PARTISAN REVIEW
395
a ghost clinging in the musky room. Something in him has died and
now haunts the moment, a moment she has provoked. She calculates
the beginning of his confession and interprets it as an impending
assault upon her sex. She understands she has brought this about
through her silence.
" It
was all clear till you started roaming in my nightmares again."
He has not moved and she remains calm, but with a cautious
thumb planted at her waist, at the edge of her blade. Her tickling
is
now acute and she equates it with a certain air of poison he has
brought into the room. She fails to trace the shape of his protest. Its
random aggression inflames her and she feels now she has in fact
lived clear of him. There is a new deafness to mock the infections
he pours in her ear. One moment of direct contagion helps her to
circumnavigate five long years of crawling out of his shade. There is
a delicious humming in her head.
"Last night I dreamed I carved my initials in your brain, but
you refused to decode the message. You've jumped in where you
aren't wanted, Perfidia. The other day I jammed my fingers into
you and found you'd been done over while I was away. Don't think
I'll let you rest with all this, babe. Every time you trip up in the
street, I'll be there to lean on you. Every time you crack, I'll come
running with my crowbar to finish the job."
He has gotten up now and her disappointment is immense. She
has lived a solid moment without the freight of his body looming
over her, has discovered in his voice a loss of hope,
in
his breathing,
the scarred remains of his passion. He will spoil this by ambling to–
wards her, pretending to engage her,
all
the while stalking and trem–
bling. His hand, a weight on the darkness, hovers in sexual dilemma,
midair, a hand which has thrown the circuits of Power into chaos,
drawn the riot squads up from their retreats - this hand now de–
scends like a carpet on air. She has come up to meet him, despite the
blackness, drawing her switchblade between his thumb and forefinger,
the blood spattering her shaven head. She doubles back in swift re–
treat, thinking he will surely kill her now, her knife at the ready. But
he only backs off and waits.
"Why don't you try and finish it. You've done my trigger finger.
I can't even reach for the pistol. You'd better do it, Perfidia. One
cut means nothing. You know what happens next."
