Ode to a beautiful nude
She turned with tears in her eyes. "Nelly, Im not the only one." A hand touched my shoulder. I looked up. A grey-haired Irishman was standing there with calm authority the face portentous and distant as if I were recovering consciousness after a blow on the head. They do not always remember. "Go over there by the fountain, Bill. Ill look into this." I could feel his eyes on my back see the sad head shake hear him order two coffees in excellent Spanish ... dry fountain empty square silver paper in the wind frayed sounds of distant city ... everything grey and fuzzy ... my mind isnt working right ... who are you over there telling the story of Harry and Bill? ... The square clicked back into focus. My mind cleared. I walked toward the café with calm authority. Dont worry, I won’t. I’ve seen real-estate flags before. Lazeer opened the table drawer and fumbled around in it and pulled out a tattered copy of a hot-rodder magazine. He opened it to a page where readers had sent in pictures of their cars. It didnt look like anything I had ever seen. Most of it seemed to be bare frame, with a big chromed engine. There was a teardrop-shaped passenger compartment mounted between the big rear wheels, bigger than the front wheels, and there was a tail-fin arrangement that swept up and out and then curved back so that the high rear ends of the fins almost met. I asked Dr Strauss if Ill beat Algernon in the race after the operashun and he said maybe. If the operashun works Ill show that mouse I can be as smart as he is. Maybe smarter. Then Ill be abel to read better and spell the words good and know lots of things and be like other people. I want to be smart like other people. If it works perminint they will make everybody smart all over the wurid. The calliope stopped its atonal caterwauling just before Quincannon reached the ferry landing. He took advantage of the respite to ring for the closemouthed ferryman and then board the scow, which was still moored on this bank. While he and the bay were being winched across, the calliope started up again. He could tell from mid-slough where the music, such as it was, was coming from— an old, weather-beaten steamer moored at the town wharf. Doubtless Gus Burgades store boat, theIsland Star. The Solidarity Partys headquarters was located in a somewhat shabby two-story brick building on Ellis Street. Nathaniel Dobbs, however, was not in residence this morning. The lone occupant of what a sign on the door labeled a suite — a misnomer if ever there was one, given the cramped, unkempt confines of the tworooms inside — was a tubby little man seated behind a long, cluttered worktable. He wore a green eyeshade and a pair of spectacles with lenses as thick as the bottoms of milk bottles. He seemed surprised to see a woman enter the premises, and wary and not a little scornful when he squinted at herbusiness card. Sabina knew what he was going to say before he said it; she had heard the same tiresome twaddle dozens of times before. Great, said the groom, and painted the horse green. Cant you do it by strength alone? asked the man. (I just looked up the word in the dictionary Dr Strauss gave me. The word issubconscious. adj. Of the nature of mental operations yet not present in consciousness; as, subconscious conflict of desires.)Theres more but I still dont know what it means. This isnt a very good dictionary for dumb people like me. I havent, he said. Not now. Not any more.Damn that woman!” I see smoke coming from the chimney, and when we round the last turn in the path we see the cabin. Sue waves from the door. She has worked like a squaw since dawn, and she smiles and waves. I can remember when women would exhaust themselves talking over the phone and eating bonbons all day and then fear to smile when their beat husbands came home from their respective nothing-foundries lest they crack the layers of phonyyouthful glow on their faces. Not like Sue. Here is Sue with smudges of charcoal on her face and fish-scales on her leather pants. Her scent is of woodsmoke and of sweat. There is no artificial scent like this—none more endearing nor more completely “correct.” There was a time when the odor of perspiration would have been more of a social disaster for a woman than the gummata of tertiary pox. Even men were touched by this strange phobia. People who have attempted schizophrenia without the correct family background have universally failed. . . . They can erupt into psychotic-like behavior in combat, or when caught in some other mad and difficult situation, but they are unable to sustainthat behavior when the environment seems to right itself. The same point applies to the variety of fascinating drugs which are falsely said to induce psychosis. Not only does the drug influence miss the essence of the experience, butthe effect wears rapidly off. The occasional goat who manages to be a schizophrenic after the drug has left his system is easily separated from the sheep who go back tonormal—he has come from the right sort of family and probably would have achieved schizophrenia even without the benefit of medical research. But it takes considerable genius to come up with a Universal Law of Gravity for sheer, inanimate mass. What it takes to discover the equivalent for intelligent entities… the human race hasnt achieved as yet! Not even once has an individual reached that level! There is more than one way of avoiding the truth, said Carl. He didnt press the point. The sound which you say is more like a vibration than actual noise. Have you any idea of what it could be?” But of course you like it, she said. You always used to like it!”.
