He wondered what it would have meant if her grandfather had not died, or if she had had another father, lived in a bigger town, known somebody she could trust. What sort of person would she have been? He could not believe that she would be much different. The fear, possibly, would be more deeply buried; layers of complacency would hide it, and nobody would realize it was there. He did not feel like blaming her father. He did not imagine that Carleton Tweany was responsible for letting her down, or that Dave Gordon was somehow culpable for being young and not very bright or very perceptive. The guilt-if there was any guiltspread out and diffused itself over everybody and everything. Across the street a man had parked with his lights on to examine his rear left tire; perhaps he was the person to be considered responsible: he was as good as anybody. He, also, was a participant in the world; if he had, at some early time, made some particular gesture he had not made, or refrained from some gesture-then perhaps Mary Anne would be healthy and confident, and there would be no problem.
Perhaps, at some point in time, at some spot in the world, a moment of responsibility existed. But he doubted it. Nobody had made Mary Anne go wrong, because she had not gone wrong; she was as right as anybody else and far more right than some. But that was of no use. He could know she was right, and she could sense it in her compulsive fashion; but still no way remained by which she could live. It was not a moral issue. It was a practical issue. Someday, in a hundred years, her world might exist. It did not exist now. He thought that he saw the new outlines of it. She was not completely alone, and she had not invented it in a single-handed effort. Her world was partially shared, imperfectly communicated. The persons in it had insufficient contact; they could not communicate with one another, at least not yet. Her contacts were brief and fragmentary-a child here, a Negro there, an isolated thought that brought some response and then faded out. The fact that he felt it, even a little, proved that she was not sick, was not merely misconceived. And he was much older. He could not possibly have come closer. He loved her and others loved her, but that was of no use. What she needed was success.
Across the street the unidentified individual was kicking his tire and bending to see. Schilling watched as the man circled the car, bent once more, and then, getting behind the wheel, roared noisily off. Had a tire been low? Had he run over a bottle, a beer can? Had something of inestimable worth fallen out and been lost? The man was gone, and he would never know. Whatever the man had done, whatever he had, in secret, hatched and developed, would remain unknown.
Schilling opened the telephone book and found the number of the Lazy Wren. He dialed and listened.
"Hello," a man's voice, a Negro voice, came in his ear. "Lazy Wren Club."
He asked to talk to Paul Nitz. Eventually Nitz was at the phone.
"Who was that who answered?" Schilling asked.
"Taft Eaton. He owns the place. Who's this?" Nitz sounded dulled. "I have to go play a set."
"Ask him where Mary Anne Reynolds is," Schilling said. "He found her a place."
"What place?"
"Ask him," Schilling said. He hung up. When he felt better, he returned to his work.
Beyond the locked door, individuals passed. He heard the sound of their shoes against the pavement but he did not look up. He put new records on in the listening booth; he sharpened his pencil; he sealed up the Decca order sheet in an envelope and started on the Capitol order sheet.
The darkness hung over her, modified by the scatter of light from the hall. When she turned her head she saw that the hall door was open. She had not locked it; there seemed to be no point. In the dim light a figure was outlined, a man's figure.
"It didn't take you long," she said.
The man entered the room. But it was not Joseph Schilling.
"Oh," she said, startled, as the opaque form materialized close beside the bed. "It's you. Did-Tweany tell you?"
"No," Paul Nitz said, and sat down on the bed beside her. After a moment he reached out and stroked her hair back from her forehead. "I found out at the Wren, from Eaton. This is sure a ratty-looking dump."
"When did you find out?"
"Just now. I just went down there, to start work for the evening."
"I'm not in very good shape," she said.
"You were running," Nitz said. "And you ran right into yourself. You weren't even looking where you were going ... you were just going, trying to get away. That's all."
"Nuts to you," she said feebly.
"But I'm right."
"Okay, you're right."
Nitz grinned. "I'm glad I got to you."
"So am I. It's about time."
"I wanted you to leave, that night at your apartment. I was sick of that painting."
"Me too," she said. After a moment she asked: "Do me a favor?"
"Anything you want."
"You could go get me my cigarettes."
"Where are they?" He stood up.
"In my purse, on the dresser. If it's not too much trouble."
