A Saucer of Loneliness by Theodore Sturgeon

Author:Theodore Sturgeon [Sturgeon, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-58394-751-7
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2013-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

The Dark Room

THE WORLD ENDED AT THAT DAMN PARTY OF BECK’S.

At least if it had fallen into the sun, or if it had collided with a comet, it would have been all right with me. I mean, I’d have been able to look at that fellow in the barber chair, and that girl on the TV screen, and somebody fresh from Tasmania, and I’d have been able to say, “Ain’t it hell, neighbor?” and he would’ve looked at me with sick eyes, feeling what I felt about it.

But this was much worse. Where you sit and look around, that’s the center of the whole universe. Everything you see from there circles around you, and you’re the center. Other people share a lot of it, but they’re circling around out there too. The only one who comes right in and sits with you, looking out from the same place, is the one you love. That’s your world. Then one night you’re at a party and the one you love disappears with a smooth-talking mudhead; you look around and they’re gone; you worry and keep up the bright talk; they come back and the mudhead calls you “old man” and is too briskly polite to you, and she—she won’t look you in the eye. So the center of the universe is suddenly one great big aching nothing, nothing at all—it’s the end of your world. The whole universe gets a little shaky then, with nothing at its center.

Of course, I told myself, this is all a crazy suspicion, and you, Tom Conway, ought to hang your head and apologize. This sort of thing happens to people, but not to us. Women do this to their husbands, but Opie doesn’t do this to me—does she, does she?

We got out of there as soon as I could manage it without actually pushing Opie out like a wheelbarrow. We left party noises behind us, and I remember one deep guttural laugh especially that I took extremely personally, though I knew better. It was black dark outside, and we had to feel the margins of the path through our soles before our eyes got accustomed to the night. Neither of us said anything. I could almost sense the boiling, bottled-up surging agony in Opie, and I knew she felt it in me, because we always felt things in each other that way.

Then we were through the arched gateway in the hedge and there was concrete sidewalk under us instead of gravel. We turned north toward where the car was parked and I glanced quickly at her. All I could see was the turn of her throat, curved a bit more abruptly than usuaI because of the stiff, controlled way she was holding her head.

I said to myself, something’s happened here and it’s bad. Well, I’ll have to ask her. I know, I thought, with a wild surge of hope, I’ll ask her what happened; I’ll ask her if it was the worst possible thing, and she’ll

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