WILL AND WAY
389
free country. It took me a long time to find my freedom, and I'm
not giving it up. At least, not until it's
my
idea, not somebody
else's." And after these forceful words, she abandoned her second
slice of pizza uneaten on the counter and marched out into the
turbulent street.
Looking back, she saw that Inspector Jug did not follow her.
Miss Flatface's brave words to Mr. Obscenity and Inspector
Jug were sincerely meant. She did love her freedom. But that did
not mean she was not occasionally lonely.
Proof might be that in this period a streak of morbidity cropped
out in Miss Flatface, which expressed itself in a taste for disasters.
Not political disasters: while in Times Square, she rarely looked up
at the news flashing by. The private, domestic ones. Between jobs,
for which she used a convenient hotel on Tenth Avenue, she would
buy and pore over all the scandalous weekly papers. She found ir–
resistible such headlines as : "My Milk Killed My Nine Babies."
"For My Husband's Sake I Was Blind For Forty-Two Years." "I'm
Not Ashamed." "I Looked Like This Until I Had Plastic Surgery."
"Cooked Alive!" "I'm A Member Of The Fourth Sex." "My In–
Laws Drove Four Nails Into My Skull." "I'm Not Ugly, I'm Just
Funny Looking." "They Left Me Outside For Seventeen Years."
The stories, often, were less vivid than the headlines, but, no matter.
From the headlines alone Miss Flatface received sufficient and,
r.eed one say, vicarious pleasure. For she'd decided that she herself
was perfectly nonnal looking. Never did she meet the slightest re–
luctance from the Johns because of her flat face.
But if men generally found her attractive, she had to admit
that she did not find every man equally attractive. A total sensual
thrill was not always forthcoming. Yet she might flare up simply
upon spotting from behind someone whom she thought at first was
Mr. Obscenity, or even the insipid Inspector Jug.
Miss Flatface tried to drown her occasional discontents by
keeping on the move. That way, too, she got to know this country
extremely well-its enonnous human resources, its majestic natural
setting. From time to time she would take a vacation, travel just
for the sake of traveling (this also helped to throw her mentor and
her suppliant off the track), saving a little money and hitchhiking
or taking a bus to the Grand Canyon or Yosemite National Park
