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He isn’t dead. I wish he was but he isn’t.
He’s a seaman. He’s on an oceangoing tug. Right now he’s down somewhere in the
Caribbean. They’re hauling some kind of dredge down there. He’s a genuine
bastard, Brocky . He goes away, he thinks I ought to
lock myself up and wait for him or something. I should be dead or something all
the time he’s gone. I got to have fun, don’t I? This time, and he’s been gone
seven months now, he doesn’t send a damn nickel. How do you like a guy like
that?”
    “But when will he—”
    “You relax, honey. He won’t be back for a long time. Now you kiss Elise. Kiss
her nice. There. That’s my boy with shoulders. That’s my good boy. Do you like
this, darlin ’? Do you?”
    The April days were like that. The April days and April nights. She had
taken him down with her into some dark place. Nothing else mattered. Classes
were vague things. They talked about work he did not understand. He dozed
often. He prepared nothing. He moved through a world that was like a dull
dream, moving each day closer to that single vivid reality of her body. He knew
she was a liar. He learned she had never sung. He knew she was sloppy,
ignorant, opinionated, dull of wit. But that did not matter. It did not matter
what mind or spirit went with that practiced body. Each day was time that must
be gotten through somehow, because the hours led inevitably to her bed in the
musty room. Sometimes they would cook there, and he would buy food and bring it
to the room. She was an indifferent cook. She liked to have him bring a bottle.
    His allowance, compared with the average, was generous. But he soon found
that it was not nearly enough. She didn’t have any money at all and she wasn’t
working. He had to give her lunch money. And on May first she had to have
thirty-five dollars for the rent on the tiny, shabby apartment. She kept
needing things. Stockings. A new bra. Repairs to her wristwatch. A pair of
shoes. When she wanted something and he could not provide it, she became sulky
and she wouldn’t let him near her. He knew precisely what she was doing. He
raised money in every way he could think of. He wrote home for money for
imaginary textbooks, for a fake dental bill, for new shoes. He started selling
his possessions to other students, hocking things at a pawn shop, borrowing
from the guys in the house. At first it was easy to borrow. A five here, and
two dollars there, and a ten-dollar bill from his roommate. Then they started
making excuses and he could borrow no more. He knew they sensed the change in
him. He felt as if he were falling through space toward the inevitable smashup.
And it didn’t matter.
    He cut so many classes and did so poorly in classwork that he had to have an interview with his faculty advisor. He promised
everything with great sincerity, trying to cut the interview short because
Elise was waiting in the usual place. Everything was going to hell, but it
didn’t matter. He thought that he might get a chance to crack the books just
before exams and squeak through somehow. His watch was gone, and most of his
clothes, and that helped a little, but June first came inevitably closer and
with it the need for another thirty-five dollars in one chunk. He didn’t want
to think beyond June first. He had a vague idea of getting a job there in the
city during the summer so that they could go on as before. Elise began to ask a
bit nervously about the rent, but he told her he knew where he could get it.
    It wasn’t until nearly the last day that he remembered Marty. He wondered
why he hadn’t thought of Marty before. During his freshman year he had been
required to live in the dormitories with a roommate selected by lot. He had
drawn Marty Greenshine . At first he hadn’t liked him
at all. A strange guy, older than the others. Serious as a judge. And bright.
Disconcertingly bright. And Marty always had plenty of money. After a time he
had learned that, behind all that seriousness,