Girls In 3-B, The (15 page)

"Well
--
"

The wine sent a glow through her, making her feel at once relaxed and alert. She looked around curiously. This as a different world from any she had seen
--
as unlike the expensive hard-surfaced world of the big hotels and department stores as the small-town streets and tree-shaded lawns of her childhood. It was, somehow, more personal. The flicker of candlelight on intent faces, the silence of the deferential waiters, the soft lilting and wailing of violin music that seemed to come out of nowhere
--
all of these evoked a mood of nostalgia and romantic yearning.

Surrounded by a rosy haze, she realized that she was answering Miss Gordon's questions without self-consciousness. Yes, she lived with two other girls
--
they had been friends in school, that was how they happened to be together, but they seemed to be making separate friends and doing different things. One was in school and the other had a job with a book publisher. Yes, she liked working in the Store. "Only I don't want to be a stock girl all my life. I don't know just what I want to do, yet."

"Perhaps get married and have a couple of nice children?" Miss Gordon's lips quirked.

"No, I'll never get married."

"Don't you have a sweetheart?"

"I hate men," Barby said fiercely.

Miss Gordon turned her wine glass between slender fingers. "You don't look like a girl who hates men."

"Oh, I hate the way I look, too. If I were a Catholic I think I'd go into a convent. I really mean that, Miss Gordon."

"Ilene."

"Ilene." She blushed. "All men want to do is get their hands on you all the time. They just go by the way you look, they don't care how you really are."

"And how are you really?"

"I don't know," Barby said slowly. "It's like I'm waiting to find out."

"Yes," Ilene Gordon said, "that's the hardest part of growing up, waiting for someone else to show you your own possibilities. So often the right person doesn't come along."

The waiter refilled Barby's glass, setting a plate down in front of her. The food smelled wonderful, but she wasn't hungry. "I'm doing a lot of talking," she said shyly. "What I'm really interested in is you."

It was a simple story, Ilene Gordon said laughing. She lived in an apartment on the North Side
--
she named the neighborhood, and Barby recognized it as a very good neighborhood indeed, far better than her own. She had been sharing it with another girl, who was moving out in few weeks. "She's being married. I'm not sure what I'll do then, but anyway, it will work out."

Barby tried to imagine a marriage that would be better than sharing an apartment with Ilene Gordon, seeing her every evening, talking things over with her. She said, "Your friend will be sorry," and was rewarded by another of those long, searching looks. They left the subject there, as if it were not time to develop it further.

Miss Gordon picked up the check which the waiter presented deferentially, and tucked a bill under the edge of her plate. None of the nickel counting exactitude Barby was used to when she went out with the girls. "We must do this again. It's been fun."

How nice she is,
Barby thought, glowing with wine and talk.
How nice and understanding.

For some reason, she didn't mention the lunch to Annice and Pat.

The book was on her end of the worktable a couple of days later, tucked under a box of tags as though someone had slipped it there, hastily, while she was out. There was no note with it, and nobody mentioned it, but when she opened it she found Ilene Gordon's name on the flyleaf in a clear, small hand, and she knew that it had been left for her with a special purpose. She took it out to lunch, choosing a small cheap restaurant where she was unlikely to meet anyone from the Store. Without paying attention to the young sailor who was ogling her from the next table or to the mediocre food, she plunged into the pages of such a story as she had never read before.

It was the story of a young woman who, growing up, rejected the love of men and was lost in loneliness for the years of her girlhood, only to find a kind of love she had never known existed
--
the passionate unselfish love of another woman. Barby was fascinated. There was a relationship, then, without force or fear. Tenderness was in it, and compassion. There was a love between two individuals who understood and cherished each other because they shared the same nature. They could even pledge themselves to each other
--
perhaps not for a lifetime, but then, how many wives could count on their husbands to be faithful after the first weeks of marriage? For the last five years Barby had looked wonderingly at all the serious, respectable married men she knew, wondering what fearful secret lives were hidden by their everyday faces.

She read on, overstaying her lunch hour and not caring, though the time clock was as relentless as death or taxes and her tardiness would mean a deduction. It didn't matter. She was like an explorer who, long drifting on an unfriendly sea, finally sights land and dares to hope he will make it to shore, after all.

She carried the book home with her that afternoon, reading a few pages in the station, a chapter on the train, propping it on the kitchen table while she opened cans and threw together some kind of a supper. Annice was out, doing God knew what
--
the thought of what Annice was probably doing made her feel a little sick
--
and Pat was too absorbed in shortening another new dress to have time for food. This concern of Pat's for her looks bothered Barby, who had always been well-dressed with very little effort on her own part; she might have expected it in Annice, but Annice was getting downright careless since she no longer went to school. Pat was all wrapped up in clothes
--
insane about clothes, in fact. She had thrown away the skirts, sweaters and flats that went so well with her wholesome chubby appearance and was slinking around in a series of glamorous outfits that looked a little bit funny on her.

Well, that was another problem to straighten out when she had time to think about it. Tonight there was something more urgent. She filled a plate with canned vegetables, not so very well seasoned, and took it to the davenport, where she sat down with the book. Long after Pat finished her pinning and hemming and went to bed she was still sitting there, the empty plate still on the floor. It was like stepping into a new world, a world where secret hidden emotions ruled people's lives. Was it possible that she belonged in that world, too? She was shy about facing Ilene Gordon at work the next morning. She need not have been. Everything went smoothly. She was on time. Her face in the washroom mirror looked the same as always, a pretty girl's face made up in the current style. Only everything in the Store looked brighter and sharper than usual. The stock shimmered with newness and color; the faces of clerks and customers held a depth of feeling she hadn't noticed before. She saw a young mother with two whining children, tired, hungry or some of the pretty clothes the household budget wouldn't cover; she looked at the older saleswomen and aww their ugly comfort shoes at variance with their smart dresses and modish hair styling, and her heart swelled iwth pity for them. How hard it must be to get older and have nobody to love you, nothing to look forward to except a skimpy existence on Social Security!

But she was young. Her best years were ahead. She had never felt this identification with other people before. She had always been alone. She wasn't sure whether she liked it or not. When Ilene Gordon showed up, looking as she always did, Barby was conscious of an intense pleasure at the sight of her. That was all. No anxiety. She was sure everything would work out all right.

Nothing in her life had ever worked out right before. But then, nothing like this had ever come her way.

“Why don't we eat here
?
" Annice rolled over, shivering the chilly room.

"What for?"

"Just thought it might be fun. I'm a pretty good cook."

"Don't go little woman on me," Alan said. There was a menacing quality in his voice she didn't like. She propped herself up on one elbow and searched his face, but it was closed, as usual. So far as she could tell he had only two changes of expression
--
a hard glee when something struck him as funny, and the ravenous look
--
eyebrows knitted, mouth hungry
--
he wore when making love. It pleased her sometimes to realize that she could stir him out of impassivity to a display of emotion; it gave her a feeling of power.

Afterwards, though, he lapsed back into his normal blankness. How many times she had looked at his sleeping features as he lay limp and exhausted by love, searching for some trace of tenderness and finding none. Those were the times when she smoothed his hair as he lay against her shoulder or with his mouth buried in sleep against her breast, unwilling to give more than she had received and yet helpless against the upsurge of emotion that followed spent passion.

Now she sat up, feeling for the cigarettes she had dropped on the floor beside the bed
--
his gesture. She was no longer embarrassed by her own nakedness or excited by his; every line of his body was familiar to her, and she had learned her own body from his hands and the pressure of his weight on her. She thought, maybe being married is like this. She said, reluctantly, "The thing is I'm getting short of money."

"I wondered when that would come up." Alan sat up, wrapping his arms around his bony knees. "Christ, women are all alike. They all resent it if a man doesn't pick up the tab every time."

That was so unjust she couldn't help quavering a little. "That's not true. It's only that I don't make so very much. Forty dollars a week doesn't go far
--
and I did pay your rent last week. I've only got a dollar to last till payday."

"Hell, if I had any money you'd be welcome to it. That's the middle classes for you, go to bed with anybody but let money come into it and they're all possessive. I won't be like that. What's mine is yours."

"Yes, but
--
" She stopped, aghast.

"But I never have anything? Aw, Jesus, baby, can't you stop analyzing everything? Can't you ever just live? I know you were raised in a horrible small-town atmosphere, but haven't I made any impression on you at all
?
"

She wanted to cry. She hadn't felt like this, touchy and weepy, for a long time
--
not since she started high school and felt the town kids eyeing her clothes and hairdo snootily. She said sulkily, "I do everything you want me to. I skipped work two days last week because you wanted me to stay with you. Any more of that and I'll lose my job."

"So what? You can get another one. It's a lousy job anyhow. Anybody can be a file clerk."

The obvious answer was on the tip of her tongue. It took all the will power she had to keep from saying, "Yes, but it's been supporting both of us." Instead she said softly, putting her hand on his thin corded arm, "Let's not fight. Seems to me we fight all the time lately."

"Well, it's your fault if we do."

"What time is it?"

"How would I know?"

The clock was on the floor too, along with the overflowing ashtray and the empty beer bottles. She leaned out to look. He leaned past her. "Five to eight, if this damn thing's right. What difference does it make?"

"I'm going to be late to work again."

"Aw, come on, stay in bed a while. Let's just snuggle up here and take a nap. Or we could try the ether," he said hopefully, pulling her down against him. "When are you going on an ether jag with me? It beats booze every way, makes you sexy as hell."

"Now I'm not sexy enough for you the way I am."

"No kidding, it's unique."

She struggled to sit up. Not for anything would she have confessed
--
coward, chicken
--
the terror that washed over her when she remembered the two days of the mescal experiment. To lose control, to feel your mind slipping out of reach, was the worst thing she could imagine. Even after making love there was a moment of blind panic when the excitement died down and you came back from the far place. She eluded his reaching arm and stood up, naked, beside the bed. It was chilly in the room. She said, "I'm going to stay home tonight and catch up on my sleep."

His eyes flickered. "That's okay. I can always find some way to pass the time."

"It's different with you. You can lie in bed all day and do nothing. I have to save a little energy for work."

"Nag, nag, nag."

She pulled on her bra and wrinkled slip. No pants. Alan said that women who wore pants were just being silly, either advertising their inviolability or, more likely, hoping to have them removed by force. She needed a bath, but the bathroom was at the end of the hall and the lock wasn't very good. One of the young men had come in while she was brushing her teeth, a couple of days before, and hadn't been embarrassed at all. She put on her yesterday's dress and nylons, and her shoes. She picked up her comb, lipstick, and earrings and stuffed them into her bag. Alan didn't like her to leave anything. Sometimes she wondered if he had other girls up there while she was at work. The thought of his making love to another woman stabbed her with painful jealousy.

She hadn't gone out with anybody else since they began sleeping together. Except that Jackson Carter dropped in at the apartment now and then and sat drinking coffee with her and Pat, and she walked down to the drugstore and had a coke with him before he went home. Twice, they had gone to the neighborhood movie. That didn't count. It was just a way of making time pass until she could be with Alan.

She closed the bedroom door quietly behind her.

The bathroom door was open; Jenni was shaving. He motioned her in with a graceful sweep of the hand.

"Thanks," she said, "I'll wait. How are the violets?"

"All dead. Every one," Jenni said delightedly. He grinned at her through the lather, like a cheerful small boy who has played a trick on the grownups. It occurred to her that they were all perverse and dissipated children, Alan's friends
--
children who wouldn't or perhaps couldn't grow up. For the first time she wondered about Alan. What had his parents been like? What had happened to him when he was little, to set him adrift and make him at once ruthless and casual
?