shaped cupola which looked toward the sea; the porch, facing the
dunes and lusterless September scrubgrass was longer than a
Pullman car and screened in. The high slope of roof made the
house seem to beetle its brows and loom above him. A Baptist
grandfather of a house.
He went to the porch and after a moment of hesitation, through the
screen door to the fanlighted one beyond. There was only a wicker
chair, a rusty porch swing, and an old discarded knitting basket to
watch him go. Spiders had spun silk in the shadowy upper corners.
He knocked.
There was silence, inhabited silence. He was about to knock again
when a chair someplace inside wheezed deeply in its throat. It was
a tired sound. Silence. Then the slow, dreadfully patient sound of
old, overburdened feet finding their way up the hall. Counterpoint
of cane: Whock... whock... whock...
The floorboards creaked and whined. A shadow, huge and
unformed in the pearled glass, bloomed on the fanlight. Endless
sound of fingers laboriously solving the riddle of chain, bolt, and
hasp lock. The door opened. 'Hello,' the nasal voice said flatly.
'You're Mr. Nately. You've rented the cottage. My husband's
cottage.'
'Yes.' Gerald said, his tongue swelling in his throat. 'That's right.
And you're-'
'Mrs. Leighton,' the nasal voice said, pleased with either his
quickness or her name, though neither was remarkable. 'I'm Mrs.
Leighton.'
* * *
this woman is so goddam fucking big and old she looks like oh
jesus christ print dress she must be six-six and fat my god Shes fat
as a hog can't smell her white hair long white hair her legs those
redwood trees ill that movie a Lank she could be a tank she could
kill me her voice is out of any context like a kazoo jesus if i laugh i
can't laugh can she be seventy god how does she walk and the cane
her hands are bigger than my feet like a goddam tank she could go
through oak oak for christs sake.
* * *
'You write.' She hadn't offered him in.
'That's about the size of it,' he said, and laughed to cover his own
sudden shrinking from that metaphor.
'Will you show me some after you get settled?' she asked. Her
eyes seemed perpetually luminous and wistful. They were not
touched by the age that had run riot in the rest of her
* * *
wait get that written down
* * *
image: 'age had run riot in her with luxuriant fleshiness: she was
like a wild sow let loose in a great and dignified house to shit on
the carpet, gore at the welsh dresser and send the crystal goblets
and wine-glasses all crash-atumble, to trample the wine colored
