“How’re you doing, champ?” Bradley spoke kindly, leaning towards me with an elbow on his knee.
I cringed a little at “champ.” “Okay I think.”
“Are you able to keep up with the discussion?”
“Pretty much.” It amazed me that he was adopting such a comradely attitude and that I took to it so naturally.
“Ah! Dorothy!” Granite got to her feet and into her shoes and joined us on the couch, very close to me. Once again I noticed the dull grainy texture of her skin, the multitude of tiny lines; then I made myself widen my focus to take in the fullness of her face. “You are doing well?” Her eyes were gentle but serious.
“I think so. Would you like to look?”
“Yes, I would.” She took my notebook from my hand! I was reminded of the gravity of my position as I watched her eyes rapidly traverse my pages. Her jaw twitched passionately. Bradley and Knight began to chat.
“Pretty good for your first time,” said Granite turning to me. “But you are wasting time with asides and extra words. Then you have to waste time crossing out, see?” She pointed to a nasty knot of ink. “Listen as if you were a reporter and wanted to find the main points of this discussion.” She emphasized the last six words with a measured up-and-down movement of her hand, fingers bunched together, hooklike. “Also don’t worry about the handwriting. I don’t need to read it, you are the one who will type it out. Understand?”
“Yes but I . . . I don’t know if I’m capable of deciding which are the important points.”
“Dorothy!” Her eyes blazed! “That is a weak statement and unworthy of you!” Her severity pinned me through the eyeballs, and we sat staring at each other, she discharging bolt after bolt of sharp indignation. I felt my pores dilate helplessly to receive her until the tissue beneath my facial skin seemed composed of her indignation. Then abruptly she softened. “I know I can trust your judgment. Can you trust mine?”
“Of course!”
“Good.” She spoke this word with wonderful finality. “Carry on.” These last two words she said with a certain childishness, almost as if she’d heard them recently on TV and had been waiting for a chance to say them, but I didn’t mind. The meeting resumed and so did I, my pen flying with renewed vigor. Hours passed. The ashtrays were gradually loaded with pale gray refuse. Wilma’s face became soft and ivory with sleepiness, the men took off their jackets and rolled up their sleeves, and still Granite paced and talked. I thought of malteds and potato chips, jelly beans and roast beef sandwiches dripping gravy. I pressed on.
It was one thirty when the meeting ended and I was released into a yellow cab dispatched especially for me. Bradley actually stepped out of his conversation with the still-pacing Granite and offered to go down in the elevator and wait for it with me under the awning of the apartment.
“No, Bradley, it’s all right, finish your discussion.” Knight was suddenly behind me, manning the buttons of his coat. “I’ll take the young lady down, I’m ready to go.”
It seemed as though Wilma jerked her head in surprise, but that only added to the pleasure of the whirring fluorescent descent, during which I could not once raise my eyes. I looked at the buttons on my cheap red corduroy jacket and at Knight’s shoes, his wonderful sharp-toed gray suede shoes.
He said, “I remember you from the lecture.”
I said, “Yes.”
“I was very moved by your response.”
I gestured with a hand. “I couldn’t help it,” I murmured at my buttons.
“Yes I know. That’s what made it so moving.”
I looked up in surprise. The door burst open. We proceeded through the lobby out into the damp night where the taxi awaited. He opened the door of the car for me, and I got in, looking at him for the first time. According to his face he did this sort of thing all the time. “See you tomorrow, Dorothy.”
“Goodnight,” I gasped. I was sealed into the cab in a state of shock, staring at the smiling jiggling hula girl on the dashboard and glad to be sitting down. I thought of my former high school companions sitting around their lunch table in their pink and chartreuse skirts, the occasional triangle of pantie, their “Luv” pendants, their stupid dates and proms. Which of them would ever have what I had now?
I rode home obsessively noting the tatty little buildings of Philadelphia, the romance of neon, fluorescence and electricity, even the traffic lights swaying heavily on their wires, the hydrants, the jumbled angles, the splayed newspapers flapping against public benches. I wanted to remember every detail of this night and reconstruct it in miniature, a tiny world into which I could repair at any time.
Beau and I went to the meeting the next night and the next. They followed the same pattern; Granite would prowl the room in her cape, expounding, while the others constructed rhetorical arguments for her to refute or expand upon. I picked out the main points rather timidly the second night and then, emboldened by Granite’s approval, more cavalierly the third. Now comfortable with what I was doing, I had, to my delight, more time to observe and digest what was going on.
My first observation was the tension between Bradley and Granite. I noticed first that he was the only one of the group from whom she would accept contradiction. Further, when he spoke, her composure fell from her in delicate shudders, leaving her gentle, soft-mouthed, eyes bright and wide. And when she spoke to him, he seemed subtly to expand, to emanate heat, to release some muscles and tense others, as if her voice simultaneously stroked and tickled the length of his body.
Second was that Wilma and Wilson did not radiate any of the energy the others had. Wilson in particular seemed to sit in a patch of personal cold, his thin limbs held stiffly, his comments merely affirmations or repetitions of what Granite had said. To my surprise, Granite didn’t seem to mind or even to notice; she treated his contributions as seriously as she did Knight’s. Even more puzzling, when Wilma sallied forth, Granite barely acknowledged her or sometimes even scolded her unfairly, it seemed to me. Wilma’s pointy brittle face would remain impassive, perhaps tighten a little more, but she never argued.
The philosophy itself was wonderful. Most of it was an elucidation of the points I had already understood from The Bulwark and The Gods Disdained, but on the third night, a topic was introduced that I hadn’t yet encountered: the ultra-real, the apparently patternless structure of the universe that seems random and chaotic (causing some people to despair and turn to religion or nihilistic philosophy) but was in fact a super-rational pattern too intricate to be discerned and comprehended by us right away.
The meetings lasted until one or two o’clock in the morning, and I returned to my bed so stimulated it was hard for me to sleep right away. I was thus sleeping only about four hours a night and skipping my dinner (I considered the sandwich Bradley ordered from work a snack). The happy result was that, for the first time in my life, I was losing weight. The waist-bands of my skirts were sliding towards my hips, and my only pair of pants fit loosely. My appearance hadn’t noticeably changed, but I nonetheless rejoiced.
On the fifth night, however, my stamina began to give out. One o’clock then two o’clock came and went, and still Granite discussed. At two thirty Wilson Bean went home. At three Bradley retired into Granite’s bedroom for a nap. Fifteen minutes later Knight rested in an easy chair to close his eyes. For the next interminable half-hour, it was only Granite, me and the haggard Wilma. The air was heavy with swarming yellow granules, all light was an assault. To my dismay, I saw my dictation stumble, get up, stumble, and proceed along on its knees. Every sentence was a marathon with a lung-bursting explosion at the end. Wilma curled up on the couch and went under. Granite turned to me.
“And how are you feeling, Dorothy?” Her eyes were encircled with bruise-like purple but they retained their intensity. I felt her hot noisy heart pumping in her chest and my own dull organ making its reply. “Are you tired?”
“Yes, Anna, I am.” My blood roared in my head; I had involuntarily used her first name.
“Yes, I can see.” She leaned forward and turned away, and I thought she was displeased. Then she turned back. “I would like to offer you something to help you stay awake. But only if you want it, you understand?”
“What is it?”
“It” was two small capsules (half midnight blue, half aquamarine) that made me feel as wide awake as I had ever felt in my life. Together Granite and I outlasted everyone, smiling and waving goodbye as one by one, Wilma, Knight, and Bradley expressed their regrets. Indeed, at the very end it was I who fiercely paced the floor taking notes in motion while Granite lay on the couch soliloquizing, cigarette held aloft.
It was seven thirty when she finally gave me my cab fare. “You have pleased me, Dorothy,” she said, and I sailed out into the celebratory sun full of get up and go. It was a Saturday, but instead of going home to sleep I went to a large diner with a sparkling, kidney-shaped counter and ordered french toast. I ate slowly as my usually receptive stomach was still taut with excitement. (I didn’t make the connection between the pills and appetite loss.)
I looked with great interest at the other people at the diner, thinking about the oddness of fate. Who would think from looking at me as I sat mopping up syrup that I had just, of my own initiative, become part of the greatest intellectual vanguard in the country? I looked at the man just across from me. He was only in his late twenties, I guessed, but grizzled and jowly with tough skin and dully thoughtful eyes. He had a crouched, guarded way of sitting that was wary, weary, and sluggish, yet, because of an alertness in his neck and head, he looked capable of sudden quite vigorous action. I wished I could talk philosophy with him. He looked at me.
“You’re a cute little girl,” he said.
I stared.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No,” I answered. “I don’t. I’ve never had a boyfriend.”
“Really?” He picked up a triangle of dark toast and bit off half of it, chewing with loose, loopy movements. “That’s a shame. I’d offer to be your boyfriend myself but I’m too old and you’re not interested.” He looked sadly off into space. “You’ve got great tits though,” he added morosely.
I knew most people would think this was a rude thing to say, but considering that no one had ever described any portion of my body as “great,” it was hard to view it that way, especially given the wistful tone in which it was said. I started to say “Thank you” but then considered how Solitaire D’Anconti would react to such a remark and flushed with embarrassment to think I’d almost been flattered by it. I glowered in the mirror behind the counter, making my features as cold and imperious as possible while surreptitiously checking to see if there was anything there that could reasonably be described as “cute.” Drained face, wild burning eyes, pale fat too-wide mouth.
“You don’t have to say anything,” continued the man, pulling apart his toast with a certain magnanimous air.
I fled to the comparative serenity of the Euella Parks Hotel.
I slept most of the morning and all afternoon but still found myself a little groggy when it was time to return to Granite’s apartment at six (she ran the meetings through the weekends). I had barely enough time to heat a can of soup on my hot plate and eat it, along with a few pieces of bread, before rushing out. That night and on many of the nights that followed—whenever the conferences went past one’clock—Granite would secretly share with me one or two of her heavenly midnight and aqua capsules. My dictation became ever more quick and sure, my demeanor so optimistic that at times I feared I was losing my mind. I was sometimes so full of energy when I left Granite’s apartment that I walked to my hotel instead of taking the taxi. Knight continued to escort me to the taxi on the nights when we left at the same time and my pill-induced enthusiasm elbowed my shyness to one side. Sometimes when the cab pulled away I would look out the back window and see him turning in the other direction, presumably to walk to his apartment, or perhaps to take a bus. I viewed him romantically, but not with the expectation that anything sexual could happen between us; that didn’t occur to me. It was enough for me to be the recipient of his gallant attention, his smiles, his almost tangible warmth and goodwill. Then something happened to awaken another need which, although it initially awoke with only the feeblest twitch, continued to twitch with larger and larger movements until I saw that it was only the smallest foreclaw of a beast that, once fully aroused, would scream unabated day and night—then sleep again forever.
One evening I arrived at Granite’s apartment so exhausted that I didn’t think I could successfully pick out main points. For the first time I asked her for a pill and she gave it to me. Thus, even though it was only twelve thirty when the meeting broke up, I left with my brain chattering enthusiastically to itself and my body full of energy. When Knight performed his usual courtly gesture, I stopped outside on the pavement and told him I thought I’d walk home.
“By yourself?” he wondered.
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll give the cabbie some money so he won’t be upset.” I did so, shut the door in his muttering face, and returned to my Knight.
“How far away do you live?”
“It takes about half an hour to walk it.” We both watched as the cabbie tooled off into the night.
“Do you think it’s safe for you to—”
“Mr. Ludlow,” I said. “I’m, I, I’m grateful for your concern but I’m really not afraid. I’ve done it before, even later. I know I must seem very ordinary to you but—”
“No you don’t,” he murmured.
I hesitated. My stimulated heart ground away, my stimulated brain spewed words. “Well, I’m not. After what I’ve experienced, I doubt that anything on the late-night streets of Philadelphia could throw me for a loop.” Knight looked at me as if I’d said something curious and very cute. My confidence suddenly felt like a heavy, high structure creaking on a flimsy base. I stared at the sidewalk.
“Well, maybe you’d let me walk you home. I’m feeling pretty stirred up and energetic myself. Besides, I’m a terrible insomniac.”
I agreed out of passivity more than anything else; it discomfited me, this familiarity and friendliness. I would have preferred that he remain at a distance, gallant but within prescribed boundaries. I didn’t understand why he wanted to step over those boundaries for me. I’d seen movies in which important handsome financiers became smitten by little secretaries—but those little secretaries looked like Judy Garland and Doris Day, not like me. As we walked, however, my feelings began to change. He didn’t rush into conversation; he didn’t talk at all. He simply walked along, hands behind his back, emitting grace combined with that full and buoyant quality I’d heard in his voice—and now, unlike in the meetings, it was suffused with warmth. I enjoyed his presence in spite of myself. My hopped-up mind spewed words which, since I was too shy to talk, tunneled through my brain and doubled back out until my head was riddled with unspoken words. My thoughts roiled around in such a convoluted way that I wondered how I ever spoke at all. I wished Knight would talk to me.
“Tell me,” he said. “How did you come to work for Anna Granite? I know she just met you the night I saw you.”
So our conversation began. As soon as they found an opening, the words rolled out in proper form, only more freely than usual. I told him that my life at home had been unbearable, but not why. I expanded more on my life at college, ending with my appearance before Granite.
Then he talked about his life, which included leaving home at the age of sixteen to escape an alcoholic father. This prompted me to ask him questions about his apparently quick rise to success at age thirty-three. I had never had a conversation like this before. Every sentence, from him or me, felt new, wobbly, and vulnerable, waving in the air between us like tiny ant limbs. I felt frightened that I would say something wrong, uncertain as to what was appropriate between relative strangers. I tried to stay with the facts, but even so every new phrase added more footage to a bridge, the length and direction of which I couldn’t
predict. But despite my anxiety, his voice, as much as the pills, drew me further and further into conversation, unable to resist brushing against this foreign element of gentle strength.
When we reached my hotel, he said good night, smiled, and left. I mounted the stairs to my room, my words and feelings still extended from me like a limb groping the air for something no longer there. I entered my small suite, removed my shoes, dropped my handbag, and walked through the room in the dark to the bathroom (the toilet rather; there was a communal shower in the hall). I turned on the light, stood before the full-length mirror, and, in that narrow space, slowly stripped off my clothes until I was naked except for my socks. I stood for several moments looking, as if I were an adolescent girl just developing breasts. I didn’t look to see whether I was attractive or not, I just looked.
Then I turned off the light and got in bed.
The next day, during lunch hour, I used some of my new financial abundance (Granite’s already generous wage was increased with all the overtime) to buy two new skirts, two shirts, and a pair of pants. All were two delightful sizes smaller than my conspicuously loose-fitting older clothes. I also bought a paper, which I immediately folded to highlight the rental ads. I sat at my desk reading coded descriptions of “sunny efficiencies” and “furnished 1 bedrm.,” my new clothes bundled in exciting bags under the desk, where I could squeeze them between my knees.
That night the dynamic of the conference was rearranged by Knight’s new proximity to me; all night I felt the friendly tug of his warmth, the silent communication of the invisible antennae tickling the air between us. I felt something open in my body, something like a rare flower that absorbs molecules, pheromones, and oxygen, then secretes them in a glittering membrane of vibrancy, fecundity, and power, a membrane that quivered tautly every time Knight’s image came into my mind.
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