A Hidden Place Read Online Free PDF

Travis left Millie was just turning twelve and had already begun to grow aloof. Other than that he had talked to his mother, his schoolteachers, a couple of girls doing what they obviously perceived as a kind of distasteful social work when he was left conspicuously alone at school functions. It was humiliating; but there were others who were, in a way, worse off; who were ostracized for some mental or physical deformity and not solely on account of their family situation. And although he had often enough prayed that it was otherwise, Travis knew, at least, that he was not despised altogether for himself.
    But that was back home. This was a new place. Here it was still possible that Travis could expect some of what he had so far been pointedly denied. Nobody knew him here, and that simple fact was as tantalizing as a promise.
    He lingered over the steaming plate of food, which he did not much want, killing time. There was no good opportunity to talk. Nancy moved deftly between the tall aluminum coffee urn and the soda fountain, balanced plates on her arms, pinned table orders on the silver carousel for the kitchen to pick up. He watched her pluck a strand of steamed black hair out of her eyes and thought: well, this is impossible. Nevertheless he lingered over his coffee and asked for refills. The hot black coffee made his heart beat faster. His eyes were on her constantly. And he thought: she at least notices me here.
    In time the tables began to empty, the humidity eased. She filled his cup for the third time and said, “Eight o’clock.”
    He looked at her, stupefied.
    She put her elbows on the counter. “That’s when I get off. Eight o’clock. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?”
    “I guess it is.”
    “I’ve seen the Cagney film at the Rialto but there’s a new one at the Fox. Jewel Robbery. William Powell and Kay Francis. You like William Powell?”
    “He’s pretty good.”
    Travis had seen three moving pictures in his life.
    She smiled. “Well, I guess I’m going over there after work.”
    “I guess so am I,” he said.
    She surprised him by stopping off at the Haute Montagne Public Library and slipping three fat volumes into the night depository: a Hemingway novel, a book on astronomy, and something by a German named Carl Gustav Jung.
    Travis said, “You read all that?”
    “Uh-huh.” She gave him that smile again- it was harder now, defiant, and he guessed she must have been ribbed about her reading. “Don’t you read?”
    “Magazines mostly.” In fact he had had a fair amount of time for reading in the long winters back home. She would already have seen the dime western; and he was not prepared to admit to the stacks of stolen, borrowed, or dearly bought science fiction and adventure pulps he had ploughed through. Not when she was dumping Carl Gustav Jung into the night slot.
    They moved along the darkened sidewalks back toward Lawson Spur and the Fox Theater.
    There was a short line at the ticket box and Travis saw other girls there, high-school girls or just older, and observed how they looked at Nancy Wilcox, the crabbed sidelong glances and covert stares. It was a phenomenon he recognized, and he thought: What is there about her? He paid for two tickets and they sat together in the mezzanine, gazing down silently for a time at the plush velvet curtains over the screen while a fat woman played overtures on the Wurlitzer. Travis felt the girl’s warm pressure next to him. She smelled good, he thought, some perfume and just a lingering indication that she had put in a long day in a hot restaurant. It was a wholesome smell. It aroused him and it made him nervous: he wondered what was expected of him, whether he should hold her hand or keep to himself. He did not want to insult her. Then the lights flickered down, the organ hissed into silence, the movie started. It was one of those cock-tail-and-evening-gown movies, everybody pronouncing calculated bon mots in rooms that seemed to