"You wretch, stole a march on me ... And there I was up at Squirrel Island with Aunt M., bored to the ears. Never mind, I'll have my revenge some day."
Fitzie's Italian who smelt of garlic and looked like a young Greek god, dark face and a boy's full wistful smile. The gods were ever young and Mabel Worthington eloped with youth and married an elderly Dutchman for his money and lived at the Vendome.
Fanshaw was on his feet.
"Must you run away so soon?"
He nodded. Her cheerful social voice rang bitterly in her ears as she stood in the middle of the empty room. She was full of dull surprised pain like a disappointed child. So that's dead, she heard herself say. Am I growing old? Is everything going to die like that? Twenty-nine isn't old.
She switched on the light and took her violin. I can get in an hour's practice before getting ready to go to the Smithers ... O, I can't play. I'm too wretchedly nervous this afternoon. Perhaps Gertrude'll be in. She went to the phone in the hall to call the number. As she waited with the receiver against her ear, something made her remember Fitzie saying in her thrill excited whisper: And Salinski says you played as if you had a soul. Let's see, when was that? Think I've been in this apartment nearly four years, four years scraping on the fiddle. Gertrude doesn't answer. Tomorrow morning I must get hold of Fitzie. She promised to take me to see that girl. Quite exciting her career has been: the Fadettes and then that disreputable episode with the Italian. How much she must know about life! Probably decided she couldn't play or she wouldn't have gone into the agency business. Wonderful to cut loose the way she has. Fitzie says she comes from quite a good family out in Waltham.
Nan had put the teacups on the tray with the pot and was carrying them out into the kitchenette. O that wretched girl forgot the garbage. She took up the little zinc pail and put it on the dumbwaiter. I'll ask John to empty it as a special favor. While she stood pulling on the rope, gingerly so as not to dirty her hands, she heard loud laughter from one of the kitchens below. Wish I'd noticed more about the people living in this house; there must be some queer fish. She felt herself smiling. How shocked Aunt M. was when I told her where I'd taken an apartment. She washed the teacups and the pot and left them to dry in the rack beside the sink. When she opened the tin box to put the cake in, there came to her a familiar smell of stale bread and crackers. She dropped the lid sharply. Why do I go on doing these little things day after day? The indigestion of the little. A woman's life may always be that. O, I must know about other people's lives. Mabel Worthington, is her life just pots and pans and combs and nailfiles and doilies? She went into her bedroom. Only half-past six by the little porcelain clock on the mantel, a whole hour before I need be at the Smithers. She lifted the shade and peered down into the blue darkness of the street. The workmen had gone. Under the lamppost she could see the patched place they had left. She let herself sink into a chair and remained a long while looking out the window with the shade between her and her room. Occasionally a man or woman walked past from the direction of Huntington Avenue. On their way home to dinner. Endless family tables, and other tables, kept women pouring out champagne for fashionably dressed men, the fast set. Women throwing back their heads and laughing through the smoke of their cigarettes. Perhaps that's how Mabel Worthington would be, with high-piled hair bleached with peroxide and a whisky voice. If I were like that dining tonight with Wenny among cocktails and offcolor stories. The Back Bay siren. She shuddered and threw open the window. Fog was coming in, blurring the streetlights. He always loved the fog. Perhaps once more out of the streaming faces and the clicking feet, his funny shambling walk, his hands, ditchdiggers' hands, the hair curling crisply about his forehead the way it curled on foggy nights.... As the fog thickened the people passing under the window became shadowy and the sound of their steps dull and muffled.
Behind her in the room the clock struck seven silvery discreet little strokes. Nan jumped guiltily to her feet. She must dress. As she arranged her hair she wondered if she should take her violin. They'd be sure to ask her to play, but perhaps it would impress them more if she said she had forgotten it.
* * * *
"Perhaps it's suede you wanted, Miss," said the thin blonde saleslady, narrowing her eyes as she leaned towards Nan across the counter.