Dusk and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

he began. They may have heard, for instance, that he was a big-time lawyer from the city. They may have heard that he wore three-hundred-dollar suits, that he drove a Cadillac and smoked expensive cigars. He was walking along as if looking for something on the floor. They may have heard that he was Jewish.
    He stopped and looked up. Well, he was from the city, he said. He wore three-hundred-dollar suits, he drove a Cadillac, smoked big cigars, and he was Jewish. “Now that we have that settled, let’s talk about this case.”
    Lawyers and sons of lawyers. Days of youth. In the morning in stale darkness the subways shrieked.
    “Have you noticed the new girl at the reception desk?”
    “What about her?” Frank asked.
    They were surrounded by noise like the launch of a rocket.
    “She’s hot,” Alan confided.
    “How do you know?”
    “I know.”
    “What do you mean, you know?”
    “Intuition.”
    “Int ui tion?” Frank said.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “That doesn’t count.”
    Which was what made them inseparable, the hours of work, the lyric, the dreams. As it happened, they never knew the girl at the reception desk with her nearsightedness and wild, full hair. They knew various others, they knew Julie, they knew Catherine, they knew Ames. The best, for nearly two years, was Brenda who had somehow managed to graduate from Marymount and had a walk-through apartment on West Fourth. In a smooth, thin, silver frame was the photograph of her father with his two daughters at the Plaza, Brenda, thirteen, with an odd little smile.
    “I wish I’d known you then,” Frank told her.
    Brenda said, “I bet you do.”
    It was her voice he liked, the city voice, scornful and warm. They were two of a kind, she liked to say, and in a way it was true. They drank in her favorite places where the owner played the piano and everyone seemed to know her. Still, she counted on him. The city has its incomparable moments—rolling along the wall of the apartment, kissing, bumping like stones. Five in the afternoon, the vanishing light. “No,” she was commanding. “No, no, no.”
    He was kissing her throat. “What are you going to do with that beautiful struma of yours?”
    “You won’t take me to dinner,” she said.
    “Sure I will.”
    “Beautiful what?”
    She was like a huge dog, leaping from his arms.
    “Come here,” he coaxed.
    She went into the bathroom and began combing her hair. “Which restaurant are we going to?” she called.
    She would give herself but it was mostly unpredictable. She would do anything her mother hadn’t done and would live as her mother lived, in the same kind of apartment, in the same soft chairs. Christmas and the envelopes for the doormen, the snow sweeping past the awning, her children coming home from school. She adored her father. She went on a trip to Hawaii with him and sent back postcards, two or three scorching lines in a large, scrawled hand.
    It was summer.
    “Anybody here?” Frank called.
    He rapped on the door which was ajar. He was carrying his jacket, it was hot.
    “All right,” he said in a loud voice, “come out with your hands over your head. Alan, cover the back.”
    The party, it seemed, was over. He pushed the door open. There was one lamp on, the room was dark.
    “Hey, Bren, are we too late?” he called. She appeared mysteriously in the doorway, bare legged but in heels. “We’d have comeearlier but we were working. We couldn’t get out of the office. Where is everybody? Where’s all the food? Hey, Alan, we’re late. There’s no food, nothing.”
    She was leaning against the doorway.
    “We tried to get down here,” Alan said. “We couldn’t get a cab.”
    Frank had fallen onto the couch. “Bren, don’t be mad,” he said. “We were working, that’s the truth. I should have called. Can you put some music on or something? Is there anything to drink?”
    “There’s about that much vodka,” she finally said.
    “Any ice?”
    “About two cubes.” She