Sanctuary

intersections. Once a policeman shouted at them, but he did not even look

around.

Temple began to whimper, moaning behind his hand, drooting upon his

fingers. The ring was like a dentist's instrument; she could not close her

lips to regurgitate. When he removed it she could feel the imprint of his

fingers cold on her jaw. She lifted her hand to it.

"You hurt my mouth," she whimpered. They were approaching the outskirts of

the city, the speedometer at fifty miles. His hat slanted above his

delicate hooked profile. She nursed her jaw. The houses gave way to broad,

dark subdivisions out of which realtors' signs loomed abrupt and ghostly,

with a quality of forlorn assurance. Between them

132 WILLIAM FAULKNER

low, far lights hung in the cool empty darkness blowing with fireflies. She

began to cry quietly, feeling the cooling double drink of gin inside her.

"You hurt my mouth," she said in a voice small and faint with self-pity. She

nursed her jaw with experimental fingers, pressing harder and harder until

she found a twinge. "You'll be sorry for this," she said in a muffled voice.

"When I tell Red. Dont you wish you were Red? Dont you wish you could do

what he can do? Dont you wish he was the one watching us instead of you?"

They turned into the Grotto, passing along a closely curtained wall from

which a sultry burst of music came. She sprang out while he was locking the

car and ran on up the steps. "I gave you your chance," she said. "You

brought me here. I didn't ask you to come."

She went to the washroom. In the mirror she examined her face. "Shucks,"

she said, "it didn't leave a mark, even"; drawing the flesh this way and

that. "Little runt," she said, peering at her reflection. She added a

phrase, glibly obscene, with a detached parrotlike effect. She painted her

mouth again. Another woman entered. They examined one another's clothes

with brief, covert, cold embracing glances.

Popeye was standing at the door to the dancehall, a cigarette in his

fingers.

"I gave you your chance," Temple said. "You didn't have to come."

"I dont take chances," he said.

"You took one," Temple said. "Are you sorry? Hub?"

"Go on," he said, his hand on her back. She was in the act of stepping over

the sill when she turned and looked at him, their eyes almost on a level;

then her hand flicked toward his armpit. He caught her wrist; the other

hand flicked toward him. He caught that one too in his soft, cold hand.

They looked eye to eye, her mouth open and the rouge spots darkening slowly

on her face.

"I gave you your chance back there in town," he said. "You took it."

Behind her the music beat, sultry, evocative; filled with movement of feet,

the voluptuous hysteria of muscles warming the scent of flesh, of the

blood. "Oh, God; oh, God," she said, her lips scarce moving. "I'll go. I'll

go back."

"You took it," he said. "Go on."

In his grasp her hands made tentative plucking motions at his coat just out

of reach of her finger-tips. Slowly he was turning her toward the door, her

head reverted. "You just dare!" she cried. "You just-" His hand closed upon

the back of her neck, his fingers like steel, yet cold and light as

alumi-

SANCTUARY 133

num. She could hear the vertebrae grating faintly together, and his voice,

cold and still.

"Will you?"

She nodded her head. Then they were dancing. She could still feel his hand

at her neck. Across his shoulder she looked swiftly about the room, her

gaze flicking from face to face among the dancers. Beyond a low arch, in

another room, a group stood about the crap-table. She leaned this way and

that, trying to see the faces of the group.

Then they saw the four men. They were sitting at a table near the door. One

of them was chewing gum; the whole lower part of his face seemed to be

cropped with teeth of an unbelievable whiteness and size. When she saw them

she swung Popeye around with his back to them, working the two of them

toward the door again. Once more her harried gaze flew from face to face in

the crowd.

When she looked again two of the men had risen. They approached. She

dragged Popeye into their path, still keeping his back turned to them. The

men paused and essayed to go around her; again she backed Popeye into their

path. She was trying to say something to him, but her mouth felt cold. It

was like trying to pick up a pin with the fingers numb. Suddenly she felt

herself lifted bodily aside, Popeye's small arms light and rigid as

aluminum. She stumbled back against the wall and watched the two men leave.

"I'll go back," she said. "I'll go back." She began to laugh shrilly.

"Shut it," Popeye said. "Are you going to shut it?"

"Get me a drink," she said. She felt his hand; her legs felt cold too, as

if they were not hers. They were sitting at a table. Two tables away the

man was still chewing, his elbows on the table. The fourth man sat on his

spine, smoking, his coat buttoned across his chest.

She watched hands: a brown one in a white sleeve, a soiled white one

beneath a dirty cuff, setting bottles on the table. She had a glass in her