In spite of my attempt at gaiety I could hear both suspicion and patience giving away to concerned anger, the very thing I wanted to avoid. “Just tell me goddammit why!” It wasn’t the reaction I had been hoping for from Peters. Far from it. I was disappointed and put out with him for getting so wrought up while I was being so cool. At the time I thought it unlike him to be so demanding (not realizing until later how fucked-up I must have sounded) and damned unfair of him to disregard so flagrantly the rules of our relationship. We had ideas about relationship. We both agreed that each pair of people must have a mutually compatible system all their own within which they can communicate, or communication falls like the Tower of Babel. A man should be able to expect his wife to play the role of Wife—be she bitchy or dutiful—when she relates to him. For her lover she may have a completely different role, but at home, on the Husband-Wife set, she must stay within the confines of that part. Or we would all wander around never knowing our friends from our strangers. And in our eight months of rooming together and years-long friendship, this homely, lantern-jawed Negro and I had established a clear set of limits within which we knew we could comfortably communicate, a sort of dramatic tradition wherein he always played the sagacious and slow-talking Uncle Remus to my intellectual dandy. Within this framework, behind our shammed masks, we had been able to approach the most extreme personal truths in our conversations without suffering the embarrassment of such intimacies. I preferred it that way, even under the new conditions, and I tried again. “The apple orchards will be in fruit; the air thick with the smell of warm mint and blackberry—ah, I hear my native land a-beckoning to me. Besides, I have a score there to settle.” “Oh man—” he started to protest from the other end of the line, but I went on unheeding, unable to stop. “No, listen: I received a postcard. Let me recreate the scene for you—condensed somewhat, because my bus will soon be loading. But listen, it was a superbly styled vignette of some kind or other: I had just returned from walking on the beach— down toward Mona’s place; I didn’t go in; her damned sister was there—anyway I had just come in after what I always like to think of as one of my ‘TB or not TB’ walks, and, after a few decisive coughs, I finally decided to take arms against a sea of troubles...and flick it all in for good.” “Lee, come on please; what is it you’re—” “Just listen. Hear me out.” I drew nervously from my cigarette. “Interruptions only mar the meter.” I heard the rattle of machinery nearby. A plump Tom Sawyer had just activated the pinball machine next to my glass booth; the lights spun in a hysterical tallying of astronomical scoring, numbers mounting with a rapid-fire banging. I hurried on. “I walk in through our careful clutter. It’s about noon, a bit before. The apartment is cold; you’ve left that damned garage door open again—” “Shit; if somebody didn’t let a little cold air in on you you’d never get out of bed. Decided what? What do you mean you finally decided—” “Hush. Watch closely. I close the door and lock it. Dishtowel, wet, across the bottom. Check all windows, moving cryptically about my task. Then open all the jets on all the wall heaters— no, hush, just listen—turn on all the burners on that godawful grimy stove you left ...I remember the pilot light on the water heater . . . go back, kneel piously at the little door to blow it out (the flame spewed symbolically from three jets, describing a fiery cross. You would have applauded my cool: I draw a breath...‘There’s a divinity that shapes our’—pfft—‘ends.’) Then, satisfied with the arrangement, having removed my shoes, you will notice—a gentleman to the last—I climb onto  the bed to await sleep. Who knows what dreams? Then. I decide—even the Mad Dane of Denmark would have allotted himself a last cigarette, I mean, if that wishy-washy coward had ever had my courage, or my cigarettes—and just then, beautifully timed, just as this ghostly hand appeared, fixed, in that little window you know above the mail slot, to drop its message calling me home... just as the card fluttered to the floor...I flicked my cigarette lighter and blew out all the windows in the place.” I waited. Peters was silent whi............