left the office. What Iâm trying to tell you is I went over thereâto tell her it was off.â
He ran his thumbnail ruefully along the wire, like harp strings. âI donât expect you to believe me; I wouldnât blame you if you didnât. It must sound like sour grapes at this late day. But, Angel Face, itâs true. I wasnât going with her. Thatâs all I can say.â
I leaned my forehead tenderly against the wire toward him. âDarling,â I said, âIâve always been able to tell when you were lying. And Iâve always been able to tell when you were telling the truth. And I still am, now. So donât be afraid. I believe you.â
âThanks.â He sighed gratefully. âThatâll make it a little easier.â
They came over to take him inside again. So this was it now, and words became just empty sounds. âYouâll be back. This isnât good-by. Now remember thatâIâm just saying so long to you for a while. Take good care of yourself, darlingâuntilâuntil I see you again. Oh, wait, just let me kiss him once againâââ
âGet ready with some more of that bad coffee, darling, so Iâll have something to growl at when Iâââ
âIâll be waiting with it.â
âSo long for a while, Angel Face.â
Isnât it pitiful how two people can kid themselves when they know theyâre both lying?
The wire stencil that had framed our kiss was empty; his lips were gone. The murmur of his voice hovered about it for a moment more, as if I were still hearing him say it, though I wasnât any more. âSo long, Angel Face.â
I had that much back again, at least. He always called me that. That was his name for me when we were by ourselves. That was a special thing, from him toââ
5
REVERY BY MATCHLIGHT
T HE FLAT WAS GONE NOW , AND IN ITS PLACE THERE were the four cramped walls of a furnished room. I wouldnât have wanted the flat any more, even if there had been money enough to hang onto it; I would have run into him a thousand times a day, from every chair, from every corner of it. I would have heard him wheezing in the shower, howling for the towel that was never there; I would have heard him chuckling over there in that corner where the radio used to be; I would have heard him snoring over in the other bed, late at nightââ
Life was simpler here in this place. Life was a shot of novocain. Life was carpet slippers all day long, and a bathrobe, and hair that wasnât combed. Life was a rickety iron bed that wasnât slept on, just was wept on. Life was a can punched open maybe once a day, not from hunger, just from a sense of duty. Life was a knock on the door and an âAre you all right in there, lady? This is the landlady; I ainât seen you in three or four whole days now, and I just wanted to make sure there wasnât nothing the matter.â
âIâm all right. Sure, Iâm great. Donât worry if you donât see me or hear me, even for a week at a time. Iâm still here; Iâll still be sitting in here.â
âDo you want me to get you a paper, help you to pass the time?â
I screamed it, but she didnât hear it because I screamed it inside of me. âI donât want the time to pass! Itâs going too quick already! I want it to stand still! I want it to freeze!â
âNo, thanks, there isnât anything I want to read about or know about.â
Life was like that.
I reached the low point of the whole thing, the bottommost dip of the graph, the night someone from the Police Property Clerkâs Office came around to return his things. They give them back to you, it seems; they give you back everything but the main thing: who was in them. That they keep; thatâs theirs, to plug into the lighting system and then throw away.
This was just routine, the usual procedure when they send