Oklahoma!, which were new that summer and everywhere. But there were moments
when she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, where
indeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked of
pineywoods or prairie. One went: Don’t wanna sleep, Don’t wanna die, Just wanna
go a-travelin’ through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her the
most, for often she continued it long after her hair had dried, after the sun had gone
and there were lighted windows in the dusk.
But our acquaintance did not make headway until September, an evening with the
first ripple-chills of autumn running through it. I’d been to a movie, come home and
gone to bed with a bourbon nightcap and the newest Simenon: so much my idea of
comfort that I couldn’t understand a sense of unease that multiplied until I could
hear my heart beating. It was a feeling I’d read about, written about, but never
before experienced. The feeling of being watched. Of someone in the room. Then: an
abrupt rapping at the window, a glimpse of ghostly gray: I spilled the bourbon. It
was some little while before I could bring myself to open the window, and ask Miss
Golightly what she wanted.
«I’ve got the most terrifying man downstairs,» she said, stepping off the fire
escape into the room. «I mean he’s sweet when he isn’t drunk, but let him start
lapping up the vino, and oh God quel beast! If there’s one thing I loathe, it’s men
who bite.» She loosened a gray flannel robe off her shoulder, to show me evidence of
what happens if a man bites. The robe was all she was wearing. «I’m sorry if I
frightened you. But when the beast got so tiresome I just went out the window. I
think he thinks I’m in the bathroom, not that I give a damn what he thinks, the hell
with him, he’ll get tired, he’ll go to sleep, my God he should, eight martinis before
dinner and enough wine to wash an elephant. Listen, you can throw me out if you
want to. I’ve got a gall barging in on you like this. But that fire escape was damned
icy. And you looked so cozy. Like my brother Fred. We used to sleep four in a bed,
and he was the only one that ever let me hug him on a cold night. By the way, do
you mind if I call you Fred?» She’d come completely into the room now, and she
paused there, staring at me. I’d never seen her before not wearing dark glasses, and
it was obvious now that they were prescription lenses, for without them her eyes had
an assessing squint, like a jeweler’s. They were large eyes, a little blue, a little
green, dotted with bits of brown: vari-colored, like her hair; and, like her hair, they
gave out a lively warm light. «I suppose you think I’m very brazen. Or très fou. Or
something.»
«Not at all.»
She seemed disappointed. «Yes, you do. Everybody does. I don’t mind. It’s
useful.»
She sat down on one of the rickety red-velvet chairs, curved her legs underneath
her, and glanced round the room, her eyes puckering more pronouncedly. «How can
you bear it? It’s a chamber of horrors.»
«Oh, you get used to anything,» I said, annoyed with myself, for actually I was
proud of the place.
«I don’t. I’ll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be
dead.» Her dispraising eyes surveyed the room again. «What do you do here all day?»
I motioned toward a table tall with books and paper. «Write things.»
«I thought writers were quite old. Of course Saroyan isn’t old. I met him at a
party, and really he isn’t old at all. In fact,» she mused, «if he’d give himself a closer
shave … by the way, is Hemingway old?»
«In his forties, I should think.»
«That’s not bad. I can’t get excited by a man until he’s forty-two. I know this idiot
girl who keeps telling me I ought to go to a head-shrinker; she says I have a father
complex. Which is so much merde. I simply trained myself to like older men, and it
was the smartest thing I ever did. How old is W. Somerset Maugham?»
«I’m not sure. Sixty-something.»
«That’s not bad. I’ve never been to bed with a writer. No, wait: do you know
Benny Shacklett?» She frowned when I shook my head. «That’s funny. He’s written
an awful lot of radio stuff. But quel rat. Tell me, are you a real writer?»
«It depends on what you mean by real.»
«Well, darling, does anyone buy what you write?»
»Not yet.»
«I’m going to help you,» she said. «I can, too. Think of all the people I know who
know people. I’m going to help you because you look like my brother Fred. Only
smaller. I haven’t seen him since I was fourteen, that’s when I left home, and he
was already six-feet-two. My other brothers were more your size, runts. It was the
peanut butter that made Fred so tall. Everybody thought it was dotty, the way he
gorged himself on peanut butter; he didn’t care about anything in this world except
horses and peanut butter. But he wasn’t dotty, just sweet and vague and terribly
slow; he’d been in the eighth grade three years when I ran away. Poor Fred. I
wonder if the Army’s generous with their peanut butter. Which reminds me, I’m
starving.»
I pointed to a bowl of apples, at the same time asked her how and why she’d left
home so young. She looked at me blankly, and rubbed her nose, as though it tickled:
a gesture, seeing often repeated, I came to recognize as a signal that one was
trespassing. Like many people with a bold fondness for volunteering intimate
information, anything that suggested a direct question, a pinning-down, put her on
guard. She took a bite of apple, and said: «Tell me something you’ve written. The
story part.»
«That’s one of the troubles. They’re not the kind of stories you can tell.»
«Too dirty?»
«Maybe I’ll let you read one sometime.»
«Whiskey and apples go together. Fix me a drink, darling. Then you can read me a
story yourself.»
Very few authors, especially the unpublished, can resist an invitation to read
aloud. I made us both a drink and, settling in a chair opposite, began to read to her,
my voice a little shaky with a combination of stage fright and enthusiasm: it was a
new story, I’d finished it the day before, and that inevitable sense of shortcoming
had not had time to develop. It was about two women who share a house,
schoolteachers, one of whom, when the other becomes engaged, spreads with
anonymous notes a scandal that prevents the marriage. As I read, each glimpse I
stole of Holly made my heart contract. She fidgeted. She picked apart the butts in an
ashtray, she mooned over her fingernails, as though longing for a file; worse, when I
did seem to have her interest, there was actually a telltale frost over her eyes, as if
she were wondering whether to buy a pair of shoes she’d seen in some window.
«Is that the end?» she asked, waking up. She floundered for something more to
say. «Of course I like dykes themselves. They don’t scare me a bit. But stories about
dykes bore the bejesus out of me. I just can’t put myself in their shoes. Well really,
darling,» she said, because I was clearly puzzled, «if it’s not about a couple of old
bull-dykes, what the hell is it about?»
But I was in no mood to compound the mistake of having read the story with the
further embarrassment of explaining it. The same vanity that had led to such
exposure, now forced me to mark her down as an insensitive, mindless show-off.
«Incidentally,» she said, «do you happen to know any nice lesbians? I’m looking
for a roommate. Well, don’t laugh. I’m so disorganized, I simply can’t afford a maid;
and really, dykes are wonderful home-makers, they love to do all the work, you
never have to bother about brooms and defrosting and sending out the laundry. I
had a roommate in Hollywood, she played in Westerns, they called her the Lone
Ranger; but I’ll say this for her, she was better than a man around the house. Of
course people couldn’t help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course
I am. Everyone is: a bit. So what? That never discouraged a man yet, in fact it
seems to goad them on. Look at the Lone Ranger, married twice. Usually dykes only
get married once, just for the name. It seems to carry such cachet later on to be
called Mrs. Something Another. That’s not true!» She was staring at an alarm clock
on the table. «It can’t be four-thirty!»
The window was turning blue. A sunrise breeze bandied the curtains.
«What is today?»
«Thursday.»
«Thursday.» She stood up. «My God,» she said, and sat down again with a moan.
«It’s too gruesome.»
I was tired enough not to be curious. I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes.
Still it was irresistible: «What’s gruesome about Thursday?»
«Nothing. Except that I can never remember when it’s coming. You see, on
Thursdays I have to catch the eight forty-five. They’re so particular about visiting
hours, so if you’re there by ten that gives you an hour before the poor men eat
lunch. Think of it, lunch at eleven. You can go at two, and I’d so much rather, but he
likes me to come in the morning, he says it sets him up for the rest of the day. I’ve
got to stay awake,» she said, pinching her cheeks until the roses came, «there isn’t
time to sleep, I’d look consumptive, I’d sag like a tenement, and that wouldn’t be
fair: a girl can’t go to Sing Sing with a green face.»
«I suppose not.» The anger I felt at her over my story was ebbing; she absorbed
me again.
«All the visitors do make an effort to look their best,
