Sophie's Choice - William Styron [329]
At any rate, he was surprised—no, really flabbergasted—to find that Sophie had returned; his mind jumped to an instantaneous connection with Nathan, and he alerted himself to the possibility that he might have to make that telephone call to Larry. But he had no evidence that Nathan was on the premises and he hesitated to call Larry when it might be a false alarm. He was by now deathly afraid of Nathan (he had been near enough to me two nights before to see me recoil from Nathan’s telephoned gunshot) and he pined hungrily to be able to appeal to the police—for protection, if nothing else. He had sensed a creepy presence in the house ever since Nathan’s last rampage, and had begun to feel so nervous about the Nathan–Sophie situation in general, so jittery and insecure, that he was on the verge of giving up the half-price room he received in exchange for his janitorial functions and telling Mrs. Zimmerman that he was going to move in with his sister in Far Rockaway. He had no longer any doubt that Nathan was the most sinister form of golem. A menace. But Larry had said that under no circumstances should he or anyone else get in touch with the police. So Morris waited downstairs by the hallway door, feeling the stickiness of the summery heat and listening to the complicated and fathomless music as it showered down.
Then to his swelling wonder he watched the door upstairs open slowly and saw Sophie emerge partway from her room. There was nothing unusual in her appearance, he later recalled; she looked perhaps, well, a bit fatigued, with shadowy places beneath her eyes, but little in her expression betrayed strain or unhappiness or distress or any other “negative” emotion she might have logically been expected to show after the ordeal of the past few days. To the contrary, while she stood there for a moment with one hand caressing the doorknob, a curious, fleeting glint of mild amusement crossed her face, as if she might give a gentle laugh; her lips parted, her gleaming teeth caught the bright afternoon light, and then he saw her tongue run across her upper lip, interrupting the words she had been poised to say. Morris realized that she had caught sight of him, and his gut made a small lurch. He had had a crush on her for many months; her beauty still continued to pain him, as it had day in and day out, hopelessly, replenishing within him mingled freshets of heartache and horniness. She certainly deserved better than that meshuggener Nathan.
But now he was struck by what she was wearing—a costume which even to his unpracticed eye appeared out of vogue, old-fashioned, but nonetheless served to set off her extraordinary loveliness: a white jacket worn over a wine-colored pleated satin skirt, a silk scarf wound around the neck, and tilted over the forehead a red beret. It made her look like a movie star from an earlier time—Clara Bow, Fay Wray, Gloria Swanson, somebody like that. Hadn’t he seen her dressed like this before? With Nathan? He couldn’t remember. Morris was intensely puzzled, not simply by her appearance but by the very fact of her being there. Only two nights before, she had left, with her luggage, in such a panic and with... That was another puzzlement. “Where’s Stingo?” he was about to ask in a friendly voice. But before he could open his mouth she walked the few steps to the banister, and leaning over, said, “Morris, would you mind getting me a bottle of whiskey?” And she let fall a five-dollar bill, which fluttered down and which he caught in midair, between his fingers.
He ambled the five blocks over to Flatbush Avenue and bought a fifth of Carstairs. Returning in the sweltering