I had avoided her for over six months now and she not only knew I had been dodging her since in a town the size of ours a male can no more avoid a female consistently for that long by mere accident than they can meet for that long by what they believed or thought was discretion and surreptition, even she realised by this time that that business in Christian’s drugstore that afternoon last April had been no clumsy accident. (Oh yes, it had already occurred to me also that she had no reason whatever to assume I knew she had received the catalogues, let alone had instigated them. But I dismissed that as immediately as you will too if we are to get on with this.)
So I must make that first gesture. It would not be quite as simple now as it had used to be. A little after half-past-three on any weekday afternoon I could see her from the office window (if I happened to be there) pass along the Square in the school’s scattering exodus. Last year, in fact during all the time before, she would be alone, or seemed to be. But now, during this past one, particularly since the Levitt troglodyte’s departure, she would be with another girl who lived on the same street. Then suddenly (it began in the late winter, about St Valentine’s day) instead of two there would be four of them: two boys, Chick said the Rouncewell boy and the youngest Bishop one, the year’s high school athletic stars.
And now, after spring began, the four of them would be on almost any afternoon in Christian’s drugstore (at least there harbored apparently there no ghosts to make her blush and squirm and I was glad of that), with coca colas and the other fearsome (I was acquainted there) messes which young people, young women in particular, consume with terrifying equanimity not only in the afternoon but at nine and ten in the morning too: which — the four of them — I had taken to be two pairs, two couples in the steadfast almost uxorious fashion of high school juniors and seniors, until one evening I saw (by chance) her going toward the picture show squired by both of them.
Which would make it a little difficult now. But not too much. In fact, it would be quite simple (not to mention the fact that it was already May and I couldn’t much longer afford to wait): merely to wait for some afternoon when she would be without her convoy, when the Bishop and the Rouncewell would have to practise their dedications or maybe simply be kept in by a teacher after school. Which I did, already seeing her about a block away but just in time to see her turn suddenly into a street which would by-pass the Square itself: obviously a new route home she had adopted to use on the afternoons when she was alone, was already or (perhaps) wanted to be.
But that was simple too: merely to back-track one block then turn myself one block more to the corner where the street she was in must intercept. But quicker than she, faster than she, so that I saw her first walking fast along the purlieus of rubbish and ashcans and loading platforms until she saw me at the corner and stopped in dead midstride and one quick fleeing half-raised motion of the hand. So that, who knows? at that sudden distance I might not have even stopped, being already in motion again, raising my hand and arm in return and on, across the alley, striding on as you would naturally expect a county attorney to be striding along a side street at forty-two minutes past three in the afternoon; one whole block more for safety and then safe, inviolate still the intactness, unthreatened again.
There was the telephone of course. But that would be too close, too near the alley and the raised hand. And grüss Gott they had invented the typewriter; the Board of Supervisors could subtract the letterhead from my next pay check or who knows they might not even miss it; the typewriter and the time of course were already mine:
Dear Linda:
When you decide which one you like the best, let’s have a talk. I’ve seen some of them myself and can tell you more than the catalogue may have. We should have a banana split too; they may not have heard of them yet at Bennington and Bard and Swarthmore and you’ll have to be a missionary as well as a student.
Then in pencil, in my hand:
Saw you in the alley the other afternoon but didn’t have time to stop. Incidentally, what were you doing in an alley?
You see? the other afternoon so that it wouldn’t matter when I mailed it: two days from now or two weeks from now; two whole weeks in which to tear it up, and even addressed the stamped envelope, knowing as I did so that I was deliberately wasting two — no, three, bought singly — whole cents, then tore them neatly across once and matched the torn edges and tore them across again and built a careful small tepee on the cold hearth and struck a match and watched the burn and uncreaked mine ancient knees and shook my trousers down.
Because it was May now; in two weeks she would graduate. But then Miss Eunice Gant had promised to send the dressing case yesterday afternoon and grüss Gott they had invented the telephone too.
So once more (this would be the last one, the last lurk) to wait until half-past-eight oclock (the bank would not open until nine but then even though Flem was not president of it you simply declined to imagine him hanging around the house until the last moment for the chance to leap to the ringing telephone) and then picked it up:
“Good morning, Mrs Snopes.
Gavin Stevens. May I speak to Linda if she hasn’t already … I see, I must have missed her. But then I was late myself this morning … Thank you. We are all happy to know the dressing case pleased her. Maggie will be pleased to have the note.… If you’ll give her the message when she comes home to dinner. I have some information about a Radcliffe scholarship which might interest her. That’s practically Harvard too and I can tell her about Cambridge … Yes, if you will: that I’ll be waiting for her in the drugstore after school this afternoon. Thank you.”
And goodbye. The sad word, even over the telephone.
I mean, not the word is sad nor the meaning of it, but that you really can say it, that the time comes always in time when you can say it without grief and anguish now but without even the memory of grief and anguish, remembering that night in this same office here (when was it? ten years ago? twelve years?) when I had said not just Goodbye but Get the hell out of here to Eula Varner, and no hair bleached, no bead of anguished sweat or tear sprang out, and what regret still stirred a little was regret that even if I had been brave enough not to say No then, even the courage would not matter now since even the cowardice was only thin regret.
At first I thought I would go inside and be already sitting at the table waiting. Then I thought better: it must be casual but not taken-for-granted casual. So I stood at the entrance, but back, not to impede the juvenile flood or perhaps rather not to be trampled by it.
Because she must not see me from a block away waiting, but casual, by accident outwardly and chance: first the little ones, first- and second-and third-grade; and now already the larger ones, the big grades and the high school; it would be soon now, any time now. Except that it was Chick, with a folded note.
“Here,” he said. “It seems to be stuck.”
“Stuck?” I said.
“The record. The victrola. This is the same tune it was playing before, aint it? just backward this time.” Because she probably had insisted he read it first before she released it to him. So I was the second, not counting her:
Dear Mr Stevens
I will have to be a little late if you can wait for me
Linda
“Not quite the same,” I said. “I dont hear any dollar now.”
“Okay,” he said. “Neither did I. I reckon you aint coming home now.”
“So do I,” I said. So I went inside then and sat down at the table; I owed her that much anyway; the least I could give her was revenge so let it be full revenge; full satisfaction of watching from wherever she would be watching while I sat still waiting for her long after even I knew she would not come; let it be the full whole hour then since ‘finis’ is not ‘goodbye’ and has no cause to grieve the spring of grief.
So when she passed rapidly across the plate glass window, I didn’t know her. Because she was approaching not from the direction of the school but from the opposite one, as though she were on her way to school, not from it. No: that was not the reason.
She was already in the store
