Karen Fowler - Black Glass

Linda takes a long drink of her beer and then sets it and the empty glass back under the seat where they’ll be safe until she can retrieve them. She follows Fred to the elevator, passing through a nasty, acrid smell by the couch where Ben Bryant is smoking a pipe. With tobacco in it.

Fred doesn’t seem the sort to seduce her in the basement. Too much risk to the car, for one thing, and Linda doesn’t like him so she is relaxed and calm, picking her way through the couples who have opted for romantic subterranean lighting. Fred stops at a polished red VW bug and runs his hand over the curves of the trunk. “I got extra locks on the doors, too,” he says. “Because of the tape deck. I’m going to get leather for the steering wheel.”

Linda leans over, peering into the car’s interior. Above the soft and snowy sheepskin, next to the steering column, a set of keys dangles. “You’ve left your keys in it,” Linda tells Fred. “Anyone could take it.”

Fred pushes her roughly aside, pressing his forehead against the window. “It’s locked.” His voice breaks. “It’s all locked up. The keys are locked inside.”

“Oh,” says Linda. She thinks for a moment. “Maybe you could get in with a coat hanger. I’ve seen that done.”

“Linda, the windows are closed. And it’s got special locks.”

“Oh.” Linda thinks again. “I guess you’ll have to break a window.”

Fred runs a hand through his hair, but it is too short to be disarranged. His face is anguished. “Could you let me think this through?” he requests. “God, Linda, could you be quiet and leave me alone for a bit?”

Linda makes her way back to the elevator, the heels of her shoes snapping on the cement floor. A white-faced cadet stumbles across her path. He moans once, a pathetic, suffocated sound. “Oh, no,” he says. He falls against the first of the washing machines, claws it open, and throws up into it. He looks at Linda and throws up again.

There is a message here, Linda decides. A message from the Venusians. The message is to go home. Go home to her roommates who were so right when she was so wrong, and Linda feels that all she will ever ask for the whole rest of her life is not to forget and wash her clothes in the first machine or spend another second with anyone named Fred or Frank or Kenneth or—

The elevator opens slowly, suspensefully, and Dave is inside. “I thought you might need rescuing,” he says. “Mrs. Kirk gave me the keys to the penthouse. She says you can see all of San Francisco from there. Want to come?”

“Why not?” Linda answers coldly. “As long as I’m in the elevator anyway.” She joins him. They face front. No one’s shoulder touches anyone else’s. The elevator does not move. Linda jabs the topmost button. And again. The elevator gives a startled lurch upward. About the third floor, Linda asks where Suzette is. Maximum aplomb. A casual, uninterested question. She is merely making conversation.

“Sitting on Frank’s lap. Apparently he’s a very old soul. A teacher. A guru, would you believe it? He has a yellow aura. Suzette just about died when she saw it.”

“Too bad for you,” says Linda. The elevator has stopped, but its door is sticking. Linda has to wedge her foot in to force it open.

“I’m not interested in Suzette.” Dave sounds surprised. “Linda, the woman communicates with Venusians.” He fits Mrs. Kirk’s key into the lock. “You’re not drunk, are you? I mean not even a little. You hate beer?”

“Yes.”

“Just a lucky guess.”

“But I’m working on it,” Linda tells him. “I’m growing. I’m changing.”

“Oh, no. Don’t do that,” says Dave. They enter the penthouse and are attacked by a mob of affectionate cats, escaping to the terrace with their lives and a quantity of cat hair. The evening couldn’t be more beautiful, absolutely clear, and the lights on the hills extend all the way to the water, where Linda can actually see the small shapes of the waves, forming and repeating themselves endlessly over the bay. The air is cold, and somewhere below she hears the sound of breaking glass.

“Did that come from the basement?” Linda asks with some interest.

Dave shakes his head tiredly. “The apartment. That’s what I get for leaving Kenneth in charge.” He moves closer to Linda, putting his hands around her shoulders, making her shake. She can’t think clearly and she can’t hold still. The entire attention of her body is focused suddenly on those places where his hands are touching her. “My apartment is full of drunks and it’s after curfew,” Dave says. “I’m going to kiss you now unless you stop me.”

And what Linda feels is just a little like fear, but no, not like that at all, only it is so intense that she is not quite able to participate in the first kiss. She does better on the second, and by the third Dave has moved from her mouth to her neck and is telling her that he fell in love with her the first time he saw her, that first day in the elevator, when he saw she had Jack Lemmon’s chin.

• • •

WELL. THERE WE ARE. This seems to me to be a natural breakpoint, and although I can’t deny that we could learn a great deal more by going on here and, time permitting, we may return and do this later in the term, for now I want to bring this experience to some sort of close. The course is, after all, Romance and the focus is courtship, not mating, and let me add that the process of absorption is rather — well, untested in situations involving actual chemical changes in the subject’s physical system. We don’t want to find ourselves as subjects in someone else’s lab test, now, do we? Of course we don’t. Let’s let the lab work this out first.

We did go far enough with Linda to make some final observations concerning women and the physical aspects of romance. These are the sort of concerns which will continue to occupy our attention, as we determine whether or not they are universal, specifically female, or merely manifestations of a particular personality type.

I’m speaking, more specifically, of the body/mind split which occurred at the moment Dave touched her. I thought it was very pronounced. Did anyone not feel this? Yes, very pronounced. Linda’s body began to take on, in her own mind, a sort of otherness. Partly this was inherent in her conscious decision to feel whatever her body was feeling. A decision to be physically swept away is a contradiction in terms even when carried out successfully, and I feel Linda was relatively successful. But this is only the most straightforward, simplest aspect of the split.

Linda’s arousal was dependent upon Dave’s. Not upon Dave himself. Upon Dave’s arousal. Did you notice? In the earlier encounters we didn’t find this. Linda responded to his hands, to his face, to his voice, to various secondary male characteristics. She found him attractive. Mentally and physically. But toward the end she was much more aroused by the fact that he found her attractive. I don’t want to get into a discussion of evolution or of psychology. I merely point this out; I ask you to consider the implications. We have a sort of loop between the male and the female, and the conduit is the female’s body. It has been said — and we will be trying to determine, as we move on to other subjects, different ages, different sexes, whether it has been oversaid — that any romantic entanglement between a male and a female is, in fact, a triangle, and the third party is the female’s body. It is the hostage between them, the bridge or the barrier. At least in this case. Let’s be cautious here. At least for Linda. I’m ready for questions.

I would imagine that being told you had a nice chin was about as exciting as being told you had nice teeth. But this is just a guess. Linda was hardly listening at this point.