(c) The book stinks.
(3)
But he stopped there, because there was no third category, or if there was it didn’t really apply. All of the elements he had listed were valid but only one of them mattered. He did have other things on his mind, and they inevitably included Karen and Linda and might be said to include Melanie if one thought of her more as a metaphor for sex in general. And he had been too long from the book and had lost his feel for it, and blocking itself was its own cause, operating much like impotence; if you worried about your ability to write or to make love, the worry intensified the inability.
But the last item was the important one. The book stank. Or he thought it did, which came to more or less same thing. It was very difficult to go on with something in which you had to be totally involved if the suspicion kept gnawing at you that you were creating garbage.
Was it bad?
He hefted the manuscript, knowing he would have to read it again, knowing he didn’t want to. Of course he had read it Wednesday. He had thought he might be able to jump right back into it that morning, but when his fingers froze on the keys he knew he would have to read the book through and pick up its tones and highlights before he could go on. It hadn’t seemed bad then. It had pleased him. There were lines he did not remember having written, lines and exchanges which he knew were damned good. But after having read its 118 pages, he was still no closer to writing the next page.
He moved the typewriter to one side and centered the manuscript on the desk in front of him. However good or bad it might be, he was going to hate what he read today. He’d read the thing just two days ago and on this go-through he was sure to see only the weaknesses. Still, he had to do it Something might strike a spark, something might put him back into the book. And that was what it was all about, after all. You had to be inside what you wrote.
At first the process of reading was difficult in and of itself. His eyes scanned the pages but his mind kept slipping along other paths of thought. There were, indeed, many things to think about.
His coupling with Melanie Jaeger had been imaginative and intense, his responses sure and strong, his control certain. But it might as well have been happening to someone else. His body performed, experienced, fulfilled itself. His mind, blocked and frozen, was utterly remote. By the time her little red car pulled out of his driveway the details of their lovemaking were already receding from memory.
He went back to his bed, a bed now pungent with Melanie’s scent. He did not expect sleep would come but surprised himself by falling asleep almost at once. He slept fitfully, time after time pulling himself awake out of eternal variations of the same dream. Each time he dreamed of heights — a window ledge, a mountain precipice, a long steep endless flight of stairs, an idiot over an abyss. In each dream he would be paralyzed by fear but would force himself to edge his way along the window ledge, to descend the staircase a hesitant step at a time. He would reach his destination only to find that one window ledge led only to another, that still another flight of stairs confronted him. And then, as vertigo seized him and he was poised, about to fall, he would fight his way back to consciousness, sitting up in bed with his heart violent in his chest.
He had had these dreams for as long as he could remember, and only rarely would he recall dreams that did not have something to do with heights and falling. Sometimes the dreams held no terror and the endless descending of stairs was merely annoying and frustrating and slightly uncomfortable. On other nights, like this one, the terror was acute. And the fear would persist during the period of consciousness immediately following. If he ever fell in the course of a dream, if he ever failed to rescue himself in time—
He was not sure what the dream meant and rarely worried about them. Heights did make him uncomfortable, in or out of sleep, and he suspected that the dreams merely provided a mechanism for the unconscious expression of fear, any fear at all. Fear of death, fear of failure, any of the justified or irrational demons that curl in the corners of men’s souls.
When he awoke for the final time, the dream had no sooner receded than he thought of his daughter. She had been in several of the dreams, he seemed to remember this, although he could not recall what role she might have played. He remembered seeing her face, and that there had been a particular expression on it, but he could not remember anything about that expression.
He passed her room on the way downstairs, noting that her door was open. He paused on the stairs. The prospect of confrontation unsettled him, yet he never considered postponing the moment. He merely wanted to steady himself for a moment so that he would handle this well. It would be important to handle it well. Nor was it just a matter of handling things; at the same time he would have to be honest, and he was not entirely sure what words and attitudes on his part would constitute honesty.
She was alone at the kitchen table. She raised her eyes at his approach, and in the instant before she smiled he saw an expression on her face he had never noticed before. It struck him later that it might have been the face she had shown him in his dreams.
She said, “Hi. Is Linda coming down?”
“She didn’t stay.”
“Neither did Jeff.”
“Sleep well?”
“Okay. You?”
“Oh, not too bad.”
“She wasn’t quite what I expected.” The words came out less casually than she intended. “Linda, I mean.”
“How?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“She also wasn’t Linda.”
“Huh? You introduced—”
“No, you did, actually. You introduced yourself and told her she must be Linda, and she agreed with you.”
“Oh, wow! I just took it for granted—”
“No harm.”
“I mean that was pretty stupid of me, wasn’t it? I just thought — except I didn’t think.”
“Forget it.”
“Anyway, I’m sorry.”
She reached for her coffee cup, and he could very nearly read the unvoiced question in a comic strip balloon over her head. Then who was she?
He said, “Her name is Melanie Jaeger. She’s married; her husband runs the Barge Inn. I never spoke to her before last night. We ran into each other in Lambertville, and she came back here with me. It wasn’t anything important to either of us. It was uncomplicated and physical and we both seemed to require it.”
He couldn’t read her face. He wondered if he’d said too much, or if he ought to elaborate on what he’d told her. Why did he feel he had to justify himself?
She said, “I guess that’s why she wasn’t the way I expected Linda to be.”
“Why?”
“Oh, that it wasn’t important, that it didn’t mean anything. I got the impression — this is silly, what’s the difference what impression I got?”
“No, I’m interested.”
“Well, I had the feeling you and Linda had something heavy going on. And then meeting — what was name?”
“Melanie.”
“Well, I didn’t see her as your type, I guess. Don’t ask me why. And the general vibes. You know, it felt more casual than — oh, I don’t know.”
“‘Heavy,’” he said. “That’s a good word.”
“I probably overuse it.”
“You did get that impression about Linda and me? I didn’t know I’d said that much. You’re right. At least I think you might be. There’s a feeling of possibility between us.” He was not looking at Karen now, was talking as much to himself as to her. “I think I might be ready to... get involved. I’m not sure. And it’s questionable whether she’s ready for any sort of involvement. But what happened last night was certainly very light by comparison. Not heavy at all.”