His eyes came back to her, bright.
“Yeah, huh. Hey, Miss Phoebe, how about that.”
“When would you like to do some more?”
“Now?”
“Bless you, no! We both have things to do. And besides, you have to think. You know it takes time to think.”
“Yeah, okay. When?”
“A week.”
“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be here. Hey, I’m gonna be late for work.”
He went to the door. “Take it easy,” he said.
He went out and closed the door but before the latch clicked he pushed it open again. He crossed the room to her.
He said, “Hey, thanks for the birthday cake. It was . . .” His mouth moved as he searched. “It was a good birthday cake.” He took her hand and shook it heartily. Then he was gone.
Miss Phoebe was just as pink as the birthday cake. To the closed door she murmured, “Take it easy.”
Don was in a subway station two nights later, waiting for an express. The dirty concrete shaft is atypical and mysterious at half-past four in the morning. The platforms are unlittered and deserted, and there is a complete absence of the shattering roar and babble and bustle for which these urban entrails are built. An approaching train can be heard starting and running and stopping sometimes ten or twelve minutes before it pulls in, and a single set of footfalls on the mezzanine above will outlast it. The few passengers waiting seem always to huddle together near one of the wooden benches, and there seems to be a kind of inverse square law in operation, for the closer they approach one another the greater the casual unnoticing manners they affect, though they will all turn to watch someone walking toward them from two hundred feet away. And when angry voices bark out, the effect is more shocking than it would be in a cathedral.
A tattered man slept uneasily on the bench. Two women buzz-buzzed ceaselessly at the other end. A black-browed man in gray tweed strode the platform, glowering, looking as if he were expected to decide on the recall of the Ambassador to the Court of St. James by morning.
Don happened to be looking at the tattered man, and the way the old brown hat was pulled down over the face (it could have been a headless corpse, and no one would have been the wiser) when the body shuddered and stirred. A strip of stubbled skin emerged between the hat and the collar, and developed a mouth into which was stuffed a soggy collection of leaf-mold which may have been a cigar butt yesterday. The man’s hand came up and fumbled around for the thing. The jaws worked, the lips smacked distastefully. The hand pushed the hat brim up only enough to expose a red eye, which glared at the butt. The hat fell again, and the hand pitched the butt away.
At this point the black-browed man hove to, straddle-legged in front of the bench. He opened his coat and hooked his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. He tilted his head back, half-closed his eyes, and sighted through the cleft on his chin at the huddled creature on the bench. “You!” he grated, and everyone swung around to stare at him. He thumped the sleeping man’s ankle with the side of his foot. “You!” Everyone looked at the bench.
The tattered man said “Whuh-wuh-wuh-wuh,” and smacked his lips. Suddenly he was bolt upright, staring.
“You!” barked the black-browed man. He pointed to the butt. “Pick that up!”
The tattered man looked at him and down at the butt. His hand strayed to his mouth, felt blindly on and around it. He looked down again at the butt and dull recognition began to filter into his face. “Oh, sure, boss, sure,” he whined. He cringed low, beginning to stoop down off the bench but afraid to stop talking, afraid to turn his gaze away from the danger point. “I don’t make no trouble for anybody, mister, not me, honest I don’t,” he wheedled. “A feller gets down on his luck, you know how it is, but I never make trouble, mister . . .”
“Pick it up!”
“Oh sure, sure, right away, boss.”
That was when Don, to his amazement, felt himself approaching the black-browed man. He tapped him on the shoulder.
“Mister,” he said. He prayed that his tight voice would not break. “Mister, make me pick it up, huh?”
“What?”
Don waved at the tattered man. “A two-year-old kid could push him around. So what are you proving, you’re a big man or something? Make me pick up the butt, you’re such a big man.”
“Get away from me,” said the black-browed man. He took two quick paces backward. “I know what you are, you’re one of those subway hoodlums.”
Don caught a movement from the corner of his eye. The tattered man had one knee on the platform, and was leaning forward to pick up the butt. “Get away from that,” he snapped, and kicked the butt onto the local tracks.
“Sure, boss, sure, I don’t want no . . .”
“Get away from me, both of you,” said the black-browed man. He was preparing for flight. Don suddenly realized that he was afraid—afraid that he and the tattered man might join forces, or perhaps even that they had set the whole thing up in advance. He laughed. The black-browed man backed into a pillar. And just then a train roared in, settling the matter.
Something touched Don between the shoulder blades and he leaped as if it had been an icepick. But it was one of the women. “I just had to tell you, that was very brave. You’re a fine young man,” she said. She sniffed in the direction of the distant tweed-clad figure and marched to the train. It was a local. Don watched it go, and smiled. He felt good.
“Mister, you like to save my life, you did. I don’t want no trouble, you unnerstan’, I never do. Feller gets down on his luck once in a wh—”
“Shaddup!” said Don. He turned away and froze. Then he went back to the man and snatched off the old hat. The man cringed.
“I know who you are. You just got back from the can. You got sent up for attackin’ a girl.”
“I ain’t done a thing,” whispered the man. “Gimme back my hat, please, mister?
Don looked down at him. He should walk away, he ought to leave this hulk to rot, but his questing mind was against him. He threw the hat on the man’s lap and wiped his fingers on the side of his jacket. “I saw you stayin’ out of trouble three nights ago on Mulberry Street. Followin’ a girl into a house there.”
“It was you chased me,” said the man. “Oh God.” He tucked himself up on the bench in a uterine position and began to weep.
“Cut that out,” Don snarled. “I ain’t hit you. If I wanted I coulda thrown you in front of that train, right?”
“Yeah, instead you saved me f’m that killer,” said the man brokenly. “Y’r a prince, mister. Y’r a real prince, that’s what you are.”
“You goin’ to stay away from that girl?”
“Your girl? Look, I’ll never even walk past her house no more. I’ll kill anybody looks at her.”
“Never mind that. Just you stay away from her.”
The express roared in. Don rose and so did the man. Don shoved him back to the bench. “Take the next one.”
“Yeah, sure, anything you say. Just you say the word.”
Don thought, I’ll ask him what it is that makes it worth the risk, chance getting sent up for life just for a thing like that. Then, No, he thought. I think I know why.
He got on the train.
He sat down and stared dully ahead. A man will give up anything, his freedom, his life even, for a sense of power. How much am I giving up? How should I know?
He looked at the advertisements. “Kulkies are better.” “The better skin cream.” He wondered if anyone ever wanted to know what these things were better than. “For that richer, creamier, safer lather.” “Try Miss Phoebe for that better, more powerful power.”
He wondered, and wondered . . .
Summer dusk, all the offices closed, the traffic gone, no one and nothing in a hurry for a little while. Don put his back against a board fence where he could see the entrance, and took out a toothpick. She might be going out, she might be coming home, she might be home and not go out, she might be out and n
ot come home. He’d stick around.
He never even got the toothpick wet.
She stood at the top of the steps, looking across at him. He simply looked back. There were many things he might have done. Rushed across. Waved. Done a time-step. Looked away. Run. Fallen down.
But he did nothing, and the single fact that filled his perceptions at that moment was that as long as she stood there with russet gleaming in her black hair, with her sad, sad cups-for-laughter eyes turned to him, with the thin summer cloak whipping up and falling to her clean straight body, why there was nothing he could do.
She came straight across to him. He broke the toothpick and dropped it, and waited. She crossed the sidewalk and stopped in front of him, looking at his eyes, his mouth, his eyes. “You don’t even remember me.”
“I remember you all right.”
She leaned closer. The whites of her eyes showed under her pupils when she did that, like the high crescent moon in the tropics that floats startlingly on its back. These two crescents were twice as startling. “I don’t think you do.”
“Over there.” With his chin he indicated her steps. “The other night.”
It was then, at last, that she smiled, and the eyes held what they were made for. “I saw him again.”
“He try anything?”
She laughed. “He ran! He was afraid of me. I don’t think anybody was ever afraid of me.”
“I am.”
“Oh, that’s the silliest—” She stopped, and again leaned toward him. “You mean it, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Don’t ever be afraid of me,” she said gravely, “not ever. What did you do to that man?”
“Nothin’. Talked to him.”
“You didn’t hurt him?”
He nodded.
“I’m glad,” she said. “He’s sick and he’s ugly and he’s bad, too, I guess, but I think he’s been hurt enough. What’s your name?”
“Don.”
She counted on her fingers. “Don is a Spanish grandee. Don is putting on clothes. Don is the sun coming up in the morning. Don is . . . is the opposite of up. You’re a whole lot of things, Don.” Her eyes widened. “You laughed!”
“Was that wrong?”
“Oh, no! But I didn’t know you ever laughed.
“I watched you for three hours the other night and you didn’t laugh. You didn’t even talk.”
“I would’ve talked if I’d known you were there. Where were you?”
“That all-night joint. I followed you.”
He looked at his shoeshine. With his other foot, he carefully stepped on it.
“Why did you follow me? Were you going to talk to me?”
“No!” he said. “No, by God, I wasn’t. I wouldn’ta.”
“Then why did you follow me?”
“I liked looking at you. I liked seeing you walk.” He glanced across at the brownstone steps. “I didn’t want anything to happen to you, all alone like that.”
“Oh, I didn’t care.”
“That’s what you said that night.”
The shadow that crossed her face crossed swiftly, and she laughed. “It’s all right now.”
“Yeah, but what was it?”
“Oh,” she said. Her head moved in an impatient gesture, but she smiled at the sky. “There was nothing and nobody. I left school. Daddy was mad at me. Kids from school acted sorry for me. Other kids, the ones you saw, they made me tired. I was tired because they were the same way all the time about the same things all the time, and I was tired because they kept me up so late.”
“What did you leave school for?”
“I found out what it was for.”
“It’s for learning stuff.”
“It isn’t,” she said positively. “It’s for learning how to learn. And I know that already. I can learn anything. Why did you come here today?”
“I wanted to see you. Where were you going when you came out?”
“Here,” she said, tapping her foot. “I saw you from the window. I was waiting for you. I was waiting for you yesterday too. What’s the matter?”
He grunted.
“Tell me, tell me!”
“I never had a girl talk to me like you do.”
“Don’t you like the way I talk?” she asked anxiously.
“Oh for Pete’s sake it ain’t that!” he exploded. Then he half-smiled at her. “It’s just I had a crazy idea. I had the idea you always talk like this. I mean, to anybody.”
“I don’t, I don’t!” she breathed. “Honestly, you’ve got to believe that. Only you. I’ve always talked to you like this.”
“What do you mean always?”
“Well, everybody’s got somebody to talk to, all their life. You know what they like to talk about and when they like to say nothing, when you can be just silly and when they’d rather be serious and important. The only thing you don’t know is their face. For that you wait. And then one day you see the face, and then you have it all.”
“You ain’t talkin’ about me!”
“Yes I am.”
“Look,” he said. He had to speak between heartbeats. He had never felt like this in his whole life before. “You could be—takin’ a—awful chance.”
She shook her head happily.
“Did you ever think maybe everybody ain’t like that?”
“It doesn’t matter. I am.”
His face pinched up. “Suppose I just walked away now and never saw you again.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“But suppose.”
“Why then I—I’d’ve had this. Talking to you.”
“Hey, you’re crying!”
“Well,” she said, “there you were, walking away.”
“You’d’ve called me back though.”
She turned on him so quickly a tear flew clear off her face and fell sparkling to the back of his hand. Her eyes blazed. “Never that!” she said between her teeth. “I want you to stay, but if you want to go, you go, that’s all. All I want to do is make you want to stay. I’ve managed so far . . .”
“How many minutes?” he teased.
“Minutes? Years,” she said seriously.
“The—somebody you talked to, you kind of made him up, huh?”
“I suppose.”
“How could he ever walk away?”
“Easiest thing in the world,” she said. “Somebody like that, they’re somebody to live up to. It isn’t always easy. You’ve been very patient,” she said. She reached out and touched his check.
He snatched her wrist and held it, hard. “You know what I think,” he said in a rough whisper, because it was all he had. “I think you’re out of your goddam head.”
She stood very straight with her eyes closed. She was trembling.
“What’s your name, anyway?”
“Joyce.”
“I love you too, Joyce. Come on, I want you to meet a friend of mine. It’s a long ride on the subway and I’ll tell you all about it.”
He tried hard but he couldn’t tell her all of it. For some of it there were no words at all. For some of it there were no words he could use. She was attentive and puzzled. He bought flowers from a cart, just a few—red and yellow rosebuds.
“Why flowers?”
He remembered the mirror. That was one of the things he hadn’t been able to talk about. “It’s just what you do,” he said, “bring flowers.”
“I bet she loves you.”
“Whaddaya mean, she’s pushin’ sixty!”
“All the same,” said Joyce, “if she does she’s not going to like me.”
They went up in the elevator. In the elevator he kissed her.
“What’s the matter, Don?”
“If you want to crawl around an’ whimper like a puppy-dog,” he whispered, “if you feel useful as a busted broom-handle and worth about two wet sneezes in a hailstorm—this is a sense of power?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Never mind.”
&nbs
p; In the corridor he stopped. He rubbed a smudge off her nose with his thumb. “She’s sorta funny,” he said. “Just give her a little time. She’s quite a gal. She looks like Sunday school and talks the same way but she knows the score. Joyce, she’s the best friend I ever had.”
“All right all right all right! I’ll be good.”
He kissed where the smudge had been.
“Come on.”
One of Miss Phoebe’s envelopes was stuck to the door by its flap. On it was his name. They looked at one another and then he took the envelope down and got the note from it.
Don:
I am not at home. Please phone me this evening.
P.W.
“Don, I’m sorry!”
“I shoulda phoned. I wanted to surprise her.”
“Surprise her? She knew you were coming.”
“She didn’t know you were coming. Damn it anyway.”
“Oh it’s all right,” she said. She took his hand. “There’ll be other times. Come on. What’ll you do with those?”
“The flowers? I dunno. Want ’em?”
“They’re hers,” said Joyce.
He gave her a puzzled look. “I got a lot of things to get used to. What do you mean when you say somethin’ that way?”
“Almost exactly what I say.”
He put the flowers against the door and they went away.
The phone rang four times before Miss Phoebe picked it up.
“It is far too late,” she said frigidly, “for telephone calls. You should have called earlier, Don. However, it’s just as well. I want you to know that I am very displeased with you. I have given you certain privileges, young man, but among them is not that of calling on me unexpectedly.”
“Miss—”
“Don’t interrupt. In addition, I have never indicated to you that you were free to—”
“But Miss Ph—”
“—to bring to my home any casual acquaintance you happen to have scraped up in heaven knows where—”
“Miss Phoebe! Please! I’m in jail.”
“—and invade my—you are what?”
“Jail, Miss Phoebe, I got arrested.”
Foundations of Fear Page 74