386
SUSAN SONTAG
"I'll get you," shouted Mr. Obscenity. "No one escapes from
here. You must be expelled." Saliva streamed from the corners
of
his mouth.
"Me, too, Laura," shouted Inspector Jug, pressing a handker–
chief to his bleeding shoulder. "I'll get yer for gettin' me in dutch
with my boss. Hellion! Bitch!"
"I'm staying," said the dark-haired girl, dropping her skirt
to
her ankles and lifting her sweater over her head. The two men
ignored her, their first act in unison. All their hot desire, tardy
as
the hottest desire ever is when it is not premature, was flung at the
proud departing figure of Miss Flatface.
7.
She never regretted her departure-escape. Her apprenticeship
was over. Strictly speaking, her chosen career of venery could only
be practiced on the outside, in the world proper. It all worked out
perfectly. Because the life of a woman not drawn to this profession
either by breeding (remember her impeccable white Protestant
descent) or by background (Jim, the three children, the League
of Women Voters, the trading stamps) is a hard and lonely one, she
might have faltered.
As
it was, she had reason to court solitude. She
knew those two would not give up easily.
Pursued by Mr. Obscenity and Inspector Jug, Miss Flatface
traversed the length and breadth of the United States, carrying her
warm treasure between her legs. Wherever she went, she spied
replicas of her former self- pale, greedy, self-denying women fortified
by pop-up toasters with infrared rays and boxed sets of stainless–
steel steak knifes made in West Germany. Miss Flatface, penitent for
her former life, traveled light. Of course, she sold herself for money.
The spirits of William Jennings Bryan and Leland Stanford chided
her, when she didn't get a good price.
Her mentor, Mr. Obscenity, first caught up with her in a
lumber camp in the Northwest, somewhere near the Canadian
border. He was not wearing his monocle or his knickers. His plaid
shirt was carelessly stuffed into a pair of faded bluejeans.
M~
Flatface, plying her trade in front of the town's only movie theatre,
did not at first recognize him. His recent exertions seemed to have
aged him. He had grown a little fat, and was less well groomed.
