“Have you been coming down here at night?”
“A couple of times.”
“Doing what? Just sitting?”
“Sitting and thinking. I never worked where they gave me a key before. I played a few records… I tried to remember what you told me about them, what I was supposed to listen for. There was one I liked very much; I put it on the machine and then I went in the office and listened from there because it was warmer. Are you mad at me?”
“No,” he said.
“I’ll never be able to figure all that out, all the things you know. But that wasn’t why I came down, anyhow. I just wanted to listen and be in here by myself, with the door locked. One night—last night, I think—the cop came around and shone his flashlight on me. I had to go and unlock the door and prove who I was.”
“Did he believe you?”
“Yes, he had seen me working during the day. He asked me if I was okay.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him I was about as okay as I had ever been. But not really okay enough.”
“What can I do?” he asked.
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“I want to do something.”
“Well, you could find the coffee.”
“Can’t I do more than that?”
She pondered, her head against his, one hand resting against her cheek, the other in her lap. He could feel her breath rushing and see the slight motion of her lips. Like a child, she was breathing through her mouth. She was so close to him that, even in the dim light, he could make out the tiny, perfectly formed strands that grew from the nape of her neck and were lost in the general darkness of her hair. Along the edge of her jaw, beneath her left ear, was an almost invisible scar, a thin line of white that disappeared into the faint fuzz of her cheek.
“What was that?” he asked, touching the scar.
“Oh.” She smiled up at him, lifting her chin. “When I was eleven I bumped into a glass cupboard door and the glass broke.” Her eyes roamed mischievously. “It didn’t hurt, but it bled a lot, all down my neck in big red drops. I had a cat who used to sneak into the dish cupboard and go to sleep in the big mixing bowl, the one my mother mixed her cakes in. I was trying to get him out, but he wouldn’t come. I was pulling on his paw, and all of a sudden he scratched me. I backed away and broke the glass door.”
She was still meditating over her childhood injury when he turned her face upward and kissed her, this time directly on her dry lips. Nowhere on her was there any excess flesh; her bones were close to the surface, just beneath the skin: first came the silk of her clothing and then the immediate hardness of her ribs and shoulder blades and collarbone. Her hair, as it swept close to him, smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. Close to her ears lingered the remnant of some perfume, long since evaporated. She was tired, and there was a presence of tiredness about her, a drooping passivity and silence.
At first he held her lightly because he thought she might want to get away, and it was important that she be able to get away. But, after a time, he realized that she was falling quietly asleep, or, at least, into a kind of unwinding stupor. Her eyes were still open—she was gazing at the cardboard cartons of adding machine tape above his head—but there was no particular focus of consciousness in them. She was aware of him, aware of herself too, but only in a nebulous way. Her mind was turned inward, still revolving around thoughts, and around memories of thoughts, meditating over experiences that had long ago existed.
“I feel safe,” she said at last.
“Yes,” he agreed. “You are.”
“Because of you?”
“I hope so. Because of the store, too. It feeds us.”
“But mostly because of you. I didn’t always feel this way. Not at all, before. Remember?”
“I frightened you.”
“You scared hell out of me. And you were so—stern. You lectured me; you were like—” She searched her memory, brightness dancing in her eyes. “When I was very little…the picture of God in Sunday school. Only you don’t have a long beard.”
“I’m not God,” he said. He was an ordinary man; he was not God or even like God, in spite of the picture she had seen in Sunday school. An unhappy anger grew inside him. Her odd, warm, totally childish ideal…and there was really so little he could do to help her. “Disappointed?” he asked.
“I guess not.”
“You wouldn’t like God. He sends people to hell. God’s an old-fashioned reactionary.”
She pulled back and wrinkled her nose at him. Again he kissed her. This time she stirred; moving her face away, she smiled and blew a mouthful of warm breath up at him. Then her smile, without warning, vanished. Ducking her head she trembled and sat with her back stiff, hands clenched together, and, moaning, rose up until her bare throat was against his eyes.
Joseph Schilling knew that she was frightened now, that the old image had come back. But he did not stir. Motion would have been a mistake. He kept that fixed in his mind.
“Joseph,” she said. “I—” The spoken sound faded into a stammer of confusion; shaking her head, she tugged fretfully upward, as if her body were caught.
“What is it?” he asked, rising with her as she slid from the table and caught at him. Her nails dug into his sleeves; she struggled with herself, swallowing rapidly, eyes shut.
Schilling saw his own hands tearing at the clasps that held her shirt together. How strange, he thought. So that was it. What an eerie sight it was, his large, reddish hands plucking so industriously. The girl, opening her eyes, looked down and saw. Together they watched the hands twitch aside her shirt and spread out across the hollow of her shoulders, until they had pushed her clothes down to her elbows.
“Oh, dear,” the girl whispered. Schilling, unable to comprehend, drew back and sat rubbing his hands together.
Mary Anne took a deep breath and began to gather her shirt back around her. A wondering expression appeared on her face; turning to him, she asked: “Did you do that? You did do it, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. And then he reached out, drew the fabric of her shirt completely away from her, and unfastened the remaining clasps. She made no protest; with curiosity she watched his hands as they traveled across her stomach to the snap that held her slacks in place. Once she made a motion of unclipping her bra; she stood groping behind her back without accomplishing anything until Schilling turned her partly around, pushed her fingers away, and undid the hooks.
“Thanks,” she murmured. Her bra fell forward and she caught the cups. In a few brief motions she had pulled her slacks all the way off and, with a shiver, worked down her underpants. Collecting her clothes, she folded them in a bundle and pushed them away. For an instant her slightly luminous column danced in front of him; then she hurried forward, very smooth, very alive, creeping up onto the table.
“Yes,” she told him. “Don’t wait; hurry, Joseph, for heaven’s sake.”
He did not have to wait. By flattening her back she was able to receive him; she guided him in with her own fingers, pushed until she could go no farther, and, supporting herself upon her fists, stiffened her body. She was warm inside, warmer than he had ever found anywhere, with anyone. Her eyes were shut and she was involved in the rhythms of her body. Across her pelvis rippled a sheet of fine, energetic muscles; the activity spread until it reached her breasts and dilated each nipple. He had entered her in so short a time that neither of them had spoken a word.
It was accomplished, then. Something rushed to the surface of her body and was gone; she constricted, became hard, then soft again. Sighing, the girl lowered herself and relaxed. She withdrew her fists and contentedly laid her palms flat across her belly.
Schilling waited, and then he carefully withdrew himself. Mary Anne said nothing. Finally, after he had got his clothes back around himself and was stepping to the floor, she stirred, opened her eyes, and sat up.
In a low, timid voice she said: “That never happened to me befo
re. I never felt anything inside me come. It was always something that happened to me; nothing I did.”
“It’s good,” he assured her.
Presently she located her clothes and began to dress. He couldn’t help looking at his watch. Only ten minutes had gone by since they descended to the storeroom. It did not seem possible, but it was actually no longer than that. If they had, instead, gone up and put on the coffee, it would just now be ready.
When the girl had finished dressing, he said to her: “How do you feel, Mary Anne?”
She stretched her arms, shook herself like an animal, and then trotted toward the stairs. “I feel fine, but I’m hungry. Can we go have something to eat?”
He laughed. “Right away?”
Halfway up the stairs she halted to gaze down at him. “Why not? What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing.” Mounting the stairs, he stopped behind her. She did not seem to mind; there was no objection as he reached up and put his arm around her waist. Leaning back, she rested against him, making a breathy whirr of satisfaction. He covered her right breast with his fingers and she did not seem to mind that, either; in fact, she closed her hand over his and pressed him against her until he could feel the line of ribs under her flesh. “Where do you want to go?” he asked, releasing her.
“Anywhere. Someplace we can get hotcakes and ham and coffee. That’s what I want; plenty of it, too.” Excitedly, she scampered up the stairs to the top. “Okay?” she demanded, outlined above him.
“Okay,” he said happily, and reached to switch off the basement light.
16
• • • • • • • •
The Pacific Star Diner was a little wooden café on the rim of the slum business section. Mary Anne opened the screen door and entered. A taxi driver and two workmen in black leather jackets sat at the counter drinking coffee and reading the sporting green of the San Francisco Chronicle. In one of the booths was a solemn Negro couple.
“Can I order anything I want?” Eyes sparkling, she slid into an empty booth at the rear.
“Of course,” Schilling said, reaching for the menu.
“I want what I said, still. Will they give it to me?”
“If they don’t, we’ll go somewhere else.”
The counter man, a middle-aged Greek wearing a soiled white apron, approached and took their order.
“How long will it be?” Mary Anne asked Schilling as the Greek went back to get ham from the refrigerator. “It won’t be long, will it?”
“Only a couple of minutes.”
“I’m starving.” She began to read the titles on the jukebox selector. “Look—these are all jump tunes. All ‘Jazz at the Phil’ stuff…could I play one? Could I play this Roy Brown tune? ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight,’ it’s called. Would you mind?”
He found some change and pushed it across to her.
“Thanks,” she said shyly, dropping a coin into the selector and rotating the dial. Presently the café boomed with the noise of an alto saxophone.
“I guess it’s pretty terrible,” Mary Anne said as the racket finally subsided. She made no move to pick up any more money from the little heap, and Schilling asked:
“Aren’t you going to play any others?”
“They’re no good.”
“Don’t say that. Those men are artists in their field. I don’t want you to give up what you enjoy in favor of what I like.”
“But what you like is better.”
“Not necessarily.”
“If it isn’t better, then why do you like it?” Mary Anne reached eagerly for a paper napkin. “Here comes the food. I’m going to ask Harry to sit down and eat with us.” She explained, “That’s Harry carrying the food.”
“How do you know his name is Harry?”
“I just know; all Greeks are named Harry.” When the man had reached the table and his long arms were beginning to push out the platters of food, Mary Anne announced: “Harry, please sit down; we want you to join us.”
The Greek grinned. “Sorry, Miss.”
“Come on. Whatever you want; we’ll pay for it.”
“I’m on a diet,” the Greek told her, wiping off the table with his damp rag. “I can’t eat anything but orange juice.”
“I don’t believe he’s really a Greek,” Mary Anne said to Schilling as the counter man went off. “I’ll bet his name isn’t even Harry.”
“Probably not,” Schilling agreed, starting to eat. The food was good and he ate a great deal. Presently, across from him, the girl finished the last of her coffee, pushed away her plate, and said:
“I’m through.”
She had already finished, and completely so. Lighting a cigarette, she sat smiling at him across the yellow-moist table.
“Still hungry?” he asked. “Want more?”
“No. That’s enough.” Her attention wandered. “I wonder what it’s like to run a little café…you could get all you wanted to eat, any time of the day. You could live in the back…do you suppose he lives in the back? Do you suppose he has a big family?”
“All Greeks have big families.”
The girl’s fingers drummed restlessly on the surface of the table. “Could we take a walk? But maybe you don’t like to walk.”
“I used to walk all the time, before I got the car. And I didn’t find that it hurt me.” He finished his food, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and got up. “So let’s go take our walk.”
He paid Harry, who lounged at the cash register, and then they strolled outside onto the dark street. Fewer people were visible and most of the stores had shut off their lights for the night. Hands in her pockets, purse under her arm, Mary Anne marched along. Schilling followed behind her, letting her choose her own direction. But she had no particular course in mind; at the end of the block she halted.
“We could go anywhere,” she declared.
“That’s so.”
“How far do you suppose we could walk? Would we still be walking when the sun came up?”
“Well,” Schilling said, “probably not.” It was eleven-fifteen. “We’d have to walk for seven hours.”
“Where would we be then?”
He calculated. “We might make it to Los Gatos, if we kept on the main highway.”
“Have you ever been in Los Gatos?”
“Once. That was back in 1949, when I was still working for Allison and Hirsch. I had a vacation, and we were on our way to Santa Cruz.”
Mary Anne asked: “Who is ‘we’?”
“Max and myself.”
Walking slowly across the street she said: “How close were you and Beth?”
“At one time we were very close.”
“As close as you and I?”
“Not as close as you and I.” He wanted to be honest with her, so he said: “We spent a night together at a cabin up along the Potomac, in a little old lock-keeper’s cabin on the old canal. The next morning I brought her back to town.”
“That was when Danny Coombs tried to kill you, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“You weren’t telling me the truth before.” But there was no rancor in her voice. “You said you hadn’t been with her.”
“Beth—wasn’t his wife then.” This time he couldn’t tell her the truth, because he couldn’t expect her to understand. The situation had to be experienced.
“Did you love her?”
“No, absolutely not. It was a mistake on my part—I always regretted it.”
“But you love me.”
“Yes,” he said. And he meant it very much.
Satisfied, the girl strolled on. But after a time she seemed to fall back into worry. “Joseph,” she said, “why did you go with her if you didn’t love her? Is that right?”
“No, I suppose not. But with her it was a regular event… I wasn’t the first, nor the last.” So he had to explain anyhow. “She was—well, available. Physical acts of that sort happen. Tensions build up…they have to be expiated in some fashio
n. No personal element is involved.”
“Did you ever love anybody before me?”
“There was a woman named Irma Fleming who I loved a great deal.” He was silent for a moment, thinking back to his wife, whom he hadn’t seen in years. He and Irma had legally separated in—good God—1936. The year Alf Landon ran for president. “But,” he said, “that was a long time ago.” It certainly was.
“How long ago?” Mary Anne asked.
“I’d rather not say.” There were a lot of things, related things, he would rather he didn’t have to say.
“If I asked, would you tell me your age?”
“I’m fifty-eight years old, Mary.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “That’s about what I thought.”
They had reached the car wash at the edge of the main highway. Seeing it, Schilling recalled the first hour he had spent in Pacific Park: the Negro named Bill who had owned the car wash, and his assistant who had been somewhere getting a Coke. And the dark-haired high school girl.
“Did you go to this high school?” he asked.
“Sure. It’s the only one around.”
“When was that?” He could, easily, picture her as a high school girl; he could imagine her in sweater and skirt, carrying a few textbooks, roaming, as the dark-haired girl had roamed, from the high school to Foster’s Freeze at three o’clock in the warm midsummer afternoon.
Fresh little breasts, he thought almost sadly. Like cakes of yeast. The lightly downy body, growing and budding…and, from it, the smell of spring.
“That was a couple of years ago,” Mary Anne said. “I hated school. All the dumb kids.”
“You were a kid, too.”
“But I wasn’t dumb,” she said, and he could well believe it.
Beyond the closed-up car wash was a small roadside ceramics shop. A few lights were still on; a woman in a long smock was carrying pottery into the building.
“Buy me something,” Mary Anne said suddenly. “Buy me a cup or a flowerpot—something I can have.”
Schilling approached the woman. “Is it too late?” he asked.