Her bedroom was consistent with her parlor: it perpetuated the same camping-out
atmosphere; crates and suitcases, everything packed and ready to go, like the
belongings of a criminal who feels the law not far behind. In the parlor there was no
conventional furniture, but the bedroom had the bed itself, a double one at that, and
quite flashy: blond wood, tufted satin.
She left the door of the bathroom open, and conversed from there; between the
flushing and the brushing, most of what she said was unintelligible, but the gist of it
was: she supposed I knew Mag Wildwood had moved in and wasn’t that convenient?
because if you’re going to have a roommate, and she isn’t a dyke, then the next best
thing is a perfect fool, which Mag was, because then you can dump the lease on
them and send them out for the laundry.
One could see that Holly had a laundry problem; the room was strewn, like a girl’s
gymnasium.
» — and you know, she’s quite a successful model: isn’t that fantastic! But a good
thing,» she said, hobbling out of the bathroom as she adjusted a garter. «It ought to
keep her out of my hair most of the day. And there shouldn’t be too much trouble on
the man front. She’s engaged. Nice guy, too. Though there’s a tiny difference in
height: I’d say a foot, her favor. Where the hell — » She was on her knees poking
under the bed. After she’d found what she was looking for, a pair of lizard shoes, she
had to search for a blouse, a belt, and it was a subject to ponder, how, from such
wreckage, she evolved the eventual effect: pampered, calmly immaculate, as though
she’d been attended by Cleopatra’s maids. She said, «Listen,» and cupped her hand
under my chin, «I’m glad about the story. Really I am.»
That Monday in October, 1943. A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird. To
start, we had Manhattans at Joe Bell’s; and, when he heard of my good luck,
champagne cocktails on the house. Later, we wandered toward Fifth Avenue, where
there was a parade. The flags in the wind, the thump of military bands and military
feet, seemed to have nothing to do with war, but to be, rather, a fanfare arranged in
my personal honor.
We ate lunch at the cafeteria in the park. Afterwards, avoiding the zoo (Holly said
she couldn’t bear to see anything in a cage), we giggled, ran, sang along the paths
toward the old wooden boathouse, now gone. Leaves floated on the lake; on the
shore, a park-man was fanning a bonfire of them, and the smoke, rising like Indian
signals, was the only smudge on the quivering air. Aprils have never meant much to
me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring; which is how I felt sitting with
Holly on the railings of the boathouse porch. I thought of the future, and spoke of
the past. Because Holly wanted to know about my childhood. She talked of her own,
too; but it was elusive, nameless, placeless, an impressionistic recital, though the
impression received was contrary to what one expected, for she gave an almost
voluptuous account of swimming and summer, Christmas trees, pretty cousins and
parties: in short, happy in a way that she was not, and never, certainly, the
background of a child who had run away.
Or, I asked, wasn’t it true that she’d been out on her own since she was fourteen?
She rubbed her nose. «That’s true. The other isn’t. But really, darling, you made such
a tragedy out of your childhood I didn’t feel I should compete.»
She hopped off the railing. «Anyway, it reminds me: I ought to send Fred some
peanut butter.» The rest of the afternoon we were east and west worming out of
reluctant grocers cans of peanut butter, a wartime scarcity; dark came before we’d
rounded up a half-dozen jars, the last at a delicatessen on Third Avenue. It was near
the antique shop with the palace of a bird cage in its window, so I took her there to
see it, and she enjoyed the point, its fantasy: «But still, it’s a cage.»
Passing a Woolworth’s, she gripped my arm: «Let’s steal something,» she said,
pulling me into the store, where at once there seemed a pressure of eyes, as though
we were already under suspicion. «Come on. Don’t be chicken.» She scouted a
counter piled with paper pumpkins and Halloween masks. The saleslady was
occupied with a group of nuns who were trying on masks. Holly picked up a mask
and slipped it over her face; she chose another and put it on mine; then she took my
hand and we walked away. It was as simple as that. Outside, we ran a few blocks, I
think to make it more dramatic; but also because, as I’d discovered, successful theft
exhilarates. I wondered if she’d often stolen. «I used to,» she said. «I mean I had to.
If I wanted anything. But I still do it every now and then, sort of to keep my hand
in.» We wore the masks all the way home.
I have a memory of spending many hither and yonning days with Holly; and it’s
true, we did at odd moments see a great deal of each other; but on the whole, the
memory is false. Because toward the end of the month I found a job: what is there
to add? The less the better, except to say it was necessary and lasted from nine to
five. Which made our hours, Holly’s and mine, extremely different. Unless it was
Thursday, her Sing Sing day, or unless she’d gone horseback riding in the park, as
she did occasionally, Holly was hardly up when I came home. Sometimes, stopping
there, I shared her wake-up coffee while she dressed for the evening. She was
forever on her way out, not always with Rusty Trawler, but usually, and usually, too,
they were joined by Mag Wildwood and the handsome Brazilian, whose name was
José Ybarra-Jaegar: his mother was German. As a quartet, they struck an unmusical
note, primarily the fault of Ybarra-Jaegar, who seemed as out of place in their
company as a violin in a jazz band. He was intelligent, he was presentable, he
appeared to have a serious link with his work, which was obscurely governmental,
vaguely important, and took him to Washington several days a week. How, then,
could he survive night after night in La Rue, El Morocco, listening to the Wildwood
ch-ch-chatter and staring into Rusty’s raw baby-buttocks face? Perhaps, like most of
us in a foreign country, he was incapable of placing people, selecting a frame for
their picture, as he would at home; therefore all Americans had to be judged in a
pretty equal light, and on this basis his companions appeared to be tolerable
examples of local color and national character. That would explain much; Holly’s
determination explains the rest.
Late one afternoon, while waiting for a Fifth Avenue bus, I noticed a taxi stop
across the street to let out a girl who ran up the steps of the Forty-second Street
public library. She was through the doors before I recognized her, which was
pardonable, for Holly and libraries were not an easy association to make. I let
curiosity guide me between the lions, debating on the way whether I should admit
following her or pretend coincidence. In the end I did neither, but concealed myself
some tables away from her in the general reading room, where she sat behind her
dark glasses and a fortress of literature she’d gathered at the desk. She sped from
one book to the next, intermittently lingering on a page, always with a frown, as if it
were printed upside down. She had a pencil poised above paper — nothing seemed
to catch her fancy, still now and then, as though for the hell of it, she made laborious
scribblings. Watching her, I remembered a girl I’d known in school, a grind, Mildred
Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her stained fingers
that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turned
toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be more
opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twinship,
and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: the average
personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a
complete overhaul — desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All
right, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had in
common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they’d been given
their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the
one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. I
imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for its
nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never be
different. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step
that took small notice of those cliffs at the left. Such profound observations made me
forget where I was; I came to, startled to find myself in the gloom of the library, and
surprised all over again to see Holly there. It was after seven, she was freshening
her lipstick and perking up her appearance from what she deemed correct for a
library to what, by adding a bit of scarf, some earrings, she considered suitable for
the Colony. When she’d left, I wandered over to the table where her books
remained; they were what I had wanted to see. South by Thunderbird. Byways of
Brazil. The Political Mind of Latin America. And so forth.
On Christmas Eve she and Mag gave a party. Holly asked me to come early and
help trim the tree. I’m still not sure how they maneuvered that tree into the
apartment. The top branches were crushed against the ceiling, the lower ones spread
wall-to-wall; altogether it
