he wasn’t there. She was all tortured about him, she was just
all twisted up inside, but I never understood why, she was
pretty incoherent. We drank, we talked about him, or she did;
she didn’t have any other subject. There wasn’t no sexual
feeling between him and me and he acted cordial and
agreeable. We went on a bus with some other people they
knew to N ew Hampshire for Thanksgiving. I think he paid
but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have any money to go but they
wanted me to go; they had friends there. We went on the
Greyhound bus and it let us o ff somewhere in Verm ont and
someone, another painter from up there, was supposed to pick
us up, but he didn’t come all night, so we were in the parking
lot o f the bus station, locked out o f the depot, deserted and
freezing through the whole night; and in the morning we got a
bus the rest o f the w ay. It was like being on a camping trip in
the Arctic without any provisions— w e’d pass around the ugly
coffee from the machine outside. We got cold and hungry and
angry and people’s tempers flared, but he sort o f held it all
together. His name was Paul, she was Jill. They fought a lot
that night but hell it was cold and awful. He was gregarious
but sort o f opaque, at least to me; I couldn’t figure out
anything about him really. He w asn’t interesting, he w asn’t
real intelligent, and then suddenly, mentally, he’d be right on
top o f you, staring past your eyes into you, then he’d see
whatever he saw and he’d m ove on. He had a cold streak right
down the middle o f him. He w asn’t someone you wanted to
get close with and at the same time he held you on his margin,
he kept you in sight, he had this sort o f peripheral vision so he
always knew where you were and what you needed. He kept
you as near as he wanted you. He had a strong w ill and a lot o f
insistence that you were going to be in his scout troop sitting
around the fire toasting m arshmallows. He had opinions on
everything, including who took too many drugs and who was
really gay. We got to N ew Hampshire and there was this big
house a wom an built with a tree right up the center o f it going
out the ro o f and all the walls were w indow s and it was in the
middle o f the woods and I never saw anything so imposing, so
grand. It w asn’t rich so much as handsome from hard w ork
and talent. The two wom en w ho lived there had built it
themselves. One was a painter, one a filmmaker; and it was
real beautiful. There was a lot o f people around. Then the food
came, a real Thanksgiving, with everything, including things
I never saw before and I didn’t know what they were, it was
ju st beyond anything I had ever seen, and it was warm and fine
and it was just people saying this and that. I’d been aw ay a long
time. I didn’t know what mostly they were talking about.
