"But," I said, "but--"
But I was talking to a dead line; he had hung up. And that was the end of that.
Personnel called up after a couple of days and wanted to know what to do with Lilymary's severance pay. I told them to mail her the check; then I had a second thought and asked them to send it up to me. I mailed it to her myself, with a little note apologizing for what I'd done wrong-whatever it was. But she didn't even answer.
October began, and the pace stepped up. Every night I crawled home, bone-weary, turned on my dreamster and slept like a log. I gave the machine a real workout; I even had the buyer in the Sleep Shoppe get me rare, out-of-print tapes on special order-Last Days of Petronius Arbiter, and Casanova's Diary, and The Polly Adler Story, and so on-until the buyer began to leer when she saw me coming. But it didn't do any good. While I slept I was surrounded with the loveliest of them all; but when I woke the face of Lilymary Hargreave was in my mind's eye.
October. The store was buzzing. National cost of living was up .00013, but our rate of sale was up .00021 over the previous year. The store bosses were beaming, and bonuses were in the air for everybody. November. The tide was at its full, and little wavelets began to ebb backward. Housewares was picked clean, and the manufacturers only laughed as we implored them for deliveries; but Home Appliances was as dead as the January lull. Our overall rate of sale slowed down microscopically, but it didn't slow down the press of work. It made things tougher, in fact, because we were pushing twice as hard on the items we could supply, coaxing the customers off the ones that were running short.
Bad management? No. Looking at my shipment figures, we'd actually emptied the store four times in seven weeks-better than fifty per cent turnover a week. Our July purchase estimates had been off only slightly-two persons fewer out of each hundred bought air-conditioners than we had expected, one and a half persons more out of each hundred bought kitchenware. Saul & Cappell had been out of kitchenware except for spot deliveries, sold the day they arrived, ever since late September!
Heinemann called me into his office. "George," he said, "I just checked your backlog. The unfilled order list runs a little over eleven thousand. I want to tell you that I'm surprised at the way you and your department have-"
"Now, Mr. Heinemann!" I burst out. "That isn't fair! We've been putting in overtime every night, every blasted one of us! Eleven thousand's pretty good, if you ask me!"
He looked surprised. "My point exactly, George," he said. "I was about to compliment you."
I felt so high. I swallowed. "Uh, thanks," I said. "I mean, I'm sorry I--"
"Forget it, George." Heinemann was looking at me thoughtfully. "You've got something on your mind, don't you?"
"Well--"
"Is it that girl?"
"Girl?" I stared at him. "Who said anything about a girl?"
"Come off it," he said genially. "You think it isn't all over the store?" He glanced at his watch. "George," he said, "I never interfere in employees' private lives. You know that. But if it's that girl that's bothering you, why don't you marry her for a while? It might be just the thing you need. Come on now, George, confess. When were you married last? Three years? Five years ago?"
I looked away. "I never was," I admitted.
That jolted him. "Never?" He studied me thoughtfully for a second. "You aren't--?"
"No, no, no!" I said hastily. "Nothing like that. It's just that, well, it's always seemed like a pretty big step to take."
He relaxed again. "Ah, you kids," he said genially. "Always afraid of getting hurt, eh? Well, I'll mind my own business, if that's the way you want it. But if I were you, George, I'd go get her."
That was that. I went back to work; but I kept right on thinking about what Heinemann had said.
After all. . . why not?
I called, "Lilymary!"
She faltered and half-turned. I had counted on that. You could tell she wasn't brought up in this country; from the age of six on, our girls learn Lesson One: When you're walking alone at night, don't stop.
She didn't stop long. She peered into the doorway and saw me, and her expression changed as though I had hit her with a club. "George," she said, and hesitated, and walked on. Her hair was a shimmering rainbow in the Christmas lights.
We were only a few doors from her house. I glanced, half-apprehensive, at the door, but no Father Hargreave was there to scowl. I followed her and said, "Please, Lilymary. Can't we just talk for a moment?"
She faced me. "Why?"
"To-" I swallowed. "To let me apologize."
She said gently, "No apology is necessary, George. We're different breeds of cats. No need to apologize for that."
"Please."
"Well," she said. And then, "Why not?"
We found a bench in the little park across from the subway entrance. It was late; enormous half-tracks from the Sanitation Department were emptying trash cans, sprinkler trucks came by and we had to raise our feet off the ground. She said once, "I really ought to get back. I was only going to the store." But she stayed.
Well, I apologized, and she listened like a lady. And like a lady she said, again, "There's nothing to apologize for." And that was that, and I still hadn't said what I had come for. I didn't know how.
I brooded over the problem. With the rumble of the trash trucks and the roar of their burners, conversation was difficult enough anyhow. But even under those handicaps, I caught a phrase from Lilymary. "-back to the jungle," she was saying. "It's home for us, George. Father can't wait to get back, and neither ~an the girls."
I interruped her. "Get back?"
She glanced at me. "That's what I said." She nodded at the Sanitation workers, baling up the enormous drifts of Christmas cards, thrusting them into the site burners. "As soon as the mails open up," she said, "and Father gets his visa. It was mailed a week ago, they say. They tell me that in the Christmas rush it might take two or three weeks more to get to us, though."
Something was clogging up my throat. All I could say was, "Why?" Lilymary sighed. "It's where we live, George," she explained. "This isn't right for us. We're mission brats and we belong out in the field, spreading the Good News. . . . Though Father says you people need it more than the Dyaks." She looked quickly into my eyes. "I mean-"
I waved it aside. I took a deep breath. "Lilymary," I said, all in a rush, "will you marry me?"
Silence, while Lilymary looked at me.
"Oh, George," she said, after a moment. And that was all; but I was able to translate it; the answer was no.
Still, proposing marriage is something like buying a lottery ticket; you may not win the grand award, but there are consolation prizes. Mine was a date.
Lilymary stood up to her father, and I was allowed in the house. I wouldn't say I was welcomed, but Dr. Hargreave was polite- distant, but polite. He offered me coffee, he spoke of the dream superstitions of the Dyaks and old days in the Long House, and when Lilymary was ready to go he shook my hand at the door.
We had dinner. - . . I asked her-but as a piece of conversation, not a begging plea from the heart-I asked her why they had to go back. The Dyaks, she said; they were Father's people; they needed him. Alter Mother's death, Father had wanted to come back to America . . . but it was wrong for them. He was going back. The girls, naturally, were going with him.
We danced. . . . I kissed her, in the shadows, when it was growing late. She hesitated, but she kissed me back.