Wake Up With a Stranger

1.

Sharkey Mulloy was a man who loved his work. Those who saw Sharkey on the streets of St. Louis were never aware that in him existed a glimmer of the glory that had been Greece, a speck of the grandeur that had been Rome. It was true that there were some, even in this enlightened age, who considered his work pagan in practice and sinful in nature, but even Sir Thomas Browne, himself a Christian, was unable to discredit entirely this vestige of Christian idiocy.

Now, this day, Sharkey sat in a vault below a chapel and listened to the sound of a mourning organ. He could hear the organ only faintly, and he wished he could not hear it at all, for he did not like it. He did not, as a matter of fact, like anything about what was now going on in the chapel, for he considered it a sticky business better eliminated. A realist, however, he accepted it as a necessary prelude to his own work, something to be tolerated out of deference to deluded folk who paid the tariff but couldn’t understand the proper way of doing a thing. After the organ was silent and the chapel was empty, when what was left came down on the elevator into his hands, things would be different and better by far. The whole complex and obscure confusion of dogma and display would become, under his definitive ministration, serene and clear, and pure as fire.

In due time he heard the elevator descending and went out to receive his charge from Mr. Fairstead, who always made the delivery himself in what Sharkey had to admit was a nice gesture in the last phase of a last rite. Today, as usual, Mr. Fairstead looked somber below the neck and quite cheerful above, and his voice, when he spoke, agreed with the part above.

“Well, here he is, Sharkey,” he said. “Be sure to give us back our three percent.”

“Net,” Sharkey said.

Mr. Fairstead laughed and went, the elevator groaning upward, and Sharkey took over, warmed as always by the intimate little exchange that had not varied a bit in twenty years, except that the personal pronoun changed its gender to suit the occasion. He worked swiftly and efficiently, and it required only a short while to complete in the vault what had been begun in the chapel, to make in action the grand consignment that had already been made in words. This done, and with a period of waiting now to be endured, Sharkey put on his hat and went around the corner to a tavern.

He returned to his vault after an hour and read an Agatha Christie murder mystery for something over another hour. Finally, the time past, he extracted Mr. Fairstead’s three percent, and extracted with a magnet from the three percent a number of long screws. All screws removed, he put the three percent in a temporary receptacle and sealed it. On the outside of the receptacle, he stuck a gummed label on which he had previously printed in clear block letters: BURNS, AARON — SPLENDID IN ASHES.

He was actually required to print only the name. The added little epitaph, a phrase lifted from Browne’s Hydriotaphia, was Sharkey’s own idea.

2.

The residue of Aaron Burns, the three percent that Mr. Fairstead facetiously claimed and Sharkey Mulloy carefully preserved, really belonged, of course, to Shirley Smith Burns, his widow, who did not linger to claim her property. Arrangements with Mr. Fairstead for a suitable urn and a perpetual-care niche in the chapel of the crematorium had been completed, and there seemed nothing left for her to do. Besides, she was feeling quite ghastly, and she had this odd sensation of her skull’s being packed loosely with sawdust which shifted about in the most peculiar manner every time she moved her head. She was being driven home by Earl Joslin, Aaron’s lawyer, and she thought with resignation, looking out the car window at the remnants of snow, that it was unfortunate that she had been compelled to hurry all the way back from Florida at such an inconvenient time.

Many things in the life of Shirley Smith Burns had been, and were still, unfortunate. Perhaps the single most unfortunate thing — though it is actually impossible ever to pinpoint this — was the diphtheria which she had as a child. This was the only genuinely organic illness she ever had in her life, and she very nearly died of it, but all in all, in the final stages of recovery, she enjoyed it immensely. She was extravagantly loved and coddled and waited upon. She was the significant center of her universe. The romance of the experience, as well as the attention, was not lost upon her, for there is something poetic in the mortality of a child, and no one is more aware of it than children.

For a long time she amused herself by playing imaginative variations on the theme of her death, and it was too bad, in a way, that she could not actually have died. The only reservations she felt in this childish death wish were the knowledge that she would be unable to attend the funeral. She recovered from the diphtheria, but she never recovered from the convalescence. Moreover and worse, neither did her mother. She, having seen her only child imperiled, waged thereafter a continuing terrified battle against all the shadows of death. And Shirley grew up in the shadows. Later, when she was grown, when impatience and indifference succeeded concern, it was too late to come out from these shadows.

This change did not occur until she lost her mother. That intrepid woman, constantly alert to the designs of Death upon her daughter, was careless of his designs upon herself, and she let him steal up on her. She died suddenly one spring, and the following winter her husband died of a bronchial pneumonia he might have survived if he had not learned from his family to despise and avoid doctors.

Shirley was left with a modest income from investments and an endless repertoire of psychosomatic ills, and eventually, by chance or fate or the caprice of the devil, she met and married Aaron Burns. She married him for several reasons, and none of them was love. Most compelling of the reasons was that he was gentle enough to be imposed upon and clever enough to make lots of money. But what she was never capable of learning was that he needed most of all, because of his spiritual desolation, a simple carnal acceptance in the broad meaning of the terms. Unable to give him this in even a narrow sense, let alone a broad one, she left it to someone else.

She was a selfish woman, but she was no fool. She was certainly aware, after she began denying him herself, that he was getting satisfaction elsewhere. She never suspected, however, his actual method before Donna, and it would have been better for her if she had. She thought that he probably kept a mistress, despising him for it as a man too weak for pure devotion, but she never despised herself for her part in it. The irrational thing about her reaction was the really virulent hatred she developed for the woman who was giving and getting what she herself did not care to give or accept, and there was a time when she felt that it was absolutely necessary, if she was to retain her sanity, to know who the woman was. She hired a detective to follow Aaron for one month, but the detective, a reasonable fellow who did not consider a whorehouse and a mistress synonomous, submitted a negative report. After that she did not try to discover the identity of the woman, but she remained convinced that she existed, certain in her own mind that the detective was an incompetent and Aaron a monster of deception. She found solace in suffering, and began going frequently to Florida.

They turned into the drive and stopped beside the house, and Joslin came around to open the door on her side of the car. With one hand lightly on her elbow, he assisted her into the house and upstairs, and waited in the hall outside her room until she called to him to enter. When he went in, she was reclining on a chaise longue, wearing a pale negligee that emphasized the pallor of her skin and the shadows under her eyes. She incited in him a kind of delicate crawling revulsion, a faint unpleasant tickling below the diaphragm. He was here because he was Aaron’s lawyer and because of a genuine liking and regret for Aaron himself. But as soon as he had settled Aaron’s affairs, he never again wanted to see Aaron’s widow.

“You look exhausted,” he said courteously. “Don’t you think we had better postpone everything for a few days?”

“No. I’m feeling better now, and I want your advice about several things. Tell me again the terms of the will.”

“They’re quite simple. Everything comes to you except the two bequests to Miss Ingram and Miss Buchanan.”

“One thousand to Miss Ingram and ten to Miss Buchanan?”

“That’s right.”

“It’s quite a substantial difference. I wonder why.”

“As I told you, Miss Buchanan is quite a talented young woman. Her original designs have contributed a great deal to the reputation of the shop, and you may remember that she managed the business very competently when Aaron was laid up with his second heart attack. I’m sure the ten thousand is only a kind of bonus in recognition of these services.”

“Which one was she?”

“At the chapel?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The one with glasses. Quite a striking young woman, I think.”

He paid the compliment in malice, but he paid it deftly with the intent and without the appearance. “Can the will be broken?” she asked. “Just the two bequests, you mean?”

“Naturally.”

“No. I can see no possibility at all. Even if there were, I’d hardly advise it. After all, the amount involved is insignificant compared to the total estate. The action would cost too much for so little. Moreover, if you’ll excuse my saying so, I feel that Aaron’s last wishes should be respected.”

“It’s the principle. You know perfectly well what everyone will think when this woman receives such a large amount.”

“Oh, nonsense. I’m sure no one will think anything of the sort. Besides, a court action would certainly be a poor way of detracting attention.”

“All right, I won’t make an issue of it if you think I shouldn’t. I want your opinion on the shop.”

“What about the shop?”

“What would you estimate it is worth?”

“Off hand, it’s impossible to be accurate. I’d guess not less than two hundred thousand dollars as it now stands.”

“Will it be difficult to find a buyer?”

“I shouldn’t think so. Its reputation is superb. Probably has the most desirable patronage in town. However, if you really want my opinion, I advise you not to sell.”

“Why not?”

“The shop is a highly successful enterprise. Nowhere else could you invest your money to receive such large returns.”

“I’m not a business woman. Besides, I am not well. I couldn’t possibly run it.”

“Of course not. You would have to employ a manager who is skilled in that type of business.”

“I wouldn’t even be able to judge the efficiency of a manager. I’d be vulnerable to all sorts of errors and impositions.”

“Do you still want my advice?”

“Certainly. That’s why I asked you to stay.”

“Very well, then. I advise you to keep the shop and to keep Miss Buchanan as its manager.”

“The woman who gets the bequest?”

“That’s right. Donna Buchanan. I know that Aaron had the highest regard for her, and I know from other sources that she’s truly a fine designer. The line of originals she’s initiated compares favorably, I’m told, with the best anywhere, and it’s gaining recognition from women who are willing and able to pay very fancy prices for their original gowns. There’s simply no way to estimate the potential of this kind of enterprise.”

“No. I don’t wish to be encumbered with it. I wish to liquidate all assets and leave this city as soon as possible.”

“Just as you say, of course.”

“Will you handle it for me?”

“Certainly.”

“That’s settled, then.”

“You understand, I hope, that the final settlement of an estate requires time.”

“Oh, yes. Naturally. Just expedite it as much as you can.” She closed her eyes, pressing her fingers upon the lids. “Now I think I had better rest. It has been a difficult day, and I’m really feeling quite ill. Please excuse me for not seeing you out.”

“It’s perfectly all right.”

He stood up. Screened by her lowered lids, he permitted his revulsion to show for a moment in his face. Turning, he walked silently out of the room and downstairs and out of the house.

Behind him, on the lounge in the room where Donna had lately walked with pride in herself and contempt for the room’s owner, Shirley Burns lay quietly with her eyes still closed. She had told for once the truth about herself. She was really quite ill with a functional illness, and the illness was fury and hate.

Her lips moved soundlessly in the shape of an epithet.

3.

From the crematorium chapel, Donna and Gussie walked together to a stop where they caught, after a few minutes, a bus downtown. They got off near the shop and walked from there to a nearby cocktail lounge. Entering it, they sat at a tiny table in a corner. Soft light was admitted through perforations in the patterns of constellations, and on three walls, at intervals, were tapestries of Persian design. They ordered two Martinis. Gussie lifted her fragile glass at once and took a generous swallow. Then she sat for thirty seconds and looked at the olive.

“Well,” she said, “that’s that.”

“Yes, it is,” Donna said, “isn’t it?”

“I’m glad he wasn’t buried,” Gussie said. “What a filthy dismal day it would be to be buried! Do you mind if I’m morbid, darling?”

“Not at all. I’m feeling rather morbid myself.”

“I may even get slightly drunk as well, which would only have the effect of making me more morbid. Would you object to that?”

“Whatever you want to do is all right with me, Gussie.”

“Thank you kindly, Mistress Mary. That’s from a nursery rhyme, you know. That Mistress Mary bit. Do you know why I am thinking of that particular nursery rhyme at this moment? It’s because Mary had a garden, and we have a garden, and the question was and is, how the hell does it grow? Well, not so well, I guess. Ours, that is. The garden surely looks like it’s going to hell, doesn’t it, darling?”

“Maybe not, Gussie.”

“Anyhow, never mind. I’m just a filthy morbid woman, and I wish I were dead instead of Aaron, and that’s the truth. It’s the truth at this time, at any rate, but I admit it may no longer be true tomorrow, or even an hour from now.”

She finished her Martini and signified to the waitress that she wanted a second, but after it was brought she sat looking at it sourly, as if she were not sure that she wanted it after all. It was her second at this sitting, but it was far past her second for the day, and she had gone to the chapel with gin on her breath. Not drunk, nor on the other hand quite sober. Just quietly and bitterly fortified by gin.

“I’m glad he wasn’t buried,” she said again. “It’s much too cold and wet a day to be buried.”

“Why don’t you quit thinking about it?”

“I’d be glad to quit thinking about it if I could, but I can’t. It seems to be something I can’t control at present. Do you know why that is? It’s because I am reminded by association of another person who was put into a hole in a soggy cemetery when I was there, but that was a long time ago, and I was a young girl at the time. This person they put into the hole was a person I was going to marry, but of course after they put him into the hole, it was impossible. His name was Aloysius, which is a name I can’t imagine any mother giving to a child. But I called him Al, and I loved him, and what is truly remarkable is that he loved me too.”

“Don’t say things like that, Gussie. Surely lots of people have loved you.”

“I don’t think so. At least not in the same way as Al. He was a crazy little son-of-a-bitch, to tell the truth, and he insisted on riding a goddamn motorcycle all over the place at simply incredible speeds. I don’t know why he did this, but it seemed as if he had to. Maybe it’s the sort of thing a kid has to do if he’s named Aloysius. Anyhow, he went too fast around a curve on a gravel road, and he hit too much loose gravel or something, and that was the end of him. At least that’s what they figured afterward had happened, and he broke a number of bones, including his neck. It was impossible to patch him up properly for display, so I was unable to see him after it happened, but what I remember most about it now is putting him into a wet hole on a day very much like this one.”

Donna looked across the tiny table at the ugly, emaciated woman staring sourly at a Martini as if it were the total distillation of her life in a brittle glass bulb, and she thought that Aaron Burns had surely been in Gussie’s life a late and rather distorted recapitulation of this boy who had insisted on riding a motorcycle until he broke his neck at it. For this reason, because Aaron had turned to her and not to Gussie, Donna felt as if she had cheated and betrayed a friend. She knew that this feeling was ridiculous, but it disturbed her just the same, and she didn’t know what to say.

“What a rotten thing to happen,” she said. “I’m sorry, Gussie.”

“Well, it hardly matters any more, and I only mentioned it because of circumstances. It had very little effect on me, except to make me hate motorcycles and wet holes in the ground and sometimes myself and everything in general, and now I think we’d better talk about what is likely to happen to the shop. Do you think it will open again?”

“I don’t know. Surely it will open, if only until it’s finally disposed of. That will probably be quite a long time off, for there are sure to be a lot of legal things to be settled. I don’t know much about such matters.”

“Neither do I, and I guess there isn’t much use in discussing it at all, so far as that goes. We’re sure to be notified of what is expected of us.”

“For the present, I should think it is in the hands of Aaron’s lawyer, Mr. Joslin. Do you think I should contact him?”

“I doubt it. If he wants to talk with you about anything, he’ll let you know. Do you know him?”

“Not well. I’ve met him a couple of times when I was with Aaron.”

“He’s a nice guy. He was Aaron’s friend, as well as his lawyer, and once I spent a weekend with him at a place that doesn’t matter. I thought it would be pretty dull because he’s so dry and reserved, but on the weekend he was altogether different, quite gay and charming, and I had a very pleasant time.”

Suddenly Gussie picked up her glass and drained it of the second Martini, as if it were something she had decided to get down quickly after considering it all this time. After setting her glass down empty, she stood up.

“I don’t believe I’ll stay and get slightly drunk after all,” she said. “I believe that I’ll go home and get thoroughly drunk instead. Would you care to come along and join me in the project?”

“I don’t think so, Gussie. Thanks, anyhow. I’ll stay and have another Martini, if you don’t mind, and then I may go to the shop and try to work. I guess there would be no objection to my going to the shop now.”

“Why should there be? You still have your key, and no one’s fired you yet. Call me if you learn anything, will you, darling?”

“All right, Gussie. I’ll call.”

Gussie left, and Donna ordered another Martini and drank it slowly. She didn’t actually feel like working, and did not, moreover, want to be alone in the shop where she had been so much. On the other hand, she did not want to go alone to her apartment, which was the only other alternative. So she continued to sit at the tiny table and nurse her drink, and when it was finally gone, she ordered and nursed another. This one, too, was gone after a while, and she was left with the choice of ordering still another or leaving. She would have preferred to stay, but she decided that she had better not. So she got up and went outside on the street and waited for a taxi to come along. While she waited, she still hesitated between the shop and her apartment, but once in a taxi she decided abruptly to go home.

In the apartment, looking at herself in the long mirror of the dressing table, she thought that the dress she was wearing was one that Aaron would have liked. When she had passed by his casket, he had looked remote and unreal and utterly unlike anyone who had ever happened in her life, but now, thinking of him without seeing his gray husk, he was credible again and completely believable. She wondered where he really was, where he had gone off to so precipitately from the hall of his house, or if he had simply ceased to function or to exist in any conscious way. She had a feeling that she could at that moment, by making herself inwardly and outwardly utterly still, establish contact of some kind with him. She tried intensely to accomplish this, standing immobile before the glass that no longer reflected her image in the black dress, but there was only silence and stillness. After a while there was a stir and a sigh, and sound and motion resumed: nothing now was clear that had been obscure, nothing now was known that was not known before. Her mirror image returned, and she considered changing into something else, but at that moment the telephone rang in the living room.

The voice that responded to hers was dry and precise, and careful with syllables.

“Miss Buchanan?”

“Yes.”

“This is Earl Joslin speaking. Mr. Burns’ lawyer. I should like to see you at your earliest convenience.”

“Today?”

“It it’s convenient.”

“What do you want to see me about?”

“I’d prefer to tell you when I see you, if you don’t mind.”

“I see. Do you want me to come to your office?”

“I’m not in my office now and would rather not go there. May I call on you for a few minutes at your apartment?”

“Yes, of course. I’d be pleased to have you.”

“Very well, then. In about an hour, I’d say.”

It had naturally occurred to Donna that Aaron might have left her something in his will, and she supposed that it was about this that Joslin was coming. She did not imagine that the bequest, if there was one, would be large, and she honestly hoped that it wasn’t, not because she was troubled by any sensibility to higher morality, but simply because a large bequest would be embarrassing and would suggest a relationship she would rather not have known. She would not be seriously troubled whether the bequest was large or small, but what did trouble her seriously was the shop and its disposition and the threat to the beautiful beginning she had made there.

She put some recordings on the phonograph, selections from Swan Lake, and again decided against a drink. Earl Joslin would probably accept one when he came, and she would join him. Sitting in the brocaded chair, she listened to the music of Tchaikovsky, and stared at a Van Gogh reproduction on the wall. Responding to the bright sound and color of two tortured minds, she was suddenly reminded of the poet Villon, and of the boy named Enos Simon who had told her about the poet and whom she had neither seen nor thought of for a long, long time. Why, she wondered, did so much beauty come from darkness and despair, and what had ever become of Enos Simon? Tchaikovsky was a dark and distorted man, as were Van Gogh and Villon. Yet the world had received from them a legacy of beauty such as few men leave. Enos Simon would almost certainly not leave from his life a residue of anything, but she wondered where he was and what he was doing and thought for the first time since the fall that he’d left that she would like to see him again.

Having moved backward in her mind, she did not return until the recordings played out and she got up to reverse them. She had no sooner done this than the buzzer sounded, and she opened the door to Earl Joslin, slim and gray and dryly impeccable, who stood waiting at the threshhold. Seeing him there, she recalled immediately Gussie’s reference to a weekend, and she found the idea incredible, something she could not imagine. But Gussie had not dated it, and so perhaps it had happened long ago.

“Good evening,” she said. “Come in, please.”

“Good evening, Miss Buchanan.”

He smiled slightly and stepped past her into the room. The smile had a kind of pale clarity, like winter’s sunlight, somehow oblique and from a source far off. She took his hat and topcoat and carried them into the bedroom and returned to find him standing near the phonograph with his head canted in a posture of listening.

“Do you like Tchaikovsky?” he said.

“I don’t know. The Swan Lake score, at least. I know very little about music, really.”

“It’s very nice, very buoyant. When I was younger, I preferred the heavy things, the Pathetique and the odd Beethovens and things of that sort, but as I grow older and heavier myself, I find myself liking the lighter touch. Mozart, I think, is my favorite now. Do you care for Mozart?”

“Not especially, I’m afraid. As I said, I know little about music. I suspect that my judgment is not particularly good.”

“Oh, well, perhaps Mozart is for old men trying to forget they’re old, although I doubt that such an evaluation would be generally acceptable.”

He turned away from the phonograph, repeating his thin smile, and she wagered with herself, watching him, that he was Scotch and soda. She was mildly surprised, therefore, when he said in response to her offer of a drink that he would take bourbon in plain water. She went into the kitchen to fix the drinks, filling his glass from the tap at the sink. When she returned, he was still standing as she had left him, not a perceptible difference in his position or posture. He was, she thought, a remarkably quiet man, deliberate, conservative with sound and motion, as if he practiced a cult of quietude in a world too loud and too agitated. Handing him his drink, she asked him to sit down, and he did so after her.

“I suppose,” he said, “you’ve guessed my reason for coming.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I thought it would be something about the shop, but I wasn’t sure.”

“Has it occurred to you that you might have been remembered in his will?”

“Yes, but I haven’t thought much about it one way or another.”

“I’m happy to say that he left you ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand! That’s quite a lot of money.”

She looked down at her glass, feeling in her breast a sudden clot of pain at this post-mortem evidence of his generosity, a savage resurgence of self-reproach that she had deserted his body in death.

“On the contrary, I think that it’s not as much as he really would have liked you to have.” Earl Joslin sipped bourbon and water and looked at her quietly over the rim of the glass. “How well did you know Aaron, Miss Buchanan?”

“Quite well. He was my friend as well as my employer.”

“Yes. I knew that, of course, without asking. I was his friend, too, besides being his lawyer, and I always enjoyed his confidence. He valued highly not only his personal relationship with you, but also your business relationship. He considered you an extremely talented and clever young woman. This is something you are aware of, naturally.”

“I think so. He always implied as much, though he never said it directly. It was unnecessary for him to say it.”

“Yes. The best relationships are those in which things are understood. Possessing, as you did, this understanding, were you aware that his private life was not particularly happy?”

“I was aware that he did not love his wife, if that’s what you mean.”

“Precisely. Please excuse the deviousness that my training has given me. And yet, not loving his wife, he left her, with the exception of your bequest and a small one to Miss Ingram, all of a very large estate, which is much more than the law requires. Do you understand why he would do such a thing?”

“No. I haven’t thought about it.”

“If you were to think about it now, could you understand?”

“I think he must have considered it a kind of moral obligation.”

“True. I can see that your relationship with him was really quite sensitive. As for me, however, I would call it penance.” He drank again from his glass and sat for a few moments in silence, either waiting for her comment, if she had one, or considering how to continue. “Aaron Burns was a lonely man,” he said. “He was really more than that. He was a tortured man. All his life he was emotionally vulnerable because of the heritage he had rejected. He married for reasons that had nothing to do with love, and the marriage was a great mistake. Afterward he looked upon his wife as a kind of merited punishment and upon his life with her as a kind of penance. To have treated her in his will otherwise than he did would have seemed to him like an evasion of the penance he thought just. It would have been like trying to cheat Yahweh. Do you understand what I am trying to say?”

“I understand what you are trying to say, but I don’t understand why you are saying it.”

“Well, neither do I, precisely. Let’s just say that I am troubled by the memory of this man. Therefore it’s a relief to talk about him with someone he loved. Is that a satisfactory reason?”

“Yes. I’m sorry if I sounded rude.”

“No. Nothing of the sort. Perhaps I should not have spoken so freely.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“Good. Then no one is offended. Tell me, Miss Buchanan, are you prepared to continue in your present position at the shop?”

“Yes, but I’ve been wondering if I would be asked.”

“I’m asking you now. I talked with Mrs. Burns this afternoon after the services, and she agrees that the shop should remain open until it is finally disposed of.”

“Is it going to be sold?”

“Yes. That is what Mrs. Burns wishes.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“So am I, frankly. Would you like to know what I advised her to do?”

“Yes.”

“I advised her to keep the shop and put it under your management.”

“I’m flattered and very grateful.”

“There’s no need to be. I’m convinced that you are perfectly competent, which precludes flattery, and I was unable to get my advice accepted, which makes gratitude excessive.”

“Nevertheless, I am grateful to you for trying. Do you think it would do any good if I were to talk with Mrs. Burns?”

“No, I do not. In fact, I’m afraid it would be unpleasant for you to attempt it.”

“I’d be willing to risk the unpleasantness if there were the slightest chance of success.”

“I predict that there’s more than a risk of the former and less than a chance of the latter. However, you are perfectly free to see her if you please. If you do, I wish you luck.”

“Thank you. Will you have another drink?”

“No. I think not. It has been very nice talking with you, but now I had better go.”

He stood up, and she stood also. Taking his empty glass, she set it with her own on a table and went into the bedroom for his coat and hat. Returning, she found that he had walked to the door in her absence, and he took the coat and hat from her and stood with the coat draped over one arm and the hat held in his hand.

“Goodby, Miss Buchanan,” he said. “Since I am temporarily in charge of Aaron’s estate, it is certain that we’ll meet again.”

“I hope so.”

“Thank you for seeing me.”

“On the contrary, I am grateful to you for coming.”

4.

There was, after the reopening of the shop, an appreciable increase of interest in Donna Buchanan originals. It was real and discernible and tremendously exhilarating. Stimulated by this, and needing in the difficult aftermath of Aaron’s death the relief and defense of intense activity, she entered a period of creativeness in which ideas were conceived and executed with a hot facility and perfection. And in her mind she began to evolve the plan for a show, an exclusive presentation of original gowns to those who would come by invitation. The only oppression was the threat of the shop’s disposal, and every day she resolved to go to see Aaron’s widow. But this was something she dreaded exorbitantly. Every day she postponed it until the day following, and the day never arrived.

In the third week, Queen Hattie returned and asked for Donna. With her was her husband, William Walter Tyler himself. He sat in a chair with his knees crossed and his hat in his lap while Hattie modeled for his approval (after Serena had modeled it for hers) a gold lamé sheath which Donna had designed. Tyler liked the gown and Hattie bought it.

When they were ready to leave, Tyler took Donna’s hand and held it for a moment in both of his. It was a gesture of mild intimacy that surprised her a little but did not offend her.

“I greatly admired the last gown my wife bought here,” he said. “You have a fine talent, Miss Buchanan.”

He said this with an odd wistfulness which was as surprising as his gesture in taking her hand, and she had a feeling that he was suggesting a genuine regret that his devotion to his wife was restricted in expression to the admiration of her gowns. But this, she thought, was really ridiculous, an impression based on preconceptions that were probably not valid. He had certainly meant to suggest that to a strange woman he had only met.

“Thank you,” she said. “You are kind to say so, but Mrs. Tyler certainly made the gown appear at its very best.”

“That’s true,” he said. “She’s a lovely woman.”

And now in Tyler’s voice, she would have sworn, the odd wistfulness was effaced by an odd, impatient anger, but this too must have been no more than a peculiarity of inflection that implied what it did not intend. Saying goodby, he turned away and followed his wife out of the shop.

The next morning, compelled by an inexplicable urgency that surmounted her dread, Donna called Aaron’s widow from the shop and was given permission to see her at three o’clock that afternoon.

The sense of urgency was the result of an unreasoned conviction that she had reached a particular point in time, a brief period that was psychologically propitious, that she would succeed today in what she would have failed at yesterday or would fail at tomorrow. There was as little validity in the conviction as in the priestcraft of the zodiac, but it sustained her, through the morning and the afternoon, to the time when she was in a taxi and on her way. Then, in the taxi, the hysterical assurance drained from her at once, leaving her hollow and spent and assured of defeat. She compelled herself to complete the errand because it was something she had to do.

When she reached the house, she was let into the hall by a woman she had never seen before but who she suspected was not Mrs. Cassidy. She was younger and wore a white dress that buttoned down the front, suggesting the effect of a uniform. Donna assumed at once, and correctly, that she was a practical nurse Shirley Burns had hired to serve roughly the same purpose a placebo would serve. She offered to take Donna’s coat, which Donna retained, and then went out of the hall on rubber soles, leaving her alone in the hall where Aaron had died. How long ago? Only three weeks, plus a few days. And where, precisely, had he fallen and died and lain? A step or two from the foot of the stairs. A little to the left of them. There, right there, on polished oak that bore no stain or scar or any kind of sign, though it seemed, somehow, that it should have. Struck by the idea that if she went and stood on the exact spot she might establish the contact she had tried and failed to establish in her apartment, she went and stood on it. But there was no more this time than there had been the other time. She was still standing there when the woman returned and told her Shirley Burns was ready to see her.

Shirley Burns was sitting in a high-backed chair with a small lamp burning on a table beside her. A book was turned face down in her lap, and she did not rise nor invite Donna to sit.

“Miss Buchanan?” she said. “Yes,” Donna said.

“Why have you come to see me? I am not well, and I’d appreciate it if you would be brief.”

“I’ve come to speak with you about the shop.”

“What about it?”

“I understand that you plan to sell it. I want to urge you not to do it.”

“Indeed? In what way do you consider yourself privileged to interfere with my plans?”

“If I give you that impression, I’m sorry. I admit that I have a selfish motive in wanting the shop to continue as it is, but it would also be profitable to you.”

“So I have been told by Mr. Joslin. I repeat to you what I said to him, that I do not wish to be bound to this city by any interests at all. I intend to settle my affairs and leave as soon as possible. However, assuming for the moment that I keep the shop, am I to understand that you are suggesting that I put the operation of it into your hands?”

“That’s my idea, yes.”

“Why should I do such a thing?”

“Because I am competent and can contribute more to its success than any other person. Your husband knew this to be true, and Mr. Joslin knows it now. I’m sure he would be glad to recommend me if you were to ask him.”

“It is unnecessary to ask him, for he has already volunteered that information. Apparently, Miss Buchanan, you made quite a strong impression upon my husband and his lawyer. Especially upon my husband.”

“I believe that we understood and respected each other.”

“Certainly he must have valued you quite highly. You have been informed, of course, that he left you ten thousand dollars.”

“Yes. He was considerate and generous, and I’m grateful.”

“Perhaps your gratitude is not altogether necessary. I feel certain that his generosity was no more than posthumous payment for yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. Do you wish me to say it directly? Do you think I am such a fool that I don’t understand the bequest was payment for the use of your body? I wish you to understand, whatever you call yourself, or were called by my husband when he was alive, that he has made you appear in the end no more than a common whore, which is exactly what you are.”

Once before in her life Donna had felt as she felt now. The time had been that late-May night when her father had violated the illusion of a fragment of time. In fury, with a physical feeling of cold, but calm, almost detached in her apparent reaction, she looked at Shirley Burns, as she had looked that other time at her father, with revulsion and scorn that excluded hate.

“I am as willing as you to speak frankly,” she said. “I am willing to tell you directly that Aaron and I slept together many times. We did so frequently in this very house, and I have walked through your room and despised you for an inadequate woman without the brains or passion or guts to hold a man who was worth holding. You did your best to destroy him, but I saved him, at least some part of him, and for this you hate me. As for me, I consider hate an extravagant concession that you are not worth. I only despise you, as Aaron did, and am sickened by you, as Aaron was. I regret I came here, and now I am going. And you can go to hell — if you can find one worse than the one you’ve made.”

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 you 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.

She turned on the light and put on her glasses, thereby becoming somehow more capable of coping with such intrusions as bells and buzzers and midnight callers. After waiting for the sound to stop and start again, she got out of bed and slipped a robe on over her transparent blue nightgown and went to the door. The buzzer started for the third time, expressing a kind of angry desperation, clearly transmitting the temper of the caller. She asked herself who could possibly be at the door at such a time, and she answered that it had to be Enos Simon, a certainty she possessed without knowing why. She only knew that it was he, by a kind of sense or insight or premonition that was independent of logic or evidence. So she was not in the least surprised when she opened the door and saw him there in the hall.

He had been drinking, was really quite drunk, and this was a condition she had never seen him in before. He stood looking at her with eyes that expressed the same strange confusion of anger and desperation she had heard in the buzzer. This seemed to her wholly irrational, because she could see no reason why he should be either angry or desperate. His face, she saw now, was much thinner than it used to be, and it looked older and tireder than the intervening years should have made it. At first, right after opening the door, she was angry that he had presumed to come here after she had told him not to come, very late and clearly drunk in addition, but her anger, if it was actually strong enough to be called that, was quickly gone. She understood perfectly well that he had come now, neither earlier nor later, because he was somehow driven and could not help it. She felt strong by comparison but somehow vulnerable.

“You had better come in,” she said.

He walked past her into the room and sat down in almost the exact center of the sofa, folding carefully at knees and hips and sitting with a peculiar rigidity of his torso, not touching with his back the back of the sofa. She sat down beside him. Turning his head only slightly, he looked at her from the corners of his eyes with a curious mixture of uncertainty and slyness.

“Are you angry because I’ve come?” he said.

“No,” she said. “For a moment I was, but now I’m not.”

“Why? Why aren’t you angry?”

“I don’t know. I admit that I should be, but I’m not.”

“You shouldn’t have let me in, you know.”

“No doubt you’re right. At this hour, I probably should never have answered the door. Nevertheless, I have let you in, and here you are, and I should like to know why you have come.”

“That’s simple. Because I wanted to see you, and I didn’t want to wait any longer.”

“Well, I find that difficult to accept. You have been in town since January, you said, and you might have seen me long ago.”

“I told you that I was afraid you wouldn’t care to see me again. You remember that I don’t like to risk rejection. After I saw you tonight, though, it became different. It became intense and near again, as it was that last summer, and I had to come.”

He spoke slowly, with slightly exaggerated enunciation. He had been drinking heavily, that much was certain, but he did not speak as if he were drunk, or had even drunk excessively, except for the abnormal caution he was exercising.

“You have had too much to drink,” she said.

“Yes, I have. I admit that I have. Having too much is something I do too often, and I admit that also.”

“You didn’t used to drink at all, except a little beer.”

“True. It’s something I’ve learned since then.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Well, it comes in handy.”

“For what?”

“Oh, for all sorts of things. For forgetting things, and for making things seem different than they are, and for acquiring courage to do things I wouldn’t otherwise do.”

“Is that why you drank tonight? The last reason?”

“To get the courage to come here? Yes. Of course. There is certainly no point in denying it. I drank quite a lot in quite a short time, and here I am.”

“It was completely unnecessary. Now that you’re here, I’m very glad to see you.”

She said it, she thought, only to reassure him, but after the words were spoken she realized that they were true. She realized also that they should not, for her own good, have been true at all. In her life, he could be at best no more than a mistake, and this kind of mistake at this time was something she could not afford.

“Why are you glad?” he said.

“I don’t know. Perhaps I am also remembering how it was that summer.”

He turned to face her more directly. Without thinking, she reached out and took one of his hands. “Is that true?” he said.

“I think so. I’m not completely sure. I may know definitely after a while.”

“It was good, that summer. It was the best time of my life. Do you know that I was a little afraid of you?”

“Why ever should you have been?”

“Because you were so sure of yourself and I was not. You knew just what you wanted to do, and I hadn’t the least idea. Still haven’t, for that matter. Are you designing, as you planned?”

“Yes. I’m working in a shop here.”

“Are you successful?”

“Somewhat. I’m becoming so, I think.”

“You see? You are certain to succeed in anything you choose, and I am just as certain to fail.”

“There’s no good reason why you should fail. Why do you feel this way?”

“I’ve tried to understand it, and I believe it is because I do not choose at all. I’m always chosen. Do you see the difference between us? You choose, I am chosen.”

“I don’t think I see any sense whatever in that.”

“Maybe there isn’t any.”

“What are you doing now?”

“Teaching.”

“Here in the city?”

“Yes. At Pine Hill.”

“Teaching at such an exclusive school is quite an accomplishment, it seems to me.”

“Not at all. It’s a horrible place, crawling with detestable little monsters. Every day I think I cannot possibly endure another one.”

“Oh, please! It can’t be as bad as that.”

“It’s worse. It’s unspeakable, and therefore I don’t want to talk about it.”

“All right. We won’t mention it again. Would you like me to make you some coffee?”

“No, thank you. I don’t believe I need any coffee. What I need more than anything else is to go to bed, but what I need least of anything else is to go back to my room at the school, and this puts me in a dilemma. I’m no good in a dilemma. When I’m in a dilemma, I just do nothing or start drinking. That’s something else that drinking is handy for that I forgot to mention.”

She knew while he was speaking what she would do, and knew also she shouldn’t do it. Once, a very long time ago, she had wanted him and had had him briefly. Afterward she had not wanted him in the least, and had been unable to understand why she had ever wanted him. Now, because of her strange vulnerability, she wanted him again, knowing the time would shortly come when she would again not want him.

“Would you like to stay here?” she asked.

“I’d like it very much if you will let me.”

“It’s all right. You can stay if you want to.”

He leaned toward her and let his head fall forward upon her shoulder. She put her arms around him and felt, under the thin stuff of her gown, the hot appeal of his hands, to which she responded.

He is lonely and in need of me, she thought, and I am lonely and in need of him too, though he doesn’t know it, and if it is a mistake for one or for both of us, as it will certainly turn out to be, it is at least one that we can now make the most of.

Disengaging an arm for a moment, she removed her glasses and laid them aside.