Memory (Hard Case Crime) (15 page)

Worried thoughts about money were threatening to fill his head, but he held them at bay. “I’ve got to have some pleasure in life,” he told himself. “What am I, a prisoner?”

He went on home, ignoring the worry, feeling relaxed and pleased. Edna was really a very nice girl. He’d been needing somebody anyway.

He didn’t think of her in a sexual way at all, didn’t even debate his chances for getting anywhere with her sexually. It was simply companionship he was thinking of, somebody to sit next to.

At home, he left himself a note on the bedroom door. PICK UP EDNA AT SEVEN O’CLOCK. ADDRESS IN WALLET. Then he went to bed.

He would only have till two o’clock with her, but he wanted to put his money away at home, and change his clothes, and wash his face and hands. Charter Street was only a couple of blocks out of the way, so he decided he could take the time; he went there from the tannery at a steady trot.

It was Edna he was in a hurry to see. He had known her one day shy of two weeks, and in that time he had been with her four times. Twice he had taken her to movies, on two Sundays, and twice he had walked her home from the tavern, on two Saturdays. He kissed her as a matter of course now, and with pleasure. And when they walked together his arm was around her waist.

People knew he had a girl, and they seemed pleased. Ann Bellman acted pleased for Edna’s sake, and Little Jack acted pleased for Cole’s sake. Mrs. Malloy knew he was going out on dates with a girl these Sunday nights, but she didn’t know who the girl was, and she was pleased for her own sake; it increased the slight area of resemblance between Cole and her older son.

Tonight, he felt, was a new plateau in the relationship. Going to the tavern together on Saturday night, and the movies together on Sunday night, were all of a piece, a relationship hardly closer than that with Little Jack Flynn or Matt Malloy. But tonight would be different.

Edna was babysitting. She had a regular job, days, at the five-and-dime on Western Avenue, at the stationery counter, but every once in a while she still babysat for her aunt and uncle, who had friends in a larger city across the state line, and liked to visit them from time to time. “They’re never back before two,” she’d told him. “They wouldn’t like it if you were there, but we don’t have to tell them. I’m just doing them a favor anyway, minding their old kids.”

Trotting toward home, he wondered just how high this plateau was going to be. Would he go to bed with her tonight? The idea excited him more than he would have thought possible with this particular girl two weeks ago, but he had to admit to himself that it was unlikely. He’d never done more than kiss her goodnight, but that was at least partly because he’d never tried to do any more, and he’d never tried because his instinct had told him it would be a mistake. But tonight? They would be alone in a way they’d never been alone before. They’d never been alone indoors. In the movie or the tavern, there were other people around. They’d only been alone when he’d been walking her home.

Tonight would be the first time he would kiss her without his coat on. And she without her coat on.

It was very cold. His breath misted around his head as he ran. They day before yesterday there’d been slight snow flurries, and a strong wind. There hadn’t been enough snow for it to stick to the ground at all, but it was the first real warning of winter. It was the first week of December now; the television was full of commercials for Christmas presents. That was one thing he didn’t have to worry about. He’d be back in New York by Christmas.

He got home and hurried up the stairs to his room, where the clock read ten minutes past twelve, so he’d cut five minutes from his usual homecoming time. The first thing he did was get his money out, and sort it on the bed. He had thirty-two dollars and seventeen cents, his usual pay, and he separated it into its three usual stacks; seventeen dollars in one pile, to be given Mrs. Malloy tomorrow, and ten dollars in the second pile, to go with the nine dollars already saved in the dresser drawer, and five dollars and seventeen cents in the third pile, his expense money for the following week.

While he was putting the money away, his glance caught on one of the notes he’d put up on the wall, the one reading: 50 GROVE ST.—NEW YORK—Look In Wallet. He saw that note, and was reminded of why he’d put it there, and nodded to himself. He’d be able to go to New York soon, and it was a good thing, good to be off before he got worse, before he got so bad he forgot all about going, which he now knew was more than possible. At least twice since he’d put that note up it had been used, twice when he’d forgotten all about who and what he really was and what he really wanted from life, twice when he’d fallen into the habit of thinking of himself only as the Paul Cole who worked at the tannery and lived at the Malloy house and went with the girl named Edna. Both times, seeing the note had only confused him, but once he’d looked in his wallet and seen the union cards and the Army Discharge and all the other papers enough memory had come seeping back into his mind to get him once more on an even keel.

But New York was still in the future, and in the interim the note would stand guard. Right now he had other things to think about, and he was in a hurry. He stripped out of his work clothes and put on his suit trousers, then went to the bathroom and hurriedly washed. There was a gnawing in his stomach, part anticipation and part hunger, and he decided the Malloys wouldn’t mind if he took a piece of bread or two from the kitchen on his way out.

He put on a clean white shirt, but no tie, and shrugged back into the borrowed coat. He went downstairs without turning any lights on, and felt his way to the kitchen and the refrigerator. Opening the door to turn on the refrigerator light, he used its glow to get two pieces of bread from the breadbox. Then he closed the refrigerator again and went back through the darkness to the front door and outside. He walked along eating the dry bread.

He had the address on a note in his wallet, but he didn’t need to refer to it. It was 618 Morton Street. Morton intersected Charter two blocks up, and 618 was in the first block to the left. He’d repeated the address and route to himself so many times that he didn’t need the note at all.

There were individual differences in the houses in this town, differences of color or exterior material, differences between open porch and enclosed porch, dormer attic windows or not, but the basic architectural style was always the same. A rectangular shape, with the short dimension facing the street. A porch, with a four- or five-step stoop. Two stories plus attic, with an A-shaped roof. When it was a one-family house, there was only a porch on the first story, but two-family versions had another porch upstairs, sometimes full-width and sometimes half-width.

618 Morton Street was one-family, with clapboard siding, painted gray, and the porch open. There was a green glider on the porch, and a battered red child’s pedal auto. Through the window, Cole could see Edna sitting in the living room, watching a variety show on television.

She’d told him not to ring the bell, it might wake either or both of the children, to rap on the living room window instead, so that’s what he did, leaning over the glider to do it. She was startled for a second, and then she looked over and saw him and smiled and waved. She got up and headed for the front door, and he went across the porch to meet her.

She opened the door and let him in, saying, “Boy, it’s cold out there, isn’t it?”

“Uh huh.”

He took off his coat, and they went into the living room. There was a feeling of tension in the air; it was like their first meeting all over again, both of them awkward and ill-at-ease, but she more so than him.

“I better pull the drapes,” she said. “In case a neighbor sees you or something.”

With the drapes closed over the window, they sat down on the sofa together, both facing the television set.

“This is a good show tonight,” she said, artificially, and went on to tell him some of the funny things that had already happened on it. He put his arm around her shoulders, and when a commercial came on he turned his head and kissed her.

For a long time, they didn’t say anything at all. They kissed, or sat with their heads together watching the television screen, and his right hand stroked her arm. Excitement was building very slowly within him, excitement mingled with apprehension, and it took a strong effort of will when at last he tentatively touched her breast.

They were kissing then, and at his touch on her breast she sighed and seemed to melt, to go soft and boneless in his arms. Encouraged, he stroked her breast more boldly, and her arms tightened around him, her right palm moving in a small circle on his back. Her breast was an anonymous soft mound beneath his hand, with the layers of clothing between, obscuring his sense of her body.

There were long intervals, a long time when they were only kissing, and a long time when they were kissing and he was fondling her breast through layers of clothing, and he had tried no further step by one o’clock, when the variety show ended and the television set went silent with blue snow. Only one channel served this town, so she got up from the sofa and went over to switch the set off. When she looked back at him, her face was so soft and happy and trusting and pleased by his presence that he couldn’t stand it. He felt suddenly as though it had been a cruelty to touch her breast, and he wanted to apologize to her for it, but he didn’t because he was sure she wouldn’t understand.

Two standing lamps were lit in the living room, and she switched one off before coming back to the sofa. Her natural shyness was still in her, but her hesitancy and embarrassment were gone. She came back and sat down next to him and leaned forward for his kiss as though they’d been going together like this for years, but also as though in all those years kissing him had never lost its early fascination.

He kissed her, but he kept his hands on her arm and back. She waited, but he didn’t move either hand, so she squirmed a little and then took his left hand and placed it on her breast. He closed his eyes, and held her more closely, his mind a confusion of attitudes. The excitement had grown strong in him, but he was feeling guilt too, as though he were lying to her somehow and taking advantage of her. And the apprehension had grown, a prickling across the back of his neck as though something hostile were coming closer, he didn’t know what; he wondered if it had anything to do with something in his past.

She was wearing a green pullover sweater. At a point when the excitement was stronger in him than any other feeling, he slid his hand down from her breast to her waist, worked his fingers under the sweater, and slid the hand up again over the electric slickness of her slip, and his fingers curved again around her breast, which felt smaller now, but firmer. She began to tremble when his hand moved under her sweater, and held him more fiercely, and ground her lips against his.

He parted his lips, and his tongue touched tentatively outward, and her mouth opened for him. Their tongues trembled together, and his hand stroked her, and stroked her, and stroked her.

He wanted his hand under the slip, and under the bra, and his fingers explored this way and that way, trying to find an opening somewhere, and failing, so he said the first words either of them had spoken since he’d first kissed her. He whispered, “Take off your sweater.”

He couldn’t see her face, because their heads were together, his lips by her ear, but he felt her stiffen slightly and she whispered, “I’d better not. What if they come back?”

“It’s only quarter after one.”

“Paul...”

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised, not entirely sure himself what he meant, but nevertheless afraid it was a lie.

They separated, he taking his hands off her, and slowly she removed the sweater, keeping her head lowered and not looking at him. Her slip was white, and slick-looking, with thin straps that went up over her shoulders, next to the wider white bra straps. Her shoulders looked thin and hard and pale and cold.

She whispered, “I’m embarrassed to have you see me, Paul. Is it all right if we turn off the light?”

“All right,” he said. The one lamp still lit was beside the sofa, on his side; he turned around and switched it off, and then it was pitch black in the room.

“I’m scared,” she said, laughing nervously. “Isn’t that silly?”

He put his arms around her. “There’s nothing to be scared of,” he said. The slip had an irritatingly harsh feeling to it, beneath his hands.

She was trembling, just slightly, but when he kissed her the trembling faded away, and she didn’t react at all, one way or the other, when he slid the slip straps down her arms and off, and pushed the slip down to her waist. He undid her bra, and removed it, and touched her again, and she sighed again, the way she’d done the first time he touched her. She was very thin; below her breasts her ribs were separate corrugations of her flesh.

He kissed her and caressed her, and the fright seemed to have gone out of her. From time to time she sighed, and her arms were tight around him. When he bent his head to kiss her breast, her right hand stroked his hair, and he thought she was smiling.

But when he put his hand on her leg, she stiffened, pressing her legs tight together, and whispered, “No, Paul. Please.” He took his hand away at once, but she seemed to think she had to give him an explanation, because she said, “I don’t want to go that far. I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop, and we shouldn’t do—we shouldn’t do anything like that.”

“All right. I won’t ever try to force you.”

“I like you to touch me, Paul, up here. You can do it, I like it. If you want to turn the light on, that’s okay.”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“It’s silly to feel that way, isn’t it?” She laughed again, briefly and nervously. “To let you touch me, and not let you see me. But I can’t help it, I get embarrassed.”

“It’s all right. I don’t want to do anything you don’t want.”

“I like you an awful lot, Paul. I like you better than anybody else I ever knew.”

She thinks I’m going to stay here forever. How can I tell her I’m not going to? That’s why I’ve been feeling bad, because she doesn’t know I’ll be leaving soon.