Welcome to the monkey house by Kurt Vonnegut Page B

down. His ears were hot crimson.
    "She really scared you stiff, didn't she?" said Hinkley.
    Smiles bloomed on the faces of the small audience that had drawn near on one pretext or another. Fuller appraised the smiles, and found that the old man had left him only one weapon —utterly humorless good citizenship.
    "Who's afraid?" he said stuffily. "I'm not afraid. I just think it's a problem somebody ought to bring up and discuss."
    "It's sure the one subject nobody gets tired of," said Hinkley.
    Fuller's gaze, which had become a very shifty thing, passed over the magazine rack. There was tier upon tier of Susannas, a thousand square feet of wet-lipped smiles and sooty eyes and skin like cream. He ransacked his, mind for a ringing phrase that would give dignity to his cause.
    "I'm thinking about juvenile delinquency!" he said. He pointed to the magazines. "No wonder kids go crazy."
    "I know I did," said the old man quietly. "I was as scared as you are."
    "I told you, I'm not afraid of her," said Fuller.
    "Good!" said Hinkley. "Then you're just the man to take her papers to her. They're paid for." He dumped the papers in Fuller's lap.
    Fuller opened his mouth to reply. But he closed it again. His throat had tightened, and he knew that, if he tried to speak, he would quack like a duck.
    "If you're really not afraid, corporal," said the old man, "that would be a very nice thing to do—a Christian thing to do."
    As he mounted the stairway to Susanna's nest, Fuller was almost spastic in his efforts to seem casual.
    Susanna's door was unlatched. When Fuller knocked on it, it swung open. In Fuller's imagination, her nest had been dark and still, reeking of incense, a labyrinth of heavy hangings and mirrors, with somewhere a Turkish corner, with somewhere a billowy bed in the form of a swan.
    He saw Susanna and her room in truth now. The truth was the cheerless truth of a dirt-cheap Yankee summer rental—bare wood walls, three coat hooks, a linoleum rug. Two gas burners, an iron cot, an icebox. A tiny sink with naked pipes, a plastic drinking glass, two plates, a murky mirror. A frying pan, a saucepan, a can of soap powder.
    The only harem touch was a white circle of talcum powder before the murky mirror. In the center of the circle were the prints of two bare feet. The marks of the toes were no bigger than pearls.
    Fuller looked from the pearls to the truth of Susanna. Her back was to him. She was packing the last of her things into a suitcase. She was now dressed for travel—dressed as properly as a missionary's wife.
    "Papers," croaked Fuller. "Mr. Hinkley sent "em."
    "How very nice of Mr. Hinkley," said Susanna. She turned. "Tell him—" No more words came. She recognized him. She pursed her lips and her small nose reddened.
    "Papers," said Fuller emptily. "From Mr. Hinkley."
    "I heard you," she said. "You just said that. Is that all you've got to say?"
    Fuller flapped his hands limply at his sides. "I'm—I—I didn't mean to make you leave," he said. "I didn't mean that."
    "You suggest I stay?" said Susanna wretchedly. "After I've been denounced in public as a scarlet woman? A tart? A wench?"
    "Holy smokes, I never called you those things!" said Fuller.
    "Did you ever stop to think what it's like to be me?" she said. She patted her bosom. "There's somebody living inside here, too, you know."
    "I know," said Fuller. He hadn't known, up to then.
    "I have a soul," she said.
    "Sure you do," said Fuller, trembling. He trembled because the room was filled with a profound intimacy. Susanna, the golden girl of a thousand tortured daydreams, was now discussing her soul, passionately, with Fuller the lonely, Fuller the lonely, Fuller the bleak.
    "I didn't sleep a wink last night because of you," said Susanna.
    "Me?" He wished she'd get out of his life again. He wished she were in black and white, a thousandth of an inch thick on a magazine page. He wished he could turn the page and read about baseball or foreign affairs.
    "What did you