would be agonizing and obscene.
She knew nothing about him, his fears, his torments, his rages. She did not know he had never been to a dentist, had never been treated by doctors or psychiatrists with shock therapy or tranquilizers. She did not know that he had dislocated a girl’s shoulder in a playground because she had grinned at him and that as a result he had been thrashed mercilessly by the athletic director of the school while two older boys had held his arms.
And that girl’s father had come to Mrs. Schultz’s home that night, and Gus, hiding in the basement, had heard the man’s wild, screaming voice declaring that he would kill him like a savage dog if he ever so much as looked at his daughter again.
As punishment his mother had made Gus Soltik stay outside all night in the muddy backyard of Mrs. Schultz’s home, wearing only sneakers, jeans, and a thin shirt, with the temperatures dropping below freezing. That was why cold and coldness had become to him surrogates of shame and punishment. The coldness and the shame and that girl’s father and the punishment had been forged into a single mnemonic unit in his brain.
At the age of eleven Kate Boyd knew the only way she could save her life was to analyze and attempt to apply a diverting therapy to this man who wanted to hurt and kill her.
Partly by luck and partly by virtue of shrewd female instinct, Kate Boyd composed a question which probed like a lance at a core of fear in Gus Soltik’s dreadfully twisted nature. She managed a tremulous smile and said in a practical voice, “If you wanted a date with me, why didn’t you just call me on the phone?”
The concept of the word “date” confused Gus Soltik. He felt a warmth on his cheeks. Her question made him uncomfortable. In his dim mind he knew what dating was. He had seen boys and girls, young men and young women, walking with their arms about each other’s waists.
Their smiles confused him. He saw them going into movie houses, laughing and talking easily, and he couldn’t understand it. The girls had razors and bottles of acid in their purses. They would hurt you if you touched them. He felt sorry for the boys, the young ones. He had wanted to be with a boy, he liked to look at them, an inchoate impulse he did not comprehend; but there was only Lanny, and he was different, he was old.
Suddenly he saw with a twist of fear that “white legs” carried a green suede purse on a leather strap over her shoulder. With a quick move he snatched it from her, dizzy with relief, convinced he had saved himself from pain and humiliation.
Kate’s fiercely held composure almost cracked then; she fought back the scream rising in her throat as she felt the awesome power in the hand that ripped the purse from her shoulder.
Gus Soltik opened it and anxiously inspected its contents in the thin moonlight. He found a clean, neatly folded handkerchief, two pencils and a book with names in it, a wallet with a single dollar in the bill compartment, and a photograph of a little black dog. He had seen the dog before. He had done something to the dog, he remembered vaguely. It was over, and now no one cared. He tore the snapshot of the small black dog into several pieces and dropped them on the ground. But it was bad of her to make him think about it. It was over, and he could forget about it. But she had the picture of the dog.
Maybe it wasn’t razors or acid; maybe there were other ways they hurt you. But he wasn’t angry with her. The word “date” had started a slow but tantalizing tremor in the sludge of his mind. He wanted to know about dates. She knew about them. His helplessness made him sullen. This time was different from the others. Before, it had been him, and the lessons. And anger.
Always before, the ferocious exhilaration, the riotous, clamorous release linked to his rage. But now there was an anxiety about what to say. How to ask.
“Date,” he said, blurting the word out. “Where?”
She tried very hard not to blink, for she knew that would bring the tears. She could only guess at what his sullen anger at the picture of Harry Lauder had meant and pray that her guess was wrong. She tried to make her mind a blank, attempting with her tone and manner to strike a casual, impersonal note; she realized that she was walking a dangerous tightrope and that any mistake in judgment might be fatal. But even more difficult was finding the will not to think of Harry Lauder.
“Well, it would depend on whether someone was going out at night or in the daytime,” Kate said. There she stopped, and while she weighed her next words, she felt a cold and painful knot of fear gripping her stomach.
Kate Boyd knew who and what she was, and liked what she was, with the result that her ego structure was as solid as might be expected in a young and healthy girl who had been exposed to the molding influence of intelligent teachers and parents and to the company of companions whose emotional values were approximately as sane and practical as her own. She and her friends had not been taught that their desires were tainted and evil.
But there were areas of sexual maturity where Kate had no explicit experience. And this was what frightened her now. In their apartments, with Cokes and bowls of popcorn, she and her friends might talk and laugh about their awareness of one another’s sexuality, making titillating jokes and naughty plays on words. But it was innocent and fun, while this was ghastly and fearful. She felt lost and desperate because she knew of no way to talk about dates with this man. She had no way of knowing how this perverted creature would react to what she might say. To talk about dates meant touching on sexual potentials, and she realized that her life would literally hang in the balance if she said anything that stirred or angered him in ways she couldn’t control.
“We might just go for a walk and stop somewhere for hot chocolate,” she said.
His face was sullen, impassive, his eyes glazing as he watched her moving lips, the animation in her expression. He was waiting for her to lie.
She breathed through her open mouth. This was something her father had taught her once when they were backpacking through a forest where a skunk had laid down his scent. If she breathed through her mouth, she avoided his terrible smell.
“Would you like that?” she asked him.
He looked away from her, confused and angry, not at her but at himself. He should say yes or no. But they had told him to say nothing to them. And in his tortured mind there were no words at all. His eyes looked dimly at the dark trees and the glimpse of moonlight he could see on the lake, while that part of him that was pure animal listened for the footsteps he knew were not too far behind. .
Why had he looked away from her? What did that mean?
“There’s a place on Park called Armand’s,” she said tentatively, while studying his blunted face, the muddy eyes staring off toward the lake.
“In the window, there’s trays of cookies and cakes and little figures made of marzipan.”
She sensed a tension in his manner as he looked off into the trees.
Her purse fell from his limp hand to the ground. She picked it up slowly, carefully, and looped it over her shoulder.
“Or we could take a boat ride around the island,” she said.
He saw the word “lake”; he understood “boat,” but he said nothing and did not look at her. How did they know? Boats and water. Places to buy cakes. .
For Gus Soltik’s ignorance of the commonplace was as vast as it was frustrating to him. He did not know why some people wore glasses and others didn’t. He had never fathomed why in the winter men in red suits and white beards stood on street corners ringing bells. He did not know where the people on the screen went when Mrs. Schultz turned the TV off. He had looked behind the set many times but had never found any of them. He did not know where his mother was.
The word “cold” was blazing again in Gus Soltik’s mind. The wind was rising in the tops of the trees, diminishing what he could hear, and this made him feel tense and vulnerable. In spite of her fear and terror, Kate felt a tiny stab of compassion as she saw the lonely agony in his expression. But as she watched him scenting the wind like a frightened animal, she felt a sudden stir of confidence. Perhaps she could manipulate him now. Perhaps she could even make him take her home. She might convince him he hadn’t done anything really bad yet. He had hit the man who tried to help her, but that was all. No, there was another thing, but she had willed herself not to think of it.
“I’ve got an idea,” Kate said, smiling to complement what she hoped was a tone of surprise and enthusiasm in her voice. “We could go to my apartment and listen to records. I’d make sandwiches, and there’s Cokes.”
With growing assurance, she added, “And there’s cold beer, too.”
Gus Soltik turned to look at her, and there was something blurred and smudged in his expression now; it was as if a huge, flat thumb had exerted pressure against a malleable nose and cheekbones. His shadowed eyes, which
