23
HOW WAS I TO TELL HARLOT ANYTHING ABOUT THE AFFAIR? MODENE HAD never been able to come with a man before. So she told me, and I believed her. Could I not? How she could come! I do not know what amalgam of her alcoholic father and her socially ambitious mother contributed to the whole, but now I knew why women filled me with awe. If certain ladies, Sally Porringer, most notably, could remind you of a sledgehammer assaulting a wall, Modene came from her fingers and her toes, her thighs and her heart, and I was ready to swear that the earth and the ocean combined at such moments in my beautiful, athletic, and fingernail-tortured girl. I would feel her body pass through me, real as my own existence. So I made my peace with her lies. About the time I despaired of ever being able to cozen, elicit, trick, bully, or otherwise stimulate a confession out of Modene, she, perversely, offered me one. It was the first of several to follow, and reminded me of our first meeting.
“Do you remember Walter?” she asked me one day.
“Yes.”
“I feel like telling you about Walter.”
I had enough sense not to say: “I’d rather you tell me about Jack.” Instead, I nodded. We were in bed, and cozy; we could speak of small horrors as though they were on the other side of a window.
“Do you still see Walter?” I asked.
I looked forward to enjoying her reply that she did not, but instead she said, “Yes, I see him sometimes.”
“Now?”
She nodded. She could not speak. I wondered if it was from fear she would burst into laughter at the expression on my face.
“Since I last saw Jack,” she said at last, “since the convention, I have seen Walter again.”
“But why?” I did not make the next remark, and then I had to. “I’m not enough for you?”
“You are.” She only paused for a moment. “Except that there must always be two men in my life,” she said. She seemed pleased with this fact, as if she had invented a fail-safe for any and all emotional disaster.
“Then you have been seeing Walter all the time you’ve been with me?”
“No, just a few times. Just so I could feel there was someone else in my life. It allows me to enjoy you more.”
“I don’t know if I can bear this,” I said.
“Well, I couldn’t see Jack. He did something I didn’t like. Would you be happier if I had been with Jack instead?”
“Yes,” I said, and knew at that instant why jealousy is so perverse an emotion—it enriches our wits—“yes,” I said, “I would rather you had seen Jack.”
“You are lying,” she said.
“No,” I said. “At least I could compare myself to someone worthwhile.”
“Well, maybe we can do something about that,” she said. “Are you inviting me to start up again?”
“You couldn’t. I don’t know why you broke with him, but your pride is hurt. I know that much.”
“Oh, I could never approach him,” she said, “unless I was asked to. Unless there was some kind of external reason.”
“There are no external reasons,” I told her, “in matters such as this.”
“Well, there are. Suppose a good friend asked you for a big favor. Would you oblige?”
“You are being awfully abstract,” I said.
“Suppose this good friend wanted you to pass a message to someone you weren’t talking to anymore.”
“The recipient would still believe you were looking for an excuse to approach.”
“Yes,” she said, “that is true unless he happened to be in touch with the other person in the first place.” She yawned sweetly. “Can we make love?” she asked.
Her confessions, for this night at least, were at an end.
I sent a message to GHOUL—SPECIAL SHUNT next morning. It read:
RAPUNZEL and IOTA maintain some contact through BLUEBEARD. Will try to discover the content of such communications. Foresee implicit obstacles.
FIELD
Harlot’s reply:
If it takes weeks, well, you’ve gotten me used to walking around in the same old clothes.
GLOCKENSPIEL