hind him, as he crouched over the burning pile of wood, he heard a little laugh. It was the woman from upstairs. As he turned to look up at her, he realized how much she looked like lanthe and wondered if this might be some sort of relative. He smiled at her and was relieved to notice that now she had changed into Levis and a blue sweater that buttoned down the front. He hoped for some explanation for her presence, but she remained silent and sat down in the oak rocking chair, clamped her hands together in her lap, and simply gazed into the fire. Slowly her face lit up with a truly beautiful smile. She smiled at the fire as she might have smiled at an old friend she had just run into on the bus, or at a child swinging very high on a swing in a city park. It hardly made sense. Arnold realized he was procrastinating, that he really must go upstairs and fill those boxes, that his time was limited here. He was sad, though. He* admitted to himself that he would be quite lost without lanthe. Once again he was traveling into the unknown, the unfamiliar that no longer tantalized him. To be quite honest, he hated the new almost as much as he hated the fit. He had liked lanthe’s finely worn face, its vague look of tragedy that caused people to glance at her wherever she went. It was a face that reminded him of the Queen of Hearts’ on a playing card. It was open and ornate, the great braids wound around her head at least twice, the long earrings. But the look, the look of understanding that simply watched and never asked, never demanded any certain thing from life. It was that she had thrown her life away many times only to have it rise up against her once again. Sometimes she would lie in bed and groan and say her life was like a dragon and it was breathing fire on her. Arnold knew himself to be one of her sad attempts at dismissing the life force. “ Are you a friend of lanthe’s?” Arnold asked, expecting her to say she was at least a cousin. “ No, I’m a friend of William’s.” She stopped smiling and looked over at Arnold with eyes that were as big as, as brown as, had lashes as long as, seal eyes. Moist brown, impossible, inhuman eyes. There was not that look of knowing that lanthe had, and now he saw that the resemblance was hardly there; she was very different from her. “ Do you have anything to do with lanthe’s theatre group?” “ Oh,” she paused and gazed once more into the fire, “ I would like to.” Arnold was becoming increasingly aware of how young she was. Her long silences were tricky and deluding. When she spoke her voice quavered and shook with nubile shame and newness. Arnold wanted to blush for her. And then at the same moment he was struck by the obvious fact of her unusedness, the fact that she did not have a past, or that she would have a very small one. This idea fascinated him. Arnold, who had always loved the complex and unending detail of relations, the mix of feelings. He could simply reach over and touch this girl and her whole life would change. He stood up and said, “Would you like some orange juice or a glass of milk?” “ No, I think I’ll have a rum and coke.” Arnold went into the kitchen and found a coke in the refrigerator and poured it into one of lanthe’s Mexican glasses that was turquoise and oddly shaped. Into this he slipped a film of rum, leaving it on top so she would be able to smell it. When he walked back into the room the girl did not look up but gazed into the flames, her face becoming pinker with the heat and the discomfort of being around Arnold. He handed her the glass silently, deciding to respect her awkwardness, to ask nothing of her. Without glancing in his direction, she asked, “Who are you?” It hadn’t occurred to Arnold that she might be curious about him and, of course, he found it difficult to answer her. “ I used to live here. I lived here for about a year.” Would a year seem respectable or not respectable? He wasn’t sure himself. The average length of a relationship was six weeks. Of course, this was affected by all of the one-night stands. It occurred to Arnold once again that he really must pack his books, that something was wrong with him that instead he was sitting here with a girl. For a terrible moment he missed lanthe, the way she had comforted him, kept him from all of this inertia. Abruptly he got up from his chair by the fire. “ I have to go pack now.” He smiled at the girl and, as he went upstairs, ran into William. William didn’t say anything to him, but paused on the stairs and stared at him as he walked past. Arnold smiled. Evening was falling and the books looked different now — sadder, more disorganized. Without love he began to slide them together and pile them haphazardly in the boxes. Downstairs he could hear the telephone ringing and ringing, and then finally William’s voice shouting at someone. Then there was silence for a while before Arnold could hear the girl crying. Arnold’s back was to the door when he heard William’s voice say, “ She’s not coming back.” “Who?” “ lanthe.” “Where is she going?” “ She’s decided to go live in Mexico with her father. She says she’s been planning it for a long time. She was just leaving to catch the plane.” William leaned against the door. “ It puts us all in a rather bad position.” Arnold wondered vaguely if William might be English. “ A bad position?” Pat Teeling is a writer living in LaConner Fay Jones is a Seattle artist whose work is now being shown in New York “ Yes, I mean here we are in her house. She didn’t say we had to move out or anything. She just said she was. You know such things were never important to her. Always having been well-to-do, it just didn’t occupy her mind.” “What about the children?” “ She says they will fly down later.” Arnold put five more books into the box and then stood up and crossed over into the hall and walked into lanthe’s bedroom. He closed the door and lay face-down on the satin bedspread. He was empty. He had always been empty except for the time he spent with lanthe. Why was she leaving? It wasn’t that there was any hope for them, but at least they would have been in the same city together, visited the same galleries, walked under the same trees. The connection of the city and a shared esthetic. The door opened and the girl walked into the room. “ Are you sad?” she asked, as she walked to the foot of the bed and gazed at him with her seal eyes. “ Yes, I didn’t know I would be, but I am. There is such failure, such pain.” Turning over, Arnold took out one of lanthe’s pillows and held it against his chest as he looked at the girl. “Why are you here?” he asked. “ It’s a long story,” she said. “ I can’t begin to tell you.” She looked down and rubbed one of the bedposts with her fingers. “ I can’t even begin to tell you.” “ Come here.” Arnold patted the bed beside him and the girl, shy and knowing at the same time, came over and sat on the bed beside him. He reached out and felt the smooth young skin above her elbow. She was cool as the sea. It was all so different. It was all so much the same. ■ ATRIUM deli-cafe Sandwiches Salads Soups Beverages Desserts 2517 FIRSTAVE. 622-2393 george’s place 1900 East Aloha 324-4760 HAIR BY APPOINTMENT Clinton St. Quarterly 15
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz