VAL and I crouched against the wall, trying to be as invisible as the shadows of the alley. It was difficult; I could hear my heart thudding and the papers rustling in my coat, and something in one of Val’s pockets was clanking against the wall. If Henry saw us, he took no notice. His hands were thrust into his pockets, and he stared straight ahead. The yellow light from inside made his hair glisten alarmingly. He stood with a casual slouch, surprising after one had seen his erect posture at the piano. He stood in the doorway as though testing the night before venturing out into it. Behind him, inside the door, I could see and hear the usual backstage activity, but Henry seemed miles away from it. Unexpectedly, he smiled. We both sank back into our corner, afraid he had seen us, or, by some mysterious instinct, guessed our reason for being there. But the smile was not for us. It was directed far away, up in the sky, apparently. It was quite a wonderful smile, and I could hardly take my eyes off it. There was a sweeping freedom in it, an enviable irresponsibility. It lingered for a moment, then disappeared. Henry turned and started slowly down the alley. We stood frozen and watched him till he got to the end, where he turned left.
“Benny’s, I’ll bet,” I said. “Let’s go. We don’t want to lose him in the mob.”
We ran noiselessly to the end—we had worn sneakers—and out into the street. For a frantic moment, we couldn’t find him. Then we saw the red hair glistening under the street light at the corner.
“O honorable carrot-top,” said Val, “what would we do without you?” She giggled, and I looked at her. She was glowing, and her hair clung to her face in damp nervous waves. “Gilbert, all my adrenaline is leaping around hysterically.”
“Well, control it,” I said. “There he goes across the street.”
He crossed and went down Seventh, and we followed, praying he wouldn’t decide to take a taxi. Sometimes he did, and sometimes he didn’t. But he seemed to be loitering along, enjoying the mild evening. He stopped at a newsstand and bought two morning papers, leaving the change in a little metal dish. He stood for a moment in front of the window, looking at the morass of toys, cosmetics, and odds and ends from Christmas.
“He must be going to Benny’s,” Val said. “He’ll meet a bunch of his cronies there, and we’ll have to wait it out.” We followed him two more blocks, running from doorway to doorway. “Gilbert,” she said, “maybe we’d better approach him now. He might be in there for hours.”
I considered, and decided it would be better to wait. For one thing, I didn’t think enough suspense had been built up, and besides that, I was not at all sure Henry was going to meet anyone at the bar. If he were, wouldn’t he be with people from Carnegie Hall, or wouldn’t he be hurrying more? He seemed a man alone with his thoughts, wandering at leisure along the street, with no appointment ahead.
“I don’t think he’s meeting anybody there,” I said. “Anyway, the chase has hardly begun.”
He turned the corner and stopped in front of a small bar with a neon sign over it.
“There he goes,” Val sighed. “And it’s impossible to see in there. There’s a curtain over the window.”
Henry went inside, and Val and I went into a drugstore across the street, sitting by the window where we could watch. We ordered sandwiches and milk shakes, hoping to distract ourselves, but it was a terrible half-hour. Every time Benny’s door opened, we jumped up and peered out, and it was never Henry. We wondered if we had missed him, or if he had gone out the back door, or if he was going on a binge. None of these things seemed likely, however. So we played word games, read a bit, made a few notes in our documents, and finally, after almost an hour, Henry came back out. We threw our money at the cashier and ran out the door. We stood in front, looking nonchalant, as Henry passed by. I thought his attitude was slightly different. He still looked thoughtful, but now he appeared to be in more of a hurry.
“Now he’ll go home,” Val said, as he turned up a side street. “And then we’ll nab him.”
His pace was so much faster now that we had to trot to keep up with him. He had reverted to his straight, soldierly posture again, as though he were striding out upon the stage. He smiled again into the night.
“Two more blocks,” panted Val. I was beginning to feel slightly apprehensive. I decided it was because I knew what our parents would think of this, and because instinct told me of the danger of pushing any situation too far, especially one that was potentially explosive. I thought I had talked myself out of worrying about it, but a voice kept saying, You’re wrong! Stop and turn back! I ignored it, and tried to concentrate on keeping my belongings from clanking, and possibly attracting Henry’s attention.
“Have you got Operation Formosa all straight?” Val asked.
“Absolutely,” I said. “With liberal interpretation in case of undue circumstances.”
“According to plan A, I’ll cringe in the hall next to the mailboxes. If all goes well, you give the password. If he threatens to take us to the police or something, we’ll just blow.”
“Roger and Cherry Blossom,” I said. “Are you ready? It’s just up the street.” She made an odd little sound, and I looked at her. She was pale and nervous, and she was biting her fingernails.
“Don’t worry,” I said, making a heroic effort to keep my voice confident. “I’ll shape him up so that he’s all ready, and then you can come along. I’ll get him in exactly the right mood.” My hands were cold and wet, and my stomach felt as though it was full of ice cubes. What on earth was I going to say? It was the one thing I hadn’t really thought about. We had both been going along on the assumption that Henry’s mere presence would inspire us to stirring oratory, but now that the task was at hand, I began to doubt it. Mr. Orient, I’d like you to meet Val, who’s in love with you, I rehearsed. You must realize that she’s been grossly misjudged, and she’s really a nice girl. It’s her mother who’s a terror...Mr. Orient, only you can purge Val’s soul of all its faults, and steer her back on the right path. Save her from necking parties and the sin of the city...that sounded too much as though Henry was a faith healer, so I crossed it off. Mr. Orient, we’re music students and we’d like to tell you what we think of your playing. It’s all right, but you need to practice more. How long do you practice every day? Mr. Orient, you are Val in man’s clothes. Mr. Orient, we know more about you than you’ve ever dreamed...you’ve made our lives interesting for the past months. Do something about Val. Keep her for me and yourself too. We can share her...
Henry turned toward his door. He paused for a moment and looked up at his window, where a light was shining. I grabbed Val’s hand, which was as cold and wet as mine, and we crouched in the next doorway, holding our breaths. Then Henry went slowly toward the door and walked in. We stole after him and crept into the little hallway. We saw his feet disappearing around the first bend of the stairs. Val held onto the door and let it close behind her very slowly, with hardly a creak. Then she turned to me.
“Okay, Gilbert,” she whispered. “Carry on.” I nodded, swallowing nervously. “Operation Formosa must go on at risk of life or death. Oh, God, this is awful.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “If I don’t see you again,” she said, “it’s been swell.”
I gave her a long, tragic look and started up the stairs. My coat rustled and I clutched it up in front. I saw Henry’s heels disappearing again, which meant he had one more floor to go. The stairs were dark and narrow, with shoddy brown carpeting, and I thought I would remember them to my dying day. I planted one sneaker after another on the step in front of me, and the old wood made a faint crunch each time. I paused before the top; I wanted to stay just one bend behind Henry, keeping his feet in sight. I saw them go around the last bend before his floor, and I hurried a little. Then I crouched by the railing and looked up. He stood in front of the door, looking through his pockets for the key. My heart was thudding so wildly I was sure he could hear it, and I wrapped my coat more tightly around me. Now was the time! What should I say? How should I begin? What could I say to make him...And just as I was about to approach him, to face him and talk to him no matter what came out of it, the door flew open; and there, like an apparition, stood Isabel.
If the bright flames of hell had suddenly appeared to consume Henry to ashes, I couldn’t have been more astonished. Everything began to swing around in gentle circles; I clung to the railing with both hands, probably to keep myself from tumbling down the stairs, and stared up with horrified fascination. The two figures were like magic lanterns, swinging in the darkness, acting out some fantastic pantomime. The Isabel one smiled; the Henry one stood in silence for a moment, and then words drifted out of it:
“Well, the beautiful and indiscreet Mrs. Boyd was able to come tonight after all. And last night, and perhaps tomorrow night?”
Then the Henry one swung forward, and the Isabel one backward...had I imagined it, or did her eyes catch mine?...and the door closed after them.
The darkness screamed with voices. Don’t tell her what you saw! It was none of your business to be here, anyway! But here’s your chance...now you can shock her away from Isabel...and make her mind sicker than it already is? You’re her friend...her life is grim enough, and all it would do would be to make it worse. I felt dizzy and nauseated, and I looked down at my hands which still clung to the railing, like two disembodied objects. I’ll tell her I lost my nerve...I’ll even tell her that some dame was there, but I won’t say who it was. Will she see the truth in my face? Which would be worse? Shall I lie, and make her hate me, or shall I tell the truth, and...make her hate me in the long run anyway? But why should she? It isn’t my fault...it isn’t, except that I thought of this and persuaded her to come, just because I hate to see anything unfinished, and because I wanted to see her reactions, as though she were something under a microscope. I felt the choke of tears, and let them drip down my face unnoticed. So this is what your fine friendship has turned out to be, I thought. You’re just like all the rest, like Braintree and Emma and all the teachers, and all the people who can’t see her as a human being, but who insist on picking and probing and looking into her soul, as though she were something on exhibition...and all the time you’ve thought you were the only person who loved her for what she was, a lonely little girl.
For the first time in my life, I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. All I asked was to be able to sit down in that dark hall and cry, punishing myself for having ever thought of this evening, raking over my failure to Val and blaming myself for having been a hypocrite. Never did it occur to me that I might not be completely to blame, that Val, being what she was, seemed to have made a wordless demand for such a denouement to her romance; or that she was the one who had always pushed me and prodded me into action, telling me to come out of my fog and do something interesting, or that she was the one who had invented the world of Henry in the first place. I forgot her hypnotic quality when it came to breaking rules, disobeying, running about New York, and making it all seem attractive and interesting; I forgot about her subconscious, seething with desires to get into trouble. I saw her only as the trusting victim of my foul play, my interfering, my uncontrollable curiosity, and I hated myself for being the worst kind of friend she ever could have had.
Slowly, I started back down the stairs. I could hear nothing from the apartment or downstairs in the hall, and I hoped that for one reason or another she had left. I had no desire to face her, but the thought did not frighten me. I felt drugged and exhausted, and before I even got there, I knew I would lie. I simply hadn’t the courage or energy to tell the truth. It was the first time I’d ever felt that way, and I wondered at myself. But looking at it from the other side, I saw that it was more than that. I wanted to save what I could of Val, and if I could postpone her discovery of the truth by lying, and save her for me for a while longer, I would do it. She was worth more to me than my own honesty.
She was crouched by the mailboxes, her brown eyes looking up at me.
“You chickened out,” she said, and her voice was flat. “I had a feeling you would.” Her face was disappointed and resigned, as though she had expected this to happen all along.
“He had some dame in there, Val,” I said. “I couldn’t just charge in.”
“I heard him say something.”
“He was talking to her.”
She sighed and stood up, then looked at me and gave a rueful little smile.
“Well, I guess we wasted a lot of fuel, didn’t we?” She looked around the hall. “While I was waiting for you, I began to wonder just what we were doing here.” She glanced back at me. “I guess the balloon has busted.”
The disappointment welled up in me, not as anything new, but as an old friend who had been waiting to put in an appearance. And with it came an unbearable feeling of emptiness, that from here on, there was nothing left.
“I guess it had to,” I said dully. I felt exhausted, and my head began to ache. Any more talk seemed pointless; I wanted to forget it all and pick up the pieces in the morning. “Let’s go,” I said.
We walked out into the empty street.
“We haven’t enough money to take a cab,” Val said. “We spent it all in those damn drugstores.”
In silence we walked down the dark street to take the first of the two busses that would get us home.
“How about coming back to the Melt for some scrambled eggs?” she said. “We’re in enough hot water now. Another hour won’t make any difference. Pop and Isabel will still be out.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Almost midnight.”
I hesitated, and the old inclination to drag it out to the bitter end returned. Perhaps I could tell her when we got there. And even if I couldn’t, perhaps we could salvage something from the ruined evening. One of the voices in the hall came back. Won’t you ever learn? it scolded. Won’t you ever learn to stop while you can, to leave things unfinished as they are meant to be, and think later what the endings might have been? I looked at her, and she looked so woebegone and lost that I gave in. If she wants me, I’ll go, I thought.
We went on down the street and got on the cross-town bus.
“I hope there’s some beer in the icebox,” Val said, as we got out of the elevator. “It’s good to mix with scrambled eggs.”
The hall was empty and silent, and I felt silly in my weighted coat and dirty sneakers on the soft rug. Val got out her key and opened the door.
“Go on into the kitchen,” she said. “I’ll be along in a...”
“Do you girls have any idea what time it is?”
We both jumped. Wimpole’s voice came through the air like a gong.
“How did she get in?” Val whispered. “I didn’t think anybody was...”
As though to answer her, Isabel appeared in the living room door, and Wimpole behind her.
“I don’t understand!” I gasped, before I could stop myself.
“It’s not difficult,” Isabel snapped. “We’ve been searching the city for you. We’ve been worried frantic, as any mothers would be, if their daughters disappeared at night for hours, God knows where. We have Mrs. Booth posted at your house waiting and Emma Hambler at her apartment in case you went there...”
I wondered if I was losing my mind. How could she...did I ever see her at Henry’s apartment, or was it all a nightmare? Perhaps I had had some sort of vision in the hall, like a saint. But here she was in the same dress she had been wearing, a dark red dress with a low neckline, and a gold necklace, all as I had seen it before. My mind raced around in circles. Perhaps there was a back door...she must have seen me, I thought, my knees weakening. She must have seen me, and even if she had come out the front door she could have beaten us back here if she found a taxi immediately. The streets are empty at night. She must have just gotten here, about five minutes ago. Isabel was watching me with a curious, unfathomable expression on her face.
“I just discovered all this a few minutes ago,” she said, echoing my thoughts. “I’ve been at the Billings’, and I just got back.” It was rather inconsistent with what she had just said about searching the city, but Val didn’t seem to notice. “I found your mother here. She’d been calling all over. And Arthur has been distraught.”
Slowly, we followed her into the living room. Wimpole stood by the door, still in her coat. Arthur was sprawled in a chair with a drink in his hand, looking not at all distraught. The radio was playing rhumba music. I looked at Wimpole, and her face was angry.
“I thought you were developing some sense of responsibility,” she said, “but apparently you aren’t. You have no idea what can happen at night in the streets of New York.” I swallowed miserably and looked at her, but I couldn’t say anything.
“It looks as though neither of them can be trusted anymore,” Isabel said. “They never realize how much trouble they cause. Inconsiderate, selfish...”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Val said. She looked over at Arthur. “I’m sorry, Pop.”
“It’s all right, Val.” Arthur got up and poured himself another drink, then looked at his wife. “How was the party, Is? Anybody there?” Clearly he wanted to change the subject, not feeling at home in conversations about the behavior of thirteen-year-olds.
Isabel looked at him for a moment. “Lots of people,” she said. “Doesn’t it concern you that your daughter has been roaming alone around the city for the past four hours?”
He swirled the ice around in his whiskey. “I want to know about your evening, Is,” he said slowly. “Val’s back. She’ll be punished, of course. Now, how about you?” My stomach constricted oddly, and I looked at Val. She was watching Isabel wonderingly. Isabel ignored him, and turned back to Wimpole.
“I think you’ll agree, Mrs. Gilbert, that these girls should be separated for a while. They’re only bad influences on each other.”
Wimpole looked at her. “I certainly think they should be kept home more, but I don’t see any reason to separate them.”
“Well, I really wonder at that. Ever since they’ve known each other, they’ve been constantly in trouble. I’ve been very disappointed in Val, very. I think the school is too lax and Emma Hambler is certainly not strict enough. I think that only certain changes can make Val into the kind of person I want her to be, I’m considering another school.” Val didn’t say anything. She was slowly biting on a fingernail.
“I don’t think we should talk about this right now,” Arthur said. “Mrs. Gilbert wants to take Marian home.” I looked at him, and he winked. I didn’t like the wink, which was a broad hint to get out, but it seemed like the first sensible statement that had come from the Boyds so far. “Don’t you want to get home, Mrs. Gilbert?”
“Well, I do,” Wimpole said, buttoning up her coat. “I think we all need some sleep.” She looked at me, and there was a certain understanding in her face. Arthur began leading us out of the room.
“I’m sorry about all this trouble,” he said pointlessly. His breath smelled of whiskey. “Kids will be kids.”
I turned to Val, just before I was edged out of the room.
“I’ll call you in the morning,” I said desperately, trying to read her face. There was nothing there, just weariness and the old fear.
“She might not be here,” Isabel said sharply. “She’ll let you know when she isn’t busy.” Her face was hard, and I felt like slapping her. Oh, how I hate you! I thought. How I wish I had the courage to tell the truth about you right here and now, in front of everybody! How I’d like to make you cry, the way you made Val! For a brief, frightening moment, I actually thought I could blurt it out; but Val’s face, so tired, stopped me. No one would believe me anyway, I thought. I gave up, and a wave of emptiness and loneliness came over me.
Wimpole and I walked out and closed the door. She walked on ahead, but some ungodly instinct made me linger behind a moment and listen at the door. I heard Arthur’s voice.
“And now, Is,” it said, “I’ll find out where you were this evening, if I have to knock it out of you.”
I turned and ran down the hall after Wimpole, and then the tears started to come.
I waited four days, then called her. The desk clerk told me that the Boyd family had checked out, and he had no idea when they would be back. I asked him if he was sure, and he said, in a clipped voice, that of course he was. I put the receiver back for a moment, then called Emma.
“I am so glad to talk to you,” she said. “Val is here with me, though she is out right now. The Boyds have gone to Rome for about three weeks.”
So Arthur dragged Isabel away to new pastures, I thought. “Is Val all right, Emma? Does she want to see me, or what?”
She hesitated. “She has not mentioned it, Marian. I think she feels ashamed about the other night. She felt she was immature to run about the city. She was most upset when she came here. Apparently there was a most unpleasant scene after you and your mother left the hotel.”
“Then she found out all about Isabel and Henry,” I said resignedly.
“About Isabel and...who?”
“Henry!” I exclaimed. “She was at his apartment, when we went there! Doesn’t Val know?”
“Good heavens,” Emma said softly. “So that is the dame you told her about.”
“I thought Isabel told Arthur!”
“She told him she was with Joe Bird, Val said.”
“Joe Bird...why should she do that?”
“Perhaps even Isabel has some understanding.”
“But didn’t she think I told Val I saw her there?”
“It seems she took a chance that you didn’t, Marian.”
“Then why is Val all upset, if she doesn’t know?”
“She thinks she made a fool of herself and made Isabel angry at her,” Emma said. “She wants very much to please Isabel.”
“Oh, Emma, why?”
“It is her mother. I am afraid that when the Boyds come back, they are going to put Val in another school, and take her away from me. Val will do anything Isabel says.”
“Can’t we stop her?” I asked desperately.
“If only you could understand! Val wants so much to make a place for herself among the other girls of her age.”
“Except me,” I said bitterly. “I’m too peculiar for her. I live on Third Avenue and my parents are divorced.”
“You must not talk like that, Marian. There is nothing different about you. You and Val have been going around thinking you are unique, and you are not so at all. You are quite normal children.”
“Then why is Val going to a psychiatrist?” I asked rudely.
She paused. “I try so hard to think she is normal,” she said, and her voice sounded defeated.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Emma, don’t tell her that Isabel was at Henry’s.”
“I will not. Perhaps she will never find out, and I assume the affair has ended.” She paused. “School starts Monday, does it not?”
“Yes. Will Val go?”
“I will send her until her mother returns and tells me otherwise.”
I thanked her and hung up, then lay back on Wimpole’s bed and stared at the ceiling. I felt much better. If Val didn’t know about the other evening, and Isabel had lied, there was no way for her to find out. As it was, she was having some trauma or other about being immature, and would soon get over that. Probably when I saw her at school, we would resume our friendship and grow up gracefully together, while I kept the secret locked in my heart. It sounded logical, but the fact remained that Isabel was determined to separate us; and besides that, she loathed me. So, I thought grimly, the battle for Val’s soul is still on. I could give up Henry, and Val and I could still be friends without him, but Isabel would not let me. I turned over and put my head in my hands.
And what, I wondered, is so awful about me? Am I that bad?
Three days after school started, Val disappeared.
She had come to Norton for the first two days, ignoring me and scurrying around between classes and piano lessons as though she had time for no one on earth. I waited for her, followed her around, and asked her to have lunch with me, but she always had an excuse. Finally I gave up, and went my own way. On the third day she did not leave her card with Mrs. Cooney in the morning, and was nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Cooney buttonholed me as I was on my way to math.
“Do you know where Boyd is, Kiddo?” she asked.
“No, I don’t. Isn’t she here, Mrs. Cooney?”
“Didn’t check in. I’ll call what’s-her-name. Sick, maybe.”
I wondered a little, but decided she must be in bed with a psychosomatic cold. At lunchtime I asked Mrs. Cooney if she had called. Mrs. Cooney looked up from her ham sandwich.
“What’s-her-name thought she’d gone to school,” she said.
“You mean she’s lost?”
“Looks like,” Mrs. Cooney said. “These kids. No sense of responsibility.”
“Isn’t anybody going to do anything about it?” I asked.
“What’s-her-name is doing some checking around. Don’t get het up, Gilbert. She’s probably in a drugstore somewhere, eating banana splits. If she doesn’t come back by tonight, probably they’ll get the police out, or something.” She looked up at my worried face. “Kids have done it before. Don’t look so rattled. In my day they called it playing hookey. In your day everybody thinks they’ve gone out and jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge.”
I anguished through the rest of the day, and as soon as school was out, I grabbed my coat and books and ran downstairs. There was no real reason to think anything was wrong, but I had an unpleasant premonition that something, at last, had cracked. I had watched pebble after pebble of fear and anguish be added to the pile, and I was afraid that, at last, she was not able to carry it any longer. On my way out the door, a small hand reached out and grabbed my coat.
“Lilian,” I said, “I’m in a hurry.”
“It so happens,” she said, “that I have something to show you. Has anybody found Boyd? I just happened to hear you talking to Mrs. Cooney at lunch.”
“She has a right to play hookey if she wants,” I said.
“Are you interested in what I have here, in my pocket?” She reached into her bulging pocket and pulled out chewing gum, candy bars, broken pencils, seventy-five cents, an art gum, comb, a hard-boiled egg, and at last a clipping. She put it in my hand. I looked at it, and saw that part of it was circled.
“On the society scene,” it read, “Mrs. Arthur Boyd, wife of the international trade tycoon, was at a corner table at the Club Marinda with key-tickler Henry Orient—probably pursuing a musical interest.”
I crumpled it up in my hand.
“Lilian,” I said angrily, “where did you get this?”
“From the Daily News,” said Lilian. “I read it every night. When I saw this, I got another copy. One for you, and one for Boyd.”
“So you showed it to her.” I felt a wave of fury.
“Well, I gave it to her yesterday afternoon, just as she was leaving. She just read it and stomped off without even saying thank you. Honestly, you’d think she was mad, or something.”
I looked down at her small yellow face. “Listen, Lilian. You don’t know what you’ve done. Right now Val might be jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, because of that clipping.”
Lilian paled. “I thought she’d like it! I thought she liked to know everything about Orient! That’s why I saved it. I was trying to do something nice.”
“Well, you didn’t! For God’s sake, Lilian, try thinking how you’d feel if you had a crush on somebody, then saw a clipping like that about him and your mother!”
“My mother...” Lilian looked aghast. “What are you talking about?”
I stared at her, and suddenly understood. “You didn’t know? Who did you think Mrs. Arthur Boyd was?”
“Oh, Gilbert!” Her face crumpled up, and two tears oozed out of her eyes. I was faintly surprised that she was capable of crying. “I just didn’t think! She lives with the Hamblers, and I didn’t know her father was an international trade tycoon, or even who her parents were. I did think it was a funny coincidence...”
“Well, now you know. Go and blab it around to everybody you see. Just think of the sundaes you can get out of this one.” I felt like poking her in the nose, as I usually felt at the end of every conversation with her.
She began to sniffle, and several people turned and looked at her. “Gilbert, you can believe me or not, and you probably won’t because you hate me, but this time it so happens I was trying to do something nice for you and Boyd. I told you before I like you, and you didn’t believe me. Whenever I try to be nice I do something wrong, and everybody hates me all over again. You don’t know what it’s like...” I began to steer her out of the door away from the staring people. “All the Eights think I’m awful, and probably I am, but the only way I know to make anybody pay any attention to me is to tell them something they want to hear...you don’t know what it is to look like me, and have everybody leave the minute you come, and the only people who ever bothered with me are you two...I feel so awful I want to kill myself.”
I looked at her, and for the first time I felt sympathy for her. “I understand in a way,” I said. “I haven’t got any friends here either, except Boyd. Listen, Lilian, stop crying. You didn’t know what you were doing.”
“The only way I know...” she sobbed, “the only way...is to tell people things...I seem to just make people run the other way...only you and Boyd...”
I tried to console her, feeling pity for her on one hand, and frantic to find Val on the other. Finally she stopped crying, and as I looked at her, I had the odd thought that if Val had gone up in smoke, Lilian was the only friend I had.
“Lilian,” I said, “there are ways to make people like you besides telling them things. That’s the reason people think you’re a goon. Nobody trusts you. It isn’t the way you look, or anything. If you’d cut out all this eavesdropping and gossiping, and try to be nice, I bet you’d have some friends.” I paused. “Maybe someday I’ll tell you all about Val, and it might make you understand better why you should keep your mouth shut sometimes.”
She looked up at me. “Gilbert,” she said, “thanks a lot. If you’d even hit me, I would have deserved it. Honestly, I’m grateful to you. I don’t know why you’re so nice to me.”
“I’m not that nice,” I said, and smiled. She smiled back, and for a moment we were friends.
I went straight from there to Emma’s, knowing what a hopeless errand it was, but full of a nagging desire to see it to the end. I went down the two steps into the areaway and found the door open a little, as though Emma had left it that way in the constant expectation of Val creeping back in the middle of the night, if she chose. The hall was silent, and I went into Val’s room and stood there in the middle of the floor. The room was a shambles: empty hangers strewn on the closet floor, a few particular books missing from the window sill, and a heap of odds and ends lying on the oak chest; scribbled pieces of paper, books of matches, paper clips, old stockings, some squashed cigarettes, a couple of tennis balls, and six or seven fountain pens that no longer worked, as though she had dumped out all of her drawers. Even in absence, she was infuriating. But she had so obviously left—and left with violent purpose—that any last hope was removed from my mind, and I knew there was nothing more I could do for her.
A wave of discouragement came over me, and then I heard Emma’s footsteps coming up the hall, and her voice saying:
“Val? Have you come back?”