VV(11): Fingernails

[Terrance]

David Morris wrote:
> 
> Why discount such an obvious incongruity: there is no indication that they
> know each other in this segment.  We have no idea who she is untill we see
> the nameplate.  Even then Benny does not indicate any personal aquaintance,
> nor does Rachel.  And if you read it again you'll realize that Rachel
> arrives from the "outside corridor" and strolls through the reception area
> waving to her co-workers on the other side of the rail.  She walks right
> past Benny whose head is glued to her being.
> 
> If he knows her he is being incredibly cool, and so is she.
> 
> David Morris

Maybe he is and she is too. Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe he
doesn't recognize her. That seems to be what some readers
think here. That Disney land tourist thing is at play here I
suspect (see William Plater's *Grim Phoenix*). And what
about that erection, that erection and the folds of the NY
Times, and note how his erection when he gets close to her,
remember that Benny is subject to waves of horniness, he
looks for girls when he enters the office, doesn't see any,
but her. And how could he not know her. He knows that she
works for an employment agency. He's looking right at her,
but he's in Depression time and her tug, her umbilical tug,
Jewish Mother tug if off and his horny erection mechanism
on. 

He remembers her when he thinks of Fina. He remember that he
wwas object of WHAT?
Some interesting Catholic terms there, MERCY. He was here
found object, her RC rosary. 
His father was a Catholic like Fina. And now he is a boy for
a Jewish mother, Rachel. She  is Jewish. Is that how he
remembers her? As David Morris says, he sees her come
right in on that rail and only sees a machine girl. After
the Depression family, right out of the dust bowl. No dust
bowl in 1956. This is the great Depression, on film or in
dream, or in text, or in Benny time, but it doesn't matter, 
he sees nothing but a new "extemporized daydream."


He meets her like everyone else, the 54 MG. After there
summer affair she goes and finishes up at Bennington Spring
55, and gets a job as a  receptionist at the employment
agency. She wanted out of 5 towns. They kept in touch,
letters short visits in NYC. This is all "before" the novel
begins on Christmas Eve 1955 (just for arguments sake for
now) Benny is down in Norfolk as 1956 is on the door step
and he feels the tug, "the invisible, umbilical tug...
mnemonic, arousing," this causes him to wonder how much he
is his own man. She called this tug, "A secret," and "She
visited him occasionally, as now, at night, like a succubus,
coming in with the snow. There was no way he knew to keep
either out." 

She finds him at the bus station. She says she called every
bus station in the country. Maybe she did. But she paged him
at the Norfolk bus station and he knew it must be her. He
had just slipped into a sleep, or more likely, knowing P,
half in sleep and half out:
"He had just begun to drift off when the paging system
called his name." A new year is about to rung in, Benny is
with the bums. She tells him to "come home." Benny puts
Dewey on the phone so he can sing her the Depression song,
"A red headed women song, eels in the ocean, eels in the
sea, a redheaded women made a fool of me..." Benny thinks of
long fingers. Did he get an apocheir? 

Red heads in the ocean
White mermaids on the sea
All these girls of the ocean never sing to me
Tell me why must I linger 
in these chambers of the sea