No, it looked macabre. She wiped it off.
It was eight o’clock.
He wasn’t going to come.
He knocked.
She opened the door, and he stood before her, smiling with his eyes. His chest in its furry maroon rose and fell, rose and fell. She had forgotten, amid the abstractions of love, the reality of his flesh. Her erotic fancies of a moment before were all images, but the creature who came into the kitchen, hefting a black suitcase and a paper carrier full of books, existed solidly in three dimensions. She wanted to walk around him as though he were a statue in Washington Square. He shook her hand and said hello. No more.
His reticence infected her. She couldn’t meet his gaze. She tried to speak to him, as he spoke to her, in silences and trivialities. She led him to his room.
His hand stroked the bedspread and she wanted to surrender to him then and there, but his manner didn’t allow it. He was afraid. Men were always afraid at the start.
“I’m so happy,” she said. “To think you’ll really be staying here.”
“Yeah, so am I.”
“You must let me go into the kitchen now. So that I can … We’re having stew, and a spring salad.”
“That sounds terrific, Mrs. Hanson.”
“I think you’ll like it.”
She put the fried cubes of meat into the simmering paste and turned up the heat. She took the salad and the wine out of the icebox. As she turned round he was in the doorway looking at her. She held up the wine bottle with a gesture of immemorial affirmation. The weariness was gone from her back and shoulders as though by the pressure of his gaze he’d smoothed the soreness from the muscles. What a gift it is to be in love. “Haven’t you done your hair differently?”
“I didn’t think you’d noticed.”
“Oh, I noticed the moment you came to the door.”
She started laughing but stopped short. Her laughter, though its source lay deep in her happiness, had sounded harshly in her ears.
“I like it,” he said.
“Thank you.”
The red wine spurting from the Gallo tetrahedron seemed to issue from the same depths as her laughter.
“I really do,” Len insisted.
“I think the stew must be ready. You sit.”
She dished the stew out onto the plates at the burner so that he wouldn’t see that she was giving him all of the real meat. But in the end she did take one of the cubes for herself.
They sat down. She lifted her glass. “What shall we drink to?”
“To?” Smiling uncertainly he picked up his own glass. Then, getting her drift: “To life?”
“Yes! Yes, to life!”
They toasted life, ate their stew and salad, drank the red wine. They spoke seldom but their eyes often met in complex and graceful dialogues. Any words either of them might have spoken at this point would have been in some way untrue; their eyes couldn’t lie.
They’d finished the dinner and Mrs. Hanson had set out the chilled pink Granola, when there was a thud and a loud cry from Lottie’s room. Shrimp had awakened!
Len looked at Mrs. Hanson questioningly.
“I forgot to tell you, Lenny. My daughter came home. But it isn’t anything for you to—”
It was too late. Shrimp had stumbled into the kitchen in one of Lottie’s dilapidated transparencies, unbuckled and candid as an ad for Pier 19. Not till she’d reached the refrigerator did she become aware of Len, and it took her another little while for her to remember to wrap her attractions in the yellow mists of the nightgown.
Mrs. Hanson made introductions. Len insisted that Shrimp join them at the table and took it on himself to spoon out some Granola into a third bowl.
“Why was I in Mickey’s bed?” Shrimp asked.
There was no help for it. Briefly she explained Shrimp to Len, and Len to Shrimp. When Len expressed what polite interest the situation required, Shrimp started in on the sordid details, baring her shoulder to show the tine wounds.
Mrs. Hanson said, “Shrimp, please—”
Shrimp said, “I’m not ashamed, Mother, not anymore.” And went right on. Mrs. Hanson stared at the fork resting on her greasy dinner plate. She could have taken it and torn Shrimp to pieces.
When Shrimp led Len off into the living room, Mrs. Hanson got out of hearing any more by pleading the dishes.
Len had left three of the cubes of beef on the side of his plate untasted. The ounce of Granola he’d kept for himself was stirred about in the bowl. He’d hated the meal.
His wine glass was three-quarters full. She thought, should she pour it down the sink. She wanted to but it seemed such a waste. She drank it. Len came back to the kitchen finally with the news that Shrimp had returned to bed. She couldn’t bear to look at him. She just waited for the blade to drop, and it didn’t take long.
“Mrs. Hanson.” he said “it should be obvious that I can’t stay here now, not if it means putting your pregnant daughter out on the street.”
“My daughter! Ha!”
“I’m disappointed and—”
“You’re disappointed!”
“Of course I am.”
“Oh. of course, of course!”
He turned away from her. She couldn’t bear it. She would do anything to keep him. “Len!” she called after him.
He returned in no time with his suitcase and his bag of books, moving at the uncanny, hyped-up speed of the five-fifteen puppets.
“Len!” She stretched out a hand, to forgive him, to beg forgiveness. The speed! The terrible speed of it!
She followed him out into the corridor, weeping, wretched afraid. “Len.” she pleaded “look at me.”
He strode ahead heedless, but at the very first step of the stairs his bag swung into the railing and split open. Books spilled out onto the landing.
“I’ll get you another bag.” she said calculating quickly and exactly what might hold him to the spot.
He hesitated.
“Len. please don’t go.” She grasped handfuls of the maroon sweater. “Len, I love you!”
“Sweet fucking Jesus, that’s what I thought!”
He pulled away from her. She thought he was falling down the steps and screamed.
Then there were only the books at her feet. She recognized the fat black textbook and kicked it out through the gap in the rails. Then the rest, some down the steps, others into the abyss of the stairwell. Forever.
The next day when Lottie asked her what had become of the boarder, she said, “He was a vegetarian. He couldn’t live anywhere where there was meat.”
“He should have told you that before he came.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Hanson agreed bitterly. “That’s what I thought.”
Part IV: Lottie
26. Messages Are Received (2024)
Financially, being a widow was way ahead of being a wife. Lottie was able to phone Jerry Lighthall and tell her that she didn’t need her job now, or anyone else’s. She was free and then some. Besides the weekly, and now completely reliable, allotment, Bellevue paid her a lump sum settlement of five thousand dollars. With Lottie’s go-ahead the owner of the Abingdon sold what was left of Princess Cass through Buy-Lines for eight hundred and sixty dollars, off the top of which he skimmed no more than was reasonable. Even after paying out a small fortune for the memorial service that no one came to and and wiping up the family’s various existing debts, Lottie had over four thousand dollars to do with as she pleased. Four thousand dollars. Her first reaction was fear. She put the money in a bank and tried to forget about it.