Itinerant drunkards and curious neighbors sometimes saw him at night, near the docks, and the slaughterhouses a block away, gathering the wood of broken crates to carry back to the fireplace which squatted at one end of the sub-basement room. Benny had stopped in every doorway looking for the name, and could not find it. Then he saw a figure, knew it a block away, and ran toward it, to take an arm and stop him before he could step into one of the doors and disappear. — Thank God I found you! Benny said, when he caught him standing under a streetlamp with broken wood under his arm. — Where have you been? It's been months, we haven't seen you in the office for months.
Benny was an anxious man in gray flannel, single-breasted, a silk foulard tie which caught the wind, a cigarette in his hand.
— What's happened? What are you doing? Are you all right? You look fine, you look better than I've ever seen you, but wait, wait.
— But wait, wait a minute for me, listen to me, are you. have you done any plans, have you done any more of them?
— Bridge plans. don't you know who I am? Bridge plans, I have to have another one, I have to submit another one now.
— But listen, I know it, I hardly know what I'm saying, but listen. We have one up now, a very important one, and if I bring you the location and the problem will you do it?
— But listen to me. It's months since I've submitted anything. Once. Listen, I submitted a plan of my own and they laughed at me, they laughed at me, they thought it was a joke, they said, You're not serious with this are you Benny? After the Cooper City viaduct? and the bridge at Fallen Ark Gap? You used to be a genius Benny, what happened to you? Wait, listen to me, listen, just one more. Listen, old J. W. died last month, did you know that? He died. Don't you see? I can be a vice-president, and I'll never have to draw a plan again, a vice-president in charge of design, and I can do that. I can do that. You know I can do that. But it all depends on this, it all depends on this one new job, to show them.
— Just this one, this last one. And I'll pay you for this one, I know I never paid you before, but I'll pay you for this one, I'll pay you whatever you want.
— Listen maybe I never thanked you right for all you did, but you know how much it meant. I can pay you now. I can pay you. You've got nothing to lose, and I've got everything.
— Everything, and I… and you. Look at you. What is it? What are you doing, what are you doing to yourself? You like fine, I said you look fine but not like you, fine for somebody else but not like you.
Benny reached out to take his arm again, and a nail in one of the broken crates tore his sleeve.
— You're the only one who can do this for me. You're the only one who can save me. One more. And we can forget the whole thing, as though it never happened.
The silk foulard stirred on the wind. Then Benny turned away too, leaving the cone of light empty, to east and the city where the flood caught him and the ebb bore him away, as though from an empty beach and no trace on it at the feet of the figure pausing for an instant to look at the tide's recession and then going on, gathering driftwood.
When tsther came in alone she paused in the entrance to the living room; then she jumped, startled. — I didn't see you, I didn't see you standing there. She turned on a light, and stood in the middle of the room taking off her hat, looking at his back. — Posing there, she said finally, and dropped her hat on a table, — like he used to. Like an old man.
Otto turned from his reflection in the glass window, streaked into visibility by the spring rain. — Yes, he said, looking to the floor between them. — More than a year.
— What?
— And he used to warn me against youth. Did you know that? The trap of being young. He warned me about it. He said that youth is a trap that.
— Please, I don't want to hear any more about it.
— But. I just can't believe, a whole year's passed,and I'm still.
— Otto, if you spend all your time fretting and. fooling around…
— But I've got to get hold of some money.
— And this obsession you have about money.
— Yes but money, you need money to…
— You seem to take not having it as a reflection on your manhood.
— But money, I mean, damn it, a man does feel castrated in New York without money. And this, I mean you say he puts plenty in your checking account, but it, I mean for me to, well not take it out and use it but to let you actually pay.
— Otto, you know I've never understood why you've never looked up your father. If he lives right in New York, and you've never seen him. And I should think he could give you some money.
— But I don't.
— And it would probably help clear up this obsessional neurosis you have about.
Gordon: When we lose contact with the beloved one, we lose contact with the whole world.
— What are you writing?
— Just something I thought of. For this play. Otto had followed her in, and he sat on the foot of the bed which had become a refuge, no longer a beginning but a desperate end, no longer a vista of future conquest but sanctuary where failure in all else made this one possession unbearable, unearned and come too soon. — It's all like a play, a bad play with nothing but exits and entrances. And your work, your novel, he mumbled contentiously. — You haven't.
— My what?
He looked up at her. — Who is this guy Ellery that you keep seeing?
— He's in advertising, and he's very interested in analysis. Haven't you thought of going into.
— Analysis! Haven't we been over that enough?
— I was going to say advertising.
— Advertising! Do you think I've sunk that low? And what. what do you go out with him for anyhow? You're going out tonight?
— Yes.
— But why?
— It does me good to be seen in successful company.
Otto cleared his throat. He was staring at the floor between them. He raised his eyes, slightly, enough to reach her feet flattened on the floor with her weight. He mumbled, — Sometimes I wish I was old, an old man.
— Otto?
— What.
— You. Oh nothing but, I liked you better a boy, she said from the closet where she stood putting on her slip:
The women who admonish us for our weaknesses are usually those most surprised when we show our strength and leave them. -I… — We… — You…
— Esther?
— Ellery?. Oh, Otto? Otto went away, says Esther from the closet where she stands, taking off her slip. — He went to Central America, to work on a banana plantation.
Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out — My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendant in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tent-maker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth still walks barefoot.