Girls In 3-B, The (17 page)

She threw her coat across the one chair, and sat down the bed to wait for him.

It was perhaps five minutes, perhaps ten, before she realized that something was wrong. Something had been subtracted from the clutter. Vaguely alarmed, she got up and prowled around the room. Alan's undershirts and jockey shorts, mismated socks and blue shirts were gone from the dresser drawers. His suntans, corduroy pants and the one pair of tweed slacks were no longer hanging in the closet. The duffle bag and beat-up suitcase she had looked at without really seeing them every time she opened the closet door were gone too. One crumpled sock lay under the hanger bar. In the top drawer of the dresser a few shreds of tobacco and a torn handkerchief were the only indication that he had ever lived there.

The saucepan and plate had been tossed into a corner of the room.

She began to shake.

Jenni was at the telephone, talking softly and emphatically with a hand cupped around the mouthpiece, when she let herself out. "Where's Alan?" His eyebrows shot up. "Oh, he went. Last night. He went to Mexico, I think," Jenni said. His eyes were gay, his mouth twitched. He said to the telephone, "Just a moment, darling, I have another woman here," and turned to her. "Some magazine bought an article from him, maybe. Can I do anything for you?"

"No. No, never mind."

She was halfway down the block before she realized that she had left her coat in that place. The cold wind, blowing through her thin dress and forcing itself upon her abstraction, was like a knife. But she walked on, stumbling over cracks in the sidewalk, ignoring traffic when she came to a crossing, half-blind and wholly deaf with shock and anger. "The bastard," she said aloud. "The low bastard." A drunk grinned at her, lurching by.

She heard the telephone ringing before she unlocked the apartment door. Her heart expanded, growing soft with relief.
I'll go with you,
she promised silently, running to answer.
I'll live anywhere you want to, on any terms you like.

It was Barby, calling to say she would be late getting home. Annice hung up and stood for a long time beside the telephone table, looking at nothing.

Barby had known this would be the day, even before she was out of bed. She woke with a feeling of bright anticipation, like the expectant tingle a child feels on Christmas morning
--
a feeling of happy, calm assurance that was not excitement, but pure joy. Pouring coffee, too pleased to be hungry, she thought,
It has to happen today, it simply has to. I'm ready for it.

It was the first time in her life she had ever been sure of anything good.

They had lunch together in the candle-lighted hideaway that had become their special secret place. It warmed Barby to enter the small, smoky room, dim after the sun-shiny street, and cross to the corner table where they had sat the first day. When someone else was there first, her pleasure was flawed. Today the table was empty, as she had known it would be, and she hung her coat and Ilene's on the old-fashioned rack in the corner and sat down, smiling across the checkered cloth. "I love this place."

"The trouble is that we haven't long enough to talk." Ilene moved the silver at her place, then moved it back in. "I've been wondering. Would you like to come up to my apartment this evening? It's rather nice
--
and I do have a fireplace, and we'd be free from interruptions." She bent her head to examine the spoon. "We could have real visit."

"I'd like to."

"Do your roommates ask questions if you're late?"

"No. They quite often stay out late, themselves. It's funny," Barby said thoughtfully, "but the longer we live together, the less we seem to have in common. I suppose eventually we'll know all different people."

"I suppose it's cheaper, sharing a place?”

"Partly. And then partly, our families all know each other. That's one reason they let us come, because we were going to live together and they thought we'd sort of check up on each other. That shows how much parents know."

"But you don't have to stay together."

"Oh no. Well split up, sooner or later. Annice is sure to get tired of running around and get married, one of these days. Pat, too. She's the kind to settle down and have one of those big Catholic families."

"You're not thinking of marriage
?
"

Barby said low, "No. Never. I told you before, I hate men."

"I'm not going to ask you any questions, who hurt you or how," Ilene Gordon said. She reached across the table and laid her slender, well-manicured hand on Barby's. The touch tingled up her arm. "I've learned not to ask questions. The past doesn't matter for people like you
--
and me."

"No."

Ilene straightened up. She smiled. "Well then, you will come up this evening, won't you
?
Around seven, maybe
?
It's better if we don't go home together."

"Of course. I can take the subway."

"Take a taxi. Here, I'll give you the money for it."

Barby took the dollar slowly, folded it differently from her other money and put it in the back of her billfold. It was good to feel provided and cared for. When she went back to the Store, too well-nourished on happiness to know or care what she had eaten, she removed the bill to an envelope and sealed it shut.
I'll keep it,
she thought,
and when I'm old it will remind me.
She knew she was being young and silly, and romantic; but it didn't matter. She felt that she had never been really happy before, in her whole life. It was like feeling well and light-bodied after a long illness.

She called to tell the girls that she would be late, not because they would be concerned even if she stayed out all night
--
a thought that made her dizzy with anticipation
--
but because she passionately wanted everything about this to be just right, to be perfect. Annice was at home, as she had expected. She sounded tearful. Damn the girl, Barby thought, she used to be so steady and reliable, and ever since she quit going to school she hasn't cared about anything. Half the time she doesn't even show up for that crummy two-bit job. It's that bearded bohemian character she runs around with, that comic-book character. I wouldn't trust him around the corner. She turned away from the telephone, her good mood shattered.

Forget about it. Forget everything, she told herself, except the work you're doing. She couldn't think about the evening ahead; it was too bright; it dazzled her inner sight.

The twilight street was delicately dusky when she emerged into it, and a light snow was falling. It blurred the outlines of the tall buildings and put halos around the street lights. The first snow of winter. She smiled self-consciously, knowing it would turn to a dirty mush as soon as it reached the sidewalk, knowing she would have more than enough snow before the winter was over. She could see herself standing on a bus corner with the icy prairie wind whipping her skirts and piercing through her heavy coat; slipping on the frozen sidewalks, begging the landlord for more steam in the lukewarm radiators. This was Illinois winter, worse here than at home because of the Lake. But for a few minutes, she lingered in the muffled streets, recapturing the magic of childhood mornings when, after the dull tan monotony of autumn, she looked out at a world of pearl and crystal.

She wasn't hungry. It seemed unnecessary to eat, but she had to do something for an hour. She went into a drugstore and had coffee, drinking it slowly, watching the clock over the door. From the long mirror behind the counter her reflection looked back at her, wide-eyed and pink-cheeked.

I want to remember every detail of this,
she thought, hailing a cab
.
The feel of the upholstery and the driver's face and the way the store windows look through the falling snow. I want to remember it as long as I live.

Ilene's neighborhood was expensive-looking. The strips of lawn between sidewalk and apartment buildings were manicured; the cars at the curb were of two kinds
--
small, smart and foreign, or large, smart and impressive. She walked across the lobby, heels clattering on the marble flooring, and was wafted up by a sallow elevator boy in a skintight uniform and a chestful of ribbons. Then she forgot to be impressed with the aura of money and splendor, because Ilene was at the door, waiting for her.

She wore Bermuda shorts, with knee socks and sandals ; her short hair was ruffled, and she held a thin-stemmed glass. Her hands were warm on Barby's. "I'm glad you could come. Come in and see my place."

It was the sort of apartment Barby had learned to appreciate during her noonday prowlings through department stores and specialty shops. A step led up to the living room, which was long and narrow, decorated all in white and warmed by the jackets of books and the soft glow of a blaze in the fireplace. She stood before it, hands spread wide. "A real fireplace, imagine," she said, and Ilene laid a light hand on her shoulder and said, "Yes, it's marvelous for conversation." The sofa was wide enough for five people and the coffee table that stood in front of it held an elegant service in crystal and silver, glittering in the firelight. The shelves held books, Wedgewood and Spode plates, odd bits of silver. Two china dogs sat at the ends of the mantel. "Staffordshire," Ilene said, turning one of them over in thin, nervous fingers. "See the marking
?
'"

"Is it all yours? I mean, did it come this way?"

A shadow crossed Ilene's face. "I furnished it six years ago with the girl who left to get married."

"I'm sorry."

"Never look back," Ilene said. She replaced the china dog. "Six years is a long time; keep looking ahead."

Barby could accept that.
If I could cut off the past right now,
she thought,
and be born fresh!
Ilene smiled. "You learn to remember the good things, but that takes time. Come on, I'll show you the rest."

There was a tiny dining room. "Silly, because it's too small for guests and we hardly ever used it when we were alone. I like it, though. Leila made the chair seats." She touched the petit-point caressingly, and Barby felt a pang of jealousy for the unknown Leila. They moved into the bedrooms, one large, decorated in blue and pale green, with a handful of detective stories on the bedside stand and a row of tailored clothes in the closet; one small, bare, with a single bed. The immaculate bathroom, with a blue and green dressing table. And the small kitchen, best of all, with copper pans hanging on the wall and a shelf of spices in decorated jars. "Best room in the house," Ilene said. She measured coffee into the drip pot, set out a coffeecake, and then, hesitantly, took down a small squat bottle. "Kiimmel. Ever drink any? It tastes like hell, but it makes you feel all warm and cozy inside."

The drink relaxed Barby, took away the last lingering bit of self-consciousness. They sat at opposite sides of the linen-covered table. "This is a wonderful room."

"It's the main reason I don't want to sublet. But this place is too big for me alone."

"Can't you find someone to share it?"

"It would have to be someone special
--
who meant a lot , to me, personally. I don't believe in grieving for the past. One has to move ahead." She poured coffee into a heavy pottery cup, set it in front of Barby. Her hand trembled a little.

"I'm a very direct person," Ilene said. "I don't finagle around and try to put over a deal
--
not where my personal life is concerned." She looked at Barby, the long straight look that had melted her heart the first day, as if she could see through her eyes and into her mind. "You're very young."

"Not that young," Barby said low.

"I don't know if you even know what I'm talking I about."

"I've known for a long time."

"You don't have to commit yourself to anything. I want you to think it over. But
--
will you stay here with me tonight?"

Barby's heart missed a beat, then righted itself. She waited a moment, to be sure her voice was steady. "Yes," she said. She reached across the table and laid her hand on Ilene's. "Yes. I've been wanting you to ask me that."

Much later, when they stood together at the bedroom window, watching the soft flakes of snow drive against the glass and shatter, she said, "It's what I've wanted, all my life. How can anybody want a man, when there's this
?
"

Ilene held her close. "Don't be sorry."

Just before she fell asleep she thought about Rocco and the basement room; and then, dimly, of something farther back and more dreadful. But it was all far away, like a dream already dissolving. The experience of this night had washed away all the hurt and terror of it. Nothing could hurt her any more. She fell asleep in the circle of Ilene's arms, safe.

Pat wasn't interested in kids, even good-looking kids. Her heart belonged to Blake Thomson, firmly and steadfastly. This part-time clerk who kept pestering her for a date was nothing but a boy
--
twenty
--
still in school
--
sophomore at Roosevelt
--
and not so very well-heeled
--
part-time worker, and probably paid board at home. He looked like the kind of boy who would pay board. Six foot tall and football shoulders; so what
?
She said, "Good morning," coldly, and waited for him to go away.

He leaned on the edge of her desk, stooping to her from his superior height. I am not interested in children, she reminded herself firmly, recognizing the dating gleam in his eyes. She felt a moment's nostalgia for Johnny Cutler and the days of their courtship, uncomplicated by anything more than the usual passes and negotiations between young adults of different sexes.

"What do you do evenings
?
"

She doodled on a scratch pad. "I wash my nylons."

"Oh." He smiled. "I bet you don't even know my name.”

"Why should I
?
"

"No reason. I looked you up in the payroll file. Patricia Connelly. You're eighteen. Your birthday is in June. You get seventy bucks a week."

"Oh, really. Nothing about me," Pat said icily, "is any business of yours."