Флетчер Флора - Park Avenue Tramp

Now I will think very carefully about everything that has happened, she thought. It is absolutely essential now to think clearly and sanely and not to allow myself to become deceived by emotion or excessively depressed by what has occurred and can’t be helped. Let me see how it was exactly. I went accidentally to the place where he worked, which was nothing for which I can be blamed and was no offense of any kind, and I saw him there and heard him play the piano, and I thought that he was beautiful and played beautifully, and I loved him, I did love him, and now he is dead because of it, but that is no reason to accuse myself or to assume responsibility for what I did not want or directly do.

I did not want him to be hurt or to die. All I wanted was to make him happy and to be happy myself, and that’s what I did and almost was. He said himself that he was happy, that each time we were together was the best time of all, and this was good. It’s true, of course, that it would not have continued indefinitely, or even much longer, which I’ll not try to deny, but it was good for the time it lasted and better than no good at all. This is only logical, that something is better than nothing, and it is surely not my fault that it ended badly.

So. I have reasoned calmly and rationally, there is no question about that, and it is clearly preposterous for me to have this terrible and oppressive feeling of guilt, as if I had personally done a great wrong or had deliberately permitted the great wrong that was done. Commitment to grief is one thing, and commitment to guilt is another. That’s the distinction I must understand and believe. I saw him die, however. There’s no getting away from that. I saw him beaten and killed by a monster, and I said nothing afterward to anyone, and just a little while ago when the policeman was here I still said nothing, and the reason I have said nothing and will say nothing is because I am afraid of Oliver, and I know that he would find a way to destroy me if I gave him cause. I could go away, of course, but he could certainly find me if he wanted to, and even if he couldn’t I still wouldn’t go away, because there is no place for me in the world but this place and no way to survive but this way. I’m a coward, to tell the truth. I do not care to make a gesture that would change nothing that has happened and would only make things worse.

There. I have faced things fairly as they are, and myself as I am. There is supposed to be a kind of catharsis in this, and one is supposed to feel much better after having done it. In a little while, if I sit here quietly, I shall surely begin to feel better.

She sat quietly and waited to begin feeling better, but she didn’t feel better at all, and pretty soon it was impossible to wait any longer for anything or to stay any longer in the apartment than it would take her to change her clothes and get out. Unfolding her hands and rising, she walked stiffly to her room with the strangest and most disturbing sense of being precariously contained, as if the slightest exaggerated motion would cause her to fly apart in all directions. In her room, she changed her clothes and brushed her hair and came out again to the telephone and called down to the garage for the Jaguar. When she got downstairs and outside to the street, the Jaguar was there, and she got in it and drove away, and then for the first time she began to think of where she would go, and she knew, even as she began to think, that she was going to Duo’s, where Joe Doyle had worked, and this was for some reason imperative, something she had to do.

It was after four o’clock when she got there, and Yancy was at the bar. He saw her enter and watched her approach, and then, just as she reached the bar, he turned his back and spoke to her reflection in the long mirror behind a row of beer glasses.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said.

“What?” she said.

“You heard me,” he said. “Get the hell out of here and don’t ever come back.”

She stared past him into the mirror, meeting his eyes sadly, and he was almost convinced for a moment that he had hurt her inexcusably and should be ashamed of himself.

“Why are you abusing me?” she said. “Don’t you believe that I am as sorry as you for what happened?”

“No.”

“Do you believe that it happened because of me?”

“Yes.”

“Is it because you hate me so much that you want to think so badly of me?”

“I don’t hate you. What would be the use? It would be like hating cancer.”

“If you don’t hate me, why don’t you look at me?”

“I don’t want to look at you. I don’t want to see you or talk to you or have you near me. I’m sick of you, and I’m afraid of you. You’re contagious. I told you before what you were, and I told Joe, but it didn’t do any good, and now it’ll never do any good. He’s dead, and there’s no way of proving who did it, I guess, but you know and I know why it happened, that it was because of you and what you are and did. I wish it had been you instead of him, but it wasn’t, and probably that’ll be all right, after all. In the end, you’ll probably find a harder and slower way to die.”

She shook her head from side to side, as if she would not believe that he was saying such cruel things to her, and the heavy side of her hair moved slowly back and forth over one sad eye.

“All right,” she said. “I can see that I had better go away. Good-by.”

He didn’t answer, and she turned and walked to the door and stopped and looked back, but he continued to look into the mirror silently, and so she went on out and got into the Jaguar, and it was remarkable how she had begun suddenly to feel. She felt vastly relieved and lightened, purged and almost exonerated by Yancy’s castigation. Driving away in the Jaguar, she started thinking about somewhere else to go in order to avoid being alone, and she decided that Bernardine DeWitt’s apartment on MacDougal Street was the closest place that appealed to her, and so she went there.

She was admitted to the apartment by the maid, and there were, as usual, several people talking and moving around and drinking cocktails, but Bernardine wasn’t among them. Perhaps she had merely gone off somewhere for a few minutes, or even for a few hours, which wouldn’t be exceptionally odd of Bernardine, who was very casual about guests, but it didn’t matter, anyhow, where she had gone or when she would come back. Everyone would simply drink as much as he wanted, and leave when he was ready.

Charity had one Martini quickly, and then took another to carry around the room. She had drunk about half of it and spoken amicably to three or four persons when she came to a young man in a corner. He was sitting alone with an empty glass in his hand, and he had an interesting, angular face and stubborn hair that went in different directions in several places. She stopped and looked down at him, pushing her hair back on the heavy side with the hand that did not hold her glass.

“Hello,” she said.

He stood up with a kind of awkward, spasmodic motion, as if he moved by sections, one after the other. He returned her look with fierce intensity.

“Hello,” he said. “I was just watching you.”

“Were you? Why?”

“Because you’re the only woman here worth watching.”

“Do you really think so? Even if you don’t, it was a charming thing to say. I don’t believe anyone has ever said anything so charming to me before.”

“Please don’t accuse me of being charming. I was only telling the truth. I’d like to paint you.”

“Are you a painter?”

“Yes, I have a studio in the Village. You needn’t ask who I am, however, because you’ve never heard of me.”

“Possibly I’ll hear of you in the future.”