She closed the door. “Keep your voice down,” she said. “There’s an old bat in the next room to me—”
“You can take that chair that’s there already,” she said. “I’ll move over this other one — if it don’t fall apart on the way there.”
He sat down with polite rigidity.
“You can throw your hat on the cot over there,” she condescended hospitably. “If you can reach it.”
He tried uncertainly from where he was, over table and coffee-pot both, but he made it.
They both turned from watching it land, smiled tentatively at one another. Then she remembered herself, quickly checked her own. His died of loneliness after it.
“I never can make enough for one in this thing, anyway,” she remarked, as if apologizing for her own softness in asking him in. “It won’t hit the roof if I do.”
She brought over an extra cup and saucer. “The reason I have a second one,” she said, “is because they were two for five in Woolworth’s. You had to take both or lose your change.” She turned it upside-down and shook it, and some flecks of straw fell out. “First time I’ve used it,” she said. “I’d better run some water in it.” She took it over to a greenish, mildewed tap lurking under the shelf in the cupboard-arrangement. “Go ahead,” she invited while her back was turned, “don’t wait for me.”
She heard the loosely-contrived pot rattle as he picked it up to pour from it. Then it fell back rather heavily. So bumpily, in fact, that the cup that was already on the table sang out. At the same time his chair gave a slight jar.
She stopped what she was doing, which was drying the cup by sailing it up and down so that the drops of water were flung out, and turned quickly to ask him: “What’d you do, burn yourself? Did you get some of it on you?”
His face had whitened a little, she thought. He shook his head, but he was too engrossed to look at her. He still had his hand to the pot, where he’d let it down. He was holding that envelope she’d addressed to her mother in the other, staring at it as though he were stunned. She saw at a glance what must have happened. The pot must have been squatting on it the first time, and the heat had made it adhere when he’d lifted it. He’d pried it off, and that was how he’d noticed whatever it was seemed to amaze him so.
She came back to the table, stood by it, and said: “What’s the matter?”
He looked up at her, still holding the envelope. His mouth was open; both before and after he’d spoken it stayed that way. He said, “Do you
“Yes, why?” she said crisply. “That’s what it says on it, doesn’t it? That’s my mother I’m writing that to.” A little defiance crept into her attitude. “Why, what about it?”
He started to shake his head. He started to slowly rise to his feet as he did so, then changed his mind midway and sank down again. He kept looking at her for all he was worth. “I can’t get over it,” he gasped, and felt himself for a minute across the forehead. “That’s where I’m
“I’m from there originally,” she assented warily. She left off the “too.” She sat down opposite him, with watchful deliberation. Suspicion was crackling like an electric current alive in her, generated at the first word he’d let out of his mouth. She was conditioned that way. She’d learned not to believe anybody, anytime, anywhere. That was the only way to keep from being taken in. What was this anyway? What was the angle? He’d got the name of the town from the envelope, it was there for anyone to see; so far, so good. Now what was he trying to build from that? What was the come-on? What was the frame leading to? A touch? A half-nelson on her affections, before she woke up and snapped out of it? One thing she gave it; it was a new gag, and she’d thought she knew them all.
Wait a minute, he was wide open. She’d get him. “So you’re from back in Glen Falls.” She stared at him searchingly. “What street did you live on back there?”
She timed him with her fingernails tapping the edge of the table. His answer beat them to the first tap. It spilled out before the starting-gun even. “Anderson Avenue, up near Pine Street. The second house down between Pine and Oak, right after the corner—” She’d watched his face closely. He hadn’t had to think at all; it came out spontaneously, like your own name is supposed to.
“Did you ever go to the Bijou movie-house, down on Courthouse Square, when you were there?”
This time there was a time-lag. “There wasn’t any Bijou when I was there,” he said blankly. “There were only two, the State and the Standard.”
“I know,” she murmured softly, looking down at her own hand. “I know there isn’t.”
