I stopped. “Look, I don’t want to be difficult. Let’s just change the subject. Shall we?”
She gave me a hurt look. “Of course, Kyle.”
When the street lights went on, we were near the neighborhood shopping center. We had a coke in a booth in the drugstore. She sat across from me. The counter was packed with high-school kids. I looked across at Jo Anne. I had been thinking, all along, that she looked exactly the way she had in high school. I saw that I was wrong. Jo Anne didn’t look like any high-school kid. Not with those tiny parentheses at the corners of her mouth. Not with the little parchment areas under her blue eyes. Not with the two horizontal wrinkles across her throat. Not with the look of the veins on the backs of her hands.
“Now you’re looking at me that way again,” she said, smiling.
“That’s my bank-teller expression. Always size up the customer.”
She leaned toward me, her eyes wide. “Oh, Kyle. I love you so!”
“You’re going to prove that in a New York hotel.”
The blush moved up her throat and across her cheeks. “I was thinking about that, Kyle. Won’t two weeks like that be dreadfully expensive?”
“We’ve been planning on it a long time. Since before the war.”
“But babies are so expensive. And they won’t let me work in the office after the fifth month. I was talking to Alice Rand the other day. She says you can rent a wonderful camp on Blue Mountain Lake for only—”
“We’re going to New York the way we planned it!” I said, and it came out louder than I had expected.
Her lips compressed tightly. “All right, Kyle. Whatever you say.”
“Don’t be sore.”
“Am I supposed to like it when you shout at me?”
“I wasn’t aware of shouting.”
Her face softened. She leaned toward me again. “Oh, Kyle, darling! We shouldn’t quarrel. Not over a thing like a honeymoon. Should we?”
“It is sort of silly, isn’t it?” Her blue eyes smiled. Open, honest blue eyes. Quite different from eyes of a brown so dark that it was difficult to see where iris stopped and pupil started.
We walked slowly back through the night, away from the neon of the shopping center. Big evening. Forty cents total investment. Twenty for bus fare, a dime for the ice cream, a dime for the Cokes. Real riotous living. Kids raced across the shadowed lawns, leaping the hedges. “You’re out!” “I am not!” “You are so!” “I’m not!” “You are!” “Mamma! Tommy’s not being fair!” “You children play nicely, or you’re going to have to come to bed.”
We went up onto the porch. Through a gap between shade and window frame I could see the glaring white of the TV screen. We sat on the canvas cushions of the swing.
“I suppose,” Jo Anne said, “that it’s natural for us to get a little irritable with each other. The time left is so short. And we’ve waited so long. Just nervousness, I guess.”
“Probably it,” I said.
The TV comedian, knocking himself out in the living room, was an explosive counterpoint to our low-toned conversation.
“It will be a good marriage, Kyle. We like the same things, think the same way.”
“Trying to talk me into it, honey?” I asked her teasingly.
She sneezed so hard that she shook the couch. “Damn!” she said, and blew her nose on a wad of Kleenex.
“Better stay home tomorrow and get rid of that cold.”
“I’ll see how I feel in the morning.”
I slid my arm around her shoulders, tilted her chin up with my free hand. “Don’t, Kyle! You’ll catch my bugs.”
But it was important for me to kiss her. It was important that I make her stir me up. Emily Rudolph stood, quiet and amused, in the back of my mind, and she was watching me. She was looking down at my drab little life and promising an exciting tangent, a special deviation from the pattern I had set myself. And the thought of such a tangent excited me. Excitement had to be smothered by excitement of another kind. And my Jo Anne was there on the dark porch beside me.
“I’ll risk it,” I said, and pressed my mouth down hard on hers. We had grown into the cautious habit of keeping our kisses casual. I had no intention of keeping this one casual. Emily Rudolph still watched me. I was aware of her watching me. She seemed to be telling me that her victory over me was an astonishingly easy one because I knew this girl I was kissing far too well. There was no mystery left in Jo Anne. I knew her so well and had waited so long that when at last I had her, it would be something so long anticipated as to become boring before the accomplishment.
With a strange coolness and objectivity I kissed Jo Anne, every sense alert to her reactions. I forced her lips apart and felt the new quickness of her breathing. Her fingertips were sticky-warm, but lax at the back of my neck. I undid a few buttons of the cardigan and she sensed what I was doing, caught my wrist, murmured against my mouth in a protesting way. She pushed my hand away, but I brought it back quickly, slid it through the gap in the front of the cardigan. Still I was cold, inquisitive, objective. When the roundness of breast-warmed nylon filled my hand to overflowing, I felt her stop breathing. She was utterly still and then she murmured against my lips in a different way and with one hand she forced my hand harder against her breast. With her other hand she pulled my head down harder so that the pressure of her lips became bruising. She was trembling.
And I could not lose myself. A tiny part of my mind was faintly contemptuous, condescending. I took my hand from her breast, put it firmly on her knee, ran it with slow hard pressure up under the wool skirt, along the rounded outside line of her thigh. Her trembling grew more intense. I stroked her thigh and she made a tiny moan.
And suddenly something twisted convulsively in my brain. Reality was gone and now this was Emily Rudolph in my arms on the dark porch. Though I could not see her eyes, I knew they were wide, mocking, wise.
In that crazy moment, I turned Jo Anne and forced her back onto the couch, hearing the faint tearing sound of wool.
She cried out and the crazy moment was gone. Laughter came from the TV studio audience in hard, prolonged bursts. I walked over to the steps. When I turned I saw that she was standing with her back to me. By the motion of her arms I knew she was buttoning the cardigan. She turned and braced her hips against the porch railing, her arms folded across her breasts.
“Kyle,” she said softly. “Oh, Kyle.”
“I know. Not when there’s so little time to wait.”
“Why do you sound so hateful when you say that? You tore my skirt, Kyle.”
“Maybe we waited too long.”
“If you stopped wanting me, Kyle, that would mean we waited too long.”
And I couldn’t tell her that in some funny way I had stopped wanting her, that all the wanting had somehow been diverted all at once, as though an earthquake had changed the course of a river. I couldn’t tell her that I had lost control only when I had imagined that she was a girl to whom I had talked for not more than twenty seconds, a girl whom I had seen but once. It didn’t make sense. Not to me. And it wouldn’t to her.
“I guess you’re right,” I said, dulled now, apathetic, anxious only to go home and fall into the forgetfulness of sleep. I looked at her. She was a good girl. Good and sweet and generous and loyal. What more did I want? Or maybe I had suddenly got weary of goodness and sweetness and loyalty and generosity.
“I’m so shaky I can hardly stand up,” she whispered.
“We can wait,” I said.
“Oh, I know, Kyle. Say, you’re going to miss your bus!”
“Tell the folks good night,” I said. I tilted her chin up and kissed her and told her I loved her and almost believed it myself. I walked down the dark sidewalk and looked back, and though I could not see her, I knew she still stood there, watching me walk away, and I knew that my actions had puzzled her.
I had a five-minute wait for the bus. I had my token in my hand. And then when I saw it coming, I pocketed the token and turned away.
I walked the three full miles to my place. I took long strides and walked as fast as I could.
The night does funny things to your imagination. I thought of Emily Rudolph as a dark whirlpool. I was caught in a current that was dragging me toward the funnel-shaped heart of the whirlpool.
And I laughed at myself. This was stupid. Take a look at a girl with an exciting body and wise eyes, and your tongue starts to hang out, Cameron. Tomorrow she’ll be just another girl, and everything will be fine between you and Jo Anne. It’s just spring. That’s all. A touch of spring fever. In the spring you get restless and discontented.
I took a long shower and went to bed. I tried to laugh at myself again. Marriage to Jo Anne was inevitableand an attractive prospect. She certainly wouldn’t be a cold bride. And then I had to dream of Emily. It woke me up. She was standing at the top of an enormous staircase, beckoning to me with one slim crooked finger. And I was running up the stairs until I thought my heart would crack in two. And running up the stairs became a compulsive rhythm and she wore nothing but white satin tights with a black doorway embroidered on them and the black doorway swung open and I was flung awake in that moment into a jaded nastiness.
Chapter Three
All day Thursday I thought of the girl working upstairs. I thought of the dark head bent over the work, of the prancing nimble fingers, of the measured quality of her smile. There had been no good reason for her to cover me with Limebright. He had no authority over me, but when he got down on you, he could be as venomous as a wasp.
“Get a look at Emily yet?” Sam Grinter asked, during a lull.
“Uh-huh.”
“Nice little package, isn’t it? So prim and quiet and demure. She’s not kidding anybody, Kyle. All she has to do is walk and it’s like she was picketing the place carrying a big sign with just one word on it. Or maybe even two.”
I stared at him. “You think so?”
“Think so! If Limebright was a man instead of a little pansy, he would have seen when he interviewed her that a thing like that spells trouble in any bank.”
“I think you’re wrong, Sam,” I said.
“Kid, I’ve been around fifty-two years. I’ve seen ’em like that before. When you see ’em walk as though they were trying to hold a silver dollar between their knees, you take my word for it, if you can get next to it, you’ll get yourself the best …”
A man coming up to his window stopped the conversation. I was glad it was stopped. I didn’t want to hear the rest of it. I was sorry I had heard as much as I had. I didn’t want Sam dirtying her with words like that.
But while I was sitting by myself on the bench out by the lockers, eating my lunch, Sam came out and got his lunch out of his locker. He sat down with a heavy sigh. As he opened the black japanned lunch box he said, “Had to go check something with Limebright. Got another look at that item. Wish I was young and single.”
“What would you do?”
“When I was young and single, I was also stupid. Some character said that youth is a fine thing, but it’s wasted on the young. That little girl is new in town. She’s living at the YWCA. Now the YWCA, as even you probably know, is pretty devoid of opportunity. Those other girls aren’t going to help her find a place. You can tell that by the way they look at her, and by the way they stop talking when she comes around. Now you got a perfect pitch. That rat hole you live in isn’t expensive. I’d jump in there quick before some other joker thinks of an angle. Tell her you’re getting married and vacating the apartment this summer. Maybe she’d like a look at it. But I’d set the scene first. Cocktails for two. Some mood music on the record player. Take her there right from work, like tomorrow. That gives you tonight to get the place shined up. Better contact her today, though. So she’ll have tomorrow open. And look. Don’t be like I was at your age. I was a damn fool. I used to hint around and sort of ask them. Then they always say no. Just take it for granted that the answer is yes. I mean, you don’t have to be rough. Just positive.”
I got my chance a little after two when a woman named Mrs. Marsh wanted her balance figure. “Cameron speaking. Current balance, please, on Mrs. Marsh, Katherine A.”
“One moment, please.”
She gave me the figure. I wrote it down, pushed it under the grille, and said, before she could hang up, “Miss Rudolph, I have some information you might be interested in. Will you be free right after work tomorrow?”
“Yes, but …”
“This is just an apartment I thought you might like.”
Mrs. Katherine A. Marsh spoke in a terrible voice. “Young man, this figure is incorrect. It is twelve dollars and twenty cents too low.”
“Miss Rudolph. Mrs. Marsh questions the balance. Could you please bring down the card and the check file?”
I hung up. Mrs. Marsh tried to stab me through the grille with the feather on her hat. “I have been banking here for sixteen years and you people consistently–”
“I’m certain we can find the discrepancy when we check your stubs against the card, Mrs. Marsh. The girl will be right down with it.”
Emily Rudolph pulled open the wire door at the back of my cage. Her face was expressionless. Her spicy scent seemed to fill the cage. Today her dress was dark green, fitted tightly at the waist, full across the bodice, with flaring skirt.
“Thank you,” I said. “Please wait. This will only take a moment.”
I checked the stubs against the card. I found a check for eleven-eighty for which there was no corresponding stub. I leafed through the cancelled checks and found it. It was a counter check.
“Oh, dear!” Mrs. Marsh said, blushing. “So stupid of me. I forgot that …”
“Happens to everybody. And the forty cents is the charge against your account this month.”
Mrs. Marsh scurried away, still blushing. I handed the card and checks back to Emily.
“Side door tomorrow?” I asked.
Mockery was something that moved darkly behind her eyes. “You’re very kind.”
“It’s a date, then.”
“To look at an apartment.”
I was watching her walk away when a customer started clacking a coin against the counter in front of my window.
“Nice going,” Sam Grinter said, as I turned to take care of the customer.
The next morning the alarm got me up an hour earlier than usual. I spent the extra hour making the place look as decent as possible. The newly purchased bottles of gin and vermouth were on the shelf of the tiny kitchenette. I put them out of sight. I had separated what seemed to be the right sort of music. The place still looked dark, faintly squalid. Daylight never came directly into it. The windows faced the opposite wall of a narrow air well. The big advantage was that the rental came well within the means of a single girl on the sort of money banks pay.
At four o’clock, after an hour of work, I found, to my dismay, that I had a foul-up. Unless I could find it fast, Emily was going to come out at five, stand around a few minutes, and then go home. Sam saw me sweating. He said, “Get it fixed for tonight?”
“Yes, and now I can’t find …”
“Wait until I ditch my drawer, and I’ll see if I can help.”
He came back and we started applying the standard error-finding formulas to the differential between cash and paper total. It turned out to be a transposition. Sam located it. I’d written $981.30 on a cash deposit of $918.30. So I was able to lock the drawer at quarter of five, just five minutes after Paul Raddmann.
Sam gave me a lewd grin. “I helped you, so I get a play-by-play description, Kyle. Even vicarious pleasures are not beneath me these days.”
One thing I hadn’t planned on was just how conspicuous this meeting was going to be. When you spend your whole life, except for the war years, in a city of two hundred thousand, you get to know a lot of people. And though the First Citizens’ National Bank is a big place, it is sort of like a club. Everybody knows everybody. For example, I knew that there would be a collection taken up for a weddin
g present for me and Jo Anne, and maybe a little raise in pay to go along with it.
So at five o’clock, as I stood outside the side entrance of the bank, I knew some of the fellows who were also waiting for girls to come out. When the girls started to come out they spotted me at once. It made me feel uneasy. They’d seen me talking to Emily Rudolph by the water fountain, and they could add two and two and get seven most of the time.
Jo Anne had come to bank picnics and parties with me, and they knew her, and some of them had been in school with both of us. I felt curiously naked standing there waiting for the new girl. Just as I decided that it would be smarter to go across the street and wait at the soda fountain, she came out in her green dress. She wore a little green knit hat like a helmet, and the hat matched the dress.
We met there on the sidewalk and beyond her I saw two of the girls, heading for the bus stop, turn and stare back at us. In the bright daylight she looked more pale than ever, and her skin was so transparent that at the temple I could see tiny blue veins like a geography-book map of a little river system.
“It’s within walking distance,” I said. “Five short blocks. We can talk on the way. You don’t mind walking?”
I was anxious to get her out of there. “I walk a great deal,” she said in that controlled tone.
As we waited, side by side, for the light, I glanced at her face. She was staring straight ahead. Jo Anne’s head comes to the tip of my nose. Even though she was wearing low heels, Emily’s shoulders were only two inches below mine. That made her a tall girl. Taller than I had realized.
“This may seem a bit odd, Miss Rudolph.”
“What made you think I was looking for a place?”
“Mr. Grinter told me you are living at the YW. That means you have to eat out. I just guessed that you were probably looking around.”
We crossed with the green light. “Then what is odd?”
“I’m being married when I get my vacation this summer. This is my apartment I thought you might be interested in.”
“Why?”
“It’s a bargain. As long as I’m vacating it, I might as well pass it along to someone I know.”
Weep for Me Page 3
