The city was there on that Thursday too, but it seemed dull and lifeless and sad to Eve. Walking along Fifth Avenue with Larry, she thought, This is the most beautiful street in the world, but the thought was shallow because she could muster no real enthusiasm for it.
“Mama wants to give the kids a reception on Saturday,” she said. “At the apartment. Can we stay until then?”
“You can stay,” Larry said.
“What about you?”
“I’m leaving tonight,” he told her.
“Leav—? Oh, yes. I’d forgotten.”
They walked silently. A wind was rising. It seemed as if it would begin raining any moment.
“Where will you go, Larry?” she asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“What time are you leaving tonight?”
“About nine.”
“So late?”
“I like to drive at night.”
“There’s a hurricane coming,” Eve said. “Couldn’t you wait until—”
“It may by-pass us completely.”
“And it may not. Doesn’t Linda’s wedding mean anything to you?”
“Of course it does.”
“Then you can stay for the reception? It’ll only be family and some friends. It’ll seem very strange if you’re not there.”
“You can tell them I had some important business to attend to. Upstate.” He shrugged. “I’ve been called away before.”
“Yes,” she said. “But Larry, there is a storm coming. Is it so important that you leave tonight?”
“I want to get away,” he said.
“I’m not trying to stop you, but you can leave Sunday or Monday, can’t you? Why tonight?”
“I’m leaving tonight,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter what I say any more, does it?” she said, and he didn’t answer.
They sat at the fountain outside the Plaza. Eve clenched her hands in her lap, and she stared straight ahead of her into the grayness of a city waiting for a storm. She sat with a growing sadness inside her. She sat feeling empty and drained and dead.
She had tried on Tuesday to explain things to Linda, and she could not. Now sitting at the fountain, she tried to explain things to herself and she was faced with the same impenetrable haze, the same inability to reason or think clearly. If only she could think. If only she could lay things out simply — this and this are so, that and that are not — if only she could think.
But the only sure thought she had was that uncertainty was certain. She had put complete trust in a man she thought existed, and the trust had been broken. For some reason this man had chosen to walk alone, ignoring her by his side. Alone. And you could not talk to someone who was alone, you could not reach that person, you could not touch him. He could not hold you close and comfort you, he could not say the things you longed to hear, he could not say, “It’s all right, I’m here with you. I’ll always be with you.” Speechless, faceless, mindless, the man who sat beside her was a stranger.
Facing his aloneness, her own solitude seemed overwhelming. She was suddenly frightened. The world seemed like a gigantic place to her all at once, a strange and forbidding place where she wandered alone and unwanted. There was danger in this place, hidden behind every tortured outcropping of rock, every twisted tree. In the wilderness, she wandered alone, her eyes wide with terror in a world alive with menace. In all this lonely wilderness, there was no one to whom she could turn — no firm hand or smiling face — only a forest of clutching trees and tearing brambles.
Whom can I trust? she thought. To whom can I go? Who wants me? Who loves me? What shall I do! How will I live, how will I survive, what can I do, where shall I turn, whom shall I love, what does one do alone, why am I alone, why am I afraid, I don’t want to be alone, I need someone, I’m scared, I can’t alone, I’m scared, I can’t, I don’t know, I want, alone, no, I can’t, yes trust please, love please, me please, take, take, please, I can’t, I’m afraid, I’m afraid, please, I’m afraid, please, please, please, PLEASE.
And the tears burst from her eyes like explosions of her soul.
She had cried before. She had certainly cried before. But this time the tears were tears of utter bewilderment, of sorrow wrenched from the depths of her being, sorrow that rose in her throat and burned there, scaldingly hot, to erupt in great wracking sobs, claiming her completely because she did not know why she was crying and so the crying became a final act in itself, with no reason for being and no reason for ceasing.
Larry turned to her, alarmed. “Eve, what is it?” he asked. His eyes darted from her face to the passers-by, and then back to her face again.
“I don’t know,” she said. She moaned the words. The words were the tortured cry of a wounded animal hiding in the darkness. “I DON’T KNOW!”
He seized her shoulders and shook her, and she stopped for a moment, gasping for breath. And then the crying came again in a series of short machine-gun bursts, her breath uh-uh-uhing as she tried to hold back the giant sobs. Her entire body trembled with the effort to hold back the sobs. The tears ran, but her sorrow did not need tears, needed only the twisted, tortured face, the wildly moving fingers in her lap, the gasps for breath as if she were suffocating, desperately trying to suck air into her lungs.
He shook her violently. “Stop it!” he said. “Eve, stop it!”
She nodded, but she could not stop crying. Foolishly, all she could say was “The people, the people...”
“The hell with the people!” He put his arm around her and tried to pull her to him, but she would not move. Her chest and shoulders heaving she sat like a stone and would not respond to his touch. “What is it?” he asked desperately.
“Are you happy?” she asked. Her voice was very small. It barely escaped her lips, thinly wedged itself between the sobs.
“No,” he said.
She nodded her head, and then she shook her head. The crying was beginning to taper off. Nodding, she said, “I want you to be happy.”
“All right, but stop crying, Eve. Please...”
“Can’t you be happy?”
“Yes. Yes, I can. It’s...”
“Is it me?”
“Eve, please, try to stop crying. Please don’t cry like this.”
“I can’t help it. Is it me?”
“No.”
“Is it? Am I making you unhappy?”
“No.”
“Because if it’s me...” A new wave of anguish tore through her. She turned her head from him, sobbing, gasping for breath.
“Eve, Eve...”
“If it’s me, say so. Tell me, Larry, and I’ll let you go.”
“Eve, this isn’t the time to...”
“When? When you come back? Will you come back, Larry? Will Larry come back, the person I used to know? Where are we, Larry? Who are we? Larry, don’t you know how much I need you?” she said, hurling the words on a sob, and then turning on the seat to fling herself into his arms. “Please don’t cut me off, please don’t kill me. I have to know I’m yours. Please, Larry, please!”
He held her close, and he comforted her and soothed her. The passers-by looked at them strangely, and then glanced skyward again, anticipating the arrival of Felicia.