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Show 52 "You're vulnerable," Martha McAllister had said, and Hunt had unlocked his house in silence. For the hour-plus of that afternoon, Martha hadn't read; rather, she watched Hunt. "I love watching you," she said. "Work. It's a lesson. It's a kind of lesson for.me. You shut everything else out. But you open up at the same time. How do you do that?" Hunt felt self-conscious. O.K.: And there it was, bottom line: leaping, clowning, terrified dreaming, all spinning down the same drain into the same stupid sink: His Self-Conscious. Christ! "I just work," Hunt had said. "I just put my time in and work. I do what I have to." At two-thirty, Martha had slid from her chair, crossed the room and picked her clothes from the back of the screen and stepped into them* "You know, . it's curious," she'd said. "On one level, I feel like we've been having an affair. On another, I absolutely don't. Do you feel that?" Hunt had looked at the floor, then up. He'd tried to reach. He'd tried to be honest. "There's something in you," he had said, "that's really . . . beautiful . . . powerful. And I'm just trying to . . . draw it, have it . . . out, or . . ." He swallowed; "have it be, have it happen in this room: I'm not making sense, I know; I'm not saying it." Martha McAllister was crying. "Oh, shit," Hunt said. "Don't apologize," she'd said and finished dressing. She hugged him unexpectedly when she'd left. On the final Wednesday, she'd arrived with a poem she.'d written. |