Flowers for Algernon

“God, Charlie, if you get me started and disappoint me again I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m human too, you know.”

I pulled her down beside me on the couch, on top of the pile of her clothing and underthings.

“Not here on the couch, Charlie,” she said, struggling to her feet. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Here,” I insisted, pulling the blouse away from her .145 She looked down at me, set her glass on the floor, and stepped out of her underwear. She stood there in front of me, nude. “I’ll turn out the lights,” she whispered.

“No,” I said, pulling her down onto the couch again. “I want to look at you.”

She kissed me deeply and held me tightly in her arms. “Just don’t disappoint me this time, Charlie. You’d better not.”

Her body moved slowly, reaching for me, and I knew that this time nothing would interfere. I knew what to do and how to do it. She gasped and sighed and called my name.

For one moment I had the cold feeling he was watching. Over the arm of the couch, I caught a glimpse of his face staring back at me through the dark beyond the window-where just a few minutes earlier. I had been crouching. A switch in perception, and I was out on the fire escape again, watching a man and a woman inside, making love on the couch.

Then, with a violent effort of the will, I was back on the couch with her, aware of her body and my own urgency and potency, and I saw the face against the window, hungrily watching. And I thought to myself, go ahead, you poor bastard-watch. I don’t give a damn any more. And his eyes went wide as he watched.

June 29 Before I go back to the lab I’m going to finish the projects I’ve started since I left the convention. I phoned LandsdofE at the New Institute for Advanced Study, about the possibility of utilizing the pairproduction nuclear photoeffect for exploratory work in biophysics. At first he thought I was a crackpot, but after I pointed out the flaws in his article in the New Institute Journal he kept me on the phone for nearly an hour. He wants me to come to the Institute to discuss my ideas with his group. I might take him up on it after I’ve finished my work at the lab-if there is time. That’s the problem, of course. I don’t know how much time I have.

A month? A year? The rest of my life? That depends on what I find out about the psychophysical side-effects of the experiment.

June 30 I’ve stopped wandering the streets now that I have Fay. I’ve given her a key to my place. She kids me about my locking the door, and I kid her about the mess her place is in. She’s warned me not to try to change her. Her husband divorced her five years ago because she couldn’t be bothered about picking things up and taking care of her home.

That’s the way she is about most things that seem unimportant to her. She just can’t or won’t bother. The other day I discovered a stack of parking tickets in a corner behind a chair-there must have been forty or fifty of them. When she came in with the beer, I asked her why she was collecting them.

“Those!” she laughed. “As soon as my ex-husband sends me my goddamned check, I’ve got to pay some of them. You have no idea how bad I feel about those tickets. I keep them behind that chair because otherwise I get an attack of guilt feelings every time I see them. But what is a girl supposed to do? Everywhere I go they’ve got signs all over the place-don’t park here! don’t park there!-I just can’t be bothered stopping to read a sign every time I want to get out of the car.”

So I’ve promised I won’t try to change her. She’s exciting to be with. A great sense of humor. But most of all she’s a free and independent spirit. The only thing that may become wearing after a while is her craze for dancing. We’ve been out every night this week until two or three in the morning. I don’t have that much energy left.

It’s not love-but she’s important to me. I find myself listening for her footsteps down the hallway whenever she’s been out. Charlie has stopped watching us.

July S-I dedicated my first piano concerto to Fay. She was excited by the idea of having something dedicated to her, but I don’t think she really liked it. Just goes to show that you can’t have everything you want in one woman. One more argument for polygamy.