Plaza. Moreover, it would have taken a Rockefeller to decorate it, for it soaked up
baubles and tinsel like melting snow. Holly suggested she run out to Woolworth’s and
steal some balloons; she did: and they turned the tree into a fairly good show. We
made a toast to our work, and Holly said: «Look in the bedroom. There’s a present
for you.»
I had one for her, too: a small package in my pocket that felt even smaller when I
saw, square on the bed and wrapped with a red ribbon, the beautiful bird cage. «But,
Holly! It’s dreadful!»
«I couldn’t agree more; but I thought you wanted it.»
«The money! Three hundred and fifty dollars!»
She shrugged. «A few extra trips to the powder room. Promise me, though.
Promise you’ll never put a living thing in it.»
I started to kiss her, but she held out her hand «Gimme,» she said, tapping the
bulge in my pocket.
«I’m afraid it isn’t much,» and it wasn’t: a St. Christopher’s medal. But at least it
came from Tiffany’s. Holly was not a girl who could keep anything, and surely by
now she has lost that medal, left it in a suitcase or some hotel drawer. But the bird
cage is still mine. I’ve lugged it to New Orleans, Nantucket, all over Europe, Morocco,
the West Indies. Yet I seldom remember that it was Holly who gave it to me,
because at one point I chose to forget: we had a big falling-out, and among the
objects rotating in the eye of our hurricane were the bird cage and O.J. Berman and
my story, a copy of which I’d given Holly when it appeared in the university review.
Sometime in February, Holly had gone on a winter trip with Rusty, Mag and José
Ybarra-Jaegar. Our altercation happened soon after she returned. She was brown as
iodine, her hair was sun-bleached to a ghost-color, she’d had a wonderful time:
«Well, first of all we were in Key West, and Rusty got mad at some sailors, or vice
versa, anyway he’ll have to wear a spine brace the rest of his life. Dearest Mag
ended up in the hospital, too. First-degree sunburn. Disgusting: all blisters and
citronella. We couldn’t stand the smell of her. So José and I left them in the hospital
and went to Havana. He says wait till I see Rio; but as far as I’m concerned Havana
can take my money right now. We had an irresistible guide, most of him Negro and
the rest of him Chinese, and while I don’t go much for one or the other, the
combination was fairly riveting: so I let him play kneesie under the table, because
frankly I didn’t find him at all banal; but then one night he took us to a blue movie,
and what do you suppose? There he was on the screen. Of course when we got back
to Key West, Mag was positive I’d spent the whole time sleeping with José. So was
Rusty: but he doesn’t care about that, he simply wants to hear the details. Actually,
things were pretty tense until I had a heart-to-heart with Mag.»
We were in the front room, where, though it was now nearly March, the enormous
Christmas tree, turned brown and scentless, its balloons shriveled as an old cow’s
dugs, still occupied most of the space. A recognizable piece of furniture had been
added to the room: an army cot; and Holly, trying to preserve her tropic look, was
sprawled on it under a sun lamp.
«And you convinced her?»
«That I hadn’t slept with José? God, yes. I simply told — but you know: made it
sound like an agonized confession — simply told her I was a dyke.»
«She couldn’t have believed that.»
«The hell she didn’t. Why do you think she went out and bought this army cot?
Leave it to me: I’m always top banana in the shock department. Be a darling,
darling, rub some oil on my back.» While I was performing this service, she said:
«O.J. Berman’s in town, and listen, I gave him your story in the magazine. He was
quite impressed. He thinks maybe you’re worth helping. But he says you’re on the
wrong track. Negroes and children: who cares?»
»Not Mr. Berman, I gather.»
«Well, I agree with him. I read that story twice. Brats and niggers. Trembling
leaves. Description. It doesn’t mean anything.»
My hand, smoothing oil on her skin, seemed to have a temper of its own: it
yearned to raise itself and come down on her buttocks. «Give me an example,» I said
quietly. «Of something that means something. In your opinion.»
«Wuthering Heights,» she said, without hesitation.
The urge in my hand was growing beyond control. «But that’s unreasonable.
You’re talking about a work of genius.»
«It was, wasn’t it? My wild sweet Cathy. God, I cried buckets. I saw it ten times.»
I said, «Oh» with recognizable relief, «oh» with a shameful, rising inflection, «the
movie.»
Her muscles hardened, the touch of her was like stone warmed by the sun.
«Everybody has to feel superior to somebody,» she said. «But it’s customary to
present a little proof before you take the privilege.»
«I don’t compare myself to you. Or, Berman. Therefore I can’t feel superior. We
want different things.»
«Don’t you want to make money?»
«I haven’t planned that far.»
«That’s how your stories sound. As though you’d written them without knowing
the end. Well, I’ll tell you: I you’d better make money. You have an expensive
imagination. Not many people are going to buy you bird cages.»
«Sorry.»
«You will be if you hit me. You wanted to a minute ago: I could feel it in your
hand; and you want to now.»
I did, terribly; my hand, my heart was shaking as I recapped the bottle of oil. «Oh
no, I wouldn’t regret that. I’m only sorry you wasted your money on me: Rusty
Trawler is too hard a way of earning it.»
She sat up on the army cot, her face, her naked breasts coldly blue in the sunlamp light. «It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I’ll
give you two.»
I went straight upstairs, got the bird cage, took it down and left it in front of her
door. That settled that. Or so I imagined until the next morning when, as I was
leaving for work, I saw the cage perched on a sidewalk ash-can waiting for the
garbage collector. Rather sheepishly, I rescued it and carried it back to my room, a
capitulation that did not lessen my resolve to put Holly Golightly absolutely out of my
life. She was, I decided, «a crude exhibitionist,» «a time waster,» «an utter fake»:
someone never to be spoken to again.
And I didn’t. Not for a long while. We passed each other on the stairs with lowered
eyes. If she walked into Joe Bell’s, I walked out. At one point, Madame Sapphia
Spanella, the coloratura and roller-skating enthusiast who lived on the first floor,
circulated a petition among the brownstone’s other tenants asking them to join her
in having Miss Golightly evicted: she was, said Madame Spanella, «morally
objectionable» and the «perpetrator of all-night gatherings that endangered the
safety and sanity of her neighbors.» Though I refused to sign, secretly I felt Madame
Spanella had cause to complain. But her petition failed, and as April approached
May, the open-windowed, warm spring nights were lurid with the party sounds, the
loud-playing phonograph and martini laughter that emanated from Apt. 2.
It was no novelty to encounter suspicious specimens among Holly’s callers, quite
the contrary; but one day late that spring, while passing through the brownstone’s
vestibule, I noticed a very provocative man examining her mailbox. A person in his
early fifties with a hard, weathered face, gray forlorn eyes. He wore an old sweatstained gray hat, and his cheap summer suit, a pale blue, hung too loosely on his
lanky frame; his shoes were brown and brandnew. He seemed to have no intention
of ringing Holly’s bell. Slowly, as though he were reading Braille, he kept rubbing a
finger across the embossed lettering of her name.
That evening, on my way to supper, I saw the man again. He was standing across
the street, leaning against a tree and staring up at Holly’s windows. Sinister
speculations rushed through my head. Was he a detective? Or some underworld
agent connected with her Sing Sing friend, Sally Tomato? The situation revived my
tenderer feelings for Holly; it was only fair to interrupt our feud long enough to warn
her that she was being watched. As I walked to the corner, heading east toward the
Hamburg Heaven at Seventy-ninth and Madison, I could feel the man’s attention
focused on me. Presently, without turning my head, I knew that he was following
me. Because I could hear him whistling. Not any ordinary tune, but the plaintive,
prairie melody Holly sometimes played on her guitar: Don’t wanna sleep, don’t
wanna die, just wanna go a-travelin’ through the pastures of the sky. The whistling
continued across Park Avenue and up Madison. Once, while waiting for a traffic light
to change, I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he stooped to pet a sleazy
Pomeranian. «That’s a fine animal you got there,» he told the owner in a hoarse,
countrified drawl.
Hamburg Heaven was empty. Nevertheless, he took a seat right beside me at the
long counter. He smelled of tobacco and sweat. He ordered a cup of coffee, but when
it came he didn’t touch it. Instead, he chewed on a toothpick and studied me in the
wall mirror facing us.
«Excuse me,» I said, speaking to him via the mirror, «but what do you want?»
The question didn’t embarrass him; he seemed relieved to have had it asked.
«Son,» he said, «I need a friend.»
He brought out a wallet. It was as worn as his leathery hands, almost falling to
pieces; and so was the brittle, cracked, blurred snapshot he handed me. There were
seven people in the picture, all grouped together on the sagging porch of a stark
wooden house, and all children, except for the
