He was made deeply lonely by the arrival of carnival time in Nice. Too many full moons, too much promise of Spring. Place Messena with its giant cartoon figures of Saint Nick and his nicky helpers, Popeye, Snoopy, Clark Gable, Roy Rogers, were a bit much. The New Moon had him by the balls. Ash Wednesday got his goat. He had the howling Quadragesima blues. Lent let him down. The First Quarter moon drove him mad till the Second Lent. He walked a lot nights now — just for the lights, the carnival spirit… Hard to imagine himself not followed — or that he wasn't in pursuit…
She had a clear triangular face. “Do you speak French?” “Un peu.” She was an exchange student at the University of Nice. About twenty-one. Knew his name. Was that grounds for celebration or the cue to split. This was in his little cafe on rue du Marché. Barbara Ann Reynolds. Would he come up to the Fac and give a reading? Professeur Jean-Claude Bouffault, one of her professors, she felt sure, would support the idea. Then it was suddenly set for the last week of February. Posters in Old Nice announced the forthcoming event. A week after he'd met Barb, this: at three in the morning the phone rang: It was she. She was weeping Little Orphan Annie-tears. The girl was hysterical. Mason told her to calm. She got louder. Screaming: “Come and get me! — ” she shouted into the phone. “He's after me! H-he raped me! I'm, mmmm, l-locked in—” (she screamed again). And Mason yelled: “Where are you?” only to get this response: “He's trying to break the door in—” (and another scream, and—) “Oh please, come and get me!” “What's the address? “I don't know — I, uh… ” Was this a set-up? For real? A tactic of the Observation Squad? He'd heard about such tactics. If for real, why'd she selected him? Surely she must have friends at the university. He couldn't even call and send the police. Mason pushed the light switch. Light the color of Billy the Kid-gunsmoke filled the room. A crackpot maybe? The feeling and sound of his own heartbeat was that of a scalawag viciously kicking repeatedly — with coldjaw, unbroken pride — a blood-slick fence on a candescent day. But what to do now? Clumsily he stepped into his stiff jeans. The phone rang. Barbara Ann again. “I got away.” Gasping. A high ring in the nightwood of her voice. Echo of a sleeper awaking. It dislocated him. Something fishy? Was she another spy after him? She explained that she'd been picked up by the police while running along, God who could remember the boulevard. Maybe Dubouchage. He saw a full moon swinging loosely above her flight. The cops stopping her. Every shadow was too long… When Mason entered the harsh light of the station he knew he was getting in too deeply. He took her away. She was in bad shape: red-eyed. Swollen face: out of focus. Her whole presence warped. The story went this way: she'd been in a bar in rue Droite, the Arab section. Everything was okay for a while with the two American guys and their French friend. Then Jackie went off with the Frenchman leaving her. Well, she and Jackie weren't all that close anyway. But there she was stuck with these two boys she didn't even like. She'd thought the French guy pretty nice. She was drunk. The year the place the season all fell like a landslide down her consciousness. “I made the mistake of trusting that sonofabitch and he raped me.” (The other had gone off alone on foot.) She went into convulsive heavings as she talked. Mason drove with no sense of direction. He felt helpless, hurt by her pain. She'd gone willingly to the American's apartment. She did not expect to be raped. She wept. She'd fought him violently. He overpowered her, pinned her down, entered her like a Boy Scout knife. She knew dimly then that no living organism ever wanted to be penetrated. Mason thought about this and its potential.
Lately some woman was turning up in his bed in the night. A chain smoker, he smelled her breath. Could the other hotel guests hear her screams, smell her? Despite himself his fingers seemed always to find the warmth and wetness between her thighs. A hog in armor, he climbed the mountains of her, and tasted the snowflakes falling from her peaks. He fizzled fast though. His heart wasn't in it. Resisting the glow of her red light, he endured her kicking — her yelps. Was she making a movie or something? She huffed and clawed. She squirmed and gagged. Bit his neck. Her toenails dug into his cheeks. “Oh, I'm coming—” His sense of flunkum was complete in minutes. Yet he plowed on: an after-midnight farmer watching buzzards circle against the hazy moon. A cagey “impostor,” he hid out in the valley of her chomper. She bit him. “Ouch!” “Sorry.” Then she whipped out a can of chicken soup…