The Sandman Read Free Page B

pumped into her, and finally the one milligram of epinephrine used to stimulate the pulse rate.
    “It’s not working,” Peter said. “Nothing’s working at all.”
    “It’s no fucking good,” said Dios.
    “My God,” said Debby. She turned her long, beautiful back to Peter and held her hair with her hands, like someone gripping the edge of a building. Peter watched her and felt another jolt go through him. He wanted to go over to her, put his arm around her, hold her face and tell her it was all right. Everything was going to be just fine.
    He stood there, hands limp at his sides, the glare of the hot lights reflecting off his glasses. He watched, deeply moved, as they wheeled the corpse into the hall.
    He walked through his living room, hearing the sound of his stockinged feet as they glided over the fake Oriental rug. In his hand was a Scotch and soda, and the sounds of the ice cubes clicking sounded like the roll of dice on a back alley in Baltimore.
    She was done. She was history, and he waited to feel ashamed, waited for the Space to start eating away inside of him, the rawness of the organs as the Space ate through him like an acid. He sat down heavily in his white chair, stared at the blank TV screen, and remembered the first time he had felt that way, sitting in his peeling wallpapered room on 21st street in Baltimore.
    He had been staring across the alley at Rosalie Fangikis, the Greek girl, and she had started to take off her clothes. He watched her take off her sweater, toss her black hair back, walk to the window, and he felt himself getting excited—Christ how he wanted her. But then it came over him, the way his father had laughed at his skinny arms, the absurdity of his small chest, and birdlike legs. And he felt suddenly a wave of paralyzing self-loathing. It was nuts to even think of it. Not only was he not going to have Rosalie, but the fact was he was never going to have anybody. He was a mama’s boy, Lila Lee’s boy, the artsy crazy lady of the block. He began to shiver and to hold himself, wrapping his arms around his waist and moaning. It was then, at that moment, that the Space was born.
    He felt hollow. He felt his heart, veins, kidneys, lungs disintegrating, like people disintegrating on Captain Video serials. He squirmed on the cold, wide bed, and tried talking to himself—it’s just a crazy feeling … it’s all in your head … your heart is still in your body, you can hear it beating … your lungs are still there, you’re still breathing. But the logic of his words didn’t ease him. He felt empty, drained out, a non-person. He was never going to be alive, never going to be a man. He was a pussy. He couldn’t even climb the fucking ropes in gym for Chrissakes. And when he turned and saw her body across the dark alley, he felt as though he were an empty goblet or a manikin. Push him over on the floor and he would shatter into a million fragments.
    Now he sipped his Scotch, and looked around the room. The Space had never left him—never. He had tried to fight it, had finally, tearfully (and full of shame) told Lila Lee about his trouble, not actually mentioning the Space—he was too ashamed of that, too fearful of it to actually call it by name, at least to her—for even then he was aware that somehow she was partially responsible for it. She had taken him to Dr. Salem. He recalled the man’s old office on Greenmount Avenue, the musty smell of old furniture and the dead glare of faded yellow lampshades. He had gone into the doctor’s office and sat in front of the bald man, and after an hour of twitching and stalling, he could resist no longer, and he had broken down and told him about the Space—how he felt like nothing, how he would be on his way to school, and he would see a woman and he would feel it happening, the organs vanishing, smoking like dry ice. Eventually, after Peter had spilled himself to Salem, the doctor had asked him to wait in an adjoining room, and called