326
LEONARD MICHAELS
"Tell me one thing before you go."
The fighting and the music were loud. I gave her a steady, deaf
look.
"I said I want you to tell me one thing before you go."
She didn't stop smiling.
"It was all right, Nell."
"But
?"
I waited to see what she made of nothing.
Her smile strained as if tugged by waters. "You'd like to beat
me, wouldn't you? I think you'd like to beat me. Wouldn't you,
Phillip?"
I winked.
The other man went down. Swoon was grinding a heel into his
neck. He'd been invited here fifty times. People were cheering, call–
ing his name. "Jack. Jack." That was love, waves of love. Nell clasped
her hands on her breast and jumped up and down like a child. "Oh,
kill, kill," she said. "Make him be dead." I left the room.
5
Like a child, a little girl, and yet her exqUlslte jumping epito–
mized the party, spoke for the fighting men, all the others, too, even
the servants. They served, they danced, and fought for the lady in
white and gold of the symmetrical face. The spot where she pinched
me seemed to be burning a message into my kidney. Her crowd wasn't
made up of phonies. Between desire and action they interposed no
mask. Impulse didn't twist into perversion, into games. They were
whole, straight, noble creatures, slave and master. To me, the chal–
lenge they represented left no alternatives. Maybe Stanger and Mildred
had seen to that, but now I was glad that I'd made the first deadly
stroke, going to the zoo with Nell and killing Mildred as surely as
Stanger killed giraffes. I could imagine him on the veldt, in a crowd
of naked blacks who hand him gun after gun, begging him to shoot
straight as the giraffe charges, bearing down with tooth and hoof.
Great, but I'd buggered his wife. Before, I'd wanted the job. Now,
I could not
not
have it, and something definite had to be said
tonight. Yes or no. Either answer would be a comment on myself.
The only one I cared to hear. Yes or no. Before the evening was over
I'd be purged of irony. Made clean. Hired. Or a simple schmuck. I'd
