But the point is, Bron thought, even though I was thinking of telling her something like that, if the woman had actually said anything to me, I certainly wouldn’t have used it. I would have treated her the same way I treated Lawrence; honest, straightforward. I mean if I learned one thing hustling it’s that, in matters of sex at any rate, it pays to be straight. I wouldn’t have told such a story to a complete stranger! Why did I tell it to someone I actually like? Hadn’t it begun as an attempt to spare Audri’s feelings, in some strange way? How ridiculous, she thought. Other people’s feelings, beyond maintaining general civility, had never been one of her major concerns. Nor did she think very highly of people for whom they were. People take care of their own feelings; I take care of mine. Besides, if I’d just said, “No,” to Audri’s request, it would have been far kinder than all those complicated theatrics! That was worthy of an actress like the Spike!—oh, come on: the Spike had nothing to do with that! Nothing! But what Bron also realized, and it was almost as annoying, is that somehow she’d gotten, in telling the lie, something she’d wanted: The first thing she’d felt (when it was just over, before this stupid and unstoppable ques—
tioning had set in) was satisfied. Now that’s the question: Why? Bron turned over again and thought: I can tell, this is just going to be another of those nights—
—and was dreaming about the bar, the place Prynn had taken her; but it was different, because there were only women present. What a strange dream, she thought. For one thing, most of the women were complete strangers. Over there, leaning against the wall, was the blonde lesbian who used to live on the second floor. Now why, Bron wondered, should I be dreaming about her? But then, I was just thinking about her, wasn’t I? A girl not much older than Prynn was sitting on a table corner playing her guitar. Charo? Over there sat a sixty-year-old woman with blue nails, blue high-heeled shoes, blue lips, and blue breast bangles. Bron was sure that if she’d ever seen her before, it was just in passing on the street. Still, all these strange women made her uncomfortable. She looked around again for someone more familiar and saw, to her astonishment, the Spike sitting at one of the tables, busily writing on the gold—and black-edged sheet of an interplanetary letter-form. And there was Audri, sitting not far behind her, with Prynn next to her; just behind them stood a woman she didn’t recognize at alclass="underline" a very dark oriental ... was it that Miriamne person she’d almost been lumbered with as an assistant? No; too young. More likely it was somebody she had once seen with Alfred. Were they all looking at her? Or looking past her? Bron turned, thinking how silly it was to be in a pickup bar with nothing but women. But the door was opening. A man in maroon coveralls backed through it. Apparently he was still talking to a bunch of friends outside. He kept lingering at the door, calling to them, laughing at them.
Bron looked at the women. Some were definitely looking at her now. Charo was smiling, nodding in time to her strumming. The Spike had apparently covered several sheets. Indeed, the sheet she was writing on so busily now was much too large for a letter-form. Prynn and a black girl had stepped up behind the Spike and were leaning over her shoulder to read. Prynn reached down to point something out; the Spike immediately made a correction. She wasn’t writing a letter at all! She must be making notes on a new production. Bron turned to look at the man (he was at the bar now, but still looking away) and thought: This must be where my part comes in. Do I know my lines? At any rate, I’m sure they’ll come back to me, once I begin. Again she glanced: several of the women, with large, colored markers, were reaching over the Spike’s shoulder to add notes of their own. This is going to be quite a show, Bron thought. The woman with the blue lips and bangles looked up at her, smiled, nodded her on. Bron turned back to the man, who was leaning with one forearm on the counter, still looking away at the door—as if, Bron thought at once, he might go after his friends outside any moment and miss the whole production! Nervously, she walked toward him.
He turned to her.
Somehow, she had expected it to be Mad Mike the Christian. But the face, under pale, curly hair, was someone else’s. One eyebrow was rough and rumpled. The other had been replaced with a gold arc in the skin.
When she recognized him, she thought: Oh, no ... ! It was just too ... well, banall For dream or theater! With this, no mise en scene was possible! Meeting her old self like that ... well, it was just too pat. It was as cliche as—well, “waiting for the dawn,” or “the horrors of war.” Wasn’t theater involved with belief? How could anyone believe such an absurd coincidence! Just running into herself like that, why the chances were fifty-to-one, fifty billion to one!—There had been some mistake! That’s not the way the production could have possibly been planned! The action, properly speaking, would be invisible from the pit ... She glanced at the Spike again.
Almost all the women were writing now, crowding each other, reaching over one another’s shoulders. With bright-colored pens, they filled in bright-colored numbers on the large paper grids scattered on the table—from just a glance, she knew they were filling in the plurality female deployment configuration. How hopelessly banal! Was she really going to have to take part in this absurb drama? She turned again to Bron—
he stood at the counter, smiling at her, pleasantly enough, if a little nervous, but completely unaware. She raised her hand tentatively toward his face, then shrieked:
“I shall destroy you!” She clawed at his gold brow, hissing: “I shall destroy you, destroy you, do you hear!” Her nails, she noticed, were not the carefully-filed, surgically-narrowed ones from her last bit of cosmetic surgery, or even the broad and cleaned ones she’d had before the operation, but the bitten ones of her adolescence. “I shall destroy you—as you destroyed me\” The words tore at her throat. She turned, gasping, away.
It was over!
Some of the women were clapping politely.
She gasped in another breath, overcome with emotion. A terrible script! Devoid of whatever meaning—or was it meaninglessness?—it might have for an audience! But I did give a brilliant performance. I must have gotten carried away with the part. Completely carried away. Her eyes were tearing. She reached for a chair to collapse into, but it was over there, behind the third bar. So she staggered on another few steps. Lord, how many bars were there? But somewhere behind them all there must be a chair. She staggered on, still wracked by the emotions the performance had evoked, one fragment of her mind still aloof and objective: As moved as I was by it, it’s still a terrible part! I mean—she gasped another breath, as the emotions welled on; it was as if the whole production had been some tawdry, twilight melodrama the intellect could not bear but the heart could not resist—I may have been that kind of man. But I am not that type of woman! Hot, buffeting, embarrassing, her emotions roiled and seethed. Oh, I must sit down, she thought, reached out for the chair again—
—and woke, suddenly, completely, and (annoying-ly) with the same question she had drifted off with: Why did I lie to Audri?
The silly dream—its emotional detritus still falling away from the images—certainly didn’t suggest any answer. She turned over once more, with two ques—