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

“I’ve only gone down the street a minute to get some foodstuffs. If you hear someone at the door, don’t jump at them, it’s only me. L.”

On her way back inside, burdened with bags and bundles like an overladen coolie, she ran into the fat woman who was in charge of the house.

The latter grinned with a wizened monkey-like expression as she saw her go by. “It pays to buy in large quantities like that, it’s more economical,” she observed. “You almost have enough there for two people.”

Leone halted and whirled around to face her. “Have I?” she challenged.

“One shouldn’t be alone too much,” the woman went on.

Now what does that mean? Leone wondered, beginning to tighten up inside. She said, “If you mean me, haven’t I always been? What about it?”

“After a while you — you know, you start talking to yourself.”

She overheard us, last night, Leone told herself, with a cold stricken sensation taking hold of her around the heart. “What do you do, come up and listen outside my door?” she flared up angrily. “Well, the next time, let me know what I say to myself! I want to know how good I sound!” And she swung around and continued on up the stairs, but with a chipper indifference she was far from feeling.

He was still asleep; he’d never even heard her leave. She put her things down, and then went over to where he was lying and stood looking at him for a moment. One of those gravely sweet, inscrutable looks that love can give at times. Then she bent over and kissed him, soft as a petal dropping, on the forehead.

His lids flickered and started to go up several times, then lost their battle and settled down once more. But a spark of consciousness had been ignited that was slower in dying down again. He went “Mm,” and his head stirred a little, and she knew that he could understand her, even though he seemed not to. Or he would remember what she had said when he fully woke up.

“Listen, I have to go now. I’ll be late getting back, this is our big day. Are you listening? When you get up, lock the door on the inside. I’m going to try to fix it with the old woman downstairs, to keep her from coming up here, if I can. And keep away from the windows, don’t go near them and try to look out. There are some cigarettes in there, I put them where you can find them, and everything else you need. I brought you in a couple of magazines, too, to help pass the time with. On my way home I’ll try to stop off and buy you a clean shirt and underwear, if I can find a place that’s still open. Now rest, rest all you can. I only hope God keeps His eye on you for me.”

She bent and kissed him twice more, this time once on each cheek. From the open door she looked back. His arm, which had been too near the edge of the bed, over-balanced and fell loosely down and dangled there limply over-edge.

She went back a moment, lifted it, and put it back under the cover. Then she tucked it a little to hold it.

Then she went out and closed the door behind her. At the head of the stairs, before starting down she opened her handbag and took out some money. About all she had, all she could afford, leaving just a little over for the bus and to buy him a shirt. She folded it tactfully out of sight under her palm and went down the stairs.

“Here,” she said going over to the fat woman, and held out her hand.

“What’s this for?” the fat woman said, looking at it. “You’re all paid up until the first.”

Leone said off-handedly: “You don’t need to go up to my place to look after anything today. In fact I wish you wouldn’t. It’ll hold. Some other time. I’ll let you know.”

The superintendent pinned her with a look that was undecided between being shrewd and sympathetic.

Leone suddenly threw discretion aside. It seemed the only thing to do. “Look, you’re a woman. There’s a time in life when — well, someone means a lot to you. You had the time come to you once too, yourself. Try to remember it now and — make an allowance, will you?”

This unkempt, heavily-fleshed hostile, with a shadowed upper lip and a mole on one cheek, who could be so shrill about disturbing noises and so steely about an overdue rent, showed a surprising streak of empathy that Leone hadn’t known she’d even had in her until now.

“We’re all sisters, all of us,” she said. She prodded money back down into the slashed hand-pocket of Leone’s raincoat. “All in one big family.” She chopped the edge of her hand reassuringly against Leone’s upper arm.

As she went on out to the street Leone knew, at least, that she had her on her side.