Jane Bowles - My Sister's Hand in Mine - The Collected Works of Jane Bowles

“Well, I wasn’t talking about anything like that,” said Miss Goering.

“That’s what you’re talking about all right. Don’t try to pussyfoot it out now. But I tell you it’s perfectly all right as far as I’m concerned.” He was looking with feeling into Miss Goering’s eyes. “My life,” he said, “is my own, whether it’s a mongrel or a prince.”

“What on earth is he talking about?” Miss Goering asked Bernice and Dick. “He seems to think I’ve insulted him.”

“God knows!” said Dick. “At any rate I am sleepy. Bernice, let’s go home.”

While Dick was paying Frank at the bar, Bernice leaned over Miss Goering and whispered in her ear.

“You know, darling,” she said, “he’s not really like this when we are home together alone. He makes me really happy. He is a sweet boy and you should see the simple things that delight him when he is in his own room and not with strangers. Well”—she straightened up and seemed to be a little embarassed at her own burst of confidence—“well, I am very glad indeed that I met you and I hope we did not give you too much of a rough time. I promise you that it has never happened before, because underneath, Dick is really like you and me, but he is in a very nervous state of mind. So you must forgive him.”

“Certainly,” said Miss Goering, “but I do not see what for.”

“Well, good-by,” said Bernice.

Miss Goering was far too embarrassed and shocked by what Bernice had said behind Dick’s back to notice at first that she was now the only person in the barroom besides the man who had been rolling the wooden balls and the old man, who had by now fallen asleep with his head on the bar. When she did notice, however, she felt for one desolate moment that the whole thing had been prearranged and that although she had forced herself to take this little trip to the mainland, she had somehow at the same time been tricked into taking it by the powers above. She felt that she could not leave and that even if she tried, something would happen to interfere with her departure.

She noticed with a faint heart that the man had lifted his drink from the bar and was coming towards her. He stopped about a foot away from her table and stood holding his glass in mid-air.

“You will have a drink with me, won’t you?” he asked her without looking particularly cordial.

“I’m sorry,” said Frank from behind the bar, “but we’re going to close up now. No more drinks served, I’m afraid.”

Andy said nothing, but he went out the door and slammed it behind him. They could hear him walking up and down outside of the saloon.

“He’s going to have his own way again,” said Frank, “damn it all.”

“Oh, dear,” said Miss Goering, “are you afraid of him?”

“Sure I’m not,” said Frank, “but he’s disagreeable — that’s the only word I can think up for him — disagreeable; and after it’s all said and done, life is too short.”

“Well,” said Miss Goering, “is he dangerous?”

Frank shrugged his shoulders. Soon Andy came back.

“The moon and the stars are out now,” he said, “and I could almost see clear to the edge of the town. There are no policemen in sight, so I think we can have our drink.”

He slid in, onto the bench opposite Miss Goering.

“It’s cold and lifeless without a living thing on the street,” he began, “but that’s the way I like it nowadays; you’ll forgive me if I sound morose to a gay woman like yourself, but I have a habit of never paying attention to whoever I am talking to. I think people would say, about me: ‘Lacking in respect for other human beings.’ You have great respect for your friends, I’m sure, but that is only because you respect yourself, which is always the starting-off point for everything: yourself.”

Miss Goering did not feel very much more at ease now that he was talking to her than she had before he had sat down. He seemed to grow more intense and almost angry as he talked, and his way of attributing qualities to her which were not in any way true to her nature gave his conversation an eerie quality and at the same time made Miss Goering feel inconsequential.

“Do you live in this town” Miss Goering asked him.

“I do, indeed,” said Andy. “I have three furnished rooms in a new apartment house. It is the only apartment house in this town. I pay rent every month and I live there all alone. In the afternoon the sun shines into my apartment, which is one of the finest ironies, in my opinion, because of all the apartments in the building, mine is the sunniest and I sleep there all day with my shades drawn down. I didn’t always live there. I lived before in the city with my mother. But this is the nearest thing I could find to a penal island, so it suits me; it suits me fine.” He fumbled with some cigarettes for a few minutes and kept his eyes purposely averted from Miss Goering’s face. He reminded her of certain comedians who are at last given a secondary tragic role and execute it rather well. She also had a very definite impression that one thing was cleaving his simple mind in two, causing him to twist between his sheets instead of sleeping, and to lead an altogether wretched existence. She had no doubt that she would soon find out what it was.

“You have a very special type of beauty,” he said to her; “a bad nose, but beautiful eyes and hair. It would please me in the midst of all this horror to go to bed with you. But in order to do this we’ll have to leave this bar and go to my apartment.”

“Well, I can’t promise you anything, but I will be glad to go to your apartment,” said Miss Goering.

Andy told Frank to call the hackstand and tell a certain man who was on duty all night to come over and get them.

The taxi drove down the main street very slowly. It was very old and consequently it rattled a good deal. Andy stuck his head out of the window.

“How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?” he shouted at the empty street, trying to approximate an English accent. “I hope, I certainly hope that each and every one of you is having a fine time in this great town of ours.” He leaned back against his seat again and smiled in such a horrid manner that Miss Goering felt frightened again.

“You could roll a hoop down this street, naked, at midnight and no one would ever know it,” he said to her.

“Well, if you think it is such a dismal place,” said Miss Goering, “why don’t you move somewhere else, bag and baggage?”

“Oh, no,” he said gloomily, “I’ll never do that. There’s no use in my doing that.”

“Is it that your business ties you down here?” Miss Goering asked him, although she knew perfectly well he was speaking of something spiritual and far more important.

“Don’t call me a business man,” he said to her.

“Then you are an artist?”

He shook his head vaguely as though not quite sure what an artist was.

“Well, all right,” said Miss Goering, “I’ve had two guesses; now won’t you tell me what you are?”

“A bum!” he said stentoriously, sliding lower in his seat. “You knew that all the time, didn’t you, being an intelligent woman?”

The taxicab drew up in front of the apartment house, which stood between an empty lot and a string of stores only one story high.

“You see, I get the afternoon sun all day long,” he said, “because I have no obstructions. I look out over this empty lot.”

“There is a tree growing in the empty lot,” said Miss Goering. “I suppose that you are able to see it from your window?”

“Yes,” said Andy. “Weird, isn’t it?”

The apartment house was very new and very small. They stood together in the lobby while Andy searched his pockets for the keys. The floor was of imitation marble, yellow in color except in the center where the architect had set in a blue peacock in mosaic, surrounded by various long-stemmed flowers. It was hard to distinguish the peacock in the dim light, but Miss Goering crouched down on her heels to examine it better.