“It will go lousy,” Henry said, “and no one will buy it.” He opened the door and went out, and there at the corner, leaning against a lamp post in dirty yellow light and a kind of arrogant indolence, was the girl. He started past here without speaking, but at the last moment he discovered that it was something he couldn’t do, even though he had a strong feeling that it would probably be a mistake to do anything else. Stopping a step or two beyond her in the yellow light, he turned and stared at her, and he saw that the Greek was right, that her body under the coat was very thin, but it seemed somehow to be a natural thinness appropriate to her character and chemistry, and not the thinness that would come from not having enough to eat for too long a time.
“Where are you going?” he said.
“As you see,” she said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t you have any place to go?”
“That’s a reasonable conclusion, isn’t it? If I had a place to go, I’d go there.”
“Don’t you have any money at all?”
“I have a little, but not with me.”
“Where is it?”
“At the place I came from.”
“Why don’t you go there and get it?”
“Because I don’t want to. I don’t suppose a chintzy son of a bitch like you would give a girl a cigarette.”
“I might if she asked me properly.”
“Really? What would you consider properly?”
“With a little respect and courtesy.”
“Will you please give me a cigarette?”
“That’s better.”
He gave her a cigarette and struck a match for her, holding it cupped in his hands against the wind. The tiny light flared up from the protective bowl of flesh and spread across her thin face as she leaned down to suck the flame. He was surprised, and somehow touched, as if it were a special concession to him, to see that she was rather pretty in a taut and sullen way.
“I paid for the coffee after all,” he said.
“Actually?” She straightened, drawing smoke deeply into her lungs and releasing it to the wind on a deep sigh. “Thanks all to hell.”
“All right. Now that you’ve got your cigarette, there s no need to behave decently any longer. I can see that. Why don’t you go find a nice warm alley to spend the rest of the night in?”
Crossing the intersection, he started down the block, and it was not until he had gone almost halfway to the next corner that he became aware that she was following him. She had moved so silently behind him that he never heard her at all, not the least sound above the wind of her heels striking the concrete walk, and it was only the sudden leaping of her shadow in a small island of light that told him she was there. He stopped and wheeled around, and she also stopped in the same instant, and be thought in that instant that he could detect in her a kind of wariness and apprehension. She was abusive and insolent, the Greek had said, because she was filled with hate for everyone on earth. These attitudes could also be, he thought, a front for fear.
“What do you want?” he said. “Why are you following me?”
“I want to go with you.”
“Go with me where?”
“Take me home with you.”
“No. That’s impossible. It’s a crazy idea.”
“I wouldn’t be any trouble to you.”
“The hell you wouldn’t.”
“I promise I wouldn’t.”
“No, thanks.”
“You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”
“I’d damn well be sorry if I did.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to give me a place to sleep and stay warm.”
Staring at her in amazement, he had a sudden odd sensation of gaseousness, of being lighter than air and in imminent danger of rising through the dirty light into upper darkness.
“Well, by God,” he said, “this is a switch! You abuse me and curse me and behave in general like a bitch, and now you want to move in with me.”
“If I say I’m sorry for the way I acted, will you let me come?”
“No.”
“Why not? I tell you I wouldn’t be any bother. I promise.”
“You’re pretty good at making promises, aren’t you? At breaking them too, I’ll bet.”
“All right. It’s apparent that you’re determined to make me sleep in an alley. If I die of the cold, it’s no skin off your tail.”
She started back the way they had come, and there was a display of desperate pride in the rigidity of her thin back, in each carefully measured and conscious step. He felt himself choke with pity, and he softly cursed the pity and himself and his bad luck in meeting her.
“Wait a minute,” he called.
She stopped and turned toward him, waiting beyond the perimeter of light, a pale shadow against the dark street stretching out behind her.
“You’d have to get out tomorrow,” he said.
“All right.”
“Don’t get the idea that you’re going to hang around and live off me until you’re damn good and ready to leave.”
“Don’t worry. You said I’ll have to leave tomorrow, and I will.”
“Later today, I mean. Sunday. Not tomorrow.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Come on, then. Let’s go.”
He started walking on at a quickened pace, not looking back, but aware of her behind him just the same, matching steps, measuring and maintaining between them the distance that had existed at the start. And then, after crossing another intersection and moving perhaps fifty feet along the block, he suddenly knew that she was no longer there. Turning, he saw her standing quietly under the lamp at the corner. They stood staring at each other for half a minute before she began to advance very slowly, almost reluctantly, stooping again at the distance from him that she seemed to have established in her mind as being appropriate and proper.
“I don’t think I’ll go home with you after all,” she said.
“Well, for God’s sake, make up your mind. Don’t imagine for a minute that I’m anxious to have you come.”
“If I were to come, what would you expect of me?”
“I’d expect a little civility and gratitude, that’s all, but I doubt that I’d get any.”
“I thought you might expect me to sleep with you.”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
“Why should it make you laugh? I suppose you’d be justified in expecting it under the circumstances.”
“Listen to me. I’ve been working all night, and I’m tired. I wouldn’t sleep with you if you were the last female on earth and it was my last chance. Besides, you’re not my type. You’re too skinny, and you’ve got a nasty disposition, and you’d probably accuse me of taking advantage of you. Go sleep in an alley if you choose.”
“I’d prefer to go with you and be warm.”
“In that case, stop standing here in the cold.”
Once more under way, he felt her following at the established interval. Stopping, he felt her stop.
“Why are you walking behind me?” he said. “If you’re coming, walk beside me. It makes me uncomfortable to have you walking back there like a servant or something.”
“I thought you might prefer it.”
“I don’t. I prefer to have you up here. If it’s not too offensive to you, that is.”
“I don’t mind walking beside you.”
She came even, and they walked on, a distance by this time of slightly more than another block to the second-hand book store with his rooms above. Using his key, he unlocked the street door to the stairway leading up, and using the same key on the landing at the top, unlocked the door to the first of his two rooms, which was the living room. She went past him into the room and stood waiting a couple of steps inside while he closed the door behind them. He had left a lamp burning on the table where he had been working. His typewriter stood in position, loaded with a yellow second sheet on which several lines had been typed and x-ed out, and the top of the table surrounding the machine was littered with two hundred more of the yellow sheets covered with words and words and inexorable x’s where words had failed. Additional sheets were crumpled and scattered about the floor.