Флетчер Флора - Park Avenue Tramp

And at that instant the first world disintegrated and became the second world, and Sweeney stood with arms akimbo on the white sand beach beside the whispering sea, and his body was straight and strong and golden in the hot white light of the sun.

Charity was running down the beach. Lightly, lightly, scarcely disturbing the sand. She cried out once, his name, and he turned with his heart pounding and swelling to see in her face the light of anticipated ecstasy. Then the second world was in an instant, without warning, distended and blurred and bursting apart. It vanished completely in a pink froth and was gone for a minute and then returned. The sun returned, and the sea and the sand, and Sweeney was standing where be had stood. But he was now, in the second world, the first world Sweeney. His body was blue-veined and bloated, a profanation of light.

Charity had stopped running. She stood in the sand as still as stone. On her face, instead of ecstasy, was an expression of utter loathing.

Sweeney closed his eyes and lay back across his bed.

Monday was not one of Charity’s better days, but neither, on the other hand, was it one of her really bad days, and on the whole it was just a day in between. She wakened in the middle of the morning and lay thinking for a while of Connecticut, how fine and exciting and yet restful it had been there with Joe Doyle, but this was not good, for it made her begin to want Joe again, and it was much too soon to begin this, for it was far too long a time until Tuesday night. If she began thinking about him and wanting him already, it would make the passing of time much more difficult to bear, and she was quite likely to do something precipitate and unfortunate instead of waiting patiently and sensibly as she had planned. In order to avoid this, she began thinking of what she could do to fill in the rest of this day that she had now started. The first thing that occurred to her was breakfast, and she was surprised, the moment it occurred to her, to discover that she was really quite hungry, which she scarcely ever was at the beginning of any day, no matter what time she began it.

She got up at once and had a shower and dressed and then went out to the dining room, where she ate a substantial breakfast, even including an egg, that would eliminate the necessity for lunch. The breakfast was served by Edith, who said good morning in a respectful voice and didn’t say anything more all the while she was serving and Charity was eating. She hovered about, however, usually in a position in which Charity could not see her without turning her head, and this made Charity uncomfortable. She wished that Edith would go away, but she didn’t say anything about it until she was ready for a second cup of coffee and a cigarette, and then she said something as politely as she could with the definite intention of not being unpleasant.

“Edith,” she said politely, “I wish you would go the hell away.”

“I beg your pardon, Madam?” Edith said with a rising inflection which implied that she had either not heard correctly or could not believe what she had heard.

“You heard me quite clearly, Edith,” Charity said. “I said very politely that I wish you would go the hell away.”

“Certainly, Madam. Is there anything more I can do for you before I go?”

“No, there is nothing more you can do. I am only going to have a second cup of coffee and a cigarette, and I am perfectly capable of doing it without any help from you.”

“Shall I pour the coffee?”

“I’ll pour it myself, Edith. I’ll also light my cigarette myself.”

“Very well, Madam.”

Edith walked around the end of the table and across the room to the door. She stopped there and turned and smiled and stood with her hands folded under her breasts in the kind of posture taught to offensive children by teachers of elocution. It was a kind of posture that was meant to be ingratiating but only succeeded in being annoying,

“I hope you had a pleasant weekend, Madam,” she said.

“I had a very pleasant weekend,” Charity said, “I went with Miss Samantha Cox to her house in Connecticut.”

“So I understood, Madam. I was certain that I saw Miss Cox drive past on the Avenue Saturday afternoon, but obviously I was mistaken, since she was in Connecticut.”

“Obviously you were, Edith.”

“Probably it was only someone who looks like Miss Cox and happens to drive exactly the same kind and color of car.”

“It’s more probable that you are trying to be malicious and troublesome, Edith, which I understand clearly.”

“Pardon me, Madam. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. Would you like me to make your bed while you’re having your coffee and cigarette?”

“Yes, you may go make my bed, Edith, and please don’t help yourself to any of my things while you are there.”

“Very well, Madam.”

Edith smiled again and unfolded her hands and went out, and Charity poured a second cup of coffee and lit a cigarette and was furious.

The bitch! she thought. The sneaky, unreliable bitch!

She wasn’t thinking of Edith, however. She was thinking of Samantha. It was just like Samantha to have driven right by the place innumerable times and to have made no effort at all to be inconspicuous during the time she was supposed to be in Connecticut, and it was Charity’s opinion that she had probably let herself be seen deliberately. You simply couldn’t rely on Samantha to do her part faithfully in anything, and it was bad luck that she had been the only one with a suitable house to borrow for the weekend. She was more than unreliable, as a matter of fact. She was absolutely treacherous when it pleased her to be, with no conscience whatever, and it wouldn’t be the least surprising to discover that she had actually called Oliver on the telephone on some pretext just to let him know that Charity had lied about going with her to Connecticut. But if this were done and she were charged with it, she would simply be too contrite and exuding apologies for being so careless and forgetful and utterly undependable, which she wouldn’t have been deliberately for the world, of course, and she was absolutely a bitch, bitch, bitch!

While thinking of Samantha, she had been drawing deeply and methodically on her cigarette without realizing what she was doing, and suddenly she became aware that her tongue was hot and the cigarette was tipped with a long red coal that was almost half as long as what was left of the cigarette itself. She crushed it in a tray and drank the coffee in her cup. She was beginning now to wish that she hadn’t eaten such a hearty breakfast. It had tasted good, and she had enjoyed it, even the egg, but it was beginning to feel like a mass of sodden facial tissue in her stomach, and she couldn’t imagine how it had got as far as it had, or how it would ever get the rest of the way it had to go.

Well, it served her right for being such a glutton. Ordinarily she had very little taste for food of any kind, and she ate lightly as a necessity whenever her body demanded it, and she simply couldn’t understand people who made a big issue of eating, a kind of religious ceremony, with all kinds of specifications as to how things were to be prepared and served. It was disgusting, when you stopped to think about it, making such a thing over eating flesh and eggs and things like that, a lot more disgusting than some of the natural appetites some people professed to find disgusting, and anyone who did it, as she had just done it, deserved to have an uncomfortable stomach at least.

Getting up abruptly from the table, she went out of the dining room and into a hall and down the hall to a library with two or three thousand books that no one ever read. Once she had gone through a period of resolving to be something different from what she was, and then she had decided to start reading the books in the library with the intention of becoming dedicated to a reclusive life, and she had actually taken a few of them down and read snatches in them here and there, but she had never got around to starting one at the beginning and reading through to the end. It was just as well that she hadn’t started, anyhow, because the period had been pretty brief, and she probably wouldn’t have had time in the length of it to read a whole book. Now, starting Monday morning to wait for Tuesday night, she put several records on the hi-fi and sat down in a chair to listen.