Harry, The Rat with Women

Synopsis: First as a child, later as a man, Harry just could not avoid being loved. Everyone has his own image of perfection and Harry fit them all. No one considered it strange that Harry thought only of himself since all those around him thought only of Harry. He made people want to stand there and watch; he made them want to salute. Sightseeing buses could have made a fortune driving around him.

At an early age it became clear that Harry was going to be something special. Because his parents were of modest means, other relatives -- aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews -- insisted on raising a monthly Harry Fund as an investment in his future. A governess was engaged, but she left somewhat suddenly after her attempts to seduce her young charge were misinterpreted by Harry's father, who tried to seduce her. At this point Harry was sent off to Europe in the ripening hands of his 19-year-old cousin, Gloria, whose efforts to persuade him to surrender his virginity were innocently rejected. Harry returned from Europe alone, and Gloria, in subconscious retaliation, became subject to a recurring medical problem every six months or so for the next three years, demanding emergency expenditures that depleted the Harry Fund to such an extent that its principal benefactor eventually found himself practically without financial resources. Harry moved to a rooming house in an industrial community and there met Rosalie MurchisonFromMacon who had $2500 in a savings account and who immediately began to give it to Harry in a hopeless attempt to detain him; but, Harry was restless and so one day, in a spasm of supreme self-sacrifice, Rosalie came home with a check for $700 and an airline ticket to New York. It was the last of her savings. "Here," she said, handing him both check and ticket. "Hey, New York! That's a swell idea," said Harry, and he immediately began packing.

Harry entered his maturity looking more handsome than ever. He liked to present himself against various backgrounds: to see how he looked against a blonde, how a brunette complemented the color of his eyes, how a redhead set off the tone of his skin. He was also a narcotic in his way-- for women had to have him; but like a narcotic, once the effect wore off there followed a slicing emptiness and a nervous need for more. Indeed, he made many women quite punch-drink, among them Georgette.

Georgette was a member of the Blue Belles, a smug and fashionable group of career women of talent, beauty, arrogance and spleen. Her colleagues: Belle Mankis, Naomi Peel, India Anderbull, Arlene Moon and Viola Strife. When Georgette and Harry met, they became lovers, but later their relationship degenerated to such an extent that the Blue Belles thought it wise to send Georgette away to a rest home when deep lines began to show in her face. They also reached another decision: that Harry was a rat and must go. To eliminate him they sent for Eugenie Vasch who was almost as beautiful -- and as self-centered -- as Harry himself.

Men were as helpless with Eugenie as women were with Harry; she had reduced to impotence movie stars, diplomats, heads of state, industrialists -- men who afterward cursed her betrayal while wistfully cherishing the flaccid remains of their lost love.

On the day that Eugenie Vasch arrived from London to answer the summons of the Blue Belles, Harry lay around wondering what to do with himself. Listlessly, he decided to go to a party. There, by predesign of his foes, he met Eugenie. Four days later they were married. The Blue Belles were outraged.

In the bedroom they installed a mirror on the ceiling that could be raised and lowered by pulleys. The mirrors in the dining room were angled around the table so that they could watch themselves eating from a variety of positions. The table itself had a mirrored surface. Though they usually dined alone, the table always seemed crowded. The largest of the bedroom mirrors had two hinged leaves that they liked to close around themselves; then with gluttonous eyes they revolved slowly. They spent their days looking into mirrors: they looked at themselves and at each other and at themselves looking at each other and at themselves pretending to look at each other while really still looking at themselves and at themselves making love.

In the beginning there was some difficulty with their love-making. Eugenie was reluctant to indulge; her only experience in its use was as a weapon.

"I don't think I can," she said.

"Sure you can," Harry assured her.

"How can I get excited? I know I won't get excited."

"Think of me."

"You're nice. But that won't do it."

"Well, what do you usually think of?"

"Hate. That's my problem. I always think of hate and it comes off very well. If I could only think of something else. Give me something that I can use. What do you think of?"

"Myself," said Harry.

"That's an idea."

She thought of herself and their first experience, though trying, was successful. After a while she became used to it, eventually finding that doing it with Harry was almost as much fun as doing it by herself.

They saw, felt, listened to and thought of nothing but themselves. They showed home movies to themselves of themselves and held hands while they screened them. They took albums of photographs of each other and once a day pored over them. Harry inspecting his pictures, Eugenie inspecting hers. Sometimes they danced, sometimes they talked. They hated to go out anywhere; Eugenie particularly hated to go to work. Each evening she'd rise quietly so as not to disturb Harry and slip off to business. During the hours she was gone, Harry felt restless and uncomfortable; a new feeling for him. It wasn't that he missed her; he missed himself when she was not there. He felt numb, erased, inexact; and with Eugenie it was the same.

"I'm no longer myself without you," she told him.

"Me too," agreed Harry.

"It's as if I'm pretending to be me. It may convince others but I know it's an act. I don't like having to act like my self. Imitations are always so sterile."

"I don't know what to do around this darn place," said Harry.

"I can hardly work," said Eugenie. "I've come to hate my job. I do it mechanically. No more pleasure. It's increased my efficiency but there used to be pleasure."

"A job is a job," chastened Harry.

"Every minute without you is a minute without both of us," said Eugenie. They went to a mirror and embraced.

They moved through their days in a state of automatic rapture. They never quarreled, they never even bickered. Their voices were extensions of their beauty; each comment was the right one, each answer was perfectly matched to the question. Theirs was less a relationship than an orchestration. One clean line flowed between them and when they were together its tightness took in the world.

"If it's one thing we are, it's everything," Eugenie once commented.

When they were apart the line unraveled and the world got away.

So they spent more time with each other. Eugenie went from taking occasional nights off to taking every second night off to taking every night off. They inhaled and exhaled only themselves and kept the windows shut tight so that no odor could escape. The perfume of their bodies lightened the air; it aided their breathing and improved their skin tones. They began to look luminous. Dusk was a favorite time of day: they delayed turning the lights on till the last of the day dwindled and their glowing outlines had ranged from a golden orange to a dark and burning blue. Their bodies held the color like live coals.

One day when Harry touched Eugenie his hand left a purple bruise that stayed for hours. Their skins had become too sensitive to touch. From then on they were careful not to come near each other.

"It's becoming harder and harder to look at myself," called Harry from the easy chair he had positioned in front of the bathroom mirror. "The glare is blinding."

"I know how you feel," answered Eugenie as she stared at her reflection in the coffee table. "We're becoming unreal."

"Godlike," said Harry.

"Goddesslike," corrected Eugenie.

Having re-established rapport, they returned to their work.

Conversation became a rarity. Several times a day, to confirm the other's closeness one of them would mumble a few words, wait for a reassuring return mumble and then drop back into silence.

Finally it was too much; it was over-indulgence. Both began to feel glutted and lazy; worn down by the unwavering singularity of their lives. But neither wished to commit himself to change. So (continued on page 82) Harry, The Rat (continued from page 72) with the windows shut tight and the air growing clammy they said the same things and they did the same things.

"What?" asked Eugenie after the silence of many hours.

"Never mind," said Harry. "I was about to say something but then I remembered having said it before."

"I feel that I've said everything before," said Eugenie.

"Let's try to say things nobody has ever said!"

"Grasnyk," said Eugenie.

"Frmploh," answered Harry.

"Bzmpssrk," said Eugenie.

"Klmnx ogtvpx," said Harry.

"Rplxtphrskprdznk Opsklmxe," said Eugenie.

After several days this too became tiresome.

"What can two people do with each other when neither of them is being destructive?" asked Eugenie one day in frustration.

"We can sit," offered Harry.

"I've had sitting. I'd rather lie than sit."

"Then we can lie," said Harry.

So they went to bed and didn't get up for three weeks. They slept, they dozed, they daydreamed, they yawned, they played but did not listen to the radio, they got up for water, they twisted themselves in the sheets, they saw how close they could move to each other without touching, they shifted sides, they curled, stretched, turned over, made up songs; got depressed.

They tried games:

"Now close your eyes. Now which part of my body am I touching?"

"Your eyes."

"No."

"Your mouth."

"No."

"Is it upper, middle or lower region?"

"Middle."

"Is it upper middle, middle middle or lower middle?"

"Lower middle."

"The navel."

"That's not lower middle; that's middle middle."

For a time this game managed to keep them amused.

One day, Eugenie's stomach, for the first time in her memory, rumbled. The next day, for the first time in his life Harry hiccuped. The air closed in around them, pushing their breaths back into their bodies and out again every which way. Finally they were forced to open the windows.

"I know what's the matter with me," Eugenie decided; "I'm too white."

"You can't be too white," said Harry; "white is beautiful."

"I'm bored with white. I need a sun tan."

"Sun dries out the skin," said Harry.

"I'll feel like a new woman with a sun tan," said Eugenie.

"I like me fine the way I am," grumbled Harry.

It was their first quarrel.

They both knew what was coming. They feared it as much as they welcomed it.

"We're going to die in here," Harry began.

"That's why I wanted to get out in the sun. Things change out in the sun."

"I don't feel like myself anymore," said Harry.

"I know what you mean."

"I don't even feel like the two of us," he added.

"Nothing. Blah. That's how I feel," Eugenie said.

"Blah; yes, blah," Harry agreed.

"When I walk it's not me, when I talk it's not me," said Eugenie.

"I feel that way," said Harry.

"I feel that a net has descended over me," continued Eugenie.

"I feel as if I'm in a slow-motion movie," said Harry.

"Or a beautiful, serene still photograph," said Eugenie.

"Paralyzed," lamented Harry.

"Dead."

"We're no good this way," said Harry.

"No good to ourselves," agreed Eugenie.

"I have to be alone for a while," said Harry.

"I've been offered a free-lance assignment in Acapulco -- a head of state."

"Sounds wonderful for you," said Harry.

"That way I can get my sun tan and make some money at the same time. I don't think I can afford to turn it down."

"A job is a job," said Harry.

He helped her pack.

"You don't have to take me to the airport," said Eugenie.

"I'll say goodbye here," Harry said, carrying her bags to the elevator.

When he returned to the apartment he wandered through each room slowly and thoughtfully. After 15 minutes he began to whistle. Ten minutes later he began to talk: "Harry! Hello, Harry! How are you, Harry? What are you going to do today, Harry? Where have you been; it's been a long time, Harry!"

Then he showered, shaved, dressed very carefully and took himself to an expensive restaurant.

"Guess who's around town again?" Belle Mankis muttered to her colleagues after their escorts had been sent from the table for cigarettes. The Blue Belles made unpleasant noises.

"Don't I know," said Viola Strife. "I saw him last night at The Four Seasons with Brenda Washburn."

"She's through," said Belle Mankis.

"I saw him at '21' with Lucretia Pyle," said Naomi Peel.

"She's through," said Belle Mankis.

"He was at La Fonda when I was there," said India Anderbull. "He was with Grace Ventricle."

"She's through," said Belle Mankis.

"We saw him at Le Pavillon with Alice Light," reported Arlene Moon. The table fell grimly silent.

"Who?" asked Georgette Wallender.

It was a new Georgette who had returned from the rest home. Her eyes shone, her hair sparkled, the deep lines in her hair sparkled, the deep lines in her face added a knowing strength to the naive strength that had been there before. Having been made to suffer, she had met suffering squarely and converted it to her needs as she had everything and everyone until Harry. Suffering, she realized, had cleansed her soul; pried open a heart that had been selfishly turned inward. She knew that she had used Harry, cunningly and mercilessly used him, confusing her determination for control for her determination to love. Learning this had been a bonus; a real plus. It added a number of new points to her character. She saw herself as warm where once she'd been cold; ready to give -- to love -- to not be loved in return -- to suffer. She had made suffering work for her and knew its positive aspects. She was now suffering's partisan, its devoted defender, regretting only that so many shallow years had been wasted before learning its punishing truths. Why, she wondered, had she been allowed to come so far in a world whose depth was beyond her, whose painful beauty she had only minimally begun to understand? Had her glibness really been that effective; or was it that her friends were too bland to notice, too much like the old Georgette to be further trusted? She viewed them with growing suspicion.

Only Harry had gauged her correctly; by rejecting her he had proved the soundness of his taste. His incorruptible spirit had scented the sham in her lectures, the lies in her easy truisms. Harry had rejected her; and now she too had rejected her. Gone was the old Georgette; in her place stood Georgette! If only Harry could see her; how surprised he would be! His sharp eye would know her newness in a flash: that she no longer wanted to use him, that she had grown free of wanting to take, that now her life was all give. Give. Give. Give. Give. Give.

"Oh, Georgette!" Harry cried in her dreams a thousand times a day, "you have crossed over the mountain and are mine!"

Sometimes she let him take her. Other times she turned away. "No, Harry, you are all love and I am cheap self-pity. (continued on page 128) Harry, The Rat (continued from page 82) Perhaps someday with even more suffering my selfishness will the and I will be ready to come to you. But for now -- --" and her dark figure slipped unseen into the night.

She had dreams where Harry followed her into hiding, bursting into the grimy, black closet, lit by a single candle, that had been her home for many years.

"I am old. What do you want with me?" she cried, covering her face with a threadbare shawl to hide the age that had grown there.

"We are both old," said Harry, removing her hands with his hands, a tear matching her tear running down his cheek. "It is time we went home."

She knew that none of this could ever be. Too much life had come between them. Harry was married and separated -- she had heard that; now he was undoubtedly off on some new happiness. What right had she to intrude? Turn up like a bad penny? A forgotten page? With all her vaunted suffering was she still not his inferior? Was it her right to inflict her sin-scarred soul on his sinless one? No, she decided, there could be nothing in it but misery for both of them. The maturing woman in her advised her to remember Harry only as the experience that set her life free; to go on from there to new experiences, to new and final love. The suffering woman in her accepted the advice. She would never see Harry again.

She rang his downstairs bell to tell him.

Georgette was always articulate in moments of crisis. She spent the evening smoking lightly, crossing and uncrossing her legs in a relaxed manner and drinking hardly at all. She began by explaining to Harry why they must never see each other again. It seemed to go well. She listened to the even sound of her voice and remarked to herself, "My, it's going well. It's going awfully well."

Harry actually seemed to be paying attention. It took several hours and when she was through they went to bed.

The next morning she felt empty. Harry was gone, having left a note that said he was sorry they couldn't see each other anymore and that he had enjoyed their friendship. The tone of the note was wrong. She recalled the previous evening with embarrassment; it hadn't gone well at all. She had ended by giving a lecture, just as in the old days! How could she expect Harry to understand why they could no longer see each other unless she showed him the new Georgette he could no longer see? She waited till he came home to begin over again.

But it went just as badly. "Oh, God," she thought, "he's winding his watch!"

Harry was tired. She was tired. They went to bed.

She stayed three weeks trying to explain. She cleaned house, cooked dinner and, during the odd moments when Harry was there, talked about feeling and giving and communication and contact. The further away Harry drifted, the more she blamed herself. She was not getting through.

He was always polite. When he brought dates home he said, "Stick around if you want to." She always did, patiently waiting for the girl to go home so that she at last could properly tell him why they must never see each other again.

Each new morning she left his bed sated and defeated. She tried telling herself that this was another rich experience, another triumph of suffering. But she was not suffering and she knew it. She was eroding. Harry ignored her conversation completely; he barely noticed her in bed. That he satisfied her nonetheless had become degrading.

"There's only one way I can get my point across about how suffering has changed me, Harry."

"Terrific," said Harry.

"I am going to demonstrate to you that I'm not the selfish, compulsive, opportunistic Georgette you used to know."

Harry was thumbing through a men's fashion magazine and did not answer.

"I am going to prove that I'm not an egoist. I am going to kill myself."

But Harry was too involved selecting a fall wardrobe to respond. Later they went to bed.

The mature woman in Georgette told her that suicide was the only answer. Harry would certainly get her message if she killed herself. The sensitive soul she had failed to reveal would at last be made known to him. Her death would show what he might not have lost had she only found a way to present her facts more cogently.

"I am going to kill myself, Harry. It's the only way," she told him one morning. "I thought it out. Don't try to dissuade me."

"You're crazy!" Harry laughed. At moments like this he genuinely enjoyed her.

"I'm a failure."

"You're a crazy kid."

He played in bed with her all day. Talk like that charmed him thoroughly.

Her attempt to commit suicide was becoming as embarrassing as her attempts to leave Harry. Each morning she lay in bed with new ambition, Harry's warm body beside her, a further thrust to the completion of her plan. She was going to rise from bed and then she was going to do it; really do it. Her period of indecision was past. She was finally in the mood. Very soon now she was going to rise from bed and then she was going to do it. By nightfall she was back in bed -- waiting to see if Harry would come home. Would he be alone? Would he have a date? Would it be proper to tell him her plans while the date was there or should she wait for her to leave?

One night, while having nothing better to do, she wrote a suicide note:

Well, Harry, I told you and you didn't believe me. By the time you read this note I will be dead. I do not ask that you cry for me. I don't deserve your tears. I only ask that you absorb the lesson I am trying to teach: that I must die because I have failed to make contact. I have tried but I am not skilled enough to make you know my feelings. You have never really seen me, Harry. You have never looked. But it is not your fault, really. I was never there to be seen. I don't mean to criticize.

I have suffered but I cannot communicate my suffering. However I try it comes out self-pity. I wonder as I sit here if this is the way it is with all of us. There must be something more than words to express the emotions that the best of words don't seem able to. I do not know. I'm only asking.

What is almost as beautiful as you, Harry? A baby. And why? Because it is new. Because it is virginal and innocent and interested in nothing but itself. A newly minted anything has a beauty, and this is a baby's beauty. But the moment life begins to touch the baby it loses its look of newness; it loses its innocence. It grows away from perfection.

Life is an abrasive. The more you come in contact with it, the more it uglies you. To make contact is to uglify. To give is to leave yourself open, to leave yourself open is to be hurt. Love, true love, is the act of taking all these negative factors and turning them into gold. To make ugliness beauty; to make suffering joyous; to make giving receiving.

People who do not make contact do not live. They only exist. Existing isn't living, Harry. We must open our hearts to others if we are to live. I have tried and failed. If you are ever to be happy you must try and succeed. Give, Harry. Give, give, give -- or die.

I kill myself to teach you this lesson. Do not try to read any other reason into my death. My career has never been as successful. My finances are in perfect order. I have many friends who love me. No, Harry, the reason I give my life is to help you to give yours.

I ask you not to feel sorry. I teach more by dying than I ever could by living. I suppose in my heart I have always been an educator.

With feeling, Georgette

It was rough -- but it was only a first draft.

By writing the note she knew she had crossed over a line. The myth had taken form; it was now quite clear she was going to do it. She even had a plan: she would take a room in a hotel (the shape of the room came alive before her), wait till it was early morning and the streets were deserted -- and then she would jump. It was inexorable. The tug of tragedy sucked her toward her final future. She flushed with a sense of Greek drama and waited for Harry to tell him the news and read him her letter. While waiting, she corrected for spelling and punctuation and started on a final draft.

It was three in the morning when she finished; and Harry was still not home. She knew he would not be back at all. It left her the rest of the night with nothing to do. She reread her letter a number of times. The first dozen times she cried; the last few times it bored her. Her sense of purpose was diminishing. She tried television but there was nothing on. She made herself a sandwich. She paced. She searched the apartment for cigarettes. After coffee she decided that if she was ever going to kill herself she had better do it now.

It was past four o'clock before Georgette found a decent hotel. She was shocked and annoyed: how must New York seem to out-of-town visitors? Sullen desk clerks, avaricious bellhops, dark, urine-colored corridors with colorless carpeting leading into colorless rooms; windows that opened on other windows; buildings so close to one another that had she jumped off one she couldn't have fallen -- she would have had to slide. Disgraceful!

She had a clear idea of what she needed: a room that was not just a hotel room but a transition chamber. In it she would move from one world into another. That called for high ceilings with many curtains, powder blue walls, a crystal chandelier, Early American furniture (an old writing desk in the corner), exquisite hand-loomed rugs -- and no television. She required a view of a park from wall-high windows that opened easily and did not make one stoop to climb out. She needed a comfortable ledge to balance on; she planned to balance for a long time and do nothing but stare out at the park and feel life rush at her, more vivid than it was because of her leaving it.

The room she finally settled on was a compromise: it looked out on Bryant Park and had traditional furniture. It had television but at Georgette's insistence the management agreed to remove it in the morning. Georgette said she didn't care about the morning, she wanted it out now. The night clerk said he had no one on hand to do the job and she would have to wait. Georgette said she would move it herself.

"Do as you like but you will be billed if there is any damage," said the night clerk. Then he asked if she had luggage.

Georgette said no.

"Then I must ask you to pay in advance," said the night clerk with quiet satisfaction.

"How much?" asked Georgette.

"Twenty-five dollars," said the night clerk.

"But I'm not even going to use the room all night," said Georgette.

The night clerk stared patiently through her.

"I'll come back with luggage," she said. She was damned if she'd be taken advantage of.

One thing was certain: she couldn't return to Harry's for a suitcase. What if he were home? She wasn't sure she'd leave. Nor could she return to her own apartment. She hadn't been there in a month and to go now -- to move through her rooms, go through her closets, feel her dresses, say goodbye to her jewelry -- and then to find something out of order, something she had always meant to change, knowing she couldn't die without changing it, getting down to work and in the heat of activity letting this, her grandest moment, slip away; because a hem needed fixing, a waist needed taking in, or a seam needed stitching.

Enemies of her suicide lurked everywhere: the night clerk -- her closets -- herself. She was not going to truckle under. It had become a matter of principle. She would not go home and she would get into that damned hotel without playing. She would die without paying. Let the night clerk explain that to his superiors!

She called Belle Mankis.

"Georgette, darling! Where in the world have you been?"

"Belle, I'm sorry -- did I wake you?"

"No, we're all here playing 'Lifeboat.' Get over here at once!"

"I can't, Belle. I have to ask you for a favor."

"Good God, darling; anything!"

"Can I borrow a suitcase?"

"Dear heart, are you all right?"

"Please, Belle, I can't explain but I need a suitcase right away and I just don't have the energy left to go over to your place and get it. I'd be desperately grateful if you'd bring it to me at the 42nd Street entrance of the Library. Please, Belle."

"Is this a new game? Sounds marvelous! Where in God's name have you been hiding?"

"Will you bring it, Belle? Please? Will you bring it?"

Belle Mankis and the Blue Belles descended on the Public Library in a squad of taxis; singing, laughing, having quite a time for themselves. They bounced Georgette between them; surrounded her in a wall of gossip, asked many pointless questions and demanded that she join them on the weekend for skiing.

"You must come Saturday," said Belle; "everybody you know! You will come. You must. You will. It's settled. Not another word. It's settled."

"Where is the suitcase?"

"Oh my God!" said Belle, "I knew you wanted something!"

At 5:30 in the morning, Georgette found a luggage shop on a darkened section of 39th Street. She hurled a brick through the window, grabbed a set of matched luggage and ran.

Fifteen minutes later she registered at the hotel and had her bags taken to her room. She gave the bellboy a dollar and he helped her carry the television set into the hall. The dawn was rising and it left her less time to dawdle than she wanted. She struggled over whether she should call Harry for a last goodbye. She dialed his number and got the answering service. They told her to wait for a minute. Georgette hung up. She tried to think of other people to call. She couldn't. She went to the bathroom and washed her face and combed her hair.

By the time she stepped out on the ledge, it was morning. She looked across to Bryant Park, trying to choose a spot to fix her eye on when she jumped. She picked the clearing outline of an elm tree. It looked peaceful; it looked complete. As the sun rose, the tree's outline sharpened, staring at Georgette as hard as Georgette stared at it. She tried to make the tree look like Harry, so that it would be Harry she would be jumping toward. But the tree stayed a tree. She flirted with it, swaying toward the edge, then stopping short. She waited for the growing morning traffic to notice her. She waited for cries of "Stop! Stop! You have too much to live for!" She waited for the cops and the priest to crawl out on the ledge and talk to her; and she would say, "Bring Harry." And Harry would be brought awash in tears, pleading with her, begging her, crying -- actually crying. "I read your note, Georgette. It was the most beautiful letter I've ever read. It made me understand everything. And it is more than just a letter! It is literature!"

She came back to life feeling ashamed. The morning wind chilled her. "I wish I knew what I really wanted to do," she moaned as a gust of wind whipped around the corner of the building and she let it lift her off the ledge.

Harry never read very much. Georgette's note lay around the apartment for a week before Gladys Friend, a girl he had over to clean, found it as she swept the litter from the breakfast table.

"Do you want this note, Harry?" she asked.

"What is it?"

"I don't know. Do you want it?"

Harry took the note from her hand and read it.

"Georgette," he remembered; "I guess I haven't heard from her in months."

"You've certainly heard from me, Harry," said Gladys Friend, picking the note from his hand. They went to bed and Harry forgot about the note until he found it raveled in the sheets the next morning.

"Crazy Georgette," he thought. For a few moments he almost felt guilty. "Crazy Georgette," he said fondly; "she said I couldn't make contact. I feel guilty, don't I? Well, isn't that contact?"

He congratulated himself on his refutation of her argument. If she had indeed killed herself to help him find emotion then she had not died in vain. Harry was pleased with himself for the rest of the day.

But mixed with the pleasure was a reaction he was unable to identify. It hid aloofly within him, resisting the surface; a new feeling, familiar not because he had ever experienced it but because he had either read about it or been told about it or at some time been aware of its presence in others. It came and went; Harry could not focus on it and this angered him. It made him feel less than himself, as if that were possible. He felt doubt. And that, he suddenly realized, was the feeling! Doubt! Self-doubt! Insecurity!

Harry had always accepted the fact that everyone loved him; it was the cornerstone of his life. But would a person who truly loved him voluntarily remove herself from the scene? What if he had further use for her? Could anyone so casually dismiss his needs?

At last he saw the lie in Georgette's suicide. She hadn't done it for him. She had done it for herself. She hadn't given; she had taken. It was not a love-filled sacrifice but an act of petty selfishness, an act of vindictive egoism! She hadn't thought of Harry when she took gas or went out the window or did whatever it was she did: she had thought only of Georgette, of Georgette's wants, of Georgette's moods, of Georgette's problems! She was spoiled rotten! It made Harry sick to think of it.

If Georgette could kill herself, then so could any of the others. They could just pick themselves up and say to hell with Harry and go die! They could do what they wanted to do, not what Harry wanted them to do. And if that much were true, how could he be sure that anyone really cared for him at all? All those gifts, all those declarations, all that daily round of adoration took on a sour smell. He wasn't being given love! He was being robbed of love! Sucked dry! He stared hostilely at Gladys Friend as she slept smugly beside him. He was being used. Insecurity cracked like a whip through his body.

He studied the sleeping Gladys. What was she smiling at? What was she thinking? If she was a separate person, she had separate ideas. She had her own personality. She probably even came from a family. Harry tried to remember if Georgette had a family. Nothing came to him. He tried to remember her face. He couldn't. He had never looked at her. He turned away from Gladys and closed his eyes. What color hair did she have? Blonde, no, brunette, no -- he checked. Her hair was brown. Well, he was close.

He felt like a lost child in a strange city. Who were these strangers out there who had talked of love and lied to him? How could he find out? He couldn't ask; he no longer trusted anyone to give an honest answer. He would have to be devious, indirect, learn as much as he could through other, less crucial questions. It was a job that required careful observation and evaluation; and it could be accomplished in only one way -- Georgette's way: he would have to make contact.

These thoughts did not come all at once. They struck in tortured droplets -- a few each day. He tried to keep them in order, define them one by one and store them for further use. But he had no background to work with. Insights trickled through and toured unorganized through his awakening imagination.

He attempted to shift focus; to force his attention on the world outside him. But it held only for a moment and then snapped back like a spring. He thrilled Gladys Friend by asking her questions.

"Do you have a job or something?" He was determined to make a breakthrough.

"How wonderful of you to ask! I'm a writer, actually."

He'd do it little by little. Make contact at least once a day.

"Do you have a job or something?"

"Yes, a writer. I'm a writer."

He'd begin by pretending to an interest in people. The first week for two hours a day; the second week, four hours a day -- in time perhaps it would become a habit.

"How long have you been working there?"

"Where? I work here. In the next room. You must have heard me type."

What did Gladys really feel? How could he get inside her? What was she out to get from him?

"Listen, what exactly do you do? Do you have a job or something?"

"I write, I'm a writer."

"Give," Georgette had written. "Give, give, give -- or die." But to whom was he to give? The hornyhanded takers with their falsified love? Give to them openly what they had already stolen on the sly? His friendship, his company, his good will -- well, why not? It seemed that they were going to get it anyway. Harry could not help smiling at that; at least he had kept his sense of humor.

"I'm a writer. I'm a writer," said Gladys Friend.

The more he tried to make contact, the more confused his relations became. Gladys Friend turned wary; his other women acted shy. Those who once moved silkily toward him began to jerk, stumble, twitch and fall. No one knew what the trouble was; their faces drew tight with fear as they waited for Harry's next question.

And the results proved disappointing. He felt no more than he did before. In the past he had seen people as tools; now he saw them as strangers and enemies. He did not consider this progress.

In the midst of his gloom, a telegram came from Eugenie: Arrive Seven A.M. At Idlewild. You Needn't Meet Me.

Harry ran from the apartment. "Where's a flower shop? Where's a flower shop?" he asked the doorman to his building, and having the one next door indicated, he rushed in and ordered roses. With his arms full, he staggered back into the apartment and searched all the closets for a vase. There wasn't one. He ran out again and found a store that sold him a dozen vases. He positioned the vases around the living room and in each one he placed a fistful of roses. He stung his fingers repeatedly. Only when the act was completed was he struck by the enormity of what he had done. He had bought his wife a present.

He had never given a present to anybody. A warm Hush of shyness crept over him and then -- joy. Joy in its full, familiar flavor but larger than he remembered it; brighter, more exciting, more true. Joy, and with it, the first tremor of a new beginning. Here, without effort or plan, Harry had given a room full of flowers. He had crossed a continent. He had given!

And it was just as Georgette had said: no feeling could rival this one. He stood in the center of the room and revolved slowly, letting his gaze sweep from vase to vase. He was one with the vases and one with the flowers inside them. Was this how it was with other people? This surrender to sudden communion? A shiver of ecstasy excited his toes and made him want to dance. He looked at the flowers and felt contact. The flowers made him think of giving and giving made him think of Eugenie to whom he had given and having given to Eugenie he saw that Eugenie would give to him and the two of them would give, give, give, to each other -- -- Because in the end they were one. One with the flowers, one with the vases, one with each other. And there lay the secret: the beauty of giving was that it was always returned.

And though he did not feel love, he knew that too must come. He had taken the first step and had made contact. And making contact had taught him the meaning of communication: everybody giving all he had and taking all he could.

He stood in the center of the room whirling faster. The mirrors everywhere dozened his flashing image -- flawless and beautiful -- but Harry did not notice. He saw only the singing red circle of roses. He had given.

The next morning he woke up with a pimple on his nose.

It wasn't there. It wasn't there and even if it were there, it was bound to heal and disappear in a day. Or two days. Certainly no more than two days. He examined himself in the dark, lightly touching the part of him which, because of its discrepancy with the rest, was the center of all interest at the moment: the pimple. His hand, his warm, pliant, soft and beautiful hand with an outside like down and an inside like velvet, set to rest on his forehead (cool, noble, molded in perfection) and slid judiciously down across perfectly formed eyes, perfectly formed cheeks (smooth and hairless), across to a firm, responsible chin, up to a mouth that sank deep, thrust forward, lay still, came alive, changed with the light of day or a turn of mood -- and each change its own cameo of lightness, of justification for the whole -- and swooping down toward the mouth, meeting it with an avenging passion: the villain nose. Perfect at its root, thrilling in its concourse and traitorous at its end: the pimpled tip. It saluted redly, becoming the starting point of Harry's body, the diameter of his circle, the point of purchase from which his past dropped away and his future clung despairingly.

Facts unpleasant to face are best faced by thorough avoidance -- that was Harry's philosophy. There was no pimple. He would close his eyes and throw it away from his face. He whistled, hummed and chanted the nonexistent hump into nonexistence. Harry looked upon himself as a graced body, a metaphysical principle. He had floated as-really through his childhood without hives, his adolescence without acne, his summers without mosquito bites, his winters without chapped lips. Nothing -- no mark, no bruise, no scab, no inflammation, no oiliness, no dryness, no dandruff, no whitehead, no blackhead, no ulcer, no chancre -- nothing, until the pimple, had separated his body from its dogmatic perfection. In metaphysics there is no room for pimples.

He eliminated it from the present. It became a shameful episode in his past, not to be discussed, a black sheep in the family. Something -- but who can remember what -- was once awry, but that was long ago and now everything was fine again.

As much as possible he avoided his mirror. But he could not keep his hands from his face. And each touch gave the lie to his self-deception.

• • •

For a month after Eugenie left him, he remained indoors. He had no idea where the time disappeared. He would turn around and the morning was gone, sit down and the afternoon was over, muse about and it was bedtime. Had he or had he not eaten dinner? He often retired without knowing.

He didn't blame Eugenie; he blamed his stupid imperfection. Marriage was a contract and a violation of that contract -- a sudden change in one of the partners -- was ample reason for its cancellation. Eugenie had come home to him extraordinarily beautiful -- thus fulfilling her part of the contract. Harry greeted her at the door with a handful of roses.

Eugenie ignored the roses, "Hold the elevator," she called at the operator who was wheeling out her luggage. "You've got a pimple on your nose, Harry."

"I'm dying to hear all about your trip," said Harry.

"A small, ugly, red pimple."

"I bet you have millions of stories to tell," said Harry.

"I think it's growing. Hold the elevator."

Harry shoved the roses at her. Eugenie recoiled.

"What the hell are these things -- what am I supposed to do with them?"

"They're some kind of flower. I'm giving you a present."

Half the roses fell through his fingers to the floor.

Eugenie glared. "You never had to give me anything before. Hold the elevator!"

Harry reached for her arm. The rest of the roses fell.

"Can't we even talk?"

"You're whining, Harry. I never heard you whine before." An old look clicked into Eugenie's eyes. She turned toward the elevator.

Harry trailed after her, "When are you coming back?"

"I have a million things to do."

"Dinner? How about dinner?"

"Call me," she said, and stepped into the car.

"Where will you be?" Harry asked as the door started shut.

"I'm washing my hair," said Eugenie and the elevator went down.

"What time shall I call?" Harry asked the elevator door.

• • ?

He was in limbo. His body could only hold so much; when life seeped in, his beauty seeped out. Now neither held possession, yet the direction of his descent was obvious -- unless he did something to stop it. But there was nothing to do; his piqued curiosity was not to be unpiqued. The danger was incredible.

He cold-creamed his face vigorously, burning his skin with the rubbing force of his fingers. And perhaps this too was harmful. Perhaps in trying to help he had hurt; ruptured a membrane; given himself a rash; broken down the sensitive nerve endings so close to the surface of his skin. Perhaps his veins would begin to show. Harry became aware of an erratic rhythm in his head; a muted, painful throb -- his first headache.

One thing was certain: he could not go on this way. Being alone, fingering his face, examining his body for new signs of decay was more than he could bear. Looking in the mirror was like baring a wound; if there could be no Harry to give peace to Harry, he had to find someone else. He was forced into the street, entering it awkwardly, reluctant to go but more reluctant to remain where he was. And on the street he was driven to look -- at people. They were as strange as a foreign language. He couldn't understand what made them move, what made them walk in their graceless ways, carrying their bodies like burdens, fighting themselves with every step, walking as if the act of standing were painful. Their arms fought their clothing: their legs beat out against their overhanging bodies, trying but failing to break away. Their faces showed passive regret.

Harry tried not to look. He had begun to see more than he wanted. He looked into eyes and they stared back grinning. But not from love; from lust. "There goes a great-looking man," grinned the comparison shoppers pricing him as he passed by. Their stares chipped away at him, knocking a piece off his shoulders, shortening his stride, changing the pace of his body. The tempo of other lives became tangled with his own. His walk was affected by whoever walked in front of him. He shuffled, he minced, he limped. "Are you making fun of me?" a shriveled man cried wretchedly at him. Harry discovered that he was. He was losing himself; he was becoming them. It was happening too fast and it had to stop. He could think of nothing else to do but talk to Phoebe Tigerman. She knew everything.

Harry had met Phoebe Tigerman as he had met and barely remembered so many others: various friends took him regularly to Fridays at Phoebe's, where they drank and dissected Thursdays at Tessa's. Phoebe, he remembered, sat like a small, watchful Buddha, taking little part in the conversations. But people said of her, "Phoebe knows everything" and their faith in her knowledge made them more open in front of her, as if her ability to see through them allowed them the freedom to be what she would see. Her guests sat at her feet, rooted there for the evening, except for those few occasions when Harry's appearance sent them sliding from her feet to his. Harry could not remember whether Phoebe slid with them. He really knew nothing about her except that she was ugly.

Phoebe Tigerman had been touched and hurt early in life and the hurt, once inside, burned outward, distorting her child's face with its complex pain; turning it grotesque in its mute desire to banish the suffering. And heard over the strident pounding from the inside were the blows of her mother from the outside: "Don't twist your face like that, you awful thing. It will grow that way!" Obediently her face followed Mother's advice and grew as she said it would: ugly. Each new attack, whether from inside or out, added a deeper hunger to the eyes and a profounder sadness to the mouth. Her body, too, was ugly: hard and cramped as a prize fighter's crouch, designed to present as small a target as possible and render harmless those blows that broke through. But by the time she was complete, no blow could. There came a day when she was still available to be hurt but those who had the power were dead. After that, everyone who followed was like a lightweight. She blossomed in the knowledge of her safety. Other knowledge followed. She had a sure instinct for people, grown out of her childhood reconnaissance of them. In studying to find where the next blow would come from, she found, too, the vulnerable spots for her own blows and, knowing both, she knew everything. She knew people.

Her reputation developed quickly: "Phoebe knows everything." Pilgrimages were made to her thick-sandaled feet. Friends came to her like soldiers home from war: no further need to bluster or protest, just a warm fire and a soft bed. In visiting Phoebe they left their color outside: the spirit that made them loud or quiet, respected or hated. First they talked to each other and became one and then they listened to Phoebe and became anonymous.

Her face softened as her security grew. Age took away its rawness, consolidating each grotesque feature into a strikingly sculpted whole. A glow of beauty hung like a nimbus around her ugliness. She never married because she had no urge to destroy.

When Harry arrived at her apartment, having walked up the four flights with the thick smell of foreign cooking over-sweetening the hall, he found the usual number of people at her feet--but this time they did not slide over to his. He was not surprised but he saw that Phoebe was, and for some reason this drew him to her.

"Get out," he said to her guests. He saw that he still had enough authority to make them go. They grinned as they left. Harry noticed in Phoebe's mirror that the face they grinned at was beginning to lose its hair.

"I used to be beautiful," said Harry. "This morning I woke up with bags under my eyes." He looked at her pleadingly. "Once all I had was me and that seemed enough. Now nothing seems enough."

"What do you want me to tell you?" asked Phoebe.

Harry had trouble getting the words out. "How do you learn to make contact?" he finally asked, feeling the utter inadequacy of the question.

Phoebe's eyes receded. "In the beginning," she began, "all living creatures were one-celled. All natural and subnatural processes were provided for within themselves. They even reproduced within themselves. Not by eggs, not by spermatozoa, but by the fission of the body into two or more individuals. Of that I am fairly convinced."

Harry chuckled. "Even men and women?" He had her there.

"Out of whose rib was Eve created?"

Phoebe asked. "Adam and Eve were one-celled organisms -- the first of their kind to go against the laws of nature. Eve's sin was not deflowering the tree of knowledge but deflowering Adam. Eve's sin was incest. And you and I are her abnormal progeny.

"And how hard we have tried to find our way back to our original state. The record of history is the sum total of man's frustrated efforts to return to a state of oneness. We are maladjusted protozoa, Harry--one-celled animals raised in a society with a multicelled ethic. Man has forgotten his origins but historic memory sends him in a frenzied search for them. He cannot admit it because he does not know what it is that he is searching for -- so he invents substitutes: he searches for the Messiah; he searches for the Holy Grail; he searches for Isolde, Eurydice, Juliet, the big money, the lost chord, the cure for cancer, world peace. All this empire building, all this love-making, all this meaningful relating going on around us is the hungry search to find a way back to what you have had all your life, Harry, and what I have now. One-celledness. That is why we are irresistible. We are seen as solid, secure, whole and complete -- what others go to bed with each other for and still find lacking. Lovemaking is a lost search for the other half of one's self. The selection of a mate is the final surrender of that search.

"So, settling for frustration in his own life, man must destroy the lack of frustration in the lives of others. Children are born as one-celled as you and I; so the parents' first step is to reorder the child's concern for only itself into a guilty concern for only the parents. And once all reminder of oneness is destroyed in their children, they fall upon us -- living, healthy, grown-up reminders. They sit at our feet because we are perfect but our perfection goads them. So they set out to destroy us in the only way they can justify their own lives: they must change our image to their image, they must change our values to theirs. They tell me to come out of my shell; yet it is to my shell they so willingly pay homage. They tell you to make contact with others while they strive only to make contact with themselves.

"Don't fall for their message, Harry. Don't believe a word they say. They do not know it but they are demons."

But, demons or not, they had him. He was sickened by the thought of it and fully aware of the horrible truth implicit in Phoebe's warning. But he could not resist the pull to the abyss; he had come too far to go back. He had even forgotten what it meant to go back. To what? That other life without pain? He was willing to try; but where would he begin? He bought dark glasses to blot out other people and return his vision inward. But he cheated; he peered out of the corners. He became trapped in detail: why did some women whistle while they walked; why did people have to touch their bodies surreptitiously; why did most policemen look like furniture? He noticed with some surprise that the suits men wore were cut very much like his own. He noticed also that his own suit badly needed pressing. Other people were occupying his thoughts and he had no time for himself. The question was no longer where he wanted to go. He must go forward because he had lost the way back.

But in what condition was he for the journey? His eyes sank into hollows; his hair came loose in his comb. He was not perfect; he was not beautiful; he was now only handsome -- and that, a dissolute handsomeness. His eyes, staring permanently outward, wore an uneasy look. If he were going to make contact, he had better do it quickly, while some semblance of his looks remained. Having only one direction in which to go, he wanted to get there still in a position to discuss terms.

But contact remained beyond him. He was not involved with life; he was involved with his involvement with life. He looked out at the world, but saw the world only after he had seen himself looking. His strong feelings were for the general; he learned to love crowds.

"I feel you crowds," he whispered to himself as he watched from behind a closed window. "I love you UN Plaza, I love you pigeons, I love you East River tugboats." But he could not particularize. His love failed with one person in the crowd, one tree in the park, one pigeon in the Plaza. To love the world meant to love nothing; but narrowing his range was equally frustrating.

He wanted to love women but he could not find a method that worked. Rejection didn't help; now with the disappearance of his looks he was rejected often; the only feeling it left him was a fondness for the girl and a revived faith in people. Rejection made him feel too good. It was obviously not enough; he would have to be more than rejected. He would have to be hurt. Hopefully Harry decided to make a stab at it.

But first another, more immediate crisis had to be solved. With his loss of looks went his source of income. His apartment was forfeited, his clothing redeemed, his checking accounts canceled. "What can I do?" he asked Phoebe, helplessly.

"I can't help you," she said, looking down at him. "I can't help anybody."

"Suggest something," Harry pleaded.

"Why don't you get a job?"

Harry had never thought of that.

He went through the want ads. Never having done anything, there was nothing for which he was qualified; however, one ad caught his eye.

Tall, graceful yng. men to be trained as dance instructors. Experience not required. Excellent oppty. Kirby Mercer Dance Studios Inc. Founder of the Mercer-Quiver System.

The big, flat-faced receptionist handed Harry an application form. Her face was a sketch pad for cosmetics. Her eyebrows were two black pencil streaks, her eyes were purple circles with blackened lashes, her cheeks were reddened by a palette knife and her firm red lips seemed to have been glued on before drying.

Harry filled out the application and handed it back to her. "It's blank," the receptionist said; her nails were red blades; they dug into the paper accusingly.

"I haven't done very much," Harry admitted.

"At least list your Social Security number."

"List what?" asked Harry.

The receptionist stared at him; one of the pencil marks above her eyes rose questioningly. It occurred to Harry that people no longer grinned at him.

He returned to the Kirby Mercer Studios with a Social Security card and filled out a second application. The receptionist was joking with another applicant who was resting his elbows on her desk, making hand shadows on a sheet of typewriter paper. Harry saw a quick motion of the elbows and heard two grunted giggles.

"Boy, you'll never get this job," he heard the receptionist say. When he handed her his application, he saw that her face was crimson.

"What are you staring at, nosy? A free show? You two go through that orange door and wait in the next room."

Harry followed the other man. He was as tall as Harry, broad-shouldered and good-looking. He walked with a side-to-side motion; each step forward sending him in three other directions as well. The two of them sat with four others in a arge waiting room with photographs and pictures of Kirby Mercer blotting out the walls: Kirby Mercer dancing with Bernice Oliver in his first starring film, She-Devils of Broadway; Kirby Mercer dancing with De De Fairfax in their wartime series, Battleships on Parade, Dance, Marine, Dance and Rhythm Goes to Russia (later retitled for television as Rhythm Goes to Rome), and a wall-length photograph of Kirby Mercer in straw hat, loafers and cane, taken from his final film, the film in which he died dancing -- Johnny Happiness. A hidden phonograph piped an orchestral suite into the room: The Legend of Kirby Mercer, melodies that he had made famous, now symphonically integrated, with the happy beat removed out of respect for the dead. While waiting, Harry browsed through an edition of the Kirby Mercer Cook Book, copies of which were spiced around the room.

Eventually an angular, attractive woman entered, looking quite severe. Little lines of tension stood out on her face. She stared at each applicant as if he were the one who put the lines there.

"Stand, please."

The applicants stood. She pointed to the man who was making shadows. "Walk across the room, please." The man slouched out of his chair and, smiling at the woman, shuffled indifferently across the room. Her color rose. "You," she motioned to Harry and pointed at him to follow. Harry walked across the room. The woman inspected the two men side by side.

"The rest of you can go," she said, and, signaling for Harry and the other man to follow, she opened the door to another room.

It was large and mostly empty, there being by way of decor only a number of fold-up chairs, a wall chart and two basketball nets bracketed to posts at either end of the room. Above one of the nets was the sign: The Kirby Mercer Basketball System. The sign above the wall chart read The Mercer-Quiver System. A complicated diagram of the human body ran down the chart: sections were circled, arrows were drawn, blocks of color were laid in. The woman picked up a dangerous-looking pointer and brought it down on the chart with a loud slap. The pointer rested dead center on the body. "My name is Miss Brill." She pointed. She slid the pointer up an inch, leaving a gray scar on the diagram.

"I will be your instructor in the Mercer-Quiver System Method. A scientific approach to physical culture and social dancing. It is true, is it not, that neither of you boys can dance?"

The two men nodded. Harry tried to listen carefully.

"It is easier to teach the Mercer-Quiver System to nondancers than to have to break dancers of their old habits and retrain them.

"If you will observe the chart, you will see the human body."

"Damn right," grinned Harry's companion.

Miss Brill's pointer dipped and rose dangerously.

"As you may observe," she continued, "the diagram is broken down structurally into 15 separate units. These are known as the 15 basic quiver units. There are in addition to 15 basic quiver units, 35 corollary quiver units, but at this point it would be premature to concern ourselves with them."

Harry agreed. It all sounded fascinating.

"Each quiver unit has a life of its own and can gyrate or quiver at will. A quiver as defined by the Mercer-Quiver System is a series of one or more independent or interdependent muscular revolutions occurring at various strategic parts of the body via a self-induced, auto-regulated method of control. A quiver-reverse, which is a slightly more advanced technique, is a series of one or more reverse muscular revolutions stemming, however, from the selfsame quiver-control center as the quiver itself."

Harry tried to look interested. His mind was beginning to wander.

"During his period of instruction, Mercer-Quiver System teaches the student to operate all basic quiver units independently and interdependently. Once the student has mastered his basic quiver unit control, he is then ready to learn to dance. It will be your job to teach him."

Teach? Teach what? Harry couldn't remember a thing.

"All Mercer-Quiver System dance instructors are expert in all quiver-method dance steps. These include: "The Mercer,' 'The Grapple,' 'The Conceit,' 'The Harass,' 'The Breach,' 'The Reproach,' 'The Release' and 'The Quiver.' All of these steps except 'The Quiver' require a partner. 'The Quiver' may be danced with or without a partner and, actually, in its purest form, is best done alone. Observe."

Miss Brill rested her pointer against the wall and proceeded to demonstrate. Her head shot back at a beat, her eyes disappeared in their sockets, her shoulders dropped away to the sound of finger snaps, her pelvis socked in and out like a plunger, her long legs rubbed up and down each other in quick spasmatic rhythm; a groan let loose from her belly and her dress changed color in front of them. She came out of the dance with a look of beauty and innocence. Her face was sleek with perspiration. Harry fell in love on the spot.

"The Mercer-Quiver System," she resumed lazily, "has in addition to dance instruction proved valuable in weight control and loss of nervous" -- she yawned -- "tension. Mercer-Quiver offers the students a six-week 'Beginner's Course,' a 12-week 'Foundation Course,' a 26-week 'Advanced Course' and an 86 week 'Professional Course.'

"As instructors in the Mercer-Quiver System it will be your job to interest the student in subscribing to as beneficial a program as possible. The 86-weeker is the student we can do the most with."

Harry stared into Claire Brill's shining eyes and saw contact there. Love! He knew it at last; he was in love! He waited until the end of the first day's instruction to approach her.

"You know what's happened, don't you?" he said, grinning happily. "I'll meet you outside as soon as I change."

The shine died in Claire Brill's eyes. "Social contact between supervisory personnel and student instructors is strictly forbidden." She walked coolly away, swaying her 15 basic quiver units. Harry counted them hungrily. It wasn't really a rejection, he decided. She was only following company rules. He felt confident that it would be no serious problem to find a way around them. He would use his charm.

During lessons he watched the sections of her body click on and off like lights in a house. He tried to imitate the action, follow the clicks to their source, but he had trouble learning. His body was too intent on her body to absorb the rules. Quiver control escaped him; he'd think he'd have it, he'd feel it coming, he'd close his eyes, he'd wait -- and nothing happened.

"Quiver! For Christsakes, quiver!" Claire Brill cried out in frustration.

"Show me again," Harry invited, using his charm.

But each demonstration only sank him more deeply into love. He was incapable of the minimal concentration required to register a single decent quiver.

"You're hopeless," said Claire Brill, and she began spending more of her time with the other trainee, Guy Peck. Peck was a fast student; Claire Brill quivered and Peck quivered quickly after her. From quiver unit to quiver unit she taught and he followed till a rising rhythm was established between them.

"Unit Fifteen," called out Claire Brill.

"Unit Fifteen," responded Guy Peck.

"Unit Seven," called out Claire Brill.

"Unit Seven," responded Guy Peck.

"Unit Nine."

"Unit Nine."

"Unit Four."

"Unit Four."

"Five."

"Five."

"Three, One and Two!"

"Three, One and Two!"

"Thirteen, Fourteen, Six and One!"

"Thirteen, Fourteen, Six and One!"

"Seven, Eleven, Twelve and Three!"

"Seven, Eleven, Twelve and Three!"

"Units One through Ten," Claire Brill keened.

"One through Ten," gasped Guy Peck, his quiver units beating like a band of pulses. The room shook with their vibration.

"Rest!" Claire Brill cried, and then dropped to the floor. Guy Peck dropped beside her. They stretched out panting heavily, a low rumble sounding in their stomachs, gurgling through them till it burst out: wild, intimate, sweaty laughter. Their bodies trembled across the floor. "Want to see my 16th basic quiver unit?" gasped Guy Peck. He rose to one knee and made an obscene body gesture. Claire Brill laughed herself against him.

Small clouds of dust settled in the air as they hysterically rolled across the unswept dance floor. Harry felt out of things.

He had always been the center; the center outside of whom all others stood waiting. Now it was he who stood out side and the center was Claire Brill. Each day she became more special, more beautiful; each day Harry felt a little further outside. Within her circle were Guy Peck and the receptionist, Florence Chrome. During rest periods the insinuating murmur of Peck's voice echoed from the corner where he staged his anecdotes across to the corner where Harry practiced, with little progress, the art of quiver control. How much easier it would have been to charm Claire Brill if his infatuation hadn't caused him to lose the feeling of his body. Love drove him to fight his own muscles; love cramped his arms and legs with overuse; love put the wrong words in his mouth and robbed him of the opportunity to say even those. Before, he had been filled with emptiness; now he was filled with love. He found that the two emotions were not altogether at variance. Guy Peck, without feeling love, was making out like a thief; Harry, immersed in a sea of the stuff, barely dared whisper for fear of making waves. Love, he now saw, was an obstacle that got in the way of lovemaking.

Still, he was confident that it was only a matter of time until he regained his stride. He composed himself with this knowledge, allowing it to drown out the echoing sound in the corner of Peck's voice outdistancing him. There were those moments when Claire Brill looked Harry's way and gave him his chance to stare warmly, inviting her with the sweep of his eyes to detach herself from the group and join him in what would be their corner. When she did not respond, Harry exercised his way over and loitered on the periphery of their circle. Guy Peck stepped aside and made room for him. Peck called him "Har' " and was very friendly.

"No kidding, Har', you're not a badlooking guy. You should make out," Peck told him at the end of a day's class.

"Don't worry about me," smiled Harry knowingly.

"Sure, sure, Har'. The girls are crazy for you. I know. It's only that you walk around too much like a dreamer. You know what I mean?"

"Don't worry about me," smiled Harry knowingly.

"You got to do more with your personality. You're too shy. Girls like to be pushed around. I knew a girl once who said she hated to be pushed around. She pushed around everybody but she hated it for herself. I came along and didn't let her push me around. I pushed her around. She never got over me.

"You know any dirty jokes, Har'?"

"A few," smiled Harry knowingly.

"The quickest way to make it with a girl is a lot of dirty jokes. Don't stop telling them. She says, 'Stop, stop' -- you go on telling them. First she gets mad, then she blushes -- then she starts to get hot. There's nothing like a lot of dirty jokes to work a girl up to the point you can love her, Har'."

"I have my own methods," smiled Harry.

Peck squeezed Harry's arm reassuringly. "Listen, why don't you take out Florence Chrome from the office? You can practice on her. She's a goodhearted kid."

Harry smiled.

"Listen, we could double-date. I and Claire. You and Florence. Why not?"

Harry stared blankly; it didn't register.

"I hate to go out the first time with a girl alone," Peck elaborated; "it gets too complicated, too serious. I run out of material." He paused and squeezed Harry's arm reassuringly. "So it's a date. Right, Har'?" He looked warmly into Harry's eyes and said, "I'd appreciate it, Har'." At which point Harry fell in love with him.

Love wasn't a happening; it was a state, a condition, a porous vessel filling and emptying, filling and emptying. Claire Brill poured into the vessel, Guy Peck tumbled after -- and who could be certain there wasn't room for more?

Peck grinned toothily at Harry. Harry, who had never used a toothy grin, grinned toothily back. "Will you be my friend?"

"Buddies, Har'. What do you say?"

"Anything for a buddy," Harry said, sounding very much like Guy Peck.

Peck laughed agreeably. Harry laughed agreeably. They walked down the street looking like twins. Peck taught him some dirty jokes.

Friends.

Harry disappeared; vanished into himself like an inverted stocking; turned inside out to become Guy Peck. He listened to Peck with wonder: what a man! He parroted his voice, his rolling gait, his sense of humor. He tried Peck's dirty jokes in class with Claire Brill, but his imitation failed; he was clumsy. He fumbled punch lines, lost his timing and, twice, had to let Claire finish the stories for him. She did so with great hauteur. Harry got the message; he was not Guy Peck. No, he wasn't; but he could be. And he would be. He watched Peck. He studied his technique in storytelling till he, one day, got Claire Brill to laugh.

"That's not bad," she said, with some surprise. But she didn't tell him one of her own as she would have with Peck.

He studied Peck's technique at quiver control.

"You're improving," said Claire Brill, again with surprise.

To joke like Peck, to move like Peck, to dress like Peck, to become Peck and then to have Peck's love because Peck would have to love Harry if Harry became Peck, and then -- once being Peck, and having his love, gaining also the love of Claire Brill who would have to love Peck -- any Peck, even Harry's Peck.

"So it's a date," Peck said, his arm on Harry's shoulder. "I and Claire, you and Florence. Right? It's a date?"

"Well, I don't know," said Harry. Florence was an outsider.

"You'll like Florence, Har'. She's a million laughs. Don't let on to Claire but I took her out once. She's perfect for a shy guy like you."

"Well, I don't know."

"See this bruise on my neck? She'll carry you off kicking and screaming."

Harry sulked. "I don't want Florence."

"Who do you want, Har'? Pick her out and she's yours. Anyone you want."

Harry bit his lip. "I want Claire."

Guy Peck looked amazed. He squeezed Harry's arm. "Look, Har', you don't want Claire. She's out of your league."

"I want Claire," repeated Harry, studying his hands. He hoped Peck did not think badly of him.

"Look, Har'. You go double with me this once and I promise you once I'm through with her I'll make Claire go out with you."

Harry looked up gratefully. "You'll actually tell her she has to?"

"Why not? No skin off my ass, huh, Har'?"

It turned out that Florence was at least a million laughs. On the drive out to Claire's she ticked off several hundred and Guy Peck ticked off several hundred and they broke each other up. Following each seizure, Peck, whose eyes were not always on the road, straightened the car, reached across Florence's soft front and squeezed Harry's shoulder. "Huh, Har'? What did I tell you? All right?"

At Claire's house, Guy left Harry and Florence in the car. "We may as well shift to the back," said Harry.

"Three of us can fit in front," said Florence. "There's no reason for both of us to go."

Harry didn't reply.

"They'll be out any second. You'd better move," said Florence. Harry didn't. They sat in silence for a half hour. At last, Peck and Claire Brill came trotting out hand in hand.

"Aren't we awful?" Claire giggled at Florence.

Harry could not breathe; he had never seen anyone look so beautiful.

"Hey, you two! Somebody make room for the chauffeur!" joked Peck. Harry and Florence moved to the back. Florence's laugh average declined considerably.

She regained her stride in the bar, however. The four of them took a table in a booth, Peck squeezing next to Claire on one side, Florence and Harry pressed away from each other on their side.

"What's black and white and red all over?" snapped Florence.

"A newspaper!" screamed Peck. They wept with the fun of it.

They ordered a number of rounds of beer. Harry became conscious of his billowing paunch. Guy Peck drank beer often and had no paunch; Harry determined to learn how he did it. He concentrated on the paunch, feeling certain that it was the sight of it that turned the perceptive Claire away from him. Like Eugenie, she was hypersensitive: she could no more care for a man with a paunch than Eugenie could care for a man with a pimple on his nose. He would get rid of it, exercise harder, think it away. And, once removed. Claire would see him lean and paunchless and cry, "Oh, Harry. My own Harry!" and they would live to be old together, and Guy Peck would live with them, upstairs, and Harry would tell jokes, many jokes, hilarious jokes, and the three of them would laugh and hold hands across the many years. He ordered another beer.

"I've got one!" cried Claire, "There was this Catholic, this colored guy and this Jew and -- wait a minute -- --" she pondered." And this Chinaman! And they were all in this lifeboat together -- --" At the end of the joke Harry roared with the others. He had to have her!

"Your problem, Har'," Guy Peck began to say, but forgot with the movement of Claire Brill's hand beneath the table what Harry's problem was. The lower half of their quiver units wrestled silently under the table.

"What are you doing in there?" grinned Peck, grabbing at an invisible hand.

"In where?" asked Claire.

"Naughty, naughty," beamed Peck and he caught the offending hand and squeezed tight.

"Ouch!" yelled Florence Chrome.

"See, Har', a million laughs! Wasn't I right?" Peck quickly said, and threw himself at Claire's neck before she could open her mouth, "The Werewolf of London strikes at midnight!"

"I'll die!" screamed Claire. "I swear I'll die!"

Harry grinned at her toothily.

"Your problem, Har'," Peck began again.

"Stop it, Guy!" Claire suddenly shouted.

"Your problem, Har'," Peck kept his face turned on Harry while his two arms squirmed under the table, "is that you listen to girls. The idea, I tell you, is not to listen."

"Guy, I mean it!" Claire's face darkened.

Harry grinned at her toothily.

"You see what I mean, Har'?" Guy continued.

"You put your hand up here and the girl says -- --"

"I swear to God, Guy, you want a slap?" Claire said.

"So you put your hand a little higher and the girl says -- --"

"You think you're so funny. You're not so funny, Guy. I'm serious!"

"So you go even a little higher and -- --"

"Guy! Oh, please dear God, make him stop!" Claire quivered.

"Say, listen, Guy -- --" Harry protested, still grinning. He thought his friend was going too far.

Claire gasped, turned white and then crimson.

"You rat!" she screamed, and threw herself at Guy, giggling shyly. Guy smiled at Harry, very pleased. Claire's head giggled into his protecting shoulder.

"What is it you do again?" Harry asked quietly.

"Don't listen to him, Har'. He's crazy," mumbled Claire from Peck's shoulder.

"Try it, Har'. Florence won't mind. It's an experiment, Florence," Peck assured her. "Put your hand on her knee, Har'."

"Keep your hands off me, Har'," Florence said.

Harry looked hesitant.

"C'mon, Har'! We're separating the men from the boys," Peck said.

Claire guffawed into his shoulder. Peck looked down at her securely hidden head and reached across under the table. He took Harry's hand.

"Don't be afraid, Har'." He put it on Florence's knee.

"I'll lay you out, Har'," Florence said.

"See what I mean, Har'! The idea is not to listen," said Peck, his hand pushing Harry's hand up Florence's leg.

"I can't look! I can't look!" screamed Claire, not looking.

Florence, her lips pursed, leaned far over the table. Harry's hand was pushed still higher and then left behind while the other hand explored onward. Florence's heavy lips puckered into a smile. "I mean it, Har'," she intoned softly, "I really mean it, Har'."

Claire Brill lifted her head off Peck's shoulder, and Peck drew back. "See how easy it is, Har'?" Harry's hand rested where Peck had left it on Florence's leg. She flicked it off casually and shook with silent laughter. Harry's hand tingled with feeling; he felt the shock waves of Florence's large body vibrating against him. He dared not look at her because if he did he knew that her beauty would blind him; he would never have seen anyone look quite so beautiful.

He took Florence home and they trembled through their coats at each other. Here at last was love, real love: he opening to her; she opening to him. He kissed her large pliant mouth and felt her lips all over his; sucking away Claire Brill, swallowing Guy Peck, covering his body like a poultice. Here was completion; here was oneness; here was giving! He did not need to be hurt to feel; he was feeling now. Florence drew Harry's face away.

"Are we going to do this again?" she asked.

"Always," Harry said softly.

"Or do you want to come in and get everything over with tonight?"

"Tonight. Tomorrow night. What do we care?" Harry asked happily.

"Oh, does Guy want to do it again tomorrow?" she asked.

"What do we care about Guy?" cried Harry ecstatically.

Florence freed her body. "Look, you're a little overexcited now. Tell me at the office Monday when Guy wants to do it again. OK?"

"But I want to see you tomorrow," Harry said.

"Only with Guy," Florence said.

"But I want to marry you!" croaked Harry.

"Only with Guy."

Out on the street, Harry saw a crowd standing around an ambulance. He waited in the cold for an hour trying to find out what happened and then, remembering the fact of his desolation, he struggled home. In the elevator mirror he saw that the rest of his hair had fallen out.

So this was what it meant to be hurt. Love had been with him, betrayed him and run away. The hollow ghost of love stood in its place, breathing its emptiness before him.

Bald, pimpled, paunchy, hollow-eyed Harry went in to work on Monday and was immediately called aside by Miss Brill, who informed him that the Mercer-Quiver System no longer required his services. A very ordinary-looking girl, thought Harry.

"It's your own fault, Har'," Guy Peck told him. "You really let yourself go to hell." He playfully punched Harry's gut.

"Maybe we can go out sometime together again, Guy," Harry said hopefully.

"You know the way it is with jobs, Har'. People leave and you lose touch." Peck playfully slapped Harry's cheek.

Harry sucked his hurt like a bruise. His head drooped; his shoulders sagged. He limped to the outer office to say goodbye to Florence. How could she resist his broken soul? A girl like Florence couldn't. A girl like Florence would rise like a phoenix from the cold ashes of his hurt, take him in her broad arms, and say, "There, there, Har'. There, there."

"I've been fired, Florence," he said to the girl behind the receptionist's desk. The hurt in his voice shriveled the room.

"Florence isn't in today," said the girl behind the desk. "I think she'll be in tomorrow." Harry fled from the Kirby Mercer Dance Studios.

There was no further use pretending. He couldn't love, he couldn't be hurt, he couldn't communicate, he couldn't make contact, he couldn't do anything. He was a fake! "Maybe I should fingerprint the girls I fall in love with so I'll be sure I'll know them next time!" he cruelly told himself. He was a fake.

But he wasn't alone. He saw pretense everywhere. Life registered on him like a stamp: an overhead hypocrisy thickened his nose; a stare of smugness puffed his eyes: a glare of hostility acned his complexion. Lies, personal and impersonal, further bloated his belly; inconsistency rounded his shoulders; indifference gave him a hacking cough. Little things, normal as street noise, left marks on his consciousness: suits disguising the bodies that wore them; the eerie odor of mass cosmetics; the faces of the aging glamorous, their surplus skin drawn taut with clips secured beneath their bulky wigs. His teeth yellowed. His chin dropped away. His Adam's apple stuck out like a pointing finger. The finger pointed inward, caught in his gullet and cried "Fake!"

He was a romantic fake. A woman who stared at him briefly and walked by became his goddess. Her disdain shone in his eyes like a beacon of eternal worthiness. He had a goddess of the week: dream relationships with ladies who walked quickly by. Their inadequacies blurred into adequacy and their adequacy turned into perfection.

They and no one else were perfect. Harry tried to find them again; looked everywhere; thrilled when the back of a head looked familiar; dropped into deep depression when he saw it was the wrong head; despaired for days until another woman passed, stared at him, and lifted his heart to a height he was sure it would never reach again. Up and down that heart went. He pretended to love, knew he pretended, but continued to pretend anyway. What better emotion was there for him? He let his dreams go high, go low and go high again; shortening the loop so they went faster; not full-length anymore, but short-hand fantasies: a beginning cut to middle, cut to end, cut to new beginning. The action whirled, the machine reeled and broke down. Harry was alone with himself again. There was nothing to get in the way of that terrible message: he was a fake.

He was a broke fake. He scarcely had money for food. He could not afford a laundry so he washed and ironed his two remaining suits. They shrank in the wash and Harry shrank to fit them. His nose turned red. Faint networks of blue-veins traced across his cheeks, his forehead and his luminescent nose. He picked up odd jobs. He was fired from most of them. Those that did not fire him he assumed were going to, so after the first few days he left them. He scraped enough together to afford a room, sufficient food and, for those moments when his mind ran on unwillingly, a bottle of wine, to slow it. More than anything he wanted to lose the world and be one again. He wanted in; not out. But he found himself chiding little boys not to choke their dogs on the leash, warning vagrant garbage pickers about germs, giving nuns his seat on the subway, helping blind men home.

His soul was wide open. Light, blinding in its unpleasantness, threw deep shadows oil the people he watched in the street. He saw, without wanting to, their pride, their cleverness, their pettiness, their confusion, their weaknesses. He placed no value on it; there were too many to choose from. The glare of a traffic light tear-stained his eyes. The whistle of a cop scraped against the walls of his ears. People stared at him and quickened their pace. Harry stared back and knew their histories.

But his knowledge was more than was bearable. He had learned nothing from experience. He had no strength to draw upon. Rather than absorb insights, he tried to deflect them off his surface. He saw them coming, and turned away as they smashed against him, scattering through the pores of his body. Their powdered grains pitted his face. One-celled? He had more calls than anybody.

He felt the triumph of simultaneous contact and detachment. Now, with clear, burning eyes he saw all of life at the very moment he was furthest apart from it. It was some kind of trick: a mirage; the closer he came the more distant were his feelings toward himself.

The people he stared at now contained more of him than he did. His leftover body puckered like a shriveling balloon. He became smaller as he walked.

One morning he awoke and was completely ugly. No semblance of Harry remained; he was another person. And he was hated. Waves of hate beat at the air he breathed. He carried it on his person and where he walked it spread like an epidemic, leaving him untouched as its carrier. The uglier he became the more he saw; the more he saw the more his judges felt themselves being judged. They hated him all the more for it.

But he did not judge. He could not. He could see but he could not touch. He could feel but he could not react.

Harry tried to hate but he could not. He worked on plans for hate, constructing intricate foundations that collapsed as soon as he tried to build on them. He could not give hate. He could not give love. It seemed pointless to continue experimenting to find out what other feelings he could not give. He decided to die.

He would die blankly. He would die uselessly. He would die, unlike Georgette, for no instructive purpose. But he would die publicly. He would die before a mob. If he couldn't give anything else, he would at least give satisfaction. He went to a drugstore.

It was lunch hour. The store was crowded. Its three glass doors flapped in and out; blasts of automobile exhaust came in, blasts of perfumed deodorant went out. "Good afternoon!" said an amplified voice. "Today's specials are ---"

Harry waited in line at the drug counter, selecting from the stacks of decongestants and cold remedies, a common variety of aspirin. Then he waited in line at the lunch counter.

"The Breathing Betty Baby Doll," said the amplifier. "Special today. Actually breathes. Listen to the sound of the Breathing Betty breathe." Gasps of breath shot through the store. "Only $9.95," said the amplifier.

A wide-hipped young woman squeezed off a stool and Harry took her place and waited for service. The customers on either side of him leaned away. The customers waiting for Harry's seat stood well behind him. Harry ordered three Coca-Colas. The waitress lined them up on the counter, punched a check and left it, getting wet, beside the Cokes. Harry took two aspirins with each swallow. At the end of the bottle he still felt normal. He took the check and left his stool, hearing the murmured mumbles of relief from people at the counter.

"Good afternoon!" said the amplifier.

Harry waited till he got the attention of the druggist and ordered another bottle of aspirin. On the way back to the lunch counter, he banged into a revolving rack of paperbacks and sent it spinning. The browsers followed the rack around, trying to find their places.

Harry waited patiently in line till he found himself another stool, this time from a fat man who quaffed the remains of his coffee with an eye nervously fixed on Harry. He left his wet napkin on the seat. Harry sat on it and waited for service. He ordered three Coca-Colas. The waitress lined them up and left a wet check. "I've only got two hands," she said to the woman next to Harry who had asked for a check, and with her wet hands served a wet sandwich to the man on the other side of him. The scent and clatter of lunchtime trade draped the counter like a mist. "I've only got two hands," Harry's waitress said to somebody near him who asked for a glass of water. No one noticed when he finished his second bottle of aspirin. Near his seat rose the smell of stale soda. "Listen to the sound of Betty breathe," said the amplifier. "Huuhh. Ahuuuhhh. Huuhh. Ahuuuhhh."

Harry waited for the pharmacist to complete the sale of an alarm clock and then he ordered a third bottle of aspirin. A heavily powdered woman knocked over a tray of cosmetics. It bounced past Harry, spraying "Persian melon," "Cherries-in-the-snow," "Butterfly pink." The woman glared at Harry as if he had done it. When Harry failed to pick up the cosmetics, the woman shook her head and exchanged glances with the pharmacist. Contempt became one of the smells in the store. People deliberately walked in front of Harry in order to stare away from him. He felt a faint dizziness as he waited in line for a stool; but the feeling left as soon as he was seated.

"Three Coca-Colas," Harry said to the waitress, who was getting annoyed. She waited on three other people before lining up Harry's Cokes. "I've only got two hands," she explained to Harry, who said nothing. The lady next to him turned away and began polishing her fork and knife with a napkin. Thinking this last bottle might do, Harry felt around in his pocket for change. He left whatever he found on the counter to cover the cost of his drinks. He wanted to die giving.

He poured out the aspirin. Several missed his hand and burst like popcorn across the counter. "Hey!" he heard people say angrily. It was the last sound from the outside he heard.

His ears suddenly twitched to the far-off sound of himself. It was dim but if he stayed very quiet he could hear it. A half-dozen aspirins brought it closer. He heard the real Harry! The sound filled his head with its singular hum. Harry listened, trying to get his body in tune with it. It remained evasive. Other sounds competed with it. "Quite," Harry commanded the outside world. The lunch counter fell silent, the amplifier died. An ancient memory flickered: Harry, the center, Harry the focus of everyone's life. But it held no more importance for him now than it did then. All that was important was that his eyes had turned inward and he saw Harry.

Harry looked at Harry and saw that he was neither beautiful nor ugly, but perfect. He lifted the final handful of aspirins to his mouth and every hand in the store lifted in silent imitation. He swallowed the last Coca-Cola. The raising and lowering of his aim was like a baton for the craning and settling of dozens of necks. He rose from his stool and the store rose with him. He was one and they were part of his one. He walked harmlessly to the street through a red sea of onlookers.

The store followed him. The street followed him. He sucked up life as he walked, leaving the sidewalks empty. It wasn't love that followed him. There was no love. It wasn't hate that followed him. There was no hate either. It was himself that followed him. The sound of Harry left his head and emptied the world in its cradle. And why shouldn't he be able to feel for everybody? He was everybody. When he was empty the world was empty; when he was full the world was full; when he triumphed everybody triumphed and when he died the world died.

Then Harry died.

Harry and Eugenie found a large apartment in midtown with a mirrored lobby, a mirrored elevator and seven comfortable rooms with mirrors on every wall.

This is the conclusion of a two-part serialization of Jules Feiffer's first novel, "Harry, the Rat with Women."