The young family let her off in the downtown business section, and from there she walked through the evening darkness to her own room. On the front porch the empty wine bottles of the colored women remained, a heap of glitter and smoothness near her feet as she pushed open the front door.
The hall, narrow and dank, unwound ahead of her as she walked toward her door; she fumbled in her purse, found her key, and stopped at her own door.
Somewhere in a nearby room, a radio thundered out a jump record. Outside, along the dark street, a sweeper made its complicated route among the stores and houses. She put her key in the lock, turned it, and entered.
Shapes outlined themselves in the light from the hall: the pasteboard cartons of her possessions. They had never been unpacked. She closed the door and the weak light cut off; the room dwindled into itself and became a solid surface.
She leaned against the door for a long, long time. Then, removing her coat, she walked to the bed and sat down on its edge. Springs groaned, but she could not see them; she could only hear. She pushed the covers aside, kicked off her shoes, and crept into bed. Pulling the covers over her she lay on her back, her arms at her sides, and closed her eyes.
The room was still. Below, in the street, the sweeper had gone on. The floor vibrated from the sounds of other people, other rooms, but even that was a motion rather than a sound. She could no longer see and now she could no longer hear. She lay on her back and thought of different things, good things, pleasant things, clean and friendly and peaceful things.
In her darkness nothing moved. Time passed, and the darkness departed. Sunlight streamed through the frayed curtains, into the room. Mary Anne lay on her back, her arms at her sides, and heard the sounds of cars and people outside the window. Toilets were flushed; noise vibrated among the other rooms.
She lay, staring up at the patterns of sunlight on the ceiling. She thought of many different things.
At nine o'clock in the morning Joseph Schilling opened up the record shop, found the push broom in the closet, and began sweeping the sidewalk. At nine-thirty, as he was filing records away, Max Figuera appeared in his soiled coat and trousers.
"She didn't show up?" Max said, picking his teeth with a match. "I didn't think she would."
Schilling went on working. "She won't be coming back. From now on, I'd like you to come in every day. Until Christmas, at least. Then maybe I'll go back to handling it alone."
By the counter Max paused, leaning, an expression of wisdom on his face, a knowing dryness that dropped from him like fragments of skin and cloth, bits of himself deposited wisely as he went along. "I told you so," he said.
"Did you."
"When you first looked at that girl, the one with the big knockers. The one drinking the milkshake; remember?"
"That's true," Schilling agreed, working.
"How much did she take you for?"
Schilling grunted.
Max said: "You ought to know better. You always think you can take these little babes, but they always wind up taking you.
They will; they're smart. Small-town girls, they're the worst of all. They sell it high. They know how to cash in on it. Did you get anything for your money?"
"In the back," Schilling said, "there's a Columbia shipment I haven't had time to open. Open it and check it against the invoice."
"Okay." Max roamed through the store. He chuckled, a wet snicker. "You did get something, didn't you? Did she pay off at all?"
Schilling walked to the front of the store and looked out at the people, at the stores across the street. Then, when he heard Max rooting in the shipment, he returned to his own work.
At one-thirty, while Max was out at lunch, a dark-haired boy wearing a yellow uniform entered the store. Schilling waited on a fussy gentleman at the counter, sent him into a booth, and then turned to the boy.
"Is Miss Reynolds here?" the boy asked.
Schilling said: "You're Dave Gordon?"
The boy grinned self-consciously. "I'm her fiance."
"She's not here," Schilling said. "She doesn't work for me anymore."
"Did she quit?" The boy became agitated. "She did that a couple times before. You know where she lives? I don't even know that anymore."
"I don't know where she lives," Schilling said.
Dave Gordon loitered uncertainly. "Where do you suppose I can find out?"
"I have no idea," Schilling said. "May I suggest something?"
"Sure."
"Leave her alone."
Dave Gordon went out, bewildered, and Schilling resumed his work.
He did not expect that Dave Gordon would find her; the boy would search for a while and then go back to his gasoline station.
But there were others who might. Some of them had found her already.
That evening, after work, he remained in the store by himself, preparing a Decca Christmas order. The dark street was quiet; few cars moved by, and almost no pedestrians. He worked at the counter with a single light on, listening to one of the phonographs playing new classical releases.
At seven-thirty a sharp rap startled him; he looked up and saw Dave Gordon outlined in the doorway. The boy made a sign that he wanted to come in; he had changed from his uniform to a stiff, double-breasted suit.
Putting down his pencil, Schilling walked over and unlocked the door. "What do you want?" he asked.
"Her family doesn't know where she is either," Dave Gordon said.
"I can't help you," Schilling said. "She only worked here about a week." He started to close the door.
"We went down to that bar," Dave Gordon said. "But it isn't open yet. We're going to try later. Maybe they know."
"Who is 'we'?" Schilling asked, stopping.
"Her father's with me. He doesn't have a car of his own. I'm driving him around in the truck."
Schilling looked out and saw a yellow service truck parked at the curb a few spaces down. In the cabin of the truck was a small man, sitting quietly.
"Let's have a look at him," Schilling said. "Tell him to come over."
Dave Gordon left, stood talking at the truck for a time, and then he and Edward Reynolds returned together.
"Sorry to bother you," Ed Reynolds murmured. He was a slender, lightly built man, and Schilling saw some of the girl's lines in his face. There was a nervous tremor in his arms and hands, an involuntary spasm that might have been a suppressed abundance of energy. He was not a bad-looking man, Schilling realized. But his voice was thin, shrill and unpleasant.
"You're looking for your daughter?" Schilling said.
"That's right. Dave here says she worked for you." He blinked rapidly. "I think something's happened to her."
"Such as?"
"Well." The man gestured and blinked again. He twisted on one foot, his hands opening and closing, a shudder of movement that reached his face and put a series of muscles into activity. "See, she was hanging around with colored people down at this bar. I think there was one, murdered a white man. It was in the newspaper." His voice trailed off. "Maybe you noticed it."
This was her tormentor. Schilling saw a small man, in his middle fifties, a workingman hunched with fatigue from his day at the plant. The man, like most human beings, smelled of age and perspiration. His leather jacket was stained and crinkled and torn. He needed a shave. His glasses were too small for him, and probably the lenses were obsolete. Around one finger was a ragged strip of tape where he had cut or hurt himself. There was nothing evil or sadistic in the man. He was as Schilling had expected.
"Go on home," Schilling said, "and mind your own business. All you can give her is more trouble. She has enough of that." He closed the door and locked it.
After a conference with Mr. Reynolds, Dave Gordon again rapped on the glass. Schilling had returned to the counter. He went back and opened the door. Dave Gordon looked embarrassed and the girl's father was flushed and humble.
"Get out," Schilling said. "Get out." He slammed the door and pulled down the shade. The tapping began again almost at once. Schilling yelled through the glass: "Get out or I'll have you both arrested."
One of them mumbled something; he couldn't hear it.
"Get out!" he shouted. He unlocked the door and said: "She isn't even in town. She left. I gave her her money and she left."
"See," Dave Gordon said to the girl's father. "She went up to
San Francisco. She always wanted to; I told you."
"We don't want to bother you," Ed Reynolds said doggedly.
"We just want to find her. You know where in San Francisco she went?"
"She didn't go to San Francisco," Schilling said, half-closing the door. Then he went over to the counter and resumed his work. He did not look up; he concentrated on the Decca order sheet. In the darkness Dave Gordon and Ed Reynolds came softly into the store toward him. They stopped at the counter and waited, neither of them speaking. He went on with his work.
He could feel them there, waiting for him to tell them where she was. They would remain for a while, and then they would go to the Wren, and there they would find out where she was. And then they would go to her room, the room in which she looked out at neon signs. And that would be it.
"Leave her alone," he said.
There was no answer.
Schilling put down his pencil. He opened a drawer and took out a folded piece of notepaper, which he tossed to the two of them.
"Thanks," Ed Reynolds said. They shuffled away from the counter. "We appreciate it, mister."
After they had gone, Schilling relocked the door and returned to the counter. They had carried off the scribbled address of a San Francisco record wholesaler, an outfit on Sixth Street in the Mission District. That was the best he could do for her. By ten o'clock they would be back, and then they would go to the Lazy Wren.
There was nothing else he could do for her. He could not go to her, and he could not keep others away from her. In her twenty-dollar-a-month room, not more than a mile away and perhaps as close as a few blocks, she sat as she had sat in the restaurant: her hands in her lap, her feet together, her head slightly down and forward. He could help her only by not hurting her; he could keep himself from doing her further damage, and when he had done that he had done everything.
If she were let alone she would recover. If she had always been let alone she would not need to recover. She had been trained to be afraid; she had not invented her fear by herself, had not generated it or encouraged it or asked it to grow. Probably she did not know where it came from. And certainly she did not know how to get rid of it. She needed help, but it was not as simple as that; the desire to help her was no longer enough. Once, perhaps, it would have been. But too much time had passed, too much harm had been done. She could not believe even those who were on her side. For her, nobody was on her side. Gradually she had been cut off and isolated; she had been maneuvered into a corner, and she sat there now, her hands in her lap. She had no other choice. There was no other place for her to go.
He wondered what it would have meant if her grandfather had not died, or if she had had another father, lived in a bigger town, known somebody she could trust. What sort of person would she have been? He could not believe that she would be much different. The fear, possibly, would be more deeply buried; layers of complacency would hide it, and nobody would realize it was there. He did not feel like blaming her father. He did not imagine that Carleton Tweany was responsible for letting her down, or that Dave Gordon was somehow culpable for being young and not very bright or very perceptive. The guilt-if there was any guiltspread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. Across the street a man had parked with his lights on to examine his rear left tire; perhaps he was the person to be considered responsible: he was as good as anybody. He, also, was a participant in the world; if he had, at some early time, made some particular gesture he had not made, or refrained from some gesture-then perhaps Mary Anne would be healthy and confident, and there would be no problem.
Perhaps, at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed. But he doubted it. Nobody had made Mary Anne go wrong, because she had not gone wrong; she was as right as anybody else and far more right than some. But that was of no use. He could know she was right, and she could sense it in her compulsive fashion; but still no way remained by which she could live. It was not a moral issue. It was a practical issue. Someday, in a hundred years, her world might exist. It did not exist now. He thought that he saw the new outlines of it. She was not completely alone, and she had not invented it in a single-handed effort. Her world was partially shared, imperfectly communicated. The persons in it had insufficient contact; they could not communicate with one another, at least not yet. Her contacts were brief and fragmentary-a child here, a Negro there, an isolated thought that brought some response and then faded out. The fact that he felt it, even a little, proved that she was not sick, was not merely misconceived. And he was much older. He could not possibly have come closer. He loved her and others loved her, but that was of no use. What she needed was success.
Across the street the unidentified individual was kicking his tire and bending to see. Schilling watched as the man circled the car, bent once more, and then, getting behind the wheel, roared noisily off. Had a tire been low? Had he run over a bottle, a beer can? Had something of inestimable worth fallen out and been lost? The man was gone, and he would never know. Whatever the man had done, whatever he had, in secret, hatched and developed, would remain unknown.
Schilling opened the telephone book and found the number of the Lazy Wren. He dialed and listened.
"Hello," a man's voice, a Negro voice, came in his ear. "Lazy Wren Club."
He asked to talk to Paul Nitz. Eventually Nitz was at the phone.
"Who was that who answered?" Schilling asked.
"Taft Eaton. He owns the place. Who's this?" Nitz sounded dulled. "I have to go play a set."
"Ask him where Mary Anne Reynolds is," Schilling said. "He found her a place."
"What place?"
"Ask him," Schilling said. He hung up. When he felt better, he returned to his work.
Beyond the locked door, individuals passed. He heard the sound of their shoes against the pavement but he did not look up. He put new records on in the listening booth; he sharpened his pencil; he sealed up the Decca order sheet in an envelope and started on the Capitol order sheet.
The darkness hung over her, modified by the scatter of light from the hall. When she turned her head she saw that the hall door was open. She had not locked it; there seemed to be no point. In the dim light a figure was outlined, a man's figure.
"It didn't take you long," she said.
The man entered the room. But it was not Joseph Schilling.
"Oh," she said, startled, as the opaque form materialized close beside the bed. "It's you. Did-Tweany tell you?"
"No," Paul Nitz said, and sat down on the bed beside her. After a moment he reached out and stroked her hair back from her forehead. "I found out at the Wren, from Eaton. This is sure a ratty-looking dump."
"When did you find out?"
"Just now. I just went down there, to start work for the evening."
"I'm not in very good shape," she said.
"You were running," Nitz said. "And you ran right into yourself. You weren't even looking where you were going ... you were just going, trying to get away. That's all."
"Nuts to you," she said feebly.
"But I'm right."
"Okay, you're right."
Nitz grinned. "I'm glad I got to you."
"So am I. It's about time."
"I wanted you to leave, that night at your apartment. I was sick of that painting."
"Me too," she said. After a moment she asked: "Do me a favor?"
"Anything you want."
"You could go get me my cigarettes."
"Where are they?" He stood up.
"In my purse, on the dresser. If it's not too much trouble."
"How far's the dresser?"
"You can see it. There's only this one room-is that too far?" A period passed in which she lay listening to the noise of Paul Nitz fumbling around in the dark. Then he was back. "Thanks," she said as he lit a cigarette for her and placed it between her lips. "Well, it's been hectic. A hectic week."
"How do you feel?"
"Not too good," she said. "But I think I'll be okay. It'll take a while."
"Lie there and rest."
"Yes," she said gratefully.
"I'll turn on some heat." He found the small gas heater and lit it. Blue flames became visible; the fire hissed and sizzled in the darkness of the room.
"I can't see him again," Mary Anne said.
"All right," Nitz said. "You don't have to worry. I'll take care of you until you're back on your feet, and then you can take off, wherever you want."
"Thanks. I appreciate it."
He shrugged. "You took care of me once."
"When?" She had no memory of it.
"That night when I passed out and hit my head on the toilet.
And you sat down with me on the couch and held me in your lap."
He smiled a little, awkwardly.
"Yes," she said, remembering. "In some ways we had a lot of fun, that night. Lemming ... I wonder what became of him. That was such a strange night."
"I took some time off from the Wren," Nitz said. "I don't have to go back for almost two weeks. A sort of premature Christmas vacation."
"With pay?"
"Well, partially."
"You shouldn't have to do that."
"Now we can go places."
Mary Anne considered. "Would you really take me places!"
"Sure. Wherever you want."
"Because," she said earnestly, "there're a lot of places I want to see. We can do a lot of things ... could we go up to San Francisco?"
"When you feel like it."
"We can ride on the ferry. Can we do that!"
"Absolutely. There's one that goes to Oakland."
With fervor she said: "I want to visit some of those little restaurants out in North Beach. Have you ever been there?"
"Plenty of times. I'll take you to the Hangover Club to hear Kid Ory."
"That would be wonderful. And we can go out to Playland ... to the funhouse. We can go down the slides. Would you like that?"
"Sure," he agreed.
"Jesus." She reached up and hugged him. "You're a kid."
"So are you," Nitz answered.
"I am," she said. And then she thought of Joseph Schilling. And, presently, snarling with pain and despair, she clutched the man beside her, crying: "What the hell am I going to do? Answer me, Paul! How can I live like this?"
"You can't," he said.
"It was bad enough before. I knew something was wrong-but now it's worse. I wish I hadn't gone in there; Christ, if only I hadn't gone in there that day." But it wasn't true, because she was glad she had found the store. "It's still there," she said brokenly. "The store. Joseph Schilling. They're both there. In a way."
In a way, but it was a dead shell. There was nothing inside. She lay in the darkness, her arm around Nitz's neck, cigarette between her fingers, sobbing. It had come and gone, and left her by herself. But she didn't want to be by herself.
"I can't stand it!" she shouted. She hurled her cigarette across the room; it struck the far wall and dropped to the rug, a little flicker of red light. "I'm not going to die here in this rat hole."
Nitz went over and put out the cigarette. "No," he said, coming back. He gathered her up in his arms, and the bedcovers also, and carried her to the door. "Here we go," he said, holding her against him. He carried her down the hall and down the stairs; he carried her past the closed-up doors and their blaring sounds, past Mrs. Lessley the landlady, who peered out, suspicious and wary-eyed and hostile. He carried her down the front steps and along the night sidewalk, among the people wandering here and there in droves and in couples among the stores and gas stations and drive-ins and hotels and bars and drugstores. He carried her through the slums, through the business district, past neon signs and cafes and the office of the Leader, past the modern little shops of Pacific Park. Holding her tightly against him, he carried her to his own room.