He mumbled something about buying her a drink. Without looking at him, Cath lengthened her stride and said clearly, “No, thank you.” He turned away, and she was glad when she came into the theater section, the better part of the city.
She turned into the lobby of the Hotel Glenton and went through a little act of looking anxiously around the lobby as though expecting to meet someone, ending with a shrug of disappointment as she sat down in one of the deep chairs.
She sat and looked at her fingers and saw that her nail polish was chipped. She inspected her knuckles and saw that the skin had grown coarse. She found a small callus on one thumb and wondered which of the continual household duties was responsible.
She looked at her hands and pretended that it was very subtle make-up, and that she had been cast in a part where the director was very anxious to have her grow old in a realistic manner, and they had done a careful job on her hands, gently roughening the clear soft skin. In adoption they had put two almost invisible parallel wrinkles across her throat, a few threads of white at her temples...
The game she played heightened her sense of unreality, heightened the feeling that she had been playing a part for several years, and that the real Cath, the Cath who danced and collected records and had her own battered convertible, was somehow buried cleverly underneath; at the proper moment, everything would be as it once had been. The children and Carl and the house were all parts of the stage design; she fitted them cleverly into the play, conscious always that this part was a challenge to her ability as an actress...
She realized that, without her having been conscious of it, tears had started to her eyes; she wondered why she was weeping. She snatched a handkerchief from her purse, blotted the tears, stood up and walked out into the night.
On the street, with people walking by her, she had a different feeling. It was as though she were a spy in the heart of the city, and she had to walk among them and pretend that she was one of them, though all the time she was completely different — of a different race, a different time, a different purpose. Should she fail to conform in every single particular, they would turn on her and point at her, and there would be a moment of tense silence before they took her away to some place she could not even imagine.
She stopped, looked into a store window where, in front of huge posters advertising Bermuda, were the plainest possible sport clothes, their mere simplicity attesting their supreme good taste.
She knew that she should tell the director that she was sick of this part, that it had gone on much too long and that tomorrow she would fill wardrobe trunks with expensive clothes and fly down to Bermuda to dream in the sun until all memory of the long part was gone.
It took a long time to walk slowly to the end of the brightly lighted area, and she turned and walked slowly back, stopping once more in the lobby of the hotel, glancing at her watch without seeing it, frowning as though she were furious at being kept waiting.
Once when she glanced at it, she noticed the time, and the small watch told her that it was nearly midnight. She stood up, thinking that there should be a long flight of stairs and that on one step she should leave a glass slipper...
The click of her heels was clear and definite as she walked back up the boulevard, turning left on Henderson.
A car cruised up beside her, edging along with her. She walked more quickly, lifting her chin a bit. The car horn beeped softly with a familiar note. She turned sharply, saw familiar outlines.
She hurried toward it with explanations on her lips that weren’t uttered because Carl said, “You going my way, lady?”
She affected coyness. “And what way would you be going?”
“Oh, I thought I might go out on the turnpike and buy a beer or two. Come along. I’m harmless.”
She slipped into the car, pulled the door shut behind her and looked at Carl. She saw his face in the dim light of a street light, set and calm, with mild good humor showing in his mouth. She had the odd feeling that he was indeed a stranger.
“My name is Carl,” he said.
“I’m Cath. What do you do, Carl?”
“Oh, I’m a pretty dull sort. Work in a construction outfit. Wife and kids. Own about half my own house. Wish I had a new car, and a few new suits. Average stuff. What do you do, Cath?”
“Housewife. Cook and clean and dust. A nice husband, two children, a small house. Just average. Nothing exciting.”
He laughed. “That gives us something in common. Just a couple of members of what they call the backbone of America. We can weep into our beer.”
He turned into the gravel drive of a roadhouse, parked in an empty space... They walked in, and he said, “A table in the bar? Or do you want to dance?”
“In the bar is fine.”
The two beers were set in front of them. Carl looked at her, and she felt sudden fear as she saw that his look was, in actuality, the calm appraisal of a stranger. She weighed him as a stranger and saw that his eyes were nice. It was a face that anyone would like — but there was a deep weariness in it.
“It’s a shame a good-looking gal like you has to be saddled with a house and kids,” he said abruptly.
“Is it?” she said coldly. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
“I bet you get restless with that husband of yours. I bet you feel trapped and that life is passing you by.”
“I do not!” she said hotly.
He grinned lazily. “Oh, come now! It can’t be very exciting.”
“How about yourself?” she demanded. “You’re trapped just as much as I am. Don’t you get restless?”
He took a sip of beer, set the glass down carefully. Then he frowned. “That’s a tough question, lady. Really tough. You see, I’m older than you are, and if you don’t like what I say, you can tell me it’s so much resignation, that I’ve given up fighting. I had a tough time when I was your age. I felt trapped and restless and... well, sort of alone in the world.”
“You did?” she said eagerly.
“Sure. I guess I never really got over it. I just realized what it is. You see, you’re always alone. Everybody you know is really a stranger. Even that husband of yours. Time passes; you don’t accomplish anything big. You just live. And always in your heart, you’re alone.”
She felt a lingering sadness. Gently, she said, “But what do you do? What can you do? How do you get over it?”
“I get over it with little things. You see, I love my wife, which is pretty much of an old-fashioned virtue, I guess. She’s a good kid, and I get a big bang out of the first look I get at her in the morning and when I come home at night. I have two kids, as I told you, and sometimes little things they do, or the way the hair looks on the napes of their skinny necks... even the buds on a rose bush that I bought for a buck... little things... I’ll never kill the world dead. I’m just going to be a guy who likes little things.”
Their eyes met for a long second, and she was the first to look away. She finished her beer, and he said, “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
They didn’t talk on the way back, and oddly, he let her out in front of the house. He went around the car, opened the door, and helped her out. He said, “Lady, I’m just a stranger to you. Maybe the next time you get all knotted up, I’ll be around to help.”
She went up the front steps, unlocked the door and went in. While she was paying Hilda, she heard Carl drive into the garage. After taking her coat off, she stood in the living room, until she heard him come into the kitchen.