“I know it. But I still feel like crying. I can’t help it.”
“Don’t cry, Jan.”
“I—”
“Because I don’t want to cry and I will if you do. Please.”
She swallowed and said, “I’m all right now.”
“That’s the girl. You’re going to be happy, Jan.”
“I hope so.”
“You will, honey. Now... now I’m going to leave and I want to go before you do. I don’t want to be by myself right now.”
She stood up and walked to the closet, taking a raincoat from a hanger and slipping into it.
“Will I see you again, Laura?”
“If you do I don’t want you to talk to me. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Good. It’s better that way, Jan.”
“I understand.”
Smiling quickly, “Now will you give me a kiss?”
The kiss was very brief, very chaste and sisterly. Laura stepped back, her hand on the knob of the door, and Jan could see the tears flooding her eyes and at the point of overflowing.
She said, “So long.”
And then she was gone.
16
Solong. That was the song, of course. That was the song she had to hear, the song that was played in The Shadows at least a dozen times a day, day after day. How many times had she heard it? How many times had she been the one to play it, for that matter, or the one to cause some other girl to play it?
Too many times, she thought, dropping her dime in the slot and pressing the proper buttons. She turned and walked to an empty booth, glad at least that there was a booth to be alone in, glad that at The Shadows she could be all alone by herself and yet have people in the room with her.
The record. Such a sad song. Music and lyrics blending to create a mood which matched her own as no other song could. Some girls even cried to it, but it never had that effect on her. It summed things up so expertly that crying became unnecessary, as though the song did it for you.
As those melancholy lyrics said, she would not forget. Not Jan, not even if all the others were someday forgotten, all the girls she had left and all the ones who had left her. She had said this about each of them in turn but this time she knew it to be true. Jan would remain. Jan would stay in her mind until there was no mind left.
Such a short time. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And a part of Thursday. Four days, really — four days in a lifetime, and wasn’t that the title of a book? But all she could remember about it was that it drew four separate days from a man’s life and made them into a novel.
Four days.
They were such good days, such perfect days, and the tragedy was that they had to come all at once, one after the other. Days like that were so good that they ought to be spaced throughout a person’s life.
Or was it better this way? Perhaps the intensity of it all compensated for the brevity. She had told Peggy something to that effect, that the acceleration was matched by the loss of love and the lessening of the pain. Did that make it any easier for Peggy?
Probably not. The fact was important, but knowing it didn’t help in the least.
Something was different. This was an altogether new sort of break-up, a new chapter in the saga of the Musical Beds. The sadness and emptiness was present as always, the deep feeling of the loss of something precious.
But there was more.
She had left many girls and many girls had left her. And on rare occasions nobody left anybody — the relationship simply withered away with no broken edges.
But this was different.
So many good-byes. So many times and so many times to look forward to, so many girls still to be known, to be loved passionately and lost with equal passion. And yet this one affair was different from all that had been and all that was yet to be.
She looked around the room. The faces kept changing but the girls remained the same. And The Shadows never changed. It was supposed to have been a speakeasy during Prohibition, complete with peephole in door. And — in a sense it still was. It never changed and it never would change. The same records would spin forever on the jukebox while the same faceless waitresses served the same tasteless drinks. And the same tourists would stumble in to stare nervously at the dimly lit forms, leaving with the sensation that they had stepped into another world.
Even the same people would drink at The Shadows. Their names and faces might change but this did not matter. Kate wasn’t around; neither was a whole host of the girls who had been present Saturday night. Peggy was sitting across on the other side of the room, she noticed, and she thought of Peggy for a moment with something approaching tenderness.
But there was no time to think of Peggy. Later there might be time for her, later but not now.
Tonight was Jan’s night.
Tonight was a brand-new night. She had never felt quite this way before. She herself had never broken up an affair while still in love and she had definitely never felt the particular emotion that filled her. What was it, exactly?
Relief? Hardly. Fulfillment? Not that. Nothing like that.
What was it?
Never mind. Whatever it was, she felt strangely good about it.
She could have kept Jan with her, for a time. She could have fought with Mike and she might have beaten him. With a certain amount of effort she might have kept Jan in the shadows forever.
But she hadn’t. She hadn’t even demanded that last fitful and desperate love that Peggy had requested and received. She could have, but she did not really need it.
I must have loved her, she thought. I must have loved her one hell of a lot.
She had lost so much. This time she had loved more intensely than ever before.
Tonight would be empty and alone. Tomorrow morning there would be no one in bed beside her. But she would go on living, and then there would be another girl with brown hair or black hair or red hair — or blonde hair, she thought, looking briefly at Peggy.
Tomorrow or the day after. Always another girl, always someone else to fill part of the emptiness.
Musical Beds.
The game had to go on because you could never get away from it. If you lived in the shadows you had to be a shadow and play shadowy games. You had to run from the sunshine or be dissolved by it. When you were a shadow, the shadows were all you ever knew.
So long.
The magic word in the shadow world. You said it over and over until you died, but you could never say “so long” to the shadows.
And yet, for the first time, she felt as though she had caught one brief glimpse of the sun.
17
She was just barely aware of the rain. The water poured down on her as she walked, plastering her clothes to her skin and soaking her hair, but she remained only vaguely conscious of it. She noted the rain, accepted it and forgot it. There were too many other things to be aware of, too much to think about and try to understand. The rain was the least of her worries.
Everything was happening so quickly. It seemed as though that was the story of her life: things always happened before she was ready for them and ended before she had quite begun. Everything happened so quickly, so suddenly, and she was always just a little bit behind; just a little too slow to catch on, just a little too young and a little too frightened for each successive event.
But she was beginning to catch up. Finally she could feel herself growing older and moving faster, and everything was slowing down to wait for her. That was the way it had to be and the way it would be from now on.
She was going home. She had been trying for so many years to go home but there had never been a home for her, not since her mother died.