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

I couldn’t wait to tell Vera about it. I came rushing up to the bench the following day, kissed her breathlessly and for once almost perfunctorily, and pulling her down onto the bench along with me, blurted out: “Know what? We’ve been invited to a party.”

But to my surprise, instead of being pleased, she acted appalled about it at first. “Where is it?” she asked, and when I’d told her, she kept repeating almost hypnotically, “But Riverside Drive! I can’t go there.”

“What’s so wonderful about Riverside Drive?” I said, shrugging uncomprehendingly. “I’ve been to their place lots of times. In the wintertime they get all the ice-cold wind blowing in from the river. And in the summer, when it would be cooler than other parts of town, they’re not there to enjoy it anyway.”

But temperature wasn’t the deterrent, some kind of monetary denominator — or differential — was. Her mind evidently magnified it and couldn’t rid itself of the fixed idea. I had never taken this into account myself, so I wasn’t in a position to see her point of view.

“That isn’t what I mean!” she said impatiently. “Only rich people live there.”

“What difference does it make?” I said. “You’re going with me. You’re not worried about me, are you? Then why worry about them?”

“But you’re different,” she said, groping to find the right words. “I never think about you in that way, maybe because I’m used to you. You’re friendly, and you never seem to dress up much. And besides, you’re a fellow, and it’s not the fellows that worry me as much as it is the girls.”

“What about them? They’re a bunch of drips. You’ve got more real personality than all of them put together,” I said loyally.

But I couldn’t seem to overcome her misgivings.

“And what about a dress? What kind are they going to wear?”

“I d’no,” I said vaguely. “Dresses for dancing in, I guess. Haven’t you got one of those?”

“When do I go dancing?” she said, almost resentfully.

When we separated that evening, I still hadn’t been able to bring her to the point of agreeing to come. The most I could get her to say was “I’ll think it over, and I’ll let you know.”

The next time we met it was the same thing, and the time after. As far as I could judge her attitude, it wasn’t coyness or wanting to be coaxed. She seemed attracted to the idea of going, and yet at the same time something seemed to keep holding her back. One time she even made the outrageous suggestion: “I’ll walk down there with you as far as the door, and then you go in by yourself. I could even meet you later, after you leave.” Then before I had time for the heated protest that I felt this deserved, she quickly recanted it, saying, “No, that would be foolish, wouldn’t it?”

I finally told her, another time, “Let’s forget about it. If you’re not going, then I’m not either. Who needs the party?”

But she wouldn’t hear of this either. “No, I’m not going to dish you out of the party. You’re expected there, and if you don’t show up, I’ll get the blame. You’ll have to go. I won’t meet you that night, I won’t come out at all, so if you don’t go, you’ll be all by yourself.”

“We go together, or we stay away together,” I insisted stubbornly, as I had right along.

This went on for nearly the whole week or eight days preceding the controversial little event. Then on the very night before, after I’d already just about given up all further hope of persuading her and was ready to quit trying once and for all, she suddenly said — not at the very first, but after we’d been sitting there together for quite some time — “I’m going to tell you something that’ll please you. Want to hear it?”

I told her sure, sure I did.

“I’m going with you tomorrow night.”

I bounced to my feet, took hold of her two hands in my two, and swung them vigorously in and out, to give vent to my elation.

“I made up my mind several days ago,” she admitted, smiling at my enthusiasm, “but I didn’t tell you until now because I wanted to keep it as a surprise.”

The dinner had been set for “somewhere between seven-thirty and eight” (Janet s words), so we arranged to meet three-quarters of an hour earlier, in order to give ourselves time enough to get there without hurrying. She told me to wait for her at the bench, she’d come there, and I gave in to that readily enough. I didn’t like the idea of having to pass in review before her whole family, anyway.

By six-fifteen the following evening, all aglow, I’d completed my rather uncomplicated toilette, which included the by-now semiweekly rite of a light overall shave, more in tribute to the future than a present necessity, and put on my one dark blue suit. I stopped in to see my mother for a minute, before leaving.

“Are you taking her anything?” she asked me. “Because I have a little unopened bottle of cologne you could have. It would save you the expense of buying something.”

“I’ll pick her up a box of candy on the way,” I said evasively. I knew I wouldn’t; I didn’t think that much of Janet.

“I’d like to take her a baseball bat, and give it to her over the head!” I added darkly.

She was laughing, accommodatingly but a little unsurely, as I left her.

I was ahead of time, Vera wasn’t there yet, when I got to the bench.

I sat down to wait for her, and at first I whistled and was relaxed, one knee cocked up high in front of me and my hands locked around it. But the minutes came, the minutes went, more minutes came, more went, and still she didn’t arrive. Pretty soon I wasn’t carefree anymore, I was on needles and pins. I turned and I twisted and I shifted; I constantly changed position, as though by doing that I would bring her there faster. I crossed my legs over one way, then over the other. I swung my hoisted foot like a pendulum. I drummed the bench-seat with my fingers like the ticking away of a fast-moving taxi meter. I raked my nails through my hair, wrecking its laboriously achieved sleekness. I clasped my hands at the back of my neck and let my elbows hang from there. I probably smoked more than in any comparable length of time up to that point in my short young life.

I even combined two positions into one, so to speak — the sitting and the standing — using the top of the bench-back for a seat and planting my feet on the seat itself.

It was while I was in this last hybrid position that I heard a skittering sound, like raindrops spattering leaves, and a small figure came rushing out of the lamp-spiked darkness toward me. A figure smaller than Vera, anyway. It was the little girl who’d been up in the flat that first day I went there, and who seemed to tag around after Vera a good deal. I’d glimpsed her more than once hanging around, helping Vera pass the time while she was waiting for me on the bench, and then when I came along she’d discreetly drift off, probably at a confidential word from Vera.

She seemed to have run all the way, judging by her breathlessness; it was no inconsiderable distance for a youngster her size. Or maybe it was only feasible for that very reason, because of her young age.

“What happened?” I asked, hopping down from the bench-back. “Why didn’t she meet me here like she said she was going to?”

But she only repeated verbatim the message she had been given, evidently having been told nothing else. “She says come right away. She’s waiting for you at her house.”

I bolted off without even giving the poor little thing time to stand still a minute and catch her breath. She turned and faithfully started back the way she had just come, following me. But my long legs soon outdistanced her shorter ones, and after falling behind more and more, she finally bleated out: “Don’t go so fast! I can’t keep up with you!”