“This is it,” she said.
He followed her up the stoop. A woman was sitting on the steps, knitting. She glanced up at him as he passed, sensing immediately, with the instinct of self-preservation, that he was a cop. He could almost feel her shrinking away from him, and his own instinct asked the question, “What’s she done to be afraid of?”
Garbage cans were stacked in the hallway. The refuse had been collected earlier that day, but the cans were never washed and they filled the air with the stink of waste. There was a naked light bulb hanging in the entrance foyer, but it would not be turned on until dusk.
The girl climbed the steps ahead of him. He walked behind her; her legs were remarkably good for a girl so thin. They climbed steadily. There were voices behind the doors. He heard the voices in the medley of sound, and he reflected on the doors he had broken, a quick flatfooted kick against the lock to spring it, since he’d been a detective. Rarely had he knocked on a door. Rarely had he given the occupant a chance to unlatch it. The kick was quicker, and it precluded the possibility of a door being opened to reveal a hostile gun inside.
“It’s on the third floor,” the girl said.
“All right,” he answered, and he kept following her, watching her legs.
“Be careful, there’s a broken bottle.”
He skirted the shards of brown glass, smelling the whiskey fumes as he passed the alcohol-soaked wood. The girl stopped at a door at the end of the hall. She unlocked it and waited for him to enter. When they were both inside, she put the police lock in place, leaning the heavy, unbending steel bar against the door, hooking it securely into the steel plate embedded in the floor, so that it formed a formidable triangle against which entrance was impossible.
The kitchen was small but clean. A round table sat in the centre of the room, and a bowl was on the table. A single apple rested in the bowl. The girl went to the window and lifted the shade. Light, but not sunlight, entered the room. It was a pale light that bounced from the brick walls of the tenement not four feet away, leaping the airshaft between the building. The girl turned.
“I... I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I’ve never done this before.”
“No?” he said, and there was a trace of sarcasm in his voice.
“No. Could... could we talk a little?”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. Anything.” The room grew silent. Patiently, Randolph waited.
“I’m... I’m sorry the place isn’t nicer,” the girl said.
“It’ll do.”
“I meant—” She shrugged.
“What?”
“I don’t know. A girl likes to think—” She stopped, shrugging again. “Would you like a beer or something? I think we have some cold in the Frigidaire.”
“No, thanks,” Randolph said. He grinned. “We’re not allowed to drink on duty.”
The girl missed his humour. She nodded and then sat opposite him at the table. Silence crowded the room again.
“Have you been a cop long?” the girl asked.
“Eight years.”
“It must be terrible. I mean, being a cop in this neighbourhood. ‘
For a moment, Randolph was surprised. He looked at the girl curiously and said, “What do you mean?”
“All the... all the dirt here,” she said.
“It...” He paused, studying her. “You get used to it.”
“I’ll never get used to it,” she said.
She seemed about to cry. For a panicky instant, he wanted to bolt from the room. He sat undecided at the table, and then he heard himself saying, “This isn’t so bad. This is a nice apartment.”
“You don’t really mean that,” she said.
“No,” he answered honestly. “I don’t.”
The girl seemed to want to tell him about the apartment. Words were perched on the edge of her tongue, torrents of words, it seemed, but when she spoke she only said, “I haven’t got my own room.”
“That’s all right,” he said. “We can use...” And then he stopped his tongue because he sensed the girl had meant something entirely different, and the sudden insight surprised him and frightened him a little.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
“In a hotel,” he said.
“That must be nice.”
He wanted to say, “No, it’s very lonely.” Instead, he said, “Yeah, it’s all right.”
“I’ve never been to a hotel. Do people wait on you?”
“This is an apartment hotel. It’s a little different.”
“Oh.”
She sat at the table, and he watched her, and suddenly she was trembling.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because of... of what I almost did. What I almost became.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m glad you arrested me,” she said. “I’m glad I got caught the first time, I don’t want to be—”
She began crying. Randolph watched her, and he felt inordinately big, sitting across from her, awkwardly immense,”
“Look,” he said, “what do you want to bawl for?”
“I... I can’t help it.”
“Well, cut it out!” he said harshly.
“I’m sorry.” She turned and took a dish towel from the sink, daubed at her eyes with it. “I’m sorry. Let’s... let’s do it.”
“Is this really your first time?” he asked suspiciously.
“Yes.”
“What made you... well... I don’t understand.”
“I got tired,” she said. “I got so damned tired. I don’t want to fight any more.”
“Fight what?”
“Fight getting dirty. I’m tired of fighting.” She sighed wearily and held out her hand. “Come,” she said.
She stood stock-still, her hand extended, her shoulders back.
“Come,” she repeated.
There was a strength in the rigidity of her body and the erectness of her head. In the narrow stillness of her thin body, there was a strength and he recognized the strength because he had once possessed it. He rose, puzzled, and he reached out for her hand, and he knew that if he took her hand, if he allowed this girl to lead him into the other room, he would destroy her as surely as he had once destroyed himself. He knew this, and somehow it was very important to him that she be saved, that somewhere in the prison of the precinct, somewhere in this giant, dim, dank prison there should be someone who was not a prisoner. And he knew with sudden painful clarity why there were potted plants on the barred fire escapes of the tenements.
He pulled back his hand.
“Keep it,” he said harshly, swiftly.
“What?”
“Keep it,” he said, and he knew she misunderstood what he was asking her to keep, but he did not explain. He turned and walked from the room, and down the steps past the stacked garbage cans in the hallway and then out into the street.
He walked briskly in the afternoon sunshine. He saw the pushers and the pimps and the prostitutes and the junkies and the fences and the drunks and the muggers.
And when he got back to the precinct, he nodded perfunctorily at the desk sergeant and then climbed the stairs to the Detective Division.
Gene Fields met him just inside the slatted rail divider. Their eyes met, locked.
“How’d you make out?” Fields asked.
Unwaveringly, unhesitatingly, Randolph replied, “Fine. The best I’ve ever had,” and Fields turned away when he added, “Any coffee brewing in the Clerical Office?”