Rennel’s eyes were half closed. He looked almost sick. Drifts of his smoke were visible in the dim light. Finally he turned to me and the hurt in his eyes hurt me.

“There was a baby, wasn’t there?”

“I think so.”

We sat looking at each other. Not a very comforting sight for either of us. Loneliness is hard and cold. A sick thing.

“Rennel, do you suppose we ought to live together for a while? You and me?”

His face hardened. His hips undulated briefly in his leather pants. “No. Actually, not.” He sighed. “No,” he repeated. “I don’t think that would be very nice at all.”

He got up then and went away. I climbed up onto the chaise. Carlotta’s cup, full of dark coffee, was beside me. The smoke lay still on the air. The rain pecked at the skylight all that night.

The cat, the fish, and the toad

I might as well get a cat. Why not have the picture complete? Not having a cat may be an originality I can’t afford anymore.

This is going to be one of my sluttish days. I will not get dressed. I will keep the lamps on all day. It’s raining anyway. If it rains for a week, I’ll have a sluttish week.

I think the most depressing thing about this past weekend was that Rennel slept. It would have been all right if he had dozed off with my pages fallen in his lap and happened to sleep till morning. But he stacked the papers in a neat pile on the desk. He went into the bathroom and brushed his teeth and put on his pajamas and then deposited himself tidily in the bed I had made for him on the sofa. His glasses folded neatly on the coffee table. His blue velvet robe on a chair above his slippers. I found him that way the next morning. He had even brushed and hung his suit. He lay flat on his back pouting softly at the ceiling. His eyelids swollen over their contents. It made me angry. I went straight through to the kitchen and made a lot of noise to wake him up.

His stomach seems to have settled with age. He’s become a big breakfast feeder. I was thrown off by his ankles and feet. I had quite forgotten other people’s unclad ankles and indiscreetly presented feet beneath breakfast tables. His manner was clinically cheerful. Nobody could ever complain that Rennel was unwilling to discuss.

“Tell me now,” with his cheek full of half-mauled toast, “have you always felt such resentment for me? Do you still?”

“I’m too gray and fat now to resent anything.”

“You’re the same size now that you’ve always been.”

“I’ve been pretty fond of you for years now, off and on.”

“Yet you have insulted me, and Sam, and yourself. You’ve insulted us all.”