Rock Island Line

by David Rhodes

  “Why don’t you tell me what you want,” he said a little too loudly, “and maybe I can attract some attention.” He laughed as though what he’d said was partially a good-natured joke about the restaurant, and drank from his black coffee, though he didn’t like it except almost white with cream. She smiled back and his heart just stopped altogether, like the racing wheels of a buggy locked tight with a brake.

  “That’s sweet of you,” she said. “Why don’t you just see if you can get me what you have—the same kind of rolls. They look so good.” Her eyes flashed like black, wet stones.

  “Over here,” said July in his selling voice. “We’ll have two more rolls here—the same kind, and a cup of coffee.” He tossed a dollar bill on the counter in the manner of Franklin Carroll. His change was returned with the order, but both were laid down unpleasantly, the coffee spilling a little over the top and down into the saucer.

  “Must be early in the morning,” he said to her, proud of how much control he was having over his voice.

  “Must be,” she said coldly, then softened the wrinkles in her forehead, smiled politely at July and began drinking her coffee black.

  Wow! thought July. Wow!

  “It was a nice sunrise this morning,” he said, measuring his bites to coincide with hers so they would be leaving together.

  “I didn’t see it,” she said. Again the coldness—almost hostility—but she realized it and looked at him to make up for it, adding apologetically, “I don’t usually get up that early. Just naturally lazy, I guess.”

  They laughed.

  “Of course,” he continued the thought, “I mean, aren’t we all? I mean, what I usually think is if I watch it come up I should be asleep before it gets dark—sort of to pay myself back.” He laughed and she smiled, then turned away and resumed eating her remaining roll, each bite a delight to July because he’d paid for it. He gulped his own down whenever he noticed he was getting behind.

  “How about something else?” he asked, as she was finishing her coffee.

  “No, really, thank you. I must be going.” She picked up her bag and walked out. July hurried behind her and got to the door first and opened it for her. Everyone seemed to be watching them.

  “Say, don’t run away. I mean, I haven’t come upon anything like you in a long time—and it’d be a shame to lose you so early in the morning.”

  “You’ll get over it,” she said—the coldness beginning to rise again. But again she apologized for it. “Say, I really did appreciate the breakfast, and you’re sweet, but I must be going or I’ll be late for school, and I’ve already missed too many days this semester.”

  “Oh. School,” said July and fell to walking silently beside her.

  “We could go to a movie,” he said, after several blocks.

  “No. Look, maybe some other time. I really have to go, and you better not walk me any further or you could cause trouble for me—really, I mean it.”

  “OK, sure. Some other time . . .”

  “That’s right.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime if we happen to meet—”

  “Oh no . . . when?” He was trying to laugh, but there was a sickening feeling in his stomach which was making it harder. He thought he could see the beginning of the end. He wondered what kind of trouble she could be talking about.

  “All right. You don’t give up, do you? Just once. We’ll go out just once—and don’t get any ideas. I’ve got a feeling I’m way too old for you . . . but you are nice, so tonight—”

  “What time? Tell me where you live—tell me your name—give me your phone number—I’m about seventeen.”

  “Come on, that can’t be true. I’m not even that old. Really, I’ve got to go. I’ll meet you right here at seven thirty tonight. My name’s Charlotte. You don’t need to know anything else. I wouldn’t ever want you calling me or coming over to my house. Now I have to go.” July couldn’t help but look very sad. She touched his arm. “Really, I’ll come. And thank you for breakfast.” Then she left.

  The rest of that morning and afternoon was composed of the longest minutes July had ever been through. Each one was so stretched out that whole dreams could fit into them. How many times had he resolved to himself that she would never come? The cut about him not being almost seventeen dried up his soul. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything. He refused even to talk to Butch about it, and his little cement room, which just the day before had been perfectly fine, felt like a slum and shamed him. Worries of personal inadequacy beset him.

  At a quarter to seven he began to wait, although across the street. What had been tempered with better emotions was now pure fear. At seven thirty (according to the clock in the drugstore) he crossed the street. She hadn’t come. Of course, he thought. All along I knew she wouldn’t show. As he stood in the appointed place, his pride dangling from him by a string, several boys he knew yelled at him from out of a car and he waved, hoping they wouldn’t stop. They didn’t, but tossed out a half-empty can of beer at him. He jumped back to avoid getting wet and flipped the bird at them, laughing. They returned it, and raced on down the street.

  When he saw her round the corner a block away, he couldn’t believe it. From that far away her long legs and small waist were evident. Wow, he thought. Someone yelled an obscenity at her from a moving car, but she didn’t turn her head, walking as if she hadn’t heard it.

  “Hi, Charlotte,” he said, when she was up to him.

  “Hi,” she returned, but he couldn’t help thinking her voice expressed more—a desire to have never come. The hostility was still there. “Let’s go.”

  They began walking.

  “Where are we going?” he asked hesitantly.

  “We’re going to a movie, remember?”

  “Oh yes, so we are, so we are. Which one?”

  “That’s up to you, you’re the boss.”

  He smiled and blushed.

  They went to the theaters on 14th across the street from City Hall. Eating pizza, they chose a movie about reincarnation and radiation, where insects were born with human minds, paid and went in.

  After some time he put his arm around her in the dark obscurity and she leaned her head back on his arm; but he couldn’t force himself to go further, and she took no initiative to encourage him.

  When the movie was over he said, “Let’s watch it again.”

  She said, “It wasn’t that good. Too much fake.”

  “Everything gets better, second time around. Most books, for instance, never really make sense until the second time through. The Case of the Thread, for example—” he began, wanting to show his literary knowledge, but was interrupted by a man behind them leaning forward and saying: “Shut up or get out.”

  “Stuff it, shithead,” mumbled July.

  Walking with her out of the theater and into the street, experiencing that sensation of passing out of looming fantasy and into realness, July wished his parents could see him—without any fears, self-doubts or apprehensions, a beautiful, mysterious girl on his arm, her eyes wild and dark. They went to Baker’s Drug Store and drank cherry sodas and July told a slightly altered account of when three toughs had kidnapped his cat.

  When they were back on the street again he wanted to get her to walk in the park, but she didn’t want to. The hostility had not returned, but a kind of obstinacy was beginning to rise. They wandered from store window to store window, agreeing and disagreeing on the worth of the items on display. At a certain point he realized that she had begun a slow navigation toward home and that he wouldn’t be able to turn her back. Each step was a step into the closing of the night. He fought against it, but there was nothing he could do. And then:

  “I’ve got to leave you here. It’s been fun. I’ve had a great time.”

  “I’ll walk you home.”

  “No. I wouldn’t like that.”

  “It’s not safe for you out alone. There’s too many monsters loose. This is the weekend they let them roam—on
ce a month. Keeps down on the state’s food budget.”

  “Well, they wouldn’t go for me. I’d be a bitter pill to chew.”

  July wished desperately to say something here about how he’d like to chew on her, and the very idea of biting her made him fill up with heat. Instead, he said quite seriously, “You aren’t afraid of me, are you?” and looked away.

  Charlotte burst into a fit of laughter. “How sweet you are!” she exclaimed, moved quickly to him and kissed him firmly, tenderly, but quickly on the mouth. “But I must go.”

  “Again,” said July. “When will we see each other again?” The sensation of the kiss almost knocked him down. “Give me your phone number.”

  “Stop it. I told you I couldn’t do that. I said, ‘Only once. Just once.’ ” July looked at her. His face was as though he’d been publicly whipped. “Damn you,” she said. “I told you not to go thinking anything about me. We could never be together. Damn you—I told you that.”

  All July could do was stand there and nod his head. After she said, “I’m sorry,” and turned to go, he said, “Just once more . . . one more time.”

  A terrible moment ensued. At the end of it, she agreed. He feared it was only because she thought he might cry. She promised to meet him for a matinee movie on Saturday—but nothing more . . . and that was to be the end of it. Then she left. July felt naked, alone, and watched every inch of her disappear around the corner.

  He followed her from a safe distance. She went a few blocks, then turned west and began walking in the shadows close to the buildings. At one corner in the middle of a very ominous-looking neighborhood, where the houses were three-story stone and the lights inside made them seem like rows of tremendous horses’ skulls with candles ritualistically set inside that gleamed from the eyes and nostrils, Charlotte stopped and stood for several moments as though trying to decide where she wanted to go. Evidently making up her mind, she set off again and soon entered one of those horse skulls with only one nostril glowing. Broken windows on the third floor. July stopped across the street and tucked himself into a shadow beneath an awning, as dark as the inside of a pocket. Whenever a figure crossed the lighted window his heart would flare up, thinking it was she. But it was always unclear, moving aimlessly, a kind of phantom shape. He waited until he was thoroughly dissatisfied with himself and began walking back home, keeping on the edge of his senses, looking for signs of that trouble she’d said would find him if he walked her home. Underneath the platform with Butch he let his memories open and felt himself dissolve into the concrete.

  The following day was Friday, and he worked through the morning in a daze, selling papers and making cheap talk like a madman who decides to have nothing to do with his exterior self and lets it function without him.

  She’ll never come, he thought. She never wants to see me again—that’s simple. But then the memory of her kiss would come back, and because of the depth of feeling it produced in him, it seemed to say to him, One event, one emotion—the same feeling would have to be in her.

  He quit work early in the afternoon and went down and talked to Butch for an hour, sounded all his thoughts and counted all his money out onto the pallet—even the jars that he knew contained $700 each. He began to fill one jar up again, reconsidered and stuffed it all, down to the $7.00 from that morning, into a brown paper sack: $2073. Butch overlooked all this activity with measured disapproval. Carrying the bag as though it were lunch, accompanied by his cat, July went up onto the street and headed for the several jewelry stores that he knew uptown.

  Barney Snells owned and operated the Snells Jewelry Store by himself. In the past he’d tried to employ other people, but it had never worked out. He had no friends and few enjoyments. He disliked eating, and whenever he and his wife would attend a back-yard party of one of her acquaintances in the suburbs, he would ask for his steak very well done, just to watch his hosts wince and shake their heads in pity for his bad taste. He would go out of his way to buy a tie or suit that would make him look older and more drab than he was. He read nothing but science fiction, and one of the reasons none of his help had lasted was that he resented the extra companionship and noise. He played chess by mail with someone in Alaska he’d never met; and had his playing board set up in the back room of the store, and each day he would confront it as a way of waking himself up. Both of his children had run away from home when they were sixteen and he’d never heard from them again; he imagined his wife corresponded with them in secret and sent them money from his account, but he didn’t hold it against her. He prided himself on having no opinions except about jewelry.

  His greatest love was diamonds. He appreciated them beyond anything—the way they held the light, their purity, their rarity and strength. Breaking down a crudely cut diamond into smaller stones, eliminating pores and feathers, polishing each facet (especially on a King Cut) and making the set was an adventure in which each fiber of him participated, and he spent days at a time with his eyepiece held in his eye, turning a diamond this way and that, letting the light spray out of the facets into spectrums, his mind lost to all thought. He could recall dreams—long, complicated dreams—which were composed of diamonds turning in light, other diamonds coming in, clashing, breaking, splintering, and more diamonds growing up. One dream that he remembered with particular pleasure had begun with only the color blue and out of it had come the nine large stones of the Cullinan, and later starred the Florentine yellow.

  He was an authority on diamonds. His chess set had a diamond (Magna Cut) set into the top of both the white and the black king. At the end of the game the winner held the matched pair.

  He carried a small diamond replica of the Koh-i-noor (New Cut) in his watch pocket.

  He was a wealthy jeweler because the experience of buying from him always proved satisfactory—he never seemed to want to let anything he had go, whatever the price.

  When July came in he had the eyepiece to his eye and was painstakingly tearing apart a setting on a wedding ring that he’d come upon in trade during a trip to New York the weekend before—a wedding set which had been made to resemble the famous set made for Henry VII by Leopold with the main stone offset by four smaller ones around it—the purpose being to focus essentially red light from the facets of the larger and through the smaller, accentuated by the gold, producing small red light veins at thirty-two places along the circumference. But the job had been sloppy and many of the facets were ground at the wrong angle to catch the red spectrum band. He put the eyepiece down and stood up, looking with wary circumspection at July, his cat and the soiled brown sack which he set on the glass case.

  “Watch that cat there,” he said, “and mind he doesn’t jump up on anything.”

  “Here, maybe you better wait outside,” said July, and opened the silent door for Butch, who indignantly stepped back onto the sidewalk and sat down.

  “Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I want to buy something for someone,” said July, and abruptly stopped talking, as though to offer any more information would in some way compromise his feelings. Barney Snells looked him over closely and thought he looked barbaric—his hair shaggy and long, his ears dirty, his clothes unpressed, shoes dry-splattered with mud, and a quite ruffianlike way of standing, looking down into the cabinet, his dirty bag (which looked to be full of greasy potato chips) and his abrupt, harsh voice, like a street hawker’s.

  “See here, now. Just what is it that you’re wanting? All the things in here are extremely expensive—more than I would think you might at this stage of life be considering.”

  “This here,” said July, pointing his finger against the glass, leaving a smudge. “Let me see this one.”

  Barney came quickly over. “Don’t touch the glass,” he said, “and take this bag off here.”

  July took his sack and stepped back a few inches, but remained pointing. “That one there.”

  Barney hesitated with “Go on, get out of here” just on the tip of his tongue. He was aware
that he was being just a bit of a grouch. This didn’t bother him, but he felt a vague interest in what July’d picked out. So much could be told about people from their taste in jewelry. Often some completely intelligent -appearing couples would reveal their underlying stupidity by choosing huge, gaudy designs, brooches lacking all subtlety, and rings with setting flaws, stones little more pure than industrial grade. One’s taste in diamonds, Snells believed, was a mirror reflection of the soul. He opened the case.

  “This one?”

  “No. Over to the right.”

  “This one?”

  “No, further . . . now down a little . . . too far.”

  “This one?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Let me look at that one.”

  Barney lifted it out. He felt an admiration for the boy beginning in him. From the whole case, he’d picked out the only piece of real value—a small necklace with three diamonds in the pendant, brown, yellow and white tinged with blue, very small, but set with breathtaking sensitivity. Thin wires of gold held the stones together. Barney had had it for a long time. He had $300 on it and no one had even asked him to take it out before.

  “This is a really nice one,” he said. “Look here how these tiny wires seem to lead your eye from one stone to another, emphasizing just a little the white one—don’t touch it! And notice, only a twenty-one-inch chain would be right for it—it needs a wide angle coming down to it. Any higher would be out of the question, and any longer would be base. The person who wore it would have to be thin, of course, and pale hair wouldn’t be good either.”

  “She’s dark,” said July.

  “Black hair?”

  “ Yes.”

  “Oh. Then this wouldn’t be quite right. It would be good, mind you, but you’d be dissatisfied, I’m afraid, in the long run.”