Wake Up With a Stranger

by Flora, Fletcher

  She turned and walked to the door and out into the hall, leaving the door standing open behind her, and she was followed by the whispered epithet of the woman she left.

  “Whore,” Shirley Burns whispered after her. “Whore, whore, whore!”

  From her apartment, she called the shop and talked to Gussie. “Will you take care of closing, Gussie?” she said.

  “Where are you now?” Gussie said.

  “At the apartment.”

  “How did it go with Mrs. Bitch?”

  “Badly. There’s no hope there.”

  “Well, that’s tough, but you’ll remember I predicted it.”

  “I remember, and I really didn’t expect to accomplish much myself, but I thought it ought to be tried.”

  “What now?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. I’ll think about it.”

  “Sure, darling. You think about it. Goodby, now.”

  “Goodby, Gussie. See you in the morning.”

  She began to wonder what she could possibly do with the rest of the afternoon and the long night to come. She was still protected by a sense of detachment, but she realized it would not last, that she must — and quickly — find support. And the support she needed was one which, at the moment, she lacked, a man and the reassurance of a man, a man to talk with if not to sleep with, a man to use if not to love.

  She wanted Aaron, but Aaron was dead — if he were not dead, she would not now be in excessive need. Because she had been faithful, in infidelity, she was now alone. While she was trying to decide what to do, the telephone rang. It was Earl Joslin. She thought she heard, after his voice saying hello, the sound of a chuckle, like a dry crackling in the wire.

  “How are you feeling?” he said. “Quite well,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I think you must have just gone through a rather trying experience.”

  “Oh. With Mrs. Burns, you mean. Apparently she lost no time in calling you.”

  “When it comes to registering complaints, Mrs. Burns never loses time. I’ve never known her to be quite so furious before, however. You must have ticked her off pretty thoroughly.”

  “I confess that I used poor judgment.”

  “Well, that’s in how you look at it. As for me, I’m not so sure. You probably understand, of course, that she’s demanding your immediate dismissal.”

  “Am I to take it, then, that this is notice?”

  “Not at all. I’d merely like to talk with you. Is it possible for you to see me this evening?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you consider having dinner with me?”

  “I’d be happy to. Thank you very much.”

  “Good, good. I’ll come for you about eight. Is that acceptable?”

  “Perfectly. I’ll be ready.”

  “Until eight, then. In the meantime, I shouldn’t worry too much if I were you.”

  After hanging up, she looked at her watch and saw that it was exactly five o’clock. Her present problem, then, was reduced to the expenditure of three hours, and she tried to think what she could do that would be a defense against her increasing sense of disaster and the concommitant threat of depression. She had reached, she felt, a state of suspension in which she was impotent, a body without energy. She was more than ever by her feeling of impotence irrationally convinced that she had reached a time of enormous significance, that she must now in the matter of the shop, which was somehow identically the matter of her life, succeed enormously or fail definitively.

  She mixed a much-needed drink in the kitchen, and stood leaning against the cabinet, feeling inside her the diffusion of the drink’s warmth, and reviewing in her mind the selection of gowns that were hanging in her closet in the bedroom. Without knowing exactly the reason, or trying to know it, she felt compelled to make on her dinner date with Earl Joslin the best possible appearance. This need was stronger and more directed than the natural desire of a woman to make the most of her assets, but it was not concerned specifically with the effect she might have on Joslin himself. What it surely was, though she didn’t verbalize it or even recognize it, was a reaction of pride and defiance to the threat of devaluation.

  The decision made regarding the gown, she did not think of it again. She finished her drink and rinsed the glass and went back through the living room and into the bedroom. Moving with a deliberateness that was imposed to kill time and secure serenity, she undressed and lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. If only she could make her mind impermeable to all ideas and images, she would be able to go to sleep, but it would be necessary to awaken by seven, at the latest, in order to be ready for Joslin when he came. She began telling herself that now she would sleep and would awaken at seven precisely, for she had heard that this was a kind of control to which the mind was actually subject. Whether or not this was true, she did go to sleep after a short while and did awaken at approximately seven. She got up at once and bathed and fixed her fingernails and face and brushed her hair and dressed. She was looking at herself in the mirror and thinking that the silk taffeta had been a wise choice when the buzzer sounded. She went to the door and admitted Earl Joslin into the living room.

  “Good evening,” he said. “Do you mind if I say that you’re looking particularly lovely?”

  “On the contrary,” she said, “I would mind if you didn’t. Do you want to leave at once, or would you prefer to have a drink first?”

  “Perhaps it would be as well to have a drink after we get there. I thought we might go some place not too elaborate. A quiet place that permits conversation. Do you agree?”

  “Yes. I’d like that.”

  She got her coat, and they went down to the street where he had left his car, a black Chrysler Imperial. He drove neither slowly nor excessively fast, but with the same precise conservatism with which he apparently did everything, regardless of the degree of its significance, and they reached the restaurant he had chosen within half an hour. He let her out at the entrance and drove around the corner to park the car and was back after a few minutes. Inside, in an L-shaped dining room, they sat with approximately nine square feet of snowy linen between them, a candle burning in a frosted column in the center of the linen. A little to her left was a small combo — a piano, guitar, bass fiddle, and drums — that played a variety of rhythms, mostly Latin American, and played all of them softly. In the soft light, hearing the soft rhythms, she felt somewhat relaxed and less imperiled, and his presence across the table, his thin gray face and suggestion of surety, contributed also to the relief of depression. But despite all this, the light and the music and him, she retained the insistent sense of crisis which she could not lose. She picked up her menu and glanced at it and put it down again, feeling suddenly that even the nominal task of choosing among appetizers and entrees and salads was a burden too heavy to assume.

  “I would like a Martini,” she said.

  “Good. I’ll have one too. Would you prefer that I order dinner for both of us?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He studied the menu while the waiter was getting the Martinis, ordering quickly when the waiter returned. She lifted her fragile glass and let some of the Martini slip down her throat; it was dry and strong and did her good.

  “I won’t ask you what you said to Shirley Burns this afternoon,” he said. “I’ll only comment that it must have been most effective.”

  “I’m sorry that it turned out as it did,” she said. “I went there to try to influence her to keep the shop and let me manage it, but I was not very successful.”

  “That was apparent. I believe I warned you that she wouldn’t be receptive to the idea.”

  “Yes, you did. It was something, however, I felt I had to try.”

  “I can understand that. As I said earlier on the telephone, you are to continue in your present position so long as I am in control of Aaron’s estate. If you still want to, that is.”

  “Yes. I want to stay on for the present.”

  “Have yo
u considered what you will do when the shop is sold?”

  “I’ve been trying to think, but I’ve been unable to come to any decision.”

  “Perhaps there will still be a place for you under the new owner, whoever it may be.”

  “I’ve considered that too, but I don’t feel I should depend on it.”

  “No. You’re right there. It doesn’t pay to anticipate these things.”

  He drank some of his Maritini. Then placing the glass on the table, he laced the fingers of his hands above the glass in an odd kind of pose.

  “Have you thought of trying to acquire the shop for yourself?” he said.

  “I’ve thought of it, but I don’t see how I could manage it. I estimate that it will sell for around two hundred thousand dollars, which is to me an incredible amount of money.”

  “Your estimate is pretty accurate, certainly, and it’s a very large amount of money to anyone. Well, I only mention this as a possibility, although a remote one, because I am convinced from Aaron’s comments and my own observation that you could make a big thing of it. The initial investment, I concede, is a problem. If you decide, however, to try to swing it, I suggest that you talk with Bill Tyler at the Security Bank and Trust Company. He is a client of mine, and I would be glad to speak to him in your favor.”

  “Thank you. You are very kind.”

  “Not at all. I believe you have real talent and could make a success of the business, that’s all. Or perhaps that’s not entirely all, either. The truth is, I like you very much — as Aaron did — and I would like to see you do as well as he wanted you to do.”

  She looked down at her folded hands in her lap, presenting in the posture an effect of demureness that seemed to him all the more appealing because she usually appeared so deliberately sophisticated. To his generosity she felt an intensity of gratitude that clotted her throat and choked her. When the feeling had diminished, her throat clearing so that her breath passed through it easily again, she looked up from her hands and smiled.

  “You see? Regardless of what you say, it returns to kindness. You are under no obligation at all to be concerned about me.”

  “All right. It doesn’t matter. Let’s just say that my concern, whatever the basis, is genuine, and I would like to help you if I can. Do you think you could handle a loan sufficiently large to buy the shop?”

  “I’m sure that I could successfully pay it off in a reasonable time, if that’s what you mean, but I don’t see why anyone should accept my confidence as security for so much money.”

  “Have you no security besides your talent and your confidence?”

  “No. I own nothing except my personal things, which are of little value.”

  “You could mortgage the shop itself, of course.”

  “Would that be sufficient? I know so little about these things.”

  “Ordinarily it wouldn’t, I’m afraid. However, if you could impress Bill Tyler as favorably as you have impressed Aaron and me, it might. I doubt that he would risk bank funds in that amount, but he has a large personal fortune, you know.”

  “You mean he might be willing to loan me the money personally on a mortgage?”

  “If you can convince him that it’s a good investment. There’s another angle, too, that I’ve thought of. He might be willing to buy the shop himself and put it under your management. Much the same sort of arrangement you wanted Shirley Burns to agree to. This wouldn’t be as big a thing for you, but it would possibly be more appealing to him because he’d stand to make a much larger profit than interest on a loan.”

  “I see. I hadn’t thought of that. Do you suppose he would be interested? Why do you suggest Mr. Tyler?”

  “It would be up to you to make him interested, with what help I can give. I have suggested him because I know him well, because he’s a millionaire who can afford to consider such investments, and because he has the kind of imagination that just might be intrigued by a different sort of venture like this.”

  She looked down at her hands again. Now it was excitement instead of gratitude that she felt, but it had the identical effect of clotting her throat and making it difficult and a little painful to breathe. Before she could look up and respond, the waiter arrived with their dinners. She was glad to see he had ordered capon, which she liked, for she was conscious all at once of being much hungrier than she had realized. His thoughtfulness and wisdom in anticipating her hunger seemed to be, on top of everything else, another subtle claim upon her. They began to eat and to talk of other things, when they talked at all. A few minutes before ten, while they waited for coffee, he looked at his watch and said he had a telephone call to make. Excusing himself, he went away, and she sat and watched him go, wondering idly, without real interest, whom the call would be to — a client or a friend or his wife. Then she realized that she did not even know if he had a wife or not, and had not even thought to find out. The combo finished one number and began another, and the one they began seemed quite familiar, something she should recognize. She followed the rhythm and tried to identify it, but she could not. Then a voice spoke her name at her shoulder, and the voice sounded as familiar as the music, something she should also recognize, but couldn’t. She looked up at the face of a young man, a rather handsome young man with dark and slightly curly hair, and the conviction of familiarity remained. Then, when he smiled in a hesitant way that seemed to suggest an inner uncertainty regarding his welcome, she recognized him, with an emotional reaction which she would not have expected and for which she was in no way prepared. She had not thought to see him again, and had felt no desire to see him again, but now seeing him, she could not understand why she had been so indifferent.

  “Enos Simon,” she said, and held out a hand.

  He took her hand and bent over it slightly, and his smile widened and strengthened and gained assurance.

  “Hello, Donna,” he said. “Did you have trouble remembering me? If you hadn’t, I was going to kick you under the table as a reminder.”

  “I confess that I had trouble for a moment. You must admit, however, that you have reappeared rather suddenly. Won’t you sit down?”

  “No, thanks. I know that you are with someone. The truth is, I’ve been watching you for at least half an hour. Earl Joslin, isn’t it? You must be doing well for yourself these days.”

  “I met him through my work, and he has become my friend. I’m sure he would be happy to have you join us.”

  “I am with someone myself and can only stay a minute. I’ve thought of you often, Donna. It’s wonderful seeing you again.”

  “I have often thought of you too,” she lied. “Are you living here again?”

  “Yes. I came back in January of this year.”

  “That long ago? Why haven’t you looked me up? Are you married?”

  “No, I’m not married. Actually, I don’t quite know why I haven’t tried to see you before. Perhaps I was afraid you would not want me to. I wouldn’t want to presume on something that happened when we were little more than kids.”

  “Oh, nonsense. I’d like to talk with you and learn what’s happened to you.”

  “Well, it covers quite a bit of time and takes a while to tell. More than we have now, at any rate. May I see you again?”

  “If you like.”

  “When?”

  “Suppose you suggest a time.”

  He stood looking down at her, and she felt in him again, as if it were a tangible substance that projected and touched her, the kind of intermediate mood she had felt in him frequently during the summer after she had graduated from high school. He was, somehow, both withdrawn and supplicating, expressing mutely an appeal he feared would be rejected, and she remembered suddenly that he had openly expressed his dread of rejection more than once. It was really impossible, she thought, after so many years to read so much into an expression, a hesitation, hardly anything at all. But she felt it anyhow, as she had before, and responded to it now, as she had then.

  “I suppose you
will not be free later?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I think we had better make it another night.”

  She actually regretted that it was impossible, or at least impolitic, to let him come to her apartment later. And she tried to make this regret plain in the inflection of her voice. But she could see immediately that he reacted in the way she did not wish, with a kind of morbid and unreasonable sensitivity, as if he had been repulsed in a totally improper advance.

  “Well, it doesn’t matter, there’s no hurry about it,” he said. “Perhaps it would be better if I were just to give you a ring sometime.”

  “Yes,” she said, “perhaps it would.”

  He nodded and went away without saying goodby, and she began to wonder why she had responded so warmly to someone she had hardly missed, and would not have missed if he had never turned up again. Now that he had returned so abruptly after his long absence, however, she was honestly anxious to see him, to talk with him and to learn what he had been doing in the interim between going and coming. There seemed to be no good reason why she should be so involved and she couldn’t understand why. But it did not have to be understood, so far as that went, because it was something that could simply be accepted.

  Just as all things, she thought, must be accepted in the end for what they are and without concern for how they became — the inexplicable allegiance, for instance, of a man like Earl Joslin, who was legally and morally uncommitted and who was now coming back to her among the tables.

  5.

  She was alone in her apartment and in bed by eleven-thirty, and she thought that she would never go to sleep, though she kept her eyes resolutely closed and tried to make herself as passive as possible. After what must have been a much shorter time than it seemed, she did in fact go to sleep and was awakened at ten minutes after twelve by the sound of the telephone ringing. She assumed, at least, that she had been awakened by the telephone, but she wasn’t quite sure. She waited for a repetition of the sound which, when it came again, was the buzzer at the living room door.