Barry Hannah - Long, Last, Happy - New and Collected Stories

“Hey, George, you quoting Marcel? I’m not cynical at all. She was having a hell of a time.”

Her language, an image from French dairy cow country — my good horror. How could this thing be? Albert was using the dog against her. He was forcing the paregoric down her, making her sick and blabbering.

“Now, man. You ought to see your face. What’s eating you?”

Horace was tall, too wise, knowing nothing. I hated him.

I couldn’t go see her that night. It was a bitter, bitter evening. Horace wanted to go down to the lobby and lie in wait so we could check out the woman when she came by. I told him that was a horrible sophomoric idea. Why? he asked, getting fed up with me. He said we might have found a lady with a profession here. He was ready to do a Chinese dwarf.

“Let’s leave it like the harmonica player,” I said, stonily.

“That isn’t the same at all.”

“Leave it.”

“You don’t tell me, all right? You’re not the duke of Kosciusko.”

He went down and I was happy he came back without seeing her.

The next morning was Sunday. Horace called himself a free-thinking Baptist. He’d brought a suit and he went out to that church down the way. I was apostate, but very glad he wasn’t. I checked the rail, being stealthy. That bastard Albert was in the chair, staring tiredly, having forced her twice this week. I was praying for an artery to snap in his face and vowed direct revenge if it didn’t. The man must be stomped and dragged off in a net. I could see venom popped up in his cheeks, spotting them red.

“Hey you,” I called, not very loud.

He twisted his head back, trying to find me.

“ En Attendant Godot? En Attendant? ”

He got up, shaken, and I watched the top of his head, gray hair brushed forward Roman, leave for the street.

When I knocked on the door and waited, I heard something clink inside. She came to the door in nothing but a house wrap, wet from the bath.

“Friend George.” Her eyes were very dull. She was on the stuff, her conscience awful.

When I went in she’d already gone back to the tub. I sat on the bed and heard her stir the water. Then I heard the clink again. For the longest time she said nothing.

“You ought to watch your transom. My friend heard you really having a good time last night.”

There was no reply at all.

“I thought wrong. You don’t need a friend so much as. . somebody to betray.”

Nothing. You heard water sounds, just a little.

I studied the bed and carpet and dresser — all she had and was, as far as I knew. A hotel was a stupid and desperate place to live, I suddenly thought. And rotation from one to another, having her bicycle and robe and boots and chain everywhere, up the stairs dutifully with them again and again, setting up like carnival gypsies except with less dignity and no good at all even to yokels with a quarter. But I was being unfair to her, and caught myself up again. Because I cherished her, nothing could budge me.

“I so need a friend now. It’s the end of things,” she said in a little, faint voice. “Come in here and sit. There’s a curtain between us. Oh!” I thought she gasped and I hurried in, face blushing and dying to help. The curtain was closed, all right, the brown shadow of her behind it sitting in the water. “Oh!” I thought she said again.

Around the front gathered edge of the curtain near the faucets the dog chain lay out on the floor with one of its bracelets open, the rest of the chain in the tub with Felice.

“Put it on your wrist, my pal,” she said tinnily, almost sighing it.

So I did and snapped it on. I would be a gypsy too. I’d be the panting boy in the wings, waiting until her act was over and the others had had their fill of her. Until we made our move. This charity and long-suffering had never even nearly come near me before. I’m just sailing along the current in the rain gutter, a piece of nothing, nobody can touch me without drowning . The steel of the cuff was very serious and required a key for release, I noticed.

“You will be with me down down down oh! There’s a way to do it in the liver they said brings it there quick but oh! no no no.” This was all so faint and not recollected until a long while afterwards.

“Felice! Are you okay? I’m buckled on the chain with you.”

“Something’s not right, and I’ve used the last one.” Her voice was faint, dimming like a small girl going to sleep, her breath wet on the pillow.

“Everything will be all right. Everything. I know you’re under horrible pressure. I’m reading Proust, drawing closer to your world. The French Proust.”

There would be no way for me not to view a lot of her with the chain binding us, I reckoned. This would be an unearthly familiarity. The die would be cast. The new world would begin right then, and I felt actual waves of a kind of happy nausea.

“Oh oh oh oh ohh! Not right.”

This voice did not rise in friendship or passion. She was very sick and I knew something was wrong, unpretended and real.

“I’m not dying the right way, George.”

I got up, thinking, and pulled the chain to the door. I couldn’t look at what I wanted without pulling her a little, with a splash from the tub. I finally had my eyes just past the jamb and looked on the dresser. The paregoric bottles were there, three empty, but where the long acupuncture needles always were was empty space. It was too catastrophic a thing to even consider; but I knew she had them.

“Felice, I’m opening the curtain!”

She was lying over with her head forward, drugged, on the shower plunger between the faucets. Her hands were down on her stomach. The tub water was pink around it with three streams of blood. She’d pushed them in the right side where the liver was, I found out. Oriental, Oriental , I remember thinking over and over, trying to call the dread something.

I got in the tub with her and lifted her. You think you are one muscled champion until you try to lift a wet naked woman dead-haul. It can barely be done, and I thought she was already dead, so that in this fear I finally did it and we both fell over together, confused in the chain, off the tiles into the carpet of the room. My nose was flat in it and it smelled like the dusty feet of a horde. She was whimpering. When I saw the heads of the needles, puffed out with blue and darker skin, with a near-black blood dripping out like spread fingers, I almost went under.

I looked for a phone, but we had no phone in these rooms. Her legs began moving although her face looked dead. I drew up and whirled my head around looking. I reached the robe on the hanger and dragged it off, then threw it over her and put my arms under hers, tugging and pleading with her.

With as much ease as I could I got her out on the stoop and she began walking a little, saying oh oh oh . We went down the stairs very slowly. When we got toward the bottom, I raised up and there Albert was staring at us from his black suit, his eyes seeming beyond a known emotion. I gasped at him to phone help, she was dying. Some others behind Albert stood there, but I barely noticed even their shoes. I settled her on the last stair then sat myself, unwrapping the chain around us both and getting some free length to my wrist. Then I saw she was revealed and I pulled the robe together on her.

She had a great deal of blood in her lap and on the side of the robe, up level with the circled cross of the Klan.

“This is my affair,” said Albert. “Let her go.”

“It is not . I’m with her now. Can’t you see? I’m her future now!”

“No you ain’t, son,” said my father, who’d come up with Horace, the both of them in suits.