Dance of the Happy Shades

exaggerated, almost enough so to seem mocking, yet in another sense it was real and I felt unsure of myself.
    “I won’t take up a minute of your time,” he said. “I never meant to be a nuisance. I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry I offended you last time and I apologize. Here’s a little present if you will accept.”
    He was carrying a plant whose name I did not know; it had thick, glossy leaves and grew out of a pot wrapped lavishly in pink and silver foil.
    “There,” he said, arranging this plant in a corner of my room. “I don’t want any bad feelings with you and me. I’lltake the blame. And I thought, maybe she won’t accept furnishings, but what’s the matter with a nice little plant, that’ll brighten things up for you.”
    It was not possible for me, at this moment, to tell him that I did not want a plant. I hate house plants. He told me how to take care of it, how often to water it and so on; I thanked him. There was nothing else I could do, and I had the unpleasant feeling that beneath his offering of apologies and gifts he was well aware of this and in some way gratified by it. He kept on talking, using the words
bad feelings, offended, apologize
. I tried once to interrupt, with the idea of explaining that I had made provision for an area in my life where good feelings, or bad, did not enter in, that between him and me, in fact, it was not necessary that there be any feelings at all; but this struck me as a hopeless task. How could I confront, in the open, this craving for intimacy? Besides, the plant in its shiny paper had confused me.
    “How’s the writing progressing?” he said, with an air of putting all our unfortunate differences behind him.
    “Oh, about as usual.”
    “Well if you ever run out of things to write about, I got a barrelful.” Pause. “But I guess I’m just eatin’ into your time here,” he said with a kind of painful buoyancy. This was a test, and I did not pass it. I smiled, my eyes held by that magnificent plant; I said it was all right.
    “I was just thinking about the fellow was in here before you. Chiropractor. You could of wrote a book about him.”
    I assumed a listening position, my hands no longer hovering over the keys. If cowardice and insincerity are big vices of mine, curiosity is certainly another.
    “He had a good practice built up here. The only trouble was, he gave more adjustments than was listed in the book of chiropractory. Oh, he was adjusting right and left. I came in here after he moved out, and what do you think I found? Soundproofing! This whole room was soundproofed, to enablehim to make his adjustments without disturbing anybody. This very room you’re sitting writing your stories in.
    “First we knew of it was a lady knocked on my door one day, wanted me to provide her with a passkey to his office. He’d locked his door against her.
    “I guess he just got tired of treating her particular case. I guess he figured he’d been knocking away at it long enough. Lady well on in years, you know, and him just a young man. He had a nice young wife too and a couple of the prettiest children you ever would want to see. Filthy some of the things that go on in this world.”
    It took me some time to realize that he told this story not simply as a piece of gossip, but as something a writer would be particularly interested to hear. Writing and lewdness had a vague delicious connection in his mind. Even this notion, however, seemed so wistful, so infantile, that it struck me as a waste of energy to attack it. I knew now I must avoid hurting him for my own sake, not for his. It had been a great mistake to think that a little roughness would settle things.
    The next present was a teapot. I insisted that I drank only coffee and told him to give it to his wife. He said that tea was better for the nerves and that he had known right away I was a nervous person, like himself. The teapot was covered with gilt and roses and I knew that it was not cheap, in spite of its extreme hideousness. I kept it on my table. I also continued to care for the plant, which thrived obscenely in the corner of my room. I could not decide what else to do. He bought me a wastebasket, a fancy one with Chinese mandarins on all eight sides; he got a foam rubber cushion for my chair. I despised myself for submitting to this blackmail. I did not even really pity him; it was just that I could not turn away, I could not turn away from that obsequious hunger. And he knew