Dance of the Happy Shades

it a try,” the man said, as if it were a joke. He looked at May. The old woman madeup her mind. She said scornfully, “It don’t matter to me.” She put her elbows on the counter and held her head between her two hands, as if she were pressing something in. “Pity to take your time,” she said.
    “You really ought to lay down so you can relax better.”
    “Sitting down—” she said, and seemed to lose her breath a moment—“sitting down’s good enough for me.”
    Then the man took a bottle-opener off a card of knick-knacks they had in the store and he walked over to stand in front of the counter. He was not in any hurry. When he spoke it was in a natural voice but it had changed a little; it had grown mild and unconcerned. “Now I know you’re resisting this idea,” he said softly. “I know you’re resisting it and I know why. It’s because you’re afraid.” The old woman made a noise of protest or alarm and he held up his hand, but gently. “You’re afraid,” he said, “and all I want to show you, all I mean to show you, is that there is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to be afraid of. Nothing. Nothing to be afraid of, I just want you to keep your eyes on this shiny metal object I’m holding in my hand. That’s right, just keep your eyes on this shiny metal object here in my hand. Just keep your eyes on it. Don’t think. Don’t worry. Just say to yourself, there’s nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be afraid of, nothing to be afraid of—” His voice sank; May could not make out the words. She stayed pressed against the soft-drink cooler. She wanted to laugh, she could not help it, watching the somehow disreputable back of this man’s head and his white, rounded, twitching shoulders. But she did not laugh because she had to wait to see what her grandmother would do. If her grandmother capitulated it would be as unsettling an event as an earthquake or a flood; it would crack the foundations of her life and set her terrifyingly free. The old woman stared with furious unblinking obedience at the bottle-opener in the man’s hand.
    “Now I just want you to tell me,” he said, “if you can still see—if you can still see—” He bent forward to look into herface. “I just want you to tell me if you can still see—” The old woman’s face with its enormous cold eyes and its hard ferocious expression was on a level with his own. He stopped; he drew back.
    “Hey what’s the matter?” he said, not in his hypnotizing but his ordinary voice—in fact a sharper voice than ordinary, which made May jump. “What’s the matter, lady, come on, wake up. Wake up,” he said, and touched her shoulder to give her a little shake. The old woman with a look of intemperate scorn still on her face fell forwards across the counter with a loud noise, scattering several packages of Kleenex, bubble gum, and cake decorations over the floor. The man dropped the bottle-opener and giving May an outraged look and crying, “I’m not responsible—it never happened before,” he ran out of the store to his car. May heard his car start and then she ran out after him, as if she wanted to call something, as if she wanted to call “Help” or “Stay.” But she did not call anything, she stood with her mouth open in the dust in front of the gas pumps, and he would not have heard her anyway; he gave one wildly negative wave out the window of his car and roared away to the north.
    May stood outside the store and no other cars went by on the highway, no one came. The yards were empty in Black Horse. It had begun to rain a little while before and the drops of rain fell separately around her, sputtering in the dust. Finally she went back and sat on the step of the store where the rain fell too. It was quite warm and she did not mind. She sat with her legs folded under her looking out at the road where she might walk now in any direction she liked, and the world which lay flat and accessible and full of silence in front of her. She sat and waited for that moment to come when she could not wait any longer, when she would have to get up and go into the store where it was darker than ever now on account of the rain and where her grandmother lay fallen across the counter dead, and what was more, victorious.

THE PEACE OF UTRECHT
I.
    I have been at home now for three weeks and it has not been a success. Maddy and I, though we speak cheerfully of our enjoyment of so long and intimate a visit, will be relieved when