"Do you like baths or showers?" Karen said.
"I take baths when there's time. I give myself up to my bath. It's the only place where I'm happy in the present moment."
"I'll run you a bath."
"Usually I'm happy only thinking about it later. About five years later. Except for my bath and except for my writers. I'm happy doing writers."
"I don't think I've ever said that before. 'I'll run a bath for you.' It sounds strange coming out."
"And what about Bill, so where is he, does anyone know, that foolish man?"
"There's no news or Scott would have called me."
"There is a tendency of men to disappear. What do you think? Although I guess you've done some disappearing yourself. I could never just disappear into the blue. I would have to make certain announcements. Let the bastards know why I'm leaving and let them know where to find me so they can tell me how sorry they are that I'm gone."
"Did your husband disappear?"
"He went on a business trip."
"When was this?"
"Eighteen years ago."
"It's like what's the name of that myth?"
"Exactly. And he has a series of adventures and performs legendary feats and comes back with a contract for a million spare parts."
"Tell me when you want me to run a bath."
"Did your husband disappear?" Brita said.
"They sent him to England to be a missionary. I don't know where he is now."
"And you were married in this church."
"There is a thing called a matching ceremony. This is before the wedding. They have mate selection."
"Do I really want to hear this?"
"Some members wear actual labels saying Infertile, like, or May Be Gay. Just so the surprises are kept in check."
"Listen, there are going to be surprises. I would be the tattooed lady if I had to list the full particulars."
"Taking Powerful Tranquilizers."
"And who selected your mate?"
"Reverend Moon."
"And how did you feel about this?"
"I thought it was perfectly lovely. I stood up when my name was called. I went to the front of this" ballroom-type place. Master was way over at the other end of the stage with many people standing between us, officials and members of the blessing committee and so forth. So then he just pointed to a man in the audience."
"And you looked at him and knew he was the right one."
"I thought I honestly loved him even before he finished rising to his full height. I thought how great he's Korean because many Koreans have been church members for a long time and this would give us a deeper foundation to build on. And I liked the darkness and sleekness of his hair."
"My husband was largely bald."
"But guess what I found out later. The day before the ceremony Master had looked at photographs of members and he actually matched us by photograph. So I thought how great, I have an Instamatic husband."
"Do you know how lucky you are to be out of there?"
"I don't like hearing that expressed, necessarily."
"You are extremely lucky."
"There are more potatoes," Karen said.
"There are always more potatoes. I'm talky by nature. Okay? I make a lot of noise, I see people, I see men, I like to talk to men, I have affairs but I never know I'm happy for five years minimum. Think about Scott."
"I think about him. But I think about Kim too. He was husband-for-eternity. He wore a dark blue suit and maroon tie. They all did. And all the brides wore Simplicity Pattern number eight three nine two with the neckline two inches higher."
"Go back to Scott and stay with him. You people belong together, all three of you. I think it's a strange and sad way to live in many respects but who am I to say that something is strange and anyway you desperately need each other. I don't like thinking of Bill being off alone somewhere."
"How do you know he's alone?"
"Of course he's alone. He wants to be so alone that he can forget how to live. He doesn't want it anymore. He wants to give it all back. I'm completely certain he's alone. I know that man for a hundred years."
"I'll run your bath now," Karen said.
Scott was doing reader mail. It was all over the attic, mail arrayed in slanted ranks on the desk and table, on the tops of file cabinets and bookshelves. He was structuring the mail by country. Once that was done he would put each country in chronological order so he might easily locate a letter sent from Belgium, say, in 1972. There was no practical reason why he'd ever want to find such a letter or any other piece of reader mail in particular. The point is that he would have it all in place. The house would make more sense in this alignment. And once he had all the other countries in place, he would do the United States. He would do it state by state, masses of letters through the decades. Most mail made Bill uneasy. It cut into his isolation and made him feel he was responsible for the soul of the sender. Scott laughed at this of course. About the only letters Bill looked at came from jerkwater towns and junctions, wide places in the road. He lingered over postmarks and return addresses. He liked to recite place names that carried the ghost music of remote terrain, hamlets that sat in a summer buzz under the Indian sky. He wanted to believe that only a few shy high-school kids or army recruits or piano teachers in small lost towns might truly see what was important in his work.
That evening Scott reread the letters from Bill's sister. Then he went through the bedroom looking for anything that might tell him where Bill was or when he would call or if he would call. The medications were spread through two upper drawers in the bureau. There were many more than he'd known about and he examined the brand names. They were like science-fiction gods. And he glanced at the manuals and reference works and little paperback pill books. He looked for personal letters and documents. There was a single empty suitcase at the top of the closet and a small old electric fan set on a folded paper bag down among the shoes. He looked for sealed instructions, mocking himself for the thought and the phrase, but still thinking there might be something he was supposed to find eventually.
Willard Skansey. A welterweight fighting outdoors in steaming holiday weather before a crowd of straw hats.
Scott would never reveal the name change to anyone. He would keep absolutely silent. He was happy to keep silent, even now, beginning to feel abandoned. For many years Bill had been able to trust people to keep silent on his behalf. It would sustain and expand Scott, it would bring him closer than ever to Bill, keeping the secret of his name.
He went into the workroom and studied the wall charts again. He read the postcards from Liz. Then he made a list of things to do when he was finished with the mail.
Karen rode in a taxi, she loved these jouncing yellow cabs with their slender Ethiopians at the wheel. They had padded wheels, they had furry covers for their wheels and religious pictures pasted to the dash. She was looking at a wedge-shaped building in Times Square and it had a band of glowing letters running all around it. In other words the news of the day flashing across a moving-message unit. There was something about the funeral of someone famous but she couldn't get a clear look from out the taxi window and the words went fleeting off the edge and continued around the corner and she had this stopped feeling you get when there's something awesome in the news, this stoppage in the body, the cold stilled excitement that prepares you for something vast. She waited for the main news to return but the taxi started up again. She formed a picture of people massing in a square.
A crazy storm broke over the city. Box huts struck and pum-meled by slashing hail. She thought, Hailstones the size of hailstones. It was only the lucky construction sheeting that saved the boxes from melting on people's heads.