Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“Been here long?” she asked him, to get off the prickly topic.

“About six months now. I was transferred here to the Company’s New York office.”

She asked him a question out of her own melancholy experience. “Did you find it hard to adjust?”

“Very. I was king, back home. The only fellow in a houseful of women. I got the royal treatment. They spoiled me rotten.”

That, she decided, was not apparent on the surface, at least.

“My mother spoiled me because I was the only son in a family of girls. (My eldest sister’s married and lives in Japan.) My elder sister spoiled me because she looked on me as her kid brother, and the younger one looked up to me as her big brother. I couldn’t lose.”

“And what did you do to entitle you to all this?”

“Brought home money, and could always be depended on to fix the car or the t.v. without calling in costly repairmen, I suppose.”

“That’s fair enough value received,” she laughed.

They’d reached Fifty-seventh Street. This time they did stop, but not to part, to decide what next to do, where next to go, together. They both seemed to have tacitly agreed to spend the balance of the afternoon together.

“Have lunch with me,” he suggested. “I haven’t had any yet, have you?”

“It’s late; don’t you have to go back to the office?”

“I have the day off. The Company’s founder died, an old man of eighty. He hasn’t been active in years, but out of respect to his memory all our offices everywhere were closed down for one day.” He repeated his invitation.

“I’m not hungry,” she said. “But I am thirsty, after that stroll in the sun. I’ll take you up on an ice-cream soda.”

They turned west for a short distance and stopped in at Hicks, at her suggestion. She waived a table, and they sat down at the counter.

“I stop in here every Christmas — or at least, the day before — and buy myself a box of candy,” she told him.

His brows rose slightly, but he didn’t say anything.

“I have to,” she added simply. “Nobody else does.”

“Maybe next time around,” he said very softly, “you won’t have to.”

She had a chocolate malted and he a toasted-ham and coffee.

They walked on from there and entered the park at the Sixth Avenue entrance, and drifted almost at a somnambulistic gait along the slow curving walk that paces the main driveway there, then finally straightens out and strikes directly up into the heart of the park itself, toward the Mall and the lake and the series of transverses.

Now they were becoming more personal. They spoke less of outside things, of things around them and things on the surface of their lives, and more of things lying below and within themselves. Not steadily, in a continuous stream, but by allowing occasional insights to open up, like chinks in the armor that was each one’s privacy and apartness. Thus she learned many of the things he liked, and a few he didn’t, and he learned them too about her. And surprisingly many of the things they liked were the same, and not a few of the things they didn’t, also.

We’re remarkably compatible, the thought occurred to her. Isn’t it too bad we had to meet — so late.

It’s not so late, she said to herself then, unless you will it to be so. And a daring thought barely ventured to peer forth around the corner of her mind, then quickly vanished again: it needn’t be late at all, it can be early, if you want it to be. Early love, first love.

“What were you doing six months ago today, exactly to the day?” she asked him suddenly.

“It’s difficult to pin-point it that closely. Let’s see, six months ago I was still back in ’napolis. If it was a weekday, then I was slaving over a hot draught-board until five; after five I was driving back to the harem. If it was a Sunday I was probably out driving in the crate with some seat-mate.”

Anyone special? she wondered, but didn’t say it.

“Why did you ask that?”

She upped a shoulder slightly. “I don’t know.”

She did, though. How different my life might have been, she couldn’t help reflecting, if I’d met you — as you seem to be — six months ago instead of today.

“Do you get lonely at times, since you’ve come to New York?”

“Sure I do.” Then he reiterated, “I sure do. Anyone would.”

“It’s easier for a man, though, isn’t it?”

“No it isn’t,” he told her quietly. “Not really. Oh, I know, girls think that a man can go a lot of places they can’t, by themselves. And he can. But what does he find when he goes to those places? Loud, laughing companionship for an hour-or for an evening. Did you ever know, you can be lonely with someone’s loud laughter ringing right into your ear? Did you ever know?”

She had a complete picture, a vignette, of his life now, of that one aspect of it, without his having to say anything further.

“No,” he said, “we’re in the same boat, all of us.”

They sat down on a bench overlooking the lake. They didn’t talk any more for a while. After a time an indigent squirrel spotted them, made toward them by fits and starts, looked them over from a propitiatingly erect position, then scrambled up to the top-slat of the bench-back and ran nimbly across it. She could feel the fuzz of its tail brush lightly across the back of her neck. It stopped by his shoulder and sniffed at it inquiringly. “Sorry, son,” he said to it. They both looked at it and smiled, then smiled to each other. Completely matter-of-fact, and far too venal to waste time allowing itself to be petted empty-handed, it dropped down to the ground again and went lumbering off bushy-tailed across the grass.

The irregular picket-fence of tall building-tops around them on three sides in the distance looked trim and spruce and spotless as new paint in the sunshine. Much better than when you were up close to them. It was a brave city, she decided, eyeing them. Brave in its other sense; not courageous, so much as outstanding, commanding. It was too nice a town to die in. Though it had no honeysuckle vines and no balconies and no guitars, it was meant for love. For living and for love, and the two were inseparable; one didn’t come without the other.

By about four in the afternoon they were already using “Laurel” and “Duane” when they said things to each other. Sparingly at first, a little self-consciously. As though not wanting to abuse the privilege each one had granted to the other. The first time she heard him say it, a warm, sunny feeling ran through her, that she couldn’t contradict or deny. It was like belonging to someone a little, belonging to someone at last. While at the same time you at last had someone who belonged a little to you.

There is no hard and fast line that can be drawn that says: up to here there was no love; from here on there is now love. Love is a gradual thing, it may take a moment, a month, or a year to come on, and in each two its gradations are different. With some it comes fast, with some it comes slowly. Sometimes one kindles from the other, sometimes both kindle spontaneously. And once in a tragic while one kindles only after the other has already dimmed and gone out, and has to burn forlornly alone.

By the time they left that consequential bench overlooking the tranquil little lake tucked away inside the park and started walking slowly onward in the general direction of her place, she was already well on the verge of being in love with him. And she sensed that he was too, with her. It couldn’t be mistaken. There was a certain shyness now, like a catch, she heard somewhere behind his voice every time he spoke to her. The midway stage, the falter, between the assuredness of companionability and the assuredness of openly declared love. And when their hands accidentally brushed once or twice as they walked slowly side by side, he didn’t have to turn his head to look at her, nor she to look at him, for them both to be aware of it. It was like a kiss of the hands, their first kiss. The heart knows these things. The heart is smart. Even the unpracticed heart.