«I knew English when I came,» she said. «It was to be my profession, and I was going to be an English teacher. I love the language; it just seems to fit me. I used to think I spoke it perfectly, but here everyone can tell at once I am European.»
«You speak it too perfectly,» I said. «Can you still speak your native language?»
She laughed and spoke rapidly in something that sounded Slavic. I tried to repeat a few words and we went back and forth over the moussaka. She said, «You’re not a linguist.»
«I know that,» I said. «It’s all I can do to handle English. My copyreaders weep over my manuscripts. What was it that I was trying to say in that gibberish you were making me repeat?»
«You ask too many questions.»
«Oh, come on. It’s only natural for me to want to know.»
«No, no, that’s what we were saying. The words you repeated meant, ‘You ask too many questions.’»
She asked questions, too, just the same, and I spoke an incredible deal of nonsense over the baklava and coffee about how I had gotten started as a writer.
And then, unaccountably, her fires seemed to sink, and a frown, like a cloud, came over her face.
I said, «What’s the matter, dear?»
The «dear» slipped out unintentionally. I was feeling friendly.
She shivered a little. «I don’t know. I’m beginning to see things.»
«What things?»
«I think it’s because I was telling you I had seen that flash of movement when I left Mr. Devore’s room. It seems to have put me into a melodramatic mood.»
It was the first time that Giles had been mentioned since we had entered the restaurant and I felt his unseen presence come gritting down over the smooth evening sunshine that had seemed to fill the meal. «Well, what? Put a name to it.»
«When we were walking here, it seemed to me that someone was following us.»
«Following us? I didn’t see anything.»
«You weren’t watching. Well, neither was I, but I saw a man.»
«There were thousands of men all about us.»
«I saw him several times, always somehow near us, but not too near. And then just now, he came into the restaurant.»
I turned, of course, for my back was toward the door, and she said, «He’s gone. He only came in for a moment, as though to make sure we were still here.»
«Did you recognize him?»
«He was a complete stranger.»
«Was he the same man you saw in the street?»
«I can’t be sure. I just had a glimpse. But why should anyone just come in and leave? The man just looked around and left.»
I looked up at the clock on the wall over our heads. I pointed and said, «He drifted in to check the time and he wasn’t the same man who was in the street, and the man in the street wasn’t following us. And besides, you need fear nothing when you’re with me. Don’t let my size fool you. I tell you what, let’s take a walk. It’s not late at all.»
She smiled. «Where shall we walk? Let me guess. To your apartment?»
I felt myself flush, for, of course, my apartment was within walking distance. I said, «Innocent, your honor. If you were to beg to come to my place, I wouldn’t refuse you, but, my word of honor, I have nothing evil in mind.»
«It depends on how Darius Just defines evil,» she muttered.
«I have a walk in mind,» I said, «an honest-to-God walk along the side of the park in the fading twilight. I am suggesting a walk through beauty. It’s just two days after full moon and in the clarity of tonight’s evening air, we will see it rise nice and fat and orange over the park. And when we’re through, if you live anywhere within ten miles, I will take you home by taxi; or, if you’d rather, I’ll put you into a taxi and pay off the driver in advance.»
«Goodness,» she said, «you block off all reasonable paths to a kind refusal. What if I tell you I think I’m coming down with a headache?»
«Then I’ll tell you that the smell of the fresh spring foliage from the park will prove a sovereign cure.»
«Then that’s it. By all means, let’s take a walk, Darius.»
The waiter had brought back my credit card and I carefully computed the tip, and we were out.
17 SARAH VOSKOVEK 8:30 P.M.
It was about half past eight when we reached the park, and the twilight was well faded. In fact, if I hadn’t talked about fading twilight so that I had a vested interest in it, I would have considered it night. The three stars that one can see in the city sky were out and the automobile headlights twinkled merrily on every side.
I put my arm about Sarah’s waist and said, «Are you cold?»
She said, «Not a bit,» but I left my arm there, just in case she became cold later, and she put hers around mine, perhaps for the same reason.
We were walking toward my apartment, but I said nothing about that and I swear I had no intention of maneuvering her there. It was the purest coincidence that we were walking in that direction.
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Asimov is deliberately having me overprotest here to make me look ridiculous.
Darius Just
All I can say is that I wish I had thought to use a tape recorder. You should have heard Darius swear, cross his heart, and kiss his pinkie ringer to heaven as a sign that his motives were pure. Not that I believed him for a minute.
Isaac Asimov
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The moon was exactly as I had predicted it would be and she told me that back in her apartment she had a field glass which she sometimes used from her apartment-house roof to look at the moon’s craters, Venus’ phases, and the four major satellites of Jupiter. I had never seen the satellites and I said so, and she said that someday she would show them to me; a promise which, at that moment, I treasured and meant to cash in.
She had apparently gotten over her grisly moment in the restaurant, but I wasn’t particularly aware of that, since, to tell the truth, I had utterly forgotten about it.
In fact, between the odd, and therefore erotic, feel of the waist of a mature woman in a position I had never felt before, and the utter placidity of the moment after the hectic almost interminable stretch of the convention, I felt an odd storybook romanticism of a kind to which ordinarily I am a stranger.
I said, in melting tones that I would not have recognized as my own if I could have listened to them from outside, «What a pity the park is off-bounds.»
«A pity indeed,» said Sarah. «It could be so beautiful on an evening like this; so peaceful to escape from the hectic city into the serene greenery.»
It was exactly what I had felt and a sense of wild grievance overcame me, a feeling of cruel deprivation.
«This,» I said, «is the result of a self-fulfilling belief. Once the rumor spread that the park was dangerous at night, the public began staying away, and a deserted park becomes, by that simple fact, dangerous. And since the wolves flocked for what prey remained, since their isolation made them easy picking, it grew still more dangerous.»
«I know. It’s a terrible pity.»
«But I tell you what. We need not penetrate its depths. Why not a bench near the edge with a light conveniently nearby? We can at least sit down and be shielded, just a little, from the traffic.» (I’ll be honest, I was thinking we might kiss a bit.)
She said, «Oh no. After all, if something happened—»