Disappointment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  A startled look flared in Dara’s eyes; she glanced at Stephanie with disappointment. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” she said shortly. “I doubt you know anyone less at home than me.” They stood silently, Stephanie’s silence a disheartened one. She had thought she was making a penetrating remark that would impress Dara with her perceptiveness; instead she had revealed herself to be a person living in a dreamworld. This was always happening. — The next day at Christine’s, she felt like a person in a dreamworld, specifically a Playboy cartoon dreamworld inhabited by beautiful, moronic prostitutes in short pink negligees lolling about on cushions with white cats while large men in suits smiled at them. It was a strangely pleasant sensation. It had been a slow afternoon, and the women lounged on the couch with their high heels off and their feet up, watching TV and eating heavily salted french fries from damp carry-out containers. Stephanie was talking to Brett, an alert Chinese girl with waist-length hair. Brett had been in “the business” for ten years, since she was seventeen, and she said she was ready to leave. She told story after story about how customers were always trying to take advantage of her, humiliate her or intrude on her sympathies in some grotesque way. “It was just awful,” she said, concluding a particularly obnoxious story. “It was as if he’d done it almost, having to listen to him say it, you know?” She leaned forward for a handful of french fries, stuck some in her mouth and chewed meditatively. “When I was younger I had more energy to fight them off. No matter what they said or did, I could keep them away from my real self. But it gets harder and harder and I don’t know how much longer I can go on. I want to do something else anyway. I’m bored.” The other women began to talk about the terrible things men had done or tried to do, and how they’d thwarted them or gotten them back. There was a tenacious sense of defended pride in the room, which Stephanie felt both distant from and very much a part of. She thought of how pathetic this pride would seem to someone like Sandra, who had once disgustedly described a brief stint as a cocktail waitress as making her feel “like a whore.” The buzzer rang and Bernard the lawyer appeared, hands in his pockets, a sophisticated fellow playing the part, with mild amusement, of the casual businessman about to enjoy himself with a cheap woman. Stephanie smiled at him and sank back into the couch, feeling she was a sophisticated woman playing cheap. Soon they were back in the Shadow Room.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She didn’t see Bernard during the next three days, but she saw a variety of people unappealing enough to demolish her soothing daydream of happy prostitutes and fatherly johns. One, although he had made a point of showering and vigorously drying beforehand, dripped sweat off the tip of his nose and onto her face as ardently as he dripped his endearments, and seemed genuinely puzzled, even hurt, when she turned away from his kiss. Another, a huge, morose fellow with a gold Pisces chain on his fleshy chest, lay on his back and talked about how the most wonderful time in his life had been when he played football in high school; he was unable to figure out why everything had been so boring ever since. “I bet I know what you was like then,” he said, rolling over. “You was one of them quiet types that never went out. And look at you now.” There was no malice in his voice; it was a wonderless comment, which made its accuracy all the more depressing. Then there was the concave-chested little person who so offended her with the pre-session suggestion that she “suck his tits” that she involuntarily threw up her hands and said, “No. No. Just no,” and walked out of the room and down the stairs, not caring whether or not Christine fired her, which she didn’t. “I’ll send one of the other girls up,” she said to Stephanie as they huddled in the kitchen. “You’ve worked hard today and I can afford to lose that geek if he walks.” On the fourth day, when Bernard finally appeared, she fell into his arms. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said, feeling his rather automatic placating response. She told him how terrible the last few days had been. “This guy was there for half an hour droning about his stupid high school days, and how important he was, and how all the cute girls would go out with him. It was just dreadful.” She noted Bernard’s puzzled expression and laughed. “I guess it doesn’t sound so bad, but it really was. For a while I was in his life, and his life was lousy.” He looked at her seriously. “You’re right,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here. This is a bad place for you.” “I know. I’m going to quit next week.” “If you do, you must give me your phone number. I’d really like to keep in touch with you. It doesn’t have to be any big deal. I just think you’re an interesting girl.” She didn’t see him before she quit, nor did he call her right away. When a week went by, she decided he’d changed his mind. She felt disappointed, but also relieved, and then stopped thinking about it. She eased back into her life slowly, first looking for another job and then trying to write every day.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He had a stronger impulse to beat her. He looked around the room until he saw a light wood stick that his grandmother had for some reason left standing in the corner. He pointed at it. “Get me that stick. I want to beat you with it.” “I don’t want to.” “Get it. I want to humiliate you even more.” She shook her head, her eyes wide with alarm. She held the blanket up to her chin. “Come on,” he coaxed. “Let me beat you. I’d be much nicer after I beat you.” “I don’t think you’re capable of being as nice as you’d have to be to interest me at this point.” “All right. I’ll get it myself.” He got the stick and snatched the blanket from her body. She sat, her legs curled in a kneeling position. “Don’t,” she said. “I’m scared.” “You should be scared,” he said. “I’m going to torture you.” He brandished the stick, which actually felt as though it would break on the second or third blow. They froze in their positions, staring at each other. She was the first to drop her eyes. She regarded the torn-off blanket meditatively. “You have really disappointed me,” she said. “This whole thing has been a complete waste of time.” He sat on the bed, stick in lap. “You don’t care about my feelings.” “I think I want to sleep in the next room.” They couldn’t sleep separately any better than they could sleep together. She lay curled up on the couch pondering what seemed to be the ugly nature of her life. He lay wound in a blanket, blinking in the dark, as a dislocated, manic and unpleasing revue of his sexual experiences stumbled through his memory in a queasy scramble. — In the morning they agreed that they would return to Manhattan immediately. Despite their mutual ill humor, they fornicated again, mostly because they could more easily ignore each other while doing so. They packed quickly and silently. “It’s going to be a long drive back,” he said. “Try not to make me feel like too much of a prick, okay?” “I don’t care what you feel like.” — He would have liked to dump her at the side of the road somewhere, but he wasn’t indifferent enough to societal rules to do that. Besides, he felt vaguely sorry that he had made her cry, and while this made him view her grudgingly, he felt obliged not to worsen the situation. Ideally she would disappear, taking her stupid canvas bag with her. In reality, she sat beside him in the car with more solidity and presence than she had displayed since they met on the corner in Manhattan.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  The boy glanced at him affably and buried his spoon in the bowl of stew he had before him. “Yeah,” he said. “Simone’s been experiencing a lot of rejection from her old friends.” “I’m not really rejecting her,” said Jane. “I just want to put some distance between us emotionally. Enough so that she doesn’t feel compelled to call me every time her psychotic girlfriend starts slapping her around.” She was going to sit there and continue her conversation. “How many times has it been now?” asked the ugly kid through a mouthful of stew. “Five, counting the last girlfriend, three times at six in the morning. I mean, my God, where does she find these women? I didn’t think lesbians were into beating each other up.” A waitress in a short black leather skirt and leopard-skin tights charged his table. “Are you ready to order?” “No, no, not yet.” She smiled and roared off. He lowered his head to the plastic menu. He was not sure why this experience was such an unpleasant one. “I mean, her life is her life,” said Jane. “But the last time she called she actually got me over there to mediate between her and this crazed, muscle-bound black belt in God knows what, and they’re screaming at each other and Simone is threatening to cut her wrist, and oh, it was a mess.” “It sounds very theatrical.” “It’s like not only is she going to be a masochistic asshole, she wants an audience. I know I’m being cruel.” “I don’t think you’re cruel. Most people wouldn’t have put up with it as long as you did.” “It’s so tragic, though. She’s such a great person. And I know at least two really attractive, charming girls who’re dying to get into her pants, but she’s not interested. She likes bitches.” “Look, Simone sets herself up for disaster. She always has. Then she tries to drag anyone within range into it.” They gnawed their food righteously. Jane still had her elbow up and her hand blocking her face. “How’s the job search going?” she asked. “It looks good so far. Like I said, I think I did all right at Ardis films. And I know somebody who used to work there. The only thing about that place is that the people are so pretentious. Everybody there is a ‘close personal friend’ of Herzog or Beth B. or somebody. Everybody has this certain pompous accent, especially when they say ‘film.’ ” “That’s professional New York,” said Jane. “People who work in the arts are always that way.” “Maybe I’ll just come work in the museum with you.” “If we’re not on strike. And it looks like we’re going to be.” “Could you survive on free-lance work if that happened?” “Maybe.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “One of the times I was there, I was watching this girl called Marissa, a skinny, not very attractive girl with blank brown eyes. It was almost the end of the night and she was squatting on the floor with her skirt hiked up to her waist, counting her money with a little furry-animal look of concentration, and I thought about how she must look to someone like you, despite her nasty personality—like this cute little beast who can be swept up and fondled and experienced and then put down.” “That’s fabulous.” He looked deeply entertained. “You have such a wonderful way of expressing things.” She thought: If he says “fabulous” one more time tonight, I may punch him in the nose. It was a cool autumn evening. Clawlike leaves smelling of ashes rasped and scuttled across the pavement as they walked to her apartment. They were silent and she felt uncomfortable about it. They were returning from a dinner that should’ve been nice but wasn’t. Bernard had been distracted and (she felt) bored by her. He had flirted subtly with their waitress, which she’d observed with a detached sense of disappointment, a cold and lifeless form of jealousy. As they mounted the stairs, she felt they were heading toward a destination simply because it was more trouble than it was worth to avoid it. Once inside the warm apartment, though, she felt better about him, and she sensed a similar change in his mood. They lay snuggled on her bed and told short stories about their lives. He mentioned a girl he’d had a particular passion for in college, a headstrong dancer with long red hair, and told how he had finally seduced her one night after a party. “It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life. At the last moment she panicked and said, ‘No, let me just take you in my mouth.’ ” “Why didn’t she want to screw?” “Because she felt too vulnerable and didn’t want me to enter her.” “What happened?” “Well, I fucked her.” Pause. “And that was the beginning of a long and intense relationship.” “Did you ever consider marrying her?” What a silly idea, said his face. “No, no. I wasn’t thinking about that then.” “Did you ever feel a passion like that for your wife?” “No, I really didn’t. She was by far the most beautiful of all the women I’d been with, but I wasn’t nearly as attracted to her as I had been to the others.” He touched her nose. “You’re really concerned about that, aren’t you?” They kissed and petted, and her absurd bed creaked. Then they separated and talked again. She told him about the time her sister’s boyfriend had tried to seduce her in the middle of their breakup. “What happened?” He smiled. “Nothing. I didn’t want to. I mean, I wasn’t attracted to him and he was obviously doing it out of hostility to my sister.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She didn’t see Bernard during the next three days, but she saw a variety of people unappealing enough to demolish her soothing daydream of happy prostitutes and fatherly johns. One, although he had made a point of showering and vigorously drying beforehand, dripped sweat off the tip of his nose and onto her face as ardently as he dripped his endearments, and seemed genuinely puzzled, even hurt, when she turned away from his kiss. Another, a huge, morose fellow with a gold Pisces chain on his fleshy chest, lay on his back and talked about how the most wonderful time in his life had been when he played football in high school; he was unable to figure out why everything had been so boring ever since. “I bet I know what you was like then,” he said, rolling over. “You was one of them quiet types that never went out. And look at you now.” There was no malice in his voice; it was a wonderless comment, which made its accuracy all the more depressing. Then there was the concave-chested little person who so offended her with the pre-session suggestion that she “suck his tits” that she involuntarily threw up her hands and said, “No. No. Just no,” and walked out of the room and down the stairs, not caring whether or not Christine fired her, which she didn’t. “I’ll send one of the other girls up,” she said to Stephanie as they huddled in the kitchen. “You’ve worked hard today and I can afford to lose that geek if he walks.” On the fourth day, when Bernard finally appeared, she fell into his arms. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said, feeling his rather automatic placating response. She told him how terrible the last few days had been. “This guy was there for half an hour droning about his stupid high school days, and how important he was, and how all the cute girls would go out with him. It was just dreadful.” She noted Bernard’s puzzled expression and laughed. “I guess it doesn’t sound so bad, but it really was. For a while I was in his life, and his life was lousy.” He looked at her seriously. “You’re right,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here. This is a bad place for you.” “I know. I’m going to quit next week.” “If you do, you must give me your phone number. I’d really like to keep in touch with you. It doesn’t have to be any big deal. I just think you’re an interesting girl.” She didn’t see him before she quit, nor did he call her right away. When a week went by, she decided he’d changed his mind. She felt disappointed, but also relieved, and then stopped thinking about it. She eased back into her life slowly, first looking for another job and then trying to write every day.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Virginia left the conversation feeling cheated. Camille had told her about Magdalen at the end of the conversation, after all the good things. That seemed strange to Virginia. She sat for a long time on the stool under the phone with her legs tightly crossed and her elbows on the knee of one leg. She thought about how awful the kitchen was. There were balls of dust and tiny crumbs around the edges of the floor. Pans full of greasy water ranged across the counter. The top of the refrigerator was black. Everything in the room seemed disconnected from its purpose. — In the fall, Daniel decided that he didn’t like engineering school and dropped out. Jarold argued with him over the phone for a long time. When he hung up, Jarold went out into the garage and sat in the car with a scarf around his neck. He sat there for over an hour. Virginia could hear the car’s engine start, chug awkwardly, and then shut off. This happened several times. She couldn’t tell whether Jarold was repeatedly deciding to drive somewhere and then changing his mind, or if he was just keeping warm. — Camille divorced Kevin two months later. She put her things in bags and boxes and moved into a girlfriend’s apartment. She tried to make it sound like fun. Virginia pictured her sitting on the couch with her friend, both of them bundled in blankets, drinking mugs of tea, being supportive. It was a nice picture, but it seemed adolescent. — Everybody came home for the holidays. Magdalen and Camille hugged each other constantly during the visit. On Christmas they wore their pajamas and slippers all day. They sat close together and squeezed each other’s hands. They had confidential conversations, which Virginia only half heard. When they talked to anyone else, their faces stiffened slightly. Magdalen had a hard time finishing a sentence. No one else seemed to notice. “Magdalen’s always been flighty,” said Jarold. Charles was very pale. He picked at the Christmas meal, eating very little. His dinner plate was a mass of picked-apart food. Daniel ate a lot. He ate while he talked or walked through the room. There were often light brown crumbs on his plaid shirt. Virginia took only one group picture. It came out ugly. Magdalen’s eyes were a dazed green slur. Camille’s neck was rigid and stretched, her eyes bulged. Daniel’s eyes were rolled up and his nostrils were flared. Charles hung back on the couch, his hand covering the face of a malignant elf. Jarold, half in the picture and seen from the side, was frozen in the middle of a senseless gesture. — Virginia and Jarold were in the den watching the late movie when Magdalen called. Virginia tried to ignore the phone. It rang eight times. “Are you going to get that, honey?” said Jarold.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Because every street is becoming a Myrtle Avenue, because emptiness is filling the whole continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Because, after a certain time, you can’t enter a single house throughout the length and breadth of the land and find a man standing on his hands singing. It just ain’t done any more. And there ain’t two pianos going at once anywhere, nor are there two men anywhere willing to play all night just for the fun of it. Two men who can play like Ed Bauries and George Neu-miller are hired by the radio or the movies and only a thimbleful of their talent is used and the rest is thrown into the garbage can. Nobody knows, judging from public spectacles, what talent is disposable in the great American continent. Later on, and that’s why I used to sit around on doorsteps in Tin Pan Alley, I would while away the afternoons listening to the professionals mugging it out. That was good too, but it was different. There was no fun in it, it was a perpetual rehearsal to bring in dollars and cents. Any man in America who had an ounce of humor in him was saving it up to put himself across. There were some wonderful nuts among them too, men I’ll never forget, men who left no name behind them, and they were the best we produced. I remember an anonymous performer on the Keith circuit who was probably the craziest man in America, and perhaps he got fifty dollars a week for it. Three times a day, every day in the week, he came out and held the audience spellbound. He didn’t have an act—he just improvised. He never repeated his jokes or his stunts. He gave himself prodigally, and I don’t think he was a hop fiend either. He was one of those guys who are born in the corn crakes and the energy and the joy in him was so fierce that nothing could contain it. He could play any instrument and dance any step and he could invent a story on the spot and string it out till the bell rang. He was not only satisfied to do his own act but he would help the others out. He would stand in the wings and wait for the right moment to break into the other guy’s act. He was the whole show and it was a show that contained more therapy than the whole arsenal of modern science. They ought to have paid a man like this the wages which the President of the United States receives. They ought to sack the President of the United States and the whole Supreme Court and set up a man like this as ruler. This man could cure any disease on the calendar. He was the kind of guy, moreover, as would do it for nothing, if you asked him to. This is the type of man which empties the insane asylums.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  And as the train stops I put my foot down and my foot has put a deep hole in the dream; I am in the Arizona town which is listed in the timetable and it is only the geographical Arizona which anybody can visit who has the money. I am walking along the main street with a valise and I see hamburger sandwiches and real estate offices. I feel so terribly deceived that I begin to weep. It is dark now and I stand at the end of a street, where the desert begins, and I weep like a fool. Which me is this weeping? Why it is the new little me which had begun to germinate back in Brooklyn and which is now in the midst of a vast desert and doomed to perish. Now, Roy Hamilton, I need you! I need you for one moment, just one little moment, while I am falling apart. I need you because I was not quite ready to do what I have done. And do I not remember your telling me that it was unnecessary to make the trip, but to do it if I must? Why didn’t you persuade me not to go? Ah, to persuade was never his way. And to ask advice was never my way. So here I am, bankrupt in the desert, and the bridge which was real is behind me and what is unreal is before me and Christ only knows I am so puzzled and bewildered that if I could sink into the earth and disappear I would do so. I look back rapidly and I see another man who was left to perish quietly in the bosom of his family—my father . I understand better what happened to him if I go back very, very far and think of such streets as Maujer, Conselyea, Humboldt . . . Humboldt particularly. These streets belonged to a neighborhood which was not far removed from our neighborhood but which was different, more glamorous, more mysterious. I had been on Humboldt Street only once as a child and I no longer remember the reason for that excursion unless it was to visit some sick relative languishing in a German hospital. But the street itself made a most lasting impression upon me; why I have not the faintest idea. It remains in my memory as the most mysterious and the most promising street that ever I have seen. Perhaps when we were making ready to go my mother had, as usual, promised something spectacular as a reward for accompanying her. I was always being promised things which never materialized. Perhaps then, when I got to Humboldt Street and looked upon this new world with astonishment, perhaps I forgot completely what had been promised me and the street itself became the reward. I remember that it was very wide and that there were high stoops, such as I had never seen before, on either side of the street.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Dara was trying to become a fashion designer, and she looked unusually beautiful that night in a strapless satin dress that was dramatically faded in the middle where someone had probably spilled something on it a long time ago. Stephanie had always admired Dara, even though she was not friendly and had once been very rude to Stephanie on the phone. But Dara seemed pleased to see her and hung on to her presence throughout a shockingly dull conversation that stumbled awkwardly through Sandra’s work, Sandra’s husband’s work, a writer Stephanie liked and a movie. Still, Stephanie resolutely held on to her idea of Dara as an interesting person. She said, “You seem like someone who is at home in the world.” A startled look flared in Dara’s eyes; she glanced at Stephanie with disappointment. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” she said shortly. “I doubt you know anyone less at home than me.” They stood silently, Stephanie’s silence a disheartened one. She had thought she was making a penetrating remark that would impress Dara with her perceptiveness; instead she had revealed herself to be a person living in a dreamworld. This was always happening. — The next day at Christine’s, she felt like a person in a dreamworld, specifically a Playboy cartoon dreamworld inhabited by beautiful, moronic prostitutes in short pink negligees lolling about on cushions with white cats while large men in suits smiled at them. It was a strangely pleasant sensation. It had been a slow afternoon, and the women lounged on the couch with their high heels off and their feet up, watching TV and eating heavily salted french fries from damp carry-out containers. Stephanie was talking to Brett, an alert Chinese girl with waist-length hair. Brett had been in “the business” for ten years, since she was seventeen, and she said she was ready to leave. She told story after story about how customers were always trying to take advantage of her, humiliate her or intrude on her sympathies in some grotesque way. “It was just awful,” she said, concluding a particularly obnoxious story. “It was as if he’d done it almost, having to listen to him say it, you know?” She leaned forward for a handful of french fries, stuck some in her mouth and chewed meditatively. “When I was younger I had more energy to fight them off. No matter what they said or did, I could keep them away from my real self. But it gets harder and harder and I don’t know how much longer I can go on. I want to do something else anyway. I’m bored.” The other women began to talk about the terrible things men had done or tried to do, and how they’d thwarted them or gotten them back.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “I can’t say that suddenly we didn’t know each other, or anything like that, because I actually know John very well. It isn’t even that we don’t love each other anymore, because I do love John, even if it’s more of a sisterly love at this point. People say that it gets that way after you’ve been married awhile.” She cut her salmon steak into pieces with polite, relaxed moves, as though pausing in a discussion of art or film. “Well, what is it, do you think?” asked Susan. Barbara sat back. “I’m not sure how to describe it. It was like everything that supported the relationship was coming from the outside. Judging by all the signs, we were a perfectly successful couple and John was an ideal husband for me—rich, blond, tall, sensitive, ad nauseam. But even worse, it seemed as if our most intimate conversations were based on what we were supposed to be saying, and what we were supposed to be. Nothing seemed to come directly from us. Do you know what I mean? I sound like a hippie, I know.” “No, I know what you mean.” “I don’t know. I didn’t see it that way at the time. He was just driving me crazy and I guess I was driving him crazy too.” “I don’t know anymore how much a relationship can be based on what comes from the inside,” said Susan. “With Steve and me, it’s all based on us, and it’s very genuine and very sweet but sometimes it seems as if we’re involved in a fantasy that has nothing to do with the real world. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that, I don’t know, but it can begin to feel solipsistic.” She remembered what her father had said to her during an argument when she was fifteen years old: “You want to suck people dry, you expect them to pour out their guts to you and you to them over and over and over until you know everything, and it just doesn’t work that way. Relationships are built from ‘Hi, how are you doing?’ and ‘I’m fine.’ ” He had said this last word like a stake was being driven through his heart. “Do you remember Leisha?” “I sure do. The nutty one with the musician boyfriend. Why?” “I thought I saw her on the street today. There was this bag lady who looked just like her.” “Oh, my God.” “I didn’t realize that it wasn’t her until I was an inch from her face.” “What did you do?” “Gave her five dollars.” —

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “I’m an architect. Do you want some coke?” “No, thank you.” He looked at her as though she were completely mad and walked away. She quickly moved off the spot of this encounter toward a roomful of people in groups, determined to hear at least part of an interesting conversation. She was stopped by a man who wanted to know if she was Italian. She said no and escaped him. She was continuing toward a courtly group of large, aging transvestites who were the most welcoming and companionable bunch she’d seen all night when a very handsome black man took her elbow and said, “Bonsoir. Are you French?” “No.” “Italian?” “No.” His faced changed a shade. “What are you?” “I’m from Illinois.” He dropped her elbow with unmistakable contempt and turned his back to her. That was the last straw. She walked out of the club and into the street, not even bothering to look for Babette. She walked ten blocks in her high heels, and was almost home when she decided to stop at a neighborhood lesbian bar. It would be comfortable, she thought, to get drunk in the company of jovial women. And it was, until a pleasant conversation she thought she was having turned into a nasty argument, before she ever saw the turn, about whether or not bisexual women are lying cowards. Then she staggered home. At twelve o’clock the next day she answered the phone, making her voice as feeble and throaty as possible, the better to parry Babette with a muddled excuse. She didn’t recognize his voice right away, not even when he mentioned Christine’s, and he was beginning to sound insulted when she finally said, “Oh, hi,” her voice wobbling pleasingly (to her) and making her feel like a tousle-haired, mascara-smeared movie babe in a rumpled bed. He was in the neighborhood, and he wanted to meet her for lunch. “Gosh, I’d like to, but I was out late last night, I’m still in bed and I look awful.” “Well, I’m disappointed, but maybe some other time.” “Well, maybe I could…where are you?” Half an hour later she was sitting with him in an expensive eggs Benedict place, with waiters in black pants mincing about as a piped-in symphony identified this as a haven of Western civilization. “I tried to call you before, but you weren’t at home and then I got incredibly busy. There’s been a lot of fuss over a particular couple of blocks in the Village.” “I’ve heard,” she said. “Actually, I wish they weren’t doing that to the Village. It’s going to be awfully sterile soon.” “That may be,” he said easily. “But it would be sterile, not to say precious, if the old neighborhood were artificially maintained.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Susan was thirty-five years old, and Leisha thirty-four. When they were friends, Susan was an aspiring writer and Leisha an actress. Whenever she had a positive image of Leisha—a rarity during these last six years—she saw them together in Leisha’s apartment drinking tea, drinking wine, snorting coke, something, and talking about their careers. Leisha had loved the word “career.” “I think it’s going to happen for you really first,” she’d say. “Like boom, your career’s just going to skyrocket—I mean it.” It hadn’t. Susan had spent most of her New York years typing, proofreading or coat-checking, selling an article maybe twice a year. Little by little she had given up trying to make it as a writer and had taken an entry-level position with a journal that she didn’t think much of. Her editorial career didn’t exactly skyrocket, but it puttered along nicely. In Chicago, where she lived now, she edited a pretentious TV magazine and occasionally wrote film reviews for a local entertainment guide that paid almost nothing but gave her a chance to pontificate about aesthetics. When she thought about the magazine, she despised it and considered herself a failure; when she didn’t think about it, she would catch herself enjoying the work and decide that it was where she belonged. “And what do you think will happen with my career?” Leisha would ask, pulling back her shoulders and revealing her long, alert neck. Susan had answered her cautiously and it had been just as well. Leisha had taken the same acting course repeatedly for three years until the teacher told her she couldn’t take it anymore. She’d had one showcase, a string of auditions and then spent the next few years wringing her hands, seeing therapists and going into debt on her charge cards. Susan passed the Eighth Street Theater and noted the long-haired boys in black pants hanging around the entrance in a communal slouch. She remembered when she and Leisha would stand outside the St. Marks Bar and Grill in the summer wearing black Capri pants and white lipstick. She snapped her tongue against the roof of her mouth, making the classic junior-high-schooler’s noise of contempt for her own sentimentality, then remembered that sentiment was what her visit to New York was all about. She walked up Greenwich Avenue, scanning the Korean fruit stands that she had always liked so much, the tiny hardware stores selling toylike, largely superfluous wares, the cafés with tense outdoor patios and waiters racing to classical music with prim, neurotic steps. It was almost nauseatingly rich compared to clean, terse Chicago.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He was in the neighborhood, and he wanted to meet her for lunch. “Gosh, I’d like to, but I was out late last night, I’m still in bed and I look awful.” “Well, I’m disappointed, but maybe some other time.” “Well, maybe I could...where are you?” Half an hour later she was sitting with him in an expensive eggs Benedict place, with waiters in black pants mincing about as a piped-in symphony identified this as a haven of Western civilization. “I tried to call you before, but you weren’t at home and then I got incredibly busy. There’s been a lot of fuss over a particular couple of blocks in the Village.” “I’ve heard,” she said. “Actually, I wish they weren’t doing that to the Village. It’s going to be awfully sterile soon.” “That may be,” he said easily. “But it would be sterile, not to say precious, if the old neighborhood were artificially maintained.” “Letting a place alone isn’t the same thing as artificial maintenance. Anyway, this is artificially accelerated development.” She argued with him happily, pointing out that he was contradicting an earlier-expressed belief that the government should manipulate the economy to protect the poor. “Yes, I suppose you’re right about that,” he said after her short speech. His indifferent capitulation left her forceful argument charging foolishly toward a vanishing target, and she changed the subject, telling him about the previous night. He especially liked the drunken argument with the lesbian, and said “fabulous” three times. Their eggs came in oblong dishes. The piped-in woodwinds sang stirringly of decency and order. “What are you doing now that you’ve left Christine’s?” he asked. “Are you working or writing?” “Neither one, really.” She thought: I’m trying to re-form my personality. “I’m looking for a job, probably some clerical thing. Maybe something part time.” “Have you considered something in an editorial capacity?” “I tried that when I first came here and it didn’t work out.” “Why not?” She shrugged. “I guess I wasn’t really interested enough.” She thought of trying to explain herself further, but ate her eggs instead. She remembered herself newly arrived in New York, nervously planning her future. She saw the ensuing events as a series of comic-strip pictures separated by dark borders. This was especially true of her job search—there she was, the round-shouldered applicant before the monotonous, large-handed boss. She remembered her interview with the most respected editor of the most prestigious publishing house in town: “Oh, yes, I remember Georgia Helman.” The editor had rolled his eyes as he mentioned the woman who had referred Stephanie to him, a woman who had been his associate for two years. “A rather pathetic case. The only reason I hired her was as a favor to a personal friend.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Sexually, they seemed to be on the same level. She couldn’t tell if this was disappointing to him or not. And the money issue was beginning to disturb her again, now that she was working for the magazine. He’s not someone who comes to my house and is nice to me, she thought as she lay alone in bed. He’s someone who pays me to fuck him. She had an image of herself, sprawled half on and half off a bed at Christine’s, her upside-down head patiently looking back at her from the mirror as some galoot humped her. This vision blended discordantly with the idea of herself at her desk at the magazine and she was unable to separate them. Despite this ambiguity, she was curiously reluctant to drop the affair. He only saw her once or twice a week, he was not demanding, he liked her favorite authors and was somehow very reassuring. Reassuring of what, she didn’t know, but it was connected to her old feeling that he thought of her as a representative of the exciting avant-garde—although it also seemed that if he had any brains at all, he would’ve realized by now that she was just a bewildered human. “I think I know why you go to places like Christine’s,” she said. “I’m all ears.” “One of the times I was there, I was watching this girl called Marissa, a skinny, not very attractive girl with blank brown eyes. It was almost the end of the night and she was squatting on the floor with her skirt hiked up to her waist, counting her money with a little furry-animal look of concentration, and I thought about how she must look to someone like you, despite her nasty personality—like this cute little beast who can be swept up and fondled and experienced and then put down.” “That’s fabulous.” He looked deeply entertained. “You have such a wonderful way of expressing things.” She thought: If he says “fabulous” one more time tonight, I may punch him in the nose. It was a cool autumn evening. Clawlike leaves smelling of ashes rasped and scuttled across the pavement as they walked to her apartment. They were silent and she felt uncomfortable about it. They were returning from a dinner that should’ve been nice but wasn’t. Bernard had been distracted and (she felt) bored by her. He had flirted subtly with their waitress, which she’d observed with a detached sense of disappointment, a cold and lifeless form of jealousy. As they mounted the stairs, she felt they were heading toward a destination simply because it was more trouble than it was worth to avoid it.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Past them was the shiny, drab-colored machinery that was so forbidding to her but probably so familiar and homey to him. She shifted her gaze and met Carla’s kind, squirrel-bright brown eyes. Was Carla’s job in this office a set of symbols for her too, or was it an entity complete in itself, an efficient series of movements and interactions that emerged wholly and naturally from her needs and abilities like a bouquet of trick flowers, opening when you least expect it? “Doing all right, aren’t you?” asked Carla. Connie made a faint affirmative half moan. Carla made a small sensual laugh in her throat. “She’s really enjoying herself now,” she said. “And we’re allllmost done,” said Dr. Fangelli. “Just a little...” He did some dull, painful thing that caused a nasty taste in her mouth. — She returned to her office in a mildly muddled state that was both combative and uncertain. She stopped in the ladies’ room to look at herself in the mirror and saw with an unhappy loss of confidence that one side of her face had fallen into a jowly state of despair and that her eyes looked terribly tired and sad. She put on more makeup and entered the office. Luckily, there were only three people there, two assistants and an associate whom she liked. On her desk was a copy of a story being considered for publication. She read it twice and took it into the associate editor’s office. “Steve,” she said, “do you like this?” “What’s wrong with your mouth?” “Ignore it. I look spastic, but I’m not, I just went to the dentist. Do you like this?” “Yeah, I do. It’s—” “No, I mean really. Tell me the truth. Do you like this?” Steve looked provoked, then cornered, then he marshaled himself. “Yes, Connie, I like it. It’s terse, it’s quirky, it tricks you into thinking you’re safe, and then you find yourself on the edge of a cliff.” “Yeah, so does everything else we publish here.” “Connie, what do you want me to say? I know you feel frustrated about what we’re publishing, but this is what Fulford likes. I don’t have a problem with it.” “But I thought you liked the thing I showed you a few weeks ago.” “I did like it! I liked it a lot! But Fulford didn’t.” “He never likes anything I like. I don’t know why he hired me.” “You don’t like many things. If you did blurbs for novels they’d read ‘Mediocre! raves Constance Weymouth.’ ” “You like everything.” “I’m ready to like things. That’s true.” He leaned back in his chair and tipped his head backward as if he were on a talk show hosted by an obnoxious crank. Then he banged his chair forward again and smiled.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  We never thought it would be easy, but it turned out to be even harder than we had expected. In the first few months of operation our first director resigned, the University of Alabama School of Law where we had set up the office withdrew their support and promise of office space, and we discovered just how hard it was to find lawyers to come to Alabama and do full-time death penalty work for less than $25,000 a year. Obstacles were multiplying rapidly. We were denied funding from the state legislature, which we needed to get federal matching dollars. After several disheartening meetings with our board, it had become clear that we had no support in the state for the project. State bar leaders were committed to seeing our operation succeed—some because they felt it was unacceptable that condemned prisoners could not obtain legal assistance, others because they wanted more executions at a faster pace and felt that the absence of counsel was slowing them down—but we now realized that we would have to do it on our own and raise the money ourselves. Eva and I regrouped and decided to start again in Montgomery, the state capital. The project would eventually be named the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). I found a small building near downtown Montgomery, and in the summer of 1989 we signed a lease. The building was a good start: a rented two-story Greek Revival house built in 1882, near the historic district called “Old Alabama Town.” It was painted yellow and had a charming porch that made it feel open and welcoming—a nice contrast from the daunting courtrooms, institutional waiting rooms, and prison walls that defined so much of the lives of our clients’ family members. The office was cold in the winter, it was almost impossible to keep squirrels out of the attic, and there wasn’t enough electricity to run the copier and a coffeepot at the same time without blowing a fuse. But from the start it felt like a home and a place to work—and given the hours we would spend there, it was always a little of both. Eva took on administrative duties for our new project, which were pretty challenging given that federal dollars came with all kinds of complex reporting and accounting requirements. Eva was fearless and smart, and she sorted everything out so that a few dollars could trickle in. We hired a receptionist and tried to figure out how to survive. I had worked on fund-raising for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee almost as soon as I started there, so I had some experience asking for money to support our work. I was sure there would be a way to raise enough for the new Alabama office to meet the minimum federal matching requirements. We just needed some time—something, as it turned out, we wouldn’t get at all. A flood of execution dates awaited us.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  It seemed as though her friendship with Leisha had never been what she would now call a friendship at all, but a complex system of reassurance and support for self-involved fantasies that they had propped up between them and reflected back and forth. Susan now identified her early fascination with Leisha as a vicarious erotic connection with the ex-lover they had both slept with. She did not fantasize about Leisha and this man together, but she had been oddly gratified to experience secondhand the dynamic between him and this throaty-voiced little bad girl, and to reflect this dynamic back to Leisha, making it more of a drama by becoming another character in the story. Leisha had done the same, clearly enjoying her two-way link with their lover and the mysterious, contrary, perverse woman he had described to her, this tackily glamorous icon of a dirty-magazine woman who was also her reliable friend Susan. During the first year of their friendship they discussed and described him, pro and con, right down to the blond pinkness, the raised, strangely exposed quality of his genitals, and they were both greatly amused to discover that the sight of them talking and giggling together unnerved him. — She had dinner that night with her old friend Barbara. They went to a restaurant on Bleecker Street that served neat little dinners to predictably soothing music. Barbara was a jeweler who had never quite been able to become a big name in the industry, but whose work was a persistent presence in fashion magazines and department stores. She had recently separated from her husband of twelve years, a sculptor whom Susan had known. Barbara didn’t seem so much upset by the separation as appalled. “I can’t say that suddenly we didn’t know each other, or anything like that, because I actually know John very well. It isn’t even that we don’t love each other anymore, because I do love John, even if it’s more of a sisterly love at this point. People say that it gets that way after you’ve been married awhile.” She cut her salmon steak into pieces with polite, relaxed moves, as though pausing in a discussion of art or film. “Well, what is it, do you think?” asked Susan. Barbara sat back. “I’m not sure how to describe it. It was like everything that supported the relationship was coming from the outside. Judging by all the signs, we were a perfectly successful couple and John was an ideal husband for me—rich, blond, tall, sensitive, ad nauseam. But even worse, it seemed as if our most intimate conversations were based on what we were supposed to be saying, and what we were supposed to be. Nothing seemed to come directly from us. Do you know what I mean? I sound like a hippie, I know.” “No, I know what you mean.” “I don’t know. I didn’t see it that way at the time.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She knew Anne was being supportive. Anne had been told that Virginia had not recovered well from Charles’s death, and had come to bring lightness to the darkened house. She was determined to cheer Virginia, just as she’d been determined to mop the floor or make them eat their breakfast. She had approached Lily with the same unshakable desire to rectify. Lily’s presence in Virginia’s life began as a series of late-night phone calls and wild letters from Anne. The letters were full of triple exclamation points, crazy dashes or dots instead of periods, violently underlined words and huge swirling capital letters with tails fanning across several lines. “Lily is so withdrawn and depressed.” “Lily is making some very strange friends.” “Lily is hostile.” “I think she may be taking drugs....” “Think she needs help— George is resisting—may need recommendation of a counselor.” Virginia imagined the brat confronting her gentle sister. Another spoiled, pretty daughter who fancied herself a gypsy princess, barefooted, spangled with bright beads, breasts arrogantly unbound, cavalier in love. Like Magdalen. “I want to marry Brian in a gypsy wedding,” said Magdalen. “I want to have it on the ridge behind the house. Our friends will make a circle around us and chant. I’ll be wearing a gown of raw silk with a light veil. And we’ll have a feast.” “Does Brian want to marry you?” asked Virginia dryly. Magdalen was seventeen. She had just returned home after a year’s absence. She carried a fat green knapsack on her back. Her feet were filthy. “I’m coming home to clear my head out,” she said. She ate huge breakfasts with eggs and bacon, baked a lot of banana bread and lay around the den playing with tarot cards. Family life went on around her brooding, cross-legged frame. Her long blond hair hung in her face. She flitted around with annoying grace, her jeans swishing the floor, humming songs about ladies on islands. After six months she “decided” to marry Brian, and went to Vancouver to tell him about it. Virginia was glad to see her go. But, even when she was gone, insistent ghosts of Magdalen were everywhere: Magdalen at thirteen, sharp elbows on the breakfast table, slouching in an over-long cashmere sweater, her sulky lips ghoulish with thick white lipstick—“Mom, don’t be stupid, everybody wears it”; twelve-year-old Magdalen, radiant and triumphant, clutching an English paper graded triple A; Magdalen in the principal’s office, her bony white legs locked at the ankle, her head primly cocked—“You’ve got a bright little girl, Mrs. Heathrow.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Trying to BeStephanie wasn’t a “professional lady” exactly; tricking was just something she slipped into, once a year or so, when she was feeling particularly revolted by clerical work, or when she couldn’t pay her bills. She even liked a few of her customers, but she had never considered dating one; she kept her secret forays into prostitution neatly boxed and stored away from her real life. She was thus a little dismayed to find herself standing in high heels and underwear in front of the smeared mirror in the “Shadow Room,” handing her phone number to Bernard the lawyer. She felt she was being drawn deeper into something she had no business doing in the first place, but she had no boyfriend, she liked the lawyer and, since he was married, it seemed likely he would leave only a faint impression on her life. She had been working at her current “house” for three nights when she met him. It wasn’t as posh or expensive as the other two places she’d worked, but it was comfortable and safe. She hadn’t wanted to go back to the first place because of the peculiarity of the manager, who’d read the girls’ auras daily and made them chant over anointed candles in the kitchen to “purify the space”; and she couldn’t go back to the second because it had been closed by the Mafia. She wasn’t well connected or knowledgeable enough to systematically search for the best establishment, so she had settled for this—a run-down townhouse apartment with poor ventilation and sad old smells coiling through the rooms. It was called “Christine’s” after the woman who ran it, a tiny frantic blond tyrant who rather desperately fancied her hideous paisley sitting room to be a salon and forced long minutes of excruciating conversation between women and johns before allowing them to escape up the stairs. “We’re known for our intellectual women,” she told Stephanie during her interview. “Everybody here does something. Alana here is an artist. Suzie is a fashion designer and Beatrice is a nurse.” The three women on the couch regarded Stephanie blankly. Christine gave Stephanie the working name “Perry” and told her to wear something in which she could “meet her mother for lunch and then rendezvous with her boyfriend for cocktails.” This ridiculous pretense, teetering pathetically toward aspiration, appealed to her. She thought: It’s only for a few weeks, and showed up two days later in a tight silver minidress. She had come downstairs, after being summoned through the intercom to “meet someone,” hurried and disheveled, one stocking badly run, having left her portly, huffing client to finish his ablutions alone. She stood before the new man, feeling slightly knock-kneed in her short black skirt, smiling goofily and thinking, for some reason, of the I Love Lucy show. The canned laughter mumbled as Christine folded her hands and asked, “Well, Bernard, would you like to see Perry?”