THE MAN IN THE BROOKS SHIRT
329
movement of rejection. This can't he, she thought angrily, it can't he.
She shut her eyes tight. When I open them again, she said, he will be
gone. I can't face it, she thought, holding herself rigid; the best thing to
do is to go back to sleep. For a few minutes she actually dozed and
dreamed she was hack in Lower Seven with the sheets feeling extraordi·
narily crisp and clean and the curtains hanging protectively about her.
But in the dream her pillow shook under her as the porter poked it to call
her for breakfast, and she woke again and knew that the man was still
beside her and had moved in his sleep. The train was pulling out of the
station.
If
it had not been so early, outside on the platform there would
have been tall men in cowboy hats. Maybe, she thought, I passed out and
he put me to bed. But the body next to her was naked, and horror rippled
over her again as she realized by the coarseness of the sheets touching her
that she was naked too. Oh my God, she said, get me out of this and I will
do anything you want.
Waves of shame began to run through her, like savage internal
blushes, as fragments of the night before presented themselves for inspec–
tion. They had sung songs, all right, she remembered, and there had been
some question of disturbing the other passengers, and so the door had
been shut. After that the man had come around to her side of the table
and kissed her rather greedily. She had fought him off for a long time,
but at length her will had softened. She had felt tired and kind, and
thought, why not? Then there had been something peculiar about the
lovemaking itself-but she could not recall what it was. She had tried to
keep aloof from it, to be present in body hut not in spirit. Somehow that
had not worked out and she had been dragged in and humiliated. There
was some comfort in this vagueness, hut recollection quickly stabbed her
again. There were (oh, holy Virgin!) four-letter words that she had
been forced to repeat, and, at the climax, a rain of blows on her buttocks
that must surely (dear God!) have left bruises. She must be careful not
to let her aunt see her without any clothes on, she told herself, and remem–
bered how once she had visualized sins as black marks on the white soul.
This sin, at least, no one would see. But all at once she became aware of
the significance of the sheets. The bed had been made up. And that meant
that the Pullman porter.... She closed her eyes, exhausted, unable to
finish the thought. The Negley Farson man, the New Deal lady, the waiter,
the porter seemed to press in on her, a crowd of jeering material witnesse•
If
only nobody could know....
But perhaps
it
was not too late. She had a sudden vision of herself
in
a black dress, her face scrubbed and powdered, her hair neatly combed,
sitting standoffishly in her seat, watching Wyoming and Nevada go by and
reading her publisher's copy of a new
avant-garde
novel. It
could
be done.
If
she could get back before the first call for breakfast, she might he able
to carry it off. There would he the porter, of course, hut he would not
dare gossip to passengers. Softly, she climbed out of the berth and began
to look for her clothes. In the darkness, she discovered her slip and dress
