“Things happened when you couldn’t sleep?”
She watched me with a rather helpless smile above the match flame. “Do you telepath or something? Not that I’d mind awfully…. Oh, I began remembering more and more, couldn’t stop — please, Will, without prejudice to my right of being nine years older, huh? But — take me to him.”
“Sure?”
“Why, you sevenfold so-and-so, I can’t rest till I see him. Once anyway. And you knew I couldn’t. Green Tower, you said — I sort of wouldn’t care to go alone. Well, look—” She unfastened a button of my shirt, puffed a lungful of smoke through the opening, and stood back to study the effect. “Like that, you — you character. Make people start smoldering with silly ideas, you’ve got to take the consequences.”
I slipped an arm around her and walked her into the kitchen. I felt the shock in her like an electric charge, and took my arm away.
Abraham was standing on the other side of the cluttered table. I saw his small brown hands spread out, finger tips supporting him, and heard him say raggedly: “Don’t look now, Will, but you’re still smoking.”
I ignored that, as Sharon did. I don’t know how long they stood quietly, staring at each other. Long enough for a universe to spin a while. I remember picking up a spoon and setting it down with great care lest I hurt the silence. Neither had spoken when Sharon walked around the table. She raised her hands to his forehead and moved them down slowly, over his eyes and cheeks and mouth, until they were resting on his shoulders. He said nothing, but she spoke as if answering something, with gravity and a little surprise: “Why, did you think you could love any woman but me?”
I said: “For your information, Abraham, the world won’t blow up.” He might have heard it; I don’t know. I stepped into the living room and shrugged on my overcoat. At the door I glanced down and muttered: “Nah, Elmis, not slippers.” My shoes were by the armchair where I had kicked them off, so I studiously shoved my old four-toed feet into them. I didn’t hear any conversation from the kitchen. I went out to the elevator and rode down and walked a mile or so into the city’s morning. The wind was chilly but very fresh and sweet.
After a time I was aware that someone was following me. I put on an act of window-shopping in one or two places, but couldn’t get a fair look at him. A small man in nondescript gray-brown, busily peering into windows himself, his face averted. I tried a few aimless turnings, enough to make certain that I was his quarry: there was no doubt of it; he clung. I climbed to Second Avenue Upper Level, and walked a few blocks before pausing at a bus stop to look back. He was no longer with me. That I found strange — if a bus came now he’d lose me — unless he had turned over the task to some other shadow. I strolled away from the bus stop and entered a drugstore on the Upper Level, finding a seat at the soda counter from which I could study the sidewalk over my coffee. No one else came in while I lounged there. No one even looked in, except a harmless-seeming woman who halted to glance at the menu in the window and moved on.
I couldn’t detect anyone tailing me as I gradually retraced my course to the apartment house. I had used up about an hour and a half. It was past ten o’clock and the sky had grown dingy, preparing a spring storm.
Someone with a familiar back was hurrying for the self-service elevator when I came into the lobby. Bright platinum hair, a fine hip-swing. Not good. I grabbed the elevator door as she was about to close it. “Oh, hello, Will! But how lucky! I was on my way to see you.”
“Fine.” I searched a bumbling and semiparalyzed brain for something that might work. “Things are kind of upset — can’t I take you out somewhere? Had breakfast? Coffee anyhow—”
“Oh my, no!” She batted cute eyelashes at me. “Too much trouble, and anyway I had breakfast.” She poked the button and the cage started up. I could have asked how she happened to know my floor. I didn’t. “I don’t mind a bit, Will — I’ve seen how you helpless men keep house, everything just everywhere—”
“But—”
“Now, that’s all right, don’t give it a thought!” She captured my arm and hugged it to her side. “Simply had to talk to you about something, awfully important, that is to me—” Miriam Dane chattered on, managing to say actually nothing at all, until we were in front of my door.
I tried again. “Got a friend staying with me, he’s been ill and — well, sleeping late. Small apartment. Really be better if we—”
“Now you stop fretting. I’ll be so quiet, and it’s only for a minute.” She wasn’t exactly the woman I had met at Max’s. In some subtle fashion she looked older. I had not sensed any steel of determination in her then. She had it now, and there was coldness in the steel. She quit smiling and chattering, because I had quit being Santa Claus. She watched me as if she intended to hypnotize the key ring out of my pocket. It wouldn’t do. I stared back at her, not wanting to get rough or disagreeable, not reaching for my keys either. The smile was all gone. A tiny shoe with a rhinestone buckle began to tap on the floor. She said without any pretense, evenly and clearly: “It’s necessary that I see Abe Brown.”
So they had followed him last night. Followed, but hadn’t done anything. Until now. Too busy maybe: Max and his boys might not be having an easy time over the death of Daniel Walker, with a New York police force which they say has been incredibly honest for the last thirteen or fourteen years. “Why, Miriam?”
“Why!” Her neat shoulders rose and fell. “After all! We’re engaged. As you know. I could ask, why’s it any of your business?”
“He came to me. That made it my business.”
“Really! He’s of age. And this happens to be Party business.” It was already open war. I said: “I still want to know why.”
“You’re not a member. What right’ve you got to know?”
“He’s not a member either.” I was making my voice reasonably strong, hoping it might carry through the thick door.
“Needn’t shout.” She was showing the whites of her eyes. “That’s got nothing to do with it, Mr. Meisel. Don’t be so difficult.”
“All right. Come in. But do you mind if I look in your handbag?”
“My — handbag?” I saw then that she used a trace of rouge: her cheeks displayed unhealthy little roses as the blood drained out of them. Her right hand darted to the blue bag, and my hand closed over hers before she could open the catch. It could be tough for me, if she screamed. I didn’t think she would, and I was right. She let the bag go, stood away with fingers pressed to her bright mouth. It was there, in the bag. A .22, like a toy but big enough. I hate the things anyway. I made sure of the safety, dropped the gun in my hip pocket, and returned the bag. “I carry it for protection,” she said, pathetic now. “Have to go around — queer places sometimes.” The pathos became precariously held dignity. “I’ve got a license for it. I can show you. It’s here — somewhere.” As she groped in the bag a tear spilled and rolled to her mouth corner. Uncalculated. So was the sniff, the flirt of her little tongue to her mouth corner while her hands were flutteringly busy. “You don’t have to be so damn mean—”
“Keep the license,” I said, “and I’ll give you back the ordnance, when you leave.” I punched the bell a couple of times and thrust my key noisily in the lock. “Coming in?” Impolitely I marched in ahead of her.
Sharon was in the armchair by the window with her feet tucked under her. Abraham at least had not noticed our voices out there. He sat on the floor beside her, full of quiet, drowsily conscious of her hand in his hair, not of much else maybe. Sharon smiled and murmured: “Knew it was you so I didn’t get up. We’ve talked ourselves into a coma, and—”