for the average reader seeking a few hours of escape.
Still, I was fascinated. Through the chapters, between the
lines of marching black words, a face seen at a party weeks
before kept drifting through my mind. A face which I had
been fighting to forget. . ..
Amber hair, long and straight.
“See that woman? Over there? That’s Marcus Aureli-
us. Writes those semi-pornographic books, like Lily and
Bodies in Darkness, those.”
Her face was sculpted, smooth planes and milky flesh.
Her eyes were green, wider than eyes should be, though
not the eyes of a mutant.
Her body was graceful, provocatively in vogue.
Her…
I ignored what he was saying about her, all the foul
things he suggested, and studied amber hair, cat’s eyes,
fast fingers touching that hair, clasping a glass of gin,
jabbing the air for emphasis in conversation….
When I was finished with the book, I went and made
myself some Scotch and water. I am not a good bartender.
I drank it and pretended I was about sleepy enough for
bed. I stood on the patio, which is slung over the side of
the small mountain which I own, and I watched the snow.
I got cold and went inside. Undressing, I went to bed,
nestled down in the covers, and thought about ice floes
and blizzards and piling drifts, letting myself find sleep.
I said, “Damn!” and got up and got more Scotch and
went to the phone, where I should have gone as soon as I
finished the last page of the novel.
I could not understand the logic of what I was doing,
but there are times when the physical overrides the cere-
bral, no matter what the proponents of civilized society
might say about it.
Punching out the numbers for directory assistance, I
asked for Marcus Aurelius’ number. The operator refused
to give me her real name and number, but I esped out and
saw it as she looked at the directory in front of her:
MARCUS AURELIUS Or MELINDA THAUSER; 22-223-296787/
UNLISTED.
So I said sorry and hung up and dialed the number I
had just stolen.
“Hello?”
It was a competent, businesslike voice. Yet there was a
sultriness in it that could not be ignored.
“Miss Thauser?”
“Yes?”
I told her my name and said she would probably know
it and then sounded pleased when she did. It was all as if
someone were possessing me, directing my tongue against
the will of the screaming particle of me that demanded I
hang up, run away, hide.
“I’ve followed your exploits,” she said. “In the papers.”
“I’ve read your books.”
She waited.
“I think it’s time I had my biography done,” I said.
“I’ve been approached before, but I’ve always been against
it. Maybe like the primitive tribesmen who feel a photo-
graph locks their soul away inside it. But with you, maybe
it would be different. I like your work.”
There was a bit more said, and it ended with me and
with this: “Fine. Then I’ll expect you here for dinner
tomorrow night at seven.”
I had suggested escorting her to dinner somewhere, but
she had said that was not necessary. I insisted. She had
said that restaurants were too noisy to discuss business. In
the course of the floundering planning, I had mentioned
my cook. And now she was coming here.
I went out and swallowed half a glass of Scotch on the
rocks (as a change from the Scotch and water), which
solved the problems I had just acquired upon hanging the
phone on its hook: a dry mouth and a bad case of the
chills.
It was stupid. Why be so afraid of meeting a woman? I
had met quite famous and sophisticated ladies, wives of
men of state and some of them statesmen themselves.
Yes, I told myself. But they were different. They were not
young and beautiful. That was where the core of my terror
lay, though that seemed just as unfathomable as anything
else.
At two in the morning, unable to sleep, I got heavily
out of bed and walked through the many rooms of my
dark house. It is a fine place, with its own theater and