Free The Bobby-Soxer by Hortense Calisher Page B

up at the house. Had my voice been too loud? No, the figure was still pacing. It couldn’t see us.
    “Our hedges prevent,” I said. “Seeing out.”
    “You are—remarkable,” he said. “I might even explain. You see—I’m not a lovely girl. I merely acquired one. While—hanging on to something else. It’s true she won’t buy for the baby. I wish I didn’t know why.”
    “Maybe because it’s low class to trip through the stores for layettes and stuff.” My grandmother’s voice sure enough, though I was mimicking. “You’re supposed to have it all in the attic. My brother was practically born in my father’s bassinette.”
    I wanted to wound him. That’s the first hint.
    I’m sure he saw. “And what about you?” he murmured. Not really asking.
    We both held very still. I could smell the work-sweat and the pearlike starch of his shirt. The cap of his hair, dark and silky, was some barber’s triumph over bristle born on Cobble Row. Where they had no attics, but many a beaked nose like his, Englishy or Pole. Invisible wings of other revelries and knowledge stretched like a fay’s from his shoulders. And had brought him back here.
    Would it have been the same to someone from Brown’s Beach?
    So this is the womanizer, I thought. The word suggests a cockatoo, moving its head forward, and in. But this eye—I fixed on one in the starlight—is remoter than that. Any girl with him will move questward, in the arms of that remoteness. Or drop by the wayside.
    “Look up there,” he said. “At that bedroom. You have to.” He hadn’t touched me.
    Up there perhaps the figure was only putting its clothes away, but it went back and forth still.
    “People mostly don’t marry for who the other person is, but for what that person is. With rare exception. She up there—did it about as badly as anyone could. Other than me.” He stepped back, into the shadow of the hedge. “I expect I’ll soon be moving on.”
    “Then—you’ve finished your play?”
    He froze. “No. I’ve scarcely begun.”
    “But that’s what it’s about, eh? About what you just said.”
    “I don’t do domestic plays. Marriage ones.” His face was a scowl of distaste. “Nor leukemia ones.” I remembered the newspapers the waitresses at Gilbert’s had pulled out of the wastepaper basket after he left.
    “Sorry—” he said. “I take advantage of you. Of your youth. And I just may do it again.” He moved to the car. “Maybe I’ll write about you.”
    “Not if—you’re leaving.”
    “Hmm, that may be just when.”
    “Ah, you wouldn’t—” I threw out in scorn. “Be writing about me. Not if you can say so.”
    “No. But how can you tell.” His glance strayed. He had had exchanges like this before. “So that’s Gilbert’s house, over there. Two lots extra to itself. On either side. Yet he wants mine.”
    “He won’t get it,” I said confidently.
    “This town. This town. My God, how it knows itself. No, he won’t. But maybe you and I should collaborate.”
    “It’s unfair. For someone like you to talk that way to me. Why can’t you stop?”
    Knobby’s room lit up.
    “She’s called to him,” I said. “About where I can possibly be.”
    “Out being a breath of fresh air,” he said. “Yes—why can’t I stop?”
    He means his plays, too, I thought. And yet—he’ll move nearer. The comprehension was so heavy that I thought I would cry. Instead I broke out into a sweat and stood tall, hoarding my armpits. When he did come close it was like our doctor did, his breath cool and reserved.
    “Sorry—” he said, “but if I asked, you wouldn’t let me. Just a bit of research.” His forefinger traveled down my right cheek, steady, not a caress. Then he slipped the envelope into the breast pocket of my blouse, his hand lingering for a second, and quickly stepped back. “Apologies.” He said it twice. Then he was in the Volks, leaning out. “But if you ever want to talk—about the town—let me know. I