She read The Nice and the Good, The Long and the Tall, The Quick and the Dead, The Beautiful and Damned. She read The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, A Temporary Life, The Life to Come and Other Stories, Life Studies, A Sort of Life and If Life’s a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? She read Dreams of the Dead, Dead Man Leading, Die, Darling, Die, From a View to a Death, and The Death of Ivan llych and Other Stories. She read Labyrinths, Scruples, America, Sadness, Despair, Night, Love, Living. She soon learned that titles were often deceptive. A few of the books were dead—they were empty, there was really nothing inside. But some were alive: they spanned out at you seeming to contain all things, like, oracles, like alephs. And when she geared herself to wake early they were still open on the table, well aware of their power, coolly waiting.
One thing the books couldn’t do, though: they couldn’t make her start dreaming again or otherwise subdue her sleep.
Nor did they quite explain how you lived with other people.
All week three things hovered—the thought of Amy and what she had done, the thought of Prince and what he might do, and Alan. Alan was the third thing that hovered. Pallid Alan hovered on the staircase when she left her room each morning. He loitered there like an aimless phantom, condemned always to wait on the wrong side of the doors of the living. You’d think he had been there all night from the way he quavered ‘Morning, Mary’, as if without constant practice his voice was cracking up altogether. He hovered on the steps of the squat, waiting for Mary and shouting down to the deep-sleeping Russ, who valued a few extra minutes in bed more than the elementary breakfast which Alan and Mary usually ate with Charlie, Alfred, Vera, Jeremy and Paris.
Alan hovered behind her at work, using his eyes. He sent his eyes out from the small cubicle to stand guard behind her at the sink, and Mary could feel them smoothing along her back. He hovered outside the cloakroom when it was time to go home, and she felt his force field throughout the evening, in the communal sitting-room where the television played, even when she went out alone into the small garden where you were also welcome provided you took care about other people’s flowers, vegetables, weeds and stinging-nettles. And he hovered last thing at night as Mary climbed her own stretch of stairs, saying the words ‘Good night, Mary’ or ‘Sleep well’ or ‘God bless, Mary’ as if they sealed a day of vain but honourable striving in a cause that would now have to wait until dawn, finding him once more on the stairs again. Alas, poor ghost, thought Mary.
He never did or said anything. It was Russ who was always doing and saying things. Old Mr Garcia was more affectionate and demonstrative than Alan was—and even the languorous Antonio openly favoured her with his yawning caresses. But Alan did nothing. Russ gave her painful tweaks on her bottom, tickled her chin, kissed her throat and licked her ears, and talked obsessively and bewilderingly about his elaborate plans for her, or hers for him.
‘I don’t know when I can fit you in, girl,’ he would say, ‘but it could be soon. I generally make it a rule not to go all the way onna first night. But you know me. Get a couple of Scotches down me and I go all giggly—I’ll be putty in your ands!’
‘Russ,’ Alan would say; but that was all Alan said.
Mary didn’t understand. Perhaps none of it mattered that much anyway. She just hoped that Alan would be all right, that he wouldn’t break anything.
Early on Friday evening Mary was ominously summoned into Norman’s room to receive a call on the pay-telephone. Norman gestured towards the instrument with a flourish that almost bowled him over and then wobbled from the room, closing the door behind him. Mary had watched people use the telephone several times and was pretty confident that she could handle it. The bandy, glistening dumb-bell was heavier than she had expected. But she had expected the call: she knew who this must be.
‘Yes?’ said Mary.
A thin voice started talking. Telephones were clearly less efficient instruments of communication than people let on. For instance, you could hardly hear the other person and they could hardly hear you.
‘I can’t hear. What?’ said Mary.
Then she heard, in an angry whine, ‘I said turn it the other way up.’
Mary blushed, and did as she was told.
‘Boy, you’re a real woman of the world, aren’t you,’ said Prince.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mary.
‘Ah forget it. No, actually, you’d better not, come to think of it, Christ.’
‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘It’s the sort of thing I know. Now listen, Mary—did you go there?’
‘Yes, I went there.’
‘Any joy?’
‘No, it was very sad.’
‘It didn’t take you back.’
‘No, I’m still here. It’s all changed there.’
‘What? No, I mean did you have any luck?’
‘Well, I’ve this room now.’
‘Jesus.’ She heard him stifle a snort of laughter. ‘Better pick my words here. Did you remember anything, Mary.’
‘Only the dress.’
‘The address?’
‘No, I didn’t remember anything.’
He paused. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Hell. Hey look, why don’t you come out on the town with me tomorrow night?’
‘Because I don’t want to,’ said Mary.
‘You’re interesting, Mary, I’ll say that for you. I’ll give you that: you’re interesting. I’m afraid I’ve got to insist about this. Tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at work.’
‘What do you want from me?’
‘I just want to show you the sights, that’s all.’
‘What sights?’
‘You’ll see. Goodbye, Mary.’
‘Goodbye,’ said Mary.
She rejoined Alan on the front steps. They were watching the children play, or Mary was. Alan was too busy trembling and pulling his hair out to have much attention to spare, Mary reckoned. The boys swirled up and down the road in the patterns determined by their energy, watched by the girls from the thrones of the facing garden walls. Cruelty came easily to the boys and found its salute in the girls also. Mary had once seen tiny, stammering Jeremy flattened up against a car by one of these callous-bodied young champions; Jeremy’s face was sick and smiling as the boy held him and turned, looking to the girls for their worship or their signal.
‘Mary?’ said Alan, when his trembling had subsided.
‘Yes?’ said Mary, and turned to him. She was sorry she was doing all this to Alan. She knew she had given him his new numb-eyed look, his untrustworthy hands, his Jeremy smile. He had given Mary her room and she had given him all this. She had shown him a chaos inside himself which she didn’t understand. It wasn’t fair, and she was sorry.
‘Who was that on the phone?’
‘Just a man I know.’
‘Ah.’ Alan received the remark as if it were a light but expertly stinging rebuke, and one that he moreover richly deserved. ‘Mary?’
‘Yes?’
‘What you like doing best in the evenings?’
‘Reading in my room.’
‘Ah. Good one,’ said Alan. His waved hand suddenly bunched in front of his mouth as, without warning, his laugh convulsed into a cough. ‘No. I meant, you know, weekends, evenings out.’
‘Oh,’ said Mary cautiously.
‘Because I was wondering. Say no and everything if you can’t or something, but. But I was just wondering if you’d come out with me. Tomorrow. Night.’
‘I’m seeing a man tomorrow night,’ said Mary.
Alan took his lower lip between his teeth, raised his eyebrows, and nodded twelve times.
Just then Russ came jogging up the basement steps. When he saw Mary he jerked to a halt, as if he’d never encountered her before. Reaching out an experimental forefinger, he lifted her chin. He kissed her, urging his mouth right into hers so that his lips tickled her teeth. Mary thought that if Russ wanted to do this, it was really quite a pleasant and reassuring thing to do; so she opened her mouth wider and put an arm round the back of his head to steady herself. This went on for a long time. Then Russ withdrew his lips with a sudden pop, eyed her judiciously for several seconds, shook his head with pitying sternness, and moved past her up the steps. Alan wrenched a handful of hair from his crown with a faint whimper and got to his feet. Then he raced off down the road, so fast that even the whirling boys hesitated and stood back catching their breath to watch his speed.
• • •
Boy. Have you ever had it as bad as Alan had it the next day? Do you know that kind of pain? It’s a really bad kind, isn’t it, right up there in the top two or three? That kind of pain isn’t very popular these days and some people pretend not to feel it. But don’t fall for that one. The trouble with pain is that it hurts. Ow. Ow! ow! ow! Pain hurts! It hurts. If love is the most you can feel, then this is the worst. But pain is what can happen when you fall in love with other people.