He stirred restlessly on the metal chair. He ought to get up and start moving around again, but he was haunted by the certainty that if he did that, his feet would carry him right out of the park and back to the downtown subway.
He ran his fingers over his forehead. He was sweating. There was a woman sitting at the next table, drinking iced tea. She was about thirty-five, he would have judged, dressed in expensive-looking clothes. She looked at him peculiarly, and he dropped his glance. He stood up, pushing his chair back with a harsh rattle of its legs on the terrace stones, and walked quickly down into the plaza where the seal tank was.
He watched the seals for a few minutes, his hands closed over the fence rail. The thought that he was on the verge of giving the whole thing up bothered him tremendously.
He had thought this business out, after all, and come to a logical decision. He had always abided by his decisions before, and they had invariably worked out well.
It was this Barbara business, he decided. There was nothing wrong with being in love with her — there was plenty of room for illogic in his logic — but it was bound to complicate his immediate plan. Yet, it was obvious that there was nothing he could do but go ahead in spite of it. Barbara, or a girl like Barbara, would come later, when he had settled his life down. That all belonged in a different compartment of his mind, and ought not to be crossing over into this one.
It was the first time in his life that he found himself unable to do what he ought to do, and it bothered him deeply. It made him angry. He turned abruptly away from the seal tank and marched up the steps back toward the exit beyond the lion cages.
While he’d been drinking his milk, apparently, a girl had set up a camp stool in front of the cages and was sitting on it, sketching. He noticed her out of the corner of his eye, walked up to her, and without even having bothered to particularly look at her, said challengingly, “Haven’t I seen you someplace before?”
3
The girl was about his own age, with very pale blond hair that was straight, cut close to her skull, and tapered at the back of the neck. She had high cheekbones with hollows under them, a thin nose, and a broad, full mouth which she did not lipstick to the corners. Her eyebrows were very thick and black, painted in with some gummy black cosmetic that looked like stage makeup more than eyebrow pencil. She was wearing flat ballet-ish slippers, a full printed skirt, and a peasant blouse. Her eyes were brown and a little startled.
Lucas realized that it was almost impossible to know what she really looked like, that she was probably quite plain, and, furthermore, that she was far from a girl he could even like. He saw that the sketch she was working on was completely lifeless. It was a fair enough rendering of a lioness, but it felt like a picture of something stuffed and carefully arranged in a window.
He felt angry at her for her looks, for her lack of talent, and for being there. “No, I suppose not,” he said, and turned to walk away.
“You may have,” the girl said. “My name’s Edith Chester. What’s yours?”
He stopped. Her voice was surprisingly gentle, and the very fact that she had reacted in any calm way at all was enough to make him feel like an idiot. “Luke,” he said, and, for some reason, shrugged.
“Are you at the Art Students’ League?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. I’m not.” He stopped, and then, just as she was opening her mouth to say something else, he blurted, “As a matter of fact, I don’t know you at all. I was just — ” He stopped again, feeling more foolish than ever, and getting angry again.
Surprisingly, now, she had a nervous laugh. “Well, that’s all right, I guess. You’re not going to bite my head off, are you?”
The association of ideas was fairly obvious. He looked down at her sketch pad and said, “That’s not much of a lioness.”
She looked at the drawing too, and said, “Well, no, I suppose it isn’t.”
He had wanted to draw a hostile reaction out of her — to start an argument he could walk away on. Now he was in deeper than ever, and he had no idea of what to do. “Look — I was going to the movies. You want to come along?”
“All right,” she said, and once again he was trapped.
“I was going to see Queen of Egypt,” he declared, picking a picture as far as possible from the taste of anyone with pretensions to intelligence.
“I haven’t seen that,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind.” She dropped her pencils into her purse, put the sketch pad under her arm, and folded the camp stool. “We can leave all this stuff at the League,” she said. “Would you mind carrying the stool for me? It’s only a couple of blocks from here.”
He took it without a word, and the two of them walked out of the park together. As they crossed the plaza, going toward the Fifth Avenue exit, he looked over toward the terrace in front of the cafeteria, but the stylishly dressed woman who’d sat at the next table was gone.
4
He stood in front of the League building, smoking, and waiting for the girl to come out. He didn’t know what to do.
The thought of walking around the corner and taking a downtown bus had occurred to him. His hand in his pocket had already found the quarter for the farebox. But it was obvious by now that he’d picked on a girl not very many boys could be interested in, and that if he walked out on her now, he’d be hurting her badly. This whole thing wasn’t her fault — he wished it was — and the only thing to do was to go through with it. So he waited for her, Gripping the quarter angrily in his pocket. In due course she came out.
By now he was feeling ashamed of himself. She came out quickly, and when she saw him, she smiled for the first time since he’d met her — a smile that transformed her face for a moment before she remembered not to show relief at his still being there. Then she dropped her eyes in quick decorum. “I’m ready.”
“All right.” Now he was annoyed again. She was so easy to read that he resented the lack of effort. He wanted someone with depth — someone he could come to know over a long period of time, someone whose total self could be unfolded gradually, would be always interesting and never quite completely explored. Instead, he had Edith Chester.
And yet it wasn’t her fault. It was his, and he ought to be shot.
“Look — ” he said, “you don’t want to see that phony Egyptian thing.” He nodded across the street to where one of the expensive, quality movie houses was showing a European picture. “How about going to see that, instead?”
“If you want to, I’d like that.”
And she was so damned ready to follow his lead! He almost tested her by changing his mind again, but all he did was to say “Let’s go, then,” and start across the street. She followed him immediately, as though she hadn’t expected him to wait for her.
She waited at the lobby doors as he bought the tickets, and sat quietly beside him throughout the picture. He made no move to hold her hand or put his arm on the back of her seat, and halfway through the picture he suddenly realized that he wouldn’t know what to do with her after it was over. It would be too early to take her home and thank her for the lovely evening, and yet too late to simply leave her adrift, even if he could think of some graceful way of doing it. He was tempted to simply excuse himself, get up, and walk out of the theater. Somehow, for all its clumsiness and cruelty, that seemed like the best thing to do. But he held the thought for only a few seconds before he realized he couldn’t do it.
Why not? he thought. Am I such a wonderful fellow that it’d blight her life forever?