"All right, if that's the way you feel." She crossed to the door, opened it and went out into the hall. I went after her and picked up my hat that I had left on the hall chair. She opened the front door, glanced out into the corridor and then stood aside.
I was reluctant to go. I had to force myself out into the corridor.
"Maybe you might like to have dinner with me one night or take in a movie."
"That would be very nice," she said politely. "Good night." She gave me a distant smile and shut the door in my face.
III
Of course it didn't remain like that. I wish it had, but a relationship between a man like myself and a girl like Helen is certain sooner or later to become complicated.
I tried to put her out of my mind, but I didn't succeed. I kept seeing the expression in her eyes when I had left her, and that did things to me. I knew I was inviting trouble, and yet there was this fascination about her that made any trouble seem unreal. In my saner moments, I told myself that as far as I was concerned she was rank poison, but in my less saner moments I told myself – who cares?
For the next five or six days she was constantly in my mind. I didn't tell Gina that I had met Helen at the party, but Gina has an awkward knack of being able to know to some extent what is going on in my mind, and I caught her looking at me several times with a puzzled, inquiring expression.
By the sixth day I was more or less a dead duck. I had got this blonde, lovely girl so much on my mind that I found I wasn't concentrating on my job. I decided to ease the strain, and when I returned to my apartment, I called her.
There was no answer. I called three times during the evening. At the fourth try, around two o'clock in the morning, I heard the receiver lift and her voice said, "Hello?"
"This is Ed Dawson," I said.
"Who?"
I grinned into the receiver. That was a little too obvious. That told me she was as interested in me as I was in her.
"Let me jog your memory. I'm the guy who runs the Rome office of the Western Telegram."
She laughed then.
"Hello, Ed."
That was better.
"I'm lonely," I said. "Is there any chance of you coming out with me to-morrow night? I thought if you hadn't anything better to do, we might have dinner at Alfredo's."
"Will you hold on a moment? I must look in my little book."
I held on, knowing I was being given the treatment and not caring. After a two-minute pause, she came back on the line.
"I can't manage to-morrow night. I have a date."
I should have said it was too bad and hung up, but I was too far gone for that.
"Then when can you fix it?"
"Well, I'm free on Friday."
That was three days ahead.
"Okay, let's make it Friday night."
"I'd rather not go to Alfredo's. Isn't there somewhere else quieter?"
That brought me up short. If I wasn't thinking about the danger of us being seen together, she was.
"Yeah, that's right. How about the little restaurant opposite the Tevi fountain?"
"I'd like that. Yes, that would be lovely."
"I'll meet you there. What time?"
"Half-past eight"
"Okay: good-bye for now."
Life didn't mean much to me until Friday. I could see Gina was worried about me. For the first time in four years I was short-tempered with her. I couldn't concentrate, nor could I work up any enthusiasm for the job on hand. I had Helen on my mind.
We had dinner at the little restaurant. It wasn't a bad dinner, but I can't say I remember what we ate. I found talking difficult. All I wanted to do was look at her. She was cool, distant, but at the same time, provocative. If she had invited me up to her apartment I would have gone and to hell with Sherwin Chalmers, but she didn't. She said she would take a taxi home. When I hinted I would go with her, she handed me a beautiful brush-off. I stood outside the restaurant, watching the taxi edge its way up the narrow street until I lost sight of it. Then I walked home, my mind seething. The meeting hadn't helped: in fact it had made things worse.
Three days later I called her again.
"I'm pretty busy," she said, when I asked her to come to a movie. "I don't think I can manage it."
"I was hoping you could. I'm going on vacation in a couple of weeks time. I won't be seeing you then for a month."
"Are you going away for a month?" Her voice had sharpened as if I had caught her interest
"Yes. I'm going to Venice and then on to Ischia. I plan to stay there for about three weeks."
"Who are you going with?"
"I'm going alone. But never mind that: how about this movie?"
"Well, I might. I don't know. I'll call you. I have to go now. There's someone at the door," and she hung up.
She didn't call me for five days. Then, just as I was about to call her, she rang my apartment number,
"I've been meaning to telephone you," she said as soon as I came on the line, "but I haven't had a moment up to now. Are you doing anything particular right now?"
The time was twenty minutes past midnight. I was about to go to bed.
"You mean right now?"
"Yes."
"Well, no. I was going to bed."
"Will you come to my place? Don't leave your car outside."
I didn't hesitate.
"Sure, I'll be right over."
I entered her apartment block like a sneak thief, taking elaborate care no one would see me. Her front door was ajar, and all I had to do was to step across the corridor from the elevator into her hall.
I found her in the lounge, sorting through a stack of Long Play records. She was wearing a white silk wrap and her blonde hair was about her shoulders. She looked good, and she knew it
"So you found your way up?" she said, putting the records aside and smiling at me.
"It wasn't so hard." I closed the door. "You know, we shouldn't be doing this: this is the way to start real trouble."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"You don't have to stay."
I went over to her.
"I don't intend to stay. Why did you ask me over?"
"For heaven's sake, Ed!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Can't you relax for a moment?"
Now I was alone with her, my caution asserted itself. It was one thing to imagine being alone
with her, but with my job hanging to the consequences of being found out, actually being with her was something else besides. I was sorry now I had come.
"I can relax," I said. "Look, I've got to think of my job. If your father ever found out I was fooling around with you, I'd be through. I mean that He would see I never got another newspaper job as long as I live."
"Are you fooling around with me?" she asked, opening her eyes very wide and looking surprised.