He seized only upon the comedy of the events.

At times Lillian asked herself: what will he make of me some day, when will he hurt me? And what if he does: I will try to love him gaily, more easily and loosely. To endure space and distance and betrayals. My courage is born today. Here lies Jay, breathing into my hair, over my neck. No hurt will come from me. No judgment. No woman ever judged the life stirring within her womb. I am too close to you. I will laugh with you even if it is against me.

Against me. Now the pain about the pianos left out in the rain suddenly touched her personally, and she understood why she had not been able to laugh freely. Those pianos were not only those of Jay's friend in the past, but her own too, since she had given up playing in order to work for Jay's support. She had surrendered any hope of becoming a concert pianist to attend better to their immediate needs. Jay's mockery wounded her, for it exposed his insensitiveness to anyone's loss, and to her loss too, his incapacity to feel for others, to understand that with the loss of her pianist self she had lost a very large part of herself, annihilated an entire portion of her personality, sacrificed it to him.

It was her piano Jay had left out in the rain, to be ruined...

He was wearing bedroom slippers and he was painting, with a bottle of red wine beside him. Circles of red wine on the floor. Stains. The edge of the table was burnt by cigarette stubs.

He didn't care. He said that what he had painted today was not as good as yesterday, but he didn't care. He was enjoying it just the same. He wasn't worrying about art. Everything was good, hang perfection, and he was out of cigarettes and if she would give him one he might finish that watercolor. She had come to interrupt him, that was good too, that was life; life was more important than any painting, let the interruptions come, specially in the form of a woman; let people walk in, it was good, to paint was good, not to paint was just as good, and eating and love making were even better, and now he was finished and he was hungry, and he wished they might go to the movies, good or bad...

The room was black. Jay was asleep in her arms, now, heavily asleep. She heard the organ grinder grinding his music. It was Saturday night. Always a holiday with him, always Saturday night with the crowds laughing and shouting and the organ grinder playing.

"According to the Chinese," said Jay, awakening, "there was a realm between heaven and earth…this must be it."

Tornadoes of desire and exquisite calms. She felt heavy and burnt.

"I want to keep you under lock and key, Lillian."

Suddenly he leaped up with a whiplike alacrity and exuberance and began to talk about his childhood, about his life in the streets, about the women he had loved and ditched, and the women who had ditched and bitched him, as he put it. He seemed to remember everything at once, as though it was a ball inside of him which unraveled of itself, and as it unraveled made new balls which he would unravel again another day. Had he actually done all these things he was relating to Lillian with such kaleidoscopic fury and passion? Had he really killed a boy in school with a snow ball? Had he really struck his first wife down when she was with child? Had he really butted his head against a wall in sudden anger because the woman he loved had rejected him? Had he really taken abortions and thrown them off the ferry boat in order to pick up a little extra change? Had he really stolen silver from a blind news vendor?