PALE VIRGINS SHROUDED IN SNOW
81
you don't have to ask the way to the ocean to take a dip. Anyway,
that's all he did when he wasn't sucking whisky from a coke bottle
up on the tower, play handball and mostly lie in the sun without
saying a word for hours except to ask for a light, even if there was a
bull session among the local thinkers, one of whom now writes for
Partisan Review
and lectures at Columbia, where I, too, became
cultured and refined, and one of whom, before he got his in the back
of the head with a sawed-off shotgun, rose high in the chicken
rackets in Long Island City."
Out on the terrace, the two beach chairs, with now a third one
added since Mr. Ennis had looked away, were arranged for con–
versation and the three men stood at the far edge of the terrace study–
ing the chairs through frames of fingers. One of the men was tall and
slightly bent, as if the weight of his tremendously heavy, black–
rimmed glasses pulled him forward, and when, presently, the three
men walked off the terrace in a body, the first man bowed the tall
one through the open door then quickly stepped inside, himself, leav–
ing the terrace abandoned to the three bright beach chairs in the
muddy light.
"And that was a life," said Scotty, "for one whose pulse ran
slow and easy, pillowing the head on the warm, maternal sand, and,
on duty or off, watching the whale-backed waves as green as Sand–
wich glass curl in and up until they shattered onto the beach in a
glint of spray, from early spring through fall, until, when winter
came, it was time for Lippy to hole up in the Half Moon Hotel
where the mere presence of his animal spirits was a great consolation
to the fat lady and the midgets who used to make that their home.
Sunbathe and drink, play handball and watch the waves, that was
a,ll
Lippy did until the dame got drowned in front of his tower,
which was only a minor shock to his system, though, in spite of be–
ing Lippy, he was fired on the spot, until a few minutes after the
event the late bather turned out to be Nola, his private piece, and
for all I know, though I am grown skeptical in these affairs, his own
dear darling. It hit him hard, and he stayed hard hit, quite possibly
because he was too lazy a man to break in another piece, except of
course for an occasional quickie with the mice they used to pick
up at the Legion dances where, as a matter of fact, he'd first latched
onto Nola when she was just fourteen, though tall for her age, and
with fake working papers was holding down a responsible job wear-
