“Who is that?” she asked afterwards.
“A friend of a friend.”
“What does he do?” Her questions were helpless, she was ashamed of them.
He lived on Fulton Street. At the first chance she leafed feverishly through the telephone book: there was his name. Her heart was jumping wildly, she could not believe her luck. He was no closer, but she had not lost him, she knew where he was.
Love must wait; it must break one’s bones. She did not see him, she could not imagine any coincidence by which it would happen. Finally—there was no other way—on a pretext she called. His voice was puzzled, cold.
“We met near the Filmore,” she said awkwardly.
“Oh, yeah. You have a purple coat.”
She rushed to denounce it. She wondered, she was going to be in his neighborhood that day, could she…
“Yeah, all right.”
She had never known a happier moment in her life.
They met at a place on the corner, a long, ancient room such as once existed everywhere in the city, its tile floor worn down, the bar deserted. There was now a kitchen in back. The air smelled of soup. He was sitting at a table.
“Still the same coat,” he said.
She nodded. The hateful coat.
“You want anything?” he asked. “Some soup?”
No. She could not eat, like a dog that has been sold.
“So what do you do? You work?” he asked.
“I’m going to school.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Come on.”
An afternoon in winter, bright and cold. They crossed a wide street, almost a square, with gulls standing in the middle of it. There were gulls on roof peaks white from droppings.
They were walking fast and then running. She tried to keep up. They were passing the dirty fronts of commercial shops, cutting through open lots where he found the timbers for his work, running, he was pulling her across the rubble. The ground was strewn with bricks; she stumbled and fell. The heel of her shoe was broken.
“It’s nothing,” she said. She held the broken piece in her hand.
He ran on, reaching back for her. She hobbled after him. He took her into an entrance filled with broken glass; the doors were empty, a ruined mattress was lying there, bottles beside it. Limping, she climbed the stairs.
He lived in a huge room, a warehouse, the windows filthy, the floor splintered wood. Someone else was already there, standing near the stove.
She looked around her. In the darkness where the light could not penetrate there were partly assembled structures. It was like a shipyard; there were hammers, shavings of wood on the floor. The bed was mounted on four columns, high up, close to the fleurs-de-lis stamped in the metal ceiling. There were sketches tacked to the wall, announcements, photographs.
She stood quietly while they talked about work, shelves to be built in a gallery on Sixtieth Street. They were to run the length of the room, to be painted white. She did not look at either of them, they were warming their hands. She was afraid to look, the blood was jumping in her arms, her knees, she dared not see his face. He handed her a cup of something dimly colored, aromatic. She sipped it. Tea. His pants were a faded blue, his shoes had cleated soles.
“You want some sugar?” he asked.
She shook her head. He had not bothered to introduce her, but he was standing close as he talked, as if to include her. His limbs were spreading their authority. She tried not to think of them. She was weak as if from illness. She did not know what her face was doing, her body; she was too bewildered to remember them. They would plane the edges of the wood, they were saying, but allow the surfaces to remain rough. The walls were plaster over brick; they could not use ordinary nails. She listened uncomprehending, like a child listening to grownups, she knew them to be wiser, more powerful than herself.
Finally the other man left. She was not nervous, she was not frightened, she simply had no ability to speak.
“Let’s get in bed,” he said. He took the cup from her hand and helped her climb up. It was a man’s bed, unmade, the quilt dirty, the sheets with streaks of gray. She did not know what to do. She knelt there and waited. She thought of the houses on stilts in Thailand, the Philippines. The ceiling was barely a foot from her head.
He knelt beside her and stroked her hair. She trembled beneath his kisses. She had no second person within her wondering what would happen, what he would do next; every part of her consciousness was willing, compelled. She hardly realized what he was doing. As he lifted the dress from her raised arms, they wilted as if powerless. The broken shoe fell to the floor. His hands were slipping gently inside the elastic of her panties, her body was marked there, printed in red from the waistband. The marvelous, dumb mound, hair pressed flat, is revealed to the light. He touches her; it’s as if she is killed, she cannot move. The only thing she can remember is to murmur, “I haven’t done anything.”
He did not answer. She managed to repeat it.
“Don’t worry,” he said.
He was naked, his body was scalding her. She was helpless, he was parting her knees.
When it was over, she lay beside him dreaming, content. She could feel the creases in the sheets beneath her, smell their age. She was wet, afraid to touch herself. His body was hard, the muscles were embedded within it. The smell of his hair, like wood smoke, made her dizzy.
She did not move. I have done it, she thought. The light that came through the windows was wintry. There was a bite to the air, as of coal. High up, faint, the sound of a jet crossing the city, en route to Canada, France.
He watched her as she dressed. “Where are you going?”
She could not continue. She sat half-naked, her arms bare, her breasts heavy, firm. She was calm beneath his stare, almost lifeless. “I have to go.”
“Listen, I want to leave an order with you.”
“An order?”
“You deliver, don’t you? Three quarts a week. And a pint of cream.”
“I could come on Wednesday,” she said.
“Good.”
He had turned her life upside down. She wanted to kiss his hands; she wasn’t sure she was liked enough to show her feelings. She was embarrassed as she put on her clothes. They seemed childish, artificial.
8
A MORNING IN SUMMER, THE GREEN trees lashing one another, the leaves sighing in the wind, luggage by the door. Breakfast was hasty; they could not settle down to it.
“Do you have your passport, Viri? Do you have the tickets?” They were going to England at last.
Danny said goodbye at the door and again at the car, the windows rolled down. Hadji was unhappy. She was holding him.
“My God, he’s heavy!”
His eyes were clouded with age.
“Write to us at the hotel,” Nedra reminded.
“I will.”
“Come on, Viri, we’ll be late,” she cried.
The morning, open to light, untouched, lay before them like the sea. They sped into it, Franca with them to drive the car back. She was nineteen. She was going on a trip to Vermont.
“Too bad you’re not coming with us,” Nedra said. “I suppose it wouldn’t be as exciting.”