“Yeah, well,” I said, winding up. “Anyway. What’s the thing? You look great.”
She laughed, coughed, and spat. “Forget it, Lou,” she said croakily. “I only do it for fun.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Sunny. Now where’s your mother.”
“Two days.”
“Uh?”
“In her room. In her room two days. She’s serious this time.”
“Oh, sure.”
I rebrimmed my drink and went inside. The only point of light in the hallway came from the mirror’s sleepless scanlamp. I looked myself over as I limped by. The heavy boredom and light stress of the seven-hour drive had done me good. I was fine, fine. “Happy?” I said, and knocked.
“Is that you, Lou?” The voice was strong and clear—and it was quick, too. Direct, alert. “I’ll unlatch the door, but don’t come in right away.”
“Sure,” I said. I took a pull of booze and groped around for a chair. But then I heard the click and Happy’s brisk “Okay” . . . Now I have to tell you that two things puzzled me here. First, the voice; second, the alacrity. Usually when she’s in this state you can hardly hear the woman, and it takes an hour or more for her to get to the door and back into bed again. Yeah, I thought, she must have been waiting with her fingers poised on the handle. There’s nothing wrong with Happy. The lady is fine, fine.
So in I went. She had the long black nets up over the sack —streaming, glistening, a crib for the devil’s progeny. I moved through the gloom to the bedside chair and sat myself down with a grunt. A familiar chair. A familiar vigil.
“Mind if I don’t smoke?” I asked her. “It’s not the lung-burn. I just get tuckered out lighting the damn things all the time. Understand what I mean?”
No answer.
“How are you feeling, Happy?”
No answer.
“Now listen, kid. You got to quit this nonsense. I know it’s problematic with the new role and everything, but— do I have to tell you again what happened to Day Montague? Do I, Happy? Do I? You’re forty years old. You look fantastic. Let me tell you what Greg Buzhardt said to me when he saw the outtakes last week. He said, ‘Style. Class. Presence. Sincerity. Look at the ratings. Look at the profiles. Happy Farraday is the woman of men’s dreams.’ That’s what he said. ‘Happy Farraday is the—’
“Lou.”
The voice came from behind me. I swiveled and felt the twinge of tendons in my neck. Happy stood in a channel of bathroom light and also in the softer channel or haze of her slip of silk. She stood there as vivid as health itself, as graphic as youth, with her own light sources, the eyes, the mouth, the hair, the dips and curves of the flaring throat. The silk fell to her feet, and the glass fell from my hand, and something else dropped or plunged inside my chest.
“Oh, Christ,” I said. “Happy, I’m sorry.”
* * *
I remember what the sky was like, when the sky was young —its shawls and fleeces, its bears and whales, its cusps and clefts. A sky of gray, a sky of blue, a sky of spice. But now the sky has gone, and we face different heavens. Some vital casing has left our lives. Up there now, I think, a kind of turnaround occurs. Time-fear collects up there and comes back to us in the form of time. It’s the sky, the sky, it’s the fucking sky. If enough people believe that a thing is real or happening, then it seems that the thing must happen, must go for real. Against all odds and expectation, these are magical times we’re living in: proletarian magic. Gray magic!
Now that it’s over, now that I’m home and on the mend, with Danuta back for good and Happy gone forever, I think I can talk it all out and tell you the real story. I’m sitting on the cramped veranda with a blanket on my lap. Before me through the restraining bars the sunset sprawls in its polluted pomp, full of genies, cloaked ghosts, crimson demons of the middle sky. Red light: let’s stop—let’s end it. The Thing Up There, it may not be God, of course. It may be the Devil. Pretty soon, Danuta will call me in for my broth. Then a nap, and an hour of TV maybe. The Therapy Channel. I’m really into early nights. . . . This afternoon I went walking, out on the shoulder. I don’t know why. I don’t think I’ll do it again. On my return Roy appeared and helped me into the lift. He then asked me shyly, “Happy Farraday—she okay now, sir?”