Hot Night in the City

Stewart voice, 'Look, I'm... I'm just terribly sorry if I frightened you, Miss. But I want you to know that I wasn't following you. Well, yes, yes, I was following you, I suppose. But not on purpose! I was just, sort of, well... walking along. Lost in daydreams. Just... just lost in daydreams, that's what I was. Look, why don't I just... just... turn around and go the other way? It's all the same to me, 'cause I'm not going anywhere special. I'm just... you know... sort of drifting along through life.'

She still didn't smile, although it was a pretty good Jimmy Stewart, she had to admit. She continued to stare at him, tense and angry, so he made a comic little salute and walked up the street, away from her. Then he turned back. 'Excuse me, my little chickadee, but you said something that tickled my cur-i-osity.' He dragged out the syllables in the nasal, whining style of W. C. Fields. They were talking across a space of perhaps ten yards, but it was well after midnight and the background growl of downtown traffic was so distant that they could speak in normal tones. 'Pray tell me, m'dear. Why did you warn me that this is an I-talian neighborhood. Just what has that—as the ancient philosophers are wont to wonder—got to do with anything?' W. C. Fields tapped the ashes from his imaginary cigar and waited politely for her answer.

She cleared her throat. 'Italians aren't like most city people. They have family feelings. If a woman screams, they come running and beat up whoever's bothering her.'

'I see,' W. C. drawled. 'A most laudable custom, I'm sure. But one that would be pretty hard on a fellow unjustly accused of being a mugger, like yours truly.' She smiled at the W. C. Fields, so he kept it up. 'You are, I take it, a woman of I-talian lineage?'

'No. I live here because it's safer. And cheap.'

He chuckled. 'You've told me more than you meant to,' he said in his own natural voice.

She frowned, and the steep-angled light filled her forehead wrinkles with shadow. 'What do you mean?'

'You've told me that you live alone, and that you don't have much money. Now, I wonder if you'd be kind enough to tell me one other thing?'

'What's that?' she asked, still cautious, although the first spurt of adrenaline was draining away.

'Is there someplace around here where I could get a cup of coffee?'

'Well... there's a White Tower. Four blocks down and one over.'

'Thanks.' His eyes crinkled into a smile. 'You know, this is a strange scene. I mean... really strange. Just picture it. Our heroine descends from a bus, right? She is followed by a young man, lost in vague daydreams. She suddenly turns on him and threatens to Italian him to death. Surprised, bewildered, dumbfounded, nonplussed, and just plain scared, he decides to flee. But curiosity (that notorious cat killer) obliges him to stop, and they chat, separated by yards of sidewalk that he hopes will make her feel safe. While they're talking, he notices how the overhead street lamp glows in her hair and drapes over her shoulders like a shawl of light. ...A shawl of light. But her eyes... her eyes are lost in shadow, so he can't tell what she's thinking, what she feels. The young man asks directions to a coffee shop, which she obligingly gives him. Now comes the tricky bit of the scene. Does he dare to invite her to have a cup of coffee with him? They could sit in the Whitest of all possible Towers and while away a few hours of this stifling hot night, talking about... well, whatever they want to talk about. Life, for instance, or love, or maybe—I don't know—baseball? Finally the drifter summons the courage to ask her. She hesitates. (Well, come on! What young heroine wouldn't hesitate?) He smiles his most boyish smile. (I'm afraid this is my most boyish smile.) Then the girl— Well, I'm not sure what our heroine would do. What do you think she would do?'

She looked at him, mentally hefting his intent. Then she asked, 'Are you an Englishman?'

He smiled at her abrupt non sequitur. 'Why do you ask?'

'You sound like Englishmen in the movies.'

'No, I'm not English. But then, you're not Italian. So we're even. Well... I'm even. Even-tempered, even-handed, and even given to playing with words. But you? You, you're not even. You're most definitely odd.'

'What do you mean, odd?'

'Oh, come on! Accepting an invitation for coffee with a total stranger is pretty goshdarned odd, if you ask me.'

'I didn't say I'd go for coffee with you.'

'Not in words maybe, but... say, which way is this White Tower of yours, anyway?'

'Back the way we came.'

'Four blocks down and one over, I believe you said.'

They walked down the street side by side, but with plenty of space between them, and he kept up a light trickle of small talk, mostly questions about her. She liked that, because nobody was ever interested in her, in who she was, and what she thought or felt. She told him that she had been in the city only six months, that she had come from a small town upstate, and that she had a job she didn't like all that much. No, she didn't wish she'd stayed in her hometown. Oh sure, she got the blues sometimes, but not bad enough to want to go back there. At the next corner, she turned unexpectedly in the direction of the all-night coffee joint, and their shoulders touched. They both said 'Sorry', and they walked on, closer now, but she was careful not to let their shoulders touch again as they approached the White Tower, a block of icy white light in the hot night.

It was pretty full, considering the late hour. The air-conditioning had attracted people driven off the street by the heat. In the booth next to theirs, a young couple fussed over three kids wearing pajamas and unlaced tennis shoes. The baby slept in the woman's arms, its mouth wetly pressed against her shoulder. The other two made slurping noises with straws stuck into glasses of pale tan crushed ice from which the last bit of cola taste had long ago been sucked. Among the refugees from the heat wave, the boy recognized several night people by the way they hunched defensively over the cups of coffee that represented their right to stay there. They were his sort of people: the flotsam that collects in all-night joints; the losers and the lost; those on the drift, and those who'd been beached; nature's predators, nature's prey.

Mugs of coffee between them, the boy and the girl talked; and when their talk waned or their thoughts wandered inward, as sometimes they did, they gazed out onto the empty street lit only by the bright splash from their window. Once she saw him examining her reflection in the glass, but when his eyes caught her looking back at him, they flinched away. She felt sure he hadn't had a real chance to see what she looked like out in the darkness and was making a quick appraisal of her reflection. She was young and slim, but she knew she was not pretty. Still, people sometimes said she had nice eyes, and when she examined them in her mirror, she found them, if not exotic or sexy, at least kind and expressive, and they were set off by long, soft lashes... her best feature. She was afraid he was going to compliment her on her eyes, and she was glad when he didn't because saying a girl has nice eyes is an admission she isn't good-looking, something like describing a person with no sense of humor as 'sincere', or saying a really dull girl is a 'good listener'. Her shoulder-length hair was curled in at the ends, forming, with her short bangs, a frame for her face. She had gone out that night in a stiff cotton frock with little bows at the shoulders, a full skirt held out by a rustling crinoline, and a matching bolero jacket... her 'June Allyson dress'.

Every major film actress had her characteristic makeup, hairdo, and wardrobe that girls imitated, each following the style of her 'favorite movie star': meaning the actress she thought she most closely resembled. For girls with too much face, there was the 'Loretta Young look'; for hard-faced girls, the 'Joan Crawford look'; for skinny-faced girls, there was Ida Lupino; for chubby-faced girls, Mitzi Gaynor or Doris Day; for very plain girls there was always Judy Garland, with her moist-eyed, hitch-in-the-voice earnestness. And for girls who weren't pretty in a showy way, there was June Allyson, who was always nice and kind and understanding, and almost always got the man, even though she wasn't all that sexy.

'That's a lovely dress,' he said with gravity.

She smiled down at it. 'I got all dressed up and went to the movies tonight. I don't know why. I just...' She shrugged.

'A June Allyson movie?' he asked.

'Yes. I'd been waiting to see—' Her eyes widened. 'How did you know?'

He slipped into a Bela Lugosi voice. 'I know many things, my dear. I have powers beyond those of your ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill, ready-to-wear, off-the-shelf human being.'

'No, come on, really. How did you know I went to a June Allyson movie?'

He smiled. 'Just a lucky guess.' Then he popped back into the Lugosi voice, 'Or maybe not! Maybe I was lurking outside the movie house, and I followed you onto the bus, stalking my prey!' He shifted to Lionel Barrymore, all wheezy and avuncular, 'Now you just listen to me, young lady! You've got to be careful about letting bad boys