Read The Night People for Free Online Page B

army, and now a job on the Times-Chronicle. That’s it.”
    “No girl?”
    I nodded. “In college. She promised to wait for me, while I was in the army. Two months after I left home she married a football player.”
    “It’s a story anyway.”
    “Sure.”
    “Would you like to sleep with me?”
    “I … I don’t think so.”
    “It wouldn’t cost you anything.”
    I felt sick. “No, I … I appreciate it, but….”
    “But you’re working.”
    “That’s right. I’m working. Only a little over five hours to find that story.”
    “What if you don’t find it?”
    “What?”
    “What if you don’t find a story? Will the world end?”
    “No, of course not. But he expects one. If he doesn’t get it he’ll have to run a story about the weather or something.”
    “So?”
    “It’s awfully tough to sell papers on Saturday afternoons. He explained it all to me.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Could I have another drink?”
    “I guess so.” There was a tapping on the door and she ducked the bottle out of sight. “Hope it isn’t the cops,” she whispered.
    She walked to the door and opened it a crack, and saw what was apparently a familiar face. “What in hell do you want?” she stormed.
    A creepy little guy slipped into the room. “Didn’t want to interrupt you, but … have you got a spoon I could borrow? It’s real important.”
    She snorted and disappeared into the next room, returning in a moment with a spoon. “Don’t bother to return it.”
    “Thanks. Thanks a lot. If you ever need anything….”
    “Just to be left alone, mister, that’s all.”
    “Well … thanks again.”
    She slammed the door after him. “The stupid slob!”
    “What the heck did he want with a spoon in the middle of the night?” I asked in innocence.
    “He takes the stuff. Dope, you know. They warm it on a spoon or sumthin’.”
    I fumbled for a cigarette. “How can you live in a place like this, anyway? What kind of life do you find here?”
    “What other kind of life is there? I could be one of those New York society dolls and only sleep with college boys, I suppose. Would that be better?”
    I didn’t answer, because I didn’t really know what to tell her. She needed someone who’d lived a lot longer than I had. She needed a priest, or maybe just a good man. I surely wasn’t a priest, and I was too young to know how good I was.
    She poured herself a drink from the bottle and came over to where I sat. Suddenly, all at once, she was old—she might have been the oldest girl of twenty-five I’d ever seen. “I’m trapped,” she told me, settling down on the arm of my chair. “Trapped in a life without beginning or end.”
    “I’ve got to be going,” I said. “There’s no story here.”
    “No,” she agreed sadly. “Not here.”
    I started to get up, but she slid her soft weight down upon me. “I have to go,” I repeated.
    “How about a little kiss first?”
    “No….” I managed to break free, struggling to my feet. And then I was out the door, casting only a final backward glance at her sad, lonely face. As I went down the stairs I felt for my wallet, but it was still there….
    Outside, the rain had settled into an annoying pattern of early morning drizzle, with clouds that hung low over the dim buildings and blotted out the golden sunrise somewhere to the east.
    I walked, because there was nothing else to do. No story, no nothing. It was Saturday morning and nothing ever happened on Saturday mornings. Nothing but sleep and regrets for the night that was past.
    I stopped for coffee in a little fly-specked lunch counter just opening for the day’s business, trading comments in a monotone of dull improbability with the sleepy-eyed counter man. And then back to the street.
    With my footsteps carrying me back toward the apartment where she would be sleeping now, lonely after a damp night of wandering. Why not? Where else did I have to go? Why not back to her, for a few minutes, an hour….
    And as I turned