“They’re warm,” Tweany muttered.
“I’m feeling a little ill,” Beth said, picking up her purse and moving toward the door. “Nothing serious, just a sick headache. Come along, Carleton. Please take me home.”
“But we—” he began.
Beth opened the door and went out into the hall. Without looking back, she said:
“This is certainly the dirtiest building I have ever been in.” Then she was gone, and, after a moment of hesitation, Tweany put down the beer cans and followed after her. The door closed, and Mary Anne was alone.
She looked around for her coat. She waited until she was sure Beth and Tweany had gone, and then she dropped the door key into her purse, slammed the door, and started down the hall.
On the front porch sat two obese colored women; they were reading movie magazines and drinking wine. Mary Anne edged past them, descended the steps to the sidewalk, and joined the midmorning crowd.
Music flowed around her, the outpourings of a symphony orchestra. She halted in the entrance, and then she walked two slow steps, studying her feet and seeing, at the same time, the pattern of the floor. She saw the suddenness of the counter, and it surprised her; she opened her mouth in an exclamation of bewilderment. Had she come that far into the store? Lifting her head, then, she saw Joseph Schilling stationed behind the counter. He was discussing records with a young man who seemed to be a student. At the front of the store, Max Figuera was sweeping the floor with a push broom, and she had walked past him.
“Hello,” she said.
“Well,” Max said, eyeing her grumpily. “Look who showed up.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Turning, Max said across the store to Schilling: “Look who decided to drop in for a few minutes and say hello.”
Schilling glanced instantly up. He put down the record he was holding and said: “I was beginning to worry.”
“I’m late,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Not too late, though.” He returned to his customer.
Removing her coat, she carried it carefully downstairs. When she returned, the young man had left, and Joseph Schilling was alone at the counter. Max was outside sweeping off the sidewalk.
“I’m glad to see you,” Schilling said. He was sorting records, a new Victor shipment. “Are you back for good?”
“Naturally,” she answered, going behind the counter. “I’m sorry you had to call Max to come down.”
“No harm done.”
“You haven’t had your morning coffee, have you?”
“No.” His face was lined and drawn; he seemed especially ponderous today. When he bent down to rummage in a carton, he lowered himself with care.
“Are you stiff?” she asked.
“Like a steel plank.”
“My fault, again,” she said. “I’ll check the shipment; you go back and get your coffee.”
Schilling said: “I was getting the idea you weren’t going to show up at all.”
“Didn’t I tell you I’d be in?”
“You did.” He concentrated on the records. “But I wasn’t positive.”
“Go drink your coffee,” she said. Suddenly she said: “Why is it up to me?”
He stared at her with emotion; his eyes were intense and he cleared his throat to speak.
“Go drink your coffee,” she repeated, wanting him to stop confronting her. He had forced her to leave; or, at least, he had not made it possible for her to stay. She felt frightened, and now she went away from him toward the front of the store. A customer had entered and was examining a display rack.
Behind her, Joseph Schilling changed his mind and did not speak. He moved in the direction of his office. She could hear him going. So she didn’t have to tell him now; she could tell him later. Or perhaps not at all.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said, turning quickly to the customer. “What can I do for you?”
20
• • • • • • • •
That evening after work Joseph Schilling took her to dinner at La Poblana. It was the restaurant to which they had gone that first day. It had become their special spot.
Candles spotted the gloom as they followed the waiter to their particular table. The tables were low and covered by red-checkered tablecloths. The walls—Spanish in style—were adobe; the ceiling was low, and at one end of the room was a rococo railing overgrown with elderly ivy. Beyond the railing three musicians in Spanish costume were playing dinner music.
The waiter seated Mary Anne, laid the menu open before Schilling, and departed. A low haze of cigarette and candle smoke hung over the room; the murmur of voices mixed with it, smudging out the orchestra.
“It’s peaceful here,” Mary Anne said.
Joseph Schilling listened to her voice, and now, as he held the menu, he looked across the table at her and tried to be sure what she was feeling. “Yes,” he agreed, because the restaurant was peaceful. People came here to eat and relax and talk with one another; the light was dim and there was a low quietude, as if everything, the people, the tables, were melting and flickering with the candles, flowing together into passivity. He rested. He felt the cessation of pressure, and he joined the people around him.
But the girl was not relaxed; she said she was peaceful, but she sat like a little ivory rod, her hands on the table before her: white hands, folded, cold with the light of the candle. She was not calm; she was a hard, chipped, highly polished device that seemed to have no particular feelings; she was withdrawn, as if she had shut off everything but her wariness. She heard everything, watched him without even looking at him; but that was all.
“Want me to order?” he said. If he meant to help her, he would have to proceed sentence by sentence. He could take no risks, and he could not let himself make a mistake. He required of himself a great deal.
“Please,” Mary Anne said. “You know what’s good.” Her voice was hollow.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
He saw her summon a spurious heartiness. “I’d like something new. Something I’ve never had before.”
“Something new.” Elaborately he studied the menu, read all the words and all the prices.
“Something unusual: a treat.”
“How about dolma?”
Mary Anne considered at length, as if the matter was of vast importance. And—perhaps—it was. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Dolma is a mixture of rice and beef cooked in grape leaves…rolled up like tortillas.”
“That sounds wonderful. I’d like that.”
He ordered. “What do you want to drink?” he asked her as the waiter stood ready with his pad. He was the same waiter they had had the first night, a light-complexioned young Mexican with sideburns down to his jaw. “Some wine? Their port is excellent, as I remember.”
“Just coffee.”
He ordered the same for himself, and the waiter left. Sighing, he unfastened his cuffs. Mary Anne watched fixedly as he loosened his necktie. “Beth and Tweany came by looking for you,” he said. “Did they find you?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
He was disturbed to hear it. He had steered them off in a vague tangent, not knowing himself where she was, “Was it important?” he asked. “They looked dire.”
The girl’s lips moved. “The inquest.”
“Oh yes.”
Mary Anne said: “What’ll we do? What’s going to happen to us?”
“Nothing is going to happen to us,” he said, and he thought how carefully he measured his assurance. And how tangible the girl’s suffering was. “The roof isn’t going to fall. The ground isn’t going to open up and swallow us.” He paused and watched her. “Did they say anything?”
She nodded.
“They did?” He would have liked to get at them. “Is there anybody else you expect to hear from? What about your family?”
“My family—doesn’t know.”
“But they’d have something to say.”
Mary Anne s
aid, “Can’t you think of something? You have the brains-you ought to know what to do. Are we just going to sit here and—” She gestured. “Joseph, for Christ’s sake, do something!”
The waiter appeared then, bringing first bowls of tossed green salad and then their dinners proper. The interruption was good, and he poked and concentrated on the dolma. He made an issue of it. “Are these grape leaves?”
“Sorry, sir,” the waiter said. “No grape leaves during the winter.”
“Cabbage?”
“Yes, sir. The real thing starts coming in about April, early May.” The waiter served him and Mary Anne their coffee. “Will there be anything else, sir?”
“Not right now,” Schilling said.
The waiter departed, leaving the two of them alone.
“I don’t mind,” Mary Anne said. She ate mechanically. “This is exactly what I wanted.”
“What sort of person is this Dave Gordon?” he said. “You never really told me much about him. This morning I was thinking over what you said. Max was in about the same business; he used to operate a car-rental agency, and he had a gas pump and he did a few repairs. Little odds and ends. He used to sit in his office—I’d see him on my way to work. He never seemed to do anything, just sit there in his office.” He sliced a dolma in half. “He seemed to enjoy it. In a sense, Max retired when he was fifteen.”
She seemed to hear him, and to be following what he was saying. That, at least, was encouraging. But she said nothing. He waited, then went on, speaking conversationally, without emphasis.
“In many ways I’m like that, too. I came here to retire; I wanted a quiet, stable town where I could open my record shop. For me this sleepy atmosphere is exactly right; I can open the store when I want, chat with customers, waste time. There’s not really much to do or see. If I wanted to see anything, I suppose I’d have to leave.”
“Where would you go?” Mary Anne asked.
“That’s hard to say.” Showing her his concern, he pondered; he sorted over cities, places, other lands. “Probably New York or San Francisco. I wouldn’t go to Los Angeles; in spite of its size, it’s really a small town. Of course, it’s got informality—you can walk down the street in shorts.”
“I’ve heard that,” she said.
“And the climate is nice down there. That talk about smog is mostly propaganda. It’s warm; it’s spacious; the public transportation system is terrible. If you moved down there you’d have to buy a car.” He sipped his coffee. “Have you ever thought of buying a car?”
“No,” she said.
“Can you drive?”
“No. I never thought about it.”
“Somebody told me cars are two or three hundred dollars cheaper down there. They’re high, up here.”
She seemed to rise briefly to the surface. “How long does it take to learn to drive?”
Schilling computed. “It varies with the person. If I were you, I’d go to a regular driving school. Two or three weeks. You can get a license then, and practice on your own. There’s a lot of satisfaction in owning your own car. You’re not dependent on anybody; you can get up and go when and wherever you want. Late at night…when the streets are deserted. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I get up and go driving. And when you drive well, it’s a source of genuine personal satisfaction. Any skill like that, once you acquire it, you don’t lose it.”
“Cars cost a lot of money, don’t they?”
“Some do. You should—if you get one, or ever think of getting one—try looking at light coupés. Say, 1951 to 1953. A Ford or a Chevrolet. A little two-door Olds would be nice; you could get the hydramatic shift. It can be plenty of fun.”
“I’d have to save up,” she said presently.
“What you might do is this,” Schilling said. He had stopped eating and so had she. “Your biggest decision will be whether you want to marry and raise a family, or go into some profession that makes use of your highest abilities—medicine, law, one of the big commercial arts such as advertising, fashion, or even television.”
“I hate clothes,” she said. “I couldn’t ever see dress designing.” Then she said: “I was interested in medicine. I took a course in nursing in school.”
“What else have you been interested in?”
“I thought I might—you’ll laugh.”
“No,” he said.
“For a little while I thought of being a nun.”
He didn’t laugh. He felt deeply troubled. “Did you? Do you still feel that way?”
“A little.”
“Don’t withdraw,” he said. “You should be active; you should be with people, doing something. Not off somewhere, isolated, in contemplation.”
She nodded.
“What about art? Have you ever taken any aptitude tests?”
Mary Anne said, “They gave us tests in the twelfth grade. I had ability in—” She counted on her fingers. “I was good in manual skills: typing, and sewing, and working with objects.”
“Object manipulation,” he said.
“I showed ability at clerical things, like filing and handling forms, using office equipment. I didn’t have much artistic ability, like painting or drawing or writing. On the IQ test I did pretty good. In sociology we had to do a paper on what we wanted to be. I chose social welfare work. I did a lot of research on it in the library. I’d like to help people…slums and alcoholism and crime. Race relations-I made a speech in assembly on race relations. It went over good.”
“If you were in a big city,” Schilling said, “you could get training in some field. You can’t really get that here. You have a college, but it isn’t much. Stanford, up at Palo Alto, would be another matter. Or even San Francisco City College. Or the university at Berkeley.”
“Stanford costs a lot. I looked it up once, when I was about to graduate from high school. But—” Her voice clouded and diminished—“I never got anything out of school.”
“You wouldn’t be going to school,” he said. “You’d be getting training in a particular line. It would be something to use, not just facts to know. It would be your job, your life’s work.”
“How would I live?”
Schilling said: “You could work in the evening. Or you could take your courses in the evening and work during the day. In a city like San Francisco, you’d have opportunity to do both. Or, here’s a suggestion. You might be able to get a scholarship. What kind of grades did you get in school?”
“Mostly B’s.”
From his coat pocket Schilling brought his black leather notebook and fountain pen. He began to make clear, large lines on the paper. “Let’s look at this in order. First,” he made a note, “you should leave this town.”
“Yes.” She was watching the pen write; leaning forward, she followed the black lines. But still she showed no emotion, no expression; he couldn’t tell how she felt. The tightness was still there; she had not let go. Perhaps, he thought, she never would.
“You’ll have to live somewhere. Now, you could move in with a bunch of girls, or one girl, or at the Y, or at a boardinghouse. But I think you’d be happier if you lived by yourself, so you had a place to withdraw to. You should have some sort of a retreat, a place to hide.” He put down his pen. “You need that. You have to have a way out. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” she said.
He went on writing. “You might look for a place in North Beach, around Telegraph Hill. Or you might go out toward the Marina. Or even around Fillmore. That’s the colored section; bars and shops, lots of noise. Or, if you have enough money, you could rent a swank apartment in one of the new suburbs, like Stonestown. I’ve never seen it, but they say it’s right out of the future.”
“I’ve seen it,” she said. “Some insurance company built it, the whole town. It’s near the ocean.”
“Now the job.” He sipped his coffee. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about that. As I see it, you have two good choices. Where have you worked? Go over that again for me.”
&n
bsp; Mary Anne said: “I worked for a loan company, as a receptionist. And then I worked at a furniture factory.”
“Doing what?”
“Stenographer and typist. I hated that.”
“And then the phone company?”
“Yes,” she said. “And then for you.”
“Don’t get a job in a small office. Don’t get in with six other girls and a messenger. Do one of two things. Either go to work for a private professional man, a doctor or a lawyer or an architect, somebody with a modern office where there’s nobody else around you, where you can be in charge. One of those small modern places, with glass and bricks and recessed lighting, a place that’s clean and bright.”
“What’s the other?”
“Or get in with a big outfit—Shell Oil, or the Kaiser Foundation. The Bank of America, even. An organization so large that you’ll have an impersonal system and room to advance. And with really specialized jobs. An outfit so big that—”
Mary Anne said: “Maybe I could work for a record store in San Francisco. Like Sherman Clay.”
“Yes. You could.” And he felt, then, that he had achieved something, that perhaps, after all, he could bring her permanently to the surface and help her.
If he helped her, if he meant to unravel her retreat into despair, he would have to do it now. She was watching him, looking at his notes, listening to what he had to say. He had reached her. Her eyes were not blank with fear; she was rational, attentive, a young woman following his planning.
“I am planning it out for you,” he said.
“Thank you.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No,” she said.
“Do you want anything more to eat? Your food is cold; how about the coffee?”
Mary Anne said: “This morning I was late…you know what I did?”
“What did you do?”
“I rented a room. I moved my stuff from the apartment. I told the woman to go jump in the creek.”