PULL
DOWN VANITY!
~55
"It's just that nut next door," someone shouted out of the dark,
and everyone began to laugh, turning back from us to their own affairs;
but I could feel Judith beside me, shaking with alternate giggles and
sobs.
"Stop it!" I said, grabbing her by the shoulders. "Stop it!"
"I'm scared," she whispered, "can you imagine it, scared! How
stupid it all is. How ugly and stupid! The crazy old bitch. Oh, why
didn't you come during the week?" She held out one hand to me, the
fist balled, as one offers a surprise to a child; then opened her fingers
right under my nose. "Look!"
I looked at the key on her open palm.
"It's for the attic apartment, the one that's empty. I'm supposed
to show it when anyone comes.
If
you'd care to see it, Mr. Amsterdam?"
She closed her hand again suddenly. "But I'm afraid. I don't want to
go up now. Tell me, why don't I want to go up, when I want you
so much? You know everything."
"You
do
want to," I said, thinking that, after all, this was the
way it had to end: in the consummation of the myth, right here above
all the foolish kids who recapitulated, without knowing it, my own hated
youth. "Just because he's human," the phonograph was bellowing, "he
doesn't want a bullet through his head...."
She came along without another word; walking with me silently
up the narrow stairs; waiting silently as I fumbled at the lock; pressing
silently against me as we crossed the threshold into the black, fetid
room. The heat was appalling; it seemed hardly possible to breathe, but
when I started toward the window she stopped me.
"No windows, no lights," she whispered to me, "don't move any–
thing." Taking me by the hand, she led me through the jumble of
furniture in what must have been the living room, into a further room
where we sat side by side on the bed. It was stripped and smelled a little
of urine, only a stiff mattress between metal headpiece and footboard.
I could hear the rustle of her dress as she pulled it over her head; and
I undressed, too, slowly, putting my clothes carefully on a low table
beside the bed, where I would have no trouble finding them again in
the dark.
After a while, I could make out the shapes of objects in the dim
light that leaked through the single uncurtained window; and I was
able to see that Judith was unbraiding her heavy hair, shaking it free
finally with a gesture as formal as a dance step. She lay down beside
me; but wet with perspiration and dazed by the stagnant air, I re–
mained for a while without touching her; then rolled over on to one
elbow, and with my free hand felt her body from head to toe, very
