He knew she wasn’t sleeping because she stirred and blinked her eyes, though she still didn’t speak.
“Louise?”
“Is — this what you wanted to talk to me about, Charlie?”
“Why, yes. It may not seem important to you, but I love dogs. I couldn’t bear to hurt one, see it all mangled and bloody.”
She looked down at her blue dress. It was spotless, unwrinkled. It bore no sign that she had run out into the street after Charlie’s car and been dragged under the wheels and lacerated; and Charlie, unaware that anything had happened, had driven on alone. He had seen nothing and felt little more. Maybe I felt a slight bump but I thought it was a hole in the road, I certainly didn’t know it was you, Louise. What were you doing out on the road chasing cars like a dog?
“Oakley,” she said in a high, thin voice. “Mrs. Cathryn Oakley.”
“The little dog has no father?”
“I guess not.”
“Do you spell her first name with a C or a K?”
“C-a-t-h-r-y-n.”
“You must have looked it up in the city directory?”
“Yes. Mrs. Oakley is listed as head of the household, with one minor child.”
Charlie’s face was flushed, as if he’d come out of the cold into some warm place. “It’s funny she’d want to live alone in that big house with just a little girl.”
He knew, as soon as the words left his mouth, that he’d made a mistake. But Louise didn’t seem to notice. She had stood up and was brushing off her dress with both hands. He could see the outline of her thighs, thin, delicate-boned, with hardly any solid flesh to protect them from being crushed under a man’s weight. She wasn’t wearing any garters and he would have liked to ask her how she kept her stockings up. It was a perfectly innocent question on his part, but he was afraid she would react the way Ben would, as if such thoughts didn’t occur to normal men, only to him, Charlie. “Why do you ask that, Charlie?” “Because I want to know.” “But why do you want to know?” “Because it’s interesting.” “Why is it interesting?” “Because gravity is pulling her stockings down and she must be doing something to counteract it.”
Louise had taken her gloves out of her handbag and was putting them on, holding her fingers stiff and smoothing the fabric down over each one very carefully. Charlie looked away as if she were doing something private that he had no right to watch.
She said, “I’d better be going now.”
“But you just got here. I thought you and I were going to have a talk.”
“We already have, haven’t we?”
“Not real—”
“I think we’ve covered the important thing, anyway — Mrs. Oakley and her dog and her child. That was the main item on tonight’s agenda, wasn’t it? Perhaps the only one, eh, Charlie?”
She sounded friendly and she was smiling, but he was suddenly and terribly afraid of her. He backed away from her, until his buttocks and shoulders touched the wall. It was a cool wall with hot red roses climbing all over it.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t hurt me, Louise.”
Her face didn’t alter except that one end of her smile began to twitch a little.
“Louise, if I’ve done anything wrong, I’m sorry. I try to do what you and Ben tell me to because my own thinking isn’t too good sometimes. But tonight nobody told me.”
“That’s right. Nobody told you.”
“Then how was I to know? I saw you and Ben looking at each other in the hall and I could sense, I could feel, you were expecting me to do something, but I didn’t understand what it was.
You and Ben, you’re my only friends. I’d do anything for you if you’d just tell me what you want.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“You must figure it out for yourself, apart from Ben and me.”
“I can’t. I can’t. Help me, Louise. Hold out your hand to me.”
She walked toward him, her arms outstretched stiffly like a robot obeying an order. He took both her hands and pressed them hard against his chest. She could feel the fast, fearful beating of his heart and she wished it would stop suddenly and forever, and hers would stop with it.
“Oh God, Louise, don’t leave me here alone in this cold dark.”
“I can’t make it any lighter for you,” she said quietly. “Warmer, yes, because there would be two of us. I’ve had foolish dreams about you, Charlie, but I’ve never kidded myself that I could turn on any lights for you when other people, even professionals, have failed. I can share your darkness, though, when you need me. I know what darkness is, I have some of my own.”
“For me to share?”
“Yes.”
“And I can help you, too?”
“You already have.”
He held her body close against his own. “It’s warmer already, isn’t it, Louise? Don’t you feel it?”
“Yes.”
“Imagine me helping anybody, that’s a switch. I could laugh. I could laugh out loud.”
“Don’t.”
She put one hand gently over his mouth, staring into his eyes as she would twin pools of water. On the surface she saw her own reflection, but underneath there were live creatures of every shape and size, moving mysteriously in and out, toward and past each other; arriving, departing, colliding, unconcerned with time or joy or grief. At the bottom of the cold, dark water lay the stones of death, but small green creatures clung to them and survived, unafraid. There was enough light to live by, even down there, and they had each other for comfort.
Charlie said, “Why — are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I love you.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“It’s reason enough for anything.”
“You talk sillier than I do,” he said, touching her hair and the ribbon in it. “I like silly girls.”
“I’ve never been called a silly girl before. I’m not sure I approve.”
“You do, though. I can tell.”
He laughed, softly and contentedly, then he swooped her up in his arms and carried her over to the davenport. She sat on his lap with her face pressed against the warm moist skin of his neck.
“Louise,” he said in a whisper, “I want you and me to be married in a church and everything, like big shots.”
“I want that too.”
“You in a long fluffy dress, me in striped trousers and a morning coat. I can rent an outfit like that down at Cosgrave’s. One of the fellows at work rented one for his sister’s wedding and he said it made him feel like an ambassador. He hated to take it back because actually he’s just a truck driver. I wouldn’t mind feeling like an ambassador, for a few hours anyway.”
“An ambassador to where?”
“Anywhere. I guess they all feel pretty much the same.”
“I suppose I could stand being an ambassador’s wife for a few hours,” Louise said dreamily, “as long as I could have you back again exactly the way you are now.”
“Exactly?”
“Yes.”
“Now you’re talking silly again. I mean, it’s not sensible to want me just as I am, with all my — my difficulties.”
“Shhh, Charlie. Don’t think about the difficulties, think about us. We must start planning. First, we’ll have to decide on a church and a date and make a reservation. Someone told me that autumn weddings are starting to outnumber June weddings.”