“The ad?”
“The girl without a date. In her room.”
“Oh. That girl.”
“But a friend tipped her off and everything changed. Toothpaste or mouthwash or deodorant. Or the right bra. I always thought that went a little more to the heart of things. The right bra. Those ads didn’t mince around. The little profile ads on the back page of the newspaper.”
“Books aren’t really so important,” Carl said. “I used to think so but I don’t any more. I don’t read as much as I used to. I’m getting out of the habit. For a while I was reading Proust. I read and read, but I never got through more than the first couple of books. I’d start a sentence and by the time it finished I’d have forgotten the beginning.”
There was silence. “What part of the country do you come from?” Barbara murmured, after a time.
“Oh, we came originally from Denver. When I was about three we moved to California. My mother died while we were in California. I went to live with my grandparents. I moved around. I was living in St. Louis when I went to work for the Company. They moved me from the domestic branch over here. I applied for overseas work when I signed up.”
“How long ago was that?”
“About five years ago. Good Lord. I’ve been working for the Company five years.”
“How old were you when you started?”
“Eighteen. Almost nineteen.”
“Why did you want to work for the Company?”
“The draft, partly. I was tired of school. I had been going to the university for a while. I wanted to get a job. And I wanted to get a job that would keep me out of military service. Sometimes I think I made a mistake, but at the time I really wanted to give up school and work.”
“Why?”
“Well, I had been going to school so long. I was tired of being a school boy. I wanted to earn my own way. Support myself. Get out in the world.”
“Don’t you miss school?”
“I had already begun to lose faith in books.”
“That early?”
“I lost faith in my books and my microscope and slides and Bunsen burner. My maps and notes and papers.”
“Why?”
“Well, I was in a period of internal turmoil. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I had been interested in a lot of things, but they never turned into anything that was important. They never seemed to get out of the hobby stage. I found myself in a world that was made up of quite different things than my slides and notes and books. There didn’t seem to be any connection between—between all the things in my room and what I ran into outside.”
Barbara sat up. She took out her cigarettes and lit up. Carl watched her, turning his head on one side.
“How about you?” he said.
“Me?”
“Where did you come from?”
Barbara laughed. “From Boston.”
“I thought you had a New England accent! I was right.”
“It’s not a New England accent. It’s not anything. Damn it—why do people always think they’re so clever when they figure out where you come from?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Boston people talk completely differently from me.”
“I’ve never been in Boston. What’s Boston like?”
“Like any other town, I suppose.”
“What do you remember about it?”
“Not much. A few impressions.” Barbara leaned back again, against the warm grass. She folded her arms, cigarette smoke drifting up. “When I think of Boston I remember the Common. I remember that first.”
“The Boston Common?”
“It’s like a park. A public park. When it was hot in the evenings, in the summer time, we used to go out and sleep on the grass. Like this. Warm and dry. With the sky full of endless stars.”
“Was that the kind of weather you had there?”
“Not all the time.” She laughed. “Sometimes we had the worst possible weather. One night I was walking home. I had a job as a waitress after school, in a one-arm beanery, near the campus. It was about midnight. All of a sudden it began to rain. Great sheets of rain, coming down, blowing along, trees bending, signs blown over. I started to run. I ran and ran until I came to the Common, all dark and soggy. I ran right across it Finally I came to a wall of some sort. I hid under the edge of the wall, where the rain didn’t come. Water was pouring down on all sides of me. Nobody was out. Nothing but rain. I got out my cigarettes and my matches. I was just beginning to smoke. I lit every match, all twenty, one after another. They were water logged, I guess. None of them lit. There was water dripping off me, my hair, my clothes. And no one around. Only the rain and the grass. And the wall behind me.”
“That’s what you remember about Boston?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever get home?”
“Finally.”
Carl considered. “Strange how things like that will stick in your mind. Bits and fragments from your past. Snatches, like tunes. Phrases. A few words.”
Barbara smiled. “Do you have a past, Carl?”
He nodded.
“How old are you? Twenty-three?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“You were eighteen when you began to work for the Company. You said that was five years ago.”
“Oh.” Carl rubbed his chin.
“What’s the matter?”
“I wondered if I looked twenty-three. Sometimes I think I look older, and then sometimes I’m sure I look just like some kid. When I go to shave in the morning I always get a sort of a shock. I think I’ll see a kid of fourteen, with long shaggy hair and—and skin trouble.”
“Do you want to be fourteen again?”
“No! I really don’t. I’m glad it’s behind me, all those years. My boyhood.”
“You said you were interested in things, then.”
“Yes. I had books, and drawings, and my microscope, and my electric motor, and the chemistry set. But there was a sort of unhealthiness about it. I was so much involved in things, running from one thing to another. Like ants running around a hot stove. Faster and faster. I had a whole roomful of things, boxes and piles and heaps. A desk of things, every drawer stuffed full. Maps on the walls. Rows of books. I stayed home from school all the time, to work on my things.”
“Was that so bad?”
“There was something unhealthy about it Inside my room— And outside, everything was different. Two worlds, my room full of things, and the things outside.” Carl stared off into space, frowning. “It was hard for me to get across. Over to the outside things. There was something about them that didn’t make sense. At least, the things in my room made sense. I knew what they were for. Why they existed and did what they did. But the things outside—”
“What happened outside?”
“I remember one thing. There was an old cat, a worn out old yellow tomcat that lived at the house behind us. All torn, ears cut, one eye missing, nothing left of his tail but the bone and a few patches of fur. He was old. Finally he got sick and lay out in the yard, their yard. The people who owned him never even went near him. He lay out in the long grass with the sagging porch swing and the beer bottles, with all the flies buzzing around him.”
“I saw him out of the bathroom window, lying in the grass, gasping and dying. I went to the refrigerator and got some ground meat my mother was saving for supper. I took the meat out to him. The grass was long and wet. I remember how it felt under my feet, against my pants. It was hot—the sun was bright. I sat down on a board in the grass and pushed the food toward the cat. I was about nine years old, I think. I held out the food, but the cat was dead. For a long time I sat looking down at him. His one good eye stared sightlessly up at me. Flies crawled all over his skinny body, over his skin and fur, into his mouth. I would have dug a hole and buried him, but I didn’t think of it. A boy of nine wouldn’t know that. After a while I went back inside the house, and put the meat away.”