A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Whatever he was and whatever it was he was after, he kept gaining ground, encroaching on her more and more as night followed night, while still keeping the distance between them fixed and unbridged, as it was now. The first couple of nights, for example, she’d managed to disengage herself from him at the crowded bus-stop where she took her bus, simply by waiting until the last possible moment before she jumped on, and thus leaving him stranded back there in the crowd. After that he knew which bus she took, so it wouldn’t work anymore. Then she shook him off by a reverse twist, maneuvering so that she succeeded in keeping him on the bus while she bolted off it without warning at her rightful getting-off place, and he was sent riding on foolishly past her to a destination that hadn’t even been his in the first place. But it was a hard thing to do, and now he knew her right departure-point this wouldn’t work a second time either. From there on in, it was a case of following her along the street at a carefully held-back distance, just enough to keep her in sight the whole time, and seeing which house she went in. She knew he was back there somewhere every step of the way, even though she couldn’t see him at all times. All that remained now was for him to come up openly to the door and try to get into the house after her. And the moment he did that, the tables swung all the way around and the law was suddenly over on her side.

But for tonight at least the problem remained, there before her, a few yards away.

She had to get the bus to go home down that way, past him. If she turned and went up the other way, she stood a good chance of slipping away unnoticed, he might not recognize her from the back. But this meant walking around all four sides of a very long block, in order to get back to where the bus-stop was. And after a hard day, on her feet most of the time since early that morning, she couldn’t face the thought. A better idea suddenly occurred to her. She turned and went back in again, almost as quickly as she had come out just now. She had to fight her way upstream against the surging tide of girls who were now pouring out the front entrance.

“Forget something, Leone?” a passing voice asked.

She didn’t bother to answer.

She accosted the lift-boy whom she’d passed a moment ago on her way out. “Emile, are you finished with that newspaper you have stuck in your back-pocket?”

“Not quite,” he said reluctantly. “I don’t get much chance—”

She reached out and pulled it away from him anyway. “Don’t be so stingy. I’ve shared parts of my lunch with you often enough, haven’t I?”

“All right, keep it,” he consented grudgingly. “Since when are you getting so studious? Next thing, you’ll be reading a book.”

She went back to the outer edge of the doorway again, keeping herself in just far enough out of sight of the waiter staked-out out there. She folded the paper over three times, so that it had bulk enough to stand upright by itself without sagging over at the top. Then she raised it to the approximate level of her face, covering the side of it that would have to pass closest to him, and held it that way with one hand. As if she was reading with her head turned aside to the paper, while she was walking along. It looked a little grotesque, but not to the point of conspicuousness.

She looked behind her and waited until a group of three had come out together, all going the same way obviously because they had their arms linked in comradely relaxation after the long hard working-day. She attached herself to them with a long swing around to their outermost side, and the four of them passed him abreast. Looking under the bottom of the newspaper, she could see his shoes standing there up against the building.

Curious, how you could read shoes, what they could tell you. She had never thought of this before. And in this particular instance, it was a shivery kind of lore. Shoes could indicate a whole bodily movement, could even indicate thoughts, even though you couldn’t see any of the rest of the person, from the insteps up.

Black shoes, these were. Not expensive, plenty rundown. They’d been around a lot, today and every day. They had a patina of dust all over them. The hubs had a line of perforations running around them and in the center a design like a musical clef-sign, she wasn’t sure what it was called.

One was flat on the ground toe-to-heel, the way any shoe usually is. The other, crossed over in front of the first, was balanced on its toe, the heel lifted clear. The fixed waiting position, waiting for her to show up, waiting for her to pass by. And as she did so, it went back to where it belonged, on the opposite side of its mate, and flattened out. The readying position: He sees someone. Is it me? Sure. Who else would it be? Now she was past. Looking backward, but still from under the newspaper’s bottom, the hubs of both had swiveled, pointing themselves after her. The alerted, about-to-start-out position.