PARTISAN REVIEW
109
"Conference Ambience." He let go and slumped into his seat.
The back of his head felt thick, knotted. The girl's intolerable eyes,
blistered and porous, were fixed on the book shelf on Malcolm's
wall. She seemed to be reading the Handbook and Rhetoric section
with fierce concentration.
"You poor kid," she said without interest.
"Without a goal-oriented philosophy where can you go?"
"I'm stoned."
"I look at your hair, your face. You have a disaffiliated face.
Centuries of disaster have emptied you of meaning. A little Zoroastrian
pot to make the world go round. Sherry, a tragedy." He leaned over
and tried the breast again.
"Two for a quarter," she said.
The door opened and the porter with
his
big trash barrel stood
with immigrant servility. "Excuse," he said and trudged in to empty
the waste baskets. Slowly, Rollie took his hand away and sank back
in
his
chair. Mter emptying the baskets the porter worked
his
push
broom around their chairs excusing himself with garlic grunts. Rollie
swiveled himself across to Malcolm's side of the room, the casters
squeaking loudly against the floor. The porter bent under Rollie's
desk and the broom whisked out one of Malcolm's glossy heroes
that had slipped from the desk. "Pretty man," the porter said as
he handed it to Rollie. At the doorway he turned back and smiled.
Rollie caught the tender curve of his mouth and felt
his
heart give
a frightened leap. Sherry got up and took the photograph from
Rollie's slack hand and held it under the desk light.
"Oobie doo."
Rollie pressed his hands over the bridge of
his
nose and listened
to the sound of the porter's barrel down the hall. The cigarette had
left a dry, papery taste in his mouth. He took the photograph from
Sherry and put it in his drawer.
"Oobie doo to you too," he said.
On
his
way home after class in
his
station wagon he thought of
something he had said to Malcolm earlier about satisfying his need
for identity. The porter's grainy face and quick smile flickered in
front of him: Ooobie doo, Sherry had said. He turned the car
around, went back to the darkened office, pulled out the body folder
and drove over to Malcolm's house. Malcolm answered the door in a
