tired of Judy and Wallace Dorn, too. I think I’ll make some changes. And wouldn’t you say you’re an expense to me too?”
“That’s up to you to decide,” I told her.
“Brave Randy. So very casual about it. Get Mavis on the phone for me, dear.”
“Were you serious about … letting me go too?”
“Now you’ve spoiled it by getting anxious. You just be a good boy this coming week end. Then we’ll see. Get Mavis, and while I’m talking, you can leave for the day. Gil will be along soon. Poor dear, he just detests finding you here. I don’t think he likes you at all.”
Noel and I drove up on Friday, chatting with the faintly evasive formality of people who meet on a train. She looked very trim and pretty, but for me it was like looking at a picture of a girl I had known once upon a time. There was nothing personal in looking at her. The whole world was dry and vague and flat. The only vividness in the world, theonly reality, was a demanding body that was labeled Wilma and in which there would be another time of forgetfulness, of the great blindness that surpasses all regrets.
I timed the trip so that we could arrive early. Gilman Hayes had come up with Wilma in her car. They were there when we arrived. Wilma had told me the room we would have, so I carried our luggage in. I believe that she has told José that I am a person of very small importance and not to help me. He even mixes and serves my drinks with an almost detectable reluctance. It is a typical example of her small methods.
After Steve Winsan arrived I could tell by the way he kept glancing at me that he wanted a word with me. I suspected what it was. When he found a chance to ask me, I agreed. He was fool enough to treat me with contempt. I was firm with him, wishing all the time that Wilma had given him no hint of danger. And then he was shrewd enough to put his finger directly on Wilma’s personal threat to me. After vaguely threatening me. He is an alert and dangerous man, perfectly capable of using any weapon he can find. But I couldn’t think of any weapon available to him. Wilma had said he was out. And she is not the sort who changes her mind.
Mavis was as gushingly tiresome as usual. Judy Jonah was almost herself, but I sensed tiredness in her. Paul Dockerty seemed rather out of place in our little group. Once upon a time I might have been, also. Gilman Hayes was at his obnoxious best, insulting the ones he didn’t ignore. There was a lot of strain in the air. It looked like a bad week end. It made me nervous. I tried to keep remembering what the doctor had told me. Take it slow and easy. Try to relaxwhenever you can. But my doctor had never spent a week end with Wilma Ferris. She creates strain. She feeds on it. She deliberately creates cross-purposes, misunderstanding.
Wallace Dorn was his normal pompous self. Noel sat as though she had deliberately taken herself out of the group. Wilma is always almost excessively sweet to her. We drank and we ate and they played games. I wandered around and watched, and drank too much. Mavis danced with Gilman Hayes. It was not an entirely pretty thing to watch.
I was glad when the evening ended. Noel went to bed early. She was asleep in her bed when I went to our room. I undressed and lay in the darkness, feeling as if my nerves had poked out through my skin, waving in the night, sampling all the emotions that moved through the big house. I paired them off. Perhaps Steve had found his way to Judy’s room. Paul and Mavis would be rightly together. And Gilman and Wilma. All the dark blinding plungings, while I lay bloodless. The rustlings and kissings, while I lay dead. It was all there was. They gave you the big words, the philosophical words. Man’s destiny. And then you learned the only destiny was function. Be born, breed, and die. And of the three, there was only one over which you had control. Function of man. And, with us, an empty function. A sterile sensation, creating not.
“That’s up to you to decide,” I told her.
“Brave Randy. So very casual about it. Get Mavis on the phone for me, dear.”
“Were you serious about … letting me go too?”
“Now you’ve spoiled it by getting anxious. You just be a good boy this coming week end. Then we’ll see. Get Mavis, and while I’m talking, you can leave for the day. Gil will be along soon. Poor dear, he just detests finding you here. I don’t think he likes you at all.”
Noel and I drove up on Friday, chatting with the faintly evasive formality of people who meet on a train. She looked very trim and pretty, but for me it was like looking at a picture of a girl I had known once upon a time. There was nothing personal in looking at her. The whole world was dry and vague and flat. The only vividness in the world, theonly reality, was a demanding body that was labeled Wilma and in which there would be another time of forgetfulness, of the great blindness that surpasses all regrets.
I timed the trip so that we could arrive early. Gilman Hayes had come up with Wilma in her car. They were there when we arrived. Wilma had told me the room we would have, so I carried our luggage in. I believe that she has told José that I am a person of very small importance and not to help me. He even mixes and serves my drinks with an almost detectable reluctance. It is a typical example of her small methods.
After Steve Winsan arrived I could tell by the way he kept glancing at me that he wanted a word with me. I suspected what it was. When he found a chance to ask me, I agreed. He was fool enough to treat me with contempt. I was firm with him, wishing all the time that Wilma had given him no hint of danger. And then he was shrewd enough to put his finger directly on Wilma’s personal threat to me. After vaguely threatening me. He is an alert and dangerous man, perfectly capable of using any weapon he can find. But I couldn’t think of any weapon available to him. Wilma had said he was out. And she is not the sort who changes her mind.
Mavis was as gushingly tiresome as usual. Judy Jonah was almost herself, but I sensed tiredness in her. Paul Dockerty seemed rather out of place in our little group. Once upon a time I might have been, also. Gilman Hayes was at his obnoxious best, insulting the ones he didn’t ignore. There was a lot of strain in the air. It looked like a bad week end. It made me nervous. I tried to keep remembering what the doctor had told me. Take it slow and easy. Try to relaxwhenever you can. But my doctor had never spent a week end with Wilma Ferris. She creates strain. She feeds on it. She deliberately creates cross-purposes, misunderstanding.
Wallace Dorn was his normal pompous self. Noel sat as though she had deliberately taken herself out of the group. Wilma is always almost excessively sweet to her. We drank and we ate and they played games. I wandered around and watched, and drank too much. Mavis danced with Gilman Hayes. It was not an entirely pretty thing to watch.
I was glad when the evening ended. Noel went to bed early. She was asleep in her bed when I went to our room. I undressed and lay in the darkness, feeling as if my nerves had poked out through my skin, waving in the night, sampling all the emotions that moved through the big house. I paired them off. Perhaps Steve had found his way to Judy’s room. Paul and Mavis would be rightly together. And Gilman and Wilma. All the dark blinding plungings, while I lay bloodless. The rustlings and kissings, while I lay dead. It was all there was. They gave you the big words, the philosophical words. Man’s destiny. And then you learned the only destiny was function. Be born, breed, and die. And of the three, there was only one over which you had control. Function of man. And, with us, an empty function. A sterile sensation, creating not.
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