“I’m sorry,” she said to him, her bare arms reaching out. “Oh Jay I am so sorry. I couldn’t help it, I really just couldn’t help it, and now I’ve killed him — have I killed him Jay? It should have been you — it was supposed to be you and making you all live and whole the way I felt. It was going to be so pretty with you, beautiful with you …”
Her bare arms blinded him, and he dropped down on one knee next to the bed and buried his child’s face in her hair. He could hear them downstairs, ringing the chimes, pounding the door; soon they would realize the house was open and they would make the ascent to the second floor. He did not much care. They could ransack the house, haul his friend Arthur Fenstemaker away in a shroud, set the place afire. All he wanted now was the room and the bed and Sarah’s young warmth.
“Beauty and grace,” she was mumbling in his head, “beauty and ease and grace … We’ll have it now, won’t we Jay? Such a sweet thought. But look at me —” She pulled back the covers. “All mussy. They kept coming and feeding on my lap, straddling me like bears and bugs and cows, burrowing like crabs, when all I wanted was you. I have this ledge, I have this lovely ledge for the two of us now. With a view …”
He could hear them coming up the stairs now and he stepped away and turned the light down and walked into the hall to wait. He led them into the other room and they all stood a short distance from the bed and looked at Arthur, pale blue in the soft light, bathed in the faint fragrance of woman, grinning over some great vague private joke.
About the Author
Billy Lee Brammer (1929–1978) was a journalist, political operative, and author born in Dallas, Texas. He worked as a newspaperman in Corpus Christi and Austin before becoming an editor at the Texas Observer magazine. He then joined the staff of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. While working for Johnson, he wrote the three novellas that make up The Gay Place. He began work on a sequel, but never completed it, dying at age forty-eight of a drug overdose.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1961 by B. L. Brammer
Copyright © renewed 1989 by Sidney, Shelby, and Willie Brammer
Cover design by Mauricio Diaz
978-1-4804-6103-1
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Gay Place Page 54