The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher Read Online Free PDF Page B

suggesting the apartment,” Peter said.
    “Mrs. Grundy wasn’t around much when I grew up.” The signal changed and they moved ahead.
    They stopped in a street which had almost no lights along its smartly converted house fronts. This was one of the streets, still sequestered by money, whose houses came alive only under the accelerated, febrile glitter of winter and would dream through the gross summer days, their interiors deadened with muslin or stirred faintly with the subterranean clinkings of caretakers. No. 4 was dark.
    “I would rather stay over at your place, if I have to,” the girl said. Her voice was offhand and prim. “I hate hotels. We always stopped at them in between.”
    “Let’s get out and see.”
    They stepped down into the areaway in front of the entrance, the car door banging hollowly behind them. She fumbled in her purse and took out a key, although it was already obvious that it would not be usable. In his childhood, he had often hung around in the areaways of old brownstones such as this had been. In the corners there had always been a soft, decaying smell, and the ironwork, bent and smeared, always hung loose and broken-toothed. The areaway of this house had been repaved with slippery flag; even in the humid night there was no smell. Black-tongued grillwork, with an oily shine and padlocked, secured the windows and the smooth door. Fastened on the grillwork in front of the door was the neat, square proclamation of a protection agency.
    “You don’t have a key for the padlocks, do you?”
    “No.” She stood on the curb, looking up at the house. “It was a nice room I had there. Nicest one I ever did have, really.” She crossed to the car and got in.
    He followed her over to the car and got in beside her. She had her head in her hands.
    “Don’t worry. We’ll get in touch with somebody in the morning.”
    “I don’t. I don’t care about any of it, really.” She sat up, her face averted. “My parents, or any of the people they tangle with.” She wound the lever on the door slowly, then reversed it. “Robert, or my mother, or Arthur,” she said, “although he was always pleasant enough. Even Vince—even if I’d known him.”
    “He was just a screwed-up kid. It could have been anybody’s window.”
    “No.” Suddenly she turned and faced him. “I should think it would be the best privilege there is, though. To care, I mean.”
    When he did not immediately reply, she gave him a little pat on the arm and sat back. “Excuse it, please. I guess I’m groggy.” She turned around and put her head on the crook of her arm. Her words came faintly through it. “Wake me when we get there.”
    She was asleep by the time they reached his street. He parked the car as quietly as possible beneath his own windows. He himself had never felt more awake in his life. He could have sat there until morning with her sleep-secured beside him. He sat thinking of how different it would be at Rye, or anywhere, with her along, with someone along who was the same age. For they were the same age, whatever that was, whatever the age was of people like them. There was nothing he would be unable to tell her.
    To the north, above the rooftops, the electric mauve of midtown blanked out any auguries in the sky, but he wasn’t looking for anything like that. Tomorrow he would take her for a drive—whatever the weather. There were a lot of good roads around Greenwich.

Heartburn
    T HE LIGHT, GRITTY WIND of a spring morning blew in on the doctor’s shining, cleared desk, and on the tall buttonhook of a man who leaned agitatedly toward him.
    “I have some kind of small animal lodged in my chest,” said the man. He coughed, a slight, hollow apologia to his ailment, and sank back in his chair.
    “Animal?” said the doctor, after a pause which had the unfortunate quality of comment. His voice, however, was practiced, deft, colored only with the careful suspension of judgment.
    “Probably a form of newt or