Only she would have to have another name. Two names. Human names. Something that sounded beautiful.
Anita. Anita Starre.
She would knock on Master Kelsey's door and ask him for someone's address. He was so nice and considerate he would surely ask her in for a drink, or just ask her in, while he gave her directions.
Dry leaves crackled under her as she walked the half-block toward Kelsey's house. The night was black with a few cold stars in the endless vault of sky. It was late, but in almost all the houses you could see the gentle glow of Tevee color through the windows.
There was no sound at all where the houses of the project, all looking exactly the same, dwindled away into darkness like lines of dots made by a typewriter.
It was, she thought, as though everyone and everything in the world were waiting, waiting for the great white hot scream to explode in the night, the great awakening, the blinding hot flash of awakening that comes before the end. But Alice didn't feel afraid at all of an air-raid as she walked up onto Master Kelsey's porch and rang the bell. There had been so many false alarms, she wondered sometimes if there was any real threat at all. The war—a vague thing far away, never here, always somewhere else, but always supposed to be getting nearer. The war with the Asians—it just went on and on, you heard about it, and saw it on Tevee if you weren't afraid to look at the newscasts, but it never seemed to happen here.
His footsteps behind the door. The door opening. His shadow there, the pink lounge suit, the wavy hair with streaks of brown in the Viking yellow, the face sleepy from Tevee coming awake as he saw the beautiful woman standing there smiling. He smiled. Their smiles met.
"Hello," she said. "I'm Anita Starre. I'm looking for 16-03074 Carnegie Way."
"You're lost?"
"I seem to be lost, yes."