She saw that by the way his eyes came back from following him along, and then and only then went upward to the light, attracted to it by her remark.
The portcullis remained stubbornly closed.
They climbed the opposite curb, and went on into the maw of the ensuing westward block. Three anemic light-pools widely spaced down its seemingly endless length did nothing to dilute the gloom; they only pointed it up by giving it contrast. As if saying: See, this is what light is like — when there is any.
There was a clamminess to the air now, a sense of nearby water, that had been lacking further over. A tug-siren groaned dismally somewhere in the night ahead of them. And then another one answered it, way over near the Jersey side.
“Pretty soon now,” she said.
“I’ve never been this far over before,” he admitted.
“You can’t get very much further in off the river than this for five dollars a week.” And then, though she realized full well he hadn’t offered any objection, she couldn’t resist adding: “You can drop off anytime it gets you down.”
“It hasn’t got me down,” he murmured diplomatically.
She opened her bag and felt for her key ahead of time; a preparatory reflex, to make sure it was there.
She halted as they reached the midway pool of light, and its downward-fuming motes powdered them back into visibility to one another. “Well, this is it here,” she said.
He just looked at her. She thought it was almost stupid, the way he looked at her. Sort of bovine. As though he were trying to grasp the fact that they were separating and he would be by himself once more. Something like that. At least there wasn’t any of that other stuff in it; no amorous ambitions.
There was a doorway opposite them, or very nearly so. Left open to the street, but with the perils of ingress ameliorated to some slight extent by a faltering lemon-pale backwash that came from deep within it and failed to reach all the way to its mouth, leaving an intervening twilight zone. Still it was better than nothing. They’d formerly left it dark, and she’d dreaded having to enter it late at nights. Until someone had been knifed on the stairs one night, and since then they’d left a light there at their foot. Now, she reflected wryly, you could see who knifed you, if you were to have it happen.
She cut their parting short; carrying it into effect while holding him where he was under a delaying barrage of a few last words. That was simply to gain distance, get beyond arm’s reach. She’d learned by experience to do it that way, and not to stand still listening to remonstrances and purring objections. She’d had to.
“Take it easy,” she said. And suddenly she was already over in the doorway and he was standing alone on the sidewalk. “I’ll see you around,” she said from there. Meaning just the reverse: she never would see him again, he never would see her, this ended it.
But even before she’d quite gone inside, she’d already seen him turn his head away again and look back into the obscurity through which they’d just come. Fear was uppermost over dalliance in his mind.
What was he to her? He was just a pink dance-check, torn in half. Two-and-a-half cents’ worth of commission on the dime. A pair of feet, a blank, a cipher.
Chapter 2
She went down the constructed hallway inside. She was alone now. She was alone for the first time since eight tonight. She was without a man. She was without a man’s arms around her. She was without somebody’s breath in her face. She was by herself. She didn’t know much about what heaven was like; but she imagined when you died and went to heaven, heaven must be like this — to be alone, without a man. She passed under a solitary light at the back, looking white, looking tired, and began to climb the slatternly stairs. At first fairly erect, fairly firmly if not jauntily; at the last, after two full flights of them, sagging forward over her own knees, wavering from side to side, supporting herself by contact now against the wall, now against the wooden guard-rail.
She went all the way to the top, and then, breathing expiringly, leaned against a door there at the front, face downward as though she were looking intently at something on the floor. She wasn’t. She was just being tired.
Presently she moved again. One more little thing to do, one slight little thing, and then it was all over. It was all over until tomorrow night this same time, and then it would have started once more. She got out her key and put it into the door blindly, head still down. She pushed the door in, took the key out, and closed the door after her. Not with her hands, or the knob. With her shoulders, falling back against it so that it flattened shut behind her.
She stayed that way, supine, and reaching from where she was, found the lever, put on the light. Her eyes dropped as she did so, as though they didn’t want to see it right away, didn’t want to look at it any sooner than they had to.
This was it. This was home. This. This place. This was what you’d packed your valise and come here for. This was what you’d looked forward to when you were seventeen. This was what you’d grown pretty for, grown graceful for, grown up for. All over the place, you could hardly move, it was littered with shards. Ankle-deep, knee-deep. You couldn’t see them. Shattered dreams, smashed hopes, busted arches.
Here you cried sometimes, cried low and quiet to yourself, deep in the night. But on other nights, that were even worse, you just lay dry-eyed, not feeling much, not caring any more. Wondering if it would take very long to grow old, if it would take very long to— Hoping it wouldn’t.
She came away from the door at last, and as she dragged off her hat, flung off her coat, drew nearer to the light — tired as she was, pallid as she was, the question was answered. Yes, it would. And it would be a darned shame, too.
She toppled into a chair, and fumbled with the straps of her shoes, and wrenched them off. That was the first thing she did, always, as soon as she came in. Feet weren’t meant to do what hers did. If they must dance, it should be of their own volition, joyously, for just a little while, a measure or two. They shouldn’t be driven to it, for endless hours beyond all endurance.
Presently she thrust them into a pair of felt slippers whose cuffs yawned shapelessly about her ankles. Then she still stayed where she was awhile longer, somnolent, head thrown back upon the top of the chair, arms hanging limply down toward the floor, before doing anything else of the little there remained to be done.
There was a cot of sorts over against the wall, depressed in its middle section even when untenanted, as though worn away by years of being slept in. Sometimes she wondered if they’d cried like she had, those who had slept in it before her turn came. Sometimes she wondered where they were now. Selling sachets of lavender on a street-corner in the rain, scrubbing office-vestibules at dawn; or perhaps by now lying on another sort of cot, for good — a firmer one, topped with sod — their perplexities eased.
There was a table with a straightbacked chair drawn to it out in the middle, under the light. An envelope lay on it, stamped and addressed, ready to mail but for the insertion of its contents and the sealing of its flap. Inscribed “Mrs. Anna Coleman, Glen Falls, Iowa.” And beside it the sheet of notepaper that was to go in, blank but for three words. “Tuesday. Dear Mom—” Then nothing more.
She could have finished composing it with her eyes closed, she’d written so many others like it. “I’m doing fine. The show I’m in now is a big hit, and turning them away at the door. It’s called—” And then she’d pick a name from the theatrical columns and fill that in. “I don’t do so much in it, just a little dancing, but they’re already talking of giving me a speaking part next season. So you see, Mom, there is nothing to worry about—” Things like that. And then: “Please don’t ask me if I need money, that’s ridiculous, I never heard of such a thing. Instead, I’m sending you a little something. By rights it should be a great deal more, they pay me a big enough salary, but I’m afraid I’ve been a little extravagant, you have to keep up appearances in the profession, and this flat, lovely as it is, comes quite high, what with the colored maid and all. But I’ll try to do better next week—” And then two single dollar-bills would find their way in, with her blood invisible all over them.