She waxed wood and polished glass, and dusted and replaced objects with sacramental care.
There were visitors. Dorothy and Ellen came when they were home on vacation, unconvincingly envying Marion as a woman of the world. Her father came, puffing from the three flights of stairs, looking dubiously at the small living-bedroom and smaller kitchen and shaking his head. Some girls from the office came, playing Canasta as though life and honor were at stake. And a man came once; the bright young junior account executive; very nice, very intelligent. His interest in the apartment manifested itself in sidelong glances at the studio couch.
When Dorothy committed suicide, Marion returned to her father's apartment for two weeks, and when Ellen died, she stayed with him for a month. They could no more get close to each other than could charged metal pellets, no matter how they tried. At the end of the month, he suggested with a diffidence unusual in him that she move back permanently. She couldn't; the thought of relinquishing her own apartment was unimaginable, as though she had locked too much of herself into it. After that though, she had dinner at her father's three evenings a week instead of only one.
On Saturday she cleaned the rooms, and once each month she opened all the books to prevent their bindings from growing stiff.
One Saturday morning in September, the telephone rang. Marion, on her knees in the act of polishing the underside of a plate glass coffee table, froze at the sound of the bell. She gazed down through the blue-toned glass at the flattened dustcloth, hoping that it was a mistake, that someone had dialed the wrong number, had realized it at the last moment and hung up. The phone rang again. Reluctantly she rose to her feet and went over to the table beside the studio couch, still holding the dustcloth in her hand.
'Hello,' she said flatly.
'Hello.' It was a man's voice, unfamiliar. 'Is this Marion Kingship?'*
'Yes.'
'You don't know me. I was... a friend of Ellen's.' Marion felt suddenly awkward; a friend of Ellen's; someone handsome and clever and fast-talking... Someone dull underneath, someone she wouldn't care for anyway. The awkwardness retreated. 'My name,' the man continued, 'is Burton Corliss... Bud Corliss.'
'... Oh, yes. Ellen told me about you...' ('I love him so much,' Ellen had said during the visit that had proved to be her last, 'and he loves me too,' -and Marion, though happy for her, had for some reason been somber the rest of the evening.)
'I wonder it I could see you,' he said. 'I have something that belonged to Ellen. One of her books. She lent it to me just before... before she went to Blue River, and I thought you might like to have it.'
Probably some Book-of-the-Month novel, Marion thought, and then, hating herself for her smallness, said, 'Yes, I'd like very much to have it Yes, I would.'
For a moment there was silence from the other end of the wire. 'I could bring it over now,' he said. 'I'm in the neighborhood.'
'No,' she said quickly, 'I'm going out.'
'Well then, sometime tomorrow...'
'I... I won't be in tomorrow either.' She shifted uncomfortably, ashamed of her lying, ashamed that she didn't want him in her apartment. He was probably likeable enough, and he'd loved Ellen and Ellen was dead, and he was going out of his way to give her Ellen's book... 'We could meet someplace this afternoon,' she offered.
'Fine,' he said. 'That would be fine.'
'I'm going to be... around Fifth Avenue.'
'Then suppose we meet, say, in front of the statue at Rockefeller Center, the one of Atlas holding up the world.'
'All right.'
'At three o'clock?'
'Yes. Three o'clock. Thank you very much for calling. It's very nice of you.'
'Don't mention it,' he said. 'Good-by, Marion.' There was a pause. 'I'd feel funny calling you Miss Kingship. Ellen spoke about you so much.'
'That's all right...' She felt awkward again, and self-conscious. 'Good-by...' she said, unable to decide whether to call him Bud or Mr. Corliss.
'Good-by,' he repeated.
She replaced the receiver and stood looking at the telephone for a moment Then she turned and went to the coffee table. Kneeling, she resumed her work, sweeping the dustcloth in unaccustomedly hurried arcs, because now the whole afternoon was broken up.
In the shadow of the towering bronze statue, he stood with his back to the pedestal, immaculate in gray flannel, a paper-wrapped package under his arm. Before him passed intermeshing streams of oppositely-bound people, slow-moving against a backdrop of roaring busses and impatient taxis. He watched their faces carefully. The Fifth Avenue set; men with unpadded shoulders and narrowly knotted ties; women self-consciously smart in tailored suits, kerchiefs crisp at their throats, their beautiful heads lifted high, as though photographers might be waiting farther down the street. And, like transient sparrows tolerated in an aviary, the pink rural faces gawking at the statue and the sun-sharpened spires of Saint Patrick's across the street. He watched them all carefully, trying to recall the snapshot Dorothy had shown him so long ago. 'Marion could be very pretty, only she wears her hair like this.' He smiled, remembered Dome's fierce frown as she pulled her hair back primly. His fingers toyed with a fold in the wrapping of the package.
She came from the north, and he recognized her when she was still a hundred feet away. She was tall and thin, a bit too thin, and dressed much like the women around her; a brown suit, a gold kerchief, a small Vogue- looking felt hat, a shoulder-strap handbag. She seemed stiff and uncomfortable in the outfit, though, as if it had been made to someone else's measure. Her pulled-back hair was brown. She had Dorothy's large brown eyes, but in her drawn face they were too large, and the high cheekbones that had bees so beautiful in her sisters were, in Marion, too sharply defined. As she came nearer, she saw him. With an uncertain, questioning smile, she approached, appearing ill at ease in the spotlight of his gaze. Her lipstick, he noticed, was the pale rose he associated with timorously experimenting adolescents.
'Marion?'
'Yes.' She offered her hand hesitantly, 'How do you do,' she said, directing a too quick smile at a point somewhere below his eyes.
Her hand in his was long-fingered and cold. 'Hello,' he said. 'I've been looking forward to meeting you.'
They went to a determinedly Early American cocktail lounge around the corner. Marion, after some indecision, ordered a Daquiri.
'I... I can't stay long, I'm afraid,' she said, sitting erect on the edge of her chair, her fingers stiff around the cocktail glass.
'Where are they always running, these beautiful women?' he inquired smilingly-and immediately saw that it was the wrong approach; she smiled tensely and seemed to grow more uncomfortable. He looked at her curiously, allowing the echo of his words to fade. After a moment he began again. 'You're with an advertising agency, aren't you?'
'Camden and Galbraith,' she said. 'Are you still at Caldwell?'
'No.'
'I thought Ellen said you were a junior.'
'I was, but I had to quit school.' He sipped his Martini. 'My father is dead. I didn't want my mother to work any more.'
'Oh, I'm sorry...'
'Maybe I'll be able to finish up next year. Or I may go to night school. Where did you go to school?'
'Columbia. Are you from New York?'
'Massachusetts.'
Every time he tried to steer the conversation around to her, she turned it back towards him. Or to the weather. Or to a waiter who bore a startling resemblance to Claude Raines.
Eventually she asked, 'Is that the book?'
'Yes. Dinner at Antoine's. Ellen wanted me to read it. There are some personal notes she scribbled on the flyleaf, so I thought you might like to have it.' He passed the package to her.
'Personally,' he said, 'I go for books that have a little more meaning.'
