Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

King, standing apart, was removing his clothes too, taking his time. Of course. Nowadays it was nothing to do that. This was what Dorothy had set in motion but she need not worry. They would have forgotten it themselves by tomorrow. Or by a week from tomorrow. Wouldn’t they? You could hardly say they loved each other, and they were drunk as sailors.
    Blair King knelt down in front of Jeanette, pressing his face against her. She bent over him and held his head. Her tanned body looked golden in the porch light, his white. Pressed together. Dorothy was finally halted. Her breath drew in at the sight of them. Now that they had put their clothes, and what looks and movements she knew of them—all they could give her to know—aside, they seemed strange and familiar to her, both more and less than themselves. Like figures in a museum. But too live, too awkward—even if she could have kept them still!—for that. Flaunting themselves in the light as if nothing mattered, guzzling and grabbing now, relishing and plundering each other. If she had been able to call out to them, Stop that, stop that at once! in her old schoolyard voice, it would have been a warning she called, more than a rebuke. Bold as they were, they looked helpless to her, helpless and endangered as people on a raft pulled out on the current. And nobody could call to them. They tumbled, they caught and bore each other down silently, behind the glass.
    She noticed now that her whole body was trembling, her knees weak, her head battered from within. She wondered if this was how a person felt at the onset of a stroke. It would be terrible to have a stroke here, in her nightclothes, and not even on her own property. She made her way back through the flower bed and around to the front of the house. She felt better as she walked, and by the time she reached the steps she felt fairly satisfied that she was not going to have a stroke after all. She sat on the steps for a few moments to get control of herself, closing her eyes.
    On the underside of her eyelids there promptly appeared the two welded figures, solid and bright, like those chalked-in drawings she used to put on the blackboard—surprising herself—for festive occasions.
    What if Viola had seen any of that? More than she could stand. Strength is necessary, as well as something like gratitude, if you are going to turn into a lady peeping Tom at the end of your life.

The Spanish Lady
Dear Hugh and Margaret ,
I have been by myself a good deal these past weeks and have been able to think about us all and have reached several interesting though not perhaps original conclusions:
1) Monogamy is not a natural condition for men and women .
2) The reason that we feel jealous is that we feel abandoned. This is absurd, because I am a grown-up person capable of looking after myself. I cannot, literally, be abandoned. Also we feel jealous—I feel jealous—because I reason that if Hugh loves Margaret he is taking something away from me and giving it to her. Not so. Either he is giving her extra love—in addition to the love he feels for me—or he does not feel love for me but does for her. Even if the latter is true it does not mean that I am unlovable. If I can feel strong and happy in myself then Hugh’s love is not necessary for my self-esteem. And if Hugh loves Margaret I should be glad, shouldn’t I, that he has this happiness in his life? Nor can I make any demands on him—
Dear Hugh and Margaret ,
The thing that makes me suffer is not just that you were having an affair but that you deceived me so skillfully. It is terrible when you find out that your idea of reality is not the real reality. Surely having Margaret at the house all the time and having us three go out together and Margaret pretending to be my friend was unnecessary treachery? How often you must have been laughing at me exchanging your careful heartless glances when we were together. It was all a show put on for your own cruel amusement and my being such a dupe and a fool of course lent spice to your lovemaking. I despise you both. I could never do that. I could never make a fool of someone I had loved and been married to or even someone who had been good to me and was my friend—
    I tear those letters off, both of them, crumple them and put them in the tiny receptacle for waste paper. Everything in the roomette is well-planned, adequate. In this cubicle of metal and upholstery a human being could without real inconvenience or