Tramp

TRAMP was first published in 1961 by Nightstand Books, under the pen name of Andrew Shaw. Here's a taste of the text: "IT WAS PRECISELY ten o'clock when the alarm went off. The clock, purchased years ago at a drugstore for not much money, made up in volume what it lacked in melody. It did not ring, exactly; it jangled. Schoenberg would have been delighted with the twelve-tone discordance of the clock."For perhaps ten seconds the clock rang without eliciting any response whatsoever. Then, dreamily, a hand worked its way out from under the bedcovers. The hand pawed its way through warm and musty air until it located the rickety night-table at the side of the bed. The clock was somewhere on top of the night-table, and the hand searched painstakingly until the clock was found. Fingers wound themselves around the clock like tentacles. One finger, more industrious than the rest, succeeded in discovering the little button that would shut off the alarm. The button was pressed and the room was plunged once again into silence. The hand withdrew, found its way once more beneath the blankets, and all was as it had been before the atonality of the alarm."There was, however, a slight difference. The owner of the hand was awake now. Although she tried rather desperately to return to the soft protectiveness of sleep, sleep was not to be hers. The clock had ruined it. The room, which had seemed so silent while she slept, was now filled with noise. Somewhere in the distance a fire engine or ambulance was careening away with its siren wide open. The traffic was heavy around the corner on Broadway, thick with mid-morning trucks. A woman shrieked across the courtyard in Spanish."The girl sighed. Slowly and reluctantly she pushed back the bedcovers. Her eyes opened one at a time and she blinked unhappily at the light. Sunlight peeped in at her through the hole in the window shade. She peeped back at it, thought sadly how nice it would be to go back to sleep, then sighed again and clambered forth out of the bed. She was nude, and her bare skin felt slightly clammy from sleep."She wrapped herself in a bathrobe, slipped her feet into deerskin slippers, unbolted her door and walked down the hall to the bathroom which she shared with the other four occupants of the third floor at 253 West 94th Street. She switched on the light, closed and bolted the bathroom door, and removed her bathrobe and slippers, setting them down on the footstool along with the towel she had brought with her. She turned on the shower and waited nervously until the water was as close to the proper temperature as it ever got. Then she stepped into the shower and scrubbed herself diligently."he worked the soap all over her body. She washed her face-high cheekbones, full mouth with sensuous lips, large eyes and a straight, almost Roman nose. She washed her shoulders, massaged the soap into her high, firm, large breasts, washed belly and thighs and legs. She spent a long time in the shower because she found it quite impossible to start a day unless she was as clean as a shower could make her. Finally she washed her rich nut-brown hair, rinsed it thoroughly, soaped and rinsed twice more. Then she stepped out of the tub and began to dry herself with the towel."And here's author Lawrence Block's take on TRAMP: "I can't say I remember much about TRAMP, but then I've reached an age when it's hard to remember what I had for dinner last night. The book, like most of my pseudonymous work, was written at a time recently examined in A Writer Prepares, a memoir of my beginnings as a writer, to be released on June 24, 2021. I hope you may find A Writer Prepares of interest; in the meantime, perhaps TRAMP will brighten a couple of hours