Out on Central Avenue, Mr. Rebeck could feel the heat of the pavement through his thin shoes. He walked with Mrs. Klapper past the frozen fountains of the willow trees and heard, far and very faintly, the guffaw of the pickup's engine. Mrs. Klapper carried the gray raincoat over her arm.
"Rebeck," she said. She took a deep breath. "Look, I'm sorry I made such a big deal about it, about where you live and everything."
"Forget it," Mr. Rebeck said. "Let's forget it. It was nothing." He did not want her to apologize.
"Never mind forget it. What am I, God, a policeman, I can tell you, 'Live here, don't live here'? You live where you want to, it's a free country. You want to live here, it makes you happy, live here. Nobody should tell you where to live. Not me, not anybody. You live where you want to."
"It's just that I feel comfortable here," Mr. Rebeck said. "I never felt that way anywhere else."
"I'm sure it's a very nice place," Mrs. Klapper said. "In the spring and summer, anyway. In the winter—well, what place is nice in the winter?" She looked directly at him. "Only I still worry about you getting wet. You catch a cold here, with no doctor, no drugstore, the next thing you know you're flat on your back. That's why I thought maybe it would be a good idea if I brought the raincoat."
"I couldn't have taken it," Mr. Rebeck said.
"I know, it was Morris's coat, you don't want anything that belonged to Morris. All right, don't take it. Why fight over a raincoat? God forbid anybody should think you look like Morris, it's the end of the world."
"Not anybody. You. I said it the wrong way, and I sounded too heroic about it, but I won't be Morris for you." It was growing a little cooler, he thought. Was tomorrow August? How fast the summer was going.
"If you want to give me a raincoat," he said slowly, "give me one of my own."
Mrs. Klapper stopped walking. "I don't know your size!" she protested happily. The look in her eyes delighted him and frightened him at the same time.
"I'm smaller than Morris," Mr. Rebeck said. "Come on, before they lock us in."
"Wonderful, you're smaller than Morris. So now I know." Mrs. Klapper began to walk again. "You think I'm a magician, I can look at you and boom, I know what size raincoat you take. Maybe I always carry around with me a measuring tape, it might come in handy? Rebeck, excuse me, about some things you know from nothing."
She was smiling now. It seemed a long time since he had last seen her smile. He felt that he had come to another Crossroads and passed it without even recognizing it as a Crossroads. If he turned around, he could probably see it dwindling behind him, perhaps even run back to it if he began to run now. Once it was out of sight it would be too late; he would never be able to find it.
"I'd better go back," he said. "We'll be at the gate soon."
"Wait a minute. At least let me make a guess what size you take. Stand up straight a little." She looked him over quickly and shrugged. "So I'll get you one that fits like your skin, you'll be sorry you didn't take Morris's coat. Good-by, Rebeck. Don't step on the ring."
She started down the road alone.
Then she stopped and turned back to him. He had not moved.
"Listen, I'll tell you something." She was not smiling. "Remember you asked how come I was late, and I gave you a big deal about the subway and how I had to go back to get the raincoat?" Mr. Rebeck nodded.
"Well, it wasn't like that. I was walking to get to the subway, and I met this woman, I know her from around. I said, 'Hello, how you doing?' She said 'Fine, how come we don't see you around no more?' So I said, 'I been busy,' and she just looked at me and said, 'Busy with what— monkey business?' Rebeck, the way she said it, how she waved her finger and went like this with the eyes. 'Monkey business,' she said, 'I know how it is.' Rebeck, I went home and I lay on the bed for an hour and I said I'm not going out there. No more. What am I, crazy? So I lay like that for an hour, and then I got the raincoat and came out. So that's why I was late."
Central Avenue makes a very wide curve just before it reaches the gate. Mr. Rebeck was able to watch Mrs. Klapper down the road, through the iron gate, and onto the street. He saw her stop to let a car pass her, and then she crossed the street and he could not see her after that. There were a lot of people on the street, and it was not easy to pick out one hat among them all, even if it was shaped like a crescent moon.
Chapter 11
It rained all night. Michael and Laura walked through it, watching the rain come down so hard that it bounced when it hit the ground. Toward morning the rain began to let up, and by the time they came to the wall that overlooked the city it had become a heavy mist that sat on the trees and would not be moved by sunrise. Mid-August rain is like that in New York.
"This is nice," Michael said. He stretched, which was, of course, not at all necessary, but it was one of the motions of humanity he remembered very clearly.
"Even though we've done it before?" Laura asked. She sat on the wall beside him.
"Even so. Some things bear more repetition than others. Mornings like this. Grapes. I don't think I could ever have gotten tired of grapes. I used to hoard them. All kinds—green, red, purple, black. Some men can't pass a pool hall without going in. I couldn't pass fruit stores."
"I was that way about bananas," Laura said. "But I wasn't really faithful about it. I'd eat a bunch in a day and then crawl under the sink and be quietly sick. That would cure me for two weeks or so, and then I'd be back on the banana boat. Grapes a little, but bananas most of all."
"Grapes," Michael said firmly. "But you see what I mean. I like this. I like us sitting here and talking, watching the mist burn off and the trucks in the streets. I suppose in a hundred years or a thousand years, I'll be weary unto death with it."
"It won't take that long," Laura said. "A month. Maybe a couple of months."
"All right. I know it. What are you trying to prove? Right now I like watching the morning come. Sandy and I used to do that a lot. We'd sit up all night playing cards and listening to records, and then, just before morning, we'd go out and walk until the sun came up. We'd have breakfast wherever we were and go home and sleep till three or four in the afternoon. Then we'd go through the same routine again, and we never got tired of it."
Laura looked down the hillside as she spoke. "Sometimes I wish Sandra would restrain herself from feather-footing her way into everything we talk about. If I sound petty and malicious, it's because I am."
"I was sorry as soon as I'd mentioned her," Michael said. "I know how it sounds. The most boring thing in the world is another man's girl."
"It isn't that," Laura said a little crossly. "You have a perfect right to talk about her. Every beautiful thing you can remember comes in handy after death. Only—" A plane from La Guardia Airport was thundering tinnily over the city, and she used it as an excuse to leave the sentence incomplete until it was out of sight. Then, still looking away from him, she said, "Only, I wish you'd decide whether you love her or hate her."
"I don't love her," Michael answered. "But all the pleasant things I remember seem to be tied up with her, one way or the other. Not because she was Sandra, but because the good moments were better for someone else's being there. This sounds like women's-magazine philosophy, but some things aren't any good unless they're shared. Sitting up all night would be pointless if somebody you loved wasn't sitting up with you, picking out music to play and helping you kill the bourbon. Walking by yourself in the rain is for college kids who think loneliness makes poets. You know what I mean."