Free Moise and the World of Reason by Tennessee Williams Page A

than a junkyard dog when the spirit moves me, that’s a good thing to know about the living nigger on ice.”
    Moise drew a breath as long as she was when standing over us seated and touched my head with her hand.
    â€œTake him home for hot chocolate,” she suggested to me, and then Lance wrenched me off the narrow bed of Moise with such violence that my shoulder muscle ached the rest of the night and he shouted, “He gets it lighter than chocolate, honey, but it sure is hotter.”
    On the way back to the rectangle with hooks I began to cry as if I were listening to Lady Day singing “Violets for Your Furs,” this being actually the first time I understood about the bad side of love.
    It is now ten past four A.M. and I still remain here alone except for Blue Jay and pencil. . . .

    But I am talking rapidly now, yes, talking out loud to myself as if in delirium which is a practice I have when I am alone with a pencil and Blue Jay and once it got me into very serious trouble. I was about Charlie’s age, passing a glorious autumn in the hooked rectangle, corners softened by the presence of Lance and many things suspended from the hooks, mostly the funky and brilliant costumes of Lance all of whose garments were like professional costumes and nearly all conceived and put together by him who could put together almost anything but his head.
    I was not unprepared for the tour of the show on ice but had rejected the contemplation of it as one does approaching death. Still it was coming and one night it came, just after he had come in me.
    He said to me, “Well, love, you know the show’s going out tomorrow.”
    â€œI knew it would be soon but why did you wait till tonight to tell me you’re going tomorrow?”
    â€œWhy should I let you think about it beforehand and depress us both?”
    â€œI don’t think you let yourself get depressed.”
    â€œWhy should I and why should you?”
    â€œDo you think I’m exhilarated staying on alone here in this corner of a warehouse by the docks while you are performing fantastic leaps and whirls and arabesques on skates in ice-domes over the continent, and no letters from you, just crazy wires now and then?”
    â€œAll right. Go stay with Moise.”
    â€œThat’s the least possible thing I could do. Moise is a solitaire when you’re not here and so am I and putting a couple of solitaires together does not make a pair.”
    â€œSugar, you and Moise are a natural pair, I always knew you would wind up together when I go through the ice.”
    â€œI’m not going to Moise’s.”
    â€œThen where do you plan to go?”
    â€œI’ll take a room at the McBurney if you will pay in advance.”
    â€œHoney, if you checked into a Y, you would check out with a board nailed over your ass.”
    â€œAre you telling me it’s Moise’s or else?”
    â€œI think you’re wrong about the pairing of solitaires like you and Moise, but”
    He got out of bed to pee and when he came back he said, “I will git you a room at the Hotel Earle and pay in advance till Christmas when the show’s booked into Madison Garden.

    It was there at the Hotel Earle that I began to talk out loud as I wrote and after one week of this, the other tenants, who were mostly retired actresses mainly engaged in comparing their scrapbooks, complained that an insane boy had invaded their sanctuary, that he was babbling out loud all night so they looked like wrecks when they made their rounds of agents and producers in the morning and were being offered character parts for the first time in their lives. Only one of them defended me from the others. She was an actress named Clare something who had made a hit in a play by Steinbeck once. She was a warm and strong-hearted lady but her defense was of no avail since her shapely figure and her superior scrapbook had alienated her from the other actresses