let her full self out. “Come over here,” she said, stretching her arms out to him. “Don’t be shy.”
“I’m not,” he answered.
“Come over here,” she cooed.
“I can manage,” he said and quickly removed his clothes, giving himself more time with the socks as he noticed she was having some difficulty in undoing her bra and finally peeled it off downward.
“Must have been rusted,” he said.
“Come here,” she said, and he saw that outside the window was rain, slush, snow, ice, and wind, and this made him feel smaller somehow. He walked over to her as gracefully as he could and she laid hold of him and sat him down on the bed with one of her hands around behind his buttocks and the other already stroking and pulling at his shrunken penis.
“That’s better,” she said. “You’ll be all right.” C had his eyes closed and was concentrating on intellectual theories—names and dates. Mrs. Sorenson wrapped her legs around him, pressed him neatly into her with the backs of her calves and heels, rocking him gently with her hands on his shoulders. The front door opened and closed. Feet clambered up the steps and into the room. C’s soul slipped to his feet.
“Mom, where’s Benji?” asked the seventh-grader, soon joined by his younger sister.
“I don’t know. At the neighbors’ . . . maybe Mrs. Myers let him in the house again. Why don’t you go look?” C had stopped and was looking at them, apologetically, fearfully, hatefully. Mrs. Sorenson began rocking him again with the tremendous power of her legs. “And tell Dennis to turn down the radio or turn it off.”
“Did you have a good day, Mommy?” asked the smaller one.
“It’s been all right. Now run along and don’t go wandering off before dinner . . . and take off your boots,” she called after them. They left.
“You have very liberal children, Mrs. Sorenson.”
“Don’t think about them now,” she said and closed her eyes.
AFTER SOME TIME C WAS ALLOWED TO ROLL OVER ONTO A MORE SPACIOUS part of the mattress and Betty trotted off to the dresser drawer. She extracted a large manila envelope and carried it over to the bed. C had sat up and was watching the summing up of the afternoon outside.
“Look at these,” said Betty. “These were taken at Lake of the Dells—at night, of course.” And she lifted out a clump of photographs and spread them out on the bed . . . pictures of her in the nude standing beside pieces of furniture, trees, lying in the grass, eating candied apples, playing a guitar . . . “My husband took them.”
“Where is your husband, Mrs. Sorenson? Is he dead?”
“No. He was in the reserves and in 1949 volunteered for active duty in Korea, and stayed there.”
C looked outside again.
“Here’s one taken at Okoboji on our first vacation. That’s Jack,” she said, pointing into a black-and-white picture. C got off the bed and went over to his neat pile of clothes on the floor, and began putting them on.
“I’ve got a lot more here,” she said.
“I don’t have time to look at them, Mrs. Sorenson. I’ve got to be going.”
“Back to your studying, I suppose.”
C put on his lost shoe and walked downstairs and then walked downstairs again. Margie, the first-grader, opened the basement door for him and stood watching him descend the open staircase. He looked around his apartment and of course saw nothing but the stripes he had painted. He looked at his desk and went to it and put a paperback edition of a contemporary philosophical position in his back pocket. In the other pocket he put his checkbook. He put on his jacket and left. After the money was gone, there would be nothing.
He walked down Burlington Avenue and into town. He had never been downtown much before except to buy books—so went into the first tavern he saw, on the corner of Dubuque Street. Many of the men and women in the bar turned around as the door opened, but then resumed their private activities after C had securely fastened it—as though they were only concerned with seeing the cold air come in. The bartender was in shirt sleeves and C went across the street to another bar after he refused to accept a check.
C sat alone in a booth and drank and ate until he was sick, and then rented a room in the Roosevelt Hotel and lay down, thinking before he fell asleep that this would not work, that he had only spent twelve dollars, and at that rate . . . well, it would simply have to go faster. The next morning he bought a used car (he could not bring himself to waste money on a new one; no, that would be wrong; but everyone needed an automobile), and drove it around all day, having the oil checked, putting air in the tires, eating four full meals in restaurants, watching two movies, and going finally back to his hotel room with a strawberry ice-cream fizz.
The following few days were like this, except without the food. Then he took the last step, walked into the final phase, and gave his money away—in the manner that his father might have—donating it to needy institutions under his full name: The Reverend Ansel C. Easter, Ontarion, Iowa. Even some to the University.
He was soon without money in the bank and threw his checkbook into a trash barrel outside the telegraph office. And walking down Clinton Avenue, he wondered for the first time how he would die—how the money made any difference at all. He would have to stop eating; and he could’ve done that anyway. Surely something will happen now, he thought, and felt in his pocket—four bits in nickels and dimes. C went inside a drugstore and bought a small bottle of terpin hydrate, signing his name The Reverend Ansel C. Easter and the date, carried it over to a tree in the Pentacrest, sat down, and began drinking it sip by sip, the taste exploding inside his mouth, very badly. There is nothing quite like terpin hydrate.
The cold air bit into him.
A girl came walking through the slush and drizzle across from the drugstore. The wind tried to carry her thin bones away. Once a horn blew at her and she stumbled back to the curb, waiting for the light. Several more people came, talking and laughing, and went into a bar. She did not look up, and pulled her denim coat more tightly around her neck. A large man stopped beside her, waiting for the light, and she turned to him. C saw the man bodily push his way past her, shaking his head and swearing, as though he might have been asked for something he was unwilling to give. She crossed the street and entered the Pentacrest, dragging her feet along in the snow, her uncovered hair wet and streaking across her face like tears. She sat down next to C and lowered her face between her arms and against her upright knees.
“How’s everything?” she asked, out loud, dull, expecting no answer, like someone talking to herself. She sounded young.
“Good,” said C. “Everything’s good. How about you?”
“Good,” she said (but didn’t look up). “Everything’s good.”
“Want some cough syrup?”
“Codeine?”
“Yeah.”
“O.K.” And she took the bottle, swallowed, and shivered from the taste.
“Go ahead,” C said, “kill it.” And she took the rest of the corner in one quick gulp.
“That’s
