Page:Jay Little - Maybe—Tomorrow.pdf/168

 you don't want to tell me all about it … I know something's wrong."

"Guess I was just lonesome. Feeling sorry for myself. I can't explain it, Bob."

"That's no way to feel. You shouldn't be lonesome … after all, why didn't you call me. I was afraid you were sick. I saw Joy …"

Joy. A blast of lead tore into his body. His heart stopped and the afternoon occurrence flashed with lightning speed through him. Joy … The white sheer blouse; the full bright skirt; the tight brassiere and the hard time he had unfastening it; his naked body on hers; the sweating climax.

He knows. Bob knows what happened this afternoon, he thought. Joy's told him.

Gaylord's face, with quivering lips, had an imperious, tragic look; though to Blake it was hardly more than a paleness in the dark, and the eyes were pools of blood.

So this was the end of the world. The end of their short friendship. No more would the bronze arms help him. No more would they protect him from the boys in the showers. This is how Joy must have felt. The end of everything. Finished. A return to the emptiness and frustration of his former life was here again.

Through Blake he could find the answer that had eluded him for so long. Through Blake he might even learn to identify why and thus realize the dream that had plagued him ever since they had met. Suddenly, an image focused on the screen of his mind, and he saw it grow into two people. Joy and Blake standing close together, their arms linked, their compelling oneness shutting him off completely; for he saw, with a sense of intuition that he had no part of them. He did not dramatize his feelings or feel sorry for himself. Right now he felt he deserved it. For the picture of Joy and Blake together haunted him far less than the one of Joy and himself. He had acted like a common tramp; a no-good scoundrel; pressed harder even when she had uttered a little cry of pain; sucked like a hungry animal at her naked breasts; had hurt her so badly, blood had covered his own flesh with its redness and stickiness. Seeing all this had left its mark under his eyes and around his mouth. He looked tense, tired and desperately worried. The fragments of a hundred scenes lingered in 158