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with you. It kinda goes right
on through and you’re hungry all over again.”
    And in the dark spring night, back out on the sidewalk, she clung to his
arm, swaying a little and her voice was lower and huskier and she said, “I bet
you don’t think I’m a singer at all. I bet you figure I was throwing a big snow
job.”
    “I believe you, Elise.”
    “You know what you’re going to do, Brocky boy?
You’re going to come up and I’ll put a record on and I’ll show you I’m a
singer, see.”
    It was a narrow building, crowded in between stores. The street door
wasn’t locked. They went up three flights of stairs, and the air in the
stairwell had a musty flavor. Her room was small, with a vague smell of laundry
and dust. It had a kitchen alcove, a small bathroom with noisy plumbing. The
studio couch where she slept was not made up from the previous night, and by
the head of the couch, beyond the rumpled pillow, cigarette butts had been
squashed out on the varnished floor beyond the edge of a dark-brown rug. He
felt sick and hollow inside. There had been girls. A very few. Back seats of
cars. Blankets under the trees. Once a back hallway. But girls. Not women.
    They drank what was left in a bottle. She had a record player and she put
on a blues record and sang along with it, slurring her way into the notes,
snapping her fingers, swaying in exaggeration of the mannerisms of torch
singers. In the dim lights of the room she had a feral, overpowering look. He
wanted to leave and he couldn’t think of any way to get out of it without
looking like a fool, like a fool kid. She had sort of taken it all for granted.
    She made him sit and watch her sing and then she came over to him and
kissed him hard and turned off the floor lamp near the day bed. It was
different than ever before. It was a kind of delirium, and a devouring, and a
sense of evil.
    He awoke and the two windows were gray and the light was in the room,
insipid on the litter and the spilled clothing. She was asleep, breathing
heavily through her mouth. He was on the outside and he slid out with great
caution. He looked at her as he dressed. She was on her side, one arm high,
showing the dark patch of armpit hair, one breast like a sagging white gourd.
She was a stranger he had never seen before. A strange woman, and in that light
she looked forty.
    He had his door key and he got into the fraternity house without waking
his roommate, and managed to wake up when the alarm went off after nearly an
hour’s sleep. The night with her was like something dreamed. In class he felt
like something dead. Through the drone of the lecture he would think of her and
something would turn slowly in his stomach and the backs of his hands would
prickle. It was a nauseous excitement.
    He went back to the beer joint that afternoon. He knew he shouldn’t. But
he had to go back and on the way there he told himself she wouldn’t be there.
    She was in the same booth and she was looking directly at him as he came
through the door. She wore the same suit but this time her blouse was yellow.
He felt ganglingly awkward as he walked to the booth.
He knew he was blushing.
    “You snuck out like a mouse or something, Brocky ,”
she said, and he wanted to shush her because her voice was too loud.
    “Had to make morning classes, Elise.”
    She reached across the table and held his hand strongly and said, “We had
fun, Brocky . We had fun, didn’t we?”
    “Yes.”
    “I don’t want you should think I’m like that. I mean that I’d do that
with anybody.”
    He wished she wouldn’t talk so loud. “I don’t think that.”
    “It’s on account of it was you. Cute Brocky .
With the shoulders.”
    He wished he could stop blushing and that she would let go of his hand.
And the day became a replica of the previous day. And it was at her place, his
arm around her, that she said, “You’re going to think I’m awful when I tell you
something.”
    “What?”
    “Archie, he wasn’t overseas.