Eyes in the Fishbowl (13 page)

I knew that Madame meant well in telling me to stay away. I’d been kind of a pet of Madame’s for years and years. It was natural that she wouldn’t want me to get involved, too. What she didn’t know was that in a way I already was involved. She didn’t know how I felt about Sara. And how Sara felt about me, too—I was pretty sure of that. And that was why I felt that if she could still be helped—if she would really try to break away for anyone, maybe it would be for me. That was the reason I decided I couldn’t obey Madame’s warning and stay away.

The next day I didn’t go to school. I went to my morning jobs because I had nothing else to do with the time; but as soon as Alcott-Simpson’s opened for the day, I went inside. I went over the entire store, except for the area near the cosmetic counter. I got close enough once or twice to catch a glimpse of Madame, but I was very careful not to let her see me. It was all wasted effort, though. Sara just wasn’t there.

Everything inside the store was pretty much the way it had been the day before. There were very few customers and fewer clerks than usual. Most of the clerks who were there were new, people I’d never seen before. The only real difference was that the toy department had been roped off, just as Madame had said it would be. After I had looked all the way through the store, I went out and wandered around town. In an hour or so I came back and looked again. And that’s the way I spent the whole day. By closing time I knew what I had to do.

A few minutes after five o’clock, I went up to the sixth floor. I had noticed that there seemed to be only two clerks on the whole huge floor, so what I had in mind would not be hard to do. There was a scattering of customers, and I walked around looking at people as if I were looking for someone. When a clerk came up to me and asked me what I wanted, I said my mother was shopping somewhere in the store and I thought maybe she’d come up there. He left me alone then, and I wandered around until I saw my chance. I slipped into the same display room I had hidden in before and slid back under the same bed.

I lay there for what seemed a very long time, listening to the distant voices of the clerks and customers. Then the closing bell rang and almost immediately all the voices stopped. The clerks must have gone downstairs almost on the heels of the last customer. Apparently they didn’t want to be left alone way up there on the sixth floor when the elevators stopped running and the lights went down.

I waited, lying there in the dust under the low bed. After a while the big lights went off and the silence widened around me. I waited a while longer to be sure that all the clerks had had time to leave the store. Then, just as the silence seemed complete, the other noises began.

They were the same noises I had heard before. There were faint whispering voices and muffled footsteps, always so soft and indistinct I could never quite rule out the possibility that perhaps I was imagining it all. I had been planning to climb out from under the bed and start looking for Sara as soon as I was sure the clerks had all gone home, but the noises kept me where I was. Somehow I felt I had to stay there until I could decide if I was really hearing something or not, as if deciding what I had to face when I came out would make it easier to face it.

But the noises went on and on, and I went on lying there, getting stiffer and stiffer from fright and from not moving, until I wondered if I would ever be able to get out at all. And then suddenly I heard someone saying my name. “Dion,” the voice said, and there was a pause and everything was very quiet. The noises were all gone. “Dion, I’m here. Please come out.”

It was Sara. I struggled out from under the bed and there she was, standing in the edge of the shadow on the other side of the room. I sat down on the side of the bed because my knees felt unhinged and my voice wouldn’t start working. As soon as I could, I said, “Am I ever glad to see you.”

Sara looked down and away so I couldn’t see her eyes. “I’m glad to see you, too,” she said. She was wearing a long dress again, but this one was pale blue with a scarf that was attached to one shoulder and went up over her head. “You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have come, but I’m glad you’re here.”

I was so relieved to see her looking just the same as ever, as if nothing was really wrong, that for a second I almost forgot what I’d come to do. But then I remembered. “Sara, I’ve got to tell you something,” I said, “but not here. Could we go somewhere else?”

“Somewhere else?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean outside. Could we get downstairs and outside without—I mean would you come some place outside the store with me?”

She stared at me, and her fantastic eyes seemed to get wider and wider and she made a sound like a gasp. “No, no I can’t.” She stepped back away from me as if she meant to turn and run.

“All right,” I said quickly. “All right. Not outside. But isn’t there a better place we could go—to talk. A better place than
this.”
I rolled my eyes in a way that I hoped would tell her what I really meant.

“The garden?” Sara asked. “We could go down to the garden.”

I started to say all right, but then I remembered how dark it would be there at night. And I remembered too about the boat that sailed by itself in the fountain. “No,” I said, “not there.”

“Wait, I know,” Sara said. “We could go up on the roof. Have you ever been up on the roof?”

I said I never had, and I thought about it quickly and it seemed like a good idea. At least on the roof it would be wide open and you could know what was around you. It would be almost like being outside Alcott-Simpson’s. Perhaps it
would
be like being outside Alcott-Simpson’s, I thought—deliberately
not
thinking that perhaps They couldn’t follow us there, as if I were afraid even to think what I really meant because the feeling was so strong that They were all around us, listening and watching. I nodded, “All right, let’s go up on the roof.”

Sara led the way to the emergency staircase, and we took the upward flight, up past the seventh floor where all the big offices were, to a little room that opened out onto the huge dark stretch of the open roof. To the West the horizon still glowed with sunset, and far to the East the sky was a clear blue-black, sparkling with stars, but the fog had settled again on the center of town and it was very dark. All around us the fog blotted out the edges of the roof so that it seemed endless, as if we were walking through dark clouds on a tar-paper and gravel infinity.

We walked for a way without talking. A slow damp wind lifted Sara’s hair and the pale blue scarf, and mixed them with the mist that closed in like a wave behind our backs. Finally a low wall with a wide ledge took shape just ahead. We came to an edge of the roof and looked over. The lights of Palm Ave, blurred and hazy, shone up from what seemed much more than seven stories down below. We leaned on the ledge and looked down into the fog flooded canyon.

“Sara,” I began, “since I saw you last, I’ve found out some very important things.”

Sara turned towards me, and the scarf fell across her face leaving only her eyes unveiled. “Yes,” she agreed, “I thought you had.”

“I found out all about the ones you call the Others,” I said. “I know all about it now—who They are and how They came here to Alcott-Simpson’s.”

She nodded sadly. “I didn’t want you to find out,” she said. “I tried to make them stay away from you. I was afraid you wouldn’t like me any more if you found out. But They wouldn’t remember.”

“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change how I feel about you,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”

“Yes, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t ever have come here. It wasn’t right for me. And it isn’t right for you.”

“Well, maybe,” I said, “but anyway—” I stopped and looked around, but nothing moved except the fog and there was no sound except the distant fog-muffled drone of the city. “Anyway it will all be over soon. They, the Others, are going to have to go away soon.”

“I know,” Sara said, “I am going to have to go away, too. I’ll have to go with Them—”

“No!” I said, and it came out almost a shout. “You mustn’t let Them make you think that. You don’t belong with Them. They only want to make you think you do. You’re going to come away right now with me. You just have to make up your mind that you are going with me no matter what. We’ll go down the stairs very quickly, and if They lock the doors, we’ll go down the escalator; and if you see Them or hear Them don’t slow down, and we’ll—”

I stopped. The wind had come up suddenly, and the air swirling around us was so heavy with white mist that Sara’s dress and hair blended into the twisting fingers of fog. But I could still see her face clearly. She moved closer to me, and her eyes were shining with a kind of wild excitement. “Do you want to come with me, Dion?” she said, and her voice was strange, too high and light.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes,” and suddenly a wave of terrible excitement broke inside my mind. A part of me struggled and then drowned, and then the fog was full of small soft hands pushing me, and I moved with them willingly towards the edge. But when I looked down, far down to the dark street, a last stab of fear broke through the numb willingness. The fear of falling was a sharp pain in the backs of my legs, and I felt my face twist with terror.

“No,” Sara said, and suddenly she was between me and the edge of the roof. The wild brightness was gone from her face, and her eyes were soft and steady and very sad. “I’m sorry,” she said, but I only stared at her without saying anything, because suddenly I knew—and there was nothing to say.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let you come here. I shouldn’t ever have let you see me.” She was moving back, away from me into the fog. “I should never have come here at all. Only the very little ones were sent for, but some of them were my brothers and sisters and so I came, too. But I was too old just to play—and then I saw you—”

The fog came down then and closed in between us, but in a moment I heard her voice calling, “Dion, Dion, this way.” I followed the sound, and it led to the little shed where the emergency stairway came out onto the roof. Sara was not there. I wound my way down the stairs for what seemed like miles and miles. My mind felt numb, and my legs were so weak and shaky that sometimes I thought I would have to stop. When I finally got to the ground floor and started down the Mall to the east entrance, the numbness had gotten worse so that I felt I was fighting to stay conscious. I wasn’t sure I could make it through the doors to the outside. Then, just as I was almost there, I heard someone call my name. It was Madame Stregovitch, coming towards me down the Mall. I didn’t even wonder why she was there. I only remember her catching me by the arms and the fierce burning of her eyes. Then I began to slip down and down into a soft and sleepy darkness.

When I woke up, I was lying on the bench in the alcove behind Ladies Gloves. No one else was there. If Madame Stregovitch had really been in Alcott-Simpson’s, she had gone off and left me there alone. I rushed to the east entrance in a panic. The door was unlocked, and I burst out into a clear, dark night.

T
HE NEXT FEW DAYS
have faded in my mind. It’s strange because I’ve always had such a good memory. But those days, right after that last night at Alcott-Simpson’s, are all jumbled up in a haze of events and feelings and fears. There are a few things that stand out clear and sharp, but I’m not sure about sequence and things like that.

I know I stayed out of school two more days that week. I hardly ever miss school so of course Dad wanted to know what the matter was. I guess it was the first day I stayed home that I ran into Dad in the kitchen about nine o’clock.

“Dion,” he said. “What are you doing at home? Are you sick?”

“No” I said. “I just overslept. I had some trouble getting to sleep last night, and when I finally did, I guess I just overslept.”

Dad looked worried. I’d been getting myself off in the mornings since I was a little kid, and I was never late. Of course, I didn’t always go to school because of the operations; but if I was going at all, I got there on time. Dad put some coffee on to perk and fixed himself some cereal before he said anything more, but after he sat down at the table he said, “Well, then, why don’t you take advantage of the opportunity and get a rest? You look tired. You know I’ve told you I think you’re on much too strenuous a schedule. I have some home lessons this morning so the place should be fairly quiet for a while. Why don’t you go back to bed and really catch up on your sleep?”

I shrugged. “I might. I don’t much like to go into class late.” So I stayed home that day and the next, not doing much except thinking. Dad asked questions once or twice, but he didn’t pressure me to get back to school.

The second day I went back to Alcott-Simpson’s, feeling very sure I’d find everything just the way it had always been. At that particular point I’d almost convinced myself that I’d had some kind of complicated nightmare, and that everything would be back to normal. But instead I found the store closed and locked and huge sheets of paper pasted over all the windows. I came home in a kind of panic.

Back at our house I picked up the morning paper and it was full of stuff about the sudden, startling failure of the fabulous Alcott-Simpson department store. The articles went on and on about the history of Alcott-Simpson’s—how it had for so many years been almost a symbol of a way of life—and how it had stood for a kind of service and a standard of quality that were fast becoming unknown—and that its passing was a great loss to the discerning and particular shopper. There was another article about why the store had closed.

The story started
CHANGING TIMES FORCE END OF GREAT STORE.
It was full of quotes from the managers. They explained the whole thing by saying that Alcott-Simpson’s was built on a lavish scale at a time when such things were more widely appreciated, and that in these modern times it was too difficult to maintain. This fact, plus the growing competition from suburban shopping centers, had finally become decisive. The article went on like that, quoting more or less the same thing said in slightly different ways by different owners and managers. I read it over three times. Someone did mention that there had also been an increase in the usual problems with thieves and vandals, but that was the closest any of them came to saying anything much at all.