“Such a simple reason for such a pretty girl? Oh, no, my dear, I’m sure it must be much more complex than that. Are you sure it’s the dancing you don’t like?”
Kathy looked up from her position on the floor, and Vera looked down through a gossamer drift of smoke, and though Kathy was young, she was no fool, and she thought that there comes a time when it is necessary to recognize and accept whatever is inside you and whatever is apparent inside someone else.
She said clearly, “I guess not. I guess it’s really the boys.”
Vera’s pink lips, wide and flexible and rather too thin, curved very slightly in the merest trace of a smile. “Shall I tell you something? We can make it a little secret just between the two of us. I don’t like boys, either. Or, in my case, perhaps I should say men. Isn’t it odd of us?”
She stood up then and walked across the room to a radio-phonograph combination. Looking back over her shoulder, she said, “Shall we have music tonight with our talk? What would you like?”
“Whatever you’d like.”
“Chopin? Some of the waltzes?”
Kathy had no feeling at all for Chopin, because appreciation of fine music was one of the things she had never learned from Stella, but she nodded in agreement, and Vera placed a stack of records on the spindle of the phonograph and continued to stand by the machine until the captive sound of a piano under talented fingers was released to lilting freedom in the room. Then she returned to the sofa and sat down again in her previous position. Her voice, against the background of Chopin’s music, was as light and lilting as the music itself.
“You have sad eyes, Kathy. That’s the first thing I noticed about you when you came into my class. Why are your eyes so sad, Kathy?”
“I didn’t know they were.”
“They are, Kathy. They’re very, very sad. Come and sit beside me and tell me about yourself, and then perhaps I’ll understand. You must call me Vera and talk with me as if I were the very best friend you have in the world because I have a feeling that that’s just what I’m going to be.”
And so Kathy sat on the sofa beside Vera and told her all about the significant events from the smell of lilies on, how she lived with Stella and loved Stella and how Stella was now dead, but she didn’t tell, not quite yet, how Vera was someone who might fill the terrible emptiness that Stella had left or how she loved the touch of Vera’s finger; on her hair and face as she talked. Always after that, the music of Chopin meant one thing, and so long as that thing was fresh and beautiful in the way she looked at it, she would listen breathlessly to the music of Chopin, but after the thing withered and grew ugly, she wouldn’t listen to the music of Chopin at all, but would go away as quickly as she could, out of hearing, whenever it was played.
CHAPTER 5
If it was a long way from Kenny Renowski to Angus Brunn, it was also a long way from a sofa to a park bench. The narrow slats of the bench pressed into her flesh, and she stirred, shifting her weight. She hadn’t thought of Vera Telsa in such detail for quite some time, and had wished, as a matter of fact, never to think of her in such detail again. It was not always possible, however, to control the direction or the material of one’s thoughts. Thinking, after all, was no more than the making of certain connections in the intricate and mysterious system of nerves with which one was equipped, and connections were made without deliberate or conscious effort. Especially, at this moment the one that sent into her mind the thought that she would one day also wish never to think of Jacqueline again, and that when she did so, it would be with sickness and regret and self-recrimination.
But that was not true. She would not permit it to be true. For Jacqueline was far more than Vera had ever been. She was, indeed, far more than herself. She was hope. She was salvation. She was absolution in a cocktail lounge. If only, that is, one could ever arrive at the time and the place. If only one could sleep quietly through the threatening interim.
Then she became aware that the terminus of her line of vision past the cast-iron man was a narrow store on the street beyond. Her eyes adjusted to the distance and focused, picking out details. Behind dirty glass was an upright cardboard figure of a girl in a very brief swimming suit two scraps of white cloth barely breaking the continuity of golden skin. Above the girl’s head was a glaring sun with long spears of flame flaring from its circumference to show how hot it was. The girl’s skin remained so beautifully golden under the blistering sun because she used a certain kind of lotion which was spelled out below in cool color. Across the top of the window in flaked letters was the claim that prescriptions were carefully compounded.
A drug store. A shabby, struggling drug store that looked as if it wouldn’t let a small point of ethics interfere with a sale. After all, plenty of places must sell barbiturates without prescriptions. She was almost certain of that. There was so much of it around in one form or another.
Without thinking any more about it, because she had already sat and thought too long, she got up and crossed the park and the street beyond and went into the drug store. Inside, the store was shadowy and cool and cluttered, scented with the mixed emissions of fountain flavors. The only light was that which filtered in from the street through the dirty display window and two smaller side windows near the ceiling. At first she thought that there was no one present but herself, but then she heard a staccato voice behind the partition at the rear that divided the store into front and back portions. The voice had a cultivated professional vigor, and after listening for a moment, she realized that it belonged to a radio news reporter. She listened a moment longer in frozen attention that possessed an element of terror, thinking that the reporter might be relating local events, that she might hear the name of Angus Brunn, but then she became aware that his remarks were international, and she walked on toward the source of the voice, her heels rapping sharply on the floor, the constriction in her chest slowly relaxing.
A man appeared in a doorway in the partition and moved forward to meet her. “Can I help you, miss?”
“Yes. I’d like some sleeping tablets, please.”
He was a tall man, and he leaned forward and down a little to look at her. His face was long, the skin hanging loosely on its bone structure, and his eyes were small and dull and tired. Looking at her, he lifted one hand and took the tip of his nose between thumb and index finger, pinching it gently.
“Sleeping tablets require a prescription, you know.”
“I know. I had a prescription, but I seem to have lost it. I’m sure it was nothing uncommon. Any kind of good tablet would do.”
“Who was the doctor? I’ll call him and get the prescription for you.”
“He’s not here. Not in the city, I mean. I got the prescription out of town.”
“That’s too bad. Law says you have to have a doctor’s prescription. Couldn’t you get another one?”
“I don’t like to pay the fee. It seems so unnecessary, and I don’t have money to waste.”
“Sure. Don’t blame you for feeling that way. Fees are pretty rough. For something simple like this, it’d probably be three minutes and three bucks.” He released his nose and sighed. “Okay, miss. Maybe I can fix you up.”
He walked back through the doorway in the partition. She could hear him moving around behind the thin barrier, and even though she understood that he knew she was lying, she experienced a renewal of the feeling of cleverness that she had known
