Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object by Laurie Colwin

Author:Laurie Colwin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2021-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

12

On the weekends I worked over my notes for Max Price, practiced the piano, and cruised the neighborhood for domestic items I didn’t need. I bought an unnecessary French teakettle and an overpriced basket from Zaire. Nothing sold in Greenwich Village seemed to be American in origin, but at the end of Bleecker Street was a good old U.S.A. general store that sold bluejeans, work jackets, and underwear. There I found a pair of men’s pajamas so lovable I almost bought them. They had red stripes, and between the stripes a vertical rank of giraffes wearing crash helmets. I stood at the counter contemplating them until I realized the depths of my self-indulgence and left.

Every few weeks I got on the train and went to visit my parents. These visits were agreeable enough: my parents struggled valiantly against normal worry, and I struggled valiantly against the threat of loving invasion. But they only said that I looked thin and so provided large cheering meals, or said that I looked pensive and so engaged me in games of backgammon or midnight gin rummy. To lift my spirits, my mother took me shopping, my father read grim items from the newspaper in the voice of Groucho Marx, and we took bracing walks in the afternoon. But they didn’t press to find out what I was up to, and since I was not in danger, they were calmed to see me recovering slowly.

I spent some time reflecting, with real despair, on Carlos Warren, that typecast flash in the pan. I knew I would never see him again, unless I happened to bump into him during a revolution in the Sudan, but my encounter with him gave me what my father called “cause for pause.”

Just as I had been Sam’s wedge, the door of evasion he closed between himself and the world, so he was mine. Left to my own devices, what would I have done? Run around cracking my heart against the grim, engaging smiles of heartless punks like Carlos Warren is what I would have done. Sam kept me steady: he kept me from giving my impulses a good run for their money since he came so close to what I craved. I loved outlaws or anybody who looked like one. I liked anything with a hard edge on it. I’d take a cowboy if there weren’t any Indians around, but Indians were smarter, angrier, had better horses, and didn’t need a saddle when they rode. Confronted with the nice tame faces at Butler Library or at a concert hall, a yearning for mayhem welled in me, and I knew it was better to be excessive. It was better to fall into harm’s arm than to snuggle up with safety and mildness. But Sam hadn’t been very wild, actually. He wasn’t very dangerous at all; Carlos Warren was the hard core. Sam’s dealings with danger were all flirtation, while Carlos conducted the serious love affair. He had been shot at, strafed, bombed nearby.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.