“I’m sorry about being on the phone so long,” he said.
“I’m sure you are,” Diane said quietly, and with sudden vehemence threw the book she was holding at him, hitting the leg of his chair. Was it a joke? “I’m sorry I missed,” she said tonelessly, staring at the floor. “Why did you lie to me?”
“I haven’t lied to you,” he said lamely, a defense against unknown charges — at the moment, for all he knew, the father of lies. “You knew Lois and I were friends. I never told you we weren’t, did I?”
“That’s the truth,” she said. “You never told me you weren’t, because you never mentioned it at all.” She remained almost motionless, staring at the rug. “I’m sorry if I’ve been presumptuous. Oh, Peter!” she screamed at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She took another book from the shelf, swung it over her head as though she were about to throw it, then put it back, laughing.
Unable to think of anything to say — could he tell her things he didn’t know? — Peter worried about the complications of his life, envied himself the lonely days of his freedom. ‘You haven’t been presumptuous,” he said, all he could say, hoping without much hope that it would ease the tension in the room, that the girl would see that he was fond of her, that he was extremely grateful for her affection, but that he was a man already — whether he liked it or not — committed to a future.
When she glanced at him, he was surprised at the intensity of bitterness he saw in her face. “I have a knack,” she said with an attempt at self-irony, “for falling in love with the wrong men.” A wry smile. “I shouldn’t have told you that, but I think you have the idea that because I pretend to take things easy I have no feelings.” Her child face shone, damp-eyed.
“How old are you again?” he asked. “Are you twenty-one or twenty-two?”
“You don’t have to make fun of me,” she said. Having said more than she meant to, she picked up her scarf and purse from the couch, in a hurry to get away. “I’ll be twenty-three in ten days,” she added. “You don’t remember anything I tell you. Good night, Peter.”
“If you wait a few seconds I’ll drive you home.”
“I’d rather take the subway, if you don’t mind,” she said, looking through her purse for a token, not finding any.
“Let me drive you home,” he said.
“No. I don’t want you to.”
“I’m grateful to you for taking care of me,” he said, standing up like a spectator at a game, the ache in his back a recollection of itself. “I feel much better now.”
“I feel much worse,” she said. Then, looking at the door:
“I didn’t mean that. Peter?” Turning to him.
“Yeah?”
“Did you know how I felt about you?”
He was standing next to her, listening to the machinery in his back. “I didn’t know,” he said.
“You should have,” she said. “Why did you think I came here tonight? Why do you think I spend so much time with you? I can’t believe that you didn’t know.”
What could he say? That it seemed inconceivable to him that a young and beautiful girl could be seriously interested in him, a man who had done nothing with his life of account, nothing he could be proud of. It seemed presumption to him to believe even now, even in the face of her confession, that Diane was in love with him. “Why do you spend so much time with me?” he wanted to know.
“God knows,” she said and bolted, leaving the door, for some reason, open behind her. Did she want him to follow? How could he be sure? Indecision, no friend of his, held him back.
When he finally made up his mind to go after her, she had just caught the elevator. He watched the indicators light up (5. ….4. ….3…), then he went after her down the stairs, racing the elevator. The faster he scrambled down the steps, the less aware he was of the jabbing pains in his back, and he had the feeling as he ran that if he went fast enough — a little nervous about the risk — he could escape his disabilities, outdistance them.
It took a while for him to discover her — shaken by the sense at first that he had lost her — Diane sitting, almost invisible, in a semi-lit corner of the lobby next to a potted plant, crying silently.
She didn’t notice him until he was standing directly over her. “Hello, jerk,” he said, still out of breath. “I’ve come to walk you to the station.”
“All right,” she said sullenly, grudged him, behind his back, a smile.
They walked the long block to Broadway in silence. It reminded him of times when he was a kid (eighteen or nineteen at most), taking a girl home after a date and having nothing to say to her, anxious about how he would approach her at the door for a kiss — the ambition of his desires slighter then, mostly symbolic. Out of regret for the failures of his youth — too late perhaps to undo them — he reached over and took Diane’s hand. She pressed it to her side, looked up at him, spying on his face, her eyes dark, noncommittal. Like a kid, he had moments with Diane — this one of them — when he was in awe of her beauty. As they walked he remembered a time with Lois, walking with her, a few days after their marriage — it had ended in a fight. The memory pained him.
“I’m not such a baby,” she said in her songlike child’s voice, looking at him, it seemed (how could he know in the dark?), with something like wonder.
The idea of it came almost as an aftermath of the act. The face was there, glistening, ingenuous as a child’s, tilted toward him. What else could he do? In the street light of Broadway and Seventy-third Street, Peter leaned over and kissed her, her face, meaning it only as a gesture, the convention of a kiss good-night. A connection with the past.
The past or the future? Diane held on to him, and with unexpected fervor — what had he expected? — kissed his face, kept kissing him, face, eyes, mouth — Peter standing there, an interested and incredulous bystander — the street lamp almost like a spotlight illuminating them. What was hard for him to believe was that all this affection, all of it, was meant for him. He had a sense of being an impostor, of impersonating the man he hadn’t yet become — the new Becker, the newer, the newest. His back, which knew him better than he knew himself, kept accounts.
“Talk to me, Peter,” she said.
It was hard for him to talk. “You’re lovely,” he said, which was only part of what he meant. He studied her face, amazed at it.
“Will you be good to me?” she wanted to know, hugging him. “Will you, Peter?” Then, without waiting for an answer, Diane ran down the street, away from him, turning around after a while to look back, waving, backing into someone, nearly falling, brushing hair out of her eyes, finally descending into the darkness of the subway. She had hardly gone and he missed her. What was the matter with him? He had enough trouble keeping in touch with the past without having to revise his commitment to the present. Watch yourself, Becker, something warned him. Watch where you’re going.
Restless, too exhilarated to go right home, he walked across Seventy-second Street to the park. It was a warm evening — the benches along Central Park West lined with people. The desolation of their faces — their vigil not to see — touched and frightened him. The eyes of so many of them seemed like prisoners, humiliated at the compromise of their lives, intent impassively on revenge. A crowd had gathered in a semicircle on the next corner. Peter, who had been walking slowly to protect his back, quickened his pace, curious to see what was going on. Two boys, both Negroes, were wrestling, the heavier of the two had pinned the other to the ground, and was now banging his head against the sidewalk. The crowd, mostly white, watched impassively. A few shouted encouragement to the boy on the bottom. “Why doesn’t someone break it up?” Peter asked. The man next to him shrugged. “You got a good fight to watch, mister. Don’t complain.” The smaller boy had gotten his knee in the bigger one’s groin and had succeeded in turning him over. The man next to Peter cheered. “I love an underdog,” he said. “It’s the American way — to love an underdog.” In a moment the big one was on top again, his knee in the smaller boy’s stomach. Peter stood with the crowd for a while, more out of lethargy than will, until his back began to throb, and then, with the caution of a man who had a frightening amount to lose, he made his way home. He didn’t interfere, he told himself, because Phil was arriving tomorrow, and his obligation, his first obligation, was to his son. Who could believe it? In some ways, he decided, he liked the old Becker (hard to tell them apart sometimes without a score card for a memory) better than the new.