"A marvelous summer party dress," the salesclerk said. "Comfortable, airy-and so different."
"I'll take it," Zoe Kohler said.
She read the weekly hotel trade magazine avidly. There was a motor inn on 49th Street, west of Tenth Avenue: the Tribunal. It would be hosting a convention of college and university comptrollers during June 29th to July 2nd.
When Zoe Kohler looked up the Tribunal in the hotel directory, she found it was a relatively modest hostelry, only 180 rooms and suites, with coffee shop, dining room, a bar. And an outdoor cocktail lounge that overlooked a small swimming pool on the roof, six floors up.
The Tribunal seemed far enough removed from midtown Manhattan to have escaped the close surveillance of the police. And, being small, it was quite likely to be crowded with tourists and convention-goers. Zoe Kohler thought she would try the Tribunal. An outdoor cocktail lounge that overlooked a swimming pool. It sounded romantic.
Her menstrual cramps began on Sunday, June 29th. Not slowly, gradually, increasing in intensity as they usually did, but suddenly, with the force of a blow. She doubled over, sitting with her arms folded and clamped across her abdomen.
The pain came in throbs, leaving her shuddering. She imagined the soles of her feet ached and the roots of her hair burned. Deep within her was this wrenching twist, her entrails gripped and turned over. She wanted to scream.
She swallowed everything: Anacin, Midol, Demerol. She called Ernie and postponed their planned trip to Jones Beach. Then she got into a hot tub, lightheaded and nauseated. She tried a glass of white wine, but hadn't finished it before she had to get out of the tub to throw up in the toilet.
Her weakness was so bad that she feared to move without gripping sink or doorjamb. She was uncoordinated, stumbled frequently, saw her own watery limbs floating away like feelers. She was troubled by double vision and, clasping a limp breast, felt her heart pound in a wild, disordered rhythm.
"What's happening to me?" she asked aloud, more distraught than panicky.
She spent all day in bed or lying in a hot bath. She ate nothing, since she felt always on the verge of nausea. Once, when she tried to lift a glass of water and the glass slipped from her strengthless fingers to crash on the kitchen floor, she wept.
She took two Tuinal and had a fitful sleep thronged with evil dreams. She awoke, not remembering the details, but filled with dread. Her nightgown was sodden with sweat, and she showered and changed before trying to sleep again.
She awoke late Monday morning, and told herself she felt better. She had inserted a tampon, but her period had not started. The knifing pain had subsided, but she was left with a leaden pressure that seemed to force her guts downward. She had a horrific image of voiding all her insides.
She dared not step on the scale, but could not ignore the skin discolorations in the crooks of her elbows, on her knees, between her fingers. Remembering Dr. Stark's test, she plucked at her pubis; several hairs came away, dry and wiry.
She called the Hotel Granger and spoke to Everett Pinckney. He was very understanding, and told her they'd manage without her for the day, and to take Tuesday off as well, if necessary.
She lay on the bed, blanket and sheet thrown aside. She looked down with shock and loathing at her own naked body.
She hadn't fully realized how thin she had become. Her hipbones jutted, poking up white, glassy skin. Her breasts lay flaccid, nipples withdrawn. Below, she could see a small tuft of dulled hair, bony knees, toes ridiculously long and prehensile: an animal's claws.
When she smelled her arm, she caught a whiff of ash. Her flesh was pudding; she could not make a fist. She was a shrunken sack, and when she explored herself, the sphincter was slack. She was emptied out and hollow.
She spent the afternoon dosing herself with all the drugs in her pharmacopeia. She got down a cup of soup and held it, then had a ham sandwich and a glass of wine. She soaked again in a tub, washed her hair, took a cold shower.
She worked frantically to revive her flagging body, ignoring the internal pain, her staggering gait. She forced herself to move slowly, carefully, precisely. She punished herself, breathing deeply, and willed herself to dress.
For it seemed to her that an adventure that night-all her adventures-were therapy, necessary to her well-being. She did not pursue the thought further than that realization: she would not be well, could not be well, unless she followed the dictates of her secret, secret heart.
It became a dream. No, not a dream, but a play in which she was at once actress and spectator. She was inside and outside. She observed herself with wonder, moving about resolutely, disciplining her flesh. She wanted to applaud this fierce, determined woman.
The Mexican wedding gown was a disaster; she knew it would never do. It hung on her wizened frame in folds. The neckline gaped. The hem seemed to sweep the floor. She was lost in it: a little girl dressed up in her mother's finery, lacking only the high-heeled pumps, wide-brimmed hat, smeared lipstick.
She put the gown aside and dressed simply in lisle turtleneck sweater, denim jumper, low-heeled pumps. When she inspected herself in the mirror, she saw a wan, tremulous, vulnerable woman. With a sharpened knife in her purse.
The rooftop cocktail lounge was bordered with tubs of natural greenery. The swimming pool, lighted from beneath, shone with a phosphorescent blue. An awning stretched over the tables was flowered with golden daisies.
A few late-evening swimmers chased and splashed with muted cries. From a hi-fi behind the bar came seductive, nostalgic tunes, fragile as tinsel. Life seemed slowed, made wry and gripping.
A somnolent waiter moved slowly, splay-footed. Clink of ice in tall glasses. Quiet murmurs, and then a sudden fountain of laughter. White faces in the gloom. Bared arms. Everyone lolled and dreamed.
The night itself was luminous, stars blotted by city glow. A soft breeze stroked. The darkness opened up and engulfed, making loneliness bittersweet and silence a blessing.
Zoe Kohler sat quietly in the shadows and thought herself invisible. She was hardly aware of the gleaming swimmers in the pool, the couples lounging at the outdoor tables. She thought vaguely that soon, soon, she would go downstairs to the crowded bar.
But she felt so calm, so indolent, she could not stir. It was the bemused repose of convalescence: all pain dulled, turmoil vanished, worry spent. Her body flowed; it just flowed, suffused with a liquid warmth.
There were two solitary men on the terrace. One, older, drank rapidly with desperate intentness, bent over his glass. The other, with hair to his shoulders and a wispy beard, seemed scarcely old enough to be served. He was drinking bottled beer, making each one last.
The bearded boy rose suddenly, his metal chair screeching on the tile. Everyone looked up. He stood a moment, embarrassed by the attention, and fussed with beer bottle and glass until he was ignored.
He came directly to Zoe's table.
"Pardon me, ma'am," he said in a low voice. "I was wondering if I might buy you a drink. Please?"
Zoe inspected him, tilting her head, trying to make him out in the twilight. He was very tall, very thin. Dressed in a tweed jacket too bulky for his frame, clean chinos, sueded bush boots.
Thin wrists stuck from the cuffs of his heavy jacket, and his big head seemed balanced on a stalk neck. His smile was hopeful. The long hair and scraggly beard were blond, sun-streaked. He seemed harmless.
"Sit down," she said softly. "We'll each buy our own drinks."
"Thank you," he said gratefully.
His name was Chet (for Chester) LaBranche, and he was from Waterville, Maine. But he lived and worked in Vermont, where he was assistant to the president of Barre Academy, which was called an academy but was actually a fully accredited coeducational liberal arts college with an enrollment of 437.
"I really shouldn't be here," he said, laughing happily. "But our comptroller came down with the flu or something, and we had already paid for the convention reservation and tickets and all, so Mrs. Bixby-she's the president-asked me if I wanted to come, and I jumped at the chance. It's my first time in the big city, so I'm pretty excited about it all."