Lesley Evans - Strange Are the Ways of Love

She’d buy more books, she decided. Books that she wanted. And some decent curtains for the front window. And a good-looking table cloth for the kitchen table instead of the red and white checkered rag that was on it now.

She put a spoonful of instant coffee in a cup, poured water in, and sat down in the living room to drink it.

I’m here, she thought. I’m here, but where do I go from here?

The time passed. She started another of Ruthie’s books, an obscure novel that didn’t sell well but had been reviewed favorably in several of the literary quarterlies. The characters remained quite shapeless after the first fifty pages, and she put the book down unfinished, knowing she would never return to it.

She sat motionless in her chair for several minutes. Then she rose and walked to the kitchen to re-light the burner under the pot of water. While it boiled she brushed her hair before the bathroom mirror, letting its glossy blackness flow over her shoulders and down her back. She put on fresh lipstick and smiled at herself in the mirror — a fast smile that left her face before she was out of the bathroom.

She made more coffee and returned to the chair in the living room and pulled another book from the shelf.

It was four-thirty.

It was five-thirty when the bell rang.

The bell startled her, for she had never stopped to realize that there actually was one for her apartment, that a person might visit her and might press the button in the vestibule. She got to her feet, setting the book down on the arm of the chair and walking to the kitchen. There was an answering buzzer for her to press, she knew, but she didn’t have the faintest idea where it was. She hunted around for several minutes before she located it under the light switch. For a moment she hesitated; then she pushed the buzzer and heard the door open in the hallway.

“Who is it?” she called, but there was no answer. Then there was a knock on her door and she opened it.

It was the folksinger, the boy called Mike. “Hi,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”

She took a step back and he walked through the kitchen to the living room, sat down on the couch. She sat across from him in her chair, wondering how he had found her and what he wanted.

“Saw you walk home last night,” he explained, answering her question before she had a chance to ask it. “Just wanted to drop over.”

“Why?”

He looked very relaxed in a flannel shirt and faded blue dungarees, as if he was already at home in her apartment.

“Why? Oh, I wanted to get to know you.”

“What do you mean?”

He leaned forward, resting his chin in one hand and looking at her intently. “New York’s a funny town,” he said, slowly. “It’s the only town worth living in, but there are some problems. For instance, it’s impossible to start a conversation with someone like you. Know what I mean?”

She shook her head.

“I’m from a little hick town upstate that nobody ever heard of. There was never anything much to do, but if I ran into anyone new on the street I could say hello.

“Here it’s different. Suppose a gal and a guy bump into each other on the subway. She looks interesting. She’s pretty, she looks bright — so the guy’s interested. What can he do?”

“I don’t know.”

“He can’t do a thing. Whatever he does, he comes across as a guy on the make. If she’s a tramp he’s set, but suppose she’s a nice gal. Then she rides to her stop and he rides to his stop and they never see each other again.”

“Unless—”

“There is no unless.” He leaned back, crossing his legs and smiling. “There’s nothing he can do.”

“He can follow her home and drop over the next day,” she said. “And then he can tell her what’s the trouble with New York.”

He grinned. “All right,” he said. “I’m interested in you. Now you know.”

I knew that, she thought . You didn’t have to tell me. I knew that from the way you looked at me.

“I tried last night,” he went on. “I started a conversation, tried to get you talking. And you assumed I was on the make and cut out.”

“I didn’t think—”

“Of course you did. I’m not blaming you; it’s the way things go around here. But I would like to talk to you and I’m not on the make. If you want I’ll get out now, but—”

“No,” she said, slowly. “No, stay.”

“Thanks.” She couldn’t tell whether or not he was being sarcastic.

“I mean... you’re right. I don’t know anyone in New York and I should. I should get to know people.” Her words sounded mildly ridiculous, but she was talking as much to herself as to him, getting things straightened out in her mind. At first she had resented his visit but now she was glad he had come, glad there was somebody for her to talk to.

“Good. Let’s get to know each other.”

On the surface his words seemed to flow easily, but she sensed that the conversation was hard for him, as hard as it was for her. It seemed as though he hadn’t played this particular scene before and was unsure of his lines. Maybe the unsureness was part of his line, a line he had used dozens of times before. But she doubted it.

“How do we start?”

“Anywhere. Tell me who you are and what you’re doing here and anything else that seems to fit in. Okay?”

“Okay.” She smiled suddenly, warming to the game. Then she lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it.

“I still don’t know where to begin.”

“At the beginning. Don’t worry — I’ll stop you if it gets boring.”

She began to talk — guardedly at first but more openly as he drew her out and she began to relax. She told him about her home and her parents and the school she went to and the classes she took and the books she read and the people she knew. She left out a lot, but what she omitted didn’t matter.

And he helped her along. He seemed to know everything, to have read all the books and have been to all the places. He wasn’t much older than she was, but he talked as if something had made him grow a great deal in a short time. As he talked his body relaxed more on the couch.

She learned about him. She learned how he’d left home before finishing high school and how he had travelled all up and down the Eastern seaboard, winding up in New York three years ago. He’d been there ever since.

Once in a while he worked. He had pushed a garment truck on Seventh Avenue for a few weeks, clerked in book stores and drugstores, bussed tables in cafeterias and slung hash in a beanery once. He had seaman’s papers and twice he had shipped out for short cruises along the coast as a deckhand.

He’d learned the guitar six years before in Virginia. It accompanied him wherever he went. He learned new songs constantly and he sang them all — at parties, in Washington Square on Sunday afternoons, at folksings and, when he was lucky, at folk music concerts.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Keep singing.” He smiled.

“Will you keep on like this? I mean—”

“You mean will I always be a bum with a guitar? I hope not. I’m sick of starving for my art, Jan. You hear people talk about starving in a garret as though it was a treat, but those people never missed a meal or lived in a cold water flat with roaches for company.

“It’s only romantic for the first week. Then you’re too tired all the time to think how noble it all is, and you feel as though you have lead in your shoes, and you stay out all night and sleep all day because at night your room’s too cold to sleep in.

“Did you ever live like that?”

She shook her head.

“Of course not. But I have. For awhile I was the only person in the Western world who was starving to death and eating caviar every day. Know why?”