“Maybe not.”
But she knew she would go.
Vince said, “What have you got to lose? You want me to come with you?”
“No thanks. This is my problem. I got myself into it, I can get myself out of it.”
“Let me know how you come out. I love both you kids.”
“Sure.”
She took a taxi. Any other way would take too long. The taxi went too slowly, as it was.
The door of Erika’s house stood ajar to the hot summer air. Someone had hung a washing in the side yard. She went up, noting as she had the night before that the railing was really about to break through and fall. It was no place for Erika. She felt her shirt pocket to make sure her money was still there.
She knocked on Erika’s door. There was no answer. She called out, a silly thing to do, for if Erika were really angry she would be more likely to open to a knock—the landlady or a delivery boy—than to a voice she hated. Still no answer. Frances waited, hearing her own breathing, hoping to catch some little sound that would indicate the room was occupied. There was nothing. The place felt empty.
Either Erika wasn’t there, or she was asleep, or else—Frances shut her mind quickly against any grimmer possibility. She went back down the rickety stairs onto the porch and sat on the top step in the shade. Should have brought a good book, she thought. Or some knitting. It may be quite a wait.
Even, maybe, forever.
She wouldn’t do a thing like that. Would she? If she got desperate enough? It happened all the time. People jumping out of windows, taking an overdose of sleeping pills, cutting their throats.
Two little girls came out of the house next door, solemnly marked the front walk into squares with a piece of chalk and began to play hopscotch. They looked curiously at her. She tried to smile, but it made her face hurt. The bruise on her jaw was getting stiff.
A thin woman in purple slacks and a lace blouse, her hair in curlers, came up the walk with a sack of groceries. Frances looked at her, but she looked the other way. She went into the house. Frances could hear the clatter of her bargain-basement wedgies on the stairs.
It was very hot. Flies buzzed around her sweaty face. She brushed them away.
After what seemed like several hours—but the two little girls were still playing on the hopscotch walk, bickering shrilly—she went into the house again and climbed the stairs. The door was still locked and there was no sound. Maybe she’s—maybe something has happened to her, she thought in terror. That’s what Vince was thinking about. That’s why he offered to come along.
The landlady would have duplicate keys. She walked slowly downstairs again, concocting a story. She had left her purse in Miss Frohmann’s room, and now Miss Frohmann seemed to be out. She found the door from which the curlered head had been thrust that first night, and rapped. There was no answer.
A thin young man coming down the stairs said pleasantly, “She works on Saturdays. Can I do anything for you?”
“You don’t know when Erika Frohmann will be in, do you? I left something in her room.” And that’s no lie, she thought grimly.
“I didn’t even know she was out. I guess that’s not much help.”
“Thanks anyway.”
When he was gone, she took up her position again on the porch.
She ran through the history of her entire life, which from this vantage point seemed to be made up completely of failures and stupid mistakes. It was unbelievable that one person could do so many wrong things in such a short time, without help from anybody. I’ve never accomplished a thing, she thought miserably. I don’t matter to one single person. I was going to be so much and lead such a wonderful life, and I can’t even love one person without having it backfire.
She had been there half and hour or so when a light step on the walk made her look up. It was Erika, looking the way she always looked, wearing an old pair of pedal pushers and a T-shirt, with both arms around a big paper sack of groceries. At the sight of Frances she stopped short. Her face hardened.
Frances got slowly to her feet and stood foolishly at the top of the stairs, waiting.
Erika said, “Let me by.”
“I have to see you.”
“I know all about you.” There was no anger in Erika’s voice, only acceptance. She had expected something like this to happen. Anything else was too good to be true. “You’re one of those two-way people, think you can live on both sides of the fence. When you feel like slumming you pick up a girl. Any girl foolish enough to believe you, I think. Then you go back to your husband and your big house.”
Erika pushed roughly past her and ran into the house and slammed the door.
Frances heard her steps going up the stairs fast and angry.
17 “YOU CAN’T BLAME HER,” VINCE SAID REASONABLY. “She’s had about all she can take.” He unfolded a dress, put it on a hanger and looked around for a place to store it. “I make a good maid, don’t I?”
“You make a good friend. Here, this is the closet door over here, I think.”
It was getting dark. The sky beyond the window was a soft pale gray, tinged with the orange and red reflections of neon signs. Vince had turned on all the lights in the hotel room: the overhead fixture with its glass dome, the thin-stemmed twin lamps on the dressing table, and the bed-head reading lamp inside its frilled silk shade, like a chocolate nestled in its paper cup. “Lower middle class,” he said, looking around, “but it’s the best you’ll find in this town for the money. How are you paying for it?”
“In cash, silly. Oh no, I see what you mean—by the day.”
“That’s good. You won’t be out anything when you locate a place of your own. You can move right in.”
“I’m going back to Chicago if I don’t get things straightened out pretty soon.” Her voice shook. She bent to line up a pair of shoes under the bed. “Why are we unpacking all this stuff?”
“Keeps it from getting wrinkled.” He unrolled a somewhat messy-looking pair of striped pajamas. Her engagement ring rolled to the floor. “Hey, look what I found. Do I get to keep it?”
“That’s my social security.” She made a dive for the ring. He reached it first and stood examining it critically. “Ought to be worth three or four hundred in a jewelry store, not so much if you pawn it. This is all you have to live on?”
She patted her chest. “Hear me crackle.”
“Give it here.”
She handed him her roll out of ten and twenty-dollar bills. He counted it and put it neatly back together with the ring in the center. “Pin your pocket good and tight. It may not seem like much to you right now, but you’ll be in a hell of a fix if you lose it.”
“I’m in a hell of a fix now, and it’ll take more than money to get me out of it.”
“It’s nice to eat regularly even when your heart is broken. How do you feel?”
“My head hurts.”
“That’s because you haven’t had anything to eat. Come on, let’s get the rest of this junk put away and I’ll take you out to dinner. It wouldn’t hurt you to put on a clean shirt, either. That one smells like a backed-up sink drain.”
“You’re so romantic.” The smile she gave him was puny, but it was a try. “I’ll put on a dress if you want me to.”
“Don’t bother. We have a little chore to tend to after we eat.”
“Like what?”
Vince unfolded a blue satin slip, gave it an appraising look, and laid it in the open dresser drawer. “Nice embroidery. Handmade? We’re going to drag that stubborn brat our of her lair and make her listen to reason. It may take both of us, one to do the talking and one to hold her down, but it’s worth a try.”
“All right, but it won’t do any good.”
“You got any better ideas?”
She hadn’t. “All right, pick me out a clean blouse. One that isn’t full of wrinkles, if that’s not too much to ask.”
“I must say you’re not a very good packer. Next time call me first, I’ll show you how.”
&nb
sp; “I was in a hurry.”
And where was Bill by this time, she wondered as she retreated to the bathroom with the fresh blouse in her hand. She could still go back to him if everything else failed. If she wakened lonely and frightened in the small hours, would she be tempted to call him?
She hurried back into the bedroom, buttoning. “Do one more thing for me, Vince? Take a dime and go to the pay phone—there’s one in the lobby, I saw it when we came in—and call Bill. I’ll write the number down for you. It’s not listed yet.”
“What do you want me to tell him?”
“Tell him I’m leaving town. He’ll hear from my lawyer in a day or two. I wouldn’t bother, but I don’t want him to get the cops out after me.”
“Suppose he says come home, all is forgiven, there’s a light in the window?”
“Tell him to go to hell.” She ran a light lipstick over her mouth, leaning to the mirror, and combed her hair. “Tell him merde, but tell him politely.”
“That’s my good girl. It wouldn’t kill you to use a little powder or whatever you use,” Vince advised, leaving. He put his head back in the door. “Your face is shiny.”
She sat down on a straight chair beside the window and tried to decide what came next. She could still see Erika’s pale, sad little face, set in something worse than hate: cold rejection. If she lived to be a hundred, she felt she would never forget that last look before Erika walked away, slamming the door shut between them.
Hate was the next thing to love, Vince had assured her. Indifference is the opposite of love. Be thankful if she hates you, it’s not so far to go as if you were strangers.
Cold comfort.
If there was any hope in the whole horrible situation, it was Vince’s steadfast kindness. She supposed he was on her side in this chiefly because he thought she might be good for Erika—why, God only knew, since all she had done so far was rouse the girl’s hopes and then shatter them. But he had spent the entire day with her, finding a place for her to stay, looking after all the practical details she felt too distrait to handle, putting up with her idiotic crying. If she had a friend in the world, it was Vince.
She was tired. She ached all over, her head most of all. She was almost willing to take a heavy sedative, go to bed and let the whole thing work itself out on another day. Except that the break-of-dawn awaking, when her first drugged sleep was over, would have been unendurable.
Vince came back, grinning. “He sounded kind of bad—like he didn’t know whether to be mad or worried. I made my voice as basso profundo as I could. Maybe he’ll think you’ve run off with a better man.”
“You’re a stinker. What did he say?”
“Said you can come home, but make your mind up pretty soon. Said he’ll contest a divorce if you start one.”
“He won’t get anywhere with it. Cruelty is a good ground in
this state.”
“I’ll be your character witness. Or find a couple of straight-type girls, that always looks good in court. Seeing he hit you, that’s really all you need, specially if you’re not asking for support.”
Frances shook her head. “Poor Bill. I must have been hell to live with. I’d like for him to be happy, and everything. Only let him not bother me.”
“You’ll be all right.”
“I hope so. Did I hear you say something about dinner?”
“If you can think about food, your heart isn’t broken.”
He took her to a small dim restaurant tucked away between two large stores. She sat in a linen-covered table, with real candles throwing uneven shadows on everything, and blinked gratefully at Vince. “The girls used to come here,” he said. “Kate and Erika. It was a special place of theirs.” He frowned at the menu. “I thought you’d like to know about her.”
“Yes. Only it’s no use, probably.”
“You have to go along on the basis that everything’s going to be all right,” Vince said. “You know, Erika was about the lone-somest person in the world till Kate came along. I couldn’t even get very close to her, and we were friends for years, as much as she was friends with anybody. She lived in a world of her own.”
“What was Kate like?”
“Medium size, brown hair, looked about like anyone else. She was an alcoholic and a depressive. Couldn’t hold a job more than a few days. Erika found her when she was at the bottom, and took care of her. I don’t know what happened between them,” Vince said delicately, “they never talked about personal things much, but they were together for a couple of years and Kate got herself straightened out all right. They were happy. All you had to do was see them together and you knew they were happy.”
“Maybe I’d better not try. I’m not sure I can come up to something like that.”
“Oh, nuts. Anything’s better than being half alive.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“You need a drink. Bourbon?” He ordered it. She tried to protest. “Would you rather have vodka, or something? I don’t like it myself, but it’s a free country.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“I’m not going to get you crocked, I’m just loosening you up a bit.”
The drink tasted better than she expected. When her glass was empty Vince ordered a second round. Now things were beginning to look a little blurry. When she turned her head, the room swung around with her. She said, “I feel sort of funny,” and clutched the edge of the table for stability. Vince nodded. “Okay, I’ll order you some food now.”
She ate it, whatever it was. It didn’t seem to have any flavor, but she could still handle a fork, so she decided that she hadn’t had too much to drink. “I’m getting to be a sissy,” she told him owlishly. “That was only two, wasn’t it?”
“About one and a half. I finished the second one for you.”
“Oh. Just so it wasn’t wasted.”
She felt fine, but something had happened to her sense of time and direction. She didn’t know whether she had come in just a little while ago or whether she and Vince had been sitting around in that dim light for hours. She finished her meal and groped around for her handbag, then remembered that all the money she owned in the world was pinned inside her shirt pocket. That was funny. She composed her face into an expression of extremely solemnity and got to the door all right and stood peering out while Vince paid the check. It was quite dark now. The street lights glowed through the nights, and the store signs were all on. “I’m all right,” she told Vince when he slipped a hand under her elbow. “Just a little fuzzy, that’s all.”
“On two drinks? Don’t fall apart on me, we’ve got a busy evening ahead of us.”
“What doing?”
He waved at a cab. It stopped. “The best defense is a good offense,” he instructed her, helping her in. “We go to see Erika. If she hears your story and then tosses us out, that doesn’t leave you much choice—but it’s the best we can do.”
“We can’t get in.”
“Sure we can. Remember?” He took an old-fashioned door key from his jacket pocket. “I’ve never used it before, but I keep forgetting to give it back. Pays to be a slob.”
“She felt safe, knowing you could get in.”
“Women dramatize everything so.”
“Yeah. We’re almost as bad as fairies.”
“The street lights showed Erika’s block shabby without romance. Vince paid the driver and stood with an arm around Frances’s shoulder as he drove away. “Pray she isn’t watching us out of the window,” he said as they started up the porch steps.
Frances’s heart was pounding so, she was afraid it would knock a hole in her chest. She said, “I can’t.”
“You have to. Come on.”
She followed him. I’m getting pretty damn tired of these old stairs, she thought. He knocked lightly on Erika’s unrevealing door. From the other side a muffled voice, startled, “Who is it? What do you want?”
“Me. Vince.”
“I don’t want to talk to anybody. I’m in bed. Pleas
e go away. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I have to see you.”
“Vincent, I don’t feel well. Please go away.”
Frances looked at him. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. She stood against the rubbed wallpaper of the hall, shaking, afraid she was going to faint.
Vince said crossly, “Come in and shut the door. Do you want all the neighbors in here?”
She shook her head. He reached out a strong thin arm and pulled her into the room, slamming the door shut behind her. At the sight of her, Erika grew very pale. She got up and stood facing them. “Please go away, or I’ll scream. You can’t break into somebody’s home like this.”
“Home,” Vince said with a scornful glance around. “Sit down, Frances. The bed’s all right.”
Erika opened her mouth. Frances had no doubt she would yell if she felt like it. Vince reached out, lightning fast, and gave her a good slap that closed it. The sound was terrible. Frances cowered as though she were the one struck, putting a hand up to shield her face. Erika put a hand across her mouth and stood staring at him as though she couldn’t believe her own senses.
“Damn right,” Vince said as though she had asked a question. “Now you kids are even. Francie’s husband popped her one this morning when she told him she was getting out. The silly bitch has been trying to get up enough nerve to leave for years, and she finally made it. You know why? Because she thought you wanted her. She thought you loved her, that’s why. She couldn’t end a bad marriage for her own sake, but she did it for you.”
Frances said, “Vince, let me—”
“And what did you do? You should have been woman enough to trust her. But no, you have to act like a spoiled brat. You’ve been around a long time, you’re no kid, you know who you can trust and who you can’t trust,” Vince said with a lovely disregard for logic. “Why are you sitting around sulking? Francie’s been caught for years. Now she’s finally made it—on your account. And what happens? You let her down.”
Erika’s lips quivered. “Nobody’s going to sleep with me and some man too. I’ve met these people before. They’re really straight. They come across the fence and play around and then they go back to their nice safe, straight life. I don’t want any part of it.”
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