He heard her panting behind him and stopped, bringing Laura up sharp with a gasp. “You’re tired,” he said. “Want to sit down a minute?”
She shook her head at him.
“You can talk to me, I’m no devil,” he said. And she had the idea he was grinning at her. But when she maintained her tense silence he shrugged and turned back. Now and then he glanced at her to see how she was doing. “Want some help?” he asked when she stumbled once, leaning toward her, but she drew back fast and he said, “Okay. Just trying to help.”
They walked for a few moments and Laura was almost ready to bolt from him when she realized that the lights ahead she had taken for far distant were in reality small bulbs strung up to illuminate a row of steps.
“Maybe you’re wondering who I am,” he said almost hopefully as they neared the steps, as if he had a story to tell and was looking for a listener.
He turned, one hand on the iron rail that ran alongside the steps, and held out a hand to her. “Here y’are. Help you?”
She ignored him, turning her back to him to swing a leg over the low railing.
“Don’t you wonder who I am?” he said. “I don’t help just anybody, little girl.” He spoke sharply. “Don’t you want to know my name?”
“No!” she cried suddenly, angrily, startling herself. “You’re just a man and all men are alike. No matter what their names are!” He gaped at her, astonished. “You don’t really care about me, only about yourself. You don’t want to know my name, you only want me to know yours.” She spoke breathlessly at breakneck speed. “You can’t suffer like a woman can. You aren’t made to take it, you men. You’re just made big enough and brute enough to hurt us. But we can’t hurt you. We can’t hurt you, do you hear?” And she stopped abruptly, putting her hand over her mouth in a storm of self-pity and shame and revulsion. It was Jack she was screaming at, not this stranger. She couldn’t believe she had hurt Jack as she had hurt Beebo or it would destroy her. She screamed to make herself believe she couldn’t really hurt him, no matter what she did.
The tears burst from her eyes when she saw it all for a lie. A lie shouted to spare her own tortured feelings. The man looked at her, patient now and unamazed. He was over his first surprise. And hers was not the first desperate speech he had heard on the shores of the East River.
Laura began to run up the steps.
“You won’t get far, looking like that,” he called after her. Momentarily Laura stopped and looked at herself in dismay. She turned and glanced back at her guide. He was standing on the steps some twenty feet below her, smiling at her consternation. He was a large man, big-boned, and she thought, My God, he could break me in two. Like my father.
“Cat got your tongue?” he said.
She started up again on shaky legs and he called, “Is that all the thanks I get?”
At this Laura began to run, but to her alarm he ran after her. She felt her heart balloon in her chest, beating frantically, and when he caught her, only a few steps from the top, she yelled in fear. She would have screamed without stopping until somebody heard her if he had not wrapped a big hand around her mouth and forced her against the gate.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said. “I told you that. I never hurt anyone. I’m harmless.” He grinned, and Laura, squirming under his big hand, was dizzy with panic.
He held her quietly for a few minutes as if to assure her that he spoke in good faith. Finally he asked her, “Where are you going?” and released her mouth. When she tried to holler at once he covered it again.
“I’ll ask you again,” he said. “But don’t yell. Where are you going?”
When he freed her mouth this time she murmured, “Home. I’m going home. Let me go.”
“How you getting home?”
“I—I’ll walk. It’s not far. Just a block.”
“You know what block this is?” He smiled with superior knowledge.
“It can’t be far,” she said.
He shook his head quizzically. “I don’t get it. You’re not even drunk. You’re tore up but you’re no tramp neither. Mostly the ones I find down here are hitting the bottle. Or they wouldn’t be down here. Or kids, exploring. Not pretty girls.” He smiled and Laura’s one intense hope was that she not faint and fall into his clutches.
“Let me go,” she said, trying to sound controlled. But her big eyes and urgent breathing gave her away.
“Okay.” He took his hands away from her altogether, and said, “Go. But I’ll bet you need a dime to telephone with.”
She turned, dragging on the gate behind her until he said, “Here. Let me.” He opened it for her. And when she saw that he was really going to let her go, she allowed herself to turn and look at him. See him. He was holding out a dime.
“Take it,” he said. “At least you can call somebody to come get you.”
Laura stared at him. He was big and ugly, seamy-faced, and wearing dirty clothes with a worn cap tilted over his ear. But he had a nice honest grin. And he looked, for all his dirt and size, rather childish. Laura stood poised at the gate, wavering between flight and the dime. At last she took it, her face reddening. She had to drop her sharp stone to get it.
“Didn’t need that, didya?” he said with a smile, watching it fall.
She shook her head and whispered, “Thanks.”
“That’s all I want to
