“I had thought I was dead,” she said, and happiness winged around inside her like a bird lamed but still flying. She tried to hug him and she was too weak. “I love you, Oreilly; you are my only friend and I was so frightened. I thought I would never see you again.” She paused, remembering. “But why aren’t you in jail?”
Oreilly’s face got all tickled and pink. “I was never in jail,” he said mysteriously. “But first, let’s have something to eat. I brought some things up from the delicatessen this morning.”
She had a sudden feeling of floating. “How long have you been here?”
“Since yesterday,” he said, fussing around with bundles and paper plates. “You let me in yourself.”
“That’s impossible. I don’t remember it at all.”
“I know,” he said, leaving it at that. “Here, drink your milk like a good kid and I’ll tell you a real wicked story. Oh, it’s wild,” he promised, slapping his sides gladly and looking more than ever like a clown. “Well, like I said, I never was in jail and this bit of fortune came to me because there I was being hustled down the street by those bindlestiffs when who should I see come swinging along but the gorilla woman: you guessed it, Miss Mozart.
Hi, I says to her, off to the barber shop for a shave? It’s about time you were put under arrest, she says, and smiles at one of the cops. Do your duty, officer. Oh, I says to her, I’m not under arrest. Me, I’m just on my way to the station house to give them the lowdown on you, you dirty communist.
You can imagine what sort of holler she set up then; she grabbed hold of me and the cops grabbed hold of her. Can’t say I didn’t warn them: careful, boys, I said, she’s got hair on her chest. And she sure did lay about her. So I just sort of walked off down the street. Never have believed in standing around watching fist-fights the way people do in this city.”
Oreilly stayed with her in the room over the weekend. It was like the most beautiful party Sylvia could remember; she’d never laughed so much, for one thing, and no one, certainly no one in her family, had ever made her feel so loved. Oreilly was a fine cook, and he fixed delicious dishes on the little electric stove; once he scooped snow off the windowsill and made sherbet flavored with strawberry syrup. By Sunday she was strong enough to dance. They turned on the radio and she danced until she fell to her knees, windless and laughing. “I’ll never be afraid again,” she said. “I hardly know what I was afraid of to begin with.”
“The same things you’ll be afraid of the next time,” Oreilly told her quietly. “That is a quality of Master Misery: no one ever knows what he is—not even children, and they know mostly everything.”
Sylvia went to the window; an arctic whiteness lay over the city, but the snow had stopped, and the night sky was as clear as ice: there, riding above the river, she saw the first star of evening. “I see the first star,” she said, crossing her fingers.
“And what do you wish when you see the first star?”
“I wish to see another star,” she said. “At least that is what I usually wish.”
“But tonight?”
She sat down on the floor and leaned her head against his knee. “Tonight I wished that I could have back my dreams.”
“Don’t we all?” Oreilly said, stroking her hair. “But then what would you do? I mean what would you do if you could have them back?”
Sylvia was silent a moment; when she spoke her eyes were gravely distant. “I would go home,” she said slowly. “And that is a terrible decision, for it would mean giving up most of my other dreams. But if Mr. Revercomb would let me have them back, then I would go home tomorrow.”
Saying nothing, Oreilly went to the closet and brought back her coat. “But why?” she asked as he helped her on with it. “Never mind,” he said, “just do what I tell you. We’re going to pay Mr. Revercomb a call, and you’re going to ask him to give you back your dreams. It’s a chance.”
Sylvia balked at the door. “Please, Oreilly, don’t make me go. I can’t, please, I’m afraid.”
“I thought you said you’d never be afraid again.”
But once in the street he hurried her so quickly against the wind she did not have time to be frightened. It was Sunday, stores were closed and the traffic lights seemed to wink only for them, for there were no moving cars along the snow-deep avenue. Sylvia even forgot where they were going, and chattered of trivial oddments: right here at this corner is where she’d seen Garbo, and over there, that is where the old woman was run over. Presently, however, she stopped, out of breath and overwhelmed with sudden realization. “I can’t, Oreilly,” she said, pulling back. “What can I say to him?”
“Make it like a business deal,” said Oreilly. “Tell him straight out that you want your dreams, and if he’ll give them to you you’ll pay back all the money: on the installment plan, naturally. It’s simple enough, kid. Why the hell couldn’t he give them back? They are all right there in a filing case.”
This speech was somehow convincing and, stamping her frozen feet, Sylvia went ahead with a certain courage. “That’s the kid,” he said. They separated on Third Avenue, Oreilly being of the opinion that Mr. Revercomb’s immediate neighborhood was not for the moment precisely safe. He confined himself in a doorway, now and then lighting a match and singing aloud: but the best old pie is a whiskeyberry pie! Like a wolf, a long thin dog came padding over the moon-slats under the elevated, and across the street there were the misty shapes of men ganged around a bar: the idea of maybe cadging a drink in there made him groggy.
Just as he had decided on perhaps trying something of the sort, Sylvia appeared. And she was in his arms before he knew that it was really her. “It can’t be so bad, sweetheart,” he said softly, holding her as best he could. “Don’t cry, baby; it’s too cold to cry: you’ll chap your face.” As she strangled for words, her crying evolved into a tremulous, unnatural laugh.
The air was filled with the smoke of her laughter. “Do you know what he said?” she gasped. “Do you know what he said when I asked for my dreams?” Her head fell back, and her laughter rose and carried over the street like an abandoned, wildly colored kite. Oreilly had finally to shake her by the shoulders. “He said—I couldn’t have them back because—because he’d used them all up.”
She was silent then, her face smoothing into an expressionless calm. She put her arm through Oreilly’s, and together they moved down the street; but it was as if they were friends pacing a platform, each waiting for the other’s train, and when they reached the corner he cleared his throat and said: “I guess I’d better turn off here. It’s as likely a spot as any.”
Sylvia held on to his sleeve. “But where will you go, Oreilly?”
“Traveling in the blue,” he said, trying a smile that didn’t work out very well.
She opened her purse. “A man cannot travel in the blue without a bottle,” she said, and kissing him on the cheek, slipped five dollars in his pocket.
“Bless you, baby.”
It did not matter that it was the last of her money, that now she would have to walk home, and alone. The pilings of snow were like the white waves of a white sea, and she rode upon them, carried by winds and tides of the moon. I do not know what I want, and perhaps I shall never know, but my only wish from every star will always be another star; and truly I am not afraid, she thought. Two boys came out of a bar and stared at her; in some park some long time ago she’d seen two boys and they might be the same. Truly I am not afraid, she thought, hearing their snowy footsteps following her; and anyway, there was nothing left to steal.
The End
