Free The Last Gentleman by Walker Percy Page A

sir.”
    â€œThat’s all right!”
    4 .
    Without quite knowing why he did so—for now he had the Handsome Woman’s name and had looked her up in the telephone book and now knew where Kitty lived—he kept up his vigil in the park.
    Once he went to look at the house they lived in. They had, Kitty and Rita, a charming cottage in a mews stuck away inside a city block in the Village. He had not imagined there could be such a place in New York, that the paltry particles, ravening and singing, could be so easily gotten round. But they were gotten round, by making things small and bright and hiding them away in the secret sunny center of a regular city block. Elsewhere in New York—wherever one stood—there was the sense of streets running a thousand miles in either direction, clear up to 302nd Street and petering out in some forlorn place above Yonkers or running clean to Ontario, for all he knew. They, Kitty and Rita, got out of the wind, so to speak, found a sunny lee corner as sheltered as a Barbados Alley.
    Then why not pick up the telephone and call her up and say, what about seeing you? Well, he could not exactly say why except that he could not. The worst way to go see a girl is to go see her. The best way is not to go see her but to come upon her. Having a proper date with a girl delivers the two of you into a public zone of streets and buildings where every brick is turned against you.
    The next day Rita came to the bench and Kitty joined her. It was not until he saw them through the telescope that he knew why he had kept up his vigil: it was because he did not know enough about Kitty.
    When they left, they turned west. He waited. After five or six minutes they came through the maples and crossed the meadow toward the Tavern-on-the-Green. There they sat not half a mile away but twenty feet, outlined in rainbows and drifting against each other weightless and soundless like mermaids in the shallow ocean depths. Packing his telescope, he walked south past the restaurant and turned back. He found a table against a peninsula of open brickwork where by every calculation—yes: through a niche he caught a glimpse of the gold chain clasping the hardy structures of Kitty’s ankle. He ordered a beer.
    Like all eavesdroppers, he felt as breathless as if the future of his life might depend on what was said. And perhaps, he being what he was, it did.
    â€œIt’s no use,” Kitty was saying.
    â€œIt is use,” said Rita. Her hair stirred. She must be turning her head to and fro against the bricks.
    â€œWhat do you think is the matter with me, Ree?”
    â€œNothing that is not the matter with all of us.”
    â€œI am not what I want to be.”
    â€œThen accept yourself as you are.”
    â€œI do!” Kitty had a trick of ending her sentences with a lilt like a question. It was a mannerism he had noticed in the younger actresses.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œEverything.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with me?”
    â€œTell me,” said Rita, turning her head to and fro.
    â€œDo you want to know?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThe truth is, I’m stupid. I’m the stupidest person in the world.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œThat doesn’t help.”
    â€œWhat would help?”
    â€œI’m serious. Val and Jamie and you and Sutter are all so smart.”
    â€œYou’re the best of the lot,” said Rita idly, turning her head against the bricks.
    â€œSometimes I think other people know a secret I don’t know.”
    â€œWhat secret?”
    â€œThe way they talk—”
    â€œPeople, what people? Do you mean a man and a woman?”
    â€œWell, yes.”
    â€œAh.”
    â€œDo you know, before I meet somebody—”
    â€œSomebody? Who is somebody?”
    â€œBefore I meet them—if I know I’m going to meet them—I actually have to memorize two or three things to say. What a