Carol was coming down the hallway again. He heard the tap of her heels, and he turned as she approached.
She was not crying. Her face was a deadly white, and there was shock in her eyes, as if someone had punched her with a heavy fist. Her body was trembling, but there was no sobbing, and no crying, and he put his arm around her awkwardly, trying to comfort her, and she kept staring blankly ahead of her, and then she began shaking her head.
She said, “Why should I feel responsible for him?” but she was not asking Bud the question, and her voice was curiously cold and dead.
“You shouldn’t!” Bud snapped. “We... we can’t. Carol, he’s not going to die... he’s...”
“Aren’t we all responsible for each other?” she said, still not looking at him. “If we aren’t, shouldn’t we be?”
“I want to leave,” Helen said suddenly. “I want a cup of coffee. I don’t want to be here when he...” She shook her head, and then she reached out and touched Carol’s hand, and she turned and started down the corridor toward the elevator.
“Helen,” Bud said, “wait.” She stopped, looking back at him. “Carol,” he said, “I’ve got to go now. I’ll be back a little later. Will you be all right?”
“Yes,” she said dully.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
She looked up at him curiously, her eyes still blank. “No,” she said. “I don’t mind at all.”
He squeezed her hand, smiled briefly, and then went down the corridor after Helen. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” he said. “I’ve got to get uptown in a little while.”
“All right,” Helen answered.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“You sounded— Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
They took the elevator down to the main floor, and then they walked out of the hospital together. There was a small restaurant on the opposite corner, and they went to it and took a table in the corner. Bud took off his coat and then helped Helen with hers. It wasn’t quite one o’clock yet, but every light in the place was on in defense against the rain.
They sat, and Helen was very quiet, and he watched her and wondered what her silence meant, and he said, “Helen, what I was trying to say before—”
“Don’t, Bud,” she said.
“All right, but I... I wanted you to know... I wanted to apologize.”
“You’ve already apologized,” she said. “Have you got a cigarette?”
“Yes, sure,” he answered. He took the package from his pocket, shook one loose, and then lit it for her, putting the pack on the table.
“He’ll die,” she said. “The poor son-of-a-bitch will die, and all of us will ask why.” Her voice was very low. She squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in on the cigarette. One hand was on the table, clenched tightly, the knuckles white. “I mustn’t... I mustn’t,” she said, and she shook her head.
“Mustn’t what?”
“Nothing.” She smiled suddenly, and the smile was so unexpected that he blinked his eyes. “This is good weather for dying, anyway, isn’t it?” she said, still smiling. “I always say if you’re going to die — and there’s no reason to believe we all aren’t, is there? — then you might as well pick a nice gloomy day for it. Of course, most of us don’t have the choice.”
“Helen, what—”
“Can’t we have some coffee? I think this place is staffed with dead men. Waiter!”
The counterman came over to the table. “What’ll it be?” he asked.
“Two coffees,” Bud said. “And a ham on rye. You eating anything, Helen?”
“No.”
“That’s it,” Bud said, and the counterman walked away. Bud looked at his watch. “I hope he makes it fast.”
“Big test this afternoon, huh?” Helen said.
“Yes. Well, it wouldn’t be so important if I hadn’t flunked the last one, but... well, you know, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do now.”
“Yes, of course. You have to catch up. I knew a man once who spent all of his life catching up. He got out of bed late one morning, you see, and so he lost a half hour, and he spent the rest of his life trying to catch up. He finally died trying to catch a train.” Helen laughed suddenly, a curious laugh, and Bud stared at her because he didn’t think she’d said anything so very funny.
“My cigarette’s out,” she said. “Why can’t cigarettes stay lighted?”
He reached for a matchbook, and she said, “No, I have some. Women carry all sorts of junk in their purses, didn’t you know? Knew a woman who carried the Encyclopedia Britannica in her purse, believe it or not, on the head of a pin. A pinhead, naturally.” She laughed again and opened her purse, and he saw that her hands were trembling, and he stared at her hands fumbling inside the purse, and he saw the book of matches she reached for, and alongside the matches something else, and he stared at the something else, not knowing what it was for an instant, and then realizing it was the syringe she had taken from Andy yesterday.
She took out the matches, and she snapped the purse shut, blotting out sight of the syringe, and he watched her hands shaking as she struck the match and held it to the cigarette, and he tried to remember all of the things she had said yesterday, and he couldn’t remember, except some of them, and they hadn’t seemed very important then, but they seemed important now as he watched her sucking in on the cigarette.
...you’ll smoke incessantly because there’s something very reassuring about a cigarette in your hand or hanging on your lips. You want that cigarette always. You put one out, and you light another one immediately afterwa—
“Ah,” Helen said cheerfully, “here comes the coffee now. I can use a cup of coffee, all right. I’m part Brazilian, you know, and down in Brazil we take baths in the stuff. Of course, you sometimes get a coffee bean stuck in your navel that way, but it’s the spirit of South Americanism that counts, you know, especially when you’re doing a Samba in the bathtub.”
“Helen...”
“Thank you, my good man,” Helen said to the counterman, and she squashed out her cigarette in the ash tray and then picked up the coffee cup instantly. “Eat your sandwich, Bud,” she said. “You’ve got a big test this afternoon, haven’t you? You need your strength. God give me strength, God said, and there was no one to give him any strength because he himself was God.”
“Helen, are you all right?”
“Me? I’m fine. I haven’t felt so good in a month of Blue Mondays. This is perfect dying weather, so when I get home I think I’ll dye some of my undies. I’ve always wanted red undies, but I could never muster up the courage to wear them. Why, suppose your skirts should blow up on a windy day? People seeing those red undies would automatically assume you were a Communist, and the one thing I absolutely fear is people calling me a Communist. Eat your sandwich. You haven’t got much time.”
No, I haven’t got much time, he thought.
I haven’t got much time at all, and if I run into a fouled-up transit situation, I’m liable to be late to begin with. I haven’t got much time — you try to blot out the taste by smothering it in other tastes. You’ll have a cup of coffee, and then you’ll have another cup of coffee, and then another — but there’s the test, what time is it? Jesus, one-fifteen already, what am I supposed to do, she’s got a syringe in her purse, what am I supposed to do?
“Where are you going now?” he asked. “From here?”
“Oh, I don’t know. To the Union Floor, maybe. Give Rog back his syringe. Damn decent of him to lend it to Andy. Never realized a pusher had a decent bone in his miserable body, but it just goes to show you can have people pegged all wrong, doesn’t it? Listen, do you mind if I have another cigarette? I’ll smoke you out of house and home, but some days you’re a natural mooch, isn’t that so? What do you smoke? I smoke O.P.’s. And can we get some more coffee?”