Sanctuary

hand. She drank, gulping; with the glass in her hand she saw Red standing

in the door, in a gray suit and a spotted bow tie. He looked like a college

boy, and he looked about the room until he saw her. He looked at the back

of Popeye's head, then at her as she sat with the glass in her hand. The

two men at the other table had not moved. She could see the faint, steady

movement of the one's ears as he chewed. The music started.

She held Popeye's back toward Red. He was still watching her, almost a head

taller than anybody else. "Come on," she said in Popeye's ear. "If you're

going to dance, dance."

She had another drink. They danced again. Red had disappeared. When the

music ceased she had another drink. It

134 WILLIAM FAULKNER

did no good. It merely lay hot and hard inside her. "Come

on," she said, "dont quit." But he wouldn't

get up, and she

stood over him, her muscles flinching and jerking with ex

haustion and terror. She began to jeer at him. "Call your

self a man, a bold, bad man, and let a girl

dance you off your

feet." Then her face drained, became small and haggard

and sincere; she spoke like a child, with sober despair. "Pop

eye." He sat with his hands on the table, finicking with a

cigarette, the second glass with its melting ice before him.

She put her hand on his shoulder. "Daddy," she said. Moving

to shield them from the room, her hand stole toward his arm

pit, touching the butt of the flat pistol. It lay right in the light,

dead vise of his arm and side. "Give it to

me," she whispered.

"Daddy. Daddy." She leaned her thigh against his shoulder,

caressing his arm with her flank. "Give it to me, daddy," she

whispered. Suddenly her hand began to steal down his body

in a swift, covert movement; then it snapped away in a move

ment of revulsion. "I forgot," she whispered;

"I didn't mean

I didn't . . . 11

One of the men at the other table hissed once through his teeth. "Sit

down," Popeye said. She sat down. She filled her glass, watching her hands

perform the action. Then she was watching the corner of the gray coat. He's

got a broken button, she thought stupidly. Popeye had not moved.

"Dance this?" Red said.

His head was bent but he was not looking at her. He was turned a little,

facing the two men at the other table. Still Popeye did not move. He

shredded delicately the end of the cigarette, pinching the tobacco off.

Then he put it into his mouth.

"I'm not dancing," Temple said through her cold lips.

"Not?" Red said. He said, in a level tone, without moving: "How's the boy?"

"Fine," Popeye said. Temple watched him scrape a match, saw the flame

distorted through glass. "You've had enough," Popeye said. His hand took

the glass from her lips. She watched him empty it into the ice bowl. The

music started again. She sat looking quietly about the room. A voice began

to buzz faintly at her hearing, then Popeye was gripping her wrist, shaking

it, and she found that her mouth was open and that she must have been

making a noise of some sort with it. "Shut it, now," he said. "You can have

one more." He poured the drink into the glass.

"I haven't felt it at all," she said. He gave her the glass. She drank.

When she set the glass down she realised that she was drunk. She believed

that she had been drunk for some time. She thought that perhaps she had

passed out and that it

SANCTUARY 135

had already happened. She could hear herself saying I hope it has. I hope

it has. Then she believed it had and she was overcome by a sense of

bereavement and of physical desire. She thought, I will never be again,

and she sat in a floating swoon of agonised sorrow and erotic longing,

thinking of Red's body, watching her hand holding the empty bottle over

the glass.

"You've drunk it all," Popeye said. "Get up, now. Dance it off." They

danced again. She moved stiffly and languidly, her eyes open but

unseeing; her body following the music without hearing the tune for a

time. Then she became aware that the orchestra was playing the same tune

as when Red was asking her to dance. If that were so, then it couldn't

have happened yet. She felt a wild surge of relief. It was not too late:

Red was still alive; she felt long shuddering waves of physical desire

going over her, draining the color from her mouth, drawing her eyeballs

back into her skull in a shuddering swoon.

They were at the crap-table. She could hear herself shouting to the dice.

She was rolling them, winning; the counters were piling up in front of

her as Popeye drew them in, coaching her, correcting her in his soft,

querulous voice. He stood beside her, shorter than she.

He had the cup himself. She stood beside him cunningly, feeling the

desire going over her in wave after wave, involved with the music and

with the smell of her own flesh. She became quiet. By infinitesimal

inches she moved aside until someone slipped into her place. Then she was

walking swiftly and carefully across the floor toward the door, the