For weeks, I had been stalking the prowler. He stood, late most nights, just inside the glass outer door of the house, in the hallway, fumbling with the doorknob of the secondhand dress shop, which is on our ground floor. He just stood there, fumbling and smoking many cigarettes. I could see him from the sidewalk. When he saw me, he would leave, brushing by me and muttering. At other times, when he didn’t notice me, I would watch him. Some nights, I thought of locking the glass outer door while he was in there, and holding it locked until someone came and caught him; I could not quite imagine, though, how that would end. Last month, I really did catch him. I had been out to dinner, which I left early, in order not to get drunk. It was on Fifth Avenue. I found a cab. An elderly gentleman, who had left the dinner too, got in beside me. He said it was not safe, after dark in this city, for a lady to take a cab home alone. He dropped me at my door. He said we ought to have lunch, please to call him. He went off in the cab, not having noticed the prowler inside the glass door. I hadn’t noticed him either, until then. The prowler, smoking, fumbling, didn’t notice me at all.
I walked a few steps away along the sidewalk. There was nobody else around except one young, cheerful man walking toward me. “Excuse me,” I said. “I live two houses from here. There’s a prowler inside the doorway, in the hall.” The young man walked back. He looked in through the glass door. “I see there is,” he said. “I’ll walk you in if you like. If he isn’t armed, I can take him.” I said, No, thanks. “I practically know him. This time I’d like to call the police. I’ll try that pay phone at the corner.” He said, “I’ll walk you over. Just dial 911. 411’s information. I’ll walk on this side.” We passed a few people on the way to the corner. The man walking with me suddenly shouted, “Phil. Hey, Phil. Nice to see you.” He shook the hand of a bearded man who had just crossed the street. They were delighted to have met. Another friend of Phil’s crossed the street then. There were introductions. Phil offered me a dime for the pay phone. I used it. I called the police. I gave Phil his dime back. We shook hands. They went off. My original friend had gone back to stand outside the glass door of my building. When a police car pulled up, he said, “Goodbye. Take care.” I said, “Thanks.” He went away. More squad cars arrived. Two policemen went into the building. Another squad car. I was now standing with six policemen at the curb. A slightly drunk, kind and friendly-looking man walked to us, and asked whether I was all right and whether I had a boyfriend. I said I had. He said, “Sure?” I said, “Absolutely.” I pointed to one of the policemen. “O.K., sweetheart,” the drunk man said, and walked away. It occurred to me, and I am almost certain, that he thought he was coming to the aid of someone alone, being arrested by six men in uniform, when, after all, it was I who called the police.
Somebody was nudging my tray along the rail at the museum cafeteria. I was trying to keep my tray from bumping the tray ahead. I held my fingers firmly on the tray top, hooked my thumbs underneath the steel bar. The pressure of the nudging tray increased. I gave in to the superior determination. Doubtless, the tray pusher had had an awful day. I let go. My tray slid into the next tray, which slid into the next, which crashed into another. At the cashier’s corner, there was a pileup. Tea bags, jello, trays all over everything.
Our defense correspondent used to be so well informed that his pieces made only ordinary sense to readers of the paper; to members of what is called the intelligence community they made such perfect sense that agencies and weapons analysts did not simply wonder what he might be up to; they were scared. It was not at all clear what they were going to do about it. They themselves did not expect to be done away with at the end of their working days or even to enter anonymous retirement; they expected to write thrillers during their careers and memoirs after. But they could not believe, on the basis of his columns, that the over-informed correspondent, far from being any sort of clandestine professional, was that rarity, a truly industrious reporter, doing a thorough job. Our editors didn’t understand it, either. He was, finally, transferred away from defense matters. The correspondent, a modest man and a steady drinker, thought his transfer had to do with some deficiency in his writing style. He already admired what were widely thought to be the great reporters. His early, happiest days in journalism had been as a reporter for his father’s failing rural paper. He had written a regular column called “Wanderings in Rural Penn.” His first report had concerned an oak tree, which appeared to have the largest girth of any in Penn County. Immediately, he had received letters from county readers who claimed to have seen wider local oaks. He had gone to measure; he had been fair. He had written columns about the largest egg yolk in the county, and the smallest, and the egg that contained the largest number of yolks. He had traveled around the county, solemnly breaking eggs to make certain just how many yolks they did contain. His column had inspired, always, a brisk and concerned correspondence. The paper’s circulation improved. His father raised his salary. Those were his best years. When, so many years later, he was transferred to the culture desk, he knew that he was through.
It certainly does not do to have too low a threshold for being insulted. Even the affectionate insult, or the compliment with any sort of spin on it, can reverberate in memory in awful ways. “I love your little fat legs,” Paul said to Joanne. He had watched her walking toward him on the beach. He was so in love with her that, although he meant it, he may not even have heard what he said, exactly. She never forgave him. She slept with him for another year and then married his enemy and rival, the only man Paul had ever hated in the world. “You have beautiful eyes and lovely hands,” Leroy said to Jane, “and when you smile, to me you’re beautiful.” She never forgave him, either. She married him. Their life together was hell for fifty years. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re lovely?” is, of necessity, a minefield. There is no conceivable proper answer. It all ends in disaster anyway.
The lady was not just a vegetarian; she had many theories, about food, and the elements around one, about smells. The smell of x-rays, the smell of diets of one sort and another. She spoke a lot of the va et viens of the elements, and the foods one ate. She pointed out she had heard that we smell badly to the Japanese. She interrupted her discourse for a moment, paused, and then turned to the sculptor beside her. “Do we smell badly to you, Mr. Omura?” she said.
Contrary to the lore of restaurants and hotel schools, I find the women I know do tip reasonably and drink a lot. They are all educated women, though — in that age group which learned its courtesies from its own mothers; its loves from Paolo and Francesca, Bronte, Joyce, and even O’Hara; and all the solid enthusiasms in its cast of mind from what we used to emphasize were not anthologies, textbooks, or other secondary works, but from originals, the works themselves. Our ambitions were, nonetheless, what those of any sensible group of women at that time, perhaps at any modern time, ought to have been: to become safe and successful; to marry someone safe and successful; to have for our children some sort of worldly safety and success. From time to time, however, there is something, I don’t know, wistful, about how it has turned out. Not just Brecht’s great ship of the eight sails and the fifty cannon. The other ships. Perhaps the tall ships, the fleet, the craft, the other ships that don’t come in.