As soon as we stepped out of the elevator, Carol said she smelled something funny, amp; after a moment I smelled it too. We all braced ourselves as she unlocked the door to her apartment, amp; sure enough, that's where it was coming from. Held my breath amp; ran into the kitchen, where I noticed that the pilot light had gone out amp; that the rusting old hulk of a stove in there was hissing like a snake. It had probably been leaking for hours, amp; the entire apartment was filled with gas. If any of us had lit a match the whole place would have gone up.
Rosie amp; I opened all the windows while Carol went downstairs to wake the super. He turned out to be a grumpy old Cuban who acted as if the entire thing were Carol's fault. He took one look amp; said a pipe had broken somewhere above the shutoff valve. He'd have to get some men to fix it in the morning.
Rosie insisted on putting us up at his place. So there we were, piling into a taxi at one thirty A.M. amp; heading uptown, Carol fussing about her stove but maybe just as relieved that everything had worked out this way, amp; me cursing to myself, while Rosie, all unaware, beamed at us from the front seat.
He lives in one of those ugly old buildings off Riverside Drive, way up in the hundreds near Columbia. The apartment itself is really much too big for him – two huge bedrooms, high ceilings with plasterwork and ornamental molding – amp; thanks to rent control the old bastard probably pays next to nothing for it. He told us he'd been living there for more than thirty years, but he certainly hasn't done much with the place. The kitchen was pleasant enough – all china-ware, teacups, amp; painted little trays, like the haunt of some dotty old lady – but the rest of the place barely looked lived in. Nothing on the walls but a few framed art prints – calendar stuff – and a crude, obscene-looking kid's drawing he said was by a little boy he knew. For someone who's traveled as much as he claims, he doesn't seem to have acquired anything very interesting; you certainly can't accuse him of being a materialist. The only books I came across were the usual bestseller-type things – I'm OK, You're OK, How to Be Your Own Best Friend – amp; a few dusty Victorian sets that you see in old ladies' parlors amp; no one ever looks at anymore. Carol seemed a bit disappointed; I guess she'd been expecting a museum.
Rosie apologized for the place's looking so 'spartan' amp; said something about not being home much. Until a year or two ago, apparently, he spent most of his time abroad or in the library – 'sometimes both,' he said. I kept picturing libraries amp; reading rooms all around the world, and in each of them, somewhere in the corner, that same wizened little face.
By then the two of us were close to dropping off, amp; I could see exactly what was coming; in fact, I should have seen it the moment that buzzer sounded back in Carol's apartment. Somehow, without meaning to, I had cast myself in the dumbest role of alclass="underline" I was the horny but thwarted lover in one of those exasperating Howard Hawks comedies, condemned to spend the night alone. And sure enough, Rosie proceeded to stick me on a sofa in the anteroom adjoining his, with Carol in the spare room amp; his own fat little self parked neatly between us.
So I had to go to bed celibate again, with a premature hangover, a bad mood, amp; a useless hard-on. I couldn't get my mind off Carol -the sight of her half out of those flimsy white Woolworth's panties, looking like a skinny little farm child with her small ass amp; slim white thighs amp; solemn expression, but also incredibly sexy. Boy, do I want her badly.
Somehow, despite it all, I slept without a single dream amp; got up feeling just as lousy. Rosie was puttering around making breakfast amp; whistling some tuneless little song – he looked awful; I think he'd taken out his false teeth – but Carol was more distant than ever. Later, as we rode downtown together on the subway, she seemed preoccupied with her apartment amp; her job. Clearly it was time to say goodbye. So I got off at Forty-Second Street, sat through half a porn film called The Coming Thing, amp; took the bus back here to Poroth Farm.
Book Five: The White Ceremony
Then there are the Ceremonies, which are all of them important, but some are more delightful than others.
Machen, The White People
July Seventh
Just as well that Jeremy was gone. Carol needed time to get her thoughts in order. That he'd had her so worked up last night, that she'd been naked, exposed before him, and so obviously excited, ready to yield – somehow it all seemed far more intimate than if they'd actually gone to bed together. And to think that, the entire time, he'd had his own pants on! The whole thing was just too embarrassing. It almost made her angry.
It also made her angry to return to her apartment and find the gas still on. 'Couldn't the men fix it?' she asked the superintendent, who stood grumpily in his first-floor doorway with a Spanish station on the radio behind him and something spicy frying in the kitchen.
'They comin' round this afternoon sometime,' he said, impatient to return to his meal. 'These guys, they're very busy. You come back tonight, everything be fixed.'
'You mean they haven't been here yet?' said Carol. 'That's funny, somebody's sure been up there.'
Back upstairs, careful not to breathe in the vicinity of the kitchen, she looked around. No, she had obviously been wrong; she could find nothing out of place, nothing missing or stolen (not that there was anything worth stealing, she reminded herself), no real sign that anyone had been here since last night. The sunlight streamed harmlessly through the open windows; the apartment still reeked of gas, and she was reluctant to stay more than a minute or two. Idly she straightened up the stack of papers in her bedroom, more of Rosie's articles to plod through. Myths of the Cherokee (Washington, 1900). Description of a Singular Aboriginal Race Inhabiting the Summit of the Neilgherry Hills (London, 1832). They would be here when she got back; it was nice hot to have to look at them now. She would change her clothes, go off to work, and try to forget everything that had happened last night.
Holding her breath, she entered the kitchen, rinsed out a few glasses – no sense letting the repairman think she kept a dirty house – and wiped off the counter. In the living room she fastened back the curtains, wondering if it was safe to leave the old TV set unguarded, and decided that no one would want it anyway. If those workmen took anything, she could report them somewhere. She noticed several strands of black hair on the rug near the foot of the couch. There's always something of Rochelle's here, she thought, as she picked them up between two fingers and released them out the window. They drifted downward on the summer breeze, floating like a spiderweb.
The library, despite the heat, was unchanged from the day before; she felt as if she'd never left. There were fewer grad students this time of year, but their elders, those pale wraiths who haunted the long tables and magazine racks each day, took no notice of the season; they had no beaches or resorts to flee to when the weather grew warm. There were the usual piles of ragged-looking books to put away, and she did so silently for most of the afternoon, but her mind wasn't on her work. She was dunking of her apartment: of the super – how rude some men were, they certainly did what they pleased! – and of Jeremy, who'd made her feel so vulnerable. Was he laughing over her right this minute? Did he think of her at all? Maybe to him she was just another conquest. And she was, she told herself, there was no sense denying it; she had been conquered last night. She thought of Rosie – and quickly pushed the thought from her mind. He was the one man who treated her kindly; she didn't want to think about what she had seen in the restaurant last night, it was too ugly…