There is an eyesore in downtown Floren Park, a village otherwise glossy, called Slough Lane. A dim, dirty street, little more really than a dirt ditch, Slough Lane runs a short way at a right turn off the Arcade and ends in a mud field that is littered with communal rubbish, with rusted parts of indefinable machinery, with a rotted mattress, rotting tires, toppled pyramids of rusted cans and broken bottles. It was all incompatible with the Alpine chalets and Victorian gingerbread, and the residents preferred it hidden from the tourists in Arcadia.
Along either side of the lane slump a dozen tin cabins, one-room square ruins, whose orange or pink rouge is peeling down their faces. There are rusted cars decaying beside a few of these cabins; rusted T.V. antennae lay crippled on the roofs; there is broken glass in the yards.
I walked down Slough Lane waiting for the sun to set and stopped in front of a grimy store that crouched in the middle of the row, shoved between two cabins, the only two rejuvenated with fresh rose fronts. By squinting through the window soot, I read that it called itself a store for adults. Peering further in, I could see its offerings: cigarettes, beer, fishing tackle, aged potato chips clipped to a stand, movie magazines, newspapers, and three dusty shelves of dusty books for adult reading. Calhoun Grange was on a magazine cover in the window telling his fans that draft dodgers ought to be jailed. I went inside where a dusty sign, in front of a row of bared breasts and bared buttocks, told me I would not be allowed to loiter. Opening a magazine anyhow, I turned the pages quickly until a dwarfish man with dirty hair, his eyes horrifically magnified by opaque glasses, came at me from somewhere in a dark corner, and I retreated back outside.
On the other side of the ditch, a plainly dressed man was talking to a colorfully dressed one. The latter frowned, shook his head impatiently and walked off; his black patent boots stepped with distaste in the dirt. His hair was black patent too, and his modish suit a brilliant blue with black trimming. The plainly dressed man watched him saunter to the last cabin, kick dirt from his boots against the step, then unlock the door and go in. He stood watching even then, until he noticed me standing there, at which point be stuck a small notebook back in his coat pocket and unhurriedly retraced his steps up Slough Lane to the Arcade. I followed him out.
By now the sky had blotted out all color left by the sun, but had not lightened the day’s heat or its humidity. Pulling my shirttail from my pants, I flapped it against my skin to cool myself. The man with the notebook had disappeared. In the Arcade, tourists were firing rifles at tin animals that sprang jerkily out of tin bushes. They were waiting for fat trout to hook themselves onto lines dropped among bread lumps in plastic bins. They were buying Navajo jewelry made in Japan and mountain landscapes painted in Manhattan. They were strolling out of the grand promenade of Main Street into this little promenade, dripping slices of pizza, ears of hot corn, frankfurters blobbed with mustard. Sluggish with heat, I leaned against the side of the shooting gallery and watched them.
The moon rose up, red as the sun. And I walked back to the theater. In front of the doors sat a long, gray Oldsmobile; in front of the car stood Bruno Stark talking to Leila, who held Davy in her arm and Maise by the hand. Behind Stark waited Edgars and Edmunds, briefcases against their chests. I came to the edge of their circle.
“Well, Bruno,” Leila said, “you’ll do whatever you decide to do.”
He smiled at her wryly; it was by no means an affectionate look, but hate was curiously tinged with respect. “True enough. So. All right. We’ll go over it all tomorrow. And I’ll look over the papers tonight. So. You’re a smart cookie, Leila. But all in all, I think this is going to be the best solution. Tomorrow.” He took Davy from her and squeezed him appraisingly between his hands. “What do you say, boy?”
Davy said nothing.
“You’re a rich man, David Stark. You don’t know it, but you’re a rich man someday. When you finish up college, you and I will go to work. See things. So. Eat. Grow big. Strong. You’re going to have it all.” He tightened his fingers, frightening Davy, whose eyes widened and whose mouth began to quiver. Stark set him down on the ground beside Maisie, then sharply rubbed her head with his knuckles. “And how about you, young lady? What do you say to one of those talking dolls, maybe a carriage too. How about that?”
Maisie ducked her head from beneath his hand. She kept staring at Stark as she pressed the end of her red bead necklace to her mouth.
“A choosy buyer, no less.” Stark asked his employees to observe Maisie’s sagacity. Grinning, they bobbed their heads, “Maybe a bicycle, then,” he bid. “What do you say to a bicycle, princess? Maybe with a horn. A light. A basket. How would that be?”
Slowly, after deliberation, Maisie nodded her head yes.
“Good, good.” Stark nodded too. “Smart girl. Don’t settle. Hold out for what you want.”
Leila spoke. “Listen, Bruno, you’re welcome to come stay at my house. We can make room. Why should you stay at a hotel?”
“No, no, no, I already made arrangements.”
Leila shrugged. “Okay, if you’re sure. Mother will be disappointed.”
“Tomorrow,” Stark told her. “Edgars, I’d like to make arrangements to talk to this sheriff, what’s his name—Booter. And this Dr. Ferrell guy. Okay, let’s go.”
Edgars got in the Oldsmobile, started the motor. Edmunds opened the back door.
“Excuse me. Mr. Stark?” I stepped forward.
He ran me through his memory bank. “Devin. Yes. Tomorrow. All right?”
I stepped back.
“So. Nine o’clock,” he said to Leila, and in silence she agreed.
The lights of the Oldsmobile swung past the creek, past the bridge, and scanned the woods across from them, then swinging around, light jabbed through the lot and was gone. Leila got in the Red Bus with the children.
“Mind if I ride back with you?”
“No. Let’s go.” She turned off the blaring radio that told us the North Vietnamese said they really didn’t see how they could talk to us unless we stopped bombing them. Leila drove quietly, one hand at the base of the wheel, one on Davy, asleep in her lap. Maisie had her head stuck out the window, her eyes shut, her mouth opened happily to the wind.
“Are you okay, Leila?”
“I’m fine.” She pulled Davy closer to her.
“Can I ask you what this new ‘best solution’ is?”
“Well, let’s see. First of all, Bruno wants to close down the theater. I show,” she smiled, “a low margin of profit. And so I’m a bad investment. Meanwhile, Lady Red’s trying to sell him the two buildings and the lot, and if they show an even lower margin of profit, then he’ll buy them. And that will be a good investment.”
“Yeah. Taxes, I guess. What will he do with them?”
“Tear them down and build something with a high margin of profit. Oh, who knows what Bruno’s up to. I don’t think he’s decided yet.”
“What does he want you to do?”
“Well, he thinks it would be appropriate for Mittie’s children to be moved to Portland and be given allowances. Well, it’s okay if I don’t want to come along, as long as they are there by the end of the month.”
“Oh.”
She added nothing further until we reached the house, when she asked me to carry Davy in for her.
Dressed in a pink chiffon garden dress in the polished perfection of our living room, Mrs. Thurston was seated, handsomely arranged beside the vacuumed fireplace, doing needlepoint. She swanned her neck past us expectantly as we entered. When no one followed, she stood to peep around the lace curtain freshly stapled to the front door.
“And Bruno?” she chirped to the crickets outside. “And Bruno?” She cricked her head to one side. I shook my head. “Why Leila, honey, where is your father-in-law? Where are ou-er guests?”
“He’s staying at a hotel, Mother.”
“At a ho-tel? Why surely that can’t be, Leila. What in the world do you mean, a ho-tel? What about his dinner? What about his business associates? Leila Stark, surely you did not fail in your manners, you did not neglect to invite your own relative to share your hospitality? Did you hear me?”
Leila had taken Davy into her bedroom. Coming out, she touched her mother’s arm. “No, I asked him, Mother, but he’d already made other arrangements. Probably he didn’t want to impose on us at such short notice.”
Mrs. Thurston’s mouth pursed in and out; she stabbed her needle through a pensive shepherdess in her embroidery. “Impose? I never! Oh, Leila, Leila child, you are deceived. But I believe I can understand reality when it is staring me in the eyes. That man, Bruno Stark, has deliberately chosen this opportunity to make a statement. And what he is saying is, he has never considered us good enough for His Royal Highness. He has always disesteemed us and begrudged us Mittie’s love, and now he is announcing, just as big as your life, ‘It is all YOUR FAULT.’ Saying it just as loud and clear by his actions in checking into a public hotel as if he had stood right here in this very yard and painted those words across the front of the house a mile high.”
“Mother…” Leila undid her sandals, stretched out on the couch, and put her feet up on the armrest. With a wince, Mrs. Thurston restrained herself from removing them.
The kitchen door swung open. Stuck all over with white pasty patches, as though she planned to glue herself to the wall, Sabby Norah walked disconsolately out of the kitchen.
“Oh, Mrs. Thurston,” she sniffed, wiping more paste across her cheek, “the dough won’t come off the rolling pin.”
“Darling, darling,” Mrs. Thurston tapped Sabby toward the kitchen again. “Go back and flour. Evenly. A steady motion, keeping the wrists firm. Roll and lift. Roll and lift. And flour, Sabby. Flour.”
Already floured, Sabby left.
“That child,” the home economist sighed, “is a good child, an industrious child, but she is simply not a…talented child.”
I took a radish from a plate of concentric hors d’oeuvres on the coffee table.
“Devin, don’t eat that!” Mrs. Thurston called.
I spat the radish into my hand.
“You’re going to ruin your supper,” she explained. “And, Leila, I want you to know that I had made the effort, in addition to everything else I had to do”—she panned the house with her eyes—“to prepare a native dish for that man. Went to the trouble of preparing Hungarian goulash, as well as a cherry soup from Budapest.”
“Bruno’s family is Russian, Mother,” Leila murmured from the couch.
Mrs. Thurston’s rejoinder was taken from the political sciences. “Well, it is a known fact that both those nations are members of the same Iron Block. And even you, Leila, who persist in establishing your own identity in defiance of your elders, in defying your training by glorifying communism as if it were the Promised Land, even you cannot deny that the result of their policies has been to completely wipe away our right to be an individual. And I’m certain that if they require everybody, regardless of their education, to toil in the field and work in the subway booths, then they also require everybody to eat the same food. And all I can say is, it is curious to me to be disesteemed by a Man from Russia, when your family has been living in America ever since…why ever since there was an America for civilized people to live in!”
As no one appeared to be ready with a rebuttal, Mrs. Thurston retired to steady Sabby’s wrists, noting only in departure that it was remarkable how some people could lie there with their eyes shut while other people were going around publicly insulting them.
The phone rang, and I answered it in the kitchen, “Hello.”
“Yeah. Who is this?”
“This is Devin Donahue.”
“Listen, man, the pigs have got me. Pulled me in. Chained me. Wow! Gestapo City!”
“Spurgeon?”
“This is it, man. They got Kafka. Dreyfus. Leary. Now they got me.”
I thought of his threats against the F.B.I., the C.I.A., Sara Lee. “Where are you, Spur?”
“Where am I? I’m in a slimy sink of Stalag blood. I’m in Auschwitz, jerk. I’m in Wounded Knee. They can’t hide from me now. I’m seeing through their glasses face to face. I’m sitting in the silent secret closet of the U.S.A. The water closet, man. The slop hole, where the shit’s packed down three hundred years thick. The turds on the top are floating in piss!”
“Spur? Are you down at the station?”
“Can you believe it?”
I thought of the spice jar, the cigarette papers in his pocket. “Was it”—I tried to whisper, for Mrs. Thurston was in the kitchen too, helping Sabby pry dough from a rolling pin—“possession of…um, Mary Janes?”
“Possessed? They’re the ones that are possessed, jack. The whole militaryindustrialcomplex is possessed! Repressed, regressed, obsessed, and abscessed!”
I translated. “Did they bust you for pot, Spur?”
“You think I’m a shit-kicking fluff-of-cotton-candy-in-my-pants MORON? You think I’d let those mule-eunuchs grass my ass?”
“What did you do with the stuff?”
“Dropped it in a can of flowers. They were taking them in too, man!”
“The women?”
“The flowers! The S.S. is confiscating hydrangeas! Can you dig it? A dragnet for lilacs! Oh, shit, this would blow Shelley’s mind!”
“What was the charge, Spur?”
“Put the chick on.”
“Leila?”
“Yeah. Put her on. I gotta be sprung, man. This is Gas Chamber, U.S.A.”
Mrs. Thurston was sledge-hammering a ball of dough with anthropomorphizing fervor. I called Leila to the phone. “A poor one-armed son of a bitch would like to speak to you, Leila.”
“Devin!” her mother clucked, disapproving of profanity even against the profane.
“Hurry up, Leila. You’re his one phone call; he’s in jail.”
“Oh, Good Lord,” Mrs. Thurston said, and raised her eyes, I thought perhaps in thanksgiving for an answered prayer.
“Hello, Spur, what’s the matter?” Leila said. Ten minutes later, she spoke again. “Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Leila Stark,” her mother followed her to the door. “Now, don’t you start interfering with the police in the performance of their duties. If they have arrested Spurgeon, I am sure they had a perfectly good reason why.”
“What did he do?” I asked Leila.
“It’s hard to tell,” she said, binding on her sandals. “But it sounds like he tried to talk some of the flower ladies into attacking Gabe Booter, and he got carried away and scared one of them yelling at her, so she started hitting Spur over the head with a can of flowers,” Leila began laughing, “and when Booter went over to stop her, Spur bit him on the thigh, and then peed on his patrol car.”
Mrs. Thurston vigorously nodded. “I am not surprised, not surprised at hearing even this. That man is right where he belongs, unless they decide to commit him to an insane asylum. It may not be his fault, but the truth is that Spurgeon Debson is a pure and simple maniac.”
“What’s the charge?” I asked.
“Obscenity. Indecent exposure. Assault. Resisting arrest. I’m going to go talk to Gabe. He’s probably completely baffled.”
“Baffled?” Mrs. Thurston’s incredulity sank her to the couch, “Is that the word to use for a law officer who has just witnessed a deranged man urinating on state property in broad daylight in the middle of the public streets? Why, this is the worst possible time for this to happen! Here you are traipsing off, scarcely clothed, a widow of less than a month’s time, to assist an unmarried madman who bites public officials, at the very moment that your husband’s father can have the news broadcast in his face. Now, you can get on your high horse, Leila, and say ‘What do I care?’ but, honey, the reality of this situation is that you are dependent on Bruno Stark, if only for the future of your babies. So please, Leila, this careless disregard of watching your step, please make an effort to overcome it. Spurgeon made his bed, and if he chooses to place himself on a prison cot, why, honey, let him lie in it alone.”
Leila picked up her pocketbook. “Mother, I understand what you’re saying, and I know you’re just thinking of me, but it isn’t going to hurt me to try to help somebody that’s mixed up.”
“Leila, you are a fool. I don’t know where you received your genes, but you certainly did not receive them from me.”
Leila left.
Our diminished family quietly ate the Hungarian goulash, after which, I asked Sabby if she’d like to walk downtown with me to the Red Lagoon Bar. She said no, she was going to try to get Mr. Wolfstein to play gin rummy with her and Mrs. Thurston, so I went alone.
The man with the notebook was coming out of the bar. Inside, Lady Red called me over to the cash register.
“Hey, kid. Who’s that friend of yours in the dance room?”
“Who?”
“Tall, good-looking blond guy. You know him, don’t you?”
“Dennis Reed? Wears a suede coat?”
“Yeah, what a nice guy. Friendly. Always a nice word, you know, never too busy to gab a minute.”
Kim, the big dancer, pulled herself up on a stool beside me and asked for a drink.
But Lady Red came over and shook her head at Tony. She spoke flatly. “You know what, Kim? You keep boozing your salary away like this, you’re gonna end up owing me at the end of the month. Much less getting to California. It ain’t exactly working wonders on your figure either.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. But it’s this goddamn heat. Come on, give me the drink. Gin and tonic, Tony?” She glanced down at her arms, hanging flabby from a sleeveless sweater, her large breasts spread out against the counter. From behind his wife, Tony handed her the drink; nursing it, she said, “Oh listen, Red, the fellow I was talking about—Rings told me somebody acting like a dick was asking him a bunch of questions outside earlier on. He told him to get lost. Wonder if it’s the same one.”
Lady Red stuck the key in her cash register. “Just let me tell you something. If that guy comes nosing around again, you just send him to me, hear? Just tell him to come see me. I don’t want snoops in my bar.”
“Okay, sure, Red, sure,” Kim drawled. A limp, heat-wet strand of lemon hair drooped across her face; she left it there.
I excused myself and went toward the back room. A blast of noise and heat swarmed around me when I pulled the door open. Tanya wasn’t there. The discotheque was jammed with dancing couples, half hopping in one direction, half jerking in the other, while Tony Menelade and two new waitresses shoved their way through them, poking backs, pushing arms aside as they steered drinks to sweaty customers. Business was good.
T-shirted, Ronny Tiorino straddled a chair near the dance floor; beside him a tanned teenaged girl applauded with giggles as he pulled off the cap of a beer bottle with his teeth. Spitting the cap at me, he yelled, “Donahue, c’mere!” I went over. “What’s going on next door?” I shrugged. “Has Mittie’s old man slapped a lock on the place yet?” I told him I didn’t know and didn’t want to talk about it.
“Be fine with me,” he said. “I’d just as soon hang around here the rest of the summer. Sure staying away from my draft board ’til the smoke clears. Joely’s looking for you to help him backstage.” He handed the girl the opened beer and stuck another bottle in his mouth. Seated on the edge of a chair, I theorized, “You’re going to pull your teeth out like that, Ronny.”
“Nnnn,” he shook his head vigorously.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Mminni,” he mumbled around the bottle.
“You heard of somebody named Rings?”
His face contorted, Ronny bit the cap off and spit it out; there was a cut on his lip. “Shit!” he licked his mouth. “Yeah,” he nodded knowingly, “Rings Morelli. Friend of Lady Red’s. I think they’re partners. He owns the little porno store. Runs a poker game. But the real cash comes from pimping, that’ud be my guess.” He grinned.
“Awh, come on, how do you know that?”
He flexed his arms, Brandoesque, rippled his fingers. “Whaddayah think, I’m sitting around playing Chopsticks with Pete Barney? I get around.”
The teenager sucked at her beer bottle, looked from Ronny to me to Ronny with huge-pupiled eyes.
“Sure,” he went on, “what do you think they call Slough Lane? Twenty-twenty Street.”
“What does that mean?”
Impatient, he snorted, “Harvard! Twenty bucks for twenty minutes. Wanna know what that means?”
“Aw, shut up. This guy Morelli. What does he look like?”
“Mid thirties. Good body. Sharp dresser. Black hair, slicks it back. Mafioso looks.”
“Wears patent leather boots?”
“You wanna make a date with him? How the fuck should I know!”
“I got to go. See you.”
“What for? Maybe Bonnie’s got a friend?” He pulled the beer bottle from his companion’s mouth. “You gotta friend, kid?” She shook her head, and he put the bottle back. “What are you looking at?” he snapped at me.
I had been staring at his eyes; Maisie had told me one of them was glass. I couldn’t tell which one.
A few feet away, a strobe light caught Dennis Reed’s hair, the “Golden Fleece,” Verl called it. Across a table from Suzanne Steinitz, he shook the gold in her eyes. As I neared them, he was saying, “You’re right. Medea would be great for you. A part like that—‘fire, passion, darkness’.” He took in her face and hair, then chanted, “Ah, my father! My fatherland! To my endless shame I left you, left you after murdering my own brother.” Well, I guess Dennis really was a Greek drama enthusiast, after all.
Suzanne breathed, “Oh, you know the play?”
“Well, I know a little Greek. Euripides has…always…fascinated me.”
“Hello. Suzanne. Dennis,” I said passing by. They ignored me.
Drinking alone away from the dance floor, I pondered the identity of the man with the notebook. Was he a detective, the Vice Squad after Rings Morelli? An F.B.I. agent checking out Spurgeon’s threatening letters? Maybe Bruno Stark had hired him to spy on Leila. Suppose he found out where Leila was right now. Or Tanya—perhaps she had committed a crime and escaped, or more likely, was a runaway heiress, whose real name was something like Babs. Or maybe he was a journalist doing research on Floren Park. I had to hurry, write my own material down before this guy with the notebook stole it. But that didn’t make any sense. I calmed myself; how could a stranger be writing things that were happening to me? I must be drunk.
Dennis Reed suddenly swooped over me and became confidential, “Look, have you seen Leila around? She’s kind of hard to locate. Thought I’d run into her here, maybe, see how things were going. Really, I mean, what a nightmare she’s been through. Somebody ought to help her have a little fun. Have you seen her around?”
“She’s in jail.”
“What?”
“She had to go see a guy at the police station about some flowers.”
“Oh.” Reed decided not to pursue it. “Well, give her a message for me. Tell her I dropped by to see her; ask her to give me a call sometime.”
“Sure…I didn’t know you knew Suzanne.”
“Just met her. She’s a nice kid.”
“Yeah. Fire and passion.”
“You and her?…” He spun a spiral with his forefinger.
I shrugged. “I’m talking about her acting.”
“Oh, so am I, pal, so am I.” He grinned at me. I thought I probably wouldn’t give Leila his message.
I had to get a pencil and some paper. Making my way back to the front room, I saw Lady Red and Kim still talking at the bar. With a bovine lowing, Kim was swaying her head back and forth; the tips of her hair were stiff with dried drink from the counter. “Fred was a no-good creep. That’s what Fred was. Always with a fresh flower in his suit, Red. Everyday fresh. And nice to Cary, good to the kid. And he could talk your ear off with sweetness. So, how do you figure a guy like that’s gonna send you out with a bad check and rip you off while you’re gone? You know?”
“Most women are saps. Kick ’em down, and they lick the foot. Not me,” Lady Red told her.
Kim plopped her hand heavily on my shoulder. “See if they got ‘Sleepless Nights’ by the Everly Brothers, kid. That’s what I listened to after Fred left me. Here’s a dime.” She fell toward her purse.
“That’s okay,” I said. “Let me get it.”
At the jukebox, a fingernail slid down my spine. “You don’t like your music live?” Tanya asked.
“It’s too hot back there.”
“Heat’s good for you; it opens your pores. That’s one reason dancing’s so healthy. All sorts of exercises are good for you.” Her arms and legs, the color of caramel, glistened against the red fringed costume. “So, Devin. You finally showed up. I’m flattered.”
“I’m flattered you’re flattered.” But nothing further coming to mind, I turned to look at the selections on the jukebox. She leaned over beside me, fanning her hair against my hand. I could feel the cold weight of her earring.
I plunged in. “Can I ask you something? What’s going on here?”
She swiveled around, rested her elbows on the jukebox, lowered her chin, and looked up at me. “Why do you ask?” she smiled.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Well, what kind of question is that?”
“Never mind.”
Her grin widened. “Hey, how old are you?”
“I’m older than you.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure, a lot older,” I figured she was around twenty-one or two.
She lit a cigarette. “Well, let’s see. ‘What’s going on…?’ I like the way you look….”
“And.”
“That’s it. Does there have to be more?”
“Thank you. I like the way you look.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
“Have you run away from home?”
She burst out laughing.
“I mean, does your family know you’re in Floren Park?” There were a lot of runaways in Floren Park that summer.
“No, they don’t.”
“I didn’t think so.”
Ronny and his new girl, Bonnie, walked out past us. Ronny gave me a nudge and a wink.
“Awwhh,” she crooned. “What’s the matter?”
I shrugged.
“Waiting for me to unzip your pants?”
I shook my head. “No…this is kind of confusing.”
I sensed she was losing patience. “Okay, let me know when you figure it out.”
“It’s too noisy in here.” I turned to face her. She could keep her eyes from blinking an incredibly long time. “Are you through?” I said. “I mean, do you have to work any more tonight?”
“Until one.”
“Oh, okay.”
But she shook out a key she had stuck beneath the cellophane of her cigarette pack. Pressing it wetly into my palm, she said, “Why don’t you go over to my place and get it all figured out where it’s nice and quiet. How’s that? Cabin 6, in the lane. Don’t lose it now,” she squeezed my fist around the key.
“Slough Lane?”
“That’s right. Just around the corner.”
“You live on Slough Lane?”
“Why not? It was the first place I could find; it’s cheap. Lady Red got it for me. If I decide to stay here, I’ll probably get a bigger place. Okay?”
“Are you sure you ought to be living in a place like that?”
She looked me over. “You know, you’re pretty weird.”
“I guess so,” I allowed. “I’ll see you later, then.”
“Make yourself at home.”
“Thanks. Look, do you have a typewriter I could borrow?”
“See what I mean,” she laughed, “really weird! No, sorry, I don’t. What do you want to do, write a letter home? Does your family know you’re in Floren Park?”
“Got any paper, then?” I asked.
“Jesus! Sure, look in the drawer beside the bed. You’ll be able to find the bed, won’t you? Big square thing in the middle of the room.” With a wave of fingernails and fringe, she went back to dance.
Outside was barely cooler than in the bar. Starless, muggy, hot smog. Slough Lane was not lit, so I worked my way slowly down the ditch, peering for numbers. Cabin 6 was one of the fresh rose fronts next to the store for adults. Rings Morelli’s store, I decided.
Expecting a stiletto in my back, I put the key in the lock. Surprisingly, it fit. I tripped over the bed, stumbling for a light switch. Her bed was a large, firm mattress on the floor. Above it hung a chain of copper bells. I pulled, and a dimmed light came on over my head, shadowing a giant poster of a rock star on the wall. Beneath me was a big white sheepskin flung over the bedspread. In one corner, a tiny refrigerator-stove beside a dish-filled sink. In another, an open closet spilling out clothes. Two full mirrors. A dresser chaotic with the tools of makeup. On the rug, a little record player, a little television, and a suitcase. On the bed table, an antique pistol that appeared to be made of mother-of-pearl and silver. What was Tanya doing with a gun? Was it a loan from Rings Morelli? A No Trespassing sign planted near the bed? It seemed a false note in the room—a gold goblet on a table with plastic plates and catsup bottles. Perhaps I should find out what I was getting into. Still, wherever I am, I thought, I came by myself. Not like the Cub Scouts that Mama took me to (canceling my enlistment after the Den Father told us to grow up as quickly as we could and destroy Red China). Not like the State Science Fair, the Harvard Dining Hall. I am free to be here, I thought, and no one who knows me knows where I am. As disconnected as if I were riding on a long-distance bus. More, for on a bus Fitzgerald is pointed home right now. But me, I could at this moment choose to be anything, at this moment somewhere in Floren Park. And somewhere now Bruno Stark was looking over Mittie’s accounts, while Sabby and Mrs. Thurston lured Wolfstein to the alertness of gin rummy, while the man with the notebook looked for clues, while Leila rescued Spurgeon from the law.
And I stretched out on Tanya’s bed. But not yet comfortable. My clothes were pasted to my skin by sweat, and my body itched. No doubt I was allergic to the sheepskin. I threw it off. But the itching worsened. Heat, then. A rash. Scratching soothed me only while it lasted. I’m dirty, I discovered. My fingernails aren’t clean, my hair feels like bugs are nesting in it. Probably I smell. Even though I had showered yesterday, maybe it would be better if I did it again.
Tanya had a small yellowed bathtub. Sticking a cloth in the drain, I filled it and floated down in coolness. Dunked my head, soaped, and lay there until film gathered on the top of lukewarm water.
I felt constricted, restless, studied the hair beneath my navel floating aimlessly.
Then a desire startled me upright. Rubbing myself dry, I ran to the table, jerked out a pad of paper, the cover doodled with flowers, and on it wrote down: “When summer started…”
Time lost, sometime the paper ran out. Shaking loose my clinched fingers, I rolled onto the bed and sank smiling to sleep.