Singing pains in her climbing legs like a piano key hit very
hard and held down with a pressing forefinger. She could listen to her
pain. That was her thought as she climbed. How the irrelevant little
ideas would slide about in her sudden chaos. She must concentrate now.
Terribly. Morton was back.
His hand, a smooth glabrous one full of clutch, riding up the banister.
It could have been picked off, finger by finger. It was that kind of a
hand. But after each lift, another finger would have curled back again.
Morton's hand, ascending the dark like a soul on a string in a burlesque
show.
Face to face. The electric bulb in her dressing room was incased in a
wire like a baseball mask. A burning prison of light. Fat sticks of
grease paint with the grain of Hattie's flesh printed on the daub end.
Furiously brown cheesecloth. An open jar of cream (chocolate) with the
gesture of the gouge in it. A woolly black wig on a shelf, its kinks
seeming to crawl. There was a rim of Hattie _au natural_ left around her
lips.
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