“What were you doing? Did you sing all that time?”
“Most of the time. A few of us swapped songs, so I wasn’t singing straight through.”
“That’s a long time to sing.”
“Not so long. I went for seven hours once without stopping, and that was all by myself.”
“When was that?”
“A few years back. But I was younger then.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re still saying ‘uh-huh’. Do you say that all the time?”
“Sometimes I say ‘no’.”
“You do?”
“Uh-huh.”
It was easy. Talking to him was very easy, and he was very tall and very strong and kissing him might be easy, too, and it might be easy to let him touch her with his big rough hands.
He wouldn’t hurt her. His hands frightened her a little because they could hurt her so easily, could bruise the soft skin of her body. But they could be gentle, too. She knew that.
“Where are we?”
“Bleecker and Sixth.”
“Oh. Where are we going?”
“Nowhere special. There’s a street here you ought to see. Have you seen Minetta yet?”
“No. What is it?”
“It’s right around the corner. It looks the way the Village is supposed to look — too narrow for two cars at the same time and it bends in the middle and the buildings are painted different colors. Want to see it?”
She nodded. They crossed Sixth Avenue and turned left into the crooked little street. Minetta was exactly as he had described it. It was narrow, with just enough room for one lane of traffic down the middle of the street. The lamps were old-fashioned and at first glance she thought they were gaslights until he explained that the only gaslights were on Macdougal Alley.
And the buildings looked ridiculous at first, robin’s-egg blue and pink and muted scarlet and dove grey under the dim lights. She looked at them a second time and they looked pretty, and the third glance had them looking quite lovely and almost beautiful.
It was a make-believe street. She knew now that it didn’t really exist and that people didn’t actually live in the funny little buildings. He pointed out the little shops in some of the buildings — carpenters, leatherworkers, silversmiths and even a Chinese laundry. But it was all make-believe, and she thought what fun it would be to have a pretend apartment on the make-believe street and not worry about anything except what color to paint the building next spring.
“Woo-woo,” she said.
“What?”
“Woo-woo. Like in that book by John O’Hara, where the girl is a little bit drunk and everything is pretty and she says woo-woo. Don’t you remember?”
“Now I do, I guess. Was it Hope of Heaven?”
“I think so. I don’t remember much about it except that it was in California and the girl was a little drunk. I feel very woo-woo now.”
“How does it feel?”
“It feels good.” She rested her head against his shoulder and gave his hand a squeeze. “It feels wonderful.”
“Woo-woo.”
“That’s it exactly. That’s just how I feel.”
“You’re nuts,” he said. “Do you know that?”
“Not nuts. Just a little woo-woo.”
“Nuts. Nuts in a nice way, and pretty and drunk and even woo-woo, but still nuts.”
“Maybe.”
“You are. C’mon, I want to show you the courtyard. It’s the best part of Minetta.”
She followed him through the gateway of the building on the corner and into the courtyard. It looked even more unreal than the rest of the street, more make-believe than anything she had ever seen, and she decided that she must have walked through a looking-glass instead of through a gateway, because this couldn’t possibly be in New York.
There was a garden, first of all. In the middle of New York there was a street with a building with a courtyard with a garden. It was a real garden, with rose bushes and zinnias and delphiniums and something that looked like a grape vine. In the center of the largest flower bed there was a terra-cotta cat with water flowing and bubbling from its mouth.
The balconies overlooking the garden seemed to come straight from Mexico. All the windows had heavy iron grillwork. She felt as though she were standing in a patio in Guadalajara.
She said, “You should have brought your guitar.”
“Why?”
“So you could sing Spanish songs to me. I wish I could live here. Barrow Street is nice, but this is magical. Can you feel the magic?”
“I think so. I’ve been here a million times, but you haven’t and that makes it new for me. Does that sound corny?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s true, though.”
“Then it’s not corny, but I still wish I had an apartment here. I wonder what kind of people live here, Mike?”
“I don’t know. The rent must be pretty steep.”
“It would be worth it. And at night I could sit by my window and you could serenade me through the iron grille. Do you know Spanish?”
“Just a few Spanish songs. That’s all.”
“That’s enough, because we couldn’t talk, you know. You could only sing to me, and if you were very good I might throw you a rose.”
She turned to face him and he took her arms in his hands, looking down into her eyes. She returned his look. For several seconds nothing happened. There was total silence in the small courtyard, total lack of sound or motion. She was conscious only of herself and him.
In a moment he will kiss me, she thought. Do I want to be kissed?
A moment passed. He was about to kiss her. His head was ready to come down to hers, his arms ready to close around her body and press her against him.
And then, all at once, they were not alone.
She sensed them before she heard them and heard them before she saw them. They walked into the courtyard, not wandering or strolling but walking with a purpose, crossing the courtyard toward a doorway on the opposite side. She knew at once that she had seen them before, but there was a half-second between that moment and the moment of recognition while she waited for Mike to kiss her.
And then she remembered.
She turned slightly away from Mike and stared full into the face of the girl with the red-brown hair. She looked at the girl and the girl returned her glance and instantly they were alone in the courtyard as Mike and the small blonde girl seemed to fade away into the shadows. Mike still held her and the blonde’s arm still encircled the girl’s waist, but neither Mike nor the blonde mattered at all.
“Laura,” said the blonde. She said something else but that was all Jan heard.
Laura.
There was no mistaking Laura’s glance. Jan watched the two of them pass her and walk on toward the door, and she knew that there had been invitation in Laura’s eyes. Laura wanted her, and she wanted Laura just as much if not more.
“Jan.”
She turned back to Mike and leaned against him. She did not want him and she knew that she could not and would not want him, not ever, but she needed someone to lean on. She was weak and she was sick and she had slipped off the narrow ridge into the shadows without even jumping, without even straining for the sunshine.
Mike’s arms closed about her, gently, possessively, but she was not conscious of them as arms or as belonging to Mike. They were merely something to hold her, something to keep her upright and tight-lipped when she wanted to fall down and cry.
Hold me, she thought. Hold me but don’t want me, don’t ever want me because I’m no good for you and you’re no good for me and I love a girl and her name is Laura.