Beneath the cushion of the plush blue chair she has hidden it.
Almost shyly her fingers grope for it, then recoil as if it were burning hot.
No! None of this will happen, don’t be ridiculous.
It is eleven a.m. He has promised to meet her in this room in which it is always eleven a.m.
She’s doing what she does best: waiting.
In fact, she is waiting for him in the way that he prefers: naked. Yet wearing shoes.
Nude, he calls it. Not naked.
(“Naked” is a coarse word! He’s a gentleman and he feels revulsion for vulgarity. Any sort of crude word, mannerism—in a woman.)
She understands. She herself disapproves of women uttering profanities.
Only when she’s alone would she utter even a mild profanity—Damn! God damn. Oh hell . . .
Only if she were very upset. Only if her heart were broken.
He can say anything he likes. It’s a masculine prerogative to say the coarsest cruelest words uttered with a laugh—as a man will do.
Though he might also murmur Jesus!
Not profanity but an expression of awe. Sometimes.
Jesus! You are beautiful.
Is she beautiful? She smiles to think so.
She is the woman in the window. In the wan light of an autumn morning in New York City.
In the plush blue chair, waiting. Eleven a.m.
Sleepless through much of the night and in the early morning soaking in her bath preparing herself for him.
Rubbing lotion onto her body: breasts, belly, hips, buttocks.
Such soft skin. Amazing . . . His voice catches in his throat.
At first he scarcely dares touch her. But only at first.
It is a solemn ritual, creamy-white lotion smelling of faint gardenias rubbed into her skin.
In a trance like a woman in a dream rubbing lotion into her skin, for she is terrified of her skin drying out in the radiator-heat, arid airlessness of The Maguire (as it is called)—the brownstone apartment building at Tenth Avenue and Twenty-Third where she lives.
From the street The Maguire is a dignified-looking older building, but inside it is really just old.
Like the wallpaper in this room, and the dull-green carpet, and the plush blue chair—old.
Dry heat! Sometimes she wakes in the night scarcely able to breathe and her throat dry as ashes.
She has seen the dried-out skin of older women. Some of them not so very old, in their sixties, even younger. Papery-thin skin, desiccated as a snake’s husk of a skin, a maze of fine white wrinkles, terrible to behold.
Her own mother. Her grandmother.
Telling herself don’t be silly, it will never happen to her.
She wonders how old his wife is. He is a gentleman, he will not speak of his wife. She dares not ask. She dares not even hint. His face flushes with indignation, his wide dark nostrils like holes in his face pinch as if he has smelled a bad odor. Very quiet, very stiff he becomes, a sign of danger so she knows to retreat.
Yet thinking, gloating, His wife is not young. She is not so beautiful as I am. When he sees her, he thinks of me.
(But is this true? The past half year, since the previous winter, since the long break over Christmas when they were apart—she was in the city; he was away with his family in some undisclosed place, very likely Bermuda for his face and hands were tanned when he returned—she has not been so certain.)
She has never been to Bermuda, or any tropical place. If he does not take her, it is not likely that she will ever go.
Instead, she is trapped here in this room. Where it is always eleven a.m. Sometimes it feels to her as if she is trapped in this chair, in the window gazing out with great yearning at—what?
An apartment building like the building in which she lives. A narrow shaft of sky. Light that appears fading already at eleven a.m.
Damned tired of the plush blue chair that is beginning to fray.
Damned tired of the bed (he’d chosen) that is a double bed, with a headboard.
Her previous bed, in her previous living quarters on East Eighth Street, in a fifth-floor walkup single room, had been a single bed, of course. A girl’s bed too small, too narrow, too insubstantial for him.
The girth, the weight of him—he is two hundred pounds at least.
All muscle, he likes to say. (Joking.) And she murmurs in response Yes.
If she rolls her eyes, he does not see.
She has come to hate her entrapment here. Where it is always eleven a.m. and she is always waiting for him.
The more she thinks about it, the more her hatred roils like smoldering heat about to burst into flame.
She hates him. For trapping her here.
For treating her like dirt.
Worse than dirt, something stuck on the sole of his shoe he tries to scrape off with that priggish look in his face that makes her want to murder him.
Next time you touch me! You will regret it.
Except: at work, at the office—she’s envied.
The other secretaries know she lives in The Maguire, for she’d brought one of them to see it once.
Such a pleasure it was, to see the look in Molly’s eyes!
And it is true—this is a very nice place really. Far nicer than anything she could afford on her secretary’s salary.
Except she has no kitchen, only just a hot plate in a corner alcove, and so it is difficult for her to prepare food for herself. Dependent on eating at the automat on Twenty-First and Sixth or else (but this is never more than once a week, at the most) when he takes her out to dinner.
(Even then, she has to take care. Nothing so disgusting as seeing a female who eats like a horse, he has said.)
She does have a tiny bathroom. The first private bathroom she’s ever had in her life.
He pays most of the rent. She has not asked him, he volunteers to give her cash unbidden, as if each time he has just thought of it.
My beautiful girl! Please don’t say a word, you will break the spell and ruin everything.
What’s the time? Eleven a.m.
He will be late coming to her. Always he is late coming to her.
At the corner of Lexington and Thirty-Seventh. Headed south.
The one with the dark fedora, camel’s hair coat. Whistling thinly through his teeth. Not a tall man, though he gives that impression. Not a large man, but he won’t give way if there’s another pedestrian in his path.
Excuse me, mister! Look where the hell you’re going.
Doesn’t break his stride. Only partially conscious of his surroundings.
Face shut up tight. Jaws clenched.
Murder rushing to happen.
The woman in the window, he likes to imagine her.
He has stood on the sidewalk three floors below. He has counted the windows of the brownstone. Knows which one is hers.
After dark, the lighted interior reflected against the blind makes of the blind a translucent skin.
When he leaves her. Or before he comes to her.
It is less frequent that he comes to her by day. His days are taken up with work, family. His days are what is known.
Nighttime there is another self. Unpeeling his tight clothes: coat, trousers, white cotton dress shirt, belt, necktie, socks and shoes.
But now the woman has Thursdays off, late mornings at The Maguire are convenient.
Late mornings shifting into afternoon. Late afternoon, and early evening.
He calls home, leaves a message with the maid—Unavoidable delay at office. Don’t wait dinner.
In fact it is the contemplation of the woman in the window he likes best, for in his imagination this girl never utters a vulgar remark or makes a vulgar mannerism. Never says a banal or stupid or predictable thing. His sensitive nerves are offended by (for instance) a female shrugging her shoulders, as a man might do; or trying to make a joke, or a sarcastic remark. He hates a female grinning.
Worst of all, crossing her (bare) legs so that the thighs thicken, bulge. Hard-muscled legs with soft downy hairs, repulsive to behold.
The shades must be drawn. Tight.
Shadows, not sunlight. Why darkness is best.
Lie still. Don’t move. Don’t speak. Just—don’t.
It’s a long way from when she’d moved to the city from Hackensack needing to breathe.
She’d never looked back. Sure they called her selfish, cruel. What the hell, the use they’d have made of her, she’d be sucked dry by now like bone marrow.
Saying it was sin. Her Polish grandmother angrily rattling her rosary, praying aloud.
Who the hell cares! Leave me alone.
First job was file clerk at Trinity Trust down on Wall Street. Wasted three years of her young life waiting for her boss, Mr. Broderick, to leave his (invalid) wife and (emotionally unstable) adolescent daughter, and wouldn’t you think a smart girl like her would know better?
Second job also file clerk, but then she’d been promoted to Mr. Castle’s secretarial staff at Lyman Typewriters on West Fourteenth. The least the old buzzard could do for her, and she’d have done a lot better except for fat-face Stella Czechi intruding where she wasn’t wanted.
One day she’d come close to pushing Stella Czechi into the elevator shaft when the elevator was broken. The doors clanked opened onto a terrifying drafty cavern where dusty-oily cords hung twisted like ugly thick black snakes. Stella gave a little scream and stepped back, and she’d actually grabbed Stella’s hand, the two of them so frightened—Oh my God, there’s no elevator! We almost got killed.
Later she would wish she’d pushed Stella. Guessing Stella was wishing she’d pushed her.
Third job, Tvek Realtors & Insurance in the Flatiron Building and she’s Mr. Tvek’s private secretary—What would I do without you, my dear one?
As long as Tvek pays her decent. And he doesn’t let her down like last Christmas, she’d wanted to die.
It is eleven a.m. Will this be the morning? She is trembling with excitement, dread.
Wanting badly to hurt him. Punish!
That morning after her bath she’d watched with fascination as her fingers lifted the sewing shears out of the bureau drawer. Watched her fingers test the sharpness of the points: very sharp, icepick-sharp.
Watched her hand pushing the shears beneath the cushion of the blue plush chair by the window.
It is not the first time she has hidden the sewing shears beneath the cushion. It is not the first time she has wished him dead.
Once she hid the shears beneath her pillow on the bed.
Another time, in the drawer of the bedside table.
How she has hated him, and yet—she has not (yet) summoned the courage, or the desperation, to kill him.
(For is not “kill” a terrifying word? If you kill, you become a killer.)
(Better to think of punishment, exacting justice. When there is no other recourse but the sewing shears.)
She has never hurt anyone in her life! Even as a child she didn’t hit or wrestle with other children, or at least not often. Or at least that she remembers.
He is the oppressor. He has murdered her dreams.
He must be punished before he leaves her.
Each time she has hidden the shears she has come a little closer (she thinks) to the time when she will use them. Just stab, stab, stab in the way he pounds himself into her, her body, using her body, his face contorted and ugly, terrible to behold.
The act that is unthinkable as it is irrevocable.
The shears are much stronger than an ordinary pair of scissors, as they are slightly larger.
The shears once belonged to her mother, who’d been a quite skilled seamstress. In the Polish community in Hackensack, her mother was most admired.
She tries to sew too. Though she is less skilled than her mother.
Needing to mend her clothes—hems of dresses, underwear, even stockings. And it is calming to the nerves, like knitting, crocheting, even typing when there is no time pressure.
Except—You did a dandy job with these letters, my dear! But I’m afraid not “perfect”—you will have to do them over.
Sometimes she hates Mr. Tvek as much as she hates him.
Under duress she can grip the shears firmly, she is sure. She has been a typist since the age of fifteen, and she believes that it is because of this skill that her fingers have grown not only strong but unerring.
Of course, she understands: a man could slap the shears out of her hand in a single gesture. If he sees what she is doing, before the icepick-sharp points stabs into his flesh.
She must strike him swiftly and she must strike him in the throat.
The “carotid artery”—she knows what this is.
Not the heart, she doesn’t know where the heart might be, exactly. Protected by ribs. The torso is large, bulky—too much fat. She could not hope to pierce the heart with the shears in a single swift blow.
Even the back, where the flesh is less thick, would be intimidating to her. She has a nightmare vision of the points of the shears stuck in the man’s back, not deep enough to kill him, only just wound him, blood streaming everywhere as he flails his arms and bellows in rage and pain . . .
Therefore, the neck. The throat.
In the throat, the male is as vulnerable as the female.
Once the sharp points of the shears pierce his skin, puncture the artery, there will be no turning back for either of them.
Eleven a.m.
Light rap of his knuckles on the door. Hel-lo.
Turning of the key. And then—
Shutting the door behind him. Approaching her.
Staring at her with eyes like ants running over her (nude) body.
It is a scene in a movie: that look of desire in a man’s face. A kind of hunger, greed.
(Should she speak to him? Often at such times he seems scarcely to hear her words, so engrossed in what he sees.)
(Maybe better to say nothing. So he can’t wince at her nasal New Jersey accent, tell her Shhh!)
Last winter after that bad quarrel she’d tried to bar him from the apartment. Tried to barricade the door by dragging a chair in front of it, but (of course) he pushed his way in by brute strength.
It is childish, futile to try to bar the man. He has his own key, of course.
Following which she was punished. Severely.
Thrown onto the bed and her face pressed into a pillow, scarcely could she breathe, her cries muffled, begging for him not to kill her as her back, hips, buttocks were soundly beaten with his fists.
And then, her legs roughly parted.
Just a taste of what I will do to you if you—ever—try—this—again.
Dirty Polack!
Of course they’d made up.
Each time, they’d made up.
He had punished her by not calling, staying away. But eventually he’d returned, as she’d known he would.
Bringing her a dozen red roses. A bottle of his favorite Scotch whisky.
She’d taken him back, it might be said.
She’d had no choice. It might be said.
No! None of this will happen, don’t be ridiculous.
She is frightened but she is thrilled.
She is thrilled but she is frightened.
At eleven a.m. she will see him at the door to the bedroom, as he pockets his key. Staring at her so intently she feels the power of being, if only for these fleeting moments, female.
That look of desire in the man’s face. The clutch of the mouth like a pike’s mouth.
The look of possession as he thinks, Mine.
By this time she will have changed her shoes. Of course.
As in a movie scene, it is imperative that the woman be wearing not the plain black flat-heeled shoes she wears for comfort when she is alone but a pair of glamorous sexy high-heeled shoes which the man has purchased for her.
(Though it is risky to appear together in public in such a way, the man quite enjoys taking the girl to several Fifth Avenue stores for the purchase of shoes. In her closet are at least a dozen pairs of expensive shoes he has bought for her, high-heeled, painful to wear but undeniably glamorous. Gorgeous crocodile-skin shoes he’d bought her for her last birthday, last month. He insists she wear high-heeled shoes even if it’s just when they’re alone together in her apartment.)
(Especially high heels when she’s nude.)
Seeing that look in the man’s eyes thinking, Of course he loves me. That is the face of love.
Waiting for him to arrive. And what time is it? Eleven a.m.
If he truly loves her he will bring flowers.
To make it up to you, honey. For last night.
He has said to her that of all the females he has known, she is the only one who seems to be happy in her body.
Happy in her body. This is good to hear!
He means, she guesses, adult females. Little girls are quite happy in their bodies when they are little/young enough.
So unhappy. Or—happy . . .
I mean, I am happy.
In my body I am happy.
I am happy when I am with you.
And so when he steps into the room she will smile happily at him. She will lift her arms to him as if she does not hate him and wish him dead.
She will feel the weight of her breasts as she raises her arms. She will see his eyes fasten greedily on her breasts.
She will not scream at him, Why the hell didn’t you come last night like you promised? Goddamn bastard, you can’t treat me like shit on your shoe!
Will not scream at him, D’you think I will just take it—this shit of yours? D’you think I am like your damn wife, just lay there and take it, d’you think a woman has no way of hitting back? No way of revenge?
A weapon of revenge. Not a male weapon but a female weapon: sewing shears.
It is appropriate that the sewing shears had once belonged to her mother. Though her mother never used the shears as she might have wished.
If she can grasp the shears firmly in her hand, her strong right hand, if she can direct the blow, if she can strike without flinching.
If she is that kind of woman.
Except: she isn’t that kind of woman. She is a romantic-minded girl to whom a man might bring a dozen red roses, a box of expensive chocolates, articles of (silky, intimate) clothing. Expensive high-heeled shoes.
A woman who sings and hums “Tea for two, and two for tea, you for me and me for you, alone . . .”
Eleven a.m. He will be late!
Goddamn, he hates this. He is always late.
At the corner of Lexington and Thirty-First turning west on Thirty-First and so to Fifth Avenue. And then south.
Headed south into a less dazzling Manhattan.
He lives at Seventy-Second and Madison: Upper East Side.
She lives in a pretty good neighborhood (he thinks)—for her.
Pretty damn good for a little Polack secretary from Hackensack, New Jersey.
Tempted to stop for a drink. That bar on Eighth Avenue.
Except it’s not yet eleven a.m. Too early to drink!
Noon is the earliest. You have to have preserve standards.
Noon could mean lunch. Customary to have drinks at a business lunch. A cocktail to start. A cocktail to continue. A cocktail to conclude. But he draws the line at drinking during the midday when he will take a cab to his office, far downtown on Chambers Street.
His excuse is a dental appointment in midtown. Unavoidable!
Of course five p.m. is a respectful hour for a drink. Almost, a drink at five p.m. might be considered the “first drink of the day,” since it has been a long time since lunch.
Five p.m. drinks are “drinks before dinner.” Dinner at eight p.m., if not later.
Wondering if he should make a little detour before going to her place. Liquor store, bottle of Scotch whisky. The bottle he’d brought to her place last week is probably almost empty.
(Sure, the woman drinks in secret. Sitting in the window, drink in hand. Doesn’t want him to know. How in hell could he not know? Deceitful little bitch.)
There’s a place on Ninth. Shamrock Inn. He can stop there.
Looks forward to drinking with her. One thing you can say about the little Polack, she’s a good drinking companion, and drinking deflects most needs to talk.
Unless she drinks too much. Last thing he wants to hear from her is complaints, accusations.
Last thing he wants to see is her face pouty and sulky and not so good-looking. Sharp creases in her forehead like a forecast of how she’ll look in another ten years, or less.
It isn’t fair! You don’t call when you promise! You don’t show up when you promise! Tell me you love me but—
Many times he has heard these words that are beginning to bore him.
Many times he has appeared to be listening but is scarcely aware which of them is berating him: the girl in the window or the wife.
To the woman in the window he has learned to say, Sure I love you. That’s enough, now.
To the wife he has learned to say, You know I have work to do. I work damn hard. Who the hell pays for all this?
His life is complicated. That is actually true. He is not deceiving the woman. He is not deceiving the wife.
(Well—maybe he is deceiving the wife.)
(Maybe he is deceiving the woman.)
(But women expect to be deceived, don’t they? Deception is the terms of the sex contract.)
In fact he’d told the little Polack secretary (warned her) at the outset, almost two years ago now (Jesus! That long, no wonder he’s getting to feel trapped, claustrophobic), I love my family. My obligations to my family come first.
(Fact is, he’s getting tired of this one. Bored. She talks too much even when she isn’t talking, he can hear her thinking. Her breasts are heavy, beginning to droop. Flaccid skin at her belly. Thinking sometimes when they’re in bed together he’d like to settle his hands around her throat and just start squeezing.)
(How much of a struggle would she put up? She’s not a small woman but he’s strong.)
(The French girl he’d had a “tussle” with—that was the word he’d given the transaction—had put up quite a struggle, like a fox or a mink or a weasel, but that was wartime, in Paris, people were desperate then, even a girl that young and starved-looking like a rat. Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi! But there’d been no one.)
(Hard to take any of them seriously when they’re chattering away in some damn language like a parrot or a hyena. Worse when they screamed.)
Set out late from his apartment that morning. Goddamn, he resents his goddamn wife, suspicious of him for no reason.
Hadn’t he stayed home the night before? Hadn’t he disappointed the girl? All because of the wife.
Stiff and cold-silent the wife. God, how she bores him!
Her suspicions bore him. Her hurt feelings bore him. Her dull repressed anger bores him. Worst of all, her boredom bores him.
He has imagined his wife dead many times, of course. How long have they been married, twenty years, twenty-three years, he’d believed he was lucky marrying the daughter of a well-to-do stockbroker, except the stockbroker wasn’t that well-to-do and within a few years he wasn’t a stockbroker any longer but a bankrupt. Asking to borrow money from him.
Also, the wife’s looks are gone. Melted look of a female of a certain age. Face sags, body sags. He has fantasized his wife dying (in an accident: not his fault) and the insurance policy paying off: $40,000 free and clear. So he’d be free to marry the other one.
Except: does he want to marry her?
God! Feeling the need for a drink.
It is eleven a.m. Goddamn bastard will be late again.
After the insult and injury of the previous night!
If he is late, it will happen. She will stab, stab, stab until he has bled out. She feels a wave of relief; finally it has been decided for her.
Checks the sewing shears, hidden beneath the cushion. Something surprising, unnerving—the blades of the shears seem to be a faint, faded red. From cutting red cloth? But she doesn’t remember using the shears to cut red cloth.
Must be the light from the window passing through the gauze curtains.
Something consoling in the touch of the shears.
She wouldn’t want a knife from the kitchen—no. Nothing like a butcher knife. Such a weapon would be premeditated, while a pair of sewing shears is something a woman might pick up by chance, frightened for her life.
He threatened me. He began to beat me. Strangle me. He’d warned me many times in one of his moods he would murder me.
It was in defense of my life. God help me! I had no choice.
Hears herself laugh aloud. Rehearsing her lines like an actress about to step out onto the bright-lit stage.
Might’ve been an actress, if her damn mother hadn’t sent her right to secretarial school. She’s as good-looking as most of the actresses on Broadway.
He’d told her so. Brought her a dozen blood-red roses first time he came to take her out.
Except they hadn’t gone out. Spent the night in her fifth-floor walkup, East Eighth Street.
(She misses that sometimes. Lower East Side, where she’d had friends and people who knew her, on the street.)
Strange to be naked, that is nude, yet wearing shoes.
Time for her to squeeze her (bare) feet into high heels.
Like a dancer. Girlie-dancer they are called. Stag parties exclusively for men. She’d heard of girls who danced at these parties. Danced nude. Made more in a single night’s work than she made in two weeks as a secretary.
“Nude” is a fancy word. Hoity-toity like an artist-word.
What she has not wanted to see: her body isn’t a girl’s body any longer. At a distance (maybe) on the street she can fool the casual eye, but not up close.
Dreads to see in the mirror a fleshy aging body like her mother’s.
And her posture in the damned chair, when she’s alone—leaning forward, arms on knees, staring out the window into a narrow shaft of sunshine between buildings—makes her belly bulge, soft belly-fat.
A shock, first time she’d noticed. Just by accident glancing in a mirror.
Not a sign of getting older. Just putting on weight.
For your birthday, sweetheart. Is it—thirty-two?
She’d blushed; yes, it is thirty-two.
Not meeting his eye. Pretending she was eager to unwrap the present. (By the size of the box, weight of what’s inside, she guesses it’s another pair of goddamn high-heeled shoes.) Heart beating rapidly in a delirium of dread.
If he knew. Thirty-nine.
That was last year. The next birthday is rushing at her.
Hates him, wishes he were dead.
Except she would never see him again. Except the wife would collect the insurance.
She does not want to kill him, however. She is not the type to hurt anyone.
In fact she wants to kill him. She has no choice, he will be leaving her soon. She will never see him again and she will have nothing.
When she is alone she understands this. Which is why she has hidden the sewing shears beneath the cushion for the final time.
She will claim that he began to abuse her, he threatened to kill her, closing his fingers around her throat so she had no choice but to grope for the shears and stab him in desperation, repeatedly, unable to breathe and unable to call for help until his heavy body slipped from her, twitching and spurting blood, onto the green rectangle of light in the carpet.
His age is beyond forty-nine, she’s sure.
Glanced at his ID once. Riffling through his wallet while he slept open-mouthed, wetly snoring. Sound like a rhinoceros snorting. She’d been stunned to see his young photograph—taken when he’d been younger than she is right now—dark-haired, thick dark-haired, and eyes boring into the camera, so intense. In his U.S. Army uniform, so handsome!
She’d thought, Where is this man? I could have loved this man.
Now when they make love she detaches herself from the situation to imagine him as he’d been, young. Him, she could have felt something for.
Having to pretend too much. That’s tiring.
Like the pretense she is happy in her body.
Like the pretense she is happy when he shows up.
No other secretary in her office could afford an apartment in this building. True.
Damn apartment she’d thought was so special at first now she hates. He helps with expenses. Counting out bills like he’s cautious not to be overpaying.
This should tide you over, sweetheart. Give yourself a treat.
She thanks him. She is the good girl thanking him.
Give yourself a treat! With the money he gives her, a few tens, a rare twenty! God, she hates him.
Her fingers tremble, gripping the shears. Just the feel of the shears.
Never dared tell him how she has come to hate this apartment. Meeting in the elevators old women, some of them with walkers, eyeing her. Older couples, eyeing her. Unfriendly. Suspicious. How’s a secretary from New Jersey afford The Maguire?
Dim-lit on the third floor like a low-level region of the soul into which light doesn’t penetrate. Soft-shabby furniture and mattress already beginning to sag like those bodies in dreams we feel but don’t see. But she keeps the damn bed made every day whether anyone except her sees.
He doesn’t like disorder. He’d told her how he’d learned to make a proper bed in the U.S. Army in 1917.
The trick is, he says, you make the bed as soon as you get up.
Pull the sheets tight. Tuck in corners—tight. No wrinkles! Smooth with the edge of your hand! Again.
First lieutenant, he’d been. Rank when discharged. Holds himself like a soldier, stiff backbone like maybe he is feeling pain—arthritis? Shrapnel?
She has wondered—Has he killed? Shot, bayoneted? With his bare hands?
What she can’t forgive: the way he detaches himself from her as soon as it’s over.
Sticky skin, hairy legs, patches of scratchy hair on his shoulders, chest, belly. She’d like him to hold her and they could drift into sleep together, but rarely this happens. Hates feeling the nerves twitching in his legs. Hates sensing how he is smelling her. How he’d like to leap from her as soon as he comes, the bastard.
A man is crazy wanting to make love, then abruptly it’s over—he’s inside his head, and she’s inside hers.
The night before waiting for him to call to explain when he didn’t show up. From eight p.m. until midnight she’d waited, rationing whisky-and-water to calm her nerves. Considering the sharp-tipped shears she might use against herself one day.
In those hours sick with hating him and hating herself, and yet—the leap of hope when the phone finally rang.
Unavoidable, crisis at home. Sorry.
Now it is eleven a.m. Waiting for him to rap on the door.
She knows he will be late. He is always late.
She is becoming very agitated. But: too early to drink.
Even to calm her nerves too early to drink.
Imagines she hears footsteps. Sound of the elevator door opening, closing. Light rap of his knuckles on the door just before he unlocks it.
Eagerly he will step inside, come to the door of the bedroom—see her in the chair awaiting him . . .
The (nude) woman in the window. Awaiting him.
That look in his face. Though she hates him, she craves that look in his face.
A man’s desire is sincere enough. Can’t be faked. (She wants to think this.) She does not want to think that the man’s desire for her might be as fraudulent as her desire for him, but if this is so, why’d he see her at all?
He does love her. He loves something he sees in her.
Thirty-one years old, he thinks she is. No—thirty-two.
And his wife is ten, twelve years older at least. Like Mr. Broderick’s wife, this one is something of an invalid.
Pretty damned suspicious. Every wife you hear of is an invalid.
How they avoid sex, she supposes. Once they are married, once they have children, that’s enough. Sex is something the man has to do elsewhere.
What time is it? Eleven a.m.
He is late. Of course he is late.
After the humiliation of last night, when she had not eaten all day anticipating a nice dinner at Delmonico’s. And he never showed up, and his call was a feeble excuse.
Yet in the past he has behaved unpredictably. She’d thought that he was through with her, she’d seen disgust in his face, nothing so sincere as disgust in a man’s face; and yet—he’d called her, after a week, ten days.
Or he’d showed up at the apartment. Knocking on the door before inserting the key.
And almost in his face a look of anger, resentment.
Couldn’t keep away.
God, I’m crazy for you.
In the mirror she likes to examine herself if the light isn’t too bright. Mirror to avoid is the bathroom mirror unprotected and raw lit by daylight, but the bureau mirror is softer, more forgiving. Bureau mirror is the woman she is.
Actually she looks (she thinks) younger than thirty-two.
Much younger than thirty-nine!
A girl’s pouty face, full lips, red-lipstick lips. Sulky brunette still damned good-looking and he knows it, he has seen men on the street and in restaurants following her with their eyes, undressing her with their eyes, this is exciting to him (she knows), though if she seems to react, if she glances around, he will become angry—at her.
What a man wants, she thinks, is a woman whom other men want, but the woman must not seem to seek out this attention or even be aware of it.
She would never bleach her hair blond, she exults in her brunette beauty, knowing it is more real, earthier. Nothing phony, synthetic, showy about her.
Next birthday, forty. Maybe she will kill herself.
Though it’s eleven a.m. he has stopped for a drink at the Shamrock. Vodka on the rocks. Just one.
Excited thinking about the sulky-faced woman waiting for him: in the blue plush chair, at the window, nude except for high-heeled shoes.
Full lips, lipstick-red. Heavy-lidded eyes. A head of thick hair, just slightly coarse. And hairs elsewhere on her body that arouse him.
Slight disgust, yet arousal.
Yet he’s late, why is that? Something seems to be pulling at him, holding him back. Another vodka?
Staring at his watch thinking, If I am not with her by eleven-fifteen it will mean it’s over.
A flood of relief, never having to see her again!
Never the risk of losing his control with her, hurting her.
Never the risk she will provoke him into a tussle.
She’s thinking she will give the bastard ten more minutes.
If he arrives after eleven-fifteen it is over between them.
Her fingers grope for the shears beneath the cushion. There!
She has no intention of stabbing him—of course. Not here in her room, not where he’d bleed onto the blue plush chair and the green carpet and she would never be able to remove the stains even if she could argue (she could argue) that he’d tried to kill her, more than once in his strenuous lovemaking he’d closed his fingers around her throat, she’d begun to protest Please don’t, hey you are hurting me but he’d seemed scarcely to hear, in a delirium of sexual rapacity, pounding his heavy body into her like a jackhammer.
You have no right to treat me like that. I am not a whore, I am not your pathetic wife. If you insult me I will kill you—I will kill you to save my own life.
Last spring for instance when he’d come to take her out to Delmonico’s but seeing her he’d gotten excited, clumsy bastard knocking over the bedside lamp and in the dim-lit room they’d made love in her bed and never got out until too late for supper and she’d overheard him afterward on the phone explaining—in the bathroom stepping out of the shower she’d listened at the door fascinated, furious—the sound of a man’s voice when he is explaining to a wife is so callow, so craven, she’s sick with contempt recalling.
Yet he says he has left his family, he loves her.
Runs his hands over her body like a blind man trying to see. And the radiance in his face that’s pitted and scarred, he needs her in the way a starving man needs food. Die without you. Don’t leave me.
Well, she loves him! She guesses.
Eleven a.m. He is crossing the street at Ninth and Twenty-Fourth. Gusts of wind blow grit into his eyes. The vodka is coursing along his veins.
Feels determined: if she stares at him with that reproachful pouty expression he will slap her face and if she begins to cry he will close his fingers around her throat and squeeze, squeeze.
She has not threatened to speak to his wife. As her predecessor had done, to her regret. Yet he imagines that she is rehearsing such a confrontation.
Mrs. ——? You don’t know me but I know you. I am the woman your husband loves.
He has told her it isn’t what she thinks. Isn’t his family that keeps him from loving her all he could love her but his life he’d never told anyone about in the war, in the infantry, in France. What crept like paralysis through him.
Things that had happened to him, and things that he’d witnessed, and (a few) things that he’d perpetrated himself with his own hands. And if they’d been drinking this look would come into his face of sorrow, horror. A sickness of regret she did not want to understand. And she’d taken his hands that had killed (she supposed) (but only in wartime) and kissed them, and brought them against her breasts that were aching like the breasts of a young mother ravenous to give suck, and sustenance.
And she said, No. That is your old life.
I am your new life.
He has entered the foyer. At last!
It is eleven a.m.—he is not late after all. His heart is pounding in his chest.
Waves of adrenaline as he has not felt since the war.
On Ninth Avenue he purchased a bottle of whisky, and from a street vendor he purchased a bouquet of one dozen blood-red roses.
For the woman in the window. Kill or be killed.
Soon as he unlocks the door, soon as he sees her, he will know what it is he will do to her.
Eleven a.m. In the plush blue chair in the window the woman is waiting nude, except for her high-heeled shoes. Another time she checks the shears hidden beneath the cushion, which feel strangely warm to her touch, even damp.
Stares out the window at a narrow patch of sky. Almost she is at peace. She is prepared. She waits.