“For all sorts of reasons! Your bequest—”
“Oh, forget that. I don’t think you had a thing to do with it.”
“Well—maybe not. I do think that daughter would have fought the will regardless. But that’s only the—”
“You know, there’s something you haven’t explained,” said Sherry. “Why don’t you like your dimple?”
After a moment’s blankness at the abrupt change of subject, I told him why I didn’t like my dimple. He listened thoughtfully, then shook his head. “Not a good reason—just because it looks better on your mother.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Yes, it is, in effect. Naturally, I’ve only seen your mother in the movies. But I never even noticed she had dimples. They don’t do the same thing for her at all.” While I was still open-mouthed at this heresy, he calmly added another. “I know she’s supposed to be a famous beauty. Frankly, I never liked her type, if you don’t mind my saying so. Too perfect.”
I said finally, “Well, that’s one thing that isn’t wrong with me.”
Sherry smiled, then reached out and took me in his arms, very tenderly. “I can’t find anything wrong with you,” he said.
“Sherry, I don’t see how you can sit there and say that! I’ve told you what I’m like.”
“Phooey. I knew already. Greensleeves, I’ll swear you’re not very bright sometimes. You’re not anything like that girl you’ve been describing.”
I pulled away in dismay. “But I am. Sherry, you’re just blind, and you mustn’t be. I am that girl. I’ve just been acting.”
“Playing Georgetta, you mean? Oh, sure—when you thought of it. But she was a phoney. I saw that, didn’t I?”
“Yes, but you liked her anyway. I did, too. But nobody likes Shan. I don’t. You don’t really know Shan yet, and—”
He effectively shut me up by kissing me hard, then giving me an exasperated little shake. “Will you get it through your head,” he said very distinctly, “that none of this matters? What the heck difference do names make? It’s you I’m in love with. Greensleeves.”
“But that’s only another name. An alias for what I am when I’m not being Georgetta or Shannon.”
“All right, that’s what I mean. That’s you.”
I stared at him. “You mean my—inner girl is somebody else? I’m three people now?”
Sherry let go of me and burst out laughing.
“I fail to see what’s funny,” I told him resentfully.
“You are! Don’t you know you’re Greensleeves and not any of these other characters?”
“Sherry, that’s easy for you to say, but I don’t know how Greensleeves is different from those others. I don’t know what she’s like at all. Besides, you probably mean I’m some certain way with you—and I’m different with you from the way I am with anybody else.”
“Well, a little, but not much. All the other people around here like Greensleeves, too. They discovered you under that hairdo same as I did.”
“Well, fine,” I said bitterly. “Now all I have to do is discover myself.”
Sherry started to answer, then didn’t; he took my hand and started playing thoughtfully with my fingers instead. After a minute he said slowly, “That shouldn’t be hard. Why not give it a try?”
I eyed him suspiciously and said, “How?”
“Come to a picnic with me next Sunday. Dress like that girl on the street, let me introduce you around as Shannon Lightley, but act like Greensleeves—and see what happens.”
There was a challenge in his voice, but I didn’t care a pin for that. “Certainly not!” I said instantly. “You can’t fool me. There’ll be a lot of people there. Students—Americans.”
“American students don’t bite.”
“They’re the very ones who do,” I muttered. “I’d be an unassimilated lump and have to start that smiling, and—it’d be the whole Mary-High routine all over again. Besides, they’d all know me from the Rainbow. Know Georgetta.”
“No, this is a different crowd—the Listener’s Club. I’ve never seen one of them at the Rainbow; they’re usually over at the Union, where the phonograph is.”
“What’s a listener’s club?”
“Just people who like listening to music and each other’s opinions. You’d like them. There aren’t so many—thirty-five or forty.”
I shuddered. Forty sharp-eyed critics all at once. “I couldn’t, Sherry.”
“I’d be there. I’ll stay right beside you.”
I felt absolutely worn out suddenly. I patted his cheek and tried for a smile, but it wasn’t a very good one. “You’re sweet, Sherry,” I told him. “But don’t ask me to do something I can’t do.”
We left it at that. At least, after studying me rather unhappily a moment, Sherry abandoned the subject and seemed to go off into a silent debate of his own. I hung my cardigan over my shoulders and huddled into it. I knew he was disappointed in me, and it made the night chilly. Both brooding, we started home and were nearly there when Sherry picked up the conversation where we’d dropped it.
“Greensleeves—I’ve already asked you to do something you can’t do, haven’t I? I’ve heard no news yet on the subject of—getting married.” He turned to look down at me rather bleakly in the light of a streetlamp. “Seems as if I would have if you felt you could make up your mind.”
“Yes,” I admitted, feeling guiltier than ever. “I’ve thought about it ever so much, Sherry. But I just—”
“Does it have anything to do with Dave?”
“Dave? Dave Kulka? My word, no!” I said quickly—maybe too emphatically, but he’d startled me.
“Sure, Greensleeves?” he said, with a look so thoughtful that I wondered if he’d noticed me watching Dave and heard the fur crackling.
“Sherry, it’s not Dave or anybody else. It’s just that—that I’m not sure yet.” I paused, then returned stubbornly to my refrain of the evening. “Besides, it wouldn’t be fair if I decided now. You still don’t know Shannon.”
“If I ever saw a one-track mind,” Sherry muttered. “Will you tell me how I’m going to get to know her if you just keep on looking like Georgetta and acting like Greensleeves? If you won’t be Shannon even at one picnic?”
“Well, you—well, I don’t know.” I was feeling tireder by the minute.
“I don’t either, and it doesn’t worry me a bit. It’s all foolishness anyway.”
That tired me most of all, because it wasn’t, but there seemed no way to convince him. Anyway, he’d returned to his refrain. “Greensleeves, you said you weren’t sure ‘yet.’ Do you think you will be, later?”
“Sure to be sometime, I should think.”
“Well, listen. Are you going to do what your dad wants? Go to college?”
“I haven’t decided. I’m not even supposed to decide yet—I’ve got another whole . . .” I swallowed. “Not quite two weeks.”
“Greensleeves, do it. Stay here and go to Fremont with me—for just a couple of years. I could take a little graduate work . . . Wouldn’t you be sure by then?”
“Sherry, I don’t know. Two years is such a long time ahead. Only somehow I feel it isn’t long enough. I know that doesn’t make much sense,” I added fretfully. “But—well, I don’t actually know how I feel about getting married—to anybody. I may be scared of it.”
“Oh.” Sherry sounded as if he were restraining a sudden grin. “When are you going to decide whether you’re scared of it or not?” he asked patiently.
“Oh, Sherry, why do you want to keep on trying to cope with me anyhow? I’m really just impossible. I can see it myself.”
“No, you’re not.” He reached for my hand and held it tightly as we climbed the long flight of steps up to the boardinghouse. “Most of this is my fault. I shouldn’t even have brought it up until I could say, ‘Marry me tomorro
w.’ All I meant to do was just—let you know I loved you. And see if you might have anything to say about it. About me.”
He stopped as we reached the porch and looked down at me in the dim reflected light that came from the city to mix with the fragile white moonlight. It touched his cheekbone and the rim of one ear. The rest of him was a silhouette—but such a Sherry-like silhouette, with the head tilted at that quizzical angle, and the old windbreak jacket clinging at the shoulders and sagging at the pockets, with the collar carelessly turned up, that I found myself practically in sentimental tears. I knew I’d never, never been so fond of anybody in all my life.
“Sherry,” I said. “I can tell you one thing I think I’m sure of. I think I’m sure I’m in love with you, too.”
The light on his cheekbone moved as he smiled; then he pulled me into his arms, sighing. “You’ll be the death of me, Shannon Kathleen Lightley,” he murmured. “Don’t you know you can’t just think you’re sure of something? You either are or you aren’t. But never mind—I’m sure. And you’re trying. That’s good enough for now.” He kissed me briefly, then drew a long breath and stepped away. “Go get some sleep—you’re pooped. And I’ve got to work. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He ran quickly down the steps. I watched until his jacket turned into a pale blur moving along the sidewalk, then drew a long breath myself and started for the door.
That’s when I smelled the cigarette smoke. Possibly, I’d been smelling it before, unaware of it—now I was aware of nothing else but that faint, ominous fragrance. I turned and saw the glowing tip, not fifteen feet from me. Dave was lounging on the porch railing, his shoulders dark against a moonlit pillar, one knee cocked—and he hadn’t just arrived.
He saw I’d discovered him and shrugged. “Sorry. But as it happens, I was here first.”
If I’d turned my back right then, walked straight into the house . . . I didn’t. I walked straight toward Dave, feeling anger rise in me like lava in a volcano.
He flipped his cigarette away—it traced a thin, bright arc against the night. “Quite a touching little love scene. Now you’ve got us both eating out of your hand, haven’t you?”
“You watched? You listened?”
“With great interest.”
He reeled out of focus as the volcano erupted. “Well, you utter pig,” I said, and slapped him as hard as I could.
It wasn’t very hard, because his hand flashed up and caught mine before its force was half expended. He kept hold of it, tight, at the wrist, and slowly got to his feet. “Pig, am I?” he said, ignoring my efforts to get my wrist free. “All right, that’s done it. I’ll tell you something now. I don’t eat out of anybody’s hand. What’s more, you’re beginning to bother me too much for comfort. Put up or shut up.”
“What does that mean?” I demanded.
“Oh, quit lying to yourself. You know you’re bothering me. You’re trying your best to bother me.”
“I’m not! If you’d leave me alone—”
“You won’t let me. You don’t want me to.”
“Why, I’ve told you in so many words—”
“Oh, sure. ‘Get out of here’ every time you open your mouth—and ‘Come on’ with every move you make. You think I don’t get the message? . . . Hold still! You’re going to hear this.” He yanked me closer, effectively immobilizing my wrist and dislodging my cardigan, which slid to the floor. He smiled, half perplexed, down into my face. “What are you scared of, anyhow? Your own feelings? Facts? Not of Sherry finding out—he never will, because you’ll see to it. ‘I think I’m sure!’ You’ve got him blindfolded, and you know it.”
My heart was behaving like a Cadillac motor in a Volkswagen. I felt shaken to bits by it. “I don’t know anything of the kind!” I choked.
“You mean you just won’t look,” Dave said. He let that sink in, then added, “Who do you think you’re fooling, anyway? You’ve been daring me to kiss you ever since that day in my room—we both know that. It’s time I did it and got it off our minds.”
I said desperately, “That won’t get it off our minds, you idiot!”
“Well, I didn’t know the truth was in you! And why do you suppose it won’t? I’ll bet Sherry’d be interested in the answer to that.”
“It’s got nothing to do with Sherry—”
“No? Hadn’t you better find out? Or are you scared to? You’re scared of everything, aren’t you? Scared to be yourself, scared to feel, scared to live, scared to face a fact, scared to tell the truth, scared to answer a simple question . . . Let’s try you. Do you want me to kiss you, or don’t you?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to hear the question, but I’d heard it. Both of us listened to my silence and to my heart thudding. We stood just not touching, except for Dave’s grip on my wrist—I leaning as far away as he’d allow. Still keeping that tantalizing inch between us, he leaned a trifle farther, eyes half closing, and brushed warm, parted lips across my forehead, then down my cheek, then back and forth, slowly and lingeringly, across my mouth.
“Make up your mind,” he whispered.
Mind? I’d lost track of everything but those moving lips, and his breath on my face, and the fireworks going off around my head. I felt the pressure on my wrist change and knew it was because I wasn’t tugging any longer. Far from it, I was straining toward him, trying to close that inch—and couldn’t—and knew he was deliberately holding me away. Then I realized this might be his exact and whole intention and went all to pieces. I thought, If he doesn’t kiss me soon, I’ll die.
Dave muttered something, twisted me hard against him, and took possession of my mouth.
No use pretending I thought about anything after that. I wasn’t thinking, I was drowning—in pure unadulterated, irresistible sensation, compounded by demoralizing weakness. If Dave hadn’t been holding me up bodily, I don’t think my knees would have. The crude fact is, I forgot who was holding me up and didn’t care. Discrimination vanished among the skyrockets. All along, it had been me I’d been afraid of—and all along I’d been right.
I don’t know how long this went on—it was a savagely rough and thorough kiss. Even so, I was fathoms deep with no desire for rescue when Dave dragged his mouth away from mine long enough to catch his breath. It was a tactical mistake. Mainly because I wanted him back, I opened my eyes, and—I can’t explain this—suddenly saw him plain: that Medici-eyed gardener, a stranger, just somebody I didn’t know, holding me plastered against him in a hard, harsh grip, and breathing raggedly, and turning down to me a hard, dark face I didn’t love. I stared up into it, and the fireworks spun away, and I came to. There wasn’t one little string pulling anywhere—never had been, never would be. I’d always known that.
Abruptly, the whole thing became insane. What was I doing here in the arms of this man I didn’t even like? He was going to kiss me again, too. Swiftly, he was kissing me again, avidly, with shaking mouth—and this time I felt nothing but revulsion. I fought so bitterly that I ruined even Dave’s notion of exhilarating battle. I made it imposssible for him to go on kissing me; he had to resort to brute force just to hold onto me, and after an astonished moment he simply let me go.
I staggered, regained my balance, and rounded on him—then saw there was no need for heroics and sagged against the railing to try to stop the trembling of my knees. For a moment we measured each other. Dave straightened slowly, got control of his breathing, and clawed back that lock of hair which promptly fell over his forehead again. There was a touch of chagrined amusement in his expression.
“Well,” he said matter-of-factly enough. “I see that’s the end of that.”
“Yes. It is,” I said with immeasurable relief.
Dave shrugged. “OK, now we know.” We went on staring at each other. “Queer,” he added after a minute, then with real curiosity, “What happened?”
“I don’t know. You just—
”
“I just quit acting childish. Like you said.”
“All right. It worked. Got you off my mind.”
“Clear off?”
“Yes.” For a while, anyway, I thought. Forever if I’m lucky.
“Well, I’m glad one of us is comfortable,” Dave remarked. He moved closer and stood looking down at me hard. “It can’t be. Just like that. Come back.”
“I won’t. I do not want to,” I said distinctly.
There was a pause. In the cold light of the moon, I thought I saw a faint sting of color along Dave’s cheekbones, but his eyes told me no more than two scraps of black velvet. He said indifferently, “Some other night.” His amusement returned when I stiffened. “Oh, don’t panic,” he told me. “I’m not going to pursue you. I know when I’m not wanted—if I’m not. I know the difference, too.”
“All right. You’ve already made that point.”
“It’s time somebody did, if you’re going to keep playing with matches. Men are combustible, and you’d better keep it in mind.” He added caustically, “For that matter, you’re pretty combustible yourself.”
I thought, I want out of here, and wondered if my knees would work yet. They felt untrustworthy, and I decidedly didn’t want them making a fool of me halfway to the door.
Dave said, “What really happened was that I let you get away the day all this started. I knew I’d regret that.”
“Oh, come off it. It’s not in you to regret a thing.” I relinquished the support of the railing and cautiously tried my legs.
“Isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t!” I said bitterly. “Not even eavesdropping on my private conversations.”
“And handing you those home truths. That’s what rankles, isn’t it?” Dave caught my chin and turned my face to him. “Isn’t it? If I had just shut up—just scared you and kissed you and made you like it—”
“Like it?”
“—don’t lie, you loved it—and never called your bluff or mentioned Sherry—”
“Never mind Sherry! Will you please leave Sherry out of this?”