by Robert Lowry
And now my life, she thought, is mostly fear. Fear of this terrible noisy apartment, of this street of warehouses and tough Italian boys and drab bars, of everything the Village has become. . . . For it had changed from the sunny leisurely place she’d hurried to after college, when she’d found a job in an art store on Eighth Street and spent her nights painting. She’d met Ric during her first year—slender, sensitive Ric who’d wanted so badly to be a writer—and they’d married as a kind of lark after living together for seven months. Yes, it had most certainly changed since those days.
It was the age of the groups on the streets late at night that disturbed her most. The boys who stood by the all-night hamburger stand at the subway entrance on Sixth Avenue couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen, and some seemed even younger. They were gathered there at twelve noon and they were still there at midnight. These were faces that had never seen the war, but that came from some more awful evil. One boy especially terrified her. He was dressed in a herringbone zoot-suit, from the pegged bottoms of which showed pointed-toed, light tan shoes. A gold pin clutched the collar of his striped shirt in tight, and out of the white scarf tucked about his throat rose a skinny neck with a thick vein throbbing in it, topped by a bony loose-lipped face with tiny light-blue eyes and sandy hair slicked back from his nobby forehead with pomade. A lump-nosed, long-upper-lipped face marked everywhere with wrinkles: across the forehead, around the eyes, down both sides of the mouth, creasing the cheeks. His shorter companions were also types—squarefaced boys with pimply foreheads, dressed in dark striped suits; skeleton-headed youths, like dwarfs not boys, who nurtured the few hairs of a mustache under their noses. But all of these seemed only props around him. Or perhaps the real reason he stood out so was because of his color: he was a light green.
They seemed to do nothing but wait—morning, noon and night. What they were waiting for was not obvious. Their eyes followed her when she went into the subway station on her way uptown to see an art show, and their eyes were still there expecting her return. She felt that of all the people she came in contact with, only this small crew of nervous chain-swinging idlers could have given an accurate account of her affairs. . . .
She did her best to resume the only life she could believe in now. The book factory shut down at 1 A.M., so she often worked at night. She wore a sleep mask to keep out the light if she went to bed at five or six in the morning, and she almost never got up before one. Then she ate and ventured out into the bitter street for a look at Washington Square, or a cup of coffee, or to visit a friend.
So few of the people she’d known before the war were still here, and the lives of these were completely changed. Jack Borens, the painter, was just out of the Army and practically bald. His wife, who’d written a much-publicized novel, was in an insane asylum, and he spent most of his time sitting around the Waldorf or Minetta’s Tavern, talking about going to Paris to study on the GI Bill of Rights. Nan French, a slender olive-skinned girl with bangs who lived on an allowance and talked of painting someday (she was thirty-three though, and she only sketched when she was in a roomful of people, her talent connecting up with some form of exhibitionism in herself)—Nan was being analyzed and had taken to confessing to her friends as glibly as she did to her doctor. Plump little Alicia Volkhausen had made money working in a defense plant during the war and recently had opened a costume-jewelry shop off Sheridan Square with her savings. Margaret saw them now and then, and went to their parties or had them over to see her work and talk. But actually she knew that her feeling for the Village, for her friends, and even for painting was no longer the same. It was as if her connection with these things had been severed by the war and that this winter, though she’d returned to them, they lacked all reality. Reality, the spirit alive in the world that animated and influenced everything, was something else now—no longer artistic activity, no longer friendship, but a kind of tension.
She couldn’t have said definitely what it was that distracted her so. But she knew it had to do in some way with the crude lettering WORLD OF SLOBS splashed in white paint by an anonymous commentator on the wall of the apartment house up at the corner; with the aggressive unfriendliness of clerks in stores and waiters in restaurants; with the teen-agers who spent their days and nights on the street not for fun, not to shout and scream and tease girls as teen-agers before the war had done, but to watch with intense hateful eyes, to plot, and to pose as plotters. The terror of the streets got into her paintings—they became wilder, more undisciplined. To rid herself of him she tried painting the face of the green loose-lipped boy. But this only added to her terror, for she couldn’t resolve for herself what he really was, what he really represented in the world, what he and his companions would come to.
She was afraid at night and she felt she couldn’t trust the bolt on the door. But Mr. T. Robini, whom she brought up to look at it, wouldn’t listen to her. “Why that a good bolt,” he said, in spite of his original promise to replace it. “You no be afraid with that bolt, I fix it myself.” She was nervous about the fire-escape which ran down past her bedroom, and she kept the window leading out onto it locked. What would she do, she wondered, if somebody did break into her miserable apartment—one of those youths who watched her so closely day and night? Surely nobody would ever hear her with the rumbling of the printing presses for background. No one would hear, no one would find her for days. . . .
She could have a lover, she thought. She could find someone to live with her. But that would have to be pretty coldblooded, for she didn’t feel up to casing for anyone. And actually there was no one around who interested her in the slightest. Jack Borens perhaps—but she’d known him too long, there could be no love with him. She had, she thought, known everyone too long—and under different circumstances—so that these old acquaintances seemed only friends of another self. As for living with a girl—she’d had enough of that the months she’d spent with Alma. She lived a special kind of life, a life built around her painting, and it was foolish to think that she could change now. She was too old to change. She was thirty.
When precisely was it that the terrible boy began to speak to her? Certainly he’d picked her out of all the people milling around the subway entrance from the first day she’d moved here. But it must have been sometime later, the second week anyhow, that she began to hear his squeaky voice call after her, often not until she’d reached the bottom of the subway stairs almost out of his sight. And he always called her by the same name—she’d misunderstood it at first.
“Hey, Lucy.”
She’d made that out finally. Her first idea was that he said “juicy”—which had utterly confused her. But perhaps Lucy was just as cryptic.
At home, if she was working in the afternoon, she would sometimes stop and lie on the bed to think of him and his sinister little gang. Could there be, she wondered, some connection between us I’m not conscious of? Could he know me from somewhere—from New Mexico or from Illinois? No, she was certain she’d never seen him before. And she was certain also that he’d never been anywhere but here. She felt almost that he’d been born there in that doorway—that he’d been the result of an assault on the street nearby and deposited there by the subway entrance to spend his life as some sort of awful reminder. . . . What was she thinking? It was really all too ridiculous. She’d have to work harder and forget such foolishness. It comes from living alone, she thought. And yet there’s no other way of life for me. I’ve had my love, there’s nothing important left now but work.
But she couldn’t work. When she tried to go on with her painting, something became excited in her, a delicious terror made her hands tremble, her face in the cold apartment grew warm. Is he there now? she wondered. Is he always there? Does he have no home? And then the idea came to her: He’s thinking of me at this moment too, he’s only waiting for me to come.
She had to sit down then, to smoke, to get herself under control. She tried to repulse the rush of ideas she had about the greenfaced b
oy, but instead they came faster than ever, and finally she gave in completely to her terror. Why was he waiting for her?
In the end she would have to go out on the street, not with the intention of venturing near the subway entrance but really only to flee from herself and her thoughts. She went over to Washington Square and watched the pigeons or talked to friends around the fountain. But always, before she came home, she found herself making excuses to go near the hamburger stand. Warmed with a cup of coffee at the Waldorf, she passed by on the other side of Sixth Avenue, trying to keep her eyes straight ahead but not able to avoid glancing over. And he seldom failed her, he was there, leaning against one of the buildings with his friends around him, a smirk on his repulsive face.
“Hey, Lucy.”
I don’t know him, she kept telling herself. And he can’t possibly know me. . . . Then what was it?
She had eaten dinner at Alma’s that Saturday night. Between nine and nine-thirty at least ten people, among them Jack Borens, had come in (it was always amazing how many people Alma dared cram into that little room) and they all sat around drinking highballs and talking. Alma was unimaginative enough to see that only painters were invited, so that most of the conversation was predictable—the current shows, the possibility of getting to Paris, Picasso, who had sold what for how much, the apartment shortage in the Village. . . . She had already downed six drinks and was telling herself how senseless it would be to stay much longer among people she didn’t really care about, when, during a lull in the little hubbub of talk in the room, she heard her own voice say: “I wonder if the rest of you feel as I do about the streets these days?”
She realized immediately that she’d had too much to drink, but she couldn’t help trying to excuse her original statement by adding: “I mean the terror in the streets. . . . Aren’t any of you afraid to go out alone?” Her heart was pounding. Though she realized that everyone in the room was staring at her in amazement, she didn’t try to hold back. “I really can’t see how you can sit around talking so gaily about life when life is like it is.”
“Well, how is life?” It was a pudgy frecklefaced girl with an unfortunate nose who was trying to be flip.
“I’m sure that Margaret means a good deal more than she’s saying——” Jack Borens began.
She got up. She’d said almost nothing all evening and now she was talking like this. “I think I’d, better go.” She found her coat and umbrella. “I’ve had a lovely time, Alma.”
How amazed they must all have been to see her walk out like that! Well, she really didn’t care. She was drunk and she’d spoken what was in her mind—not that she didn’t know how foolish it had sounded in words.
She was just opening the door to the street when she heard Jack call to her. “It’s stopped raining,” he said, catching up. “I’m glad you gave me an excuse to leave. Should we grab a bite to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.” They walked a while in silence before she said, “I simply can’t bear myself when I’m drunk. I always begin to say such ridiculous things.” But she was waiting for his answer—to see whether he’d understood something of what she’d meant.
“Oh, we all say ridiculous things.”
She felt utterly alone. She clenched her hands to try to keep from crying, but the tears came anyway. He wasn’t looking at her—his eyes were far out ahead.
They crossed Sixth Avenue and turned left. Almost no one was around—it must be at least two o’clock. But in a moment they’d pass the hamburger stand; she could see the crowd of boys from here. She managed to blow her nose and get the tears wiped away without his noticing.
“Do you see them?” she asked. “That’s what I mean—the gangs hanging around in the street at all hours, the reports in the papers of terrible things happening to people. Rapes, girls cut in two. All the terror that the world seems to be now. When I lived here before the war it wasn’t like this at all.”
They were almost there. . . .
“I guess it’s all the way you look at it,” Jack said. “Far as I’m concerned, life has just been one big bore since I got out of the army.”
Yes, he was there—he was looking at her. He wouldn’t dare say anything now, with Jack here. But he was twirling the chain, she thought she saw a smile on that wide loose mouth.
When Jack and she reached her street she stopped. “Don’t go out of your way—I can get home all right.”
“It’s no trouble——”
“No, it’s only a few steps, Jack. Goodnight.”
She watched him disappearing down Bleecker Street, and when she was sure he wouldn’t look around she turned and walked quickly back along the avenue. She didn’t even glance at the boys as she passed them—she simply turned into the hamburger stand and took a stool near the door.
“Just a cup of coffee, please.”
She’d put down the money and was lifting the cup to her mouth when the boys from outside came in. Her heart almost stopped—there were empty seats on both sides of her and they were taking them. On her left a stubby youth was sitting himself down, and on her right——
She put the cup down with a clatter. It was he—he was looking at her. They undoubtedly knew where she lived, the floor, the apartment number. They knew about the fire-escape running past her window, the weak bolt on the door, the fact that she lived alone. And he was looking at her, the green lumpnosed boy. But he wouldn’t speak. They’d been waiting for a night like this . . . when she was drunk . . . so drunk that she’d been mad enough to come here to make sure of her suspicions. . . . She noticed that the hair pomade he wore had run down on his forehead.
She got up, hurried out to the street.
“Hey!”
Glancing back, she saw him silhouetted in the bright doorway and she began to run . . . footsteps behind her . . . coming faster. No one in her path, the avenue deserted——Turning down her own street, she reached her building at last and ran into the dim hall. Bang on these doors! she thought—yet she didn’t, she kept on running, up the four flights of stairs, down the hall to her own door——
Fumbling with the lock, she heard him coming. She got it opened and ran in and threw the bolt. Then she went into the bedroom and made sure the window was locked.
She’d just returned to the kitchen to turn off the light when the rap came. Tap-tap-tap. She stood frozen; each hair on her head pricked into her scalp.
She waited in terrible agitation. Even when she heard his footsteps going away she found herself physically unable to move. At last she sat down on a. chair. She felt that she’d come close to dying and had miraculously escaped.
There couldn’t be any excuses now, she’d have to leave. Tomorrow she’d get a second-hand dealer up here and sell the furniture, then she’d buy a train ticket back to New Mexico. She had had her fill of what the world had become, she’d go back there and live her life out alone . . .
After an hour she found the courage to fix herself a drink. But alcohol had no effect on her. It was as if the terror she’d been experiencing these past weeks had made her incapable of reacting normally to anything.
When the morning light began filtering through the kitchen window she went exhausted to bed. She didn’t use the mask. The last thought in her head was surprise at being able to sleep after all she’d been through. . . .
She awoke with the winter sun shining in her eyes. For a long while she didn’t attempt to move but lay there letting the events of last night tumble haphazardly through her mind. Her running through the streets and coming back here, to this grim place which she herself considered unsafe, seemed completely mad. Why hadn’t she turned screaming into the first café?
It’s almost as if I went there to tempt him to follow me, she thought, then led him back here to make sure he’d have a secluded spot to do his crime.
The idea seemed so close to the truth it frightened her. She got up and went into the kitchen. The light there was still burning and she turned it off.
My umbrella! She
went into the other room to look—but even as she did so she knew she’d left it under the counter when she fled from the hamburger stand.
Well, it didn’t matter. It could stay there; she would certainly never subject herself to going back there for it. Now she had to hurry, it was late in the afternoon already. She’d eat out and then get the second-hand man.
She dressed, found the ten dollars she’d hidden in a shoe, and returned to the kitchen. She had trouble withdrawing the bolt—it must be rusty—but finally it worked. She opened the door—and stood there unbelievingly.
Swinging, swinging by its strap from the outside doorknob, the cheap red umbrella appeared before her—as real as her most awful fears. She grabbed it up in both hands, slammed the door shut again. An hysterical laughter broke from her throat, but when she sat down on the chair, still clutching the umbrella tightly, her eyes were blurred with the tears of an emotion she’d never known before. She couldn’t take her gaze from it—this single concrete key to herself that the world had left as a token at her door.
