Yet it had always had independent thoughts. Even in the good days of his marriage, there was always this doggy part of him noticing things, Francesca Hooton and the student Louise Germane and the girls in bikinis with leopard spots at the beach. Always this muffled little anarchic hope which he disclaimed, as if it had nothing to do with him.
Now, though, he thought deliberately about women he knew. Francesca Hooton. Eleanor Arthur. Louise Germane. Sex, not love. Love was out, the idea of another marriage inconceivable, but sex he could imagine. But there was a problem in every case. Francesca was married, and though her lawyer husband traveled a lot, Tony didn’t want a mess. Nor did he trust her signals. Eleanor Arthur’s signals were plainer, and he guessed her husband wanted her to be as free as he, but her nervous edges made Tony edgy, and he could not forget how much older she was than he. With Louise Germane he felt easy and comfortable, but she was a graduate student, and it was not good to get involved with them. Since no one suitable was available, he resigned himself easily.
A few days later the fair haired Francesca Hooton took him to the bookstore to help him get presents for Paula’s children. He liked her reticent smile and implicating eyes. Later he accepted a dinner invitation from George and Eleanor Arthur, buffet, a large group. He sat on the edge of the couch with Roxanne Furman talking about the department, glad Eleanor was too busy as hostess to pay attention to him. Shortly before Christmas he got a card from Louise Germane, a tactful note in elegant handwriting. It recalled his suspicion, merely academic when Laura was alive, that she had a crush on him.
He had Thanksgiving dinner with his brother Alex’s family in Chicago and managed not to cast gloom over the table. At Christmas he stayed ten days at Paula’s suburban house, twenty miles from New York. He liked Merton now, and could not remember why he had disliked him before. He went for walks with the children on the snowy suburban streets, he put on ice skates with them and watched as they tried their new skis on the hill slope above town. In his bedroom at Paula’s, in the northwest corner of the house, not much bigger than the bed, with a bookcase full of Paula’s books, he felt as if he were starting a new life. The room had new blue mountainy wall paper, it smelled of clean sheets, it looked out on a slope with bare trees. He made a plan.
He left on Thursday after New Year’s, going into New York on the train, refusing to let Merton drive him to the airport. He had a notion to resolve the sex question now, before going home. Once he was alone his nerves tightened up like electricity sparking in his chest. He felt it in the train along the river’s edge. His breath was tight as he signed the register. The hotel was shabby, near the center of the city. He said to himself, My name is Tony Hastings, professor of mathematics. I live elsewhere. I have been through a bad experience.
I will eat dinner in an expensive elegant place. He found a restaurant in a fancy hotel but had no appetite nor patience for the long waits between courses. After dinner he went out, timidly moving through the crowds, glancing at the sleazy windows, like a hunter trying not to be seen. He thought Ray and Lou and Turk are here, hidden in the crowd, they’ll see me. Record shops, food joints, pawn shops, arcades. He said, I am a sexual creature like anybody, but his mind was full of mugging and being rolled. Twisted into a kink in his mind. He went to a bar and surprised himself (though it was what he had planned to do) by sitting next to a woman on a bar stool. She was in her thirties, she wore a black dress with white flowers and a white bow, she had a round face and looked scared.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“You got a name?”
“Tony. What’s yours?”
“Sharon.”
She let him take her home in a taxi. He was nervously astonished by his success, since he had a deep fear of strangers and had never before picked up a woman in a public place. He was still afraid and wondered if he was going to his death, but her own anxiety relieved his fear somewhat. On the way she said, “In case you’re wondering, I’m not a prostitute.”
He wondered if that meant she would turn him away at the door. She said, “I’m a working girl, I work in a department store. I’m a singles.”
On the stairs she said she liked to meet new people, but most of the men she picked up were creeps. He hoped he wasn’t a creep. She hoped so too. She was forcing herself to talk. He noticed she was shivering. “Are you cold?” he said.
“Not really.”
She had a flat three flights up. When she got to the door she took a deep breath as if to force her shivering to stop. She glanced at him apologetically. “I get nervous,” she said.
He tried to put his hand on her shoulder. She slipped away, then grabbed his hand and pointed to his ring.
“Cheating on your wife, I see.”
“My wife is dead.”
She fished in her purse for the key and let him in. She told him to be quiet, her roommate was asleep in the other room.
Her own room was small. It had picture postcards on a bulletin board above her bed. She had an open wardrobe with dresses in it.
“What did she die of?”
“She was murdered.”
He sat on the bed and told Sharon about it. She sat motionless on the other chair, looking at him without expression. He told the story first in summary fashion, the main events. Then, though he didn’t mean to, he got into detail. He went back to the beginning and described it step by step. She stared at him blankly, listening.
“Gee mister,” she said. “You’re giving me the creeps.”
He was describing the mannequins in the bushes, and suddenly he identified the look on her face, staring at him while he talked. Terror. She was a stranger, but he was a stranger too.
He stopped, shocked himself. It was not the conjured visions of Ray, Turk, and Lou she was terrified of.
“Sorry,” he said. “I get carried away.”
She was looking around the room, like measuring distances.
After a moment he said, “Do you want me to go?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess you better.” Shivering again.
Once he was out in the hall she looked relieved. She leaned against the door, ready to push it shut if he changed his mind. “Did I scare you?” he said. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Shit,” she said. “Listen, I’m real sorry for your wife and kid, okay?”
He went down the stairs, relieved too.
On the way back to the hotel, Ray and Turk and Lou were in the street, in the shadows of doorways, the subway, watching him, while the big eyes of Sharon absorbed Laura and Helen into herself. She was killing his memory, defiling them.
So he brought it back. In the trailer Ray commanded them to strip. Turk held his knife to Helen’s throat while Ray forced Laura on the bed. Then Helen’s turn. When Laura yelled and charged, Ray smashed her in the head. Mother! Helen screamed. Screaming and crying, her mother destroyed on the floor, while Ray twisted her arm until it broke.
Something like that. Damn them to hell, Tony Hastings said.