He looked at her and she knew the question he wanted to ask.
She said: “It was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.”
And it was.
They were silent.
And then she said: “Ralph?”
“What is it, darling?”
“Could you… I feel like a wanton.”
“What is it?”
“Could you… make it happen again?”
When the police came to the first-floor apartment at 69 Barrow Street they found a little brunette sitting on the floor in the bedroom with a razor in her hand. She was giggling hysterically to herself and mumbling baby talk.
What they found on the bed caused one of them to be thoroughly sick in the bathroom.
Another group of men came and took Maria to the hospital for the criminally insane. She became very well known there as the little girl who stole a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the dispensary and poured it into her vagina as penance for what she had done to her Mummy.
Still another crew of men shoveled what was left of Stella into a box. They took the box to the morgue and it stayed there for a few days. Then some other men took it away and buried it.
Ralph and Susan didn’t remain at 69 Barrow Street. Too many things had happened there that both of them wanted to forget. Besides, the Village represented a way of life that each of them had no desire to stick with.
They moved to an apartment on 94th Street near Riverside Drive. It wasn’t long before Ralph landed a good job doing covers for a paperback book outfit. It wasn’t too much longer before they had their first child, a boy.
But the Village remained and it will remain forever. Stella and Maria and Ralph and Susan have left it, but the other Sick Ones will be there forever. Luke and Betty Swinnerton will stick needles of heroin into their arms until they pop their way to hell. The others will smoke marijuana and drink too much and sleep with whoever asks them until they rot and die.
The Village endures.