William Gresham - Nightmare Alley

The brain held him; it dosed him with grains of wild joy, measured out in milligrams of words, the turn of her mouth corner, one single, lustful flash from the gray eyes before the scales of secrecy came over them again. The brain seemed always present, always hooked to his own by an invisible gold wire, thinner than spider’s silk. It sent its charges into his mind and punished him with a chilling wave of cold reproof. It would let him writhe in helpless misery and then, just before the breaking point, would send the warm current through to jerk him back to life and drag him, tumbling over and over through space, to the height of a snow mountain where he could see all the plains of the earth spread out before him, and all the power of the cities and the ways of men. All were his, could be his, would be his, unless the golden thread broke and sent him roaring into the dark chasm of fear again.

The wind had grown colder; they stood up. He lit cigarettes and gave her one and they passed on, circling the obelisk, walking slowly past the blank, unfinished wall of the Museum’s back, along the edge of the park where the busses trailed their lonely lights away uptown.

He took her hand in his and slid it into the pocket of his topcoat, and for a moment, as they walked, it was warm and a little moist, almost yielding, almost, to the mind’s tongue, sweet-salty, yielding, musky; then in an instant it changed, it chilled, it became the hand of a dead woman in his pocket, as cold as the hand he once molded of rubber and stretched on the end of his reaching rod, icy from a rubber sack of cracked ice in his pocket, straight into the face of a believer’s skeptical husband.

Now the loneliness grew inside him, like a cancer, like a worm of a thousand branches, running down his nerves, creeping under his scalp, tying two arms together and squeezing his brain in a noose, pushing into his loins and twisting them until they ached with need and not-having, with wanting and not-daring, with thrust into air, with hand-gripping futility-orgasm and swift-flooding shame, hostile in its own right, ashamed of shame.

They stopped walking and he moved toward a backless bench under the trees which were putting out the first shoots of green in the street lamp’s glow, delicate, heartbreakingly new, the old spring which would bring the green softly, gently, like a young girl, into the earth’s air long after they and the fatal, coursing city, were gone. They would be gone forever, he thought, looking down into her face which was now as empty as a ball of crystal reflecting only the window light.

The rush, the rocketing plunge of the years to death, seized hold of him and he gripped her, pressing her to him in a fierce clutch after life. She let him hold her and he heard himself moaning a little under his breath as he rubbed his cheek against the smooth hair. Then she broke away, reached up and brushed his lips with hers and began to walk again. He fell in behind her for a few steps, then came abreast of her and took her hand once more. This time it was firm, muscular, determined. It closed on his own fingers for a single reassuring instant, then broke away and she thrust her hands into the pockets of her coat and strode on, the smoke of her cigarette whirling back over her shoulder like a sweet-smelling scarf in the wind.

When she walked she placed her feet parallel, as if she were walking a crack in the sidewalk. In spite of high heels the ankles above them never wavered. She wore gunmetal stockings, and her shoes had buckles of cut steel.

Two ragged little boys, gleeful at being out after midnight, came bounding toward them, chasing each other back and forth across the walk by the wall where the trees leaned over. One of them pushed the other, screaming dirty words, and the one pushed caromed toward Lilith. Turning like a cat released in mid-air, she spun out of his path and the boy sprawled to the cinders, his hands slipping along, grinding cinders into the palms. He sat up and as Stan turned to watch, he suddenly sprang at his companion with his fists. Kids always play alike. Rough-house around until one gets hurt and then the fight starts. A couple of socks and they quit and the next minute are friends again. Oh, Christ, why do you have to grow up into a life like this one? Why do you ever have to want women, want power, make money, make love, keep up a front, sell the act, suck around some booking agent, get gypped on the check-?

It was late and the lights were fewer. Around them the town’s roar had softened to a hum. And spring was coming with poplar trees standing slim and innocent around a glade with the grass hummocks under one’s hands-can’t I ever forget it? His eyes blurred and he felt his mouth tighten.

The next moment Lilith’s hand was through his arm, pressing it, turning him across the avenue to the apartment house where she lived, where she worked her own special brand of magic, where she had her locked files full of stuff. Where she told people what they had to do during the next day when they wanted a drink, when they wanted to break something, when they wanted to kill themselves with sleeping tablets, when they wanted to bugger the parlor maid or whatever they wanted to do that they had become so afraid of doing that they would pay her twenty-five dollars an hour to tell them either why it was all right to do it or go on doing it or think about doing it or how they could stop doing it or stop wanting to do it or stop thinking about doing it or do something else that was almost as good or something which was bad but would make you feel better or just something to do to be able to do something.

At her door they stopped and she turned to him, smiling serenely, telling him in that smile that he wasn’t coming in tonight, that she didn’t need him, didn’t want him tonight, didn’t want his mouth on her, didn’t want him to kneel beside her, kissing her, didn’t want anything of him except the knowledge that when she wanted him in the night and wanted his mouth on her and wanted him kneeling beside her, kissing her, she would have him doing all those things to her as she wanted them done and just when she wanted them done and just how she wanted them done to her because she had only what she wanted from anybody and she had let him do those things to her because she had wanted them done to her not because he could do them better than anyone else although he didn’t know if there was anybody else and didn’t want to know and it didn’t matter and she could have him any time she wanted those things done to her because that was the way she was and she was to be obeyed in all things because she held in her hand the golden thread which carried the current of life into him and she held behind her eyes the rheostat that fixed the current and she could starve him and dry him up and kill him by freezing if she wanted to and this was where he had gotten himself only it didn’t matter because as long as one end of the golden wire was embedded in his brain he could breathe and live and move and become as great as she wanted since she sent the current along the wire for him to become great with and live with and even make love to Molly with when Molly begged him to tell her if he didn’t want her any more so she might get some man before she looked like an old hay-burner and her insides were too tight for her ever to have a kid.

All these things he saw in the full lower lip, the sharp cheekbones and chin, the enormous eyes of gray that looked like ink now in the dark of the vestibule. He was about to ask her something else and he wet his lips with his tongue. She caught his thought, nodded, and he stood there, three steps below her with his hand holding his hat, looking up at her and needing and then she gave him what he was begging for, her lips for a full, warm, soft, sweet, moist moment and her little tongue between his like the words, “Good night” formed of soft moisture. Then she had gone and there he was for another day, another week, another month, willing to do anything she said, as long as she would not break the golden wire and now he had her permission, which she had pulled out of his mind, and he hurried off to take advantage of it before she changed her mind and sent him refusal, chilling along the invisible wire embedded in his brain, that would stop his hand six inches from his lips.