Marco

On Esther’s last night in New York, she goes on a double date with a man named Marco to a country club dance. She immediately classifies him as a woman-hater. Marco gives her a diamond stickpin, and says he will do something that it worth the diamond. He grabs her arm so hard that he leaves four bruises and continues to boss her around the whole night. He brings her outside and they start to talk. Esther makes him mad when he says he is in love with his cousin but she is going to be a nun. Marco grabbed Esther, causing her purse to fly into the darkness, and threw her on the ground, ripped her dress, and got on top of her. Esther figured that if she didn’t fight back, he would rape her. He started yelling “Slut” in her ear and she fought back and punched him in the nose. He stopped then, but was still aggressive with her. He demanded to know where his stickpin was and she said it was in her purse that was somewhere in the dark. Esther left right after and she got away from him while he was searching for her purse. When she gets back to the Amazon, she throws every piece of her wardrobe out the window. This is sort of like her defense mechanism. She is trying to get rid of the dirtiness of the night. Just like how she took a bath earlier in the novel.
Esther is becoming more erratic and detached. Buddy writes her a letter that he is falling in love with a nurse and that she should come to see him to win back his affections. She writes back that she is engaged to a simultaneous interpreter. Her biggest disappointment is that she didn’t get into the writing course that she wanted to and she planned her summer around.
She is losing a grip on the real world. Marco had physically hurt her within five minutes of meeting her. She already knew he was a woman hater and the whole night he continued to be rude and forceful, yet she stayed in that situation until it was almost too late.
Also, when she gets back she has trouble sleeping. Esther spends a lot of time thinking about everything she wants to do, but can never settle on something. It is sort of like the story of the tree, and how the longer she waits to pick something, the more options fall off the tree.