She saw me and said casually, “Oh, hello, Kyle.”
“What goes on?”
“I’m moving in. When I left Friday I noticed that there was no name on one of the mailboxes. So I saw the superintendent. At first he said he was saving it for somebody and then let me have it. It’s on the third floor, and it’s right above yours, Kyle.”
“Want I should lug that stuff up, lady?” the driver said humbly.
“I’ll take some,” I said, “and we can do it all in one trip. Got your key?”
“Yes. He gave it to me when I paid the rent.”
She took one hatbox. The driver took one big suitcase, one little one, and a hatbox. That left a big suitcase and a little one for me. It was expensive luggage. The best. You could see that.
In order to carry them, I shoved the corsage box into my jacket pocket. I knew Emily had seen it. She put the hatboxes down and unlocked the door. It was almost like walking into my own place. The furniture was arranged the same, and it was just about as beat as mine. As she was nearer the top of the well, it was a lighter apartment.
She paid the driver. “Thanks, lady,” he said. “Thanks a lot.” He went whistling down the stairs.
For the first time Emily seemed a bit ill at ease. “I just happened to like the setup, Kyle. And I can afford it. The others I’ve looked at were too high.”
“Don’t apologize for becoming a neighbor. I like it”
“I don’t want you to think that it changes anything I said Friday.”
“I understand that.”
“Thanks for helping me, Kyle. I don’t want to hold you up. You’ll be late.”
“It … wasn’t a definite date, anyway.”
She was under control again. She looked amused. It seemed as though she knew, somehow, what a miserable week end I had given to Jo Anne, and why I was taking her the flowers. Her dress was of a soft gray material with tiny flecks of white. Her hat, of white wool in a coarse knit, was identical to the green one she had worn Friday. No watch, ring, bracelet, clip or pin.
I went down three steps and looked back, expecting to see her in the doorway. But she had closed the door so quietly that I hadn’t heard it.
Out on the sidewalk again, I took the transparent box out of my pocket. It had become slightly crushed. I tried to straighten it out, but made it worse. By the time the bus dropped me at the Clark Street corner, the edges of the petals were rimmed with the faint brown that meant that the man had sold me flowers that were not sufficiently fresh. I tossed the box on top of a trash barrel beside the grocery store on the Clark Street corner.
They were at dinner. I should have phoned. Ed insisted that I pull up a chair. Mom went out and brought in a plate apologetically, because there wasn’t much on it. There was a happy look in Jo Anne’s eyes. I tried to tell myself that things were as they had always been, and yet, sitting with her family, I felt like an impostora guy who happened to look just like Kyle Cameron, but who had changed in some immeasurable way.
I watched the TV news again with Ed until the dishes were done, and then walked with Jo Anne to the neighborhood movies.
I sat in the darkness beside her, our shoulders touching, her hand warm and faintly sticky in mine. The movie was about a batch of madly gay people at some sort of resort. Jo Anne liked it. I watched them on the Technicolor screen, all the incredibly seductive women, all the bronzed long-jawed men. It made me remember, for no good reason, a line drawing in one of the old history books in school, in a chapter about feudal days. A big banquet was going on in the castle and the serfs were huddled around, staring in, looking mean and hungry and tired of it all. Now, suppose those serfs could really believe that with a couple of breaks here and there, they could work their way up to be one of the barons. They’d probably be looking in the windows, grinning, snickering, nudging each other, just like the people around us in the dark movie house.
“This stinks,” I said, too loud.
A woman in front of us turned around and said, “Shush, you!”
Jo Anne felt me go tense and she squeezed my hand. I settled back. She whispered, “We can leave if you want to.”
“Maybe it will get better.”
But from then on she didn’t seem to enjoy it so much. A couple of times I glanced at her and saw that she was watching me. It was too dark to read her expression.
On the slow walk back to her house, she said. “It wasn’t too bad, was it?”
“No. Leave us leap into our Hispano Suiza and swim at the Riviera under the Mediterranean moonlight. With a picnic lunch of caviar and crumpets. Don’t soil your little white hands, darling. Let the servants make up the lunch.”
She took my arm, gave me a little tug. “Kyle! You kind of scare me when you talk like that. I don’t understand you.”
“I guess I just don’t like movies like that any more, honey. They’re not real.”
“Well, goodness! Of course they aren’t! Everybody knows that.”
“They know it before they go and after they come out. But while they’re in there, they have to believe it’s real. That’s why they go. If their life was any good, they wouldn’t have to go. They wouldn’t have to pretend.”
“Do you think our life is no good, Kyle?”
“You’re putting words in my mouth. Our life is fine.”
“You don’t made it sound fine. You make it sound … kind of little and unimportant. Are you in some kind of trouble at the bank, Kyle?”
“Of course not,” I said angrily.
“Oh, Kyle! Let’s not quarrel. It was a dreadful week end.”
“I know it was. That’s why I came around tonight, honey. I thought maybe I could fix it up. I’m not doing so good, I guess.”
She hugged my arm close to her. “Everything will be all right. Really it will.”
And she was my good girl again. Girl I’d taken to dances, to movies. Girl of the sunny blue eyes, and much joy, and sweetness on her lips. I had it back now, and I was going to hold onto it. I had to hold onto it. Because it made that bronze grille bearable, made the brown-bag lunches taste good, made me want the marriage.
So on the porch, on the dark porch, while the TV chattered and yelped in the darkened living room, I put my hands on her waist, knowing as I did it that I was thinking of my hands on Emily’s waist. Jo Anne was not the same. There was a tiny roll of fat just above the sturdy line of the hips. There was no heat to sear my palms. I pulled her so hard against me that she gave a tiny gasp of surprise before I began to hurt her mouth with my lips. I released her suddenly. She put the back of her hand to her lips as she took an uncertain backward step. “Well!” she said.
“What’s so surprising?” I asked harshly. “Haven’t we got old enough to give up kid-style kissing?”
“I guess … it just wasn’t like you. You act strange, Kyle.”
“Jo Anne. Listen to me. Why don’t we do this? Buy the car now. Go out of town. Get married. Don’t tell anybody. We can go through a ceremony again in July or August, whichever it’s going to be. Between the two marriages, you can come to my place, or we can go to motels, or something.”
“That sounds … sort of shabby, Kyle. Sneaky.”
“Maybe it’s important that we do it. More important than you know, Jo Anne.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Kyle?”
“That I … I don’t know what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Poor dear. Being a nervous bridegroom. Wanting to get it over. That’s what the trouble is.”
“Will you do it?”
“No, Kyle. I won’t.”
I stood for long seconds. I kissed her lightly. “See you Wednesday, darling,” I said.
“Saturday we can inspect Hilson Gardens. I’m excited about that. Aren’t you?”
“Sure,” I said.
I caught a bus and rode back down to my corner. It was almost eleven-thirty. I went into my room and stood in the darkness, looking up at the ceiling, my head cocked to one side, listening. I co
uld hear no sound. She would be sleeping. How did she sleep? Palms flat together under her cheek, knees drawn up like a child? Or sprawling, tousled, heavy-breathing? I knew that I would hear her when she walked. The previous tenants had been heavy-footed, annoying. The layout of the two apartments was identical. I would be able to listen, trace her little routines, learn more about her.
After I undressed and went to bed, I lay rigid, staring up at my ceiling. With an eight-foot ceiling, with her couch the same height as mine, she was eight feet directly above. What was she wearing? Nightgown, pajamas, nothing? I got up after a time and turned the light on again. I looked at Jo Anne’s picture on the table, the picture I had put out of sight for Emily’s visit. Jo Anne was entangled in my life in so many ways. A thousand snapshots. Probably twenty gifts from her. Belts, tie clips, wallets, fountain pens.
I looked at the ceiling again, where Emily’s bed was. I doubled my fist and hit myself on the thigh, as hard as I could. It knotted the muscles of my thigh, and I limped back to bed, to lie sweating in the darkness. Once, when I was a little kid, I fell into Palmer Creek in the early spring. The water ran deep and fast and black. I was all bundled up. The kids ran along beside the creek, screaming and crying.
This was like that. This was that same helplessness. Who would haul me out this time, give me a hot bath, rub me with harsh towels, give me the brandy that almost made me sick, and then made everything swimmy and bright-colored?
In my dreams she came to me, and she was a sleek black mare. I rode bareback on the shining pelt, my legs clamping the hard writhe of muscles. The world tipped and the mare ran down an endless steepness, faster and faster and faster, out of control, running with a swiftness that was first a horror, and then an aching deliciousness.
In the morning I left earlier than usual. As I opened my door, I heard, in the apartment above, the rushing, droning sound that meant she was showering. During breakfast and on the walk to the bank, under gray clouds that swept low over Thrace, I saw her shower stall as a brightly lighted shadow box in the back of my mind, with Emily Rudolph standing, eyes closed, face upturned to the whip of the needle spray.
At the bank Sam Grinter gave me a curt nod. Paul Raddmann, Nairn, and Pritchard were polite, almost formal. Hell with them. I did my work.
Chapter Five
I did not see her on Tuesday or Wednesday, and had no occasion to phone her for an M balance. On Wednesday, with Jo Anne, I made a great effort to pretend that nothing had changed for me. It worked. I think she had a happy evening. But the effort left me feeling, when I left her, full of suppressed violence.
Thursday I got back to the apartment at quarter after five. I stood at the door and listened. I stood without moving until I heard her come up the stairs at twenty-five minutes to six.
As she reached the second floor I opened the door. My smile felt as if it had been slapped across my mouth with a stiff brush.
“Wanted to check and see if you’re comfortable,” I said.
She was in the navy outfit in which I had first seen her. She carried a bag of groceries in one arm. “I like it,” she said.
“How about coming down and having a drink with me and then we’ll go out for dinner, Emily?”
“No, thanks, Kyle. I have my dinner here.”
“Don’t you want to be neighborly? How about the drink, at least?”
She shifted the groceries to the other arm. “No, thank you, Kyle.”
“Look, I won’t be a problem. Honestly. I mean it. I just want to … talk to you and look at you.” I blocked her way to the stairs.
“If you keep this up, Kyle, I’ll have to move out.”
“Keep what up? What’s it going to do to you to have a drink with me?”
She sighed. “I told myself I wasn’t going to leave my apartment tonight, and I’m not. Give me a half hour and then bring your shaker up. I have glasses. I’ll have two drinks with you, and then you’re leaving. Is that quite clear?”
“Perfectly clear. Half an hour, Emily.”
She went lightly up the stairs. I closed my door and listened. I heard her walk to the kitchen. I heard the chunk of the refrigerator door as she put food away. I walked softly, listening. When twenty minutes were up, I made a shaker of drinks. I nearly filled the shaker. I had wasted too much time in listening to her. I pulled off the neat banker suit, put on pale tan slacks, a soft cocoa-brown corduroy shirt. I looked down at the edge of the left pocket and saw the neat mend Jo Anne had done the time I tore it.
I went up the stairs with the shaker cold in my hand. I knocked at her door.
She opened it quickly. She had changed to severely tailored burgundy slacks and a white nylon shirt, cut like a man’s except for the very full sleeves, the tightness of the cuffs.
“I was a little stuffy, I guess,” she said. “Now I’m looking forward to the drink.”
She had changed the apartment completely. It took a few moments to see just how simple the changes were, yet how effective. The shades and curtains had been replaced by deep aqua draperies. They were drawn, shutting out all daylight. She had replaced the lamp bulbs with ones of higher power, replaced the shades with metal ones, completely opaque, so that most of the light was directed toward the floor, a small bit toward the ceiling. A coffee table formed of two cinder blocks and an oblong of plate glass stood in front of the studio couch.
“Like it?” she asked.
“Don’t let Harrison see it. He’ll raise your rent.”
“I hope you don’t mind the draperies being drawn. When the working day is over I expect it to be night. I’m not a daylight type, I guess.”
Two glasses and a saucer with twists of lemon peel were on the coffee table. I filled the two glasses and we sat, side by side, a careful thirty inches apart.
“To confusion,” she said, raising her glass.
We drank. “Enjoying your work?” I asked.
“There’s a certain amount of enjoyment in doing anything you can do well, even if you don’t particularly like it.”
“Are the girls being more friendly?”
“No. They won’t change. I don’t expect them to. I don’t think I’d want them to. I don’t even feel like a member of the same species.”
Conversation died right there. The silence was taut and uncomfortable for me. With that old self-sufficiency of hers, she didn’t seem to notice it.
“Your friend Mr. Grinter,” she said, “stopped me on the way out tonight. He wanted me to have dinner with him.”
“Don’t have anything to do with him!”
She leaned back, raised one burgundy knee, laced her fingers around it. “That’s an order, I suppose.” Her eyes were mocking me again. They glinted dark in the reflected lamplight.
“Sam has the wrong ideas about you.”
“What are the right ideas?”
“Not Sam’s.”
“Yours, maybe?” she asked very softly.
“All right. I made a mistake. I wasn’t very smart. But don’t go out with Sam.”
“Why should I? There’s no luck there, Kyle. None at all.”
“No more than with me, I suppose.”
“Not a bit more.”
I refilled the glasses. She looked at the shaker. “You made considerably more than two rounds. Are we going through the same thing again, Kyle?”
I felt recklessly angry. “Sure. I came up to tell you that I’m only pretending to be a bank teller. Don’t tell anybody. Actually I’ve got forty million dollars. I’m just learning how the other half lives. Now you can throw yourself into my arms and we’ll ride off into the sunset, complete with mood music.”
“Poor Kyle,” she said. “Poor hungry, ambitious Kyle. And so desperately trapped.”
“You’re not trapped, I suppose.”
“Look at me and tell me I’m trapped, Kyle.”
I looked at her. “You’ll find a way out of it, won’t you?”
“Somehow.”
I stood up. Some of the drink sloppe
d over onto the back of my hand. I set the glass down and stood in front of her. “Why did you move in here, right above me?” My voice sounded hoarse and funny.
“It was the only apartment vacant.”
“I had half a chance to get you out of my mind. But not now, Emily. I hear you walking above me. I think of what you’re doing. I wonder how you sleep. How you look. I hear your shower. This morning, I listened. I stopped breathing, I listened so hard. I heard the little sound of you brushing your teeth. I didn’t know what it was at first. Then I knew.”
“You’d better go, Kyle.”
“What do you want me to do? What have I got to do to stop tearing myself apart?”
“Don’t talk like that!”
“There. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you raise your voice. And you know, you’re not kidding me. You feel this the same way I do. We’re drifting toward something. Both of us. Nothing is going to stop it.”
“You’re talking like a fool.”
“Am I. The light slants across your throat, Emily. I can see a pulse at the base of your throat. Does it always beat that fast? Does it?”
She brought her hand up to her throat. “Don’t,” she whispered.
“There’s something dark about you. Dark and strange. Me, I’m supposed to be just right for Jo Anne. I’m not supposed to want anything like you. What’s soft and feminine about you? You’re like that damn adding machine you beat on all day. Like a ledger card. Adding up this and adding up that. O.K., so in your book I don’t add up. What do I have to do to add up? What’s the price, Emily?”
She walked to the door and held it open. It wasn’t done with drama. Just with assurance, self-control. “Get out,” she said.
I walked over to her, stood inches in front of her, and looked down into her eyes. As I watched her, the heaviness of her upper lids seemed to increase.
Her mouth twisted. “Get out, Kyle. I’ve got no time for charity.”
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