Hot Night in the City

by Trevanian

  Winter descended from the mountains, and when its task of purifying the earth with cold was accomplished, retreated slowly back up the slopes, allowing spring to soften the ground and melt-water to fill the rushing Uhaitz-handia with waves that danced beneath the earth-colored foam. This was the season when Madame Utuburu usually set out her piments under cloches to get a month's headstart on the rest of the village, but somehow she did not feel up to it. What was the point? She had no husband to feed, no son to praise her spicy piperade, and now no neighbor to vex with her superior crop. Maybe she wouldn't bother with the piments this year. Indeed, the task of planting a garden at all seemed terribly heavy and unrewarding.

  She began to—I must not say 'to understand', for she never submitted the matter to the processes of reasoning. She began to sense that her rival had been... not something to live for, but maybe something to live against: a daily grievance, an object of envy, a reason to get up each morning, if only to see what villainy she had been up to.

  Down at the lavoir, a woman brushed a lock of hair from her forehead with the back of her soapy hand and commented that three wash days had passed without Madame Utuburu showing up. Her neighbor at the next scrubbing stone set aside the paddle with which she had beaten her laundry clean and said that perhaps a couple of them should go down to the edge of the village and see if anything untowards had befallen. After all, she's no longer young and— But look! Here she comes!

  And indeed, she was approaching the lavoir with a stately tread, her few scraps of dirty laundry tied into a bundle in one hand, while in the other she carried her famous cushion from Buenos Aires, and there was something balanced on top of it.

  Oh no, it can't be!

  But it was. The Book. And the women were obliged to listen while Madame Utuburu divided her praises between her own son's remarkable strength and the Etcheverrigaray boy's phenomenal brilliance.

  And in this way Madame Utuburu kept the Widow Etcheverrigaray alive for several years longer. And herself, too.

  HOT NIGHT IN THE CITY II

  There were only three passengers on the last bus from downtown: a woman, a man, and a bum. The young woman sat close up behind the driver because she instinctively trusted men in uniform, even bus drivers. She clutched her handbag to her lap, pressed her knees together, and fixed her gaze on the nippled rubber floormat to avoid making eye contact with the old drunk who sat across from her, smelling of pee and BO and waking up with a moist snort each time the bus hit a pot hole or lurched to miss one. The slim young man sitting alone at the back of the bus had been unable to sleep because of the heat and a relentless gnawing in the pit of his stomach. After squirming for hours, he had left the flophouse and deposited his bindle in a bus station locker so he could wander the streets unencumbered.

  An oppressive heat wave had been sapping the city for over a week. Not until after midnight was it cool enough for people to go out and stroll the streets for a breath of air. In the stifling tenements that separated air-conditioned downtown from the breezy suburbs, kids were allowed to sleep out on fire escapes, sprawled on sofa cushions. On the brownstone stoops down below, women in loose cotton house dresses gossiped drowsily while men in damp undershirts sucked beers. At the beginning of the heat wave, people had complained about the weather to total strangers with a grumpy comradeship of shared distress, like during wars or floods or hurricanes. But once the city's brick and steel had absorbed all the heat it could hold and began to exhale its stored-up warmth into the night, the public mood turned sullen and resentful.

  The bus crawled through tenement streets that were strangely dark because people left the lights off to keep their apartments cooler, and many streetlights had been broken by bands of kids made miserable and mutinous by the heat. But the interior of the bus was brightly lit, and it made the young woman feel odd to be moving through dark streets with everyone looking at her from out there in the dark. All the bus windows were open to combat the heat, but the breeze was so laden with soot that it was gritty between her teeth, so she reached up to close her window, but it was stuck and she couldn't, so she turned her head away. She saw a familiar advertising placard in the arch of the roof that assured her that she could improve her chances of success by 25%, 50%, 75%... Even More!... by learning shorthand. Money Back If Not Totally Delighted! Don't Wait! Start on the Road to Success Today! The placard showed a handsome boss smiling on an efficient, pretty woman with an open notebook. That would be her, one of these days.

  She reached up and tugged the slack cord, and a deformed ding brought the bus to a lurching stop. As she thanked the driver and stepped down from the front of the bus, the young man slipped out through the back accordion doors. With a swirl of dust and litter, the bus drove off, carrying the snorting drunk into the night.

  She walked towards the only unbroken streetlight on the block, tottering a little because she was unaccustomed to high heels. When her ankle buckled, she looked back at the sidewalk with an irritated, accusing frown, as though she had tripped over something. That was when she noticed him.

  It occurred to the young man that she might think he was following her, and the last thing he wanted was to frighten her, so he put his hands in his pockets and began to whistle to show that he wasn't trying to sneak up on anybody or anything. It was the theme from The Third Man, a film she had seen one afternoon when she'd gone into a second-run movie house to get out of the rain. She hadn't liked it all that much, particularly the sad ending where this Italian actress just walked right on past Joseph Cotton, who loved her. She knew that people thought films with sad endings were more 'artistic' than those with happy endings, but she went to the movies to shake off the blues, and she wanted them to make her feel good.

  The young man stopped whistling when it occurred to him that she probably listened to the eerie tales of The Whistler on the radio, so the last thing that would put her at ease would be some man whistling in a dark street. She gave him a real surprise when she reached the streetlight and turned on him. "You better not try anything!" Her voice was reedy with tension. "This is an Italian neighborhood!"

  He held up his palms in surrender. "Whoa there, ma'am," he said in a moist, toothless voice, like that western sidekick, Gabby Hayes. "You ain't got no just cause to go chucking a whole passel of I-talians at me." But she didn't find that funny. The streetlight directly overhead turned his eyes into gashes of shadow beneath vivid brows; only the tips of his lashes shone, mascara'd with light, as he smiled and said in his stammering Jimmy Stewart voice, "Look, I'm... I'm just terribly sorry if I frightened you, Miss. But I want you to know that I wasn't following you. Well, yes, yes, I was following you, I suppose. But not on purpose! I was just, sort of, well... walking along. Lost in daydreams. Just... just lost in daydreams, that's what I was. Look, why don't I just... just... turn around and go the other way? It's all the same to me, 'cause I'm not going anywhere special. I'm just... you know... sort of drifting along through life."

  She still didn't smile, although it was a pretty good Jimmy Stewart, she had to admit. She continued to stare at him, tense and angry, so he made a comic little salute and walked up the street, away from her. Then he turned back. "Excuse me, my little chickadee, but you said something that tickled my cur-i-osity." He dragged out the syllables in the nasal, whining style of W. C. Fields. They were talking across a space of perhaps ten yards, but it was well after midnight and the background growl of downtown traffic was so distant that they could speak in normal tones. "Pray tell me, m'dear. Why did you warn me that this is an I-talian neighborhood. Just what has that—as the ancient philosophers are wont to wonder—got to do with anything?" W. C. Fields tapped the ashes from his imaginary cigar and waited politely for her answer.

  She cleared her throat. "Italians aren't like most city people. They have family feelings. If a woman screams, they come running and beat up whoever's bothering her."

  "I see," W. C. drawled. "A most laudable custom, I'm sure. But one that would be pretty hard on a f
ellow unjustly accused of being a mugger, like yours truly." She smiled at the W. C. Fields, so he kept it up. "You are, I take it, a woman of I-talian lineage?"

  "No. I live here because it's safer. And cheap."

  He chuckled. "You've told me more than you meant to," he said in his own natural voice.

  She frowned, and the steep-angled light filled her forehead wrinkles with shadow. "What do you mean?"

  "You've told me that you live alone, and that you don't have much money. Now, I wonder if you'd be kind enough to tell me one other thing?"

  "What's that?" she asked, still cautious, although the first spurt of adrenaline was draining away.

  "Is there someplace around here where I could get a cup of coffee?"

  "Well... there's a White Tower. Four blocks down and one over."

  "Thanks." His eyes crinkled into a smile. "You know, this is a strange scene. I mean... really strange. Just picture it. Our heroine descends from a bus, right? She is followed by a young man, lost in vague daydreams. She suddenly turns on him and threatens to Italian him to death. Surprised, bewildered, dumbfounded, nonplussed, and just plain scared, he decides to flee. But curiosity (that notorious cat killer) obliges him to stop, and they chat, separated by yards of sidewalk that he hopes will make her feel safe. While they're talking, he notices how the overhead street lamp glows in her hair and drapes over her shoulders like a shawl of light. ...A shawl of light. But her eyes... her eyes are lost in shadow, so he can't tell what she's thinking, what she feels. The young man asks directions to a coffee shop, which she obligingly gives him. Now comes the tricky bit of the scene. Does he dare to invite her to have a cup of coffee with him? They could sit in the Whitest of all possible Towers and while away a few hours of this stifling hot night, talking about... well, whatever they want to talk about. Life, for instance, or love, or maybe—I don't know—baseball? Finally the drifter summons the courage to ask her. She hesitates. (Well, come on! What young heroine wouldn't hesitate?) He smiles his most boyish smile. (I'm afraid this is my most boyish smile.) Then the girl— Well, I'm not sure what our heroine would do. What do you think she would do?"

  She looked at him, mentally hefting his intent. Then she asked, "Are you an Englishman?"

  He smiled at her abrupt non sequitur. "Why do you ask?"

  "You sound like Englishmen in the movies."

  "No, I'm not English. But then, you're not Italian. So we're even. Well... I'm even. Even-tempered, even-handed, and even given to playing with words. But you? You, you're not even. You're most definitely odd."

  "What do you mean, odd?"

  "Oh, come on! Accepting an invitation for coffee with a total stranger is pretty goshdarned odd, if you ask me."

  "I didn't say I'd go for coffee with you."

  "Not in words maybe, but... say, which way is this White Tower of yours, anyway?"

  "Back the way we came."

  "Four blocks down and one over, I believe you said."

  They walked down the street side by side, but with plenty of space between them, and he kept up a light trickle of small talk, mostly questions about her. She liked that, because nobody was ever interested in her, in who she was, and what she thought or felt. She told him that she had been in the city only six months, that she had come from a small town upstate, and that she had a job she didn't like all that much. No, she didn't wish she'd stayed in her hometown. Oh sure, she got the blues sometimes, but not bad enough to want to go back there. At the next corner, she turned unexpectedly in the direction of the all-night coffee joint, and their shoulders touched. They both said "Sorry", and they walked on, closer now, but she was careful not to let their shoulders touch again as they approached the White Tower, a block of icy white light in the hot night.

  It was pretty full, considering the late hour. The air-conditioning had attracted people driven off the street by the heat. In the booth next to theirs, a young couple fussed over three kids wearing pajamas and unlaced tennis shoes. The baby slept in the woman's arms, its mouth wetly pressed against her shoulder. The other two made slurping noises with straws stuck into glasses of pale tan crushed ice from which the last bit of cola taste had long ago been sucked. Among the refugees from the heat wave, the boy recognized several night people by the way they hunched defensively over the cups of coffee that represented their right to stay there. They were his sort of people: the flotsam that collects in all-night joints; the losers and the lost; those on the drift, and those who'd been beached; nature's predators, nature's prey.

  Mugs of coffee between them, the boy and the girl talked; and when their talk waned or their thoughts wandered inward, as sometimes they did, they gazed out onto the empty street lit only by the bright splash from their window. Once she saw him examining her reflection in the glass, but when his eyes caught her looking back at him, they flinched away. She felt sure he hadn't had a real chance to see what she looked like out in the darkness and was making a quick appraisal of her reflection. She was young and slim, but she knew she was not pretty. Still, people sometimes said she had nice eyes, and when she examined them in her mirror, she found them, if not exotic or sexy, at least kind and expressive, and they were set off by long, soft lashes... her best feature. She was afraid he was going to compliment her on her eyes, and she was glad when he didn't because saying a girl has nice eyes is an admission she isn't good-looking, something like describing a person with no sense of humor as 'sincere', or saying a really dull girl is a 'good listener'. Her shoulder-length hair was curled in at the ends, forming, with her short bangs, a frame for her face. She had gone out that night in a stiff cotton frock with little bows at the shoulders, a full skirt held out by a rustling crinoline, and a matching bolero jacket... her 'June Allyson dress'.

  Every major film actress had her characteristic makeup, hairdo, and wardrobe that girls imitated, each following the style of her 'favorite movie star': meaning the actress she thought she most closely resembled. For girls with too much face, there was the 'Loretta Young look'; for hard-faced girls, the 'Joan Crawford look'; for skinny-faced girls, there was Ida Lupino; for chubby-faced girls, Mitzi Gaynor or Doris Day; for very plain girls there was always Judy Garland, with her moist-eyed, hitch-in-the-voice earnestness. And for girls who weren't pretty in a showy way, there was June Allyson, who was always nice and kind and understanding, and almost always got the man, even though she wasn't all that sexy.

  "That's a lovely dress," he said with gravity.

  She smiled down at it. "I got all dressed up and went to the movies tonight. I don't know why. I just..." She shrugged.

  "A June Allyson movie?" he asked.

  "Yes. I'd been waiting to see—" Her eyes widened. "How did you know?"

  He slipped into a Bela Lugosi voice. "I know many things, my dear. I have powers beyond those of your ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill, ready-to-wear, off-the-shelf human being."

  "No, come on, really. How did you know I went to a June Allyson movie?"

  He smiled. "Just a lucky guess." Then he popped back into the Lugosi voice, "Or maybe not! Maybe I was lurking outside the movie house, and I followed you onto the bus, stalking my prey!" He shifted to Lionel Barrymore, all wheezy and avuncular, "Now you just listen to me, young lady! You've got to be careful about letting bad boys pick you up and carry you off to well-lit dens, where they ply you with stimulants... like caffeine."

  She laughed. "Well, you're right, anyway. I did go to a June Allyson movie. She's my favorite."

  "No kidding?"

  "It was Woman's World. Have you seen it?"

  "Afraid not."

  "Well, there's these three men who are after this swell job, but only one of them can have it. And their wives are trying to help them get it, and..."

  "...and June Allyson is the nicest of the wives? A small-town girl?"

  "That's right, and she— Wait a minute! You said you haven't seen it."

  "Another lucky guess." Then back into the Lugosi voice. "Or was it? You must never trust bad b
oys, my dear. They may smile and seem harmless, but underneath...? Churning cauldrons of passion!"

  She waved his nonsense away with a flapping motion of her hand: an old-fashioned, small-town, June Allyson gesture. "Why do you call yourself a bad boy?"

  "I never said that," he said, suddenly severe.

  "Sure, you did. You said it twice."

  He stared at her for a moment... then smiled. "Did I really? Well, I guess that makes us a team. I'm the bad one, and you're the odd one. Riffraff, that's what we are. Tell you what: you be riff, and I'll be raff, okay?" Then Amos of Amos 'n' Andy said, "So elucidate me, Missus Riff. What am yo' daily occupational work like?"

  She described her work at a JC Penney's where Weaver Overhead Cash Carriers zinged on wires, bringing money and sales slips up to a central nest suspended from the ceiling, and the change came zinging back down to clerks whom the company didn't trust to handle money. She worked up in the cashier's cage, making change and zinging it back down. "...but most of the stores have modernized and gotten rid of their cash carriers."

  "And what if your store modernizes and gives up Mr Weaver's thingamajig—"

  "Overhead Cash Carrier."

  "...Overhead Cash Carrier. What happens to your job then?"

  "Oh, by then I'll be a qualified secretary. I'm taking shorthand two nights a week. The Gregg Method? And I'm going to take a typing course as soon as I save up enough money. You know what they say: If you can type and take shorthand, you'll never be out of a job."