He was, however, looking intently down the stairs toward the street rather than expectantly inward toward the doors she had just come through. As though delayed more by inability to decide where to go than by intent to meet anyone. In fact, she could tell by the surprised look of recognition he turned on her as she passed, that he hadn’t seen her approach at all until then.
She would have gone by without a word, but his hand went to his hat — he had one on now — and he said: “Going home now?”
If she’d been astringent inside, she was vitriolic out here in the vestibule. This was strictly enemy territory. There was no bouncer out here to protect you, you were on your own. “No, I’m just checking in. I come up the stairs backward like this so they won’t see my face, know who I am.”
She went down the rubber-matted, steel-tipped steps and out into the open. He stayed behind up there, as though still at a loss what to do. And he wasn’t waiting for anyone, because there was just one girl left behind in there and she was already preëmpted. Again she gave that slight shrug of one shoulder, but this time mentally and not in actuality. What was it to her? What was any of it to her, anyone to her?
The open air felt good. Anything would have, after that place up there. She always gave a deep exhalation on first emerging, that was part relief, part exhaustion. She gave it now.
This was the real danger zone, down on the street. There were a couple of indistinct figures loitering about, well-offside to the doorway, cigarettes dangling from mouths, whom she refrained from glancing at too closely as she came out, turned, and went up the street. There always were; she had never seen it to fail yet. Like tomcats watching a mousehole. The ones who loitered about up above, they were waiting for some one particular girl as a rule; the ones down here, they were waiting for just anyone at all.
She knew this hazard by heart. She could have written a book. She wouldn’t have smirched the good white paper to do it, that was all. There was always a time-lag, when there was to be the challenge direct. It never came at point of closest propinquity, at the doorway itself; it was always withheld until she was some distance away. Sometimes she thought this had to do with courage. Rather than tackle the mouse face-to-face, the valiant toms waited until its back was turned. Sometimes she thought it was merely that their stunted developments needed that much longer to come to a decision about their choice of prey. Sometimes she just thought, “Oh, the hell.” And often, very often, she didn’t think about it at all; it was just a puddle of dirty water to be overstepped along her homeward way.
The challenge came in the form of a whistle tonight. It often took that form. It wasn’t an honest, open shrill whistle, at that. It was bated, surreptitious. She knew it was for her. And then a verbal postscript. “What’s your hurry?” She didn’t bother quickening her pace; that would have been giving it more respect than was due it. When they thought you were afraid, that emboldened them all the—
A hand hooked detainingly around the curve of her arm. She didn’t try to pull away from it. She stopped short, looked down at it rather than up into his face.
“Take that off me,” she said with lethal coldness.
“What’s the matter, don’t you know me? Memory’s kind of short, ain’t it?”
Her eyes were taut slits of white against the street-darkness. “Look, I’m on my own time now. It’s bad enough I’ve got to talk to guys like you—”
“I was good enough for you when I was upstairs two nights ago, though, wasn’t I?” He’d followed his own hand around forward, was blocking her way now.
She wouldn’t give ground, nor even pay him the homage of trying to step around him at the side. “Heavy spender,” she said evenly. “Shot sixty cents to pieces in one night, and now you’re trying to collect a bonus on it down here on the sidewalk.”
A cab had sidled up on the outside, drawn by some unobtrusive signal on his part that she had missed, its door dangling encouragingly open.
“All right, you’re hard to get; you’ve played your act. I believe you. Come on, I’ve got a taxi waiting.”
“I wouldn’t even get in a five-cent trolley-car with you, let alone a taxi.”
He tried to turn her aside toward it, partly by indirection, partly by main force.
She managed to slam the door closed behind her, and then it acted as a bulwark as he crowded her back against it.
A man had stopped opposite the two of them. That other one, who’d been in the upstairs foyer when she came out. She caught sight of him over this one’s shoulder. She didn’t appeal to him, ask him for help in any way. She’d never asked anyone for help yet in one of these passages. That way you were sure of never being disappointed. This wasn’t anything, anyway; it would be over in a minute.
He came in closer, said to her uncertainly: “Do you want me to do anything, miss?”
“Well, don’t just stand there. What do you think this is, an audition for the Good Will Hour? If you’re musclebound yourself, call a cop.”
“Oh, I don’t have to do that, miss,” he answered with a curious disclaiming sort of modesty, totally unsuitable to the circumstances.
He pulled the other man around toward him, and she heard the blow instead of seeing it. It made a taut impact against thinly-cushioned bone, so it must have been the side of his jaw. The recipient went floundering back against the rear fender of the cab, and overbalanced down the curve of that to the ground, half-prostrate and half-upright on one elbow.
None of the three moved for a minute.
Then the recumbent member of the small group scrambled to his feet with a curious recessive movement, pushing backward with his legs along the ground until he could be sure of rising at a safe distance from further blows. When he had risen, he turned, with neither threat nor sign of animosity, as one who is too practical to waste time on such heroics, and scuttled from their ken, dusting himself down the leg as he went.
The cab withdrew second, its driver deciding there was nothing further for him in this after a briefly questioning look to see whether she intended making use of it with her new partner.
Her thanks were scarcely overwhelming. “Do you always wait that long?”
“I didn’t know but what he was some special friend of yours,” he murmured deprecatingly.
“According to you, special friends have a right to hijack you on your way home. Is that what you do yourself?”
He smiled a little. “I don’t have any special friends.”
“You can double that,” she said crisply. “And you can stick in for me I don’t want any.” And she shot him a look that added personal point to the remark.
He saw that she was about to turn and continue on her way without further parley. “My name’s Quinn Williams,” he blurted out, as if seeking by that means automatically to detain her a moment longer.
“Pleased to meet you.” It didn’t sound as pleasant as the word-arrangement presupposed it to. It sounded like a lead quarter bouncing against a zinc counter.
She resumed her withdrawal, or rather continued it without having interrupted it at all.
He turned and looked behind him, in the direction in which her recent annoyer had disappeared. “Think maybe I should walk with you a block or two?” he suggested.
She neither acceded nor openly forbade him to. “He won’t come back again,” was all she said. He translated her indecisive answer into full consent, fell into step beside her, though at a formal distance of several feet.
They walked an entire block-length from the dance-hall entrance in mutual silence; she because she was determined not to make the effort to say anything, he — judging by several false starts he made that died stillborn — because he was unequal to it, was self-conscious, didn’t know what to say now that he had gained his point of accompanying her.