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

The dinner had been set for “somewhere between seven-thirty and eight” (Janet s words), so we arranged to meet three-quarters of an hour earlier, in order to give ourselves time enough to get there without hurrying. She told me to wait for her at the bench, she’d come there, and I gave in to that readily enough. I didn’t like the idea of having to pass in review before her whole family, anyway.

By six-fifteen the following evening, all aglow, I’d completed my rather uncomplicated toilette, which included the by-now semiweekly rite of a light overall shave, more in tribute to the future than a present necessity, and put on my one dark blue suit. I stopped in to see my mother for a minute, before leaving.

“Are you taking her anything?” she asked me. “Because I have a little unopened bottle of cologne you could have. It would save you the expense of buying something.”

“I’ll pick her up a box of candy on the way,” I said evasively. I knew I wouldn’t; I didn’t think that much of Janet.

“I’d like to take her a baseball bat, and give it to her over the head!” I added darkly.

She was laughing, accommodatingly but a little unsurely, as I left her.

I was ahead of time, Vera wasn’t there yet, when I got to the bench.

I sat down to wait for her, and at first I whistled and was relaxed, one knee cocked up high in front of me and my hands locked around it. But the minutes came, the minutes went, more minutes came, more went, and still she didn’t arrive. Pretty soon I wasn’t carefree anymore, I was on needles and pins. I turned and I twisted and I shifted; I constantly changed position, as though by doing that I would bring her there faster. I crossed my legs over one way, then over the other. I swung my hoisted foot like a pendulum. I drummed the bench-seat with my fingers like the ticking away of a fast-moving taxi meter. I raked my nails through my hair, wrecking its laboriously achieved sleekness. I clasped my hands at the back of my neck and let my elbows hang from there. I probably smoked more than in any comparable length of time up to that point in my short young life.

I even combined two positions into one, so to speak — the sitting and the standing — using the top of the bench-back for a seat and planting my feet on the seat itself.

It was while I was in this last hybrid position that I heard a skittering sound, like raindrops spattering leaves, and a small figure came rushing out of the lamp-spiked darkness toward me. A figure smaller than Vera, anyway. It was the little girl who’d been up in the flat that first day I went there, and who seemed to tag around after Vera a good deal. I’d glimpsed her more than once hanging around, helping Vera pass the time while she was waiting for me on the bench, and then when I came along she’d discreetly drift off, probably at a confidential word from Vera.

She seemed to have run all the way, judging by her breathlessness; it was no inconsiderable distance for a youngster her size. Or maybe it was only feasible for that very reason, because of her young age.

“What happened?” I asked, hopping down from the bench-back. “Why didn’t she meet me here like she said she was going to?”

But she only repeated verbatim the message she had been given, evidently having been told nothing else. “She says come right away. She’s waiting for you at her house.”

I bolted off without even giving the poor little thing time to stand still a minute and catch her breath. She turned and faithfully started back the way she had just come, following me. But my long legs soon outdistanced her shorter ones, and after falling behind more and more, she finally bleated out: “Don’t go so fast! I can’t keep up with you!”

I stopped a couple of times to let her catch up, but finally I shouted back to her, rather unfeelingly: “You’re holding me up! I can’t stand and wait for you each time. Come back by yourself!” And I sprinted off and soon left her completely behind.

When I got to the building that housed Vera’s flat, I ran up the whole six flights without a pause even at landings — but if you can’t do it at that age, then you never can do it at all — and finally, half-suffocating, I rapped on the door with tactful restraint (remembering the terrible thump Frankie had given it that first day, and trying not to repeat it).

The door opened, but there was no one standing there alongside it. Then Vera’s voice said, from in back of it: “Come on in, but keep walking straight ahead and don’t turn your head. Hold your hands over your eyes.”

I thought, for a minute, she hadn’t finished dressing yet, and wondered why she’d admitted me so quickly in that case. I heard her close the door.

Then she said: “Now you can turn. But don’t look yet.”

Obediently I turned, eyelids puckered up, exaggeratedly tight, as though normal closing in itself wasn’t a sufficient guarantee.

“Now!” she said triumphantly. “Now look.”

I opened my eyes and looked, and she was all dressed up for the party.

“How do you like me?” she asked eagerly.