One can walk the streets.
Go to the Park.
Read.
Eat.
(But not sleep.)
One can take a sightseeing bus to Chinatown.
The taxi dance halls are open.
The all-night movies.
Any of numerous friends—
or my brother—
would sit up and talk till morning.
I could
by simply lifting the telephone and dialing a number
fill my apartment with assorted pretty girls.
Or just Gwen.
Why not?
The image appeared
the woman-lines, the dry-martini taste of a woman's
libido
Gwen's cuprous hair;
and it was not Gwen at all
but an image in myself.
Who she was, I had no idea.
But I knew
I'd had enough of the Gwens in this world
to last until
my next reincarnation
or, possibly,
the second coming of Christ
in Anno Double-Domini.
(Tomorrow, I thought, begins
another reincarnation)
It was enough of a list.
I had now collected sufficient Things to Do so as to go on sitting in my chair, which was all I desired to do: I had somewhat collected myself.
The sky belched light.
I leaned forward, looked, and half of the hazy stars were erased, gone, done for, hidden behind an invisible tumble of nimbus.
My nerves let themselves down another degree.
I went around the room, emptying an ashtray the night maid had overlooked, fixing myself a glass of hot, powdered coffee.
And back to my chair.
Now, across the parapet, across the well-learned silhouette of buildings opposite, the undersides of clouds were heated up. Their contours showed in brief, stammering flashes of lavender, as if they were gigantic lamps which some celestial electrician was trying to connect with a frayed cord.
At my side, the exhausted curtain came to momentary life—then perished again in the swelter of the room.
Gwen was an image. Whoever she was, I saw what I saw, looking from within to what lay within. Another item for Forbisher-Laroche: Why visit the fille de joie? Because she is more I than She.