Summer Crossing by Truman Capote

in the country and, crossing a bridge that spanned a narrow crystal river, he looked down and saw, as though they were riding below the surface, two white horses attached to a wagon, their reins twisted around the arms of a young girl, whose drowned broken face glimmered under the dancing water; he took off his clothes, thinking he would cut her loose, but he was afraid, and there she remained, wavering, unfulfilled, beyond him in death as Grady seemed in life.
    He gathered his clothes on tiptoe, then crept out the door; there was a pay-phone in the hall, he dialed her number, as usual no one answered. A swarm of kids buzzed around him on the stoop downstairs, hey, mister, give me a cigarette, and he barged through them, swinging his elbows, and one smart aleck, a skinny girl in a moth-eaten bathing suit, said hey, mister, button up your fly, and she ran after him, pointing. Jesus, he said, and grabbed her by the shoulders: her hair flared, floated, her face, pasty with terror, seemed to undulate, like the face of the girl in the river, to blur, as Grady’s did when he tried to see her hard, whole, as his own, and his hands went limp, he ran across the street, thekids hollering: pick on somebody your own size. And who would that be, somebody his own size, when he felt so small and mean?
    Seating himself at the counter of a White Castle, he ordered orange juice; it was too hot for anything else, not that he minded the heat, for in weather like this, New York, disowned by half its population, seemed to belong as much to him as to anyone else. While waiting for the orange juice, he rolled back his sleeve cuff and examined a stinging fresh tattoo that circled his wrist like a bracelet. It had happened the night before, banging around town with Gump; Gump and his damn reefers, let him smoke a stick or two and he always came up with some crazy idea, such as: I know a character will give us a swell tattoo for free. Gump knew some characters all right, this one lived in a coldwater flat in Paradise Alley, and he lived alone except for six Siamese and a stuffed python called Mabel: oh my dear boys, you should’ve known your old mother in those days, when Mabel was alive! What mad camps we were, so jolly, such fun, everyone adored us, several kings and all the queens ha ha, yes, we played the world together, dancing, dancing, twelve weeks in London alone, Waldo and Sinistra, Sinistra, that was Mabel’s stage name, poor darling, she’d be alive this very minute if it wasn’t for those filthy airlines, it really is too sick-making;you see, they wouldn’t allow Mabel on the plane, this was in Tangier and we’d had an imperative call to Madrid, so I simply wrapped her around me and put on an overcoat; everything was fine until somewhere over Spain she began to squeeze, I know how she felt, poor smothering baby, but it was absolute agony, Mabel getting tighter and tighter until finally I simply fainted, whereupon they hacked her in half with a knife, said it was the only way they could get me loose, those butchers! Ah, well—a flag, a flower, your sweetheart’s name? This isn’t going to hurt a bit. But it had hurt; G-R-A-D-Y, the letters of her name, blue and red and linked with a line, were still afire, so he bought a bottle of baby oil, and sat on an open-top Fifth Avenue bus massaging it into his wrist. He got off the bus near the Frick museum; walking park-side and under the trees, he started downtown, his eyes darting over the diamond-squared stones, an old habit that meant he was searching for lost valuables, money: twice he’d found rings, once a twenty-dollar bill, and today he stooped to pick up a nickel; straightening, he looked across the street, and he was where he wanted to be, opposite the McNeils’ apartment house.
    Look at Mr. Fat Ass: the doorman, swallow-coated, cotton-gloved, who does the bastard think he is, puffing like a pigeon? Ah, no sir, Miss McNeil is not at home, ah, no sir,I’m afraid she left no