She hurried out of the diner and walked to the supermarket down the block. She pushed a cart up and down the long aisles, filling the basket and deciding while she shopped that she wouldn’t cook dinners at the apartment. There were so many restaurants to try. Economizing on breakfasts and lunches was enough.
She’d be spending enough time in the apartment anyway.
She shopped slowly, buying a large quantity of food. She stocked up on eggs and coffee and bacon, and bread and sandwich meat for lunches, and fruit juices and milk and everything else that caught her eye. Shopping could be an end in itself. She had learned long ago that it could provide as perfect an escape as reading, that a person could lose sight of herself completely when she tried on pair after pair of shoes or pushed a market basket or simply stared into store windows.
The hell with it, she thought angrily. The hell with it, whatever it was. I don’t care what I am or who I am, but I can’t go on escaping forever. I can stand it, whatever I am. But I can’t stand running, always running.
The hell with it.
Back at the apartment she unpacked the groceries and put them away. The refrigerator looked better now, filled with food and ready for use. The shelves were not so empty any more. She put a pot of water on the stove for coffee and made the bed while she waited for it to boil.
The apartment was beginning to feel more and more like home. Somehow the mere act of working in an apartment, of straightening it up and buying food for it, made it seem to belong to her. It had been Ruthie’s and it would be Ruthie’s once again when Ruthie returned to the city, but now it belonged to her, and she lived in it.
She’d buy more books, she decided. Books that she wanted. And some decent curtains for the front window. And a good-looking table cloth for the kitchen table instead of the red and white checkered rag that was on it now.
She put a spoonful of instant coffee in a cup, poured water in, and sat down in the living room to drink it.
I’m here, she thought. I’m here, but where do I go from here?
The time passed. She started another of Ruthie’s books, an obscure novel that didn’t sell well but had been reviewed favorably in several of the literary quarterlies. The characters remained quite shapeless after the first fifty pages, and she put the book down unfinished, knowing she would never return to it.
She sat motionless in her chair for several minutes. Then she rose and walked to the kitchen to re-light the burner under the pot of water. While it boiled she brushed her hair before the bathroom mirror, letting its glossy blackness flow over her shoulders and down her back. She put on fresh lipstick and smiled at herself in the mirror — a fast smile that left her face before she was out of the bathroom.
She made more coffee and returned to the chair in the living room and pulled another book from the shelf.
It was four-thirty.
It was five-thirty when the bell rang.
The bell startled her, for she had never stopped to realize that there actually was one for her apartment, that a person might visit her and might press the button in the vestibule. She got to her feet, setting the book down on the arm of the chair and walking to the kitchen. There was an answering buzzer for her to press, she knew, but she didn’t have the faintest idea where it was. She hunted around for several minutes before she located it under the light switch. For a moment she hesitated; then she pushed the buzzer and heard the door open in the hallway.
“Who is it?” she called, but there was no answer. Then there was a knock on her door and she opened it.
It was the folksinger, the boy called Mike. “Hi,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”
She took a step back and he walked through the kitchen to the living room, sat down on the couch. She sat across from him in her chair, wondering how he had found her and what he wanted.
“Saw you walk home last night,” he explained, answering her question before she had a chance to ask it. “Just wanted to drop over.”
“Why?”
He looked very relaxed in a flannel shirt and faded blue dungarees, as if he was already at home in her apartment.
“Why? Oh, I wanted to get to know you.”
“What do you mean?”
He leaned forward, resting his chin in one hand and looking at her intently. “New York’s a funny town,” he said, slowly. “It’s the only town worth living in, but there are some problems. For instance, it’s impossible to start a conversation with someone like you. Know what I mean?”
She shook her head.
“I’m from a little hick town upstate that nobody ever heard of. There was never anything much to do, but if I ran into anyone new on the street I could say hello.
“Here it’s different. Suppose a gal and a guy bump into each other on the subway. She looks interesting. She’s pretty, she looks bright — so the guy’s interested. What can he do?”
“I don’t know.”
“He can’t do a thing. Whatever he does, he comes across as a guy on the make. If she’s a tramp he’s set, but suppose she’s a nice gal. Then she rides to her stop and he rides to his stop and they never see each other again.”
“Unless—”
“There is no unless.” He leaned back, crossing his legs and smiling. “There’s nothing he can do.”
“He can follow her home and drop over the next day,” she said. “And then he can tell her what’s the trouble with New York.”
He grinned. “All right,” he said. “I’m interested in you. Now you know.”
I knew that, she thought. You didn’t have to tell me. I knew that from the way you looked at me.
“I tried last night,” he went on. “I started a conversation, tried to get you talking. And you assumed I was on the make and cut out.”
“I didn’t think—”
“Of course you did. I’m not blaming you; it’s the way things go around here. But I would like to talk to you and I’m not on the make. If you want I’ll get out now, but—”
“No,” she said, slowly. “No, stay.”
“Thanks.” She couldn’t tell whether or not he was being sarcastic.
“I mean... you’re right. I don’t know anyone in New York and I should. I should get to know people.” Her words sounded mildly ridiculous, but she was talking as much to herself as to him, getting things straightened out in her mind. At first she had resented his visit but now she was glad he had come, glad there was somebody for her to talk to.
“Good. Let’s get to know each other.”
On the surface his words seemed to flow easily, but she sensed that the conversation was hard for him, as hard as it was for her. It seemed as though he hadn’t played this particular scene before and was unsure of his lines. Maybe the unsureness was part of his line, a line he had used dozens of times before. But she doubted it.
“How do we start?”
“Anywhere. Tell me who you are and what you’re doing here and anything else that seems to fit in. Okay?”
“Okay.” She smiled suddenly, warming to the game. Then she lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it.
“I still don’t know where to begin.”
“At the beginning. Don’t worry — I’ll stop you if it gets boring.”
She began to talk — guardedly at first but more openly as he drew her out and she began to relax. She told him about her home and her parents and the school she went to and the classes she took and the books she read and the people she knew. She left out a lot, but what she omitted didn’t matter.
And he helped her along. He seemed to know everything, to have read all the books and have been to all the places. He wasn’t much older than she was, but he talked as if something had made him grow a great deal in a short time. As he talked his body relaxed more on the couch.