He awoke in the morning, charred to an ember, in love with Gloria, in love with Lois again, in wonder at himself. And jealous of everyone. He decided he would stay a few more days if Gloria had no objections, and even if she had.
When over a breakfast of Nescafé he told her of his best intentions (love, marriage, children), Gloria sulked, explained the facts of sufferance to him. “Dontcha ever say anything to Herbie about this. I mean it.”
He had forgotten about Herbie. “When is he coming back?” he asked, hoping never (though he missed Herbie in away).
Gloria had a way of ignoring questions she didn’t want to answer. “And if Ira Whimple comes over — ”
“Ira Whimple?”
“You know him. He’s a business associate of Herbie’s. Why are you making that kind of face?”
“Ira Whimple is some kind of crook, isn’t he?”
“Well,” Gloria said, raising her penciled eyebrows, patting her mouth daintily with a napkin, “none of us is perfect.”
Peter snorted, spewing coffee from his nose. “I don’t like his face and I don’t want him around here.”
Gloria turned her head in a theatrical gesture of disdain. “Peter, you remember this is Herbie’s place and any friend of Herbie’s is welcome here. So don’t start giving orders here.”
Peter thought of punching her, but he had been through that already — no need of repeating the obvious. He collected his books and put a pair of dirty socks in his pocket.
“Where are you going?” she asked softly.
No friend of Herbie’s, only a brother (masquerading as a friend), Peter left.
Gloria called after him, “You didn’t finish your coffee. If you think I need you, you’re crazy.”
He went to his room on 113th Street to think things over, and thinking, on the precipice of an idea, fell boldly asleep. Gloria was leading him by the hand to her bedroom through a den of Ira Whimple-like rats — the rats biting his ankles, Gloria dancing seductively — when a knock on the door woke him.
“You have a phone call,” he was told by the small dark-haired witch, who had the room next to his, and who, against the rules of the house, kept a cat, a black cat.
She winked at him as he went by. Peter, aware to his embarrassment, his eyes averted, of having an erection — he pretended it had nothing to do with him.
“You might at least say thanks,” she whispered.
He rushed to the phone, expecting Gloria.
“Who is that girl who answers your phone?” A girl’s tremulous voice, unaccountably familiar to him. He had the feeling that if he moved his head just a little, he would suddenly see who it was, but he didn’t dare.
“Who is this?” He knew — ashamed of not knowing — the moment he asked.
“Don’t you know me, Peter?”
“Are you all right?” he said, afraid — a strange premonition — that something had happened to her. “Lois …”
“I want to talk to you,” she said softly. “I have to talk to you.”
They arranged to meet at noon at Riverside Drive and 110th. “Please don’t forget,” she said. Forget? Had he ever forgotten anything that had to do with her? It was the wrong question. A moment ago, he reminded himself, he had managed to forget, in the quirk of the moment, the very sound of her voice.
When he hung up he discovered his neighbor standing nosily in the doorway of the kitchen, smiling at him. “You look as if a sheep bit you,” she said.
“Yeah?” he said, full of repartee. He thought if he leered at her — grinding his mouth into what he thought was a leer — she would go away.
“You know, that’s the first time I’ve seen you actually smile,” she said. “You look less mean when you smile. My name’s Helena.” She puffed out her chest, in case he hadn’t noticed.
He went to his room in a great hurry. What did she mean, bit by a sheep? When he had the time he would ask her.
Peter awoke in a sweat at five after twelve, and unsure whether he had dreamed the phone call or not, ran heavy-footed from Broadway to Riverside Drive — nearly hit by a cab determined on its way — and down Riverside Drive to 110th Street, muttering to himself, “Wait, wait, wait,” as he ran. When he got to the place of their appointment, his chest in pain from running, Lois was nowhere in sight. Had he dreamed it? Was he dreaming now? He sat down on a cement bench overlooking the river. A toddler chased birds at his feet. Sweating, he waited. A warm breeze washed his face. A lovely day for July — the trees danced. The “There’s a Ford in Your Future” sign across the Hudson shone briefly, faded in the sun’s glare into the past. Had Lois already been and gone?
Anxious, Peter asked the thin-legged, very pregnant woman on the next bench if she knew the time.
She looked up in surprise, a bird noise squeaking in her throat. “Were you talking to me?” She seemed very young, tired, a gray of fear in her hazel eyes. “I don’t have any money.”
“Do you know what time it is?” he repeated softly.
She clutched her purse against her belly (which seemed another, larger purse), smiled. “I don’t.” Her eyes fretted.
She was wearing a tiny wrist watch, like the eye of a bird, which he tried to read but couldn’t. “Is your watch broken?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, looked up and down the street as though he wasn’t there. When he continued to hover, she snapped in a piercing voice, “Will you please go away?” He turned nervously to see if anyone had overheard. A woman was coming toward them. He stepped back, something crunching under his foot — a child’s miniature plastic tank. “I’m sorry,” he said, reaching in his pocket for money to pay for the toy, finding only three pennies — also a pair of dirty socks. Someone laughed. A child was crying. He was ready to flee — what else to do? — when it struck him that the woman coming toward him, only a few steps away now, was Lois.
“What were you doing to that woman?” she asked, a child’s smile at the corner of her mouth.
He looked at the woman on the bench, eight months or so pregnant, consoling a child of a little over a year. He nodded his sympathy. The woman turned her face away.
“It was a misunderstanding,” he said.
“Poor Peter,” Lois said, not looking at him. “Everyone misunderstands you.”
They picnicked in Riverside Park — Lois had brought sandwiches — on a grassy slope overlooking the playground, between a litter basket and a “No Picnicking” sign.
“You look better,” he said when they had finished lunch, her face gray but intact, a secret fever in her eyes.
She laughed without sound. “Better than what? Than when?”
“You look well, a little thin,” he said, his voice hoarse, strange to him, as if it hadn’t been used for a long time.
He thought of taking her hand, oppressed with the need to touch her, but was unable to communicate this dim sense of urgency from mind to body. As if seeing into his thoughts, Lois lit a cigarette, kept her hands busy.
For a long time nothing was said.
When he asked about Mildred and Will, she came alive momentarily, the passion of grief reviving her. “It’s impossible living at home,” she said, her eyes intent on some distant point on the horizon. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Peter.” She scraped tobacco from the corner of her lip with a yellowish finger, her nails beggars, tattered beyond recognition. “Mildred’s her old pain-in-the-ass self. Every time I go to the bathroom she wants to know how I feel. Last week I decided to get it over with, but when I started thinking how I was going to do it, I lost my nerve. Finally, so it wouldn’t be a total loss, I cut my wrists”—she held up her left hand to show him the fragile scar — “it wasn’t even really a try; I knew they would get to me before anything happened. I don’t even know why I did it.”