At noon I find Kronski waiting for me outside the office. He wants me to have lunch with him … there’s an Egyptian girl he wants me to meet. The girl turns out to be a Jewess, but she came from Egypt and she looks like an Egyptian. She’s hot stuff and the two of us are working on her at once. As I was supposed to be ill I decided not to return to the office but to take a stroll through the East Side. Kronski was going back to cover me up. We shook hands with the girl and we each went our separate ways. I headed towards the river where it was cool, having forgotten about the girl almost immediately. I sat on the edge of a pier with my legs dangling over the stringpiece. A scow passed with a load of red bricks. Suddenly Monica came to my mind. Monica arriving at the Grand Central Station with a corpse. A corpse f.o.b. New York! It seemed so incongruous and ridiculous that I burst out laughing. What had she done with it? Had she checked it or had she left it on a siding? No doubt she was cursing me out roundly.
I wondered what she would really think if she could have imagined me sitting there at the dock with my legs dangling over the stringpiece. It was warm and sultry despite the breeze that was blowing off the river. I began to snooze. As I dozed off Pauline came to my mind. I imagined her walking along the highway with her hand up. She was a brave kid, no doubt about it. Funny that she didn’t seem to worry about getting knocked up. Maybe she was so desperate she didn’t care. And Balzac! That too was highly incongruous. Why Balzac? Well, that was her affair. Anyway she’d have enough to eat with, until she met another guy. But a kid like that thinking about becoming a writer! Well, why not? Everybody had illusions of one sort or another. Monica too wanted to be a writer. Everybody was becoming a writer. A writer! Jesus, how futile it seemed!
I dozed off… When I woke up I had an erection. The sun seemed to be burning right into my fly. I got up and I washed my face at a drinking fountain. It was still as hot and sultry as ever. The asphalt was soft as mush, the flies were biting, the garbage was rotting in the gutter. I walked about between the pushcarts and looked at things with an empty eye. I had a sort of lingering hard-on all the while, but no definite object in mind. It was only when I got back to Second Avenue that I suddenly remembered the Egyptian Jewess from lunch time. I remembered her saying that she lived over the Russian Restaurant near Twelfth Street. Still I hadn’t any definite idea of what I was going to do. Just browsing about, killing time. My feet nevertheless were dragging me northward, towards Fourteenth Street. When I got abreast of the Russian restaurant I paused a moment and then I ran up the stairs three at a time. The hall door was open. I climbed up a couple of flights scanning the names on the doors. She was on the top floor and there was a man’s name under hers. I knocked softly. No answer. I knocked again, a little harder. This time I heard some one moving about.
Then a voice dose to the door asking who is it and at the same time the knob turning. I pushed the door open and stumbled into the darkened room. Stumbled right into her arms and felt her naked under the half-opened kimono. She must have come out of a sound sleep and only half realized who was holding her in his arms. When she realized it was me she tried to break away but I had her tight and I began kissing her passionately and at the same time backing her up towards the couch near the window. She mumbled something about the door being open but I wasn’t taking any chance on letting her slip out of my arms. So I made a slight detour and little by little I edged her towards the door and made her shove it with her ass. I locked it with my one free hand and then I moved her into the centre of the room and with the free hand I unbuttoned my fly and got my pecker out and into position. She was so drugged with sleep that it was almost like working on an automation.
I could see too that she was enjoying the idea of being fucked half asleep. The only thing was that every time I made a lunge she grew more wide awake. And as she grew more conscious she became more frightened. It was difficult to know how to put her to sleep again without losing a good fuck. I managed to tumble her on to the couch without losing ground and she was hot as hell now, twisting and squirming like an eel. From the time I had started to maul her I don’t think she had opened her eyes once. I kept saying to myself- “an Egyptian fuck … an Egyptian fuck” – and so as not to shoot off immediately I deliberately began thinking about the corpse that Monica had dragged to the Grand Central Station and about the thirty-five cents that I had left with Pauline on the highway. Then bango! a loud knock on the door and with that she opens her eyes and looks at me in utmost terror.
I started to pull away quickly but to my surprise she held me tight. “Don’t move”, she whispered in my ear. “Wait!” There was another loud knock and then I heard Kronski’s voice saying “It’s me, Thelma … it’s me Izzy.” At that I almost burst out laughing. We slumped back again into a natural position and as her eyes softly closed I moved it around inside her, gently so as not to wake her up again. It was one of the most wonderful fucks I ever had in my life. I thought it was going to last forever. Whenever I felt in danger of going off I would stop moving and think – think for example of where I would like to spend my vacation, if I got one, or think of the shirts lying in the bureau drawer, or the patch in the bedroom carpet just at the foot of the bed. Kronski was still standing at the door -1 could hear him changing about from one position to another. Every time I became aware of him standing there I jibbed her a little for good measure and in her half sleep she answered back, humorously, as though she understood what I meant by this put-and-take language. I didn’t dare to think what she might be thinking or I’d have come immediately. Sometimes I skirted dangerously close to it, but the saving trick was always Monica and the corpse at the Grand Central Station. The thought of that, the humorousness of it, I mean, acted like a cold douche.
When it was all over she opened her eyes wide and stared at me, as though she were taking me in for the first time. I hadn’t a word to say to her; the only thought in my head was to get out as quickly as possible. As we were washing up I noticed a note on the floor near the door. It was from Kronski. His wife had just been taken to the hospital – he wanted her to meet him at the hospital. I felt relieved! it meant that I could break away without wasting any words.
The next day I had a telephone call from Kronski. His wife had died on the operating table. That evening I went home for dinner; we were still at the table when the bell rang. There was Kronski standing at the gate looking absolutely sunk. It was always difficult for me to oner words of condolence; with him it was absolutely impossible. I listened to my wife uttering her trite words of sympathy and I felt more than ever disgusted with her. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.
We walked along in absolute silence for a while. At the park we turned in and headed for the meadows. There was a heavy mist which made it impossible to see a yard ahead. Suddenly, as we were swimming along, he began to sob. I stopped and turned my head away. When I thought he had finished I looked around and there he was staring at me with a strange smile. “It’s funny”, he said, “how hard it is to accept death.” I smiled too now and put my hand on his shoulder. “Go on,” I said, “talk your head
