Read You're All Alone (illustrated) for Free Online Page B

odd, almost close to tears. “You’d even have had more fun with Midge’s girl-friend.”
    “Say, you do have a memory,” he began. Then, turning on her, “Aren’t you really Jane Gregg? Don’t you know Tom Elvested and Midge?”
    She shook her head reprovingly and looked up with an uneven smile. “But since you haven’t got a date with anybody but me, Mr. Serious, you’ll have to make the best of my antisocial habits. Let’s see, I could let you look at some other girls undressing on North Clark or West Madison, or we could go to the symphony, or . . .”
    They were passing the painfully bright lobby of a movie house, luridly placarded with yellow and purple swirls which seemed to have caught up in their whirlwind folds an unending rout of golden blondes, grim-eyed heroes, money bags, and grasping hands. Jane stopped.
    “Or I could take you in here,” she said.
    He obediently veered toward the box office, but she kept hold of his arm and walked him past it into the outer lobby.
    “You mustn’t be scared of life,” she told him, half gayly, half desperately, he thought. “You must learn to take risks. You really can get away with anything.”
    Carr shrugged and held his breath for the inevitable.
    They walked straight past the ticket-taker and through the center-aisle door.
    Carr puffed out his breath and grinned. He thought, maybe she knows someone here. Or else—who knows?—maybe you could get away with almost anything if you did it with enough assurance and picked the right moments.
    THE THEATER was only half full.
    They sidled through the blinking darkness into one of the empty rows at the back. Soon the gyrations of the gray shadows on the screen took on a little sense.
    There were a man and woman getting married, or else remarried after a divorce, it was hard to tell which. Then she left him because she thought that he was interested only in business. Then she came back, but he left her because he thought she was interested only in social affairs. Then he came back, but then they both left each other again, simultaneously.
    From all around came the soft breathing and somnolent gum-chewing of drugged humanity.
    Then the man and woman both raced to the bedside of their dying little boy, who had been tucked away in a military academy. But the boy recovered, and then the woman left both of them, for their own good, and a little while afterwards the man did the same thing. Then the boy left them.
    “Do you play chess?” Jane asked suddenly.
    Carr nodded gratefully.
    “Come on,” she said. “I know a place.”
    They hurried out of the bustling theater district into an empty region of silent gray office buildings—for the Loop is a strange place, where loneliness jostles too much companionship. Looking up at the dark and dingy heights, Carr felt his uneasiness begin to return. There was somethihg exceedingly horrible in the thought of miles on miles of darkened offices, empty but for the endless desks, typewriters, filing cabinets, water coolers. What would a stranger from Mars deduce from them? Surely not human beings.
    With a great roar a cavalcade of newspaper trucks careened across the next corner, plunging as frantically as if the fate of nations were at stake. Carr took a backward step, his heart pounding.
    Jane smiled at him. “We’re safe tonight,” she said and led him to a massive office building of the last century. Pushing through a side door next to the locked revolving one, she drew him into a dingy lobby floored with tiny white tiles and surrounded by the iron latticework of ancient elevator shafts. A jerkily revolving hand showed that one cage was still in operation, but Jane headed for the shadow-stifled stairs.
    “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “It’s thirteen stories, but I can’t stand elevators.”
    Remembering the one at Marcia’s apartment, Carr was glad.
    They emerged panting in a hall where the one frosted door that wasn’t dark read CAISSA CHESS CLUB.
    Behind