You’re begging the question. I asked if you’d ever prayed for something. I distinctly remember asking that.”
“So I’ve prayed for something.”
“Recently?”
“No. A long time ago. When I was a kid.”
“Did you get it? What you prayed for, I mean.”
“I don’t remember ever getting anything.”
She shook the hair out of her eyes and looked at him with a return of triumph in her expression. “You see? I told you God loved you. Maybe you thought it wasn’t considerate of God not to give you what you wanted. Is that true? Well, I assure you it was very considerate of God, because not getting anything is better than getting too much. Once I asked for something, and I got it, but I got something else, too, and all together it was too much. Can you understand that?”
“Sure. I understand everything. Now be good and drink the coffee like you promised.”
Yes. A promise is a promise is a promise is a rose, and the roses are blooming in the night, and the night is June. She could smell the roses below the window, and they smelled like coffee. She lifted her cup and swallowed some of the roses, and they were hot. They burned a path to her stomach.
“That’s the way,” said the bartender. “Just drink it slow and pretty soon you’ll be as good as new.”
She began to giggle then, because the thought crossed her mind, prompted by his assurance, that being as good as new might be no improvement. Why was it that people always made the bland assumption that something was necessarily better when it was new than when it was older? That was not true of cheese or beer or blessed rye whisky, and it might not be true of people. If one could start over, be new again, could one be different? Before Stella and Vera and Jacqueline? Before Renowski and Brunn and murder? Could one do differently and think differently and go a different way? Or was the potential not only determined but also directed—nothing to do but what must clearly be done and one way only open? It was a complex problem, rather like metaphysics, and it mixed her all up. It made the world whirl around.
She lifted the cup and scalded her throat. The bartender nodded approvingly. She had great faith in him. Should she tell him the truth right out? I’m a strange one, It. I have the wrong color hair. Because of it, I killed a man with an ice-pick. He had a desk set in his apartment, and my hair was the wrong color. Again she giggled, visualizing the bald It’s expression. But she would be unable to see his expression because of the thick mist that was settling. As a matter of fact, it had already swallowed him up.
Quite suddenly, pricked by a desire to move, she got up herself and pushed her way into the mist. It was a soft, tangible impediment to progress, and she leaned her body against it, feeling it cleave before her and flow together soundlessly behind her. She had an idea that the mist existed only in the lounge, that it would be clear outside, but she discovered on the street that this was not so. The mist was still around her, thick and swirling. It shifted and drifted and rifted, and there was a yellow blur of electric lights, and through the rifts an occasional person or object. It made walking very difficult. Walking becomes very awkward when the ground—or the sidewalk, to be precise—turns out to be higher than one had judged. One then makes a new estimate of the distance to the sidewalk, and the perverse