jungle. I couldnt take my eyes off the little dark girl and the way, like a queen, she walked around and was even reduced by the sullen bartender to menial tasks such as bringing us drinks and sweeping the back. Of all the girls in there she needed the money most; maybe her mother had come to get money from her for her little infant sisters and brothers. Mexicans are poor. It never, never occurred to me just to approach her and give her some money. I have a feeling she would have taken it with a degree of scorn, and scorn from the likes of her made me flinch. In my madness I was actually in love with her for the fe canada goose mens chateau w hours it all lasted; it was the same unmistakable ache and stab across the mind, the same sighs, canada goose mens chateau the same pain, and above all the same reluctance and fear to approach. Strange
complexity of lights threatens him. He is being drawn into Philadelphia. He hates Philadelphia. Dirtiest city in the world, they live on poisoned water, you can taste the chemicals. He wants to go south, down, down the map into orange groves and smoking rivers and barefoot women. It seems simple enough, drive all nigh canada goose mens chateau t through the dawn through the morning through the noon park on a beach take off your shoes and fall asleep by the Gulf of Mexico. Wake up with the stars above perfectly spaced in perfect health. But he is going east, the worst direction, into unhealth, soot, and stink, a smothering hole where you cant move without killing somebody. Yet the highway sucks him on, and a sign says POTTSTOWN 2. He almost brakes. But then he thinks. If canada goose mens chateau he is heading east, south is on his right. And
you did nothing. How expensive is it?She looks at him curiously, with that alertness he had noticed rightoff, out by the parking meters.The apartment, he says.A hundred-ten a month. Then they make you pay for light andgas.And you dont do anything.She gazes into her glass, making reflected light run around the rimwith a rocking motion of her hands.Whaddeya thinking? he asks.Just wondering.W canada goose mens chateau ondering what?How wise you are. Right here, without moving his head, he feels the wind blow. So this is the drift; he hadnt been canada goose mens chateau sure. He says, Well Ill tell ya. Why dont you let me give you something toward your rent? Why should you do that? Big heart, he says. Ten? I need fifteen. For the light and gas. O.K. O.K. He is uncertain what to do now. They sit looking at the empty plate that had held a pyramid
head with an inviting twist. Harry?Angstrom.What do you do, Mr. Angstrom?Well. Im kind of out of work.Angstrom. Of course. Arent you the one who disappeared? TheSpringers son-in-law?Right, he replies smartly and, in a mindless follow-through, anoverflow of canada goose mens chateau coordination, she having on the drop of canada goose mens chateau his answerturned with prim dismissal away from him again, slaps! her sassyass. Not hard: a cupping hit, rebuke and fond pat both, well-placed on the pocket.She swiftly pivots, swinging her backside to safety behind her. Herfreckles dart sharp as pinpricks from her shocked face. Her leapingblood bleaches her skin, and her rigidly cold stare is soincongruous with the lazy condescending warmth he feels towardher, that he pushes his upper lip over his lower in a burlesqueexpression of penitence.A
the way Harry has. Ah, she says, and turns, and Eccles flinches, seeing her face taut to release a missile. I didnt want you;you wanted me.Or wasnt it that way? Yes of course it was that way, Angstrom mutters. Well then: wheres the comparison? Angstrom has hunched his shoulders over the coffee, drawn himself in very small, as if she has boxed him into a tiny corner. Oh Mary, he sighs, not daring move with canada goose mens chateau words. Eccles tries to defend him; he goes to the weaker side of a fight almost automatically. I dont think you can say, he tells Mrs. Angstrom, that Janice didnt imagine that her marriage was built on mutual a canada goose mens chateau ttraction. If the girl was such a clever schemer she wouldnt have let Harry slip away so easily. Mrs. Angstroms interest in this discussion, now that she knows she pressed her
WomansDaybackwards when a tall woman with backswept gray hair and somehow silver, finely wrinkled skin comes in and looks so familiar he stares. She sees this and has to speak; he feels she canada goose mens chateau would have preferred to ignore him. Who is she? Her familiarity has touched him across a great distance. She looks into his face r canada goose mens chateau eluctantly and tells him, Youre an old student of Martys. Im Harriet Tothero. We had you to dinner once. I can almost think of your name. Yes, of course, but it wasnt from that dinner he remembers her, it was from noticing her on to the streets. The students at Mt. Judge High knew, most of them, that Tothero played around, and his wife appeared to their innocent eyes wreathed in dark flame, a walking martyr, a breathing shadow of sin. It was less pity than morbid fascination
its still too early, the light is just a speckling senseless brightness and the sound is nothing but static. As she sits there watching the blank radiance a feeling of some other person standing behind her makes her snap her head around several times. She is very quick about it but there is always a space she cant see, which the other person could dodge into if hes there. Its the television has called him into the room but when she turns off the set she starts to cry immediately. She sits there with her face in her hands, her tears crawling out between her fingers and canada goose mens chateau her sobs shaking through the apartment. She doesnt stifle them because she wantsto wake somebody; she is sick of being alone. In canada goose mens chateau the bleaching light the walls and furniture are clear and regain their colors and the merging
the dome, tails of cirrus still hang pale and pure. As he starts down the steps he wonders,Wouldshehave?Lucy. Are ministers wives frigid? Like du Ponts. He goes down the mountainside on the flight of log stairs and through the park, where some people are still playing tennis, and down Weiser Street. He puts his coat back on and walks up Summer. His heart is murmuring in suspense but it is in the center of his chest. That lopsided kink about Becky is gone, he has put her in Heaven, he felt her go. If Janice had felt it he would have stayed. Or would he? The canada goose mens chateau outer door is open and an old lady in a Polish sort of kerchief is coming mumblin canada goose mens chateau g out of F. X. Pelligrinis door. He rings Ruths bell. The buzzer answers and he quickly snaps open the inner door and starts up the steps. Ruth comes to the