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

“What’s the matter, coffee no good?” he queried solicitously. She was a good, steady, nearly everynight customer, and he didn’t want her to be displeased.

“It’s not the coffee that’s the matter, it’s something else that’s the matter,” she answered gloomily. “I was just thinking to myself, that’s all.”

He shrugged and spread his hands out, much as to say: Well, we each have a right to our own problems, after all.

She got up and went over to the door, and looked around from there, before stepping outside. Gone. There was no sign of him. Or more likely he was covered up in some doorway, and she couldn’t distinguish him from here.

There was very little distance left to cover now, but she liked this last lap least of all. On the bus, there were people. In the eating-place, there was the proprietor. But the street was not an overly populous one, and this last had to be made all by herself, strictly on her own.

She almost ran the final few yards until she got safely to her own door. She blew a breath of relief. “Made it once more,” was the thought in her mind. And the inevitable corrollary to it was, but some night I won’t. The pitcher goes to the well once too often.

One foot safely within the open door, she leaned back far enough to turn her head and scan the street, down along the way she had just come from. Nothing, no one. But in a black door-embrasure a few houses down she thought she saw a wavy line that ran up and down one side of it, instead of being clear-cut and straight-edged like the other side was. That must be him, right there. She didn’t hang back to investigate. The door closed after her, and the street kept what it knew to itself.

Winded from the long climb, it was a walk-up of course, she let herself into her own individual flat, and went over to the window to investigate before putting on the lights. She’d been doing this for the last few nights, now. She didn’t need the lights to guide her, she knew the place so well, where everything was and how to go around it to avoid it.

The one thing he still might not know was which floor she was on and which window was hers, and she wanted to keep that final protective margin of error for as long as she could.

She went over to the side of the curtain and looked through from there, instead of dividing it in the middle, which might have been noticeable from the street.

She could see him down there, standing still down there. The olive topcoat stood out palely against the dinginess of the night. He wasn’t moving. Only one thing moved about him, and that moved while remaining in a still position. That is to say, it pulsed or throbbed; it glowed and dimmed and glowed again. It had a beat to it. The little ember-dab at the end of his immovable cigarette. There was something freezing and horrid about the way that nothing moved about him but that. It had in it a suggestion of leashed ferocity. Of hot-breathing, crouched bated-ness. Of a mauler snuffing and scenting its prey-to-be.

She put her hands up to the sides of her head and pressed them hard. She told herself: I’m walled-in here. If only there were another way out of here, a back way, a side way, any way at all. I’d like to run and run, and never stop. To the ends of the night. To the ends of the earth.

Then she said to herself: Stop thinking things like that. This is your place. You belong in it. Nobody has the right to drive you out of it. He can’t come in here. He can’t come any nearer than he is now.

She bunched a fist and pounded it down against the top of a chair-back in helpless remonstrance. Why couldn’t it have been any of the other girls I work with? Why did it just have to be me? That’s not a very charitable thought, I know, but being in a fix like this doesn’t give you time to be very charitable.

That’s not love, down there. It can’t be. Love sends you different kinds of messages. Love begins with talking first, with smiling. Love turns its face toward you, soft and shining, not hides it away from you. Love wants you to know it, not skulks in doorways in the dark.

It’s not just ordinary everyday sex, either. That sends you different kinds of messages too. Blunt maybe, but honest and open in their crude way. A hard meaningful body-stare. A look that asks you, How about it? You willing? A jostling in the crowd. A brushing of the elbows, a nudging of the foot. Maybe an opening remark in a slurred undertone for no one else to catch.

No, this isn’t that, either. This is something clammier than that.

He’s sick inside his head. What else could he be but that? Some kind of a maniac. And if people like that once ever get their hands on you— She winced with superstitious horror.