414
PARTISAN REVIEW
At one point they must have insulted each other, they always do.
She loves it. It gives her an illicit little thrill to see how far she can
drive the man. Suddenly, he struck her, slapped her; smack in the
cheek. You could hear it. She fought back with her nails. Some people
jumped in to separate them. Sam remained in his chair, staring
at them as he had been doing
all
along, with the same smirk on his
face.
"I can't tell you what led to the next outburst. Gloria. Maybe it
was a simple fretting at inattention-she had lost the initiative earlier
in the evening and had been sulking
hOTS
de combat,
giving off an
occasional shriek at someone's obscenities. Maybe she once had or still
has that feeling for Phil that I was talking about, only he never
came to her or she to
him
in silence and discretion as people should
when their eyes meet. I don't know what combination it was of
humiliation, rage or shame, envy of Martha or of Phil, love and
hatred of them both. Or maybe it was even directed at Sam-who
knows what these motives can be? But the two of them were no sooner
separated, with people standing about them on either side of the
room, shushing them, holding them back and covering up-it was
an accident, a mistake, a joke- a third detachment hovering over
Sam to keep
him
in one piece- and all of them hopping with excite–
ment as though they had just seen the ultimate excess of transgression
-than Gloria got up on the expiring end of a shriek, stepped into the
light in the clearing that had been made by the rush of people to
opposite sides of the room-and began to remove her clothes.
"She went at it methodically, righteously, with a firmness of
duty
(I
saw it all from the beginning ), as though she were undress–
ing to go early to bed, in need of a good night's sleep. She unbuttoned
the neck of her dress without any particular show of violence and
not the least evidence of lewd intent. She even removed a few pins
from her hair, and I saw her swallow her lips, as women will do,
not to smear her dress with lipstick before she pulled it over her
head. But she threw the dress out on the floor. This had a little
defiance in it-and it caught the public attention. From that moment
they never took their eyes off her. They saw her standing
in
her
slip--and a few people, detaching themselves from the previous
shock, rushed up to restrain her. 'What are you doing?' I heard them
say. 'Gloria! For God's sake!'
