Deadline at Dawn

The pattern of the darkness had reversed itself. It was lighter now outside the open windows than in here in the interior of the dance-hall. She passed the two at the end, and her friend, her ally and accomplice, was up there limned against the sky. Her head turned slightly toward it as she moved rapidly by, until the casement cut them off from one another again with her passage. If any message or look of gratitude passed fleetingly between them at the moment, that was between her and it.

She parted the swing doors and stepped out into the still-lighted foyer running to the head of the stairs, with its alcoves for the ticket-seller and cloakroom-attendant and its two decrepit rattan settees.

There were two of them out there. There was always somebody. They always hung around. If you waited until daybreak to emerge, there would still have been one or two of them hanging around. One, a leg draped from the edge of the settee, must have been waiting for someone who was still in there; he gave her only nominal attention. The other, standing out at the very head of the steps themselves, was, she saw as she passed him, the very one who had just been with her for the past half-dozen dances or so.

He was, however, looking intently down the stairs toward the street rather than expectantly inward toward the doors she had just come through. As though delayed more by inability to decide where to go than by intent to meet anyone. In fact, she could tell by the surprised look of recognition he turned on her as she passed, that he hadn’t seen her approach at all until then.

She would have gone by without a word, but his hand went to his hat — he had one on now — and he said: “Going home now?”

If she’d been astringent inside, she was vitriolic out here in the vestibule. This was strictly enemy territory. There was no bouncer out here to protect you, you were on your own. “No, I’m just checking in. I come up the stairs backward like this so they won’t see my face, know who I am.”

She went down the rubber-matted, steel-tipped steps and out into the open. He stayed behind up there, as though still at a loss what to do. And he wasn’t waiting for anyone, because there was just one girl left behind in there and she was already preëmpted. Again she gave that slight shrug of one shoulder, but this time mentally and not in actuality. What was it to her? What was any of it to her, anyone to her?

The open air felt good. Anything would have, after that place up there. She always gave a deep exhalation on first emerging, that was part relief, part exhaustion. She gave it now.

This was the real danger zone, down on the street. There were a couple of indistinct figures loitering about, well-offside to the doorway, cigarettes dangling from mouths, whom she refrained from glancing at too closely as she came out, turned, and went up the street. There always were; she had never seen it to fail yet. Like tomcats watching a mousehole. The ones who loitered about up above, they were waiting for some one particular girl as a rule; the ones down here, they were waiting for just anyone at all.

She knew this hazard by heart. She could have written a book. She wouldn’t have smirched the good white paper to do it, that was all. There was always a time-lag, when there was to be the challenge direct. It never came at point of closest propinquity, at the doorway itself; it was always withheld until she was some distance away. Sometimes she thought this had to do with courage. Rather than tackle the mouse face-to-face, the valiant toms waited until its back was turned. Sometimes she thought it was merely that their stunted developments needed that much longer to come to a decision about their choice of prey. Sometimes she just thought, “Oh, the hell.” And often, very often, she didn’t think about it at all; it was just a puddle of dirty water to be overstepped along her homeward way.

The challenge came in the form of a whistle tonight. It often took that form. It wasn’t an honest, open shrill whistle, at that. It was bated, surreptitious. She knew it was for her. And then a verbal postscript. “What’s your hurry?” She didn’t bother quickening her pace; that would have been giving it more respect than was due it. When they thought you were afraid, that emboldened them all the—

A hand hooked detainingly around the curve of her arm. She didn’t try to pull away from it. She stopped short, looked down at it rather than up into his face.

“Take that off me,” she said with lethal coldness.

“What’s the matter, don’t you know me? Memory’s kind of short, ain’t it?”

Her eyes were taut slits of white against the street-darkness. “Look, I’m on my own time now. It’s bad enough I’ve got to talk to guys like you—”

“I was good enough for you when I was upstairs two nights ago, though, wasn’t I?” He’d followed his own hand around forward, was blocking her way now.