Chase: Roman

wore a pinkie ring was not conclusive proof of any sexual aberration - just as long hair was no proof of revolutionary tendencies and violent desires, as a skimpy miniskirt in no way indicated that the girl wearing it was available because she showed a lot of leg. And even if Judge were a homosexual, his hang-up did not make him particularly more easy to find. Of course, there were places in the city where the gay crowd congregated, and Chase knew most of them, if they had not gone out of fashion. But there were bound to be hundreds at such watering spots - with no guarantee that Judge would be found frequenting such places. As with every sexual minority in America, there were ten closet queens for every liberated man who stepped forward to be counted.
        He undressed, feeling gloomy again, and got a glass from the cupboard. He carried it to the refrigerator and put two ice cubes in it, but when he picked up the whisky bottle, he realized he did not need another drink to get to sleep. He crawled beneath the covers, bone-weary, leaving the ice to melt, reached over and turned out the bedside lamp. The darkness was heavy and warm and, for the first time in longer than he could remember, comforting.
        Alone now, on the edge of sleep, he began to wonder if he had been a fool not to respond to Louise Allenby's blatant sexual offerings. He had been months without a woman and without a desire for one. She had been game and, in the physical department anyway, she would most likely have been perfect, sure and thrilling in her movements. Why had he thought there must be more than a swift coupling, an orgasm?
        Had he retreated from the prospect because he feared it would draw him even further into the world, further away from his precious routines than ever? A relationship with a woman, no matter how transitory, would definitely be an admission of one more breakdown in his carefully mortared walls.
        He turned and burrowed into the pillow, for he did not want to think about that any longer. However, he had no choice; the thoughts came unbidden. And, shortly, he had a realization whose import he could not immediately assess, not even to the extent of assigning it a positive or negative value. He had rejected Louise Allenby to preserve his sexual routine - but had immediately afterward broken an equally important ritual that was an integral part of his hermit's existence, his penitence: he had foregone his glass of whisky.
        

    Seven
        
        For a split second when he woke the following morning, he thought he was suffering from the grandfather of all hangovers, and then he realized it was only the aftereffect of the falls he had taken Thursday evening. Each contusion and laceration seemed to have swelled and grown darker, filled up with pain so pure that he felt he ought to be able to squeeze it out in a steady stream of liquid the colour of, say, fine brandy. His eyes felt sunken and served as twin focuses for a headache that ranged all over his scalp. When he sat up and tried to get out of bed, his muscles protested like rusted bands of steel working against each other without benefit of lubrication.
        He felt so bad, in fact, that he was not even frightened by the usual array of nightmares, dismissing them in order to pay more elaborate attention to the ache that was everywhere in him.
        In the bathroom, his hands gripping the sink as he leaned toward the spotted mirror, he saw that his face was drawn and much paler than it should have been, dark rings nesting under his eyes. His chest and back were dotted with bruises, most of them about as large as a thumbprint and painful out of all proportion to their size.
        He convinced himself that a hot bath would soothe him, but he found it only made things worse. Back in the main room, he began to walk and to swing his arms, biting down on the pain as if he might be able to kill it if he didn't give voice to it. He forced himself through a dozen push-ups and countless deep-knee bends until he was dizzy and felt as if he might faint. Where the bath had failed, the exercises helped, though only to a minute degree. He knew the only cure was activity, and he dressed to begin the day.
        In the light of the day, with his pain about him like a cloak, he thought his plan was stupid and doomed to failure from the moment of conception, but he also knew that he could not yet stop his investigation. He was still driven by