Short Stories: Five Decades (13 page)

“All right,” Frances said.

“You believe that, don’t you?”

“All right.”

They walked between the crowded benches, under the scrubby city park trees.

“I try not to notice it,” Frances said, as though she were talking to herself. “I try to make believe it doesn’t mean anything. Some men’re like that, I tell myself, they have to see what they’re missing.”

“Some women’re like that, too,” Michael said. “In my time I’ve seen a couple of ladies.”

“I haven’t even looked at another man,” Frances said, walking straight ahead, “since the second time I went out with you.”

“There’s no law,” Michael said.

“I feel rotten inside, in my stomach, when we pass a woman and you look at her and I see that look in your eye and that’s the way you looked at me the first time, in Alice Maxwell’s house. Standing there in the living room, next to the radio, with a green hat on and all those people.”

“I remember the hat,” Michael said.

“The same look,” Frances said. “And it makes me feel bad. It makes me feel terrible.”

“Sssh, please, darling, sssh …”

“I think I would like a drink now,” Frances said.

They walked over to a bar on Eighth Street, not saying anything, Michael automatically helping her over curbstones, and guiding her past automobiles. He walked, buttoning his coat, looking thoughtfully at his neatly shined heavy brown shoes as they made the steps toward the bar. They sat near a window in the bar and the sun streamed in, and there was a small cheerful fire in the fireplace. A little Japanese waiter came over and put down some pretzels and smiled happily at them.

“What do you order after breakfast?” Michael asked.

“Brandy, I suppose,” Frances said.

“Courvoisier,” Michael told the waiter. “Two Courvoisier.”

The waiter came with the glasses and they sat drinking the brandy, in the sunlight. Michael finished half his and drank a little water.

“I look at women,” he said. “Correct. I don’t say it’s wrong or right, I look at them. If I pass them on the street and I don’t look at them, I’m fooling you, I’m fooling myself.”

“You look at them as though you want them,” Frances said, playing with her brandy glass. “Every one of them.”

“In a way,” Michael said, speaking softly and not to his wife, “in a way that’s true. I don’t do anything about it, but it’s true.”

“I know it. That’s why I feel bad.”

“Another brandy,” Michael called. “Waiter, two more brandies.”

“Why do you hurt me?” Frances asked. “What’re you doing?”

Michael sighed and closed his eyes and rubbed them gently with his fingertips. “I love the way women look. One of the things I like best about New York is the battalions of women. When I first came to New York from Ohio that was the first thing I noticed, the million wonderful women, all over the city. I walked around with my heart in my throat.”

“A kid,” Frances said. “That’s a kid’s feeling.”

“Guess again,” Michael said. “Guess again. I’m older now, I’m a man getting near middle age, putting on a little fat and I still love to walk along Fifth Avenue at three o’clock on the east side of the street between Fiftieth and Fifty-seventh Streets, they’re all out then, making believe they’re shopping, in their furs and their crazy hats, everything all concentrated from all over the world into eight blocks, the best furs, the best clothes, the handsomest women, out to spend money and feeling good about it, looking coldly at you, making believe they’re not looking at you as you go past.”

The Japanese waiter put the two drinks down, smiling with great happiness.

“Everything is all right?” he asked.

“Everything is wonderful,” Michael said.

“If it’s just a couple of fur coats,” Frances said, “and forty-five-dollar hats …”

“It’s not the fur coats. Or the hats. That’s just the scenery for that particular kind of woman. Understand,” he said, “you don’t have to listen to this.”

“I want to listen.”

“I like the girls in the offices. Neat, with their eyeglasses, smart, chipper, knowing what everything is about, taking care of themselves all the time.” He kept his eye on the people going slowly past outside the window. “I like the girls on Forty-fourth Street at lunch time, the actresses, all dressed up on nothing a week, talking to the good-looking boys, wearing themselves out being young and vivacious outside Sardi’s, waiting for producers to look at them. I like the salesgirls in Macy’s, paying attention to you first because you’re a man, leaving lady customers waiting, flirting with you over socks and books and phonograph needles. I got all this stuff accumulated in me because I’ve been thinking about it for ten years and now you’ve asked for it and here it is.”

“Go ahead,” Frances said.

“When I think of New York City, I think of all the girls, the Jewish girls, the Italian girls, the Irish, Polack, Chinese, German, Negro, Spanish, Russian girls, all on parade in the city. I don’t know whether it’s something special with me or whether every man in the city walks around with the same feeling inside him, but I feel as though I’m at a picnic in this city. I like to sit near the women in the theaters, the famous beauties who’ve taken six hours to get ready and look it. And the young girls at the football games, with the red cheeks, and when the warm weather comes, the girls in their summer dresses …” He finished his drink. “That’s the story. You asked for it, remember. I can’t help but look at them. I can’t help but want them.”

“You want them,” Frances repeated without expression. “You said that.”

“Right,” Michael said, being cruel now and not caring, because she had made him expose himself. “You brought this subject up for discussion, we will discuss it fully.”

Frances finished her drink and swallowed two or three times extra. “You say you love me?”

“I love you, but I also want them. O.K.”

“I’m pretty, too,” Frances said. “As pretty as any of them.”

“You’re beautiful,” Michael said, meaning it.

“I’m good for you,” Frances said, pleading. “I’ve made a good wife, a good housekeeper, a good friend. I’d do any damn thing for you.”

“I know,” Michael said. He put his hand out and grasped hers.

“You’d like to be free to …” Frances said.

“Sssh.”

“Tell the truth.” She took her hand away from under his.

Michael flicked the edge of his glass with his finger. “O.K.,” he said gently. “Sometimes I feel I would like to be free.”

“Well,” Frances said defiantly, drumming on the table, “anytime you say …”

“Don’t be foolish.” Michael swung his chair around to her side of the table and patted her thigh.

She began to cry, silently, into her handkerchief, bent over just enough so that nobody else in the bar would notice. “Some day,” she said, crying, “you’re going to make a move …”

Michael didn’t say anything. He sat watching the bartender slowly peel a lemon.

“Aren’t you?” Frances asked harshly. “Come on, tell me. Talk. Aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” Michael said. He moved his chair back again. “How the hell do I know?”

“You know,” Frances persisted. “Don’t you know?”

“Yes,” Michael said after a while, “I know.”

Frances stopped crying then. Two or three snuffles into the handkerchief and she put it away and her face didn’t tell anything to anybody. “At least do me one favor,” she said.

“Sure.”

“Stop talking about how pretty this woman is, or that one. Nice eyes, nice breasts, a pretty figure, good voice,” she mimicked his voice. “Keep it to yourself. I’m not interested.”

“Excuse me.” Michael waved to the waiter. “I’ll keep it to myself.”

Frances flicked the corner of her eyes. “Another brandy,” she told the waiter.

“Two,” Michael said.

“Yes, ma’am, yes, sir,” said the waiter, backing away.

Frances regarded him coolly across the table. “Do you want me to call the Stevensons?” she asked. “It’ll be nice in the country.”

“Sure,” Michael said. “Call them up.”

She got up from the table and walked across the room toward the telephone. Michael watched her walk, thinking, what a pretty girl, what nice legs.

Search Through the
Streets of the City

W
hen he finally saw her, he nearly failed to recognize her. He walked behind her for a half block, vaguely noticing that the woman in front of him had long legs and was wearing a loose, college-girl polo coat and a plain brown felt hat.

Suddenly something about the way she walked made him remember—the almost affected rigidity of her back and straightness of throat and head, with all the movement of walking, flowing up to the hips and stopping there, like Negro women in the South and Mexican and Spanish women carrying baskets on their heads.

For a moment, silently, he watched her walk down Twelfth Street, on the sunny side of the street, in front of the little tired gardens behind which lay the quiet, pleasantly run-down old houses. Then he walked up to her and touched her arm.

“Low heels,” he said. “I never thought I’d live to see the day.”

She looked around in surprise, then smiled widely, took his arm. “Hello, Paul,” she said. “I’ve gone in for health.”

“Whenever I think of you,” he said, “I think of the highest heels in New York City.”

“The old days,” Harriet said. They walked slowly down the sunny street, arm in arm, toward Sixth Avenue. “I was a frivolous creature.”

“You still walk the same way. As though you ought to have a basket of laundry on your head.”

“I practiced walking like that for six months. You’d be surprised how much attention I get walking into a room that way.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Paul said, looking at her. She had black hair and pale, clear skin and a long, full body, and her eyes were deep gray and always brilliant, even after she’d been drinking for three days in a row.

Harriet closed her coat quickly and walked a little faster. “I’m going to Wanamaker’s,” she said. “There’re a couple of things I have to buy. Where are you going?”

“Wanamaker’s,” Paul said. “I’ve been dying to go to Wanamaker’s for three years.”

They walked slowly, in silence, Harriet’s arm in his.

“Casual,” Paul said. “I bet to the naked eye we look casual as hell. How do you feel?”

Harriet took her arm away. “Casual.”

“O.K. Then that’s how I feel, too.” Paul whistled coldly to himself. He stopped and looked critically at her and she stopped, too, and turned toward him, a slight puzzled smile on her face. “What makes you dress that way?” he asked. “You look like Monday morning in Northampton.”

“I just threw on whatever was nearest,” Harriet said. “I’m just going to be out about an hour.”

“You used to look like a nice big box of candy in your clothes.” Paul took her arm again and they started off. “Viennese bonbons. Every indentation carefully exploited in silk and satin. Even if you were just going down to the corner for a pint of gin, you’d look like something that ought to be eaten for dessert. This is no improvement.”

“A girl has different periods in clothes. Like Picasso,” Harriet said. “And if I’d known I was going to meet you, I’d’ve dressed differently.”

Paul patted her arm. “That’s better.”

Paul eyed her obliquely as they walked: the familiar, long face, the well-known wide mouth with always a little too much lipstick on it, the little teeth that made her face, when she smiled, look suddenly like a little girl’s in Sunday school.

“You’re getting skinny, Paul,” Harriet said.

Paul nodded. “I’m as lean as a herring. I’ve been leading a fevered and ascetic life. What sort of life have you been leading?”

“I got married.” Harriet paused a moment. “Did you hear I got married?”

“I heard,” Paul said. “The last time we crossed Sixth Avenue together the L was still up. I feel a nostalgic twinge for the Sixth Avenue L.” They hurried as the light changed. “On the night of January ninth, 1940,” Paul said, holding her elbow, “you were not home.”

“Possible,” Harriet said. “I’m a big girl now; I go out at night.”

“I happened to pass your house, and I noticed that the light wasn’t on.” They turned down toward Ninth Street. “I remembered how hot you kept that apartment—like the dahlia greenhouse in the Botanical Gardens.”

“I have thin blood,” Harriet said gravely. “Long years of inbreeding in Massachusetts.”

“The nicest thing about you,” Paul said, “was you never went to sleep.”

“Every lady to her own virtue,” Harriet said. “Some women’re beautiful, some’re smart—me—I never went to sleep. The secret of my great popularity.…”

Paul grinned. “Shut up.”

Harriet smiled back at him and they chuckled together. “You know what I mean,” he said. “Any time I called you up, two, three in the morning, you’d come right over, lively and bright-eyed, all the rouge and mascara in the right places.…”

“In my youth,” said Harriet, “I had great powers of resistance.”

“In the morning we’d eat breakfast to Beethoven. The Masterwork Hour. WNYC. Beethoven, by special permission of His Honor, the Mayor, from nine to ten.” Paul closed his eyes for a moment. “The Little Flower, Mayor for Lovers.”

Paul opened his eyes and looked at the half-strange, half-familiar woman walking lightly at his side. He remembered lying close to her, dreamily watching the few lights of the towers of the night-time city, framed by the big window of his bedroom against the black sky, and one night when she moved sleepily against him and rubbed the back of his neck where the hair was sticking up in sharp little bristles because he had had his hair cut that afternoon. Harriet had rubbed them the wrong way, smiling, dreamily, without opening her eyes. “What a delicious thing a man is …” she’d murmured. And she’d sighed, then chuckled a little and fallen asleep, her hand still on the shaven back of his neck.