The Last Princess (63 page)

Her thoughts were interrupted by Birdie’s, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what got into me.” She walked over to Katie, put her arms around her. “You’re crying because of what I said. I’m sorry.”

Katie wiped her tears, “No, Birdie, I’m crying because I’m so—”

“You’re crying because you’re in love.”

“Yes, I am in love, very much. But I always thought being in love was a wonderful happy thing. Tonight was so curious …”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m not sure how David feels about
me.
”

“O.K., so tell me, what is it you see in him that makes you love him so. I grant you, he’s handsome, but what the hell else is he? He’s an arrogant louse, always was. He’s not good enough for you.”

“Oh, Birdie, you don’t know David at all,”

“And you do.”

“Yes.”

“So tell me, what’s so great to understand?”

She hesitated, then looked at Birdie. “David is a very lonely man who lives inside himself. He’s so afraid to allow anyone to understand him he has built up a hard shell so not to be hurt, and I believe life has hurt David deeply in a way I don’t entirely understand but I know instinctively. David feels deprived somehow … it’s as though he were wounded, and he holds back as though he were afraid of what might happen if he didn’t. And yet I feel a kindness and tenderness in him … Do you understand what I’m saying?” Birdie thought, a little education can be a very dangerous thing. This was how David looked to Katie? Lonely, deprived? Tough luck, Dave, we’re all millionaires and we come home from the factory in our Rolls-Royces. What she said was, “Did he kiss you good night?” “No, but I think he wanted to.”

Oh boy, and Katie knows about men? A guy likes a girl, he grabs her in the hall and plants one right on the mouth and says I’ll see you tomorrow, next day, the next 4th of July, Chanukah. Didn’t even kiss her, and she thinks he likes her. “So,” said Birdie, “when’s your next date?”

“David didn’t say.”

“What the hell did he say?”

“Just that it was nice being together. And thank you.”

“Oh, that’s great. He didn’t even
try
to kiss you?”

“No, but I know that I’ll see him.”

“Mazel tov!”

When David had left Katie, he felt there was no place to hide. He wanted to be anything in this world but alive in this moment. The evening had been a disaster. He was afraid of talking too much, afraid to betray himself by one word leading to another until without realizing what he was saying, blurt out, I love you. Saying good night without touching her, not kissing her … it had been agony.

All week, he walked around like a zombie, again unable to sleep, eat, work. He would walk past her house hoping to catch a glimpse of her. At the end of ten days, he thought he would go out of his mind. His mother, noticing how drawn he had gotten and how nervous he was, pleaded with him to eat. He couldn’t. He tried calling Abe Garfinckel, but he was away for the week. There had to be someone to talk to, so he tried his brother.

Ben was something less than sensitive. “This is the second time you took her out?”

“Yes,”

“You’re screwy—who falls so crazy in love with a broad? And so serious yet.” In between cutting the soup meat on his plate, he went on, “You know what you need, Dave, is a good lay to get your nuts off. Take it from me.”

David was so angry at this sage advice he ran out of the house and down the street until he was out of breath. Then he walked for blocks, aimlessly, without seeing. He stopped and looked in a pawnshop window. The owner came to the door and called out, “There’s something you want, maybe? Come in, I’ll show you nice stuff.”

David shook his head, walked on and turned down Mott Street. There, hung on two chains, he saw the wooden sign of Goldstein the optometrist, with the huge eye that swayed gently back and forth in the breeze. The eye seemed to follow him to the door beyond where Madame Vanetti ran a house of prostitution above Goldstein’s store.

Maybe Ben was right, maybe this was exactly what he needed to get Katie off his mind, maybe that was all that was wrong with him. David rang the bell at the bottom of the stairs, and Madame Vanetti released the lever from the top as the door opened. She called out to him as he walked up the steep flight, “I’m-a-glad to see you, bambino.” When he reached the top of the stairs she ushered him into a small waiting room.

“You-a wait, it ain’t-a-gonna be long. You-a gonna get-a my best-a girl.”

She said that to every customer, in the exaggerated American-Italian. He waited nervously. Finally he went into a room that smelled of too many sweating bodies and too much cheap perfume. He began to take off his shoes, tie and shirt. As he let his trousers drop to the floor, he looked down and saw the overblown body in bed where someone else had just been—and the lurid red hair, the exaggerated outline of the sensuous mouth, the green eyelids. He wanted to throw up. Quickly he put on his clothes, grabbed his jacket, took two dollars out of his pocket and tossed them to her.

As he went out she said, “Well, I’ll be god damned,” and then, picking up the money, “Well, what the hell … win some, lose some.”

It was eleven o’clock when David knocked on Malka Greenberg’s door. Jacob opened it and stood before David in his long union suit that bagged out at the seat. It bagged even more because one of the buttons was missing.

“So what do you want, bummukeh?”

“May I see Katie? It’s very important, please.”

“I should throw you out. At eleven o’clock, he comes. It couldn’t wait until tomorrow, there would be a revolution? You should only go in hell.” He went to get Katie, and as he walked back to bed he mumbled under his breath, “Malka couldn’t wait for her to get a boy, nu, so now she’s got one. A bum. Who comes to see a girl at eleven o’clock? Oi, yoi, yoi, America goniff.”

Katie quickly slipped out of bed and into her robe as Birdie bolted up in bed. “Should I go with you?”

“No, Birdie, I’m sorry to disturb you.”

“What’s wrong, Katie?” Sammy said as she passed his bed.

“I don’t know. Now go back to sleep, dear.”

“You want me to protect you?”

“I know you could if I needed you, but no, darling.” She bent down and kissed him on the cheek, then hurried to the door. There was David, looking shockingly haggard and disheveled. “David, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said, “Go get dressed quickly—I want to talk to you,” She started to speak but he interrupted. “Don’t ask any questions. Just trust me and get dressed.”

Katie hurried back. Birdie asked nervously, “What did he want at eleven o’clock? Talk about chutzpa, nerve, guts, he’s got it. Doesn’t call a girl all week, doesn’t see her all week, and eleven o’clock he’s here. Do you know something I didn’t tell you? I’m sorry you ever met him.”

Katie was paying no attention as she proceeded to dress.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Birdie asked.

“David wants to talk to me. I know it must be important or he wouldn’t have come at this hour.”

“How do you know, tell me? How do you think you know so much about men? Listen, you’re a big girl now and I’m going to tell you for your own good, when a guy comes to a girl’s house this late it ain’t because he respects her. He thinks she’s easy, a pushover, you understand what I mean? In other words, he couldn’t sleep because he’s got hot pants.”

Katie was dressed by now. “Birdie, do me a favor—go to sleep and don’t worry.”

She met David in the hall. Without a word he took her by the hand, led her down the stairs and out into the street. They walked silently along by the river for a long time, then found a bench and sat down. She looked closely at him under the yellow lamplight.

“David, if you have a problem I’d like to help you with it. May I?”

“Yes, I have a problem.” He hesitated, then said, “You’re my problem.”

“What do you mean?

“I mean I’m in love with you.”

“… I can’t believe what you’re saying—”

“Believe it, believe it—I’m in love with you.”

She turned to him. “Why didn’t you try to see me all week?”

“Because I don’t
want
to be in love with you.”

“You don’t want to—”

“That’s right, I’m not ready. What can I give you, what can I do for you? If you married me, well, this is what you’d have for the rest of your life.”

She got up, walked to the edge of the sidewalk and watched the river. He followed and stood next to her.

“David, what can I say to you, except that I’m sorry I made you so unhappy?”

He took her face in his hands. “Maybe you could say that you could love me. I guess that’s what I really want to hear.”

“I can’t say that yet.”

“In other words you don’t feel anything—”

“That’s not what I meant. It’s just that before I can answer I have to be sure.”

“And you’re not?”

“Yes, I’m sure of myself, but one week has gone by and, well, I imagined you hadn’t even thought about me—”

“That’s some joke! I haven’t slept or eaten.”

“Well, why
did
you stay away. Why should falling in love be so difficult for you?”

“Because the timing is all wrong, I just haven’t the right—”

She took his hand and held it. “David, I believe love is a matter of the heart; it doesn’t ask the time, it just happens.”

“Have you thought about me at all?”

“Yes, a great deal.”

“What did you think?”

“That you were kind and understanding. I walked on a cloud the whole week.”

“And I was afraid to come tonight, afraid you’d think I was crazy.”

“How
wrong
you were. The first time we were together I felt a bond between us, the way two people do when they feel these things. It’s just something you sense … I waited for you to call or at least come and see me, but then as the days went by I decided I must have been mistaken.”

“What did you do then?”

“I spoke to Birdie, who’s so smart about these things and—”

“What did she say?”

“She told me I was wrong.”

“Which only proves she’s not so smart. Then what?”

“Even then I still felt I couldn’t have been so mistaken. I thought you liked me, but when I didn’t see you I began to think—”

“To think what?”

“I began to think about all of the things that I said.”

“What things?”

“That maybe I had talked too much, that maybe a girl doesn’t tell about herself to a boy she’s just met.”

“Did I seem bored?”

“No, but I did think that perhaps you might have been. You see, David, I’ve never been in love with anyone before.”

“Neither have I.”

“I knew that I was in love with you but being in love takes two.”

“Well, I’ve already told you how I felt.”

“I know, David, but for me it’s terribly important. I just don’t want to be hurt.”

“I would never hurt you, Katie.”

“But it took you ten days to see me again—”

“I
told
you, I have some problems.”

“I know, but here you are. Are your problems solved?”

“No, not by a long shot, and when I found out how I felt about you, well, I’ve been going around in crazy circles ever since.”

“David, let’s start from the beginning, I really must know why.”

“All right.” He took a deep breath. “I had never met anyone like you before; in fact I never thought a girl like you existed, or if she did that she would ever come into
my
life. You were just everything I ever wanted. The props were knocked out from under me.”

“Yes, but why—”

“When you love someone you want to share your life with them, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, what do I have to share? Share? … Hell, I don’t have anything to share.”

“And that bothers you so much?”

“Sure, and what bothers me most is I couldn’t stand not being able to give you something better than this. You don’t know what it’s like, feeling so helpless …”

“Why should you think I wouldn’t understand? I’ve been poor all my life.”

“Your poverty wasn’t the kind I’m talking about. This kind drags you down so far you can’t get away from it; it holds onto you like a vise.”

“But there are still people who fall in love. Why should it be so difficult for you?”

“Because, well, I suppose because I’m afraid of the future.”

“David, don’t ever be afraid of the future. Don’t you know that when people fall in love they bring each other luck? They really only need each other. I know that what I need most of all in my life is to be loved and to give someone love. Let me love you, David, please let me …”

He took her in his arms, kissed her and held her for a very long time. Then, rushing the words, he said, “Will you marry me, Katie? I don’t want to wait. Next week.”

“Yes, David.”

She leaned against the door in the dark kitchen. Could this be
true,
was she really going to share life’s joy with David? Was she at last going to belong to someone, to be a complete woman, a complete person? She had never known that there could be so much happiness in a kiss. To be held by someone who loved you so much he wanted to share the rest of his life with you … Closing her eyes she said, “Thank you, God. Mama, mama, thank you.”

She ran past Sammy’s bed. “Is anything wrong?” he asked.

“No, no, Sammy, everything is wonderful. I’ll tell you in the morning.”

Katie sat on the edge of the bed and hugged and kissed Birdie. “Birdie, Birdie, I don’t know where to begin. I know you won’t believe this but David has asked me to marry him.”

Birdie switched on the light and screamed. “I don’t understand, what happened?”

“I don’t know that I do, but David and I love each other and he wants us to be married next week and—”

“Oh, my God, I don’t believe it! David Rezinetsky that didn’t think any girl was good enough for him. Come on, let’s wake up mama and tell her.”

It was six o’clock in the morning when Jacob came into the kitchen. “What’s the matter, you’re all up so early, Malka?”

“Early? We never went to bed. You don’t know the good news about Katie. She’s going to get married.”

“To that bummukeh that was here last night?”