The woman's hands began to speak again. Roger did not know what she was saying. Occasionally, he glanced at her as the wonderfully fluid fingers moved in front of her face. He had never been loved by a beautiful woman in his life - except, of course, his mother.
The waiter brought his omelette.
Silently, he ate.
Beside him, the detective and his wife finished their drinks, and then ordered lunch.
He followed the detective and his wife to a subway kiosk, where they embraced and kissed briefly, and then the woman went down the steps and the detective stood on the sidewalk for a moment or two, watching her as she descended. The detective smiled then, secretly and privately, and began walking back toward the station house. The snow was very thick now, thick in the air, falling in great loose silent flakes, and thick underfoot where it clung to the pavement and made walking difficult.
Several times on the way back to the station house, he almost approached the detective and told him the whole story. He had overheard enough during lunch to know that this was the kind of man he could trust, and yet something still held him back. As he thought about it, as he walked behind the detective and wondered for perhaps the fifth time whether he should approach him now or wait until they were back at the station house, it seemed to him the reason he felt he could trust this man was simply because of the way he'd treated his wife. There had been something very good and gentle about the way those two looked at each other and talked to each other, something that led Roger to believe this man would understand what had happened. But at the same time - and curiously, considering it was the man's wife who had caused Roger to trust him - the wife was also responsible for his reluctance to approach the man. Sitting alongside them, Roger had shared their conversation, become almost a part of it. He had watched the woman's face and had seen the way she looked at her husband, had watched her hands covering his, had watched the score of gentle tender things she did, the secret winks, the glances of assurance, and had been suddenly and completely lonely.
Walking behind the detective now in a silent white world, he thought of Amelia and wanted to call her.
But wait, he thought, you have to tell the detective.
They were approaching the station house now. The detective stopped at a patrol car parked outside the building, and the patrolman sitting closest to the curb rolled down the window on his side. The detective bent down and looked into the car and exchanged a few words with the cops inside, and then he laughed, and the patrolman rolled up the window again, and the detective started walking up the seven flat steps to the front doors of the precinct.
Wait, Roger thought, I have to He hesitated on the sidewalk.
The detective had opened the door and gone inside. The door eased shut behind him. Roger stood on the pavement with the snowflakes falling fat and wet and floppy all around him, and then he nodded once, sharply, and turned and began looking for a telephone booth. The first one he found was in a combination pool room and bowling alley on the Stem. He changed a dollar bill at the desk - the proprietor made it clear he didn't like making change for the telephone - and then went to the booth and closed the door and carefully took from his wallet the folded slip of paper with Amelia's number on it.
He dialed the number and waited.
A woman answered on the fourth ring. It was not Amelia.
"Hello?" the woman said.
"Hello, could I talk to Amelia, please?" Roger said.
"Who's this?" the woman said.
"Roger."
"Roger who?"
"Roger Broome."
"I don't know any Roger Broome," the woman said.
"Amelia knows me."
"Amelia isn't here. What do you want?"
"Where is she?"
"She went downstairs to the store. What do you want?"
"She asked me to call. When will she be back?"
"Five, ten minutes," the woman said.
"Will you tell her I called?"
"I'll tell her you called," the woman said, and hung up.
Roger stood with the silent receiver to his ear for a moment, and then replaced it on the hook and went out of the booth. The man behind the desk gave him a sour look. A clock on the wall told him it was almost two o'clock. He wondered if Amelia would really be back in five or ten minutes. The woman who'd answered the phone had sounded very colored, with the kind of speech that could sometimes be mistaken for white Southerner, but more often was identified immediately as coming from a Negro. It was just his luck, he thought. The first pretty girl he'd ever met who seemed to take a real liking to him, and she had to be colored. He wondered why he was bothering to call her at all, and then decided the hell with her, and headed back for the police station.
