474
JOYCE CAROL OATES
in this building? I wish Peter would come back. I need him. And
my father, I know that my father is on his way, yes, he's on
his
way, and my new husband Martin
is
on his way, they are
all
drawing together, coming together in this room, in me, a crowd of
men coming together inside me. . . . I wish Peter would get here
first! I wish everything would speed up, my life speed up, the beat–
ing in my head get faster, faster, so that I could be shown how
I exist the way you are all certain that you exist....
SHELLEY
walks slowly to the left of the stage.
PETER V.
appears
in the doorway and enters, silently. He is anywhere from twenty–
five to forty years old. His clothes are rakish and jaunty, with an
air
0/
being stylish, even faddish, but not in a current fashion.
He wears a bright green scarf around his neck and light-colored
trousers, that are perhaps too tight for him and light-colored shoes.
Friendly, sinister. He assumes an immediate rapport with the au–
dience that is superior to
SHELLEY'S.
SHELLEY
(at the window):
I wish you could see out this window!
There's a street outside that is like a corridor, but it's very crowded.
Listen to that traffic! People are walking on the sidewalk in a big
crowd, some of them are crossing the street, getting in the way of
traffic. . . . There are children on bicycles . . . an old man on a
bicycle.... People getting on a bus. . .. There is a building across
the street just like this building. It's empty, the windows are
boarded up. But at some of the windows people are standing. I
wonder if they're young girls, little girls ...
?
People are standing at
the windows, like me, looking out. I saw someone move right across
the way.... We put our hands out like this and we push against
the window frames. But nothing happens.
PETER: The first day I brought her here she acted like that! She's
always posing. Showing off. She's always primping and posing
in
front of me, the way girls do. Girls are so cute! What a curse,
being cute! You can knock them around, knock their teeth out,
they can spit out their teeth one by one but still they're posing for
you, playing a game, they're cute as cheerleaders. A lot of them
have been cheerleaders. Look at her - after forty-five days of this,
or maybe it's been sixty days - she's still ready to break into a
cheer, to jump up and stretch her young spine and her arms and
show her shapely little body, leading the team to victory and all that.
