A month ago Paul would have tried to find a way to show him it wasn’t that simple, wasn’t that cut-and-dried. Now he was no longer sure the man wasn’t right. Permissive societies were like permissive parents: they produced hellish children.
He thought bitterly, A man ought to be able to keep a few illusions.…
Finally the man looked at the revolving clock above the bar, drained his beer and left. Paul ordered his third gin and tonic and sat rotating the glass between his palms, seeking something to look at. There were five booths along the wall behind him; two were occupied by couples who seemed to be arguing in tense whispers. A big woman sat alone in the front booth watching the street; now and then she would turn to signal the bartender and Paul had glimpses of a puffy face, too old and ravaged to go with the blonde-dyed hair. She kept getting up and putting coins in the jukebox by the door; the room vibrated and Paul wondered why saloon jukeboxes inevitably emphasized the heavy bass thumpings.
All I’d have to do is go over and say, ‘Mind if I sit down?’
He didn’t; he knew he wouldn’t.
Once she even stopped on her way back to the booth and stared straight at him. He dropped his eyes and had an impression of her shrugging and turning away. When he looked up she was sliding into the booth, buttocks writhing, the cotton dress stretched tight across her fullnesses.
The bartender refilled his glass and Paul tried to strike up a conversation but the bartender wasn’t the talkative kind, or possibly something had put him in a mood. There were five or six men clustered at the far end of the bar, half-watching the television ball game, talking among themselves with the easy familiarity of long acquaintance; probably neighborhood shop managers—dry cleaners, shoe repairmen, delicatessen types—and they didn’t look as if they would welcome a stranger’s intrusion.
He paid the tab and got off the stool and swallowed the fourth drink too fast, and felt the effect of it a moment after he hit the sidewalk. The traffic on Broadway seemed to be moving too fast for his eyes to track. He had to make an effort to walk without weaving. At the corner of Seventy-fourth Street he decided to cut across town on the side street because he didn’t want all the people on Seventy-second to see him in this condition.
He was several yards into the block before the fear hit him. There was no one in sight down the entire length of the street; the shadows were sinister and the heavily massed buildings threw dangerous projections into the street—steps, awnings, parked vans: killers could be hiding behind them, or in the narrow service alleys.…
He remembered the other night, his terror crossing the East Side in the Forties; he drew himself up. It’s about time to quit getting railroaded into panic. He walked forward with quicker steps; but his hand in his pocket closed around the sock-wrapped roll of coins and his bowels were knotted and it was no good pretending the soul-sucking darkness wasn’t alive with terrors. The beat of his heart was as loud as the echoes of his heels on the concrete.
At first he did not hear the movement behind him.
In the corner of his vision an apparitious shape. He did not stop or turn; he kept moving and kept his eyes straight ahead in the insane hope that if he pretended it wasn’t there it would go away. He was walking fast but he couldn’t betray his fear by breaking into a run. Life was suddenly all he had, and all he wanted. Maybe it was his imagination after all—maybe there was no one, only the echoes of his own steps, his own shadow moving across a stucco wall? Yet he did not look back, he could not. Half the long block yet to traverse, the street-lamp throwing a pool of light that made the shadows deeper.
“Hey, hold it, motherfucker.”
The voice like a blade against his spine.
Close enough to touch. Right there behind him.
“Hold up. Turn around, honkie.”
I’m hearing things it’s my imagination.
He stood bolt still in his tracks, shoulders tensed against awaited violence.
“Motherfuck, I said turn around.” It was quiet, tense—high-pitched, a little crack in it. An adolescent voice, a tone of raging bravado—bravado to mask fear.
Petrified. But: My God he’s as scared as I am!
And as Paul turned slowly to face his fear he heard the snap-blade knife open with a click and something inside him exploded like a brilliant deafening burst of discovery:
Anger.
A furious physical rage.
The adrenalin was shooting through him and he felt the heat exploding through his head; even as he came around and the attacker came in view Paul was lifting the roll of coins from his pocket, whipping his arm up overhead, stretching to smite this enemy the mightiest blow his inflamed muscles could deliver.…
He caught the fragmentary race of reflected lamplight along the moving blade of the knife; saw it but did not register it, all he knew was the target and the weight of the kosh swinging from his hand, swinging down toward that dark narrow weaving skull.… And he heard the enormous bellow that thundered from his own chest, the bestial cry of berserk assault.…
.…And the kid with the knife was falling back in panic, dodging, arms whipping up over his head; wheeling, scrabbling, getting his balance, digging in his toes—running….
The savage downswing found no target and Paul stayed his hand before the roll of coins could smash his own knee but it made him lose his balance and he broke his fall with a palm—got one knee under him and knelt there watching the kid who wasn’t more than half his size or weight, the kid running away up the street, flitting into an alley, instantly absorbed into the city as if he hadn’t been there at all.
The street was empty and he got to his feet but it hit him then, the reaction, and he began to shake so badly he had to reach for the railing of a brown-stone’s front steps. He hung on to it and pivoted on his hands, collapsing in a circle until he was seated on the third step from the bottom. Hot flushes and chills prickled his flesh, his vision spun, and a surge of uncontainable exultation lifted his voice to a high call of joy:
“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
11
Trying to conceal the fact that he was breathing hard he gave the doorman an idiot grin and crossed the lobby on drunken legs and stood in the elevator until its doors closed; he slid to the floor and sat there until they opened, crawled out and let himself into the apartment with vomit pain convulsing his stomach. Leaned over the kitchen sink and catted up everything.
He rinsed his mouth and threw up again and rinsed again. Hung in the sink with painful dry heaves until it subsided. Sweating, scalp prickling, he made it to the living room couch and lay down weak and wet. Felt himself pass out.
.… When the grinding of the garbage trucks awakened him, his first thought was Iwasn’t nearly that drunk. Then he remembered it all.
But he hadn’t slept as well in weeks: when he looked at the time it was half-past eight. It couldn’t have been much later than eleven when he’d come home. There was no hangover; he hadn’t felt this well since—he couldn’t remember when.
In the subway he got out of his seat to give it to an old woman; he smiled at her look of surprise. When he left the Express at Times Square and stood on the Shuttle platform waiting for the crosstown train he realized he was still smiling and he wiped it off his face with an effort; it was occurring to him that he was experiencing all the symptoms of a sexual release and that worried him.