69 Barrow Street

by Lawrence Block

  Freedom meant being free to do things. Freedom, or at least the sort of freedom he wanted for himself, meant the freedom to love one person and one person alone, to work toward a goal and to live a life that meant something. And, with Susan, he might be able to achieve this sort of freedom.

  It was a cinch he wouldn’t make it without her.

  God, why was he such a weakling? The thought nagged at him that another stronger man might have a better chance with Susan. But he couldn’t even get up the guts to break away from Stella by himself. How in hell could he save Susan when he couldn’t even save himself?

  Disgusted with himself, he paid the check and left a tip on the table. He lit another cigarette and smoked as he walked slowly back to his apartment. He waited in the vestibule, seeing Stella and Maria in the hallway by the apartment door. After they were inside the apartment he opened the door and walked to the staircase and up the stairs to the fourth floor.

  Susan didn’t answer his knock. He tried the door; it was open. Inside on the coffee table there was a note for him explaining that she had to get some work done at the ceramics shop but that she would be back fairly soon and he could wait for her. He sat down in the chair where she always posed and waited.

  He recognized her steps on the stairway less than an hour later and had the door open for her when she came in. She had a smile on her face and her eyes were bright.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “How did the work go?”

  “Very well. The design I’m working on is very tricky, and the first three times I tried it the pot fell. But this time I think it’s going to hold up.”

  They went on talking while she removed her clothing. For the first time she undressed in front of him and he thought to himself that she couldn’t be a lesbian, that if she was there was still a chance for him, that she was so natural about everything she did that she could learn to be natural about sex as well. He looked at her, marveling how each time he saw her body it was like seeing it for the first time, how each time he talked with her he fell in love with her all over again.

  She sat down in the chair without being told and assumed the pose automatically. He removed the rag that covered the painting and began mixing paint on his palette.

  Then he looked at her and stopped what he was doing. He looked long and hard at her, first at her body for only a second and then very carefully at her face.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He started to tell her that nothing was the matter, that he was merely trying to determine how to get the right color for her eyes. But the words didn’t come out.

  “Ralph?”

  He didn’t recognize his own voice when he said: “I love you.”

  She looked at him, still not certain what he was talking about. She waited for him to explain.

  And, because he loved her, because he could never hold anything back from her, he told her. He told her all of it, from the beginning to the end, from Alpha to Omega. He didn’t omit a thing.

  His voice never changed expression while he spoke. His eyes never wavered from hers. The words poured out of him one after the other and she listened in absolute unprotesting silence until he was finished.

  When he stopped talking there was silence that was louder than words. They looked at each other; then her gaze dropped to her feet.

  A small voice said: “It can’t happen, Ralph.”

  He waited for her to say more.

  “I wish this hadn’t happened,” she went on. “I should have known it was too good to be true, the kind of thing we had. We became so close that I should have seen this coming. I guess I didn’t because I didn’t want to.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Don’t love me, Ralph.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “No, of course not. I suppose you’ve been fighting the whole affair too. But I can’t help wishing I could just take your love and turn it off.”

  “Like a faucet?”

  “Like a faucet. But I guess things don’t work out that way.”

  “Not love.”

  “Love.” She spoke the word not bitterly or sarcastically but in a tone totally devoid of expression as if she was trying the word out on her tongue to see how it sounded coming from her lips.

  “Love,” she repeated.

  He hesitated. Then he said: “Susan, don’t you feel anything for me?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Tell me what you feel.”

  She considered for a moment, trying to get the words in the right order. “It’s hard to explain, Ralph. I…well, I like you very much, but that doesn’t describe it. I feel very close to you and I care an awful lot about you and I like to be near you and—”

  She broke off.

  He lit another cigarette. He took one puff of it and expelled the smoke in a rush. Then he watched the cigarette as it rested between his fingers, watching the smoke curl toward the ceiling.

  “I think I’m in love with you, Ralph.”

  His heart sang. But there was something in her tone that made him wait for her to finish.

  She said: “But it’s not the same kind of love, Ralph. I love you and I want to be near you. And I want to talk to you and I want you to talk to me and…and I suppose in a selfish way I want you to love me. It’s selfish of me and not right at all but it’s something I can’t help. I love you, Ralph. I must have known it unconsciously all along; when you told me how you felt I couldn’t dodge it any more. I’m in love with you.

  “But…but I don’t want to make love with you or to have you kiss me or touch me or anything. I don’t want that, and, I mean—”

  She broke off again. He could see tears welling up in the corners of her brown eyes and he sensed the tenseness of her facial muscles as she struggled to keep the tears from flowing down her face.

  “Ralph, do you see what I mean?”

  He nodded.

  “Then you see that it could never work out. Nothing could work out. I love you—but you could never touch me. Our love could never get off the ground.”

  He started to say something but stopped.

  “It’s no use, Ralph.”

  “Susan—”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Susan, we can give it a chance. I’ve already told you that sex isn’t the main thing. It can wait, darling. We can wait with it until you’re ready. And I think you will be ready in time, ready to love me as fully as any woman ever loved any man. But it will take time, probably a great deal of time. There are a whole lot of fears and worries that have to go first.

  “I’m willing to wait, Susan.”

  He could hear the wind outside the window. He could hear the clock ticking in the other room. He could hear Susan breathing very quickly and shallowly.

  She said: “I’m afraid.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “It’s not fair, Ralph. It’s not fair to you.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  She thought for a moment.

  “No,” she said, positively, “I can’t ask anything like that of you. It’s just not fair.”

  “You’re not asking me, darling. I’m asking you.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s too much to expect of any man. Why, it’s possible that I would never be able to love you in a sexual way. We would go on forever and after a little while we’d be making each other miserable. You’d hate me, Ralph.”

  “I couldn’t possibly hate you. No matter what happened, no matter what you did or didn’t do.”

  “That’s not true. You’d keep wanting me and I wouldn’t want you and…and before very long we’d be at each other’s throat constantly. It wouldn’t be good that way, Ralph.”

  “You’ve got to give it a chance.”

  “A chance?”

  He nodded. “You can’t drop things like this. We have to know, darling. This is too important to risk losing it so easily.”

  They fell silent. Outside the wind was b
lowing faster and the sky was getting darker with clouds obscuring the face of the sun. The air grew cooler.

  “Ralph.”

  He looked at her.

  “Come here.”

  He walked to her side. He looked at her, his eyes studying the brown hair, the well-formed breasts, the slender waist. Her hands were still unconsciously arranged over her groin in the pose they had been using, and he wondered if it indicated anything more than that she hadn’t thought to move them. Perhaps, unconsciously, she was protecting herself, keeping her body safe from him by the gesture.

  “Kiss me, Ralph.”

  He didn’t question her. He knelt beside her, his head swimming at being so close to her naked form. He brought his face close to hers and touched her lips with his, gently, tenderly.

  The kiss lasted only an instant. Then he drew away and smiled hesitantly at her.

  “Kiss me the way…the way a man kisses a woman that he’s in love with.”

  He didn’t need encouragement. He kissed her the way he had wanted to kiss her in the first place, the way he had wanted to kiss her for days now. His lips pressed down upon hers and his arms locked around her, pulling them together. He kneeled on the chair and leaned his body against hers. His lips forced hers apart and his tongue slipped into her mouth, seeking, caressing her mouth and tongue.

  The kiss took a long time. Before it ended he felt her go limp and he was unsure whether the limpness was a sign of response or rejection.

  He found out.

  When they broke apart she fell back in the chair and he sat down heavily on the floor at her feet. He looked up into her eyes and she looked down at him and their eyes locked.

  At first her face was expressionless. Then her shoulders sank and her eyes flooded over with the tears she had been holding back so long.

  And he knew, and the knowledge hit him in the head like a poleax.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

  “Yes, there is.”

  “Nothing that’s your fault.”

  “It’s not your fault either.”

  He didn’t say anything. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. Slowly he pulled himself to a standing position and looked down at her once again, trying with his eyes to delve into the girl, to understand precisely what made her tick and what was keeping her from loving him in the same way that he loved her.

  She smiled sadly.

  “You didn’t mind the first time I kissed you.”

  “It was a different sort of a kiss,” she said. “It was almost a…a friendly kiss, Ralph. Not passionate in the least.”

  “But the second time?”

  She shivered.

  “What…bothered you?”

  She leaned back in the chair and let her eyes close. In that position her face looked very relaxed and she seemed to be at peace with the world and entirely at ease. But when she spoke her voice came out in a strangled fashion and the effect of relaxation was shattered.

  “I felt as though…as though you were raping me, Ralph. It’s hard for me to explain it exactly. You were kissing me and your tongue was in my mouth and I felt as though…as though I was being—”

  “Yes?”

  “—well, penetrated. I just couldn’t stand it and I was getting more and more frightened and generally shook up until you stopped.”

  He thought for a minute. “When…when you kiss a woman, is that how you kiss?”

  “More or less.”

  “And have women kissed you like that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then—”

  “There’s a difference, Ralph. Not just in the mechanics of the kiss. Ralph, I think I’m just a lesbian and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.”

  “Don’t say that!”

  “I’m afraid it’s the truth. I’m afraid the reason I’m afraid of you is simply that you’re a man and I’m a freak who only enjoys sex with women. I guess that’s all there is to it, Ralph.”

  “I can’t believe that. There’s too much between us for it to be just that.”

  “But—”

  “It’ll take time,” he said doggedly. “It’ll take a hell of a lot of time, more time than I thought it would at first. But we’ll manage. We love each other.”

  “Yes,” she said. “We love each other.”

  They talked for a minute or two more; then Ralph covered the canvas once again and left. He was in no mood to do any more painting for the rest of the day and he knew better than to push himself once he hit a real snag. It was too easy to foul yourself up completely that way and ruin a painting that was good until then.

  He walked down the stairs again, his feet heavy on the steps. He passed the closed door of his own apartment and hurried out to the street. He wanted to keep moving, to go where nobody knew him and to do pretty much of nothing.

  He was in no mood for people—not for Susan or Stella certainly, not for the moment. The IRT subway let him off at Times Square and he deliberated between getting quietly bombed out of his head or trying to lose himself in a cheap movie. The movie won—drinking didn’t sound too attractive with the hangover he had just gone through, and the movie was also a good deal cheaper.

  He saw a double feature without seeing it. Afterward he remembered very vaguely that one of the films was something about gangsters and starred either George Raft or Jimmy Cagney, but he couldn’t remember for sure which one it was. The other picture was an “Eastern Western”—the saga of Genghis Khan or some such, with people riding around on rabid camels and shooting rifles which, as Ralph remembered, weren’t in such wide distribution at the time of Genghis Khan. But he couldn’t be sure.

  Throughout both movies his eyes stared at the screen while only half seeing it. His mind was elsewhere, wrapped up in the problems he had tried to leave behind him when he walked into the theater. As usual, it didn’t work. He found himself remembering the taste of Susan’s lips when he kissed her—the first time gently, the second time with a passion that had been too much for her.

  The taste of her lips, the clean sweet smell of her naked flesh so close to him, her breasts pressing against his shirtfront. His hands meeting behind her back as he pressed her close. The feel of her bare back under his hands, soft and clean and smooth, slender without being thin. The warm taste inside her mouth, the touch of her tongue.

  Sensory impressions flooded his brain as his mind turned time and time to the kiss and the conversation that followed it. The impressions mingled with the love he felt for her and killed whatever interest the two movies might have held for him.

  He didn’t like movies too much to begin with, generally preferring a paperback book to even a top-notch picture. There was one great thing for both reading and looking at paintings—you could do them on your own time and pace yourself as you pleased. If you were a fast reader you could read quickly; if you felt like it you could slow down. But speeding up a movie or playing a 33-rpm record at 78 didn’t work out.

  He left the theatre when the second picture ended and found his way to an inexpensive restaurant on 47th Street. He ate a meal without tasting it and smoked a cigarette without even realizing that he had lighted one. Finally he wandered to the Museum of Modern Art on Fifth Avenue and spent several hours studying some of his favorite paintings.

  Modigliani had always been his favorite painter—the feeling and warmth in his nudes and portraits of men and women with long necks and narrow heads communicated itself strongly to him. As he stood for a long time in front of the portrait of the Young Girl with Braids he was reminded vaguely of Susan. Both shared the same quality of innocence in the eyes and around the mouth.

  He thought about Modigliani and the kind of life the man had led. Sickly as a child, he moved to Paris while in his early twenties and seemed determined to kill himself as quickly as possible. He drank almost constantly; when he wasn’t drinking he was smoking opium or hashish or experimenting with still stronger drugs.


  The artist’s motto had been “Une vie breve mais intense”—a short life but an intense one. That was a perfect description of what he achieved, contracting tuberculosis and dying in his mid-thirties. And then his mistress Jeanne Hebuterne had thrown herself from the balcony of her father’s house to join him in death.

  He shook his head. Compared to that, his own life seemed almost sane. But he knew that he was walking a tightrope and could fall either way at any moment. If he lost Susan he was afraid to think what would happen to him. He knew for a fact that he would never paint again. He would pack up his paints and brushes and canvases and chuck them in the nearest trashcan. And he would probably start hitting the bottle fairly regularly, drifting deeper and deeper into the life of perversion and depravity that Stella represented.

  For a moment he remembered the night before when he had returned to listen to Stella’s taunts. He hoped again that Stella would leave Susan alone. Even if he himself couldn’t have her, the girl deserved a lot better deal than Stella would hand her.

  But what an animal he himself had turned to last night! That’s what would happen to him if he lost the girl; he was sure of it, sure that he would react by throwing up everything and striking back the only way he knew how.

  At nine o’clock he left the museum and wandered back toward Times Square. He didn’t want to go back to Barrow Street, not now. He couldn’t face either of the two women who might be waiting for him.

  Instead he took a room for the night at a run-down hotel on 47th Street, paying in advance. The room was a rat-trap—a small single bed, about a foot of space on each side of the bed, the bathroom down the hall, the room’s window opening out on a brick wall.

  But it was a place to sleep, a place to be alone. That was all he wanted for the time being.

  Chapter Eight

  SUSAN STARED AT THE CLOSED DOOR for a long time after he left her. Her mind was a jumble of confused thoughts and half-thoughts, a collection of random whirling notions, a hodgepodge of feelings and lusts and drives and inhibitions all rolled together. She didn’t know for sure how she felt or what she wanted.