Flowers for Algernon

'Best stuff in the world for that,' she said. 'If you concentrate on the warm spot that starts in the pit of your stomach, all the lines begin to melt.'

'That's what's happening.'

'Wonderful!' She jumped to her feet. 'Me too. I

danced with too many squares tonight. Let's melt em all down.' She picked up a glass and I filled it for her.

As she drank, I slipped my arm around her and toyed with the skin of her bare back.

'Hey, there, boy! Whoa! What's up?'

'Me. I was waiting for you to come home.'

She backed away. 'Oh, wait a minute, Charlie boy. We've been through all this before. You know it doesn't do any good. I mean, you know I think a lot of you, and I'd drag you into bed in a minute if I thought there was a chance. But I don't want to get all worked up for nothing. It's not fair, Charlie.'

'It'll be different tonight. I swear it.' Before she could protest, I had her in my arms, kissing her, caressing her, overwhelming her with all the built-up excitement that was ready to tear me apart. I tried to unhook her brassiere, but I pulled too hard and the hook tore out.

'For God's sake, Charlie, my bra—'

'Don't worry about your bra…' I choked, helping her to take it off. 'I'll buy you a new one. I'm going to make up for the other times. I'm going to make love to you all night long.'

She pulled away from me. 'Charlie, I've never heard you talk like that. And stop looking at me as if you want to swallow me whole.' She swept up a blouse from one of the chairs, and held it in front of her. 'Now you're making me feel undressed.'

'I want to make love to you. Tonight I can do it. I know it… I feel it. Don't turn me away, Fay.'

'Here,' she whispered, 'have another drink.'

I took one and poured another for her, and while she drank it, I covered her shoulder and neck with kisses. She began to breathe heavily as my excitement communicated itself to her.

'God, Charlie, if you get me started and disappoint me again I don't know what I'll do. I'm human too, you know.'

I pulled her down beside me on the couch, on top of the pile of her clothing and underthings.

'Not here on the couch, Charlie,' she said, struggling to her feet. 'Let's go to bed.'

'Here,' I insisted, pulling the blouse away from her.

She looked down at me, set her glass on the floor, and stepped out of her underwear. She stood there in front of me, nude. 'I'll turn out the lights,' she whispered.

'No,' I said, pulling her down onto the couch again. 'I want to look at you.'

She kissed me deeply and held me tightly in her arms. 'Just don't disappoint me this time, Charlie. You'd better not.'

Her body moved slowly, reaching for me, and I knew that this time nothing would interfere. I knew what to do and how to do it. She gasped and sighed and called my name.

For one moment I had the cold feeling he was watch­ing. Over the arm of the couch, I caught a glimpse of his face staring back at me through the dark beyond the window—where just a few minutes earlier I had been crouching. A switch in perception, and I was out on the fire escape again, watching a man and a woman inside, making love on the couch.

Then, with a violent effort of the will, I was back on the couch with her, aware of her body and my own ur­ gency and potency, and I saw the face against the win­dow, hungrily watching. And I thought to myself, go ahead, you poor bastard—watch. I don't give a damn any more.

And his eyes went wide as he watched.

June 29

Before I go back to the lab I'm going to finish the projects I've started since I left the convention. I phoned Landsdoff at the New Institute for Advanced Study, about the possibility of utilizing the pair-production nuclear photoeffect for exploratory work in biophysics. At first he thought I was a crackpot, but after I pointed out the flaws in his article in the New Institute Journal he kept me on the phone for nearly an hour. He wants me to come to the Institute to discuss my ideas with his group. I might take him up on it after I've finished my work at the lab—if there is time. That's the problem, of course. I don't know how much time I have. A month? A year? The rest of my life? That depends on what I find out about the psychophysical side-effects of the experiment.

June 30

I've stopped wandering the streets now that I have Fay. I've given her a key to my place. She kids me about my locking the door, and I kid her about the mess her place is in. She's warned me not to try to change her. Her husband divorced her five years ago because she couldn't be bothered about picking things up and taking care of her home.

That's the way she is about most things that seem unimportant to her. She just can't or won't bother. The other day I discovered a stack of parking tickets in a corner behind a chair—there must have been forty or fifty of them. When she came in with the beer, I asked her why she was collecting them.

'Those!' she laughed. 'As soon as my ex-husband sends me my goddamned check, I've got to pay some of them. You have no idea how bad I feel about those tickets. I keep them behind that chair because otherwise I get an attack of guilt feelings every time I see them. But what is a girl supposed to do? Everywhere I go they've got signs all over the place—don't park here! don't park there!—I just can't be bothered stopping to read a sign every time I want to get out of the car.'

So I've promised I won't try to change her. She's excit­ing to be with. A great sense of humor. But most of all she's a free and independent spirit. The only thing that may be­come wearing after a while is her craze for dancing. We've been out every night this week until two or three in the morning. I don't have that much energy left.

It's not love—but she's important to me. I find myself listening for her footsteps down the hallway whenever she's been out.

Charlie has stopped watching us.

July 5

I dedicated my first piano concerto to Fay. She was excited by the idea of having something dedicated to her, but I dont think she really liked it. Just goes to show that you can't have everything you want in one woman. One more argument for polygamy.

The important thing is that Fay is bright and good-hearted. I learned today why she ran out of money so early this month. The week before she met me, she had be­friended a girl she'd met at the Stardust Ballroom. 'When the girl told Fay she had no family in the city, was broke, and had no place to sleep, Fay invited her to move in. Two days later the girl found the two hundred and thirty-two dollars that Fay kept in her dresser drawer, and disappeared with the money. Fay hadn't reported it to the police—and as it turned out, she didn't even know the girl's last name.

'What good would it do to notify the police?' she wanted to know. 'I mean this poor bitch must have needed the money pretty badly to do it. I'm not going to ruin her life over a few hundred bucks. I'm not rich or anything, but I'm not going after her skin—if you know what I mean.'

I knew what she meant.

I have never met anyone as open and trusting as Fay is. She's what I need most of all right now. I've been starved for simple human contact.

July 8

Not much time for work—between the nightly club-hopping and the morning hangovers. It was only with aspirin and something Fay concocted for me that I was able to finish my linguistic analysis of Urdu verb forms and send the paper to the International Linguistics Bulletin. It will send the linguists back to India with their tape recorders, because it undermines the critical superstructure of their methodology.

I can't help but admire the structural linguists who have carved out for themselves a linguistic discipline based on the deterioration of written communication. Another case of men devoting their lives to studying more and more about less and less—filling volumes and libraries with the subtle linguistic analysis of the grunt. Nothing wrong with that, but it should not be used as an excuse to destroy the stability of language.