“Is everything all right, Marcie? It’s Laura.”
“Yes.” She sounded tired, reticent.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. The policeman got here right after Burr did. Burr was yelling like a crazy man. The policeman took him out and told him to stop bothering me or they’d take him down and book him. He was furious. He cried. But he went. Damn it, he deserved it, after what he did to you.”
“Are you alone now?”
“Yes.”
Laura suddenly felt enormously relieved. “Thank God,” she said.
“Will you be right home?”
“Yes. Right away.” She hung up and left the booth, putting some change in her purse. She felt much better. Burr was mad as hell, that was certain. But for the moment he would have to watch himself; he would have to be careful. Marcie was disgusted with him. Obviously force was the wrong way to get her back. And suddenly Laura saw her father.
Merrill Landon was about twenty feet from her, his face turned profile to her, talking to some men.
Laura gave a low cry, almost inaudible, and her heart stopped. The knot around it gave a tremendous squeeze, like a big angry fist, and stopped it altogether for a moment. It started again with a tremendous thump. She darted toward the little alcove, her face averted, but found all the seats taken. She stood facing away from him for a minute, her heart kicking wildly, wondering frantically what to do.
I’ve got to be calm, I’ve got to be calm, she said under her breath, but each time she said it it seemed more hysterical. She gulped convulsively and barely heard someone say in her ear, “Excuse me, dear. Are you all right?”
“Yes. Yes, thanks,” she said, her voice staccato, afraid to identify her questioner.
She shut her eyes tight for a minute. If I just walk out quickly, he’ll never see me. The lobby is full, there are dozens of people in here. He’s not looking for me, he’s talking to some men, he won’t see me. I’ll just walk out.
She took a very careful glance behind her. He was facing her now, but not seeing her, gesturing, talking, engrossed in his words. He would never see her. For a second she permitted herself the luxury of looking hard at him; his big maleness, his strong face that could never be called handsome and yet compelled interest. That face that almost never smiled at Laura since she was five years old. That face she was condemned to love.
Laura turned away then and began to walk toward the door, keeping her face averted, hurrying, her heart pounding as if she were running up a steep hill. Near the door she slowed down a little. I’ll never see him again, she told herself fiercely. Just one more glance. It will have to last me my life. She turned around slowly, carefully, just five feet from the door and safety.
He was looking at her. Looking straight at her, as if he had been following her through the crowd with his eyes, not quite sure but wondering. For a split second Laura didn’t believe it; thought he didn’t really see her and was just looking that way. But then he cried, “Laura!” in his big rough voice, and her eyes went huge with fear and she gasped and turned and ran as if the devil were after her. She ran headlong, panicky, her heart huge and desperate, struggling to get out of her throat. She ran with all her strength and with an unreasoning terror whipping her heels, all the way to the subway. She never once looked back. People turned to stare, they jumped out of the way and she collided with a dozen of them. She almost fell down the subway steps and ran and dodged and shoved her way into the ladies’ rest room.
There, she fell on the floor, whimpering, crying despairingly, unable to lift herself off the filth of the black floor and completely unaware of anything but the hysterical fear that gripped her. After a while she felt hands on her shoulders and she gave a wild scream and sat up. A terrified Negress was bending over her, saying, “There now, there now.” Her eyes were all whites.
Laura panted, speechless, gasping for breath. She leaned exhausted against the door of a booth until her wind came back to her and then she tried to get up. The Negro woman helped her, handling her like heirloom china, watching her every second for fear she would take off on another fit.
Laura half staggered to the wash basin and turned the water on. She looked at her haggard face in the mirror and an attack of real crying, soothing relief with real tears, overwhelmed her. “Father, Father, Father,” she cried softly, her face in her hands.
“Can I help you, Miss?” the colored woman asked. She was scared by Laura’s behavior, but fascinated.
Laura shook her head.
After a moment’s pause the woman said, “You came in here like a bat out of hell. You was out of your mind, honey, that’s for sure. Was some sonofabitch chasin’ you?”
Laura put her hands down to look at the woman in the cracked mirror over the basin. She nodded.
“Well, I never seen a girl so scared in my life. Never.” She shook her head positively. “You better get yourself some help, honey. Is he still out there?”
At this Laura went so white that she frightened the woman again, who said, “There now, there now. Didn’t mean to start nothin’. Don’t go off like that again.”
Laura turned around to look at her. And in her awful unhappiness she went to her and put her arms around her, to the bottomless astonishment of the woman, and wept on her shoulder. “I never had a mother,” Laura sobbed. “I never had a mother.” And her heart was broken.
The woman held her like a child and said, “There now, there now. Everybody’s got a mother, even you.”
“Nobody knows me. I don’t even know myself. I don’t know
