“You stupid bitch,” he said, surprising himself with a language that he had until that time only read about in paperback novels. “I don’t give a good god-damn what you do. I’ve given my money away. My father’s dead and he was a shit. I quit school because I wanted to stop studying . . . to stop everything. And my landlady has got over three hundred and fifty pictures of herself in the nude and her children are very liberal, and I’ve had it. . . . Can you understand that? Can you!”
“Fuck off,” she said. “I can’t understand any of that. I don’t know any of those people.”
“In ordinary terms, I’m going to sit here until something happens.”
“You’ll die—that’s what will happen, you jerk.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I just wonder how it’ll happen. I mean, if it will be the cold or the hunger, or what.”
“You got any food in your apartment?”
“Some. A lot. I never got much of a chance to eat it because of the upstairs landlady inviting me up to eat with her fat-faced, liberal, sneering children.”
“Let’s go back and eat,” she said.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“I wasn’t listening. I was thinking.”
“You mean everything would be good with you if you had a place? That’s all? Just those things? What were you thinking about?”
“Food. And of course it would. What else is there? Let’s go.”
“Aren’t you afraid that I’ll want something from you?”
“I was thinking maybe you would. And it doesn’t worry me much. You seem sort of weak, I guess. And I can’t drive anyway, or read street signs. And I don’t know your name to tell the landlady.”
“C,” said C.
“My name’s Cell,” said Cell.
“First,” he said, “you should know I’m not so good with people. It’s been—”
“Let’s go.”
These two, Cell and C, drove to C’s apartment and entered by the least noisy of the two doors. Mrs. Sorenson and her children—from the living room—watched them cross over the hall and into the entry to the basement, noticing particularly the tracked mud and water. They went downstairs and Cell thought that the way he had his apartment painted was not in the best taste, and he twice had to point out to her what spoiled food looked like before she tried to cook it or put it in a sandwich.
C had waited for something to happen. He was unsure, watching her eat, sitting in dry clothes too big for her, if this thing had been enough of a happening to qualify, but he was at least willing to ride a ways on the wave of it—which he felt was better than having a vague hope. And she knew this. Nothing was expected from her.
But I must be careful, she thought: I must plan ahead. She would not be fooled again. She had been once before, when their automobile killed her parents and her safe place was sold for mortgage. There had been no insurance. A kind, sad-faced policeman had taken her to an orphanage, where the civil servants beat her regularly for punishment and sport, sometimes making her pull down her drawers the next day so they could see the marks. At sixteen years old she was let out. That had been two years ago and she had not been fooled about anything since. She began to plan ahead and moved the bed to the place where the desk had been before she put it beside the furnace. So now the striped walls made more sense.
“HOW ARE YOU GOING TO PAY THE RENT NEXT MONTH?” SHE ASKED.
“I can sell the car.”
“And when that money runs out?” she pressed.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t work?”
“No.” And they turned out the light and went to bed. Cell’s body was thin, tight, and tough. C imagined in a moment of frenzy that he was in bed with some kind of smooth-skinned animal. It was also exciting to have so much to do for himself.
Afterward, exhausted, he sat on the bed, leaning against the converging stripes, and Cell brought coffee for them with so much sugar he couldn’t drink it. “Well,” she said, “how are we going to get some money?”
“We aren’t,” he said. “I’m not going to spend my life making money. I won’t do it.”
“But when the rent runs out. We need a place.”
“I’ve got a house. My father’s house. We could stay in there.”
“Your father.”
“Don’t worry, he’s dead. But if all you want is a house, then we’ve got one.”
“Where is this house?”
“In Ontarion.”
“Well, we’ll go there. But not until the rent’s gone here. It’s not right to waste. So later we figure out about food.”
“O.K.,” said C.
“What’s your last name?”
“Easter.”
“Easter!”
“What’s with you?”
“Nothing,” she said, and smiled. “I was just thinking how good things are, and how funny for you that Cell Easter is such a better name than C Easter, and somebody even named you.”
She might be right, you know, thought C, as though to someone else; then went to sleep, hoping that what he feared wasn’t true—that everything was going too fast.
I hope he doesn’t expect too much from me, thought Cell, because I can always go back to the dormitory and maybe get a job in a laundry or something; then went to sleep, a broken, fretful sleep with a stranger.
C sold some of his books to a used-book store with a little room in back of it. They didn’t pay him much for them and he had to sell most of those he owned in order to get enough money for gasoline, oil, a sack of bologna sandwiches with lettuce and mustard, and several gallons of fruit juice. They drove to Ontarion. Cell was asleep in the back seat when they arrived. They knew each other hardly better now than they did before they met. The snow had all the sounds and wouldn’t let them out. Very, very quiet.
“You mean that’s it?” she said, her sleepy voice nearly cracking, rolling down the coupe’s back window.
“That’s it,” he said, and turned the car off. Buttonweeds had overgrown the lot and stood up through the snow, brown and dead. Rabbit tracks went among them. Mice. The windows were still whole, untouched by small ruffians.
“It’s so big,” she said, and added, “But it sure is a fine house . . . it sure is a fine house.” Her voice trailed off and came back again. “You sure this is your house?”
“Yep,” he said and got out of the car.
“Sure is a big house,” she said and followed him, carrying the half-filled pillowcase of bologna sandwiches up out of the weeds.
“Who was your father anyway?” she asked, when they had reached the porch.
“A nigger.”
“A nigger!” she said and set the bag down on the snow on the porch floor.
“I mean he was everything as unpleasant as that word. I meant nothing ethnic by it.”
“You mean he wasn’t black.”
“That’s right, he wasn’t.”
“He musta been a lawyer,