One might say it was womanly intuition guiding her, but Faye, sometimes wise beyond her years, saw in the boy-man the impulsiveness, the wildness of rebellion against his uncle… a rebellion that, perhaps, he didn’t even recognize in himself… and his need for stability.
Bill was almost twenty-eight years old. He had lived almost his entire life under the direction of his Uncle Morris, and Faye recognized the unnatural aspects of that kind of life. He should have been on his own, for several years, already. It was her hope, that in their marriage she would be able to provide Bill with the stability he needed, a stability in which he would be able to find himself… his true self. It was the stuff of which romantic dreams are made and dreamed by young brides. Faye was no exception; she knew she could do it, if only her husband were no longer under the direct influence of his uncle. To this end, she wanted them to establish their new home elsewhere than Santa Monica, the city in which he had been born and reared. She would insist they live out in one of the more pleasant suburbs; commuting on the freeways wasn’t all that difficult. Thousands of people did it every day.
She loved Bill. With her whole heart and soul, she loved him; she had known it from the first date she had had with him. Her recognition of it had been a revelation. Faye had been too sure that no man would ever capture her heart. The deep bitterness in her had been almost buried, in the deep recesses of her mind, and the man beside her, now her husband of three days, had penetrated the weakened defenses, made her come alive, again… something she had thought sure would never happen.
The psychic scars on her mind, the slowly healing lacerations of her soul and the deep, empty void in her heart had, somehow, been pushed aside, allowing her to hope, to live, again… and to love… replacing hate. Hate, she found, can only be destructive; love is generative. It was ever so!
It is one of the minor miracles of youth that tragedies are overcome with a tough resilience, a certain moral fiber and strength of character that one never knew existed in them.
Faye was young. She was just twenty years of age, having passed the all-important milestone from tender ‘teens into the magic of the sophisticated twenties and approaching majority.
Beautiful, downtown Burbank, that day, two months ago, when she had descended from the Greyhound bus, had been sunny and warm. She had looked out upon its streets, finding them new, yet there was a hint in them of the old life, something that reminded her of her own home town. Whether it was homesickness or nostalgia, an unspoken wish not to sever herself, completely, from something she had known, she didn’t really know, but she walked out of the bus depot into the street, finding herself at home, immediately.
She had almost chosen Burbank, blindly, when she had bought her ticket. Originally, she had wanted to go to Los Angeles, a place where she was sure she could lose herself. The sprawling city, its mass of humanity and its myriad activities offered her the anonymity she sought. It was, in her mind, the perfect place to hide, but on the spur of the moment, she had chosen Burbank. It was smaller, yet near Los Angeles; the deciding factor had been the knowledge that the NBC studios were located there.
Walking out onto the street, she was glad of her wacky decision. She knew that this city, a continent away, offered her, at once, a part of both the old life and the new one she must build for herself. Happily, she rushed back into the bus depot and claimed her three pieces of luggage. She became, on the instant, a citizen of the town named for the plant wizard. She was six weeks past her twentieth birthday, a stranger in a strange town… and alone.
Yes, she was a stranger, albeit a beautiful, young and vivacious woman… stranger; she didn’t stay a stranger for long. She moved fast.
First, she selected a clean and modest room, in a rooming house within walking distance of the downtown district. Secondly, the following day, she groomed herself, donning a demurely conservative suit and putting on her best smile, to apply for work. She returned to her room, in the late afternoon, happy and exhilarated with the prospect of starting work, as a clerk, the following day, in a combination book store and stationers.
Earlier that same afternoon, she had opened a bank account, depositing what was left of the six hundred and thirty three dollars she had withdrawn from the savings account her older brother, Robert, had opened for her. She remembered how painful it had been to make the decision.
It had been mostly her money. She had made deposits in the account, regularly, but she hadn’t wanted to take anything that wasn’t legally hers. Finally, she had resolved the problem in her own mind by withdrawing all but the fifty dollars Robert had first deposited. Now, she had her own checking account, for the first time; the figures in her bank book assured her the four hundred and seventy-four dollars were hers to do with as she chose.
Her own place to live, a job, starting tomorrow, and money in the bank gave her a comfortable feeling of independence and self-sufficiency, the very things that Robert had told her, over and over, again, she would never have, as he kept her dependent upon him. The tragedy, she realized, now, was that for too long she had believed him, clinging to him, after they were orphaned. It was a sick situation!
Catapulted into her final act of defiance and self-preservation had proved the lie. She had done exactly what he said she would never do; she had left him… packed her bags, withdrew the money, bought a bus ticket and left him.
She should have done it sooner. Robert would never be able to find her, and that was the way she wanted it… especially after that horrible night, before she left.
Never! Never would she return to that town or that house! She had been sure of that… after Robert, her own brother, had tried to make love to her. He had stripped her clothes from her… the memory of his actions, the mad light in his eyes… and the hugeness of his fully erect penis that he had tried to shove into her, as she struggled and squealed beneath him, was almost too painful to bear. Finally, she had escaped him, but she would never understand why he tried to do it to her. Of one thing she had been sure: She would never marry! Men! Men were beasts, and she hated them! She hated them all!
Then, she had met Bill Wright. She bad been living in Burbank for six weeks. To her, it seemed, already, that she must have lived in the city all her life. She seemed to belong there. That’s why she was shocked. Bill had called her a stranger. She was sure she knew almost everyone who came to the downtown area.
It had been during the slack time, in mid-afternoon, that Faye, following her employer’s directions, was restocking one of the higher shelves, behind the long counter. She was standing on a ladder reaching high up, her hands full of ledgers she had just price-marked when his voice startled her. She had not been conscious of his entry.
“When does the special sale start?” he asked, looking up to enjoy the view of shapely, tapering thighs.
Faye looked back and down at him. She started and lost her balance, momentarily; grasping at the ladder, she dropped the pile of black-bound books, emitting a little cry as they crashed to the floor. “Oh! Darn it!”
His amused eyes continued to look up at her, and she realized, suddenly, that her position on the ladder afforded him an unobstructed view of her legs and thighs… probably all the way up to her panties. She gasped and scrambled down from the ladder. He came around the counter, murmuring an apology, and scooped up the fallen account books, smiling down into her eyes as he handed them to her.
“I’ll take a dozen!” he said.
“A dozen… ledgers…?”
“No… a dozen just like you!”
Her face reddened, prettily. “Well!… Really… I’m…”
“You’re new… a stranger to Beautiful Downtown Burbank, aren’t you? I’ve worked around here for two or three years… thought I knew most everybody…”
“I’ve only been here a few weeks,” she confessed.