Faithless: Tales of Transgression by Oates Joyce Carol

Author:Oates, Joyce Carol [Oates, Joyce Carol]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Anthologies, Mystery & Detective, United States - Social Life and Customs - 20th Century, Short Stories (Single Author), Fiction, United States, Fantasy, Thrillers, General, Short Stories
ISBN: 9780060933579
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2001-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

springs, mattress, headboard, in his confused dreams he wandered not knowing where he was, or how old; on foot in a childhood memory of Minnesota, or on idge oad above the city, or on a road meant to resemble it. That disturbing way of dreams that seem to be of people, places, incidents already known to us and yet wrongly assembled. Even __ in these dreams was not __ as he knew himself. Sometimes, in fact, in such dreams he saw __ at a distance, as if he were split in two: the physical being __ and the __ who observed him. Oh, but where was he? Why had this happened,

__ so alone? This woman he loved, and who loved

him— where had she gone? And the little girl they’d told him was his daughter. You have a daughter, a baby girl. Congratulations! He’d thought his heart would burst with happiness, he’d never again be unhappy, one of those men other men envied, but the clock continued ticking, hours days weeks months and finally years, the baby girl was now six years old, and he’d become older, not __ the father of an infant but __ the banished husband-father-homeowner. And he would wake groaning from his sweaty ignoble sleep. And he would wake alone in damp, twisted sheets. In a place of shame. In a bed smelling of his body, yet of newness. Cheap-bargain newness. He would wake in this barely furnished apartment on the tenth floor of a newly built building beside a slate-colored river. Across the river were apartment buildings like mock mirror-reflections of this building. __ was the inhabitant of approximately four rooms smelling of fresh paint and plasterboard and newly laid wall-to-wall carpeting he could not recall having chosen, a dull wet-sand hue, the very color of grime.

Not home but a temporary set of rooms. As his life too was temporary. A continuous vigil.

You have to want to kill, to hunt.

Still, he liked the view from the tenth floor. He liked his freedom, he declared. Not waiting to be asked, for those remaining friends would not have wished to ask him, any more than they would have wished to ask how he could endure living without his wife, his daughter, his home. (For wasn’t that house on idge oad his home? Of course it was.) Questions you can’t ask of a man. Questions a man can’t answer. So he was quick to declare that he liked the view from his new place, he liked the freedom the view promised. He liked the kinds of people who visited him in this new freedom. Girls he brought back with him. They were of the age of adult women yet were unmistakably girls. Leaning over the rail of his miniature balcony admiring the view of the river below. Praising __ for the view as

 FAITHLESS

if it was a considerable accomplishment of __’s. He said little in response.

Perhaps he wasn’t listening. Not wanting to scream, Get away from me! I don’t need this.

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