THE FIRST TIME Patsy saw Hank Malory’s apartment she grew irritated and walked around with her arms folded, pouting a little with the desire to throw everything in it out. It was a small two-room second-story apartment in a chunky brick house on Albans Road. As an apartment, it was totally drab. The floors were bare; there were no curtains and curtains were badly needed, what passed for a kitchen table had an awful yellow plastic top and spindly legs that weren’t even even; some of his books were piled on an ugly white bureau, others on an old brown card table in the living room-bed room, where there was a black portable typewriter and a wastebasket full of blue books and beer cans. The bed was made but it had an ugly green bedspread, and the couch was a sagging blue object with the center cushion faded white. Surprisingly, the place was quite clean, but the cleanness only emphasized the drabness, and Patsy was annoyed. Hank Malory ought not to acquiesce to drabness, even if he was poor. She had an urge to bring him some red curtains and a bright print or poster of some kind.
They had walked over one evening to see him, for he and Jim got on well. They were both new to graduate school, and while Hank was a good deal less nervous about it than Jim it was only because he was not the sort of person to be very nervous about anything. The first time Hank asked them over they found him sitting on a little stair landing in back of the apartment looking down on the tiny back yard. He was dressed in Levi’s and a blue shirt and was barefooted. He had been reading his eighteenth-century assignment, which happened to be the Essay of Dramatic Poesy. It was still early fall—Patsy wore Bermudas and a white blouse. As she came up the steps her eyes came level with his feet and she noticed that he had corns on both his little toes.
“You don’t take very good care of your feet,” she said. “I bet you wear cowboy boots when nobody’s looking.”
Hank looked surprised and held one foot aloft to see what was the matter with it. “I never noticed,” he said, which struck her as a limp remark. It annoyed her when people she was prepared to like let themselves be taken aback by her observations; but then Hank was not very taken aback—he was just not much on repartee. She noticed later that he did have an old crumpled pair of boots in his closet. He had only one suit and one sports coat and not very many shirts. Patsy was a tireless snoop and went in and snooped the apartment thoroughly while Jim and Hank sat on the back porch drinking beer and helping each other straighten out the dramatic preferences of the speakers in the Essay. When she came back outside Hank had put the eighteenth-century anthology down and she found his place and snooped in the essay a bit. Reading the places where people stopped in books was always sport. After a paragraph or two of Dryden she sniffed and closed the book.
When she sniffed, Hank grinned at her. “You prefer McCall’s to Dryden,” he said. “I saw what you were reading this afternoon.”
Patsy blushed, taken aback herself. She read the women’s magazine’s idly but regularly at the Bissonnet drugstore, and though she said she did it for the horror of it she had come to enjoy them and knew it; but the disconcerting thing was that Hank had seen her when she had not seen him and for a minute she could not remember how she had looked. She seldom went out looking dowdy, but occasionally, when the afternoon heat made the apartment like the inside of a clothes dryer, she wandered over to the drugstore for a Coke and a magazine, sometimes in an old shift, sometimes in jeans and a shirt.
“I read everything,” she said and brightened, for she remembered that she had been quite nice that afternoon, in a red dress that Dixie had prodded her into buying on one of their excursions. She had worn her hair swept up on her head. She was not sure it had been becoming, but it certainly had been cool.
A day or two later she saw him and again she was dressed nicely and he rather shabbily. She went right over and sat down just around the corner from him and when he saw her he said, “Hi,” and scooted over two seats so they could chat. Patsy ordered a cheese sandwich and showed off outrageously about Tristram Shandy, which he was having to read and didn’t like and which she had read and loved.
“You have a good memory for novels,” he said enviously. What he really noticed were the curling wisps of black hair at her temples, and the curve of her lips on the milkshake straw, and the way she kept looking down into her glass instead of at him. What Patsy kept noticing was that he was tall and a little awkward. She was five six and a half and he was only six two, yet he was always leaning down a little and smiling at her. It made her feel strangely diminutive and feminine and flustered her a little. When she had first come up the steps and seen him on the landing she had noticed how long his calves were.
She soon concluded that he was pleased with her and didn’t care at all that she had a better memory for novels than either he or Jim. They only chatted for fifteen minutes, but somehow the chat disquieted her. She was not still inside herself for two hours when she went home. She tried to put her finger on what it was that she liked about him and couldn’t. It certainly wasn’t his manners, or his general appearance. The only really appealing thing about his face was the dent on the bridge of his nose, which for some reason she liked. He was normally so silent and noncommital that she really had no clear notion of what it was he liked about her, other than her general appearance, and from then on when she went to the drugstore she took some pains with herself, in hopes that if she met him she could tell from his response what he liked about her. She dressed simply but nicely and read either The New Yorker or the Atlantic or Vogue or some paperback, quality usually, until she had met him several times and knew they were friends and that he really didn’t care what she read. Then she went back to reading whatever was at hand. He usually read Sports Illustrated and scarcely had grounds for feeling superior, in any case. Soon, without really thinking about it, she knew when his classes were, what days he had seminars and what days he didn’t, and the times when he would most likely be at the drugstore. If she didn’t bump into him there when she expected to she would go home feeling slightly put out, her day lessened. They both soon noticed that they would just as soon not see each other in other places, such as at graduate parties or beer busts. It invariably made them both edgy. It was frustrating in some way, whereas a chat at the drugstore was always pleasant and helped make a day.
Eddie Lou, the little middle-aged frizzle-haired short-order cook who could turn out hamburgers with her eyes shut, knew there was something illicit afoot months before Patsy would have allowed such a thought anywhere near the front of her mind. Eddie Lou was from East Texas and had been left by two husbands, both shiftless no-counts with roving eyes; and every time she saw Hank and Patsy looking happy and glancing at each other between sips of something and chatting about books she would never read or picture shows she would never see, the East Texas soul in her stiffened and she burned their hamburgers, if they were having them, or left the grilled cheeses on too long, or neglected to give them pickles, which she knew Patsy liked. It annoyed her all the more that they were usually so absorbed in each other that they ate the burned hamburgers as if they were delicious. What made matters even worse, in Eddie Lou’s opinion, was that Patsy had the sweetest husband in the world as it was. Jim was her special pet. He joshed her a lot and had spent the summers of his boyhood in Gladewater, where Eddie Lou was from, so they had much to talk about. To Jim she was especially nice. She kept his milkshakes thick and gave him potato chips whether he had them coming or not. She was convinced calamity was not far off and she was determined to help him through it in whatever way she could.
Eddie Lou’s forebodings, though justified, were quite premature. All through the fall no improper word passed between Patsy and Hank, and no improper tone was struck. So reticent was Hank, so little prone to reveal whatever emotion he might feel, that Patsy even became a little frustrated. Their chats were, if anything, too proper. She felt his regard for her to be a little too slight and too impersonal. Often after a chat, sweating under her dress from the humid fall heat, she felt that pregnancy must have already taken its toll of her looks; but then, when she thought about it carefully, she knew that wasn’t true. Her looks clearly pleased him, but that they did was really small consolation. Probably her looks were the only thing about her that pleased him. He probably thought of her as no more than a pretty bagatelle, someone who would do to chat with, to ogle a bit, perhaps even to flirt with, but only in the lightest way.
He told her nothing of himself, nothing of his past; he was so quiet and his temperament was so level, apparently, that it was even hard for her to tell what sort of mood he was in. It was particularly hard for her to accept such reticence, since Jim had always been the opposite. Jim had told her his entire life story fifteen minutes after he met her for the first time. They had talked about their pasts for hundreds of hours, exploring every minute wrinkle in their relatively unwrinkled childhoods. There was something in Hank’s face, in his walk, his accent, his name even, that bespoke a background very different from her own—some poverty, some vulgarity, something Pete Tatum would know about. He sometimes reminded her of Pete; like Pete, he had a kind of presence that had more to do with physical confidence than with intellect. He was fairly smart, but what she liked about him was not that he was fairly smart. She liked the way he was, and it frustrated her that he wouldn’t share more of himself with her. She felt that if he accepted her at all it was merely as the pretty wife of a friend, someone who could brighten a seat at the drugstore counter.
It was not until almost Christmas that a different quality came into their relationship. There was a Christmas party at the Hortons’. The boys had been packed off to stay at Emma’s mother’s, and all the more likable graduate students had been invited. The Hortons loved to give parties and were only inhibited by their lack of funds; in this instance the Carpenters were co-hosts. The Hortons furnished the place and the dip, and the Carpenters furnished the liquor and a goodly supply of records. Flap was drunk before the party started and made a slight fool of himself by going around with mistletoe and kissing all the women smackingly. Everyone enjoyed him; without his joviality the party might never have got moving at all. He had got drunk early to right himself with his principles, for after much brooding he had done the diplomatic thing and invited not only the Duffins but the department head as well. He hoped neither would come, but as luck would have it the department head and his wife showed up almost immediately and the Duffins a bit later in the evening.
The department head was an aging Spenserian named Timothy Ivan—a man retired from active scholarship, as he frequently said with a sigh. The graduate students jocularly referred to him as Loving Mad Tim, because he loved them all but could only very occasionally remember any of their names. The high point of his scholarly career had been a collaboration on a prose version of The Faerie Queene for use in high schools, and his chief pleasure in life was his collection of arrowheads. His wife was a petite Philadelphian who had stoically endured thirty years in Houston. She came in wearing her fur coat, as all had feared she would. The temperature was in the sixties but Mrs. Ivan seldom got even that good a chance to wear the coat and seldom missed one when she did. She lived for the rare years when the MLA held its convention in Philadelphia—then she could go home for Christmas. Flap shuffled a bit and kissed her on the cheek and she was pleased and said good things about him to her husband when they left thirty minutes later.
“Whew,” Flap said. “I thought they were going to stay.”
“They’re not so bad,” Patsy said. “I kind of like them.” She was sitting on the couch. Hank was there but was chatting with Emma by the dip bowl. Jim was in a very good mood. He had given a report that afternoon on After Strange Gods, and Duffin had praised it highly. Jim was dancing with Clara Clark, the good-looking redhead whom Flap had said wouldn’t last. She was from Santa Barbara and was very good at dancing teenage dances. Elvis Presley, one of Flap’s musical passions, was on the phonograph.
“There’s a nice limber girl for you,” Flap said, admiring Clara.
“Humph,” Patsy said. “You should see me do that, if I wasn’t pregnant.”
Not being able to dance when her husband was dancing made her feel a little out of it, but after a while Hank and Emma and Kenny came over and they all got in a hot argument over Terry Southern and she felt in it again. It was an argument over the relative merits of Candy and The Magic Christian; Flap, in his usual fashion, dominated it by being the only one who had read both books. Kenny’s beard had grown shaggier and he was staying high a lot to protect his creativity, as it were. “I don’t like Terry Southern much,” he kept saying.
“I liked his piece on the twirling convention,” Patsy said. “I don’t think he likes women, though.” She was more and more inclined to judge novelists by whether or not she felt they liked women.
Kenny didn’t answer. He was staring fixedly at Clara Clark’s pelvis, which was twisting and gyrating only a few feet away. The conversation drifted on, but Kenny kept staring at Clara’s pelvis, as if he hoped, by staring with sufficient concentration, to bring her clitoris into view.
While they were all yakking, the Duffins appeared at the door, surprising everyone. They had clearly dressed down for the occasion, Bill in an old corduroy coat with leather patches at the elbow, Lee in a blue sweater and skirt; but even so they managed to look like two jet-setters arriving at a hoedown. All the men stood up, the dancing stopped temporarily, and the conversation stopped too. Flap let his mistletoe lie and did not kiss Lee Duffin.
“Well, let the merriment resume,” Bill said with a slight bow. It resumed, but with a different tone. It became a little more frenetic and took on a slightly forced quality, as if everyone in the room were performing for the tall smiling slightly sardonic man and the trim woman. In a few minutes it worked out that Jim was dancing with Mrs. Duffin and Bill Duffin was dancing with Clara Clark. Dancing with a famous professor threw Clara slightly off and made her look like she was trying too hard. Patsy began to feel depressed the minute the Duffins arrived, and watching Jim dance with Lee only made her feel the more depressed. Lee danced intently, moving around Jim with swoops and darts, like a thin desert bird of some kind. She was smiling, but it was a taut smile; she moved well, but her movements too were taut. She moved around Jim watchfully, as if he were a small snake that she might pounce on at her leisure.
Jim was obviously having a great time dancing with her and Patsy was suddenly filled with repugnance, not so much for him but for the whole gathering—the whole business. It reminded her a little of the party in Phoenix. Maybe Jim was just naturally attracted to older women. Lee fascinated him, just as Eleanor Guthrie had. So where did that leave her? She was too heavy to dance and no one was paying the slightest attention to her, not Kenny, not Hank, not even Flap. Clara and Lee were both prettier, probably, or sexier, or something. She felt very alone and wanted very much to be home by herself. Impulsively she rose and slipped past the dancers and went into the Hortons’ bedroom. The bed was piled with sweaters and purses and she sat down on the floor by a bookcase, her back against the bed. Something inside her was sinking like a stone, sinking far down. She didn’t understand anything, didn’t love anyone, wasn’t loved, really, never had been, never would be. The Hortons’ bedside books were at her elbow: a paperback of The White Nile, Northrop Frye’s Fables of Identity, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Emma’s high school copy of Wuthering Heights—hex favorite book—a gray Modern Library Giant of Jane Austen’s novels, a mixture of smaller Modern Library books with their titles faded off, and several paperbacks. Patsy pulled out a red paperback of the Kama Sutra and leafed through it, growing even more dispirited by the thought of people doing all those abstract and acrobatic things with one another’s genitals. She was quite sure none of them would work with hers; the simplest things barely worked with hers and anyhow the whole thing was sickening, she felt like she would never want to touch a living soul again. Everything in life was disappointing and irritating and worked out to make her lonelier. She didn’t even want to cry, she just wanted to be home.
Hank Malory walked past the bedroom on his way to the john and stopped and looked in at her. She had a green ribbon in her hair and it was slightly awry. When she raised her arms to straighten it she noticed him. She felt too lonely to be embarrassed, and looked up at him solemnly.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
Patsy shrugged. Her depression was too obvious to deny. “I’m just not in the mood for this party,” she said. “I guess I’ve become antisocial. I don’t know.”
“I’ll drive you home,” he said a little awkwardly. For weeks he had been wanting to be alone with her and he was made nervous by his own desire. He was afraid too much of it would get into his voice.
But Patsy jumped at the chance. “Oh, I wish you would,” she said, stuffing the Kama Sutra back in the bookcase. She had been dreading having to ask Jim; he was having a good time and would resent having to leave. When they went back into the living room Elvis Presley was still on and Jim was still dancing with Lee Duffin.
Well since my baby left me
I’ve found a new place to dwell . . .
Emma saw that Patsy had her sweater on and came over, looking worried. “Sick or bored?” she asked.
“Equivocal,” Patsy said. At that moment she didn’t feel close to anyone and was hoping Emma wouldn’t ask her to stay. Emma didn’t. While Hank was in the john Patsy stood in the doorway watching Jim and Lee dance. Bill Duffin came over, a drink in his hand.
“How are you?” he asked.
“In the process of departing.”
“I hope you and Jim will come to dinner sometime soon,” Bill said. “He’s turning into a fine student. Between the two of us we might make a scholar of him yet.”
“What do you mean, the two of us? I have very little to do with it.”
“Sure you do,” Bill said. “You have to become a complete bitch, like Lee. Bitches like Lee are the making of scholars like me. You’ve made a fine start—just don’t mellow.”
“Do you get a sexual thrill from being offensive to women?” Patsy asked. “I really don’t understand you.”
“I was just paying you back for saying I looked like Eddie Fisher,” Bill said and walked away.
Patsy was shaking a little with annoyance and went over and made Jim stop dancing for a moment. “I’m feeling poorly,” she said. “Hank’s going to run me home. Have a good time, okay?”
“Okay,” Jim said, a little surprised. He started to ask if she wanted him to come home with her. He would not really have minded leaving, but Patsy had turned away and Lee was waiting a little impatiently for him to resume their dance. He did, but he felt slightly out of kilter, as if he might have failed to do something he should have done.
Outside, walking down the driveway with Hank a few steps behind her, Patsy’s eyes seeped a little. Duffin’s insult had a delayed kick, and she felt frustrated. She resolved that there would be no dinners at the Duffins’, no encounters with the Duffins; Jim would not have Duffin as his major professor if any effort of hers could prevent it. Hank’s car was an old maroon Oldsmobile of about the same vintage as the Ford.
“You’re smart,” she said. “You didn’t take Duffin’s seminar, did you? I wish my husband hadn’t.
“I’ve only seen the man twice and he’s insulted me both times,” she added.
Hank nodded sympathetically but didn’t ask her about it. She thought ahead to the dark apartment and felt lonely again. She wished he were more talkative. She felt like talking to one person, not to a party of people. But he just wasn’t very talkative, and they were almost to the apartment.
“Want to drive a little?” he asked unexpectedly. “Or have some coffee or something?”
“Sure,” she said. “Whatever you’d rather.”
They drove out a freeway to where it ended, on the southwestern edge of Houston, and circled underneath it and drove back in. It was a clear December night, not clear enough that stars could be seen but clear enough that the brightly lit buildings downtown were visible. Patsy wished they were going to Galveston—it would have been pleasant to walk on the beach on such a night. Instead, Hank took her to a place called Yum-Yum’s Lounge, on Richmond Avenue, a bar much favored by graduate students. It was in a small dilapidated shopping center, next to a taxidermist’s; it had deep booths and served sandwiches. Hank and Jim had been there frequently but Patsy had never been and was disconcerted at first because the jolly blond barmaid clearly regarded her as Hank’s date, or did until he introduced her as Patsy Carpenter, Jim’s wife. “Jim’s wife!” the barmaid said. “He never told me he was married. And me all set to ask him for a date.”
Seeing herself changed back into a wife in the woman’s eyes had a settling effect. The booth was cozy and all the things that had depressed her at the party were easily forgotten. She brightened, found that she was hungry, and had a Swiss cheese sandwich. “God, I was about to get morbidly depressed,” she said, eating the last bite of crust. “Why is it you never come to our house?”
“I study too hard,” Hank said.
Patsy looked at him gravely, a little annoyed. He never really spoke straight to her. He either kidded her or spoke past her in some way.
“If you’d ever really talk to me we could be friends,” she said.
“You’re too pretty to be friends with,” he said, and for once he didn’t sound like he was kidding. He even looked at her, which was disconcerting. She had a sudden sense that her hair was wrong and took the ribbon off, so that her hair hung loose at her shoulders.
“I’m not too pretty to talk to,” she said. “We could swap out. I’ll tell you about my childhood and you tell me about yours.”
Hank shook his head. “Mine’s too literary,” he said. “Some writer should have written it. What was that young guy’s name who disappeared? The Texas writer?”
“Oh, Danny Deck,” she said. “Don’t tell me he should have written it. I didn’t like his book very much. The Hortons knew him, did you know that? They were very good friends.”
Suddenly the thought that Hank might really want her struck her. What he said about her being too pretty to befriend had sounded strange, unlike anything he had ever said to her. She didn’t know what to do and began to chatter.
“My childhood was too unliterary,” she said. “I had a nice straightforward right-wing Dallas upbringing. I didn’t even have any traumas. My sister got to have all the traumas. Somehow I think that if I had got to live in Fort Worth I would have had traumas and been morbid about my childhood, like everybody else. Every second person I know seems to have come from Fort Worth and had a dark childhood.”
“I lived there four years,” he said. “Who else do you know from Fort Worth?”
“I did know this rodeo clown and his wife. His name was Pete Tatum. I don’t know if we’ll ever run into them again. His wife is named Boots.”
“You know Pete Tatum?” he asked, looking genuinely surprised for the first time since she’d known him.
“Sure. Do you?”
“His first wife was my aunt,” he said. “My Aunt Marie.”
Patsy was amazed. It was the first time it had occurred to her that it really was a small world, in the sense in which the phrase was normally used.
“She lives in Dumas now,” Hank said. “Her husband owns a grain elevator. I never got to see her much. She was my daddy’s sister and I was raised by my mother’s sisters. They didn’t like Aunt Marie very well.”
They were silent a minute. “Let’s have a little music,” he said. Patsy was agreeable and they went back to the jukebox together. He gallantly offered her first choice of songs and she chose “California Dreaming.” He played “The Gates of Eden,” and it became her turn again. She was about to play a Rolling Stones song when she noticed that there were a couple of Hank Williams songs on the jukebox. “Want to hear your namesake?” she asked. He shrugged, and she played “Cold, Cold Heart” and “The Lovesick Blues,” and they went back to the booth and watched the beer foam drying on their glasses while the songs played. They both felt slightly melancholy but comfortable together. When they went outside they discovered that a norther had just struck. The trees were rustling over the garage when he walked her up the steps to the apartment. Patsy was thinking how strange it was that Hank and Pete should have that connection, a woman named Marie whom neither of them had seen, probably, in many years. And what was stranger still was that she, who had never seen the woman, had found herself in a kind of harmony with two men who had known Marie so differently, one a nephew, one a husband.
“I think Pete mentioned your aunt,” she said, trying to get the key in the lock. “It was about them breaking up, but I don’t remember what he said.”
Just as she got the key in the lock the phone began to ring. She rushed in to get it, missed the light switch, and answered it in the dark. It was Jim, sounding very worried.
“Gosh, have you been calling?” she asked. “Hank and I just had a beer at a place you and he go to. Yum-Yum’s.”
“I just called once,” Jim said. “I was afraid you might have had car trouble.”
“No. I’m sorry I left so abruptly. Your mentor insulted me again, I’m afraid. I do wish you’d find another mentor. You’re sweet to call. How’s the party?”
“Drunken. The Duffins just left. I’m looped enough that I might as well stay until it’s over.”
“Do,” she said. “Apologize to Emma for me. I not only left, I took away Hank. Tell her I’ll send him right back.”
She didn’t push about Duffin—Jim would just resent it. She turned on the bed light by the phone, feeling suddenly awkward. Her husband had disappeared from her mind for an hour—though it seemed like he had been gone for days and weeks—then he had reappeared, his pleasant self. He had sounded very concerned about her. She had been about to ask Hank in. She had an urge to make hot chocolate and wanted him to drink it with her. Perhaps he would really talk to her if she kept trying. Despite Jim’s concern, she still felt lonely. But mightn’t he be jealous if she didn’t send Hank back to the party as she had promised? The idea of Jim jealous was so strange and new that she could hardly imagine it. Except for the one strange moment in Cheyenne when he had seen her throw Pete Tatum a kiss, he had never had the slightest reason to be jealous of her. She felt very uncertain and took a comb out of her purse and combed her hair quickly. It was an entirely new problem, and new problems made her frantic. She and Hank had just begun to get comfortable with each other, and she hated to rush him off. She went back to the door and switched on the porch light. He was sitting on the railing of the landing, his hands in his pockets. The new norther whistled around the corners of the garage.
“You didn’t have to stand out there,” she said. “You could have come in where it’s warm.”
They looked at each other through the screen but could not see each other clearly. It was only when he turned his head and looked away from the garage that the light shone on his angular face. “I don’t call this cold,” he said. “You ought to try a wind like this out where I come from.” He got off the rail, as if to go, but paused a minute on the top step looking toward the country where he came from—the land of northers.
“Homesick?” Patsy asked. That was how he looked.
“I don’t know what for,” he said.
“I was going to ask you in for hot chocolate but I told Jim I’d send you back to the party,” she said.
She had meant to ask him which he would rather do but found she couldn’t. She stood inside the screen, silent and a little impatient. She was not sure he had even heard her, and she did not feel like repeating her remark. He kept looking out into the darkness and it annoyed her; she felt her impatience swelling, and yet when he turned suddenly to face the door she felt a tremor, almost a moment of fright. She looked at him with longing, but all she longed for was someone friendly who liked her, someone to drink hot chocolate with. He looked at her with desire—she knew it, even though she couldn’t see him clearly. If he had stepped inside she would have had to make the hot chocolate and it would have all become scary.
“I’ll run on back to the party,” he said. “Enjoyed the beer, though.” He waved and started down the steps, turning up the collar of his suede coat as he went. Instead of feeling relieved she was once again very impatient with him.
“I wish you’d get another coat,” she said, putting her head out the screen. “I’m sure you could afford a better coat than that.”
Hank turned and looked up at her, quite surprised. “What’s wrong with this one?” he asked.
“Everything,” she said hotly. She was as surprised at her remark as he was. She had not been thinking of the coat until she saw him turn up the collar. Once she had given her views on it she had nothing else to say, and he had nothing to say in retort. There was a strange silence. They looked at each other across the landing, both of them irresolute.
Hank finally grinned and lifted his hands, at a loss for a solution. “You think I should burn it?” he asked.
“Yes, please burn it,” she said, feeling ridiculous. He waved and went on and she went inside and sat on the john for a long time looking at The Greek Myths without reading a word. Once her feeling of ridiculousness diminished she felt strangely good—warmer toward the world than she had in some time. When Jim came in at three she was still awake, reading Frazer. He wasn’t too drunk but he was drunk enough to go immediately to sleep. She pulled his arm across her and held his hand against her swelling stomach, feeling quiet, protected, protective, and lucky. Somehow the few odd awkward moments with Hank made being in bed with Jim seem all the cozier. The norther grew stronger, strong enough to rattle the windows of the apartment, and the harder it blew the warmer and drowsier Patsy felt.