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

The third time she disappointed me, it was already the start of a new week, the party was already three or four days in back of us now, and I didn’t wait any longer. The only possible explanation left was that she’d been taken ill; she might have caught cold that night, she’d been thinly dressed and it had been stingingly cold from what I remembered. And if she was ill, I wanted her at least to know I’d asked for her, and not let her think I’d been completely indifferent. So after a forlorn half-hour’s token vigil on the bench, with no real anticipation even at the start, I got up again and went over to her house to see if I could find out anything.

I don’t recall any longer whether I made two visits over there on two successive days, on the first of which I merely loitered about in front of the place, in hopes either of catching sight of her or else of questioning somebody who might possibly know her (such as the little girl who had carried her message the night of the party), and on the second of which I finally went all the way up the stairs as far as her door; or whether the two telescoped themselves into one and the same occasion. But I do know that, all else having failed, I finally stood at the top of the six flights of stairs and I finally knocked at her door.

After a moment’s wait I heard a single heavy crunch of the flooring just on the other side of it; I imagine the one board that had been trodden on creaked, while all the rest of them did not.

A voice asked: “Who’s that?” A woman’s, but that was all I recognized about it.

“Me,” I said. “Vera’s friend, Con.” (To my own ears, it sounded like a faltering quaver that came out of me.)

The door opened, and her mother stood there.

Her face wasn’t friendly. I couldn’t decipher exactly what was on it at first, but it was set in bleak, grim lines and no smile broke on it.

“And is it Vera you’re asking after?” she said, and I can still remember the thick Irish twist of speech she gave it.

I nodded and swallowed a lump of self-consciousness in my throat.

Her voice grew louder and warmer, but not the warmth of congeniality, the warmth of glittering, spark-flying resentment. “You have the nerve to come here and ask for her? You have the nerve to come here to this door? You?”

She kept getting louder by the minute.

“I should think you’d have the decency to stay home, and not show your face around here. Isn’t it enough you’ve done? Well, isn’t it?” And she clamped her hands to the sides of her head, as when you’re trying to stifle some terrible recollection.

I drew back a step, stunned, congealed with consternation. Only one explanation was able to cross my mind. I knew nothing had happened on the stairs that night. But maybe they didn’t, maybe they thought something had. And if they did, what way was there I could ever—

“Now go on about your business!” she said sternly. The expression “Get lost” had not yet come into general parlance, but she used an approximation of it. “Take yourself off,” I think it was.

By that time I was partly down the stairs already, and then had stopped again and half-turned around to her to hear the rest of it out.

“Stay away from here. There’s no Vera here for you.”

The door gave a cataclysmic bang, and that was the end of it. There was no Vera there for me.

I have often wondered since why it was such a long time after that before I ran into Frankie again. Maybe it actually wasn’t, but it seemed so at the time. Weeks, if not quite months. But our paths didn’t happen to cross, I guess, for we each had differing interests by now. The hero-worship stage was long a thing of the past. I had probably grown out of it by myself; I don’t think my friendship with Vera had anything to do with ending it. And I hadn’t sought him out, because it had never occurred to me that he might be in a better position than I to pick up the neighborhood rumors and gossip, his ear being closer attuned to it than mine, in a way.

Anyway, one day we came along on opposite sides of the same street, he going one way, I the other. He threw up his arm to me, I flung up mine to him, and he crossed over to me. Or we met in the middle, whichever it was.

We made a couple of general remarks, mostly about his current boxing activities (he was still in the amateur category, he told me, but about ready to become pro; all he needed was to find the right manager). Then he suddenly said: “That was tough about your friend, wasn’t it?”

I must have sensed something serious was about to come up; I quickly became alerted, even before the conversation had gotten any further. “Vera? What was tough? What was?” I asked tautly.

"About her getting caught up with like that.”

“Caught up with how?” I insisted.

“What are you, serious?” he said impatiently. “I thought you knew about it. The whole block knows. How come you don’t know about it, when you been going around with her so much lately? Practically steady.”