She raised her head and with a touch of disappointment Crane saw that she was as nondescript as her clothing. When he stopped looking at her, he couldn’t remember what she looked like. A woman. Thirty. Thirty-five. Forty. He didn’t know. And yet. There was something vaguely familiar about her, as if he should remember her, as if he might have seen her or met her at one time or another. He had a very good memory for faces and names, an invaluable asset for a salesman, and he searched his memory for. this woman and came up with nothing.
“Don’t you have nothing with you that you could change into?” the agent asked peevishly. “You’d be more comfortable down at the diner.”
“I don’t have anything but some work with me,” she said. Her voice was very patient. “I thought I’d be in the city before the storm came. Late bus, early storm. I’ll be fine here.”
Again his eyes swept through the dingy room, searching for something to say, not finding anything. He began to pull on his coat, and he seemed to gain forty pounds. “Telephone under the counter, back there,” he said finally. “Pay phone’s outside under a drift, I reckon.”
“Thank you,” she said.
The agent continued to dawdle. He pulled on his gloves, checked the rest rooms to make sure the doors were not locked, that the lights worked. He peered at a thermostat, muttering that you couldn’t believe what it said anyways. At the door he stopped once more. He looked like a walking heap of outdoor garments, a clothes pile that had swallowed a man. “Mr.-uh-”
“Crane. Randolph Crane. Manhattan.”
“Uh, yes. Mr. Crane, I’ll tell the troopers that you two are up here. And the road boys. Plow’ll be out soon’s it lets up some. They’ll keep an eye open for you, if you need anything. Maybe drop in with some coffee later on.”
“Great,” Crane said. “That’d be great.”
“Okay, then. I wouldn’t wander out if I was you. See you in the morning, then. Night.”
The icy blast and the inrushing snow made Crane start to shake again. He looked over at the woman, who was huddling down, trying to wrap herself up in the skimpy coat.
His shivering eased and he sat down and opened his briefcase and pulled out one of the policies he had taken along to study. This was the first time he had touched it. He hoped the woman would fall asleep and stay asleep until the bus came in the morning. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to stretch out on the short benches, not that it would matter anyway. He wasn’t the type to relax enough to fall asleep anywhere but in bed.
He stared at the policy, a twenty-year endowment, two years to go to maturity, on the life of William Sanders, age twenty-two. He held it higher, trying to catch the light, but the print was a blur; all he could make out were the headings of the clauses, and these he already knew by heart. He turned the policy over; it was the same on the back, the old familiar print, and the rest a blur. He started to refold the paper to return it to the briefcase. She would think he was crazy, taking it out, looking at it a moment, turning it this way and that, and then putting it back. He pursed his lips and pretended to read.
Sanders, Sanders. What did he want? Four policies, the endowment, a health and accident, a straight life, and mortgage policy. Covered, protected. Insurance-poor, Sanders had said, throwing the bulky envelope onto Crane’s desk. “Consolidate these things somehow. I want cash if I can get it, and out from under the rest.”
“‘But what about your wife, the kids?”
“Ex-wife. If I go, she’ll manage. Let her carry insurance on me.”
Crane had been as persuasive as he knew how to be, and in the end he had had to promise to assess the policies, to have figures to show cash values, and so on. Disapprovingly, of course.
“You know, dear, you really are getting more stuffy every day,” Mary Louise said.
“And if he dies, and his children are left destitute, then will I be so stuffy?”
“I’d rather have the seven hundred dollars myself than see it go to your company year after year.”
“That’s pretty shortsighted.”
“Are you really going to wear that suit to Maggie’s party?”
“Changing the subject?”
“Why not? You know what you think, and I know what I think, and they aren’t even within hailing distance of each other.”
Mary Louise wore a red velvet gown that was slit to her navel, molded just beneath her breasts by a silver chain, and almost completely bare in the back, clown to the curve of her buttocks. The silver chain cut into her tanned back, slightly. Crane stared at it.
“New?”
“Yes. I picked it up last week. Pretty?”
“Indecent. I didn’t know it was a formal thing tonight.”
“Not really. Optional anyway. Some of us decided to dress, that’s all.” She looked at him in the mirror and said, I really don’t care if you want to wear that suit.”
Wordlessly he turned and went back to the closet to find his dinner jacket and black trousers. How easy it would be, a flick of a chain latch, and she’d be stripped to her hips. Was she counting on someone’s noticing that? Evers maybe? Or Olivetti! Olivetti? What had he said? Something about women who wore red in public. Like passing out a dance card and pencil, the promise implicit in the gesture?
“Slut!” he said, through teeth so tightly pressed together that his jaws ached.
“What? I’m sorry.”
He looked up. The woman in the bus station was watching him across the aisle. She still looked quite cold.
“I am sorry,” she said softly. “I thought you spoke.”
“No.” He stuffed the policy back in his case and fastened it. “Are you warm enough?”
“Not really. The ticket agent wasn’t kidding when he said the thermostat lies. According to it, it’s seventy-four in here.”
Crane got up and looked at the thermostat. The adjustment control was gone. The station was abysmally cold. He walked back and forth for a few moments, then paused at the window. The white world, ebbing and growing, changing, changeless. “If I had a cup or something, I could bring in some snow and chill the thermostat. That might make the heat kick on.”
“Maybe in the rest room . . . “ He heard her move across the floor, but he didn’t turn to look. There was a pink glow now in the whiteness, like a fire in the distance, all but obscured by the intervening clouds of snow. He watched as it grew brighter, darker, almost red; then it went out. The woman returned and stood at his side.
“No cups, but I folded paper towels to make a funnel thing. Will it do?”
He took the funnel. It was sturdy enough, three thicknesses of brown, unabsorbent toweling. “Probably better than a cup,” he said. “Best stand behind the door. Every time it opens, that blizzard comes right on in.”
She nodded and moved away. When he opened the door the wind hit him hard, almost knocking him back into the room, wrenching the door from his hand. It swung wide open and hit the woman. Distantly he heard her gasp of surprise and pain. He reached out and scooped up a funnel full of snow and then pushed the door closed again. He was covered with snow. Breathless, he leaned against the wall. “Are you all right?” he asked after a few moments.
She was holding her left shoulder. “Yes. It caught me by surprise. No harm done. Did you get enough snow?”
He held up the funnel for her to see and then pushed himself away from the wall. Again he had the impression that there was no right side up in the small station. He held the back of one of the benches and moved along it. “The wind took my breath away,” he said.
“Or the intense cold. I think I read that breathing in the cold causes as many heart attacks as overexertion.”
“Well, it’s cold enough out there. About zero by now, I guess.” He scooped out some of the snow and held it against the thermostat. “The furnace must be behind this wall, or under this area. Feel how warm it is.”
She put her hand on the wall and nodded. “Maybe we can fasten the cup of snow up next to the termostat.” She looked
around and then went to the bulletin board. She removed several of the notices and schedules there and brought him the thumbtacks. Crane spilled a little snow getting the tacks into the paper towel and then into the wall. In a few minutes there was a rumble as the furnace came on and almost immediately the station began to feel slightly warmer. Presently the woman took off her coat.
“Success,” she said, smiling.
“I was beginning to think it had been a mistake after all, not going to the diner.”
“So was I.”
“I think they are trying to get the snowplows going. I saw a red light a couple of minutes ago. It went out again, but at least someone’s trying.”
She didn’t reply, and after a moment he said, “I’m glad you don’t smoke. I gave it up a few months ago, and it would drive me mad to have to smell it through a night like this. Probably I’d go back to them.”
“I have some,” she said. “I even smoke once in a while. If you decide that you do want them . . . “
“No. No. I wasn’t hinting.”
“I just wish the lights were better in here. I could get in a whole night’s work. I often work at night.”
“So do I, but you’d put your eyes out. What-”
“That’s all right. What kind of work do I do? An illustrator for Slocum House Catalogue Company. Not very exciting, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, you’re an artist.”
“No. Illustrator. I wanted to become an artist, but . . . things didn’t work out that way.”
“I’d call you an artist. Maybe because I’m in awe of anyone who can draw, or paint, or do things like that. You’re all artists to me.”
She shrugged. “And you’re an insurance salesman.” lie stiffened and she got up, saying, “I saw the policy you were looking over, and the briefcase stuffed full of policies and company pamphlets and such. I knew an insurance salesman once.”
He realized that he had been about to ask where she was going, and he clamped his jaw again and turned so that he wouldn’t watch her go into the ladies’ room.
He went to the window. The wind was still at gale force, but so silent. With the door closed, the station seemed far removed from the storm, and looking at it was like watching something wholly unreal, manufactured to amuse him perhaps. There were storm windows, and the building was very sturdy and probably very well insulated. Now, with the furnace working, it was snug and secure. He cupped his hands about his eyes, trying to see past the reflections in the window, but there was nothing. Snow, a drift up to the sill now, and the wind-driven snow that was like a sheer curtain being waved from above, touching the windows, fluttering back, touching again, hiding everything behind it.
She was taking a long time. He should have gone when she left Now he had the awkward moment to face, of excusing himself or not, of timing it so that she wouldn’t think he was leaving deliberately in order to dodge something that one or the other said or hinted. She had done it so easily and naturally.-He envied people like her. Always so sure of themselves.
“Which face are you wearing tonight, Randy?” Mary Louise reached across the table and touched his cheek, then shook her head. “I can’t always tell. When you’re the successful salesman, you are so assured, so poised, charming, voluble even.”
“And the other times? What am I those times?”
“Afraid.”
Drawing back from her hand, tight and self-contained again, watchful, he said, “Isn’t it lucky that I can keep the two separated, then? How successful a salesman would I be if I put on the wrong face when I went to work?”
“I wonder if mixing it up a little might not be good for you. So you wouldn’t sell a million dollars’ worth of insurance a year, but you’d be a little happier when you’re not working.”
“Like you?”
“Not like me, God forbid. But at least I haven’t given up looking for something. And you have.”
“Yeah. You’re looking. In a bottle. In someone else’s bed. In buying sprees.”
“C ‘est la vie. You can always buzz off, you know.”
“And add alimony to my other headaches? No, thanks.”
Smiling at him, sipping an Old Fashioned, infinitely wise and infinitely evil. Were wise women always evil? “My poor Randy. My poor, darling. You thought I was everything you were not, and instead you find that I am stamped from the same mold. Number XLM 119543872-afraid of life, only not quite afraid of death. Someone let up on the pressure there. Hardly an indentation even. So I can lose myself and you can’t. A pity, my darling Randy. If we could lose ourselves together, what might we be able to find? We are so good together, you know. Sex with you is still the best of all. I try harder and harder to make you let go all the way. I read manuals and take personalized lessons, all for your sake, darling. All for you. And it does no good. You are my only challenge, you see.”
“Stop it! Are you crazy?”
“Ah. Now I know who you are tonight. There you are. Tight mouth, frowning forehead full of lines, narrowed eyes. You are not so handsome with this face on, you know. Why don’t you look at me, Randy?” Her hands across the table again, touching his cheeks, a finger trailing across his lips, a caress or mockery. “You never look at me, you know. You never look at me at all.”
He leaned his forehead against the window, and the chill roused him. Where was the woman? He looked at his watch and realized that she had been gone only a few minutes, not the half hour or longer that he had thought. Was the whole night going to be like that? Minutes dragging by like hours? Time distorted until a lifetime could be spent in waiting for one dawn?
He went to the men’s room. When he returned, she was sitting in her own place once more, her coat thrown over her shoulders, a sketch pad in her lap.
“Are you cold again?” He felt almost frozen. There was no heat in the men’s room.
“Not really. Moving about chilled me. There’s a puddle under the funnel, and the snow is gone, but heat is still coming from the radiator.”
“I’ll have to refill it every half hour or so, I guess.”
“The driver said it’s supposed to go to ten or fifteen below tonight.”
Crane shrugged. “After it gets this low, I don’t care how much farther it drops. As long as I don’t have to be out in it.”
She turned her attention to her pad and began to make strong lines. He couldn’t tell what she was drawing, only that she didn’t hesitate, but drew surely, confidently. He opened his briefcase and got out his schedule book. It was no use, he couldn’t read the small print in the poor lighting of the station. He rummaged for something that he would be able to concentrate on. He was grateful when she spoke again.
“It was so stupid to start out tonight. I could have waited until tomorrow. I’m not bound by a time clock or anything.”
“That’s just what I was thinking. I was afraid of being snowed in for several days. We were at Sky Mount Ski Lodge, and everyone else was cheering the storm’s approach. Do you ski?”
“Some, not very well. The cold takes my breath away, hitting me in the face like that.”
He stared at her for a moment, opened his mouth to agree, then closed it again. It was as if she was anticipating what he was going to say. “Don’t be so silly, Randy. All you have to do is wear the muter around your mouth and nose. And the goggles on your eyes. Nothing is exposed then. You’re just too lazy to ski.”
“Okay, lazy. I know this-I’m bored to death here. I haven’t been warm since we left the apartment, and my legs ache. That was a nasty fall I had this morning. I’m sore. I have a headache from the glare of the snow, and I think it’s asinine to freeze for two hours in order to slide down a mountain a couple of times. I’m going back to the city.”
“But our reservation is through Saturday night. Paid in advance.”
“Stay. Be my guest. Have yourself a ball. You and McCone make a good pair, and his wife seems content to sit on the sidelines and watch you. Did you really think that anemic blonde would appeal
to me? Did you think we’d be too busy together to notice what you were up to?”
“Tracy? To tell the truth I hadn’t given her a thought. I didn’t know she didn’t ski until this afternoon. I don’t know why Mac brought her here. Any more than I know why you came along.”
“Come on home with me. Let’s pack up and leave before the storm begins. We can stop at that nice old antique inn on the way home, where they always have pheasant pie. Remember?”
“Darling, I came to ski. You will leave the car here, won’t you? I’ll need it to get the skis back home, and our gear. Isn’t there a bus or something?”
“Mary Louise, this morning on the slope, didn’t you really see me? You know, when your ski pole got away from you.”
Orbit 8 - [Anthology] Page 22