Going Down Fast by Marge Piercy

he watched. “See a flick, eat icecream, toss a ball around.”
    Faintly possible that this was his oblique approach to bed but she was not committing herself to anything agreeing to see him now and then. He had found her a job, he had been interesting to talk to. She was as poorly equipped to endure loneliness as she ever had been: a few weeks in her rooms and she’d be across the street at Woody’s bar seeking proof of her attractiveness, her existence, seeking relief from the pressure of walls and memory and anxiety. “By the way, was that your standard approach?”
    â€œI have no approach. I let women do what they want to.”
    She laughed. “I don’t know if that’s indifference or the cleverest trap of all.”
    â€œThe door’s open. That’s all. All the doors are open.”
    Saturday, October 25
    A clear racy day with the wind smelling of leaves. Even the grubby sparrows in the gutter showed not uniformly sooty but brown-capped and blackthroated. Content to be alone Anna walked toward the lake, a blanket over her arm and a book Leon had pressed on her—an interpretation of Blake he claimed was his theory of film—tucked in her cow of a purse. As she passed under the echoey railroad viaduct she wondered in which lakeside tower Leon was lunching with his mother, in these blocks almost entirely white and largely vertical. The managers, the lawyers, the middle echelon administration men lived over here in grandiose well kept apartment hotels or new glass walled skyscrapers. Cliffs of money on the lake.
    The point was a crowded rookery of sunning students and neighborhood people sprawled under the small trees. She clambered down from rock to rock, folded her coat and leaned back. In a clean curve the lake arced away to the Loop’s compact facade. Below her a man fished, clutching beer in a paper sack. Once an hour the fuzz patrolled. From daylight on men fished, old men joined on the weekend by young black guys. The old men fished with two or more poles, with pulleys, balls of stout line and bells to warn of a nibble. They muttered encouragement and chaff as if each was afraid the other would quit before he did.
    She turned toward deep water, let her eyes close and the sun melt the muscles in her face. The noises grew discrete, each cry, bike chain, transistor or motor boat. Then they receded and she felt calmer than she had in a month and a half. If only she could live more gently. Her trouble was in overresponding to events, to people, to touch and words and the ordinary flotsam of living. Somehow her volume control had got turned too loud. A giant baby resided in her grabbing at things, then letting go with a clatter—responding hypnotically to stroking, clutching the penis like a breast for comfort. Time and again she saw clearly and acted irrationally, crying, Now what have I done?
    Yes, these rocks. A mild April night with a damp wind lapping over the water. The evening had begun badly. Asher had agreed to take her to a Yeats play in which her friend Marcia was dancing. However, the Independents for Botts threw a party, and they must go there instead in order for Asher to talk to someone who’d be making an appearance. Then he did not like her dress and kept after her till she changed it. She had always suspected that the women Asher approved of were hipless girls with elegant bony shoulders. He had been under the impression the party was to be more political than alcoholic, and he was wrong. After he failed to persuade the man to vote for a park proposal, he wanted to go home. She said no. She did not like the group, she did not want to be at this party, but it was Saturday night and she was not going back to their apartment, not yet she wasn’t.
    Asher left, and she glared around the room waiting for one of those stuffed green olives to ask her what had happened. She got herself another drink and stood backed into a corner, a grimace of