Still sniffling, she nodded mutely. She started up the motor of the car and turned its lights on.
“Don’t go,” I said. “Listen, you can chalk it up to a demented subrational attempt on my part to reach you, don’t you see? All your talk, your making yourself admire Sam Barrows even more than ever, that drove me out of my mind. I’m very fond of you, I really am; seeing you open up for a minute to a warm, human view, and then going back–”
“Thanks,” she said in a near whisper, “for trying to make me feel better.” She shot me a tiny smile.
“Don’t let this make you worse,” I said, holding onto the door of the car, afraid she would leave.
“It won’t. In fact it barely touched me.”
“Come on inside,” I said. “Sit for a moment, okay?”
“No. Don’t worry–it’s just the strain on us all. I know it upset you. The reason I use such crude words is that I don’t know any better, nobody taught me how to talk about the unspeakable things.”
“It just takes experience. But listen, Pris, promise me something, promise me you won’t deny to yourself that I hurt you. It’s good to be able to feel what you felt just now, good to–”
“Good to be hurt.”
“No, I don’t mean that; I mean it’s encouraging. I’m not trying merely to make up for what I did. Look, Pris, the fact that you suffered so acutely just now because of what I–”
“The hell I did.”
“You did,” I said. “Don’t lie.”
“All right, Louis, I did; I won’t lie.” She hung her head.
Opening the car door I said, “Come with me, Pris.”
She shut off the motor and car lights and slid out; I took hold of her by the arm.
“Is this the first step in delicious intimacy?” she asked.
“I’m acquainting you with the unspeakable.”
“I just want to be able to talk about it, I don’t want to have to do it. Of course you’re joking; we’re going to sit side by side and then I’ll go home. That’s best for both of us, in fact it’s the only course open.”
We entered the dark little motel room and I switched on the light and then the heat and then the TV set.
“Is that so no one will hear us panting?” She shut off the TV set. “I pant very lightly; it isn’t necessary.” Removing her coat she stood holding it until I took it and hung it in the closet. “Now tell me where to sit and how. In that chair?” She seated herself in a straight chair, folded her hands in her lap and regarded me solemnly. “How’s this? What else should I take off? Shoes? All my clothes? Or do you like to do it? If you do, my skirt doesn’t unzip; it unbuttons, and be careful you don’t pull too hard or the top button will come off and then I’ll have to sew it back.” She twisted around to show me. “There the buttons are, on the side.”
“All this is educational,” I said, “but not illuminating.”
“Do you know what I’d like?” Her face lit up. “I want you to drive out somewhere and come back with some kosher corned beef and Jewish bread and ale and some halvah for dessert. That wonderful thin-sliced corned beef that’s twofifty a pound.”
“I’d like to,” I said, “but there’s no place within hundreds of miles to get it.”
“Can’t you get it in Boise?”
“No.” I hung up my own coat. “It’s too late for kosher corned beef anyhow. I don’t mean too late in the evening. I mean too late in our lives.” Seating myself across from her I drew my chair close and took hold of her hands. They were dry, small and quite hard. From all her tile-cutting she had developed sinewy arms, strong fingers. “Let’s run off. Let’s drive south and never come back, never see the simulacra again or Sam Barrows or Ontario, Oregon.”
“No,” Pris said. “We’re compelled to tangle with Sam; can’t you feel it around us, in the air? I’m surprised at you, imagining that you can hop in the car and drive off. It can’t be evaded.”
“Forgive me,” I said.
“I forgive you but I can’t understand you; sometimes you seem like a baby, unexposed to life.”
“What I’ve done,” I said, “is I’ve hacked out little portions of reality here and there and familiarized myself with them, somewhat on the model of a sheep who’s learned a route across a pasture and never deviates from that route.”
“You feel safe by doing that?”
“I feel safe _mostly_, but never around you.”
She nodded. “I’m the pasture itself, to you.”
“That expresses it.”
With a sudden laugh she said, “It’s just like being made love to by Shakespeare. Louis, you can tell me you’re going to crop, browse, graze among my lovely hills and valleys and in particular my divinely-wooded meadows, you know, where the fragrant wild ferns and grasses wave in profusion. I don’t need to spell it out, do I?” Her eyes flashed. “Now for christ’s sake, take off my clothes or at least make the attempt to.” She began to pull off her shoes.
“No,” I said.
“Haven’t we gotten through the poetry stage long ago? Can’t we dispense with more of that and get down to the real thing?” She started to unfasten her skirt, but I took hold of her hands and stopped her.
“I’m too ignorant to proceed,” I said. “I just don’t have it, Pris. Too ignorant and too awkward and too cowardly. Things have already gone far beyond my limited comprehension. I’m lost in a realm I don’t understand.” I held on tightly to her hands. “The best I can think of to do, the best I can manage at this time, would be to kiss you. Maybe on the cheek, if it’s okay.”
“You’re old,” Pris said. “That’s it. You’re part of a dying world of the past.” She turned her head and leaned toward me. “As a favor to you I’ll let you kiss me.”
I kissed her on the cheek.
“Actually,” Pris said, “if you want to know the facts, the fragrant wild ferns and grasses don’t wave in profusion; there’s a couple of wild ferns and about four grasses and that’s it. I’m hardly grown, Louis. I only started wearing a bra a year ago and sometimes I forget it even now; I hardly need it.”
“Can’t I kiss you on the mouth?”
“No,” Pris said, “that’s too intimate.”
“You can shut your eyes.”
“Instead, you turn off the lights.” She drew her hands away, rose and went to the wall switch. “I’ll do it.”
“Stop,” I said. “I have an overwhelming sense of foreboding.”
At the wall switch she stood hesitating. “It’s not like me to be indecisive. You’re undermining me, Louis. I’m sorry. I have to go on.” She switched off the light, the room disappeared into darkness. I could see nothing at all.
“Pris,” I said, “I’m going to drive to Portland, Oregon, and get the kosher corned beef.”
“Where can I put my skirt?” Pris said from the darkness. “So it won’t get wrinkled.”
“This is all some crazed dream.”
“No,” Pris said, “it’s bliss. Don’t you know bliss when it runs into you and butts you in the face? Help me hang up my clothes. I have to go in fifteen minutes. Can you talk and make love at the same time or do you devolve to animal gruntings?” I could hear her rustling around in the darkness, disposing of her clothes, groping about for the bed.
“There is no bed,” I said.
“Then the floor.”
“It scrapes your knees.”
“Not my knees; yours.”
“I have a phobia,” I said. “I have to have the lights on or I get the fear I’m having intercourse with a thing made out of strings and piano wire and my grandmother’s old orange quilt.”
Pris laughed. “That’s me,” she said from close by. “That perfectly describes my essence. I almost have you,” she said, banging against something. “You won’t escape.”
“Stop it,” I said. “I’m turning on the light.” I managed to find the switch; I pressed it and the room burst back into being, blinding me, and there stood a fully-dressed girl. She had not taken off her clothes at all, and I stared at her in astonishment while she laughed silently to see my expression.
“It’s an illusion,” she said. “I was going to defeat you at the final moment, I just wanted to drive you to a pitch of sexual desire and then–” She snapped her fingers. “Gooooodnight.”
I tried to smile.
“Don’t take me seriously,” Pris said. “Don’t become emotionally involved with me. I’ll break your heart.”
“So who’s involved?” I said hearing my voice choke. “It’s a game people play in the dark. I just wanted to tear off a piece, as they say.”