He wanted to go to her in strange and alien St. Louis, to plead his case, to beg her, implore her, to dare ask her if she’d had enough abandoned and filthy sex with her seducer; but feared that she certainly would accept his pleadings, his tears, with perverse delight, would abuse him with a word or two of contempt, and send him home alone. He knew this, knew that she was a bitch, a worthless bitch, shallow and corrupt and crueclass="underline" oh how he wanted her, she was his bitch! He asked his host then if he would consent to go to St. Louis and, through his friend at the university, meet with his wife, plead for him, set out his case for him, ask her why she’d left, ask her, ask her, ask her, even if he had to do it in front of her smirking lover. He would pay for his trip, his airfare and all expenses, and even include a bonus for his trouble, although he was not so totally unbalanced as to use the word “bonus.” And so the friend left, but was back within three days, for his wife and her amour had apparently left St. Louis, and there was no way of knowing where they had gone. The husband, in his by-now usual imbecilic daze, finally left his friends’ apartment after finding one of his own, a dark and wretched shotgun flat on Fourth Street and Avenue D, a perfect venue to complement his mood of not-quite-suicidal misery. How the streets churned with ignorance and poverty and hatred and violence. Perfect.
The weeks passed and he began, slowly, very slowly, to consider the rash frenzy, really, of his request to his “friend,” the weakness he had revealed to him in his unvarnished pleading that he go as his — what was it? — representative? intermediary? envoy? to his wife. He had exposed himself to this man and his wife, and he was certain that he had given them a social or psychological gift that they would use against him in some way in the future, he didn’t know when, but at some moment in a year or two or more, he’d be confronted with the whining, puerile, blubbering image of his collapse into bathos, he would be presented, as it were, as a milquetoast to whomever would listen. For now it was clear to him that the couple he had thought of with such dismissive contempt for so many years, had thought of him in the same way.
COMMENTARIES
— I —
… Kraft French Dressing, glowing weirdly orange … The label on the bottle describes this dressing as “creamy.” So it was in 1934, so it is now. No one has ever discovered why this dressing, with its odd tang of sugary vinegar, was and is called “French,” nor has anyone suggested a reason for its strange, pumpkin-like color. It is highly popular.
… a bottle of Worcestershire sauce … This sauce was Lea and Perrins, considered by virtually everyone to be the ne plus ultra of Worcestershire sauces. The brand has been made since 1835, and its paper wrapper surely adds to its special cachet. For many years, the label on the bottle noted that it was the recipe of a “nobleman in the county,” or, perhaps, “country,” but that information is no longer provided.
— II—
… the Shadow … The Shadow’s name was Lamont Cranston, and his assistant and (perhaps) fiancée and/or lover was Margo Lane. She was always described as “the lovely Margo Lane.”
… Philco floor-model radio … Philco radios have not been manufactured for many years.
… his black cloak and black slouch hat … While the Shadow wore such raiment in the pulp stories conceived by author Walter B. Gibson, producers of the radio version, which concerns us here, working within the constraints of the medium, imbued the character with a secret power that he had “learned in the Orient,” the power “to cloud men’s minds so that they cannot see him.” Nor, of course, could listeners: it could not have mattered what he wore.
… his unearthly laughter … The Shadow was good, a fighter of crime and oppression, yet the boy is terrified. This might suggest that children know that good may instantly become evil, and vice versa.
— III —
… standing at a dark window … Fictional characters who stand at dark windows are often constrained to look down at streets gleaming with rain. But not here.
— IV —
… his mother sits with a highball … In this instance, Canada Dry ginger ale and Seagram’s 7 blended whisky. The term “highball” is no longer in general use.
… he has been talking, quarreling … The quarrel was about money, specifically, a loan from his father-in-law on which the father would like to delay payment. His wife has taken her father’s side in this argument, not, perhaps, a good sign for the stability of the marriage.
— V —
… a drone of music … It may be inferred that the narrator does not like the music in question. But the conversation? What deductive inference are we to draw from the singular selection, for further commentary, of one type of “drone”?
… The cab was waiting … A checker cab, one of the small, lost pleasures of New York life.
… wearing his wife’s clothes … This is somewhat puzzling. Either the woman was the wife’s size, or the wife’s clothing was of the one-size-fits-all variety.
— VI —
… his wife dead for many years … His wife’s name was Constance (Connie), and his children’s Rose, Maria, Grace, and Alexander (Alex).
— VII —
… Carol and … the girls’ last names, in order, are: Brookner, Kalmas, Margolis, Imperato, Jorgensen, Pincus, Aquino, Griffin, Wasserman, Chaves, Newman, Bello, Scisorek, Vail, and Kirkjian.
… the shade of a birch tree … It may have been a poplar, or whatever you prefer.
— VIII —
… store-brand English muffin … The store, A&P; the brand, Jane Parker.
…peanut butter … The peanut butter is also the A&P’s own brand. Ann Page.
… a cigarette … He smokes Camel Lights and Marlboro Lights.
… the old story of the death camp survivor … The story: after being liberated from Auschwitz, a Jew tells another Jew that he’s going to leave soon for Brazil or Chile or Laos or Pakistan — someplace that is not in Europe. The other Jew says, “It’s so far!”, to which the first Jew replies, “Far from what?”
— IX —
… the sliding glass door … This suggests, but does not, certainly, prove, that the mise-en-scène is California.
… it presented a message … E.g., “Hello! You’ve been selected for a Caribbean vacation!”
… he’d had a friend … This unexpected event occurred a month or so after the friend had published his first book of poems. There is probably no significance to this, although another “friend” of the poet said that perhaps he’s read his own work.
— X—
… loves a girl, who, as it turns out … The reader may be reminded of the last lines of Swann’s Way (Moncrieff-Kilmartin translation): “to think that I’ve wasted years of my life, that I’ve longed to die, that I’ve experienced my greatest love, for a woman who didn’t appeal to me, who wasn’t even my type!” It should be noted, however, that Proust tells us that Swann said this to himself in a period of his “intermittent caddishness.”
… anything you can dream up … You might wish to make on the fly leaves of this book some of the things you can dream up, if you wish; the reader is the ruler.