She stared at him as if she would begin weeping, as if she wanted nothing more than to tell him she knew him. But she shook her head sadly, and said, “No, baby, I’m sorry. I don’t know you.”
He sighed deeply, and then he got to his feet, moving out of the chair. “I think I’d better go,” he said.
“Where?”
“I’m not sure. But I don’t think it’s any good staying here.”
“Have some coffee,” she said. “It’s all ready to pour.”
“No. Thank you. Gloria... thank you very much. You’re a very nice person.”
“Yeah,” she said in embarrassment.
“You are, Gloria. Thank you. But I have to go. I just have to go.”
“Have you got any money?” she asked, her eyes suddenly narrowing shrewdly.
“Sure,” he said.
She moved off the arm of the chair, and she said, “Wait. Don’t you leave, you hear me?” She went into the other room — the bedroom, he supposed — and came back carrying her handbag. She opened it and held out a five-dollar bill to him. “Here,” she said. “Take it.”
“I couldn’t.”
She did not say another word. She reached over and stuffed it into the breast pocket of his jacket, behind his cigarettes. He looked at her steadily for several moments, and then he said, “Why, Gloria?”
“You’re lost and hungry, ain’t you?” she said, shrugging. “Ain’t that what you told me on the phone?”
He smiled and nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I’m lost and hungry.”
“Then go find yourself,” she said.
3
He began expecting some sort of shock the moment he left her apartment and walked down to the street. He did not know in what manner or form the shock would arrive when it did, but he felt an almost preternatural certainty that it would come — and soon. The shock expectancy did not frighten him. As a matter of fact, he felt rather gay and lightheaded as he walked again to Broadway, and then turned right and began heading downtown.
He did not know to what he should attribute his sudden sense of exhilaration. He had known extreme peace and comfort, and a vast sense of security, lying on Gloria’s bosom, had been reluctant to leave and begin his search anew. But now that he was once more embarked on his quest — and he had not the slightest idea where he was going, or where he should begin looking — he felt that odd sense of freedom again, as though he had shaken off encumbering shackles. It was only with the greatest effort that he could contain himself from running down Broadway. And yet, not five minutes before, he had not wanted to leave the security of Gloria’s apartment.
He thought about Gloria now as he walked down the almost deserted street. It was perhaps seven o’clock in the morning and most of the stores along Broadway were still closed. He spotted an all-night cafeteria and decided he ought to have breakfast, but he no longer felt very hungry; this exhilaration inside him seemed to be all-consuming, obliterating all other feeling. He passed the cafeteria by. The thing about Gloria, he supposed, was that she was really a very repulsive woman, with her fat behind and her silly little pom-pom slippers, and yet he had not found her repulsive. He suddenly wondered if she had expected him to go to bed with her. The idea somehow pleased him because he was still partially in love with this fat slob of a woman who had no mouth but who had offered him warmth and comfort when he seemed to need it most. And yet he knew without doubt that if the matter had come up at all, he would have been obliged to refuse, and this puzzled him.
He felt strange about the money she had given him, too. He knew that five dollars was a lot of money to some people, and he suspected that Gloria was one of them. At the same time, he had a feeling that he was used to handling much larger sums of money, that he counted money in terms of thousands, and that five dollars was absolute chicken feed to his normal self. But he felt rich. He had taken the bill from his breast pocket and moved it to one of his trouser pockets, and he felt richer than he ever had in his life. He remembered with a wry grin that his life had really begun in Central Park little more than an hour ago, and that he had awakened penniless and nameless. So naturally five dollars would seem like a lot of money to him. But the thing about this particular five dollars, which he could feel in his pocket brushing the ends of his long fingers, was that it not only seemed like a lot of money, it seemed like all the money there was in the world. He felt enormously rich, overwhelmingly rich, all because he was carrying Gloria’s five-dollar bill in his pocket.
That was the curious thing about Gloria, he realized. She caused him, in his present anonymous state, to accept — indeed to be delighted by — things he knew meant nothing in his ordinary life. My ordinary life, he thought. What is my ordinary life? Maybe my ordinary life does include women like Gloria who offer me their fat and fleshy bosoms like gifts to a pauper. Maybe my ordinary life is constructed around an economy that does consider five crumby dollars a fortune. What the hell is my ordinary life, and how is this new life that began this morning in Central Park any less ordinary, any more extraordinary?
His exhilarating mood was being threatened, he felt.
He began whistling, not recognizing the tune at first, and then realizing he was whistling the main theme of a very well-known symphony, but he did not know which one. He began running through the names of composers in his mind: Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, Saint-Saëns, Shostakovich, Brahms, Beethoven, and Bach, Prokofiev, Copland, Bernstein. He supposed he had coupled Bernstein and Copland only because he could remember a record with Copland’s El Salón México on one side and Bernstein’s Fancy Free on the other, a curious combination for an A and R man to hit upon, but there it was nonetheless. Then he remembered that the record had a red label, and knew instantly it was a Columbia record, and then wondered how in hell he knew what an A and R man was, and then wondered if perhaps he wasn’t in some way involved with the music business. He did not think he was, but he seemed to have been humming a symphony and he seemed to be familiar with a composer or two, and he also knew what an A and R man was, but then he supposed everyone did. He saw a man coming down the street, an old man with a grizzled beard, his hands in his pockets, staring at the sidewalk as he walked, and he went up to the man and said, “Excuse me, sir.”
The man looked up at him suspiciously.
“Do you know what an A and R man is?” he asked.
“What?” the man said.
“Do you know what an A and R man is?”
“Well, now, just a minute,” the man said. “A and R, huh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Aerials and Radios?” the man asked.
“No.”
“Just a second, now, just a second.” The man furrowed his brow, thinking strenuously. “Aeronautics and... uh... Rockets? Rocketry? Is that it?”
“No.”
“I’ll get it, just a minute,” the man said. “What’s this for, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is this some television show or something?” the man asked.
“No, I just wanted to know,” Buddwing said.
“Oh. Well, just a second now. A and R, huh? Just a second. Automotive and... just a second... Research? That sounds right, don’t it?”
“No,” Buddwing said.
“Oh.” The man looked disappointed. “Well, then, I’m sorry, fella. I can’t help you.”
“Thanks, anyway,” Buddwing said.
“Don’t mention it,” the man answered, and he continued walking up Broadway, his head bent, his hands in his pockets.
Buddwing looked after the man for a moment and then thought, Well, he doesn’t know what an A and R man is, so perhaps I am connected with the music business at that; or perhaps, considering the skill with which I handled the old gentleman, perhaps I am a professional survey taker. His joyous mood returned at once, powerfully, making him almost giddy. The staggering number of possibilities of things he could be — the doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs; the butchers, bakers, candlestick makers; the princes, paupers, panderers and pimps; the artists, writers, actors, agents; the truck drivers, muckrakers, groundhogs, hemstitchers; chicken pluckers, aviators, pearl divers, bandleaders; bass fiddlers, ballplayers, lobster salesmen, thieves; anything, everything — the possibilities, rather than overwhelming him and leaving him weak, instead brought on a feeling of immense power. God, what a choice! he thought. I can be anything I want to be! I can start right this minute as a professional survey taker, Sam Buddwing Research, Inc., and go down Broadway asking everyone I meet if he knows what an A and R man is! I can stand on the corner and teach a class or preach a sermon! I can buy a chisel and become a sculptor or a burglar! I can find a scrap of paper and write a play or a pamphlet! I can be a lover or a hater, a creator or a destroyer, an artist or a critic! I can be whatever I want to be and whoever I want to be! I am new, I am clean, I am born, my God I am hungry!