800
PARTISAN REVIEW
"So, I've proved something," I said to the Wac in the seat
beside me.
"That's great, Mac," she said, figuring, I suppose, another
drunk. She looked no better than I did after the long haul, her hair
limp, the pores in her face distinct and dirt-clogged, beginning to
break out. I had a sense of what an artificial and inconclusive victory
is our customary individuation of faces, how much a function of soap
and barbers; a spell of fatigue and poor washing in a common en–
vironment and we resemble each other dully like peasants, regress to
the shared specific face.
"Or maybe I haven't. I mingle unnoticed with the multitude.
No false whiskers, no putty in the nose. It's the disguise of anonymity.
Like the postman in- Do you read detective stories?"
"I've read them."
"But there was one Private Eye who had me spotted all the
time. He wrote the scoop on a post-card and mailed it at Atlantic City,
along with a box of saltwater taffy, to himself. But just wait till he
gets hungry again, he'll know all! Know what his name is?"
"Whose name?" She didn't seem very interested, was writing
her own name with the grey tip of her fingernail in the dust on the
windowsill.
"Kitty's a nice name," I said.
"It sure makes this a happy day for me that you like it. Whose
name?"
"Ah, you follow me. The detective's name, of course, the shamus
who knows. It's not Hercule Poirot, not Peter Wimsey or- But let
me be brief. It's me,
me!
That surprises you; you start with amaze–
ment, turn pale; you're breathing hard-"
"Yappity-yap-yap-yap," and her plump dirty fingers made the
sign that goes with
it.
"Sorry."
"Whyn't you buy us a drink?"
"A great idea," I said, "I need one!"
"Like I need to go back to Yonkers." She was a card, you see,
one of those plump girls, besides, with a body that seems not built
by food, but rather the function of simple sexual selfishness, a kind
of monument of accumulated animal experiences made flesh.
We went to the Parlor car and had a drink, then another; I
