there are new heroes.
Your bags have been packed for you and they took back your pin and the
tables are stacked and the Chinese lanterns folded away and now they are
tearing down the bunting while tired musicians pack away the tarnished brass
horns.
So there is nothing much to do anymore. It is a good thing to lie alone
in the dark room with music not quite audible. Then in the darkness you can
savor the stink she left on you. Inhale it deeply. Finger the marks she left on
you. Remember her teeth and her softness. Roll in the sourness of her, as a dog
returns to filth.
Downstairs are the strangers. And they listen to the distant anguish of
television. Here you are, on the hill of the Delevans in the middle house, your face clan-marked, and yet you are no longer one of
them.
The records stop and this time you do not stir. You touch the plaster
beside you. It is rough and cool. There is time to go over it all again. And
then maybe it will be time to sleep.
You walked right up to the door of the lab that April day and then, for no
reason, you turned around and left. And if you go over it enough times, there
will be a time when you walk up to the door of the lab and pause… and shrug…
and walk in.
Chapter Three
Fremont is a very old street in the
city of Stockton. It had been very narrow at one time, a street of big
Victorian houses, sitting tall and narrow and secluded, like spinsters thinking
quietly of what might have been. There had been iron fences, and the quiet
metal deer under the elm shade, bird-spattered and noble. There had been money
on that street. Money from the lumber mills, which chewed and chased the good
hard woods all the way from the valleys back up into the faraway hills—so that
each year the money was less. But it had been invested in heavy parchment,
embossed and engraved, with red seals and gold seals and bits of silk ribbon,
testifying to a share in the interest of the old Commodore Vanderbilt, of the
shifty, mercurial Jay Gould. Money in railroads, in textiles, in steamships.
But the wars came and they were fought, and the giants died, and for
those on the street a good world crumbled quickly away, leaving the great
houses which had been built with the conviction that they should last through
eternity. Behind all the silly scrollwork, the fan windows, the pretentious
turrets, the stone and the beams were sound and true and good.
The street was widened, and widened again. It was a good route to the
heart of the city. The street widened like a stone river until the sidewalks
touched the steps of the old houses. The metal deer and the iron fences were
gone.
Now there are not many of the old houses left. There are supermarkets
there, and a great metal river of traffic flows endlessly by. There are many
gas stations, and there are green-and-yellow city buses that chuff at
the corners and grind away. It is a street of people who are strangers to each
other, because no one stays long anymore. The few old houses that are left have
been cut up into apartments and into furnished rooms. There is no dignity left
in the old houses. The new partitioning is flimsy. The lawns are gone and the
trees are gone, and the houses are naked to the traffic. In the houses shrill
voices saw at the nerves of children, television screens flicker as the trucks
roll by, men leave in surly humor for the swing shift.
Quinn Delevan, as he ate dinner with Bess, was constantly aware that on
this Wednesday night he would go down to Fremont Street again, down to the girl
who waited for him. They ate together in the breakfast booth off the kitchen,
and he had asked his usual meaningless question about David, and she had
answered as always, “He took his dinner out to his studio.”
They ate and she talked a great deal, talked about Robbie and his new
bride, and she ate as she talked and he wished for a dining room table of
baronial proportions, so that she could sit at one end of it and he could sit
at the other,
Your bags have been packed for you and they took back your pin and the
tables are stacked and the Chinese lanterns folded away and now they are
tearing down the bunting while tired musicians pack away the tarnished brass
horns.
So there is nothing much to do anymore. It is a good thing to lie alone
in the dark room with music not quite audible. Then in the darkness you can
savor the stink she left on you. Inhale it deeply. Finger the marks she left on
you. Remember her teeth and her softness. Roll in the sourness of her, as a dog
returns to filth.
Downstairs are the strangers. And they listen to the distant anguish of
television. Here you are, on the hill of the Delevans in the middle house, your face clan-marked, and yet you are no longer one of
them.
The records stop and this time you do not stir. You touch the plaster
beside you. It is rough and cool. There is time to go over it all again. And
then maybe it will be time to sleep.
You walked right up to the door of the lab that April day and then, for no
reason, you turned around and left. And if you go over it enough times, there
will be a time when you walk up to the door of the lab and pause… and shrug…
and walk in.
Chapter Three
Fremont is a very old street in the
city of Stockton. It had been very narrow at one time, a street of big
Victorian houses, sitting tall and narrow and secluded, like spinsters thinking
quietly of what might have been. There had been iron fences, and the quiet
metal deer under the elm shade, bird-spattered and noble. There had been money
on that street. Money from the lumber mills, which chewed and chased the good
hard woods all the way from the valleys back up into the faraway hills—so that
each year the money was less. But it had been invested in heavy parchment,
embossed and engraved, with red seals and gold seals and bits of silk ribbon,
testifying to a share in the interest of the old Commodore Vanderbilt, of the
shifty, mercurial Jay Gould. Money in railroads, in textiles, in steamships.
But the wars came and they were fought, and the giants died, and for
those on the street a good world crumbled quickly away, leaving the great
houses which had been built with the conviction that they should last through
eternity. Behind all the silly scrollwork, the fan windows, the pretentious
turrets, the stone and the beams were sound and true and good.
The street was widened, and widened again. It was a good route to the
heart of the city. The street widened like a stone river until the sidewalks
touched the steps of the old houses. The metal deer and the iron fences were
gone.
Now there are not many of the old houses left. There are supermarkets
there, and a great metal river of traffic flows endlessly by. There are many
gas stations, and there are green-and-yellow city buses that chuff at
the corners and grind away. It is a street of people who are strangers to each
other, because no one stays long anymore. The few old houses that are left have
been cut up into apartments and into furnished rooms. There is no dignity left
in the old houses. The new partitioning is flimsy. The lawns are gone and the
trees are gone, and the houses are naked to the traffic. In the houses shrill
voices saw at the nerves of children, television screens flicker as the trucks
roll by, men leave in surly humor for the swing shift.
Quinn Delevan, as he ate dinner with Bess, was constantly aware that on
this Wednesday night he would go down to Fremont Street again, down to the girl
who waited for him. They ate together in the breakfast booth off the kitchen,
and he had asked his usual meaningless question about David, and she had
answered as always, “He took his dinner out to his studio.”
They ate and she talked a great deal, talked about Robbie and his new
bride, and she ate as she talked and he wished for a dining room table of
baronial proportions, so that she could sit at one end of it and he could sit
at the other,
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