52
PARTISAN REVIEW
act ..." "Yes?" encouraged the doctor. Dottie gave her throaty,
scrupulous cough. "It's terribly simple," she protested, "but I can't
seem to say it." The doctor waited. "Perhaps I can help you, Dorothy.
Any techniques," she began impressively, "that give both partners
pleasure are perfectly allowable and natural. There are no practices,
oral or manual, that are wrong in lovemaking, so long as both part–
ners enjoy them." Gooseflesh rose on Dottie; she knew, pretty well,
what the doctor meant, and, for the first time, she was shocked. She
was also hurt. "Thank you, doctor," she said quietly, cutting the
topic off.
In her gloved hand, when she was dressed and powdered, she
took the manila envelope the nurse in the anteroom handed her and
paid out new bills from her suede billfold. She did not wait for Kay.
In a calm trance, like a dead person, she crossed the street and en–
tered a drugstore, where a fountain syringe ordered itself for her.
She proceeded into the phone booth. She had no wish ever to see
Dick again, but the possession of all this machinery left her no choice.
When a voice told her that Mr. Brown's room did not answer, she
went and sat on a park bench, with her two parcels beside her. Her
hand-made underwear felt sticky from the lubricants the doctor had
used and this soiled nasty sensation trickled into her very soul. She
had nowhere to go but to Dick's. For the first time in her twenty–
four years, she had a clear and distinct awareness, accompanied by
a sense of fatality, of how the other half lived.
