“No,” the woman said, continuing. “You can have anything you see. But excuse me if I don’t stop.”
Together, he and Mary Anne walked among the bowls and vases and plates and jars and wall planters. “Do you see anything you want?” he asked. Most of it was the usual garish oddities sold to motorists.
“You pick it out,” Mary Anne urged.
He looked and found a simple clay dish glazed a light speckled blue. Paying the woman, he carried it to Mary Anne; she stood waiting at the edge of the field.
“Thank you,” she said shyly, accepting the dish. “It’s nice.”
“It isn’t ornate, at least.”
Carrying her dish, Mary Anne wandered on. Now they had left the stores behind; they were approaching a dark square of trees at the edge of town. “What’s that?” Schilling asked.
“A park. People come and eat picnics here.” The entrance was barred by a hanging chain, but she stepped over it and continued on toward the first table. “Nobody’s supposed to be in here at night, but they never bother to check. We used to come here all the time…us kids from school. We used to drive up here at night and park and leave the car and go on inside on foot.”
Beyond the table was a stone barbecue pit, a trash can, and, after that, a drinking fountain. A tangle of trees and shrubs grew around the picnic area, a chaotic blur of night.
Sitting down on the bench beside the table, Mary Anne leaned back and waited for him to catch up. The dirt slope was an upgrade, and he found himself short of breath by the time he had reached her. “It’s pleasant here,” he said, lowering himself to the bench beside her. “But the other one has the duck.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “That big drake. He’s been there for years. But I can remember when he was a baby.”
“You like him?”
“Sure, but he tried to bite me once. Anyhow, that park’s for the pensioners.” She looked around her. “In summer we used to sit here, when it was nice and hot, drinking beer and listening to a Zenith portable we carried around. I forget who it belonged to. It fell out of the car one day and got smashed.”
Holding her blue dish on her lap, she carefully examined it.
“At night,” she said, “you aren’t able to tell what color it is.”
“It’s blue,” Schilling said.
“Is it painted?”
“No,” he explained, “it’s a fire-baked glaze. It’s put on with a brush and the whole affair is stuck in a kiln.”
“You know almost everything there is.”
“Well, I’ve seen pottery fired, if that’s what you mean.”
“Have you been all over the world?”
He laughed at the thought. “No, only to Europe. England, France, a year or so in Germany. Not even all of Europe.”
“Can you speak German?”
“Fairly well.”
“French?”
“Not so well.”
“I took two years of Spanish in high school,” Mary Anne said. “Now I can’t remember any of it.”
“You’d get it back if you ever needed it.”
“I’d like to travel,” she said. “I’d like to visit South America and Europe and the Orient. What do you suppose it’s like in Japan? My roommate has a brother who was in Japan after the war. He sent her a lot of ashtrays and trick boxes and lovely silk curtains and a silver letter opener.”
“Japan would be nice,” Schilling said.
“Let’s go there, then.”
“All right,” he agreed, “we’ll go there first.”
For a period Mary Anne was silent. “Do you realize,” she said finally, “that if I dropped this dish it, would smash to smithereens?”
“It probably would.”
“What then!”
“Then,” Schilling said, “I’d get you another.”
Abruptly, Mary Anne hopped down from the bench. “Let’s walk. Will we get hit and killed if we walk along the highway?”
“It’s possible.”
She said: “I want to, anyhow.”
It was eleven-forty-five. They walked two hours, neither of them saying much, concentrating instead on the cars that rushed past them every now and then, stepping off the highway, standing on the weedy ground, and then starting back again when each car was gone.
Shortly before two o’clock they neared an island of lights growing by the highway. Presently the lights resolved into a Shell station, a closed-up fruit stand, and a tavern. A pair of autos were parked in the lot outside the tavern. A GOLDEN GLOW neon sign gleamed in the window; the sound of voices and laughter drifted out into the night.
Walking across the lot, Mary Anne threw herself down on the steps of the tavern. “I can’t go any farther,” she said.
“No,” Schilling agreed, halting beside her. “Neither can I.”
He went inside and telephoned the Yellow Cab people. Fifteen minutes later a cab drove into the lot and slowed to a stop beside them. The driver threw open the door and said: “Hop in, folks.”
As they rode back toward Pacific Park, Mary Anne lay watching the dark highway move past. “I’m tired,” she said once, very softly.
“You must be,” Schilling said.
“These weren’t the proper shoes.” She had lifted her feet up and tucked them under her. “How do you feel?”
“I’m fine,” he said, which was true. “I don’t even think I’ll be stiff tomorrow,” he added, which was probably not true.
“Maybe we could go hiking again sometime,” Mary Anne said. “When we have the proper shoes and all the rest. There’s a nice place over toward the mountains…it’s up high, and you can see for miles.”
“That sounds wonderful.” It really did, tired as he was. “If you want, we could drive part of the way, park the car, and walk on from there.”
“Here you are, folks,” the driver said cheerfully, drawing to a stop in front of Mary Anne’s apartment building. “You want me to wait?” he asked, opening the door.
“Yes, wait,” Schilling instructed him. He and the girl climbed the stairs; he held the door open for her and she glided on inside, under the arch of his arm.
In the lobby she halted. She still had tight hold of her blue dish. “Joseph,” she said, “good night.”
“Good night,” he said. Leaning forward, he kissed her on the cheek. Smiling, she raised her face expectantly. “Take care of yourself.” he said to her. That was all he could think of.
“I will,” she promised and, turning, hurried up the stairs.
Schilling found his way back out onto the porch of the building. There was the cab, its parking lights on, waiting for him. He had descended the concrete steps and was starting to climb into it when he remembered his own car. The Dodge, moist and dark, was parked only a few yards up the street; it had completely slipped his mind.
“I’ll walk,” he said to the taxi driver. “How much do I owe you?”
The driver slammed the meter arm down and tore off the paper receipt. “Nine dollars and eighty-five cents,” he said with benign pleasure.
Schilling paid him and then walked stiffly to his own car. The upholstery, as he got in, was cold and repellent. And the motor sputtered unevenly when he started it. He allowed it to warm for several minutes before he released the parking brake and drove out into the silent, empty street.
17
• • • • • • • •
The next morning, Sunday morning, she telephoned him at ten o’clock.
“Are you up?” she asked.
“Yes,” Schilling said; having shaved, he was now dressing. “I was up at nine.”
“What are you doing?”
Truthfully, he answered: “I was about to go downtown and have breakfast.”
“Why don’t you drop over here? I’ll fix breakfast for you.” Her voice ebbed. “Maybe you could pick up the Sunday paper.”
“I’ll do that.” He was afraid to ask if her roommate would be there. Instead, he said: “Anything else I can get fo
r you? How do you feel today?”
“I’m fine.” She sounded lazy and contented. “It looks like a nice day.”
He hadn’t, as yet, looked. “I’ll see you in a short while,” he said. Hanging up, he began finding his overcoat.
The door to her apartment, when he arrived, was standing open. A warm, sweet smell of frying bacon and eggs drifted out into the hall, along with the sound of the New York Philharmonic. Mary Anne met him in the living room; she had on brown slacks and a white shirt, and her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows. Face shiny with perspiration, she greeted him and hurried back into the kitchen.
“Did you drive over?”
“I drove,” he answered, laying the Sunday Chronicle down n the couch and removing his overcoat. He went over and closed the door to the hall. There was no sign of the roommate.
“The blimp—my roommate—is out,” Mary Anne explained, noticing his prowling. “She’s at church, and then she’s having lunch with some girl friends, and then she’s going to a show. She won’t be back until late this afternoon.”
“You don’t like her very much,” he said, lighting a cigarette. He had decided to stop smoking cigars.
“She’s a drip. Why don’t you come into the kitchen? You could set the table.”
When they had finished eating breakfast the two of them sat listening to the closing minutes of the Philharmonic. The apartment. still smelled of warm coffee and bacon. Outside in the driveway, a neighbor in a sports shirt and dungarees was washing his car.
“It’s nice,” Mary Anne said, profoundly peaceful.
Schilling felt the amount of their understanding. Not much—almost nothing—had been said, but it was there. It was there, and both of them were aware of it.
“What’s that?” Mary Anne asked. “That music.”
“A Chopin piano concerto.”
“Isn’t it good?”
“It’s somewhat cheap.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “Will you tell me which ones are cheap?”
“Gladly; that’s half the fun. Anybody can enjoy music; it’s disliking it that takes training.”
“I have some records,” she said, “but they’re all pops and jump tunes. Cal Tjader and Oscar Peterson. My roommate listens to mambo records.”
“Why don’t you get rid of her?” He had nothing in mind, only an awareness of the quiet of the apartment. “Find a place of your own.”
“I can’t afford it.”
On the radio, the music had reached an end. Now the audience was clapping and the announcer was describing next week’s program.
“Who is Bruno Walter?” Mary Anne asked.
“One of the great conductors of our day. He left Austria in ’38…about three weeks before he recorded the Mahler Ninth.”
“Ninth what?”
“Symphony.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “I heard his name; somebody asked what we had by him.”
“We have plenty. One of these days I’m going to play you the recording of Mahler’s Song of the Earth that he made with Kathleen Ferrier.”
Mary Anne leaped up from the table. “Play it for me now.”
“Now? This instant?”
“Why not? Don’t we have it at the store?” She skipped over to the radio and turned it off. “Let’s do something.”
“You want to go out somewhere?”
“No more walking—I want to lie around listening to music.” Eyes sparkling, she ran and got her red jacket. “Could we? Not here—the blimp will be back. Where are all your records, your collection? Home?”
“Home,” he said, rising from the table.
She had never seen his apartment. Impressed, she gazed around at the carpets and furnishings. “Gee,” she said in a small voice as she entered ahead of him. “How nice it all is…are those real pictures?”
“They’re prints,” he said. “They’re not originals, if that’s what you mean.”
“I guess that’s what I mean.” She began peeling off her jacket; he helped her with it and hung it up in the closet. Wandering about, she came to Schilling’s giant oak desk and stopped there. “Is this where you sit when you write your radio program?”
“Right in that spot. There’s my typewriter and reference books.”
She inspected the typewriter. “It’s a foreign typewriter, isn’t it!”
“It’s German. I picked it up when I was with Schirmer’s. I represented them in Germany.”
Awed, she ran her fingers over the type bars. “Does it make that funny mark?”
“The umlaut?” He typed an umlaut for her. “See?”
He put on his big Magnavox phonograph, set the record changer for seventy-eight speed, and then, while it was warming up, entered the pantry and looked over his wine. Without consulting her he selected a bottle of Mackenzie’s Fino Perla sherry, found two small wineglasses, and returned to the living room. Presently they were sprawled out listening to Heinrich Schlusnus singing “Der Nussbaum.”
“I’ve heard that,” Mary Anne said when the record ended. “It’s cute.” She was seated on the rug, her back against the side of the couch, wineglass beside her. Absorbed in the music, Schilling barely heard her; he put on another record and returned to his chair. She listened attentively until it was over and he was turning the record.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Aksel Schiøtz.” Then he added the title of the work.
“You’re more interested in who sings it. Who is he? Is he still alive?”
“Schiøtz is alive,” Schilling said, “but he’s not singing much anymore. Most of his highs are gone…all he has left now is his lower range. But he’s still one of the really unique voices of this century. In some ways, the finest of all.”
“How old is he?”
“In his late fifties.”
“I wish,” Mary Anne said energetically, “that I could get rid of my darn roommate. Do you have any ideas? Maybe I could find a smaller place somewhere that wouldn’t cost too much.”
Schilling lifted the needle from the record; it had not yet reached the grooves. “Well,” he said, “the only solution is to search. Read the ads in the paper, go around town finding out what exists.”
“Will you help me? You have a car…and you know about these things.”
“When do you want to look?”
“Right away. As soon as possible.”
“You mean now? Today?”
“Could we?”
A little amused, he said: “Finish your wine first.”
She drank it down without tasting it. Resting the glass on the arm of the couch, she scrambled to her feet and stood waiting. “It’s seeing your place,” she told him as they left the apartment. “I can’t go on living with that fool—her and her Oregon apples and her mambo records.”
At the corner drugstore Schilling picked up Saturday’s edition of the Leader; there was no Sunday edition. He drove through town as Mary Anne, settled down beside him, scrutinized every ad and description.
Within half an hour they were tramping up the stairs of a great modern concrete apartment building on the edge of town, part of a newly developed improvement area, with its own stores and characteristic streetlamps. A tinted fountain marked the entrance of the area; small trees, California flowering plums, had been planted along the parking strips.
“No,” Mary Anne said when the rental agent showed them the barren, hygienic suite of rooms.
“Refrigerator, electric range, automatic washer and drier downstairs,” the agent said, offended. “View of the mountains, everything clean and new. Lady, this building is only three years old.”
“No,” she repeated, already leaving. “It has no—what is it?” She shook her head. “It’s too empty.”
“You want a place you can fix up yourself,” Schilling told her as they drove on. “That’s what you’re looking for, not just something you can move into, like a hotel room.”
It was three-thirty in the afternoon when they found what
she wanted. A large home in the better residential section had been divided into two flats; the walls were redwood-paneled and in the living room was an immense picture window. A smell of wood hung over the rooms, a presence of coolness and silence. Mary Anne roamed here and there, poking into the closets, standing on tiptoe to peek into the cupboards, touching and sniffing, her lips apart, body tense.
“Well?” Schilling said, observing her.
“It’s—lovely.”
“Will it do?”
“Yes,” she whispered, only half-seeing him. “Imagine how this would look with a Hollywood bed over there, and Chinese mats on the floor. And you could find me some prints, like those you have. I could build a bookcase out of boards and bricks… I saw that once. I’ve always wanted that.”
The owner, a gray-haired woman in her sixties, stood in the doorway, gratified.
Schilling walked over to Mary Anne and put his hand on her shoulder. “If you’re going to rent it, you’re going to have to give her a fifty-dollar deposit.”
“Oh,” Mary Anne said, dismayed. “Yes, that’s so.”
“Do you have fifty dollars?”
“I have exactly one dollar and thirty-six cents.” Defeat settled over her; shoulders drooping, she said mournfully: “I forgot about that.”
“I’ll pay for it,” Schilling said, already producing his wallet. He had expected to. He wanted to.
“But you can’t.” She followed after him. “Maybe you could take it out of my salary; is that what you mean?”
“We’ll work it out later.” Leaving Mary Anne, he crossed over to the woman with the idea of paying her.
“How old is your daughter?” the woman asked.
“Eh,” Schilling said, staggered. There it was again, the reality under the surface. Mary Anne—thank God—hadn’t heard; she had wandered into the other room.
“She’s very pretty,” the woman said, writing out the deposit receipt. “Does she go to school?”
“No,” Schilling muttered. “She works.”
“She’s got your hair. But not quite so red as yours; much more brown. Shall I make this out in your name or hers?”
“Her name. She’ll be paying for it.” He accepted the receipt and herded Mary Anne out of the building and downstairs to the street. She was already plotting and planning.