“I’m sorry, I’m new on the job.”
The woman disappeared. He stared after her, down a corridor. The floor was highly waxed. A chandelier hung down from another story, a thousand tear-shaped bits of glass. He looked nervously up at it. He half expected the wind to jostle it and call attention to himself, Jules, an intruder. He expected a door to fly open somewhere and a man to rush out at him with a gun.
Still, getting this far inside the house was an accomplishment, already farther than he had seriously dared to hope, and he had only to remain there, committed and smiling, for the adventure to open before him. Bold and calculating, Jules believed at the same time in passivity; he thought of events opening before him, crashing about him, sweeping him up, as the act of love itself swept him along and made of him a Jules he would never have imagined himself.
The girl’s voice came from somewhere. A sound of music…tinkling glass?
“Downstairs. Front door,” the maid said in her urban drawl.
Jules felt footsteps though he did not hear them. He saw a girl’s figure appear at the top of the stairs. The stairway was covered in thick beige carpeting, every step and under the step, elegant, fastidious, rich, and he longed to be the carpet beneath her feet, feeling that delicate pressure.
She came down only a few steps. She hesitated. “What is it?” she said.
“A special delivery.”
“From who?”
“The card says, ‘From your aunt,’ ” Jules said, looking at the card. It said, ‘To Tanya, with love, Bessie.’
He held out the plant. He had no idea what it was—sickly white flowers nodding above dark, waxy green leaves, looking unreal. A plant for the dead. Nadine stared across the expanse of floor, disbelieving. Jules had not yet seen her clearly, being nervous himself, but over the tight bunched flowers he dared a look.
She had a pale, fated face.
“My aunt is dead,” she said.
“From another aunt. From someone else’s aunt,” Jules said at once.
She remained on the stairs, still. Her fear inspired him. With so much fear in her why should he feel anything?
“I know who you are. I remember you,” she said.
Jules said generously, “I’ll put the plant down here on the floor. You can get it when I leave.”
“I thought I had to sign a card.”
“You can mail it in.”
“You’re crazy!”
She wore white. The dress was of coarse cotton, sporty-looking, very sweet. Jules loved her. He put the plant down on the floor and pushed it a few inches toward her with his foot. “See? There’s no danger.”
“Is that plant real?”
“Is your father home?”
“No.”
“Your mother?”
“No.”
“Where are they?”
“My father is in Chicago and my mother is out for the afternoon,” she said, staring at the plant.
“Is there a room we could talk in?”
“A room?”
“Can we talk in your room?”
“No.”
“Why not? Would you rather go out to a movie? A ride in my truck or a ride in a balloon or—”
“No!”
“Are you busy? What are you doing? What were you doing just now when I rang the bell?”
“Looking through my homework, figuring out my clothes—”
“Figuring out your clothes! But what is there to figure out with clothes?”
He took a step forward, charmed. She retreated a step upward on the stairs. Jules wondered where the maid was. Behind him, the delivery truck was a weight dragging him down; it had been a mistake to leave it there. So he said, retreating, “Well, I’ll leave this here and say good-by. I have five hours’ work ahead of me.”
She stared at him, surprised.
“Just fill out the card and mail it in,” Jules said.
He drove the truck around the block and parked it on a side street and walked quickly back. In the newspaper article about Grosse Pointe in which he’d learned about their low crime rate, he had read also that few people bothered to lock their doors, even at night, and so it was a natural thing for him to stroll right up to the front door and open it. Nadine was now bent over the potted plant. He saw her through the inner door. Her head was bowed, her hair was very black around her face, her face was serious, pale, doubting, but still not quite real to him. He hoped his face wouldn’t make hers raw. He tapped on the glass of the inner door and opened it slowly.
She jerked around.
“Can we talk in your room?” Jules whispered.
“What do you want?”
She seemed frightened, yet a faint smile drew her lips apart.
“A few minutes.”
“You can be arrested for this,” she said.
“Why should I be arrested? I love you—what is my crime?” Jules said.
“Then you’re crazy, you can be put away!”
“Is your room upstairs?”
“What do you want with me? What are you doing?” she said. “I’m just doing what I have to do,” Jules said.
With one hand she seemed to be warding him off, as if warding off the blow of an ax. The other hand was motionless, helpless. Jules wanted to seize both hands and kiss them hungrily. He sighed. “If nobody is home, why can’t we talk? Talk upstairs? I can help you figure out your clothes.”
“Are you going to rob the house?”
“Rob the house! Why?”
“Is somebody else with you outside?”
“Why would I bring somebody else along?”
She laughed. Her laughter was abrupt and high-pitched; it stopped suddenly. She said, “You came here on a bet. They’re outside watching. Take me outside and introduce me to them.”
“Nobody’s outside.”
“Yes, yes, there’s somebody outside! From school, from somewhere! It’s a joke—let me in on it. I want to know what the joke is, I don’t want people to laugh at me.”
“It’s no joke. We’re all alone.”
“We’re not alone!”
“We’re all alone right here, talking.”
She shook her head. “No, it isn’t funny. You shouldn’t play tricks on me. Sometimes I lie in bed all night crying—it’s bad enough to cry over nothing, but now, now I’ll cry about this, you playing a joke on me!”
“What is the joke? That I love you?”
“You don’t love me!”
“Why is that a joke?”
“You don’t love me, you’re just laughing at me. How can you love me?” she said angrily. He saw how very white the whites of her eyes were, making the iris darker; she had an unnatural stare. Her face might harden into beauty in her late twenties, perhaps. There was a slightly unfocused, uncoordinated look to her; she was edgy and near hysteria.
“Why do you cry all night in bed?” Jules asked gently.
“I don’t know—don’t people cry in bed? Why do you want to play a trick on me?”
“It’s no trick. I won’t hurt you.”
“About my uncle—you said—?”
“I don’t know anything about him.”
“You said you saw him dead! His throat cut!”
“Somebody else’s uncle.”
“No, you said so. You were the one. You saw him lying dead.”
“Did you tell your father about it?”
“He hasn’t been home. Why would I tell him anything?”
“Your mother?”
“No, of course not!”
“Can we go upstairs?”
She stared at him with a peculiar half-smile, a drugged smile.
“Is anyone home beside you and the maid?”
“Nobody.”
“I won’t hurt you,” Jules said softly.
“Anything could happen to me and I wouldn?
??t know it,” she said. Jules took her hand. She looked at his hand, holding hers. “I feel so far from everything. It could happen to me, pass over me, doors opening and things like that—slime getting on me—and I wouldn’t even notice at the time. Then afterward I would remember and start to scream. I thought all night about you, what you said yesterday. At the time I didn’t think about it at all. I hardly noticed you. Then, as soon as you drove away, I began to think about you and what you said, my uncle and all that, and you were coming back today—”
“You didn’t call the police?” He caressed her hand, which was quite cold. “Five minutes upstairs? In secret. I want to introduce myself to you.”
Like Jules, she seemed to be in a kind of trance. But he could not count on it lasting. He kissed her hand. The action was deliberate, stilted, very tender, so that Nadine’s head moved forward slightly, mechanically, as if preparing to submit itself to the heavy edge of an ax.
“I don’t know you,” she whispered.
“In five minutes you’ll know everything. I’ll turn myself inside out for you.”
He scooped up the plant and walked with Nadine, his arm around her shoulders. Pieces of furniture seemed to move backward from them, against walls, giving them room. Such furniture, Jules supposed, had no function except to take up space—there was a lot of space in this house, and no one around. Everything was silent, in awe of his daring. Would it be a lovely life, lived out in a museum of a house? He would make money after all. Why not money? A million dollars? He had no direction in which to go except up…everything was above him, all of America…and on his way why not try for it all? He would make a million dollars before the age of thirty and marry this girl, Nadine Greene.
“I love you,” he whispered. “I’ve been in love with you since that day I brought your uncle here. You walked around the front of the car and I fell in love with you. I can’t explain…”
She leaned toward him, listening. She was very tense. He could see her pale forehead beneath a childish, feathery bunch of bangs, hair he wanted to brush impatiently aside, wanting to get a full look at her face. He was afraid of her innocence. Maybe it was evil for him to draw her into his love, out of this gleaming house, these rich pieces of silent, empty furniture. “I won’t hurt you. Never,” he said, and at the same time he was thinking, involuntarily, of a closet back in his childhood where he’d fooled around with some girl for several hours, just a little girl and himself a little boy, not yet innocent. He thought of Nadine locked in a closet and him locked in with her, for eight hours.
Jules drew a line with his fingertips from her ear to the tip of her chin. “When will your mother be home?”
“I don’t know.”
She led him upstairs and into her room. He saw now that this was the first room he had ever been in, the first room anyone had seriously lived in. His sisters’ rooms had not been real rooms. This one was decorated in white and yellow. His heart thudded suddenly, seeing it, understanding that it belonged to Nadine and had been built around her, built for her and her alone. Her price was beyond estimation. He put the pot of flowers down on her bureau, glad that they were white and pure, an offering worthy of her. He was silent.
She put her hands up to her face. Jules’s senses seemed to move together in a sudden urgency, an explosive urgency; he went to embrace her. She was stiff in his arms but did not resist. He kissed her lightly, wanting to put her to sleep with kisses, comfort her, his mouth light against hers like the petals of roses or the fluttering wings of moths, nothing substantial. It was all so airy, even this embrace. He kissed her eyes, her hair, her throat, her mouth, breathing softly through his mouth and through hers, desirous of her sweet breath, prepared to become intoxicated by it. How he wanted that intoxication! But at the height of his tenderness he stumbled with her backward to the bed. He pushed her down on the bright yellow bedspread and lay on top of her, suddenly anxious, surprised at how real she was, not squirming or fighting but just a small density of flesh, very warm. Her eyes were closed. He felt her terror. In silence she moved her head from side to side, not avoiding his lips but not quite ready for them. He felt as if he were on the brink of madness or of some terrible act the other Jules would perform and then withdraw, leaving him behind. He seemed to black out and then return to consciousness, in the same instant. Consciousness was delicate. He framed her face with his hands and stared down at her. His heart was pounding, urging him on, that thief’s heart of his, but her stillness urged him to go slowly, to love her. If he did not cherish her he would never forgive himself.
“Are you all right? Am I hurting you?” he said.
She did not answer. She seemed nearly unconscious.
For some time he remained that way, pure and in awe of her face, though the violence was building up in him and his hands moved from her face to her throat, groping, caressing, wondering…to her small breasts, which seemed to him terribly unprotected, right against him and close to his own heaving heart, and with his thighs he held her tight…could feel the slight cleft of her loins, the lean muscle. With his legs he held her legs tight together, protecting her from him, but a sudden frenzy drove him to fall heavily upon her, his teeth seeking flesh, anything to rub helplessly against, and his face in a grimace that wasn’t anything of the real Jules. And all of his senses finally rushed together, out of control, so that he moaned and had to grind himself against her rigid body in order to bear it. And so that was over.
He lay beside her, waking. He hadn’t been asleep, but still he seemed to be waking, coming back to life. His breath was jagged. Nadine, lying stiff, with one arm flung back across her forehead, did not look at him. Now he could look around. He saw that he was in a girl’s room, a lovely white and yellow room, a picture-book room. On the bureau were some things—among them white flowers. The rug was fluffy and yellow, meant for bare feet. Yet, being in this room, lying on the bed, he had a peculiar sense of not truly being in it but only looking at it.
She did not move her arm. “Nobody ever did this to me before,” she said.
“Honey, I’m sorry.”
“I never even thought of it. Some things I don’t think about. Then if they happen I don’t know what they are, I have to let time go by so that I can figure them out…”
He was anxious that she keep on talking, because she seemed to find talking so difficult, almost painful. He could see her mind casting about for a thought, for words, anything. But he could not help her.
“People don’t touch me,” she said. “I don’t let them near me. I don’t want to get them mixed up with myself, everybody so close…”
“I hope I didn’t hurt you,” Jules said, feeling sluggish and sweaty, all body.
“I ran away two times. The policewoman, a nice woman, asked me both times if I had been with a man. They think you won’t run anywhere, won’t bother walking out the front door, unless it has something to do with a man. She never needed to ask me anything more because she could tell by looking at me. Nobody ever got this close to me before.”
“I didn’t hurt you?”
“I don’t remember what happened. It’s mixed up with my uncle.”
“Forget about him.”
“I can feel myself lying on my back somewhere, like this, in some strange room in Detroit, with my throat cut and the blood down under my back, getting me wet. I can almost see it. And you’re squatting over me, looking at me.”
“But why?” Jules asked, shocked.
She lowered her arm and opened her eyes experimentally. She looked at him. Her stare was frank and inquisitive and a little flirtatious, though Jules thought he might be mistaken. Maybe she was getting ready to scream instead, and would he have the good sense to put his hand over her mouth?
“So you ran away from home?” he asked quickly. “Where did you go?”
“Downtown.”
“Why downtown?”
“It’s far enough, it’s like any other
city. Why should I go all the way out to Los Angeles? Detroit is big enough.”
“I live downtown.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone.”
She tried to smile at him. Warmed, reassured, Jules leaned over her again and caressed her face and shoulders. At once she closed her eyes. She seemed to be getting rid of herself, abandoning herself to him. A pinprick in his brain began swelling suddenly, and he moaned and moved upon her again, one arm around her head very gently, kissing her. He had no idea where he was. He forgot everything—bed, bedroom, house, street, police cruiser—he could not remember, and beyond her soft, pale skin he could believe in nothing. He took her arm and kissed it. He raised it to his lips, running his tongue along it, in love with her delicate flesh; he tried to put her arm around his neck, in an embrace, but she was limp. Her neck arched, her head yearned backward. He shut his eyes and pressed himself against her, feeling all the clarity of a second before—they had had a conversation!—whirl out of him and leave him no wiser. Ah, Jules, he thought, able to remember his own name, this is worth dying for!
He believed he would truly be her lover in a few minutes and that their lives would be forever entwined, irrevocably, and so he began to explain himself. His voice was feeble and rushed.
“I know that only good can come of this. Only good. You were right to let me touch you and not anyone else…It’s because you know who I am, you feel it. I will set myself a few years to make enough money, I won’t fail. We’ll be close together all of our lives and nothing can undo it…”
The girl did not open her eyes. She was listening tensely, silently.
“All my life I’ve trusted to certain signs, hunches,” he said. “For instance, I happen to be walking along and something comes to me, like a dream, an idea comes to me, and I feel a terrible need to make it come true right away. My heart starts pounding like hell. Once when I almost lost a picture of a girl I had this feeling. I had to get the picture back, it was a sign of something, I don’t know what, and anyway I forgot about the girl afterward, for some reason, but I had to get the picture and I got it. It would have been the end for me if I hadn’t. I don’t know how I know this.”