Still clutching his hand, she hurried down the stairs of the apartment building and outside to the darkness of the street. Schilling started toward his parked car, but she led him away from it and down the sidewalk.
"Not the car," she gasped, veering away from the misty black-metal hull. "It isn't far; we'll walk."
"Where are we going?"
Her answer was lost; he couldn't make it out. In the night silence her breathing was labored. Not letting go of him, she led him across the street and around the corner. Ahead of them glowed the lights of the downtown business section, stores and bars and gas stations.
She was taking him to the record shop. Rushing through the darkness, she was carrying him closer and closer to his own store. What she had said, he realized, was stockroom. They were going there, to the converted basement under the street level. Already she was struggling with her purse, getting out her store key.
"Let me take you home," he protested. "To my place."
"Please, Joseph-I don't want to go there."
"But why the store?"
She slowed a little, her face very pale in the glare of the streetlight. "I'm afraid," she said, as if that explained everything. And it did, for him. She was becoming panic-stricken, as she had been that first day. But this time he was ready for it: it was no surprise.
"Look," he told her reasonably, pulling her to a halt. "Go on back to your apartment. I'll leave you ... there's nothing to worry about." He untangled her fingers until his own hand was free. "See? It's as simple as that."
"Don't leave," she said instantly. "Can't we go to the store? I'll be all right there; I want to be downstairs, where it's safe." And then she was hurrying on again, the silk of her clothes shining and rustling ahead of him.
He followed. When he caught up with her she had crossed the street to the far side; the record shop was visible now, its window lights glaring.
"Here," she said. "You unlock the door." She jabbed her key at him; accepting it, he turned the lock, and swung the door aside.
The store was cold. Except for the window display everything lay in darkness. An acrid haze of cigarette smoke hung in the listening booths, a stale smell mixed with the presence of onions and human perspiration: reminders of customers. To his left was the counter, laden with records. As he reached for a light switch, the corner of a display table caught him against the knee; snorting, he stopped to reach painfully down.
In the back of the store the hall light came on. Mary Anne disappeared into the office and then emerged almost at once, a wool jacket around her shoulders. "Where are you?" she asked.
"Here." He located the overhead light and pulled it on. Grunting, he limped to the door, pulled down the shade, and released the lock. The heavy bolt jumped into place.
"Yes," she agreed. "Lock it. I forgot. Can I turn on the heater in the office?"
"Certainly." Sitting down on the window ledge, he rested and rubbed his knee. Mary Anne had already vanished into the office; the soft blue shimmer of the fluorescent lamp above his desk became visible. He could hear her stirring around, lifting out the electric heater, lowering the window shade.
"Find it?" he asked, when she reappeared.
"It's on; it's getting warm." She came up and dropped beside him, crouched against the counter, half-kneeling, half-leaning against the upright surface behind her. "Joseph," she said, "why did you kiss me?"
"Why?" he echoed. "Because I love you."
"Do you? I wondered if that was why." She settled down and sat gazing at him with a worried, preoccupied frown. "Are you sure that's it?" Then she had scrambled up to her feet. "Let's go in the office where it's warm."
The little electric heater beamed and radiated, creating a nimbus of heat around itself. "Look at it," Mary Anne said. "Getting itself warm ... nothing else."
"Are you afraid of me?" he asked her.
"No." Harassed, she paced around the office. "I don't think so, at least. Why should I be afraid of you?"
Outside the store a car rushed along the empty street, its headlights spilling across the display tables and racks, the shelves of records behind the counter. Then the car was gone; the store returned to darkness.
"I'm going downstairs," she announced, already starting out into the hall.
"What for?"
There was no response; she had turned on the basement light and was hurrying down the stairwell.
"Come on back up here," he ordered.
"Please don't shout at me," she said in a clipped voice. But she had paused on the stairs. "I can't stand being shouted at."
"Look at me," he said.
"No."
"Stop this damn neurotic business and look at me."
"You can't order me around," she said. But gradually her head turned. Eyes dark, lips pressed tight, she faced him.
"Mary Anne," he said, "what's the matter?"
The darkness in her eyes blurred. "I'm afraid something will happen to me." One small hand came up; frail and trembling, she was holding onto the banister. "Oh, hell," she said, her lips twitching. "It goes back a long way. I'm sorry, Joseph."
"Why?" he repeated. "Why do you want to go downstairs?"
"To get the coffeepot. Didn't I say?"
"No, you didn't say."
"It's still down there ... I was washing it out today. It's drying on the packing table by the gummed tape. On some pieces of cardboard."
"Do you want coffee?"
"Yes," she said eagerly. "Then maybe I wouldn't be so cold."
"All right," he said. "Go on and get it."
Gratefully, she let go of the banister and hurried down into the stockroom. Schilling followed after her. When he reached the basement he found her sitting on the edge of the rickety packing table, fitting the Silex coffeepot together. A few drops of water shone on her wrist; she had filled the coffeepot up and it was sloshing over.
For a moment he thought of getting the tin of Folger's coffee down for her; she was starting to search the shelves behind her, reaching up and pushing aside the boxes of twine and Scotch tape. He went over, half-intending that and half-intending something else, something that remained diffused in his mind until he had almost reached her and she was lifting the Silex up for him to take. He took it and then, without hesitation, set it down again, this time on the edge of the table, and put his arms around the girl's shoulders.
"How thin," he said aloud.
"I told you." She shifted until more of her weight rested on the table. "What is it they call it when you want to run? Panic? That sounds like the word. But I always wanted a place I could run to, a place I could hide ... but when I got there, nobody would let me in, or it wasn't where I wanted to be after all. It never worked out; there was always something wrong. And I gave up trying."
"Have you been coming down here at night?"
"A couple of times."
"Doing what? Just sitting?"
"Sitting and thinking. I never worked where they gave me a key before. I played a few records ... I tried to remember what you told me about them, what I was supposed to listen for. There was one I liked very much; I put it on the machine and then I went in the office and listened from there because it was warmer. Are you mad at me?"
"No," he said.
"I'll never be able to figure all that out, all the things you know. But that wasn't why I came down, anyhow. I just wanted to listen and be in here by myself, with the door locked. One night-last night, I think-the cop came around and shone his flashlight on me. I had to go and unlock the door and prove who I was."
"Did he believe you?"
"Yes, he had seen me working during the day. He asked me if I was okay."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him I was about as okay as I had ever been. But not really okay enough."
"What can I do?" he asked.
"You don't have to do anything."
"I want to do something."
"Well, you could find the coffee."
"Can't I do more than that?"
She pondered, her head against his, one hand resting against her cheek, the other in her lap. He could feel her breath rushing and see the slight motion of her lips. Like a child, she was breathing through her mouth. She was so close to him that, even in the dim light, he could make out the tiny, perfectly formed strands that grew from the nape of her neck and were lost in the general darkness of her hair. Along the edge of her jaw, beneath her left ear, was an almost invisible scar, a thin line of white that disappeared into the faint fuzz of her cheek.
"What was that?" he asked, touching the scar.
"Oh." She smiled up at him, lifting her chin. "When I was eleven I bumped into a glass cupboard door and the glass broke." Her eyes roamed mischievously. "It didn't hurt, but it bled a lot, all down my neck in big red drops. I had a cat who used to sneak into the dish cupboard and go to sleep in the big mixing bowl, the one my mother mixed her cakes in. I was trying to get him out, but he wouldn't come. I was pulling on his paw, and all of a sudden he scratched me. I backed away and broke the glass door."
She was still meditating over her childhood injury when he turned her face upward and kissed her, this time directly on her dry lips. Nowhere on her was there any excess flesh; her bones were close to the surface, just beneath the skin: first came the silk of her clothing and then the immediate hardness of her ribs and shoulder blades and collarbone. Her hair, as it swept close to him, smelled faintly of cigarette smoke. Close to her ears lingered the remnant of some perfume, long since evaporated. She was tired, and there was a presence of tiredness about her, a drooping passivity and silence.
At first he held her lightly because he thought she might want to get away, and it was important that she be able to get away. But, after a time, he realized that she was falling quietly asleep, or, at least, into a kind of unwinding stupor. Her eyes were still open-she was gazing at the cardboard cartons of adding machine tape above his head-but there was no particular focus of consciousness in them. She was aware of him, aware of herself too, but only in a nebulous way. Her mind was turned inward, still revolving around thoughts, and around memories of thoughts, meditating over experiences that had long ago existed.
"I feel safe," she said at last.
"Yes," he agreed. "You are."
"Because of you?"
"I hope so. Because of the store, too. It feeds us."
"But mostly because of you. I didn't always feel this way. Not at all, before. Remember?"
"I frightened you."
"You scared hell out of me. And you were so-stern. You lectured me; you were like-" She searched her memory, brightness dancing in her eyes. "When I was very little ... the picture of God in Sunday school. Only you don't have a long beard."
"I'm not God," he said. He was an ordinary man; he was not God or even like God, in spite of the picture she had seen in Sunday school. An unhappy anger grew inside him. Her odd, warm, totally childish ideal ... and there was really so little he could do to help her. "Disappointed?" he asked.
"I guess not."
"You wouldn't like God. He sends people to hell. God's an old-fashioned reactionary."
She pulled back and wrinkled her nose at him. Again he kissed her. This time she stirred; moving her face away, she smiled and blew a mouthful of warm breath up at him. Then her smile, without warning, vanished. Ducking her head she trembled and sat with her back stiff, hands clenched together, and, moaning, rose up until her bare throat was against his eyes.
Joseph Schilling knew that she was frightened now, that the old image had come back. But he did not stir. Motion would have been a mistake. He kept that fixed in his mind.
"Joseph," she said. "I-" The spoken sound faded into a stammer of confusion; shaking her head, she tugged fretfully upward, as if her body were caught.
"What is it?" he asked, rising with her as she slid from the table and caught at him. Her nails dug into his sleeves; she struggled with herself, swallowing rapidly, eyes shut.
Schilling saw his own hands tearing at the clasps that held her shirt together. How strange, he thought. So that was it. What an eerie sight it was, his large, reddish hands plucking so industriously. The girl, opening her eyes, looked down and saw. Together they watched the hands twitch aside her shirt and spread out across the hollow of her shoulders, until they had pushed her clothes down to her elbows.
"Oh, dear," the girl whispered. Schilling, unable to comprehend, drew back and sat rubbing his hands together.
Mary Anne took a deep breath and began to gather her shirt back around her. A wondering expression appeared on her face; turning to him, she asked: "Did you do that? You did do it, didn't you?"
"Yes," he said. And then he reached out, drew the fabric of her shirt completely away from her, and unfastened the remaining clasps. She made no protest; with curiosity she watched his hands as they traveled across her stomach to the snap that held her slacks in place. Once she made a motion of unclipping her bra; she stood groping behind her back without accomplishing anything until Schilling turned her partly around, pushed her fingers away, and undid the hooks.
"Thanks," she murmured. Her bra fell forward and she caught the cups. In a few brief motions she had pulled her slacks all the way off and, with a shiver, worked down her underpants. Collecting her clothes, she folded them in a bundle and pushed them away. For an instant her slightly luminous column danced in front of him; then she hurried forward, very smooth, very alive, creeping up onto the table.
"Yes," she told him. "Don't wait; hurry, Joseph, for heaven's sake."
He did not have to wait. By flattening her back she was able to receive him; she guided him in with her own fingers, pushed until she could go no farther, and, supporting herself upon her fists, stiffened her body. She was warm inside, warmer than he had ever found anywhere, with anyone. Her eyes were shut and she was involved in the rhythms of her body. Across her pelvis rippled a sheet of fine, energetic muscles; the activity spread until it reached her breasts and dilated each nipple. He had entered her in so short a time that neither of them had spoken a word.
It was accomplished, then. Something rushed to the surface of her body and was gone; she constricted, became hard, then soft again. Sighing, the girl lowered herself and relaxed. She withdrew her fists and contentedly laid her palms flat across her belly.
Schilling waited, and then he carefully withdrew himself. Mary Anne said nothing. Finally, after he had got his clothes back around himself and was stepping to the floor, she stirred, opened her eyes, and sat up.
In a low, timid voice she said: "That never happened to me before. I never felt anything inside me come. It was always something that happened to me; nothing I did."
"It's good," he assured her.
Presently she located her clothes and began to dress. He couldn't help looking at his watch. Only ten minutes had gone by since they descended to the storeroom. It did not seem possible, but it was actually no longer than that. If they had, instead, gone up and put on the coffee, it would just now be ready.
When the girl had finished dressing, he said to her: "How do you feel, Mary Anne?"
She stretched her arms, shook herself like an animal, and then trotted toward the stairs. "I feel fine, but I'm hungry. Can we go have something to eat?"
He laughed. "Right away?"
Halfway up the stairs she halted to gaze down at him. "Why not? What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing." Mounting the stairs, he stopped behind her. She did not seem to mind; there was no objection as he reached up and put his arm around her waist. Leaning back, she rested against him, making a breathy whirr of satisfaction. He covered her right breast with his fingers and she did not seem to mind that, either; in fact, she closed her hand over his and pressed him against her until he could feel the line of ribs under her flesh. "Where do you want to go?" he asked, releasing her.
"Anywhere. Someplace we can get hotcakes and ham and coffee. That's what I want; plenty of it, too." Excitedly, she scampered up the stairs to the top. "Okay?" she demanded, outlined above him.
"Okay," he said happily, and reached to switch off the basement light.