328
LEONARD MICHAELS
door like the gross, offensive pig you happen to be. I much prefer
your silence. Any apology now would make me exceedingly furious.
I'm not exceedingly furious now, Colin. So keep your mouth shut.
I suppose you haven't shaved, have you? I won't hear your apologies.
I
won't hear your voice."
She clapped the brush down. Her legs lashed by my face, her
negligee flying, to the bed. Books and papers were knocked off the
bed. I stood up. She flung herself onto the bed, twisted onto her
back, eyes shut, forehead writhing with contradiction. She gave a
blind, shrill order to the ceiling:
"Go on, Colin, you know what
I
want."
Lest he'd forgotten her legs struck out, stiff, isoscelean. I saw
voluted conch in wire tangle, the picture of her mind. Given its
as–
sumption, the Colin in me rose, perked up like a rat, snout quiver–
ing, pointing at the answer to a question never asked. Life is this
epitome. Red, tidal maw. Yawn. Aching exfoliant. Hole. I flicked
light, shut door, three steps, and
I
straddled her neck. "Smells," she
cried, and muddy flux dragged me, gripping my head, churning
circles into the circles of her need, the cherished head which she
recognized --"Hey, who you?" - as not the right head. A good one
nonetheless, already thinking how to apologize. She screeched and
kicked. I pressed on to suggest the powerful suction of feeling, but,
thinking, thinking, I felt only ideas, tones, and tropes rise upon one
another like waves, curling, crashing, failing to hold, sliding faster
and faster down the beach to the seething, shapeless inane. Remember
the job, I thought - think - and a hairy hemp ripped from my liver
to my throat. I came at both ends simultaneously. Apology was im–
possible.
I
opted for vigor. "Fantastic," I cried, hoping thus to dis–
tract her with vigor. Also oblique flattery. She said,
"EEE,"
scram–
bling to one end of the bed, and me to the other, pleading now,
"Don't scream. I'm turning on the light." It discovered her biting
the sheet. "Woo woo woo," she said. I bent, pleading in the harmless
posture of a dog at stool. "Didn't you like it?" She twisted about to
slap the night table.
I
expected a gun. She twisted back with glasses
on her face, big eyes, the tigerish motl1er apparent. "Say, you're Nell
Stanger's kid, aren't you?" My voice was eager, genial. She screamed.
I
fled.
