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

He thanks me over and thanks me under and thanks me over again, and then he’s gone, and I’m glad he’s gone.

Poor old man, wasting his life bringing people their meals up to their rooms for thirty-five, forty-odd years. He’ll die in peace, though. Not in terror and in throes of resistance. I almost envy him.

I turn my head a little. The radio’s caroling “Tonight,” velvety smooth and young and filled with plaintive desire. Maria’s song from West Side Story. I remember one beautiful night long ago at the Winter Garden, with a beautiful someone beside me. I tilt my nose and breathe in, and I can still smell her perfume, the ghost of her perfume from long ago. But where is she now, where did she go, and what did I do with her?

Our paths ran along so close together they were almost like one, the one they were eventually going to be. Then fear came along, fear entered into it somehow, and split them wide apart.

Fear bred anxiety to justify. Anxiety to justify bred anger. The phone calls that wouldn’t be answered, the door rings that wouldn’t be opened. Anger bred sudden calamity.

Now there aren’t two paths anymore; there’s only one, only mine. Running downhill into the ground, running downhill into its doom.

Tonight, tonight — there will be no morning star — Right, kid, there won’t. Not for me, anyway.

There’s a tap at the door, made with the tip of a key, not the tip of a finger. The voice doesn’t wait, but comes right through before the signal has a chance to freeze me stiff. A woman’s voice, soft-spoken, reassuring. “Night maid.”

I wait a second to let a little of the white drain from my face before she sees me, and then I go over and let her in.

Her name is Ginny. She told me last night. I asked her, that’s why she told me. I wanted to hear the sound of somebody’s name, that’s why I asked her. I was frightened and lonely, that’s why I wanted to hear the sound of somebody’s name.

On her face the beauty of two races blends, each contributing its individual hallmark. The golden-warm skin, the deep glowing eyes, the narrow-tipped nose, the economical underlip.

While she’s turning back the bedcovers in a neat triangle over one corner, I remark, “I notice you go around the outside of the room to get to the bed, instead of cutting across the middle, which would be much shorter. Why do you?”

She answers plausibly, “People are often watching their television sets at this time, when I come in, and I don’t want to block them off.”

I point out, “But mine isn’t on, Ginny.”

I see how the pupils of her eyes try to flee, to get as far away from looking at me as possible, all the way over into their outside corners. And that gives it away. She’s afraid of me. The rumors have already reached her. A hotel is like a beehive when it comes to gossip. He never leaves his room, has all his meals sent up to him, and keeps his door locked all the time.

“I want to give you something,” I say to her. “For that little girl of yours you were telling me about.”

I take a hundred-dollar bill out of the wallet on my hip. I fold the bill a few times so that the corner numerals disappear, then thrust it between two of her fingers.

She sees the “1” first as the bill slowly uncoils. Her face is politely appreciative.

She sees the first zero next — that makes it a ten. Her face is delighted, more than grateful.

She sees the last zero. Suddenly her face is fearful, stunned into stone; in her eyes I can see steel filings of mistrust glittering. Her wrist flexes to shove the bill back to me, but I ward it off with my hand upended.

I catch the swift side glance she darts at the fifth of rye on the side table.

“No, it didn’t come out of that. It’s just an impulse — came out of my heart, I suppose you could say. Either take it or don’t take it, but don’t spoil it.”

“But why? What for?”

“Does there have to be a reason for everything? Sometimes there isn’t.”

“I’ll buy her a new coat,” she says huskily. “A new pink coat like little girls all seem to want. With a little baby muff of lamb’s wool to go with it. And I’ll say a prayer for you when I take her to church with me next Sunday.”

It won’t work, but — “Make it a good one.”

The last part is all she hears.

Something occurs to me. “You won’t have to do any explaining to her father, will you?”

“She has no father,” she says quite simply. “She’s never had. There’s only me and her, sir.”

Somehow I can tell by the quick chip-chop of her feet away from my door that it’s not lost time she’s trying to make up; it’s the tears starting in her eyes that she wants to hide.