CHAPTER 7
It was a telephone exchange, with minute light-buttons flashing on and off. The switchboards were back-to-back; as the Governor walked slowly along he could see only the operators opposite. They were all girls he remembered poignantly, girls he had loved, whose images had filled his mind, girls he had wanted, courted, thought about through restless nights, girls he had been too timid, too awkward, too shy or inept to have. There was not one whose name or voice or scent he had forgotten. Sheila, whose spare, tanned body tormented his adolescence, smiled up at him with those tantalizing lips, thin but so perfectly, so sweetly curved. Beth, who swam and sailed and rode like a boy but constantly reminded him she was a girl, waved a free hand as she plugged into the board with the other. And there was Marge, Marge of the translucent skin, and hair the silvery gold of a full moon on a hot summer's night, Marge, whose exquisiteness it had been agony not to touch, hold, crush, raven. They were all there: Anne, Louise, Ellen, Charlotte, Gwen, Dot, Jill, Hermina, Belle, Sybil.... All those rewards ironic experience informed him belatedly he could have known. Grief swelled internally; he felt the tears flowing backward from his eyes down to his throat and lungs.
The girls' darting fingers snapped and unsnapped the connections in rapid rhythm. The pointed plugs were rifle bullets growing out of living vines rooted in the switchboards. This was his chance to call Marvin; what if some vital business had come up?
Yet he could not signal to the girls opposite: Connie, whose husband had contributed to his campaign for councilman, Martha, met at some dull affair, who had gotten tight with him. He could not ask them for an impersonal number; he dared not address them familiarly after realizing how fully he had failed them. The telephone exchange was a place where communication was impossible.
His steps slowed; he grudged leaving the women even though he could not reach or touch them, even though he was as helpless to stay as he had been to seduce. His sadness at the implacability of fate merged with a gentler, resigned nostalgia.
The last pair of switchboards was unoccupied. The Governor pulled a plug out from each; the vine-wires were straight and inflexible. They sped through the air, escaping his fingers, growing diagonally upward. Thinner tendrils sprang out from them at intervals and entwined into the rungs of a slanting ladder. Lampley put his foot on the lowest; it was springy but it held his weight without bending too far. He mounted rapidly.
Halfway up he looked back. The vines had sprouted umbrella-sized leaves, making a curtain between him and the exchange. He caught glimpses of blonde, red or brown heads and thought he heard weeping and laughter. Hummingbirds, moths and dragonflies in brilliant colors lit on the foliage; the leaves turned scarlet and orange. Gentle winds rustled them.
The wind on the floor to which he climbed was gray and desolate. Far across the emptiness he saw a twenty-four motored plane being warmed up while the waiting passengers cooled cups of coffee in the wash of the propellers. Equally distant in another direction, an ice-boat turned in narrow circles. Lightning flashed from dark clouds, thunder rolled steadily. Lampley walked to a stairway, iron-railed and steep.