it. It’s time for me to go.
She thought she was everyone he’d ever want to know, and she went cold, inside and out. Well, you go to New York if you want, she said. I’m not going. You go make yourself into a big man.—She made a mockery of the last two words. If he noticed he ignored it.
I want you to come with me, he said. I’m asking you to come. Nicole. Nicole. I have enough money to keep us for a while.
She shook her head. You’re crazy. Go if you want, but I’m staying here.
She thought that was the end of it; either he would go immediately and leave her to childlike Charleston, or he would stay for a while and change his mind. But she was wrong: they talked about it all through the following days; always he said he had to go, always she said she wouldn’t, and always there was the next day, the next discussion, dissection, dissension, another day of putting off disaster.
It’ll be so easy, he said, on the drive back to his house one night.
It’s not easy at all, said Nicole. My family, my friends are here. You and I are here. She waited a moment, gazing at a cream-colored quarter moon out the window on her side of the car, but he said nothing in response, and when she looked over at him his stony face was illuminated in the glare of an oncoming car.
That was December 1st, and she felt the ends of things overhanging. Three days later he disappeared, just like that. He didn’t warn her, he didn’t explain. His calls stopped coming, and she waited, she thought it was because they’d fought. But a week went by and still no word, so she borrowed a friend’s car and drove out to his house, only to find it empty and dark. Then she realized he’d left for good and without a good-bye. He’d gone to New York.
She imagined that the city had swallowed him as soon as he set his first foot down on the sidewalk. In her head New York was hell, and he was innocent but there he was. Hell, because there were so many, many people, none of them had faces, and there was no escape, and no way for them to love each other. She couldn’t imagine what kind of experiences he might be having. She tried to picture it, but all she could see was his back as he walked down the street, because he, too, had lost his features. She worried and wept; she’d never realized she was capable of such misery.
She would be tempted to ask the women who shopped in Clarkson’s: Should a woman travel to hell in order to be with a man she loves? Seven dollars and fifty cents for a girdle. Three dollars for nylon hose, beige, package of three.
One sunny Friday morning just after New Year’s a woman came into Clarkson’s, someone Nicole had never seen before: bleached blonde, her makeup hastily applied and unflattering, no smile and no gaze. Maybe the woman was thirty, maybe thirty-five; she shopped a little bit, she looked around at this and that. She took a dress down from its stand and turned it forward and backward to get a better look. There’s a fitting room in back, if you’d like to try that on, said Nicole. The woman merely nodded, replaced the dress, and turned away to another part of the store, where there were lacy underthings. Just about then Nicole realized they were running out of the tissue paper that they kept below the counter, so she went into the back room to get some more. When she returned the woman was gone, arid it was only an hour later, when she was going through the store, primping the stacks, that she discovered an entire shelf full of hosiery missing, and she was halfway to the stockroom for replacements before she realized that the woman must have stolen them. How very strange, the more so since they were different sizes, and so she couldn’t possibly have had any use for them all herself. Well, thought Nicole, I’ll have to tell Mr. Clarkson, and he won’t be happy about it. He can’t really blame me, though. Who would have thought a woman was a thief? It made her sad to think about it, and sadder still to think she had no one to share the story with.
Nicole put a sign on the door of Clarkson’s that said:
CLOSED FOR LUNCH OPEN AGAIN AT 2:00
She locked the front door and stepped out on the sidewalk. It was chilly, and the sky was shallow and grey as ashes. She hurried the few blocks home. In her mailbox there was a small lilac envelope with the address of a high school friend’s parents engraved on the back flap.—And a letter from New York City. She opened the lilac envelope immediately; it was an invitation to the girl’s wedding, and she put it down on her kitchen table and sat suddenly. Well, weren’t they all grown up? She had no way of explaining how such a thing could be happening.
She went to a tea shop for lunch; she ordered, she ate, she wondered where the new year was taking her. Back at the store, an empty afternoon, she opened John’s letter, accidentally tearing right through the return address, which was just as well: she didn’t want to know exactly where he was.
Dear Nicole:
Please forgive me because I don’t write very well. I’m sorry I left without saying good-bye. I didn’t know what to say. I love you very much but I had to leave Charleston. I wanted you to come with me, but I did not want to fight about it anymore.
New York is even bigger than I thought it would be. Yesterday I saw Robert Mitchum right on the street. I am playing with some fellows, and they are very good. I hope that someday I will see you again. Please do not be angry with me. Write to me at the address on the envelope if you want to.
Love,
John
She’d never seen his handwriting before; it was crude, unschooled, a cursive script with wide, fat loops, as if he were roping down each word. She could imagine him buying the paper at some corner store, reaching into the pocket of one of his suits for his billfold, with that funny expression he got on his face whenever he spent some money, his eyebrows raised as if the transaction was a surprise to him and he was a little bit worried that he’d get it all wrong, somehow; she could picture him sitting at his desk in some cheap hotel, brown eyes swimming; she could see him putting the letter in a mailbox and then disappearing into the crowds on Broadway; and then she couldn’t see him anymore. She folded the letter slowly, put it back in its envelope and put the envelope back in her purse. Through the plate glass in the front of the store she could see an old man in shirtsleeves and a white panama hat, shuffling off to the left.
John Brice had ventured to Babylon with his faithful genius about him; and if that was where he wanted to be, what was hers to add? He didn’t love her, she thought. He didn’t mean it; either he was living in a dream or he was lying. So sooner or later he would have grown tired of her and he would have started to hate her, and she’d be alone and not so young anymore, and stranded in New York City.
The door opened and a woman came in, and without breaking her gaze through the window, Nicole said, May I help you?
Darling, it looks like you could use a little help yourself, said Emily. I was going to invite you to lunch, on me.
Nicole blinked in surprise. I just ate, she said.
You look like something just ate you.
I got a letter, you know—she gestured—from John in New York.
He still trying to get you to come up there with him?
Nicole shook her head. No, she said. He’s gone.
Then forget about him, said Emily. You’re twenty years old. There’ll be another, believe me. There’ll be another.
But Nicole wasn’t sure there’d be another at all. What if he was the only one, ever? For a few days she thought about writing him back, but she couldn’t have told him anything; it was a madness that started anew each evening, a paralysis in her blood that prevented her from sending so much as a note to him. It was too much for her: the weeks of wandering around with a blank look on her face, an entire symposium she conducted all by herself. Answers,