Read Online My Heart Laid Bare by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online Page A

Warren’s surprise, into the hurly-burly of lower Commerce Street. There, suddenly, she was joined, or approached, by an unexpected individual, indeed: a tall, lean, neatly dressed Negro gentleman of middle age, it appeared, judging from his powder-gray hair and goatee, and the stoop of his shoulders; he wore rimless glasses, and a black bowler hat, and walked, stiffly, with a cane. How very different this well-bred Negro was, from the common Negro laborers and servants one saw constantly; he must have been, Warren thought, a minister. Yet how strange it was: the girl in the traveling cloak and the Negro appeared to be walking at precisely the same pace, withoutglancing at each other; the Negro followed the girl at a discreet distance of about five feet as they headed swiftly on Commerce—so swiftly that Warren, a football player, long-legged and in excellent condition, had difficulty keeping them in sight.
    Earlier that day, Warren had been reading in the Contracoeur Post about the “Black Phantom” who’d committed a sensational robbery in Chautauqua Falls a few days previous, and had disappeared with an undisclosed amount of cash (rumored to be several hundred thousand dollars); he’d studied a crude pen-and-ink drawing of the robber in the paper, a young simian-faced Negro with a moustache, in a black domino mask, his long-barreled pistol raised, for effect, beside his arrogant countenance. $12,000 REWARD! WANTED ‘BLACK PHANTOM’! BOLD NEGRO ROBS CHAUTAUQUA FALLS LADIES & GENTLEMEN AT GUNPOINT ! Seeing now this older Negro in the apparent company of the girl in the traveling cloak, Warren naturally thought of the “Black Phantom”—but of course there could be no connection, for this Negro was a well-bred individual in his early fifties, and the “Black Phantom” was a mere youth in his twenties.
    Yet were the two, the girl and the Negro, really together?—Warren couldn’t decide. Surely, no one else, glancing in their direction, would have thought so. Warren was fascinated; aroused, as invariably we are in the presence of mystery; staring so avidly, he took no notice of colliding with other pedestrians, and at Grant Street, by the train station, he was almost killed stepping into the path of a clanging streetcar.
    To his surprise, and dismay, Warren lost the two in the milling crowd at the train station, and had to give up his pursuit. He’d had a glimpse, and more, of her haunting face which he would cherish for decades; which he would seek, in his romantic relations with young women, always in vain; but which would never fail to stir a sense of exhilaration and hope in his heart.
    â€œâ€˜The Lass of Aviemore’”—his numbed lips moved in reverence. How much more beautiful the girl was, to Warren’s way of thinking, thanany mere painted beauty hanging framed in gilt in his grandfather Stirling’s house these many years.

“A BIRD IN A GILDED CAGE”
1.
    W hat is the source of this daring, this giddy springtime bravado, and Eloise Peck née Ingram the granddaughter of the renowned Episcopal bishop?—French champagne at midnight on the terrace of the Saint-Léon Hotel, in Atlantic City, New Jersey; and here in the suite, in the sumptuous bedroom, more champagne at noon; and Russian caviar lavishly spread on toast (though he , with an overgrown boy’s appetite, prefers marmalade or peanut butter); pheasant-brandy pâté, rum-butter-balls, croissants greedily devoured in bed . . .
    Christopher! . . . are you asleep?
    . . . No ma’am.
    Did I wake you?
    Oh no ma’am.
    I did , didn’t I? . . . I’m so sorry.
    Oh no ma’am, I was awake . . . .I was waking.
    But, dear Christopher, why do you say “ma’am”? . . . Haven’t I begged you to call me “Eloise”? . . .
    . . . Eloise.
    Don’t you love me, Christopher?
    Oh yes . . . Eloise.
    Then why are you so shy, you silly