She turned the key in the lock and swung open the door. The air was thick and bluish with hash smoke, but this was not unusual; she and Dan often relaxed with grass or hash, which both of them considered pleasant and innocuous substances. She reeled against the doorframe in sick horror at what she saw upon the Murphy bed.
Dan. Wonderful Dan. Her Dan. Dan, nude but for T-shirt and sox, doing things to the wholly nude body of Ricky P6rez, the super’s retarded teenaged son!
Her second fiasco started almost a year later, in the person of Hariey Fist Harley was a couple of years older than she, though only an undergraduate senior, due to the fact that he had done two hitches in the army between high school and college. He was not above average in height—only five-nine or so—but was solid and powerful, with long arms and such superb coordination that he was a shining light of the varsity hockey team, though he invariably spent a good bit of each game in the penalty box.
Harley’s pugnacity on the ice was infamous; he had assault-ed opponents with butting head, flailing fists, knees, elbows, forearms, stick, feet and skates and, on occasion, had downed his man by way of a flying body-block. Nor were his attacks limited to sport—his fraternity brothers trod most warily around him, especially on the frequent times he was found in his cups. But he was unquestionably masculine and Krystal needed that super-maleness, after Dan.
As his date of graduation neared, Harley was recipient of several attractive offers from many professional hockey clubs who recognized the box-office potential of his brand of savagery. Immediately he accepted the most promising and lucrative of the commitments, and asked Krystal to marry him in June and accompany him to Canada.
Even had she not already been accepted as an intern at a large, Baltimore hospital, Krystal could not see herself legally bound to Harley Fist. Too many things about him were unsettling. He was crude, and not even four years in a top fraternity had been able to impart sufficient polish to his rough edges to make him more than marginally acceptable in most social situations. Another thing that bothered her was his obvious relish in recountals of thoroughly sickening atrocities he had perpetrated or taken part in during his tours in Southeast Asia. But the most disturbing factor was the fact that, when he was not in strict training, he was never cold sober and, when drunk, he posed a deadly threat to everyone within reach.
As gently as possible, Krystal refused him, citing her past eight years of preparation and her coming internship. Reaching across the table, she took his big, scarred hand in both of hers and sincerely thanked him for the offer, then she finished her coffee and excused herself to go to her next class.
On the evening of the second day after her graduation, her mother and her father were helping her pack her furniture and personal possessions for the storage company to collect the following morning, since she would be required to reside in the hospital during her internship. In the window, the air-conditioning unit fought valiantly against the muggy heat While her mother boiled eggs and brewed tea in the minuscule kitchenette, she and her father sat carefully wrapping breakables in newspaper before stowing them in the china barrels.
The wall clock showed twenty minutes of midnight when there came the pounding on the apartment door.
“People don’t know what a bell is for?” asked her father as she arose and stepped over to open the latch. Leaving the burglar chain engaged, she peered out to see Harley Fist, swaying on his feet, his eyes red-rimmed, his face sullen and stubbled, a livid bruise discoloring one side of his chin and jaw.
Squinting, he peered at her. “Open up the gawdam door, Krystal. I came to give you another chance, ‘fore I leave for Canada.”
“My answer is still the same, Harley. Thank you so very, very much, but no.”
He leaned against the door and leered nastily. “Well, open up, anyhow, sweet chips. We can crawl inna bed and say bye-bye right.” He shoved his hips forward, adding, “Stick your hand down here and take a feel of what I got for you.”