254
PARTISAN REVIEW
dinner. "
"I don ' t care about the others ," the man says . "I care about
you .
The woman's laugh is high and uneasy . Her face is serene, but
her hands tremble . The bones glow beneath her taut skin . There is a
sense of blood, decay. The smell of love .
"Nothing matters except you," the man says again . He reaches
over and picks up the food from her plate .
It
is some sort of creamed
fish . He squeezes it in his hand and lets it drop on the table berween
them.
It
knocks over the flowers , the wine . "What do you care what
others think?" he says .
"I don't know why people go out
if
they ' re not intending
to
have a nice time ," Jenny 's mother whispers . Jenny doesn't speak .
The man's curses tease her ears . The reality of the couple , now gone ,
cheats her eyes . She gazes flXedly at the abandoned table, at the gar–
bage there. Everywhere there is disorder. Even in her parents' eyes .
" I would say that woman had a problem there," Jenny 's mother
says .
Outside , the sunset has dispersed the afternoon's fog. The sun
makes long paddle strokes through the clouds "At day 's end, the day
creaks back to brightness like a swinging boom. Jenny walks down the
street berween her parents . At the curb, as children do , she takes a
little leap into space, supported, for the moment , by their hands .
And now gone for good , this moment .
It
is night again.
" It's been night for a long time," the man says. He is shaving at
the basin . His face , to about an inch below his eyes , is a white mask
of lather. His mouth is a dark hole in the mask.
Jenny's dizzy from drinking . The sheets are white , the walls are
white. One section of the room has a raised ceiling.
It
rises hand–
somely
to
nothing but a single light bulb, shaded by strips of wood .
The frame around the light is very substantial. It is as though the
light were caged . The light is like a wild thing up there , pressed
against the ceiling, a furious bright creature with slanty wings.
In the room there is a chair, a table, a bureau , and a bed. There
is a milkshake in a glass on a tin tray . On the surface of the milk,
green petals of mold reach out from the sides toward the center .
,'Clean yourself up and we'll go out ," the man says .
Jenny moves obediently to the basin . She hangs her head over
