up, leaving the still presence beside her. Stepping to the front of the bus, she waited for it to ease almost to a stop at the sidewalk. She’d seen how it was done—this jumping down from a bus that hadn’t quite stopped. She primed herself and jumped.
Well, she fell, but it didn’t matter. She got up at once as the bus wheezed off.
It was just a question of learning their rules. At school, she would remember to wear white gloves the next time grades were announced and to stand up from her desk with her arms folded on her chest when her mispronounced name was called.
Running home—it was late after all, and dark—she considered the question of asking questions. She sensed an opening, as though her French words had breached a low, solid wall.
The concierge let her in, looking at her curiously.
“Bon soir,” she said. There were two more.
The big stairs seemed to reach for her, as though they had been waiting. She ran up, her footsteps muffled by the thick runner that was held at each tread by gold bars.
At the top, she nearly gave up and went into her blue room as she always did. But she was still aware of the opening, although it already seemed to be closing. She wondered briefly if it could only exist outside the house.
As long as it was still possible, she pushed her way through the dimness—lights hadn’t been turned on yet—and knocked on her parents’ bedroom door. It seemed unlikely that she’d ever done that.
She heard her mother’s startled voice and went in.
That lovely lady, her mother, was sitting on the satin stool in front of her dressing table, decorated like an altar with candles, silver boxes, and trays. She turned, looking alarmed, and the girl saw her silken leg in the opening of her dressing gown. She was getting ready to go out—her evening dress lay on a chair—and the girl knew she had very little time.
“I took the bus,” she said, and gasped with surprise at herself. “Jean didn’t come.”
“Well, that is something,” her mother said, smiling. “That is really something.” The girl didn’t know whether she meant that Jean had not come or that she had taken the bus.
“I was thinking of a question,” she said, twisting her hands. Her mother had turned back to the mirror and was dusting her nose with a feathery thing that shed powder everywhere.
“What question, Darling?” her mother asked.
“How was that woman, that ambassador, poisoned?”
Her mother laughed. “You’re still thinking about that?”
“I really want to know,” the girl said desperately. There was so little time. Soon her mother would rise, drop her dressing gown, and lower the big dress over her head. Then she would pack her little purse, slide on her shoes, and leave.
“Lead in the paint that flaked off her ceiling,” her mother said. “I thought you heard that.” She was applying a coat of red lipstick.
“But I don’t understand,” the girl said, and now she knew she was talking about many thing. “Did she sleep with her mouth open?”
Her mother smiled. “She may have,” she said sagely. “She may have, for all we know.” Then she stood up to get on with the rest of her dressing.
The girl went away. She didn’t particularly want to watch her mother don the big dress although she knew she would look beautiful in it.
She went into her blue room and turned on a lamp. Above her head, the paneling of the octagonal walls reached into the darkness, topped with swirls. She stood studying that. The room had been designed for something else, something she would soon understand.
“It is hardly a room for a child,” her mother had objected when they moved in.
“A boudoir,” her father had said quietly.
There was no other room available.
I will stay here until I understand, she thought, sitting down on the bed. I will stubbornly stay until I find all the words and all the connections and all the rules of their game.
SEAGULL
“LISTEN,” SHE SAID, LEANING ACROSS THE TABLE and laying down her fork, “if this is about money, I’m leaving.” She began to gather her coat around her shoulders.
“It’s not about money,” he said. “How could I invite you to dinner and the theatre and ask you for money?”
She hesitated, one arm in her sleeve. “You’re edging toward it.”
“How?”
“As soon as you started talking about trying to raise money for your play.”
“That was innocent,” he said. “Believe me. You’re in this game, too; I thought you’d understand. Getting a new play on its feet—I thought you’d be sympathetic.”
“I’m plenty sympathetic,” she said, “but I have my own projects.”
“I know.”
She stared at him, assessing. Apparently he had researched her. It was easy to find what she’d done: two respectable off-off Broadway productions, mounted by a company she’d helped to finance.
She regretted, now, that she hadn’t done her homework. All she had to go on was the way he looked, on the other side of the café table. He was thin, tall, his background, whatever it was, hidden by decades of living in the city; she was thin, tall, sharp, her background still hovering in her Midwestern twang, worn proudly, like an award, although she, too, had lived in the city for decades. Both were theatre people—playwrights, occasionally directors, actors in their own or other people’s productions, but invisible, really, in the crowd. And of course there was no money—never had been, never would be. Feeling cheerful, she’d say it kept them honest—theatre people, her tribe.
But he was black. That was a distinction.
After ten minutes of talk, she knew they’d both come to the city years earlier, expecting a special destiny. No one could have told them it had not worked out the way they had expected because they knew it had worked out, but that their expectations had been slightly, perhaps fatally, off. So they had already in that first ten minutes established a base and a sort of harmony, and then he had started off in another direction with his play, the production mired in financial problems.
“The sources I’ve turned to in the past have dried up,” he said now, satisfied that she had let her coat fall to the back of her chair, taking her arm out of the sleeve, although she hadn’t picked up her fork; her tuna filet lay exposed on her plate, rapidly chilling. “With what’s happened to the economy, even the foundations are pulling back, and the two or three patrons”(he couldn’t help giving the word an ironic tinge) “have cut back, as well—and it’s a crucial time for me, I need to do this show now, before we have a change in administrations.”
“Really,” she said, relenting a little. She was not uninterested although she was dubious.
“It’s
