"We slept in a bed with a canopy veil that kept out mosquitoes and sifted the moonlight, and I would lie there awake in the dark watching her sleep, afraid of being trapped in that dream-choked head; and when morning came she would laugh and tease and pull my hair, and presently, after I'd gone, write… well, there is this I remember: 'R. is hiding behind a giant clock. Its tick is like thunderstrokes, like the pulsebeat of God, and the hands, shaped like pointing fingers, stand at seventeen past three; come six I will find him, for he does not know it is from me he hides, but imagines it is himself. I do not wish him harm, and I would run away if I could, but the clock demands a sacrifice, or it will never stop, and life must cease somewhere, for who among us can long endure its boom?
"Aside from all else, there is some truth in that; clocks indeed must have their sacrifice: what is death but an offering to time and eternity?
"Now, oddly enough, our lives were more than ever interlocked: there were any number of times I could have left, gone away, never seen her again; however, to desert would've been to deny love, and if I did not love Dolores, then no emotion of mine has been anything but spurious. I think now she was not altogether human (a trance-child, if such there be, or a dream herself), nor was I… though for reasons of youth, and youth is hardly human: it can't be, for the young never believe they will die… especially would they never believe that death comes, and often, in forms other than the natural one.
"In the spring we sailed for Florida; Dolores had never been before to the States, and we went to New York, which she did not like, and Philadelphia, which she thought equally tiresome. At last, in New Orleans, where we took a charming patio apartment, she was happy, as indeed was I. And during our peregrinations the dream book disappeared: where she could have hidden it I do not know, for I searched every possible place: it was in a way a relief really not to find it. Then one afternoon, walking home from the market and carrying, if you please, a fine live hen, I saw her talking with a man there in the shade by the cathedral; there was an intimacy in their attitude which made me still inside: this I knew was no simple tourist asking direction, and later, when I told her what I'd seen, she said, oh, very casually, yes, it was a friend, someone she'd met in a cafй, a prizefighter: would I care to meet him?
"Now after an injury, physical, spiritual, whatever, one always believes had one obeyed a premonition (there is usually in such instances an imagined premonition) nothing would have happened; still, had I had absolute foreknowledge, I should have gone right ahead, for in every lifetime there occur situations when one is no more than a thread in a design willfully woven by… who should I say? God?
"It was one Sunday that they came, the prizefighter, Pepe Alvarez, and Ed Sansom, his manager. A mercilessly hot day, as I recall, and we sat in the patio with fans and cold drinks: you could scarcely select a group with less in common than we four; had it not been for Sansom, who was something of a buffoon and therefore distracting, it would all have been rather too tense, for one couldn't ignore the not very discreet interplay between Dolores and the young Mexican: they were lovers, even slow-witted Amy could've perceived this, and I was not surprised: Pepe was so extraordinary: his face was alive, yet dreamlike, brutal, yet boyish, foreign but familiar (as something from childhood is familiar), both shy and aggressive, both sleeping and awake. But when I say he and Dolores were lovers, perhaps I exaggerate: lovers implies, to some extent, reciprocity, and Dolores, as became apparent, could never love anyone, so caught was she within a trance; then, too, other than that they performed a pleasurable function, she had no personal feeling or respect for men or the masculine personality… that personality which, despite legend, can only be most sensitively appreciated by its own kind. As it was getting dark in the patio, I looked at Pepe: his Indian skin seemed to hold all the light left in the air, his flat animal-shrewd eyes, bright as though with tears, regarded Dolores exclusively; and suddenly, with a mild shock, I realized it was not she of whom I was jealous, but him.
"Afterwards, and though at first I was careful not to show the quality of my feelings, Dolores understood intuitively what had happened: 'Strange how long it takes us to discover ourselves; I've known since first I saw you, she said, adding, 'I do not think, though, that he is the one for you; I've known too many Pepes: love him if you will, it will come to nothing. The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.
"It was different, this love of mine for Pepe, more intense than anything I felt for Dolores, and lonelier. But we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world's ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart. There were moments, wonderful moments, when I thought I was free, that I could forget him and that sleepy violent face, but then he would not let me, no, he was always there, sitting in the patio, or listening to her play the guitar, laughing, talking, near but remote, always there, as I was in Dolores' dreams. I could not endure to see him suffer; it was an agony to watch him fight, prancing quick and cruel, see him hit, the glare, the blood and the blueness. I gave him money, bought him cream-colored hats, gold bracelets (which he adored, and wore like a woman), shoes in bright Negro colors, candy silk shirts, and I gave all these things to Ed Sansom, too: how they despised me, both of them, but not enough to refuse a gift, oh never. And Dolores continued with Pepe in her queer compulsive way, not really interested one way or another, not caring whether he stayed or went; like some brainless plant, she lived (existed) beyond her own control in that reckless book of dreams. She could not help me. What we most want is only to be held… and told… that everything (everything is a funny thing, is baby milk and Papa's eyes, is roaring logs on a cold morning, is hoot-owls and the boy who makes you cry after school, is Mama's long hair, is being afraid and twisted faces on the bedroom wall)… everything is going to be all right.
"One night Pepe came to the house very drunk, and proceeded with the boldest abandon to a) beat Dolores with his belt, b) piss on the rug and on my paintings, c) call me horrible hurting names, d) break my nose, e and f and otherwise. And I walked in the streets that night, and along the docks, and talked aloud pleading with myself to go away, be alone again, I said, as if I were not alone, rent another room in another life. I sat in Jackson Square; except for the tolling of train bells, it was quiet and all the Cabildo was like a haunted palace; there was a blond misty boy sitting beside me, and he looked at me, and I at him, and we were not strangers: our hands moved towards each other to embrace. I never heard his voice, for we did not speak; it is a shame, I should so like the memory of it. Loneliness, like fever, thrives on night, but there with him light broke, breaking in the trees like birdsong, and when sunrise came, he loosened his fingers from mine, and walked away, that misty boy, my friend.