Everything Happened to Susan Read Free Page B

don’t mind, maybe I’ll run along right now. You don’t have to leave this second. I’ll see you in the morning.”
    “I’m going,” Susan says, “I’m going,” but, before she can even rise to follow, Phil is gone, the door swinging vacantly behind him; she sees its absent sway on the hinge, hears the diminution of his footsteps, hears the clatter of traffic outside.
    She has had a full day in New York. She has participated in the making of a pornographic film, she has had intercourse with the agent of the film’s producers, she has been offered a leading role in a forthcoming production by the same company, she has come to terms with herself in, perhaps, ways that she was not accustomed. At the end of all of this she stands in a hotel room fully dressed somewhere between retention and flight; she has a delicate feeling of being poised at some critical instant and she senses that if she could only investigate this feeling, if she could allow it to come over her fully, she might find out something about herself that she never knew before. Even as she understands this a spotlight whips through the window, traversing toward the other side of the street and she decides that she had better go. Timothy is waiting for her (or she hopes Timothy is waiting for her) and, at the end of all of this, perhaps in sleep, will come another accommodation. She leaves the room slowly, quite a pretty girl really, only a certain high tension moving from her cheekbones to her eyes indicating that anything at all has touched her. She senses that if she were to tell the men in the street who stare at her what she had been doing that day, they would be amazed but, then, they might be perfectly matter of fact. People in New York accept all sorts of things as matter of fact.

CHAPTER XIV
    At home she finds Timothy asleep over his typewriter, a half-page of his novel still in the machine. He is incredibly dedicated to his work but his job in the Welfare Department gets him down; constant demands are being made upon his compassion and sense of balance, he says, and he finds it impossible to maintain toward his work the kind of polished detachment intrinsic to the creation of great art. Nevertheless he cannot leave the Welfare Department, having tenure and needing the income too badly to be able to take time off to finish his book or look for another job. His face looks astonished in repose; his pores open, his nerves twitch under the mask of impassivity, and he groans heavily, adjusting himself more comfortably in the chair, allowing his head to sink fully into his cupped hands. Susan pats him on the neck and reads what is in the typewriter which seems to have to do with the reaction of a welfare investigator to a particularly aggressive client. “I CAN’T STAND THIS ANY MORE,” MR. MORALES SCREAMED, the page reads, “MY WIFE AND CHILDREN ARE STARVING FOR LACK OF BREAD AND YOU STAND THERE IN YOUR BUSINESS SUIT AND TELL ME ABOUT RULES AND REGULATIONS. I TELL YOU THAT THIS IS NO TIME FOR RULES AND REGULATIONS. EVERYTHING IS BURNING. THE WORLD IS BURNING. THE FIRE IS COMING UPON ALL OF US, EVEN UPON WELFARE INVESTIGATORS, AND YOUR OLD SIMPLE RIGIDITIES WILL NO LONGER HOLD US BACK.” HENDERSON FELT THE WAVES OF TERROR MOVING UP HIS PORCINE BACK, WAVES OF TERROR INTERMINGLED WITH COMPASSION BECAUSE HE COULD PLACE HIMSELF IN THE MIND AND HEART OF THE MAN MORALES, THIS SIMPLE DISPLACED PERSON. TORN FREE FROM HIS HISTORY, WHO COULD EXPRESS HIS LOVE NOW ONLY THROUGH HATRED. THROUGH THE VENTINGS OF HIS TERRIBLE FEELINGS. HENDERSON COULD FEEL A TWITCH OF COMPASSION BUT THEN, WHEN MORALES REVEALED HIS KNIFE, THIS COMPASSION TURNED TO ASHES AND HE WAS AFRAID. TERRIBLY AFRAID. IN THE NEXT ROOM HE KNEW THAT THE TEN MORALES CHILDREN HUDDLED, EARS TO THE THIN WALL LISTENING FOR THE SOUNDS OF DESTRUCTION, AND WHAT HAPPENED THEN SEEMED TO OCCUR UNDER THE EYES OF MANY WITNESSES, WITNESSES UNREACHABLE THROUGH PLASTER. “WE ARE BURNING,” MORALES SHOUTED,