Флетчер Флора - Wake Up With a Stranger

Anticipating this, she had tried to reason it away, to justify herself in relation to him and what had happened between them, and she tried again now, lying in bed and thinking for a while before getting up. What she thought was that she had been kind to him and generous and had at least given him something for some time, and it would certainly be insane of her to blame herself because she had been unable to give him more, when no one else had given him anything at all. This was true enough, but what nullified it and disturbed her was the realization that he would have been better off, much better, if she, like all the others, had given him nothing. There was no sense in this, however, no sense at all, and there was no sense, either, in lying and thinking about it and anticipating something that had not happened — and would surely never happen as a result of anything she had done — now that three weeks had passed. It was a fine day, a spring day with a bright sky, and the sensible thing was to get out of bed at once and start living it.

She walked barefooted through the living room and into the kitchen and put the coffee on, and then walked back into the living room and through it and into the bedroom and from the bedroom into the bathroom. It was a pleasure, a subtle and sensual delight, to feel on the soles of her feet the sequence of sensations incited by the soft looped pile of the bedroom rug and the stiffer clipped pile of the living room carpet and the smooth cool surface of the kitchen linoleum, the same sequence in reverse when she returned, and finally, almost like a tender bruise, the cold and absolutely ungiving bathroom tile. Showering, she remembered again how on that other morning she had walked naked and arrogant through Shirley Burns’ room, had showered and later dressed in the inappropriate scarlet sheath, and had finally walked downstairs to discover Aaron dead. This had all happened only a hundred days or so ago, and it was incredible that it had been no longer, and that so much had happened, and was still happening, since that time.

But she was thinking again of the day that had happened instead of the day that was happening; this accomplished nothing and was likely, besides, to become depressing. So she turned off the shower and toweled herself vigorously and returned to the bedroom. Retrieving her glasses from the bedside table where she had laid them last night, she put them on, the first act of dressing, then she stood for a minute before her mirror and smiled at herself and received a smile back. There was in this a kind of renewal, as if she had been bored and had met unexpectedly someone she had known and found stimulating and had almost forgotten; and with the renewal of pleasure there was also a renewal of the old resolve, that nothing should be wasted or lost before it was used, not talent or training or time or the fortunate arrangement and quality of flesh and bones. Now, however, that other morning kept intruding upon this morning, actually seemed to keep repeating itself in small parts removed from the whole. She was, for an instant before she moved, looking at herself in another mirror in another house three months ago, and everything that had occurred since would have to be repeated just as her image was now repeated in glass. Moving away from the glass and out of the glass, she dressed and fixed her face and went back to the kitchen where the coffee was ready.

Sitting at the tiny kitchen table with the coffee hot and black in its cup before her, she began for the first time to plan the day precisely around the things that were already established. There were two appointments, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, with two women who wanted gowns designed for specific occasions. It would be necessary to listen to their ideas and then modify them, or transform them completely to conform with her own which were already definite and partially on paper, and this was a delicate process requiring time and tact but which would mean at least a thousand dollars between the two of them and possibly even more. It would also be necessary to talk with Earl Joslin regarding the business, since it was still owned by Shirley Burns for whom Joslin acted, but this would be, because everything was going so well at the shop, no more than a routine conference. It would be, besides, a pleasure to talk with Joslin, who had been kind and helpful from the beginning, and still was. In the beginning, as a matter of fact, she had thought that he was possibly motivated by something more than kindness and a genuine respect for her ability and had expected him to make eventually some kind of overt bid for concession. She had wondered how she would respond if he did, but he had never made it and now quite palpably never would. She was thankful for this, especially since things had developed as they had with Tyler, and it was with Tyler, now that she had reached him in her mind, that the day she was planning would end, in this apartment in whatever development of their relationship he determined or succumbed to. But between now and then there were all these other things to do, and it was certainly time that she started to do them.

She finished her coffee and started. It was the day that ended what the other day had begun, which was, in its simplest terms, her struggle for the shop but was really far more complex, and it was — until long after dark after she had returned to her apartment — a good day that went well.

There were some boys down on the slope beneath the pines. From his position in the headmaster’s office, by looking over the headmaster’s left shoulder and through the bright glass pane of the window behind him, Enos could see them quite clearly. They didn’t seem to be doing much of anything in particular, just moving around rather slowly and aimlessly, in and out of light and shadow as they were cast in pattern by the pines and the sun. There was no special order or purpose in their movements, that was certain, and chances were that they had merely walked down the slope to loiter under the pines because it was a good place to go and be on a fine, bright day. The odd thing about them was that they no longer seemed to be the intolerable monsters of a monstrous world, and there was about them, in fact, a kind of halcyon air, motion and grace without the slightest sound. One of the boys had very pale hair; when he moved into the sun the hair changed instantly into white fire, and when he moved back into shade the fire went out as instantly as it had begun. This was very fascinating to see, and seemed for a moment to have some kind of significance that never became clear. The sight of the boys was not at all upsetting to Enos, and this was something different, a change that was part of his new peace. This was because the boys were now in a different world from his; they belonged to a world which he had left for the last time and to which he would never return, but into which he could still look over the left shoulder of the headmaster through a pane of bright glass.

“Do you understand what I have been saying?” the headmaster said.

“Yes,” Enos said. “Yes, I understand.”

What he understood was that the headmaster was trying to be kind and firm at the same time, which is standard procedure for headmasters in dealing with both students and young masters. This was something for which Enos should have been thankful, but he was not. The truth was, the firm kindness was more than a little patronizing, or at least it seemed so to Enos, and he was offended by it, because he was now, after a long time, superior and invulnerable and in no need of kindness or patronage or anything at all from anyone on earth. This feeling of detached invulnerability was so strong in him that he thought it must surely be apparent to any sentient person, and he could not understand why the headmaster was not aware of it and persisted in his foolish attitude, as if it were he who were the stronger of the two. But then, of course, when you stopped to consider it, that was because the headmaster was really a dull and inadequate little man who was aware of practically nothing and was more to be tolerated than resented. He was a frail man, with a tracery of fine blue veins visible under his skin; and his hair was white and soft and rather sparse and seemed to float in a kind of detached thin cloud around the contour of his skull. His lower lip sometimes began to tremble, which gave him the appearance of being on the verge of tears, but actually this was only a sort of tic; when it happened he would pinch the lip between the thumb and index finger of his right hand, and after a bit the trembling would stop.