A Saucer of Loneliness (17 page)

Miss Phoebe disengaged her hands and plucked away the cloth. She was smiling—really smiling, and Don understood why she so seldom smiled, if this were the expression she used for such experiences.

He answered the smile, and said nothing, because about perfect
things nothing can be said. He went and dried his hands and then pulled back the drapes and raised the blinds while she straightened the chairs.

“The ancients,” said Miss Phoebe, “recognized four elements: earth, air, fire and water. This power can do anything those four elements can do.” She put down the clean cups, and went to get her crumb brush. “To start with,” she added.

He placed the remark where it would soak in, and picked up a piece of icing from the cake plate. This time he ate it. “Why is a wet towel darker than a dry one?”

“I—why, I hadn’t thought,” she said. “It is, now that you mention it. I’m sure I don’t know why, though.”

“Well, maybe you know this,” he said. “Why I been worrying about it so much?”

“Worrying?”

“You know what I mean. That and why most motors that use heat for power got to have a cooling system, and why do paper towels tear where they ain’t perf’rated, and a zillion things like that. I never used to.”

“Perhaps it’s … yes, I know. Of
course
!” she said happily. “You’re getting a—call it a kinship with things. A sense of interrelationship.”

“Is that good?”

“I think it is. It means I was right in feeling that you have a natural talent for what I’m going to teach you.”

“It takes up a lot of my time,” he grumbled.

“It’s good to be alive all the time,” she said. She poured. “Don, do you know what a revelation is?”

“I heard of it.”

“It’s a sudden glimpse of the real truth. You had one about the wasps.”

“I had it awful late.”

That doesn’t matter. You had it, that’s the important thing. You had one with the rat, too.”

“I did?”

“With the wasps you had a revelation of sacrifice and courage. With the rat—well, you know yourself what effect it has had on you.”

“I’m the only one I know has no girl,” he said.

“That is exactly it.”

“Don’t tell me it’s s’posed to be that way!”

“For you, I—I’d say so.”

“Miss Phoebe, I don’t think l know what you’re talkin’ about.”

She looked at her teacup. “I’ve never been married.”

“Me too,” he said somberly. “Wait, is that what you—”

“Why do people get married?”

“Kids.”

“Oh, that isn’t all.”

He said, with his mouth full, “They wanna be together, I guess. Team up, like. One pays the bills, the other runs the joint.”

“That’s about it. Sharing. They want to share. You know the things they share.”

“I heard,” he said shortly.

She leaned forward. “Do you think they can share anything like what we’ve had this afternoon?”

“That
I never heard,” he said pensively.

“I don’t wonder. Don, your revelation with the rat is as basic a picture of what is called ‘original sin’ as anything I have ever heard.”

“Original sin,” he said thoughtfully. “That’s about Adam an’—no, wait. I remember. Everybody’s supposed to be sinful to start with because it takes a sin to get’m started.”

“Once in a while,” she said, “it seems as if you know so few words because you don’t need them. That was beautifully put. Don, I think that awful thing that happened to you in the sewer was a blessing. I think it’s a good thing, not a bad one. It might be bad for someone else, but not for you. It’s kept you as you are so far. I don’t think you should try to forget it. It’s a warning and a defense. It’s a weapon against the ‘yin’ forces. You are a very special person, Don. You were made for better things than—than others.”

“About the wasps,” he said. “As soon as you started to talk I begun to feel better. About this, I don’t feel better.” He looked up to the point where the wall met the ceiling and seemed to be listening to his own last phrase. He nodded definitely. “I don’t feel better. I feel worse.”

She touched his arm. It was the only time she had made such a gesture. “You’re strong and growing and you’re just eighteen.” Her voice was very kind. “It would be a strange thing indeed if a young man your age didn’t have his problems and struggles and tempta—I mean, battles. I’m sorry I can’t resolve it for you, Don. I wish I could. But I know what’s right. Don’t I, Don, don’t I?”

“Every time,” he said glumly. “But I …” His gaze became abstracted.

She watched him anxiously. “Don’t think about her,” she whispered. “Don’t. You don’t have to. Don, do you know that what we did this afternoon was only the very beginning, like the first day of kindergarten?”

His eyes came back to her, bright. “Yeah, huh. Hey, how about that.”

“When would you like to do some more?”

“Now?”

“Bless you, no! We both have things to do. And besides, you have to think. You know it takes time to think.”

“Yeah, okay. When?”

“A week.”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be here. Hey, I’m gonna be late for work.”

He went to the door. “Take it easy,” he said.

He went out and closed the door but before the latch clicked he pushed it open again. He crossed the room to her.

He said, “Hey, thanks for the birthday cake. It was …” His mouth moved as he searched. “It was a good birthday cake.” He took her hand and shook it heartily. Then he was gone.

Miss Phoebe was just as pink as the birthday cake. To the closed door she murmured, “Take it easy.”

Don was in a subway station two nights later, waiting for an express. The dirty concrete shaft is atypical and mysterious at half-past four in the morning. The platforms are unlittered and deserted, and there is a complete absence of the shattering roar and babble and bustle for which these urban entrails are built. An approaching train can
be heard starting and running and stopping sometimes ten or twelve minutes before it pulls in, and a single set of footfalls on the mezzanine above will outlast it. The few passengers waiting seem always to huddle together near one of the wooden benches, and there seems to be a kind of inverse square law in operation, for the closer they approach one another the greater the casual unnoticing manners they affect, though they will all turn to watch someone walking toward them from two hundred feet away. And when angry voices bark out, the effect is more shattering than it would be in a cathedral.

A tattered man slept uneasily on the bench. Two women buzz-buzzed ceaselessly at the other end. A black-browed man in gray tweed strode the platform, glowering, looking as if he were expected to decide on the recall of the Ambassador to the Court of St. James by morning.

Don happened to be looking at the tattered man, and the way the old brown hat was pulled down over the face (it could have been a headless corpse, and no one would have been the wiser), when the body shuddered and stirred. A strip of stubbled skin emerged between the hat and the collar, and developed a mouth into which was stuffed a soggy collection of leaf-mold which may have been a cigar butt yesterday. The man’s hand came up and fumbled around, coming away with most of the soggy thing. The jaws worked, the lips smacked distastefully. The hand pushed the hat brim up only enough to expose a red eye, which glared at the butt. The hat fell again, and the hand pitched the butt away.

At this point the black-browed man hove to, straddle-legged in front of the bench. He opened his coat and hooked his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. He tilted his head back, half-closed his eyes, and sighted through the cleft on his chin at the huddled creature on the bench. “You!” he grated, and everyone swung around to stare at him. He thumped the sleeping man’s ankle with the side of his foot. “You!” Everyone looked at the bench.

The tattered man said “Whuh-wuh-wuh-wuh,” and smacked his lips. Suddenly he was bolt upright, staring.

“You!” barked the black-browed man. He pointed to the butt. “Pick that up!”

The tattered man looked at him and down at the butt. His hand strayed to his mouth, felt blindly on and around it. He looked down again at the butt and dull recognition began to filter into his face. “Oh sure boss, sure,” he whined. He cringed low, beginning to stoop down off the bench but afraid to stop talking, afraid to turn his gaze away from the danger point. “I don’t make no trouble for anybody, mister, not me, honest I don’t,” he wheedled. “A feller gets down on his luck, you know how it is, but I never make trouble, mister …”

“Pick it up!”

“Oh sure, sure, right away, boss.”

At this point Don, to his own intense amazement, felt himself approaching the black-browed man. He tapped him on the shoulder.

“Mister,” he said. He prayed that his tight voice would not break. “Mister, make
me
pick it up, huh?”

“What?”

Don waved at the tattered man. “A two-year-old kid could push him around. So what are you proving, you’re a big man or something? Make
me
pick up the butt, you’re such a big man.”

“Get away from me,” said the black-browed man. He took two quick paces backwards. “I know what you are, you’re one of those subway hoodlums.”

Don caught a movement from the corner of his eye. The tattered man had one knee on the platform, and was leaning forward to pick up the butt. “Get away from that,” he snapped, and kicked the butt onto the local tracks.

“Sure, boss, sure, I don’t want no …”

“Get away from me, both of you,” said the black-browed man. He was preparing for flight. Don suddenly realized that he was afraid—afraid that he and the tattered man might join forces, or perhaps even that they had set the whole thing up in advance. He laughed. The black-browed man backed into a pillar. And just then a train roared in, settling the matter.

Something touched Don between the shoulder blades and he leaped as if it had been an ice pick. But it was one of the women. “I just had to tell you, that was very brave. You’re a fine young man,” she said. She sniffed in the direction of the distant tweed-clad figure
and marched to the train. It was a local. Don watched it go, and smiled. He felt good.

“Mister, you like to save my life, you did. I don’t want no trouble, you unnerstan’, I never do. Feller gets down on his luck once in a wh—”

“Shaddup!” said Don. He turned away and froze. Then he went back to the man and snatched off the old hat. The man cringed.

“I know who you are. You just got back from the can. You got sent up for attackin’ a girl.”

“I ain’t done a
thing
,” whispered the man. “Gimme back my hat, please, mister?”

Don looked down at him. He should walk away, he ought to leave this hulk to rot, but his questing mind was against him. He threw the hat on the man’s lap and wiped his fingers on the side of his jacket. “I saw you stayin’ out of trouble three nights ago on Mulberry Street. Followin’ a girl into a house there.”

“It was you chased me,” said the man. “Oh God.” He tucked himself up on the bench in a uterine position and began to weep.

“Cut that out,” Don snarled. “I ain’t hit you. If I wanted I coulda thrown you in front of that train, right?”

“Yeah, instead you saved me f’m that killer,” said the man brokenly. “Y’r a prince, mister. Y’r a real prince, that’s what you are.”

“You goin’ to stay away from that girl?”

“
Your girl?
Look, I’ll never even walk past her house no more. I’ll kill anybody looks at her.”

“Never mind that. Just
you
stay away from her.”

The express roared in. Don rose and so did the man. Don shoved him back to the bench. “Take the next one.”

“Yeah, sure, anything you say. Just you say the word.”

Don thought,
I’ll ask him what it is that makes it worth the risk, chance getting sent up for life just for a thing like that
. Then,
No
, he thought.
I think I know why
. He got on the train.

He sat down and stared dully ahead.
A man will give up anything, his freedom, his life even, for a sense of power
.

Q.
How much am I giving up?

A.
How should I know?

He looked at the advertisements. “Kulkies are better.” “The better skin cream.” He wondered if anyone ever wanted to know what these things were better
than
. “For that richer, creamier, safer lather.” “Try Miss Phoebe for that better, more powerful power.”

He wondered, and wondered …

Summer dusk, all the offices closed, the traffic gone, no one and nothing in a hurry for a little while. Don put his back against a board fence where he could see the entrance, and took out a toothpick. She might be going out, she might be coming home, she might be home and not go out, she might be out and not come home. He’d stick around.

He never even got the toothpick wet.

She stood at the top of the steps, looking across at him. He simply looked back. There were many things he might have done. Rushed across. Waved. Done a time-step. Looked away. Run. Fallen down.

But he did nothing, and the single fact that filled his perceptions at that moment was that as long as she stood there with russet gleaming in her black hair, with her sad, sad cups-for-laughter eyes turned to him, with the thin summer cloak whipping up and falling to her clean straight body, why there was nothing he could do.

She came straight across to him. He broke the toothpick and dropped it, and waited. She crossed the sidewalk and stopped in front of him, looking at his eyes, his mouth, his eyes. “You don’t even remember me.”

“I remember you all right.”

She leaned closer. The whites of her eyes showed under her pupils when she did that, like the high crescent moon in the tropics that floats startlingly on its back. These two crescents were twice as startling. “I don’t think you do.”

“Over there.” With his chin he indicated her steps. “The other night.”

It was then, at last, that she smiled, and the eyes held what they were made for. “I saw him again.”

“He try anything?”

She laughed. “He
ran!
He was afraid of me. I don’t think anybody was ever afraid of me.”