Shelley came by the car, surprisingly friendly given her prior aloofness, my mother overwhelming her with cordiality as she does with just about everyone, especially polite people. In addition to being polite, Shelley's a fine and talented young lady with a glamorous mane of brunette hair.
I'm on my way, with my mom and sister, to a party in the City. It's the weekend. We're talking with Shelley in the parking lot of some out of the way country club. Shelley tells me in private about her visit to her country house in Virginia.
She says, "Why not come along?" Otherwise, she's going there alone.
"OK."
What a change of plans, but then my schedule is often unplanned by sudden options. Why do I jump when a stranger calls? I barely know her, but I feel as though I do. I say bye to Mom and Mon.
Conversation in Shelley's car is dry. I say "I barely know you but I feel as though I do." She gives me the vulnerable impression of a person often adored but grateful for honest company. She is otherwise quiet.
"By the way, I loved your song," I tell her. "I heard it again and its passion impressed me very much."
"Oh. That's fine."
I find her very attractive.
I think if I went to her country house again, the details would return, but I'm left with impressions of the incidents that transpired there.
PART TWO
I was her inferior -- on a lower plane from the satellites whose life and death concerned her. I had been mistaken. She was not looking for a friend in me.
She wielded a steak knife and rose to the cathedral ceiling. She was vicious, but happy and fascinated as I reacted, in my final moments, to her eye piercing acrobatics.
I was nearing an anesthetized state, as if drugged, and she was the dragonfly to keep me threatened enough to remain painfully awake, even after I had taken a sleeping pill. Suddenly, she swooped and crashed on the planked floor near the couch cushions where I lay tangled in the sheets of my makeshift bed.
I shook off my coma. A Helen Keller pantomime followed.
Earthbound, she had a fit of hysterical rage. My concern went out to her. I wrapped her convulsing body in one of the white sheets I was on.
Another young lady in the house appeared to help me bring Shelley into the rustic kitchen, near a basin of water, while ignoring me. She, a grungy blond, was familiar with nursing Shelley in this condition.
As Shelley collapsed, knocking the basin to the floor, I enfolded her and tried to hold her still, holding her down. I loved her more than I could say.
During the early part of the visit, her idea of getaway entertainment was not in playing polite hostess to visitor, but in tormenting foreign prey, something like trapping an annoying insect and torturing it to death.
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