RENDEZVOUS IN BLACK (11 page)

"Green. Blue. I'll try to remember." But inside, she was all waterlogged, and the two colors were running together, in a mess.

"On those checks you've seen me use, you have to pay ten cents each time you write one. So just save them for important things like the rent and the gas. It's safer than cash."

His voice trailed off disconsolately. "What do I care about checks and interest--"

"What do I care either--"

Suddenly they were crushed together like two people in a subway.

"Now don't cry," he warned between kisses. "You promised."

"I'm not. I won't."

She helped him on with his hat and coat, handed him the little pre-packed bundle he was taking.

"I want to go to the train with you," she said. She'd been saving this to the last, afraid of being turned down if she came out with it too soon.

"I don't go there direct. I have to stop off at the draft board first. They assemble us. Then we all go from there." He added, as though this were very generous, "They pay our carefare."

"Well, then let me go just up to the draft board with you." She had a peculiar and recurrent image, whenever the word was mentioned, of a huge planeddown pine board, on which men lay down one at a time to have their outlines traced in pencil; although from the first she'd known better, of course.

"The other fellows may think . . ."

"I'm not ashamed to have anyone know I love you."

That did it. "All right. But only up to the corner, not right tip to the draft board door."

She closed the door without looking behind her. She didn't want to look at the place.

They rode the bus, and there was just one vacant seat, even that early. She pushed him down into it. "Today," she whispered, "I want you to take it, and I'll do the standing."

"Aw but everybody's looking at us--" he demurred.

"What do we care?" she said firmly.

A man stood up and tipped his hat and offered his seat. She looked and then she shook her head. "Too far away," she whispered to him. It was all the way across the aisle.

They got out. "It's up this way," he said.

She took his arm. It was like walking to your execution. Of your own accord, without guards around you.

They came to the corner. "There it is, that one down there," he said.

It was just a big gray apartment house. People went right ahead living in all the other apartments, she discovered with surprise, while the draft board was busy disembowelling people on the ground floor. She even glimpsed a woman shaking a mop out of the window two stories above it.

"I wish it would blow up," she prayed. "I wish the whole building would collapse, right while we're standing here looking." She got turned down again. And it would only have moved to another building anyway, she supposed.

They were standing turned toward one another, face to face, now. They didn't seem to know what to say. There was too much to say, that was it, not too little. It stuck in your throat.

"Look," she said, pointing to a couple halted nearby. "They did it too. She came this far with him too."

He took advantage of it to give her an object lesson. "See? She's not crying, notice that?"

She may have you fooled, she hasn't me, she thought; I'm a woman.

A man by himself darted around the corner, went running by them. He recognized Bucky, evidently from some of the processings they'd been through together. He even seemed to know him by name.

"You better not stand there, Paige," he called back warningly. "I've got two to six."

"You're not late," Bucky called after him jocularly. "Make 'em wait for you."

"Hasn't he got anyone to see him off?" she asked curiously.

"Naw, he's a lone wolf, poor fellow."

Some girl's awfully lucky, and doesn't know it, she thought.

"Well, I'm going--" They kissed, and then they kissed again. And then again, again, again. Then he put a stop to it by stepping back out of reach.

"Now go right back home. Don't hang around."

"I will. I won't."

The last thing she said to him, already walking backward along the sidewalk, and spreading her hands out at her sides in a gesture of virtuous self-esteem, was, "Look, Bucky. I'm not even crying. Didn't I say I wouldn't? And look. I'm not."

"I bet you will later though," he said grudgingly.

"No I won't. You'll see--"

And then suddenly the meaning of her own words struck her, and her face twisted ungovernably for a moment. She turned and went away, so he wouldn't see it. She went faster and faster. First she was trotting. Then she was running. Then she was fleeing up the street. There was a drugstore on the corner, and it was already open, luckily. She plunged inside. She made for the telephone booths, all the way at the back. They were all empty. She sealed herself up in one. She dropped down to her knees inside it, all the way down out of sight.

She cried like she'd never cried before. She cried for all the years ahead. She cried a whole war's worth, at one time.

Once a man tried to get in, pulled the door open before he saw her huddled there. Then he said matter of factly, "Oh, excuse me!" and closed it again. But she didn't care, she went right ahead crying.

She was standing in the drugstore entry, waiting and watching for him, fifteen minutes later when he and his mates went by. She'd known they were bound to pass there sooner or later; the bus stop was right around the corner.

The drugstore had a double set of glass doors, and she lurked between the two, and didn't let him see her. It was a good vantage point. But she saw him.

They were in a double column, walking along with their packs and bags, and he was on the inside line, third from the very last man.

He was talking to the man next to him. He'd already made a friend. He was turned, saying something to him.

She only saw the side of his face. But oh, it was a lovely side of a face!

She put her hand up against the glass, trying to hold him still, where he was, but he slipped right by because he wasn't really there. Only the glass was.

"Good-bye, Bucky," she breathed. "Good-bye, my heart."

The side of his face went away, and only the glass stayed behind. And she didn't want the glass; it wasn't Bucky.

He carried it off by himself, like something precious, to be guarded against the whole world, to be kept for himself and to himself alone. He went into the barracks. where there was no one at this hour. He curled up in his bunk with it. And that was the right word, curled; he lay on his side and brought his knees up until they almost touched his chin, made a protective half circle around it. Something of his own. A little luminous square in a dark dreary world. A letter from her.

My beloved, my own husband:

I've written you eleven letters before this one But you won't get them. I never sent them. They keep telling us on all sides, 'Lift up their morale, write only cheerful things, keep them smiling.' I know. I know all that. I tried. But it wouldn't work. Why should I lie to you now? I never lied before.

And this is the twelfth. The true one. Let some censor frown and shake his head and scissor it all out, I don't care.

I can't go on. I see you everywhere, you're every way I turn, you're everywhere I go. God didn't mean this to happen to anyone, so much of it all at one time. God didn't mean eyes to cry so much. He didn't mean insides to ache so much. He couldn't have, or He would have built them stronger.

If I sit down to eat, you're there across the way from me, but you won't talk, you won't say anything. I beg you and I plead but you won't say anything. If I walk down the street, it feels so empty and so lonely there by my left arm. The cold wind comes nipping around the corner and I feel all open on that side. If I go shopping to the A. & P., I turn around and hand you the parcels to carry for me, and suddenly you're not there, I'm holding them out above the empty floor.

And when I take the Sunday papers in from the door, the comics are always on top. . . . Why do they always have to be on top? But there's no one to snatch at them, like there used to be, and rumple up all the other sections of the paper in the process of extracting them. No one's hand to slap down, like I used to every Sunday. ' Wait , can't you? Wait . How old are you, twelve years old?' They stay so smooth all the way into the flat. No one wants the funnies, I sit holding them all morning, waiting, and no one takes them from me, no one giggles like a little boy over in the corner, all hidden behind them. I have to cram them down the incinerator at last, because funnies shouldn't do that to you, they're supposed to make you happy. Then I repent ('He still may come out of that bedroom, he only overslept this morning.') but I can't get them back. I run all the way downstairs to the basement, but it's too late, I can't get them out of the furnace.

You're everywhere. You're nowhere. I can't go on, I can't go on. I wasn't meant to be a hero's wife. I was just meant to be Bucky's wife. And they won't let me any more. What can I do? How shall I last? Tell me, oh tell me, my darling, tell me quickly, for I can't hold out much longer.

Sharon.

. . . I've taken your advice. I've applied for a war job. They asked me what I could do; I told them 'Nothing.' They asked me what I wanted to do; I told them 'Anything.' I told them I wanted to work where there was the most noise, the most glare, the greatest number of machines and people. They didn't ask me why. They just looked at me and they seemed to understand. . . .

. . . It's like a strange new world, but it keeps me from thinking of you. There's such a clatter, I can't hear your name. There's such a glare, I can't see your face. It's what I wanted. We'll wait out this war that way, you and I. We'll fool them yet. . . .

. . . I'm a machine now. I don't feel or think. I don't hurt . All day long I'm numb from the noise, too numb to hurt. All night long I'm numb from exhaustion, too numb to hurt. I look like a machine too. Dark goggles, you can't see my face. An aluminum hood, you can't see my hair. Heavy gauntlets, you can't see my hands. Overalls, you can't tell I'm a woman. They all laughed at me because I wore a dress the first day I reported to work. I was the only one in the whole plant in a dress. The men asked each other, 'Where have I seen one of them before?' And then they'd say, 'That's a girl; you remember. One of them soft things they used to have around before the war.' And then they'd say, 'What was they for? I forget.'

At least I don't hurt .

And time is on my side. On our side. Every day is a day longer the war has lasted; but it's also a day shorter it still has to go. Don't you think the halfway mark has already slipped by without anyone knowing it? Say you do, say it has! Maybe it was yesterday, maybe even the day before.

There once was a thing called Peace. Remember it? Remember? Long ago and far away. . . .

. . . My bench mate looks as much like a machine as I do, but she's still a girl underneath, very much so. (She doesn't have to be afraid of hurting, I guess.) She loves without getting hurt. I don't know how it's done, but she has some kind of a system. 'It's just like crossing the street,' she says. 'Go fast, and dodge a lot, and you don't get hit.' She has dark red hair, I've seen it on the street, going home, and so they call her Rusty. If you call her by her right name, she doesn't recognize it any more, she doesn't know it's her. 'I wondered who that was,' she says. I have clocked her. They usually last about a week apiece. 'Stores give you a week on returns,' she says. 'Why should I take any longer? Otherwise they're liable to show wear,' Wednesdays seem to be her days for 'taking 'em back and shopping for a new one.' Don't ask me why. Every Wednesday regularly she has a new one out 'on approval.' I have to hear all about them, over our sandwiches.

She has a new one now. He came up to her just outside the gates, as she was leaving the plant with the rest of the crowd. . . ."

When she saw that he was corralled, cut out from the rest of the herd, and practically pleading to be branded, she gave him an armful of rope. She practically gave him a whole lariat. Let him step into it and then tugged the knot closed.

"What do you know?" he said. A question that wasn't to be taken literally. He didn't care about her mind.

"What do you know yourself?" she replied. She didn't care about his mind either.

He tipped his hat, that outdated, forgotten prewar custom in these circles, and that pleased her. It was almost like having your hand kissed.

She just kept going, and he trotted along beside her, fast to her saddle now.

Demureness was even more outdated than hattipping. It would have been about like throwing a curtsey.

Nobody kidded anybody else. There was no time. You came to the point.

"You taking me anywhere?" she wanted to know.

"You name it."

She did. "All right. Harry's, down by the Square." And then, just so there wouldn't be any financial obstacle, she added, "Don't let it throw you. I'll go Dutch if it worries you; I'm making ninety a week, and the damn stuff's getting in my way. I gotta kick it under the mattress at nights."

"Who said it worries me?" he said. "It's just on account of looking like I do. . . ."