“There isn’t room for you to, anyway. Do you want to get out?”
“No.”
“I doubt if you could. Where do you live?”
“Hundred and sixty-fourth, near the Concourse,” said Ben.
“How do you usually go home?”
“Like this.”
“And I thought I was saving you from a tiresome subway ride or something. I ought to have known you’d never lack invitations. Do you?”
“Hardly ever.”
“Do the people ask you all kinds of questions?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. Because I wanted to and now I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You must be tired of answering.”
“I don’t always answer the same.”
“Do you mean you lie to people, to amuse yourself?”
“Sometimes.”
“Oh, that’s grand! Come on, lie to me! I’ll ask you questions, probably the same questions they all ask, and you answer them as if I were a fool. Will you?”
“I’ll try.”
“Well, let’s see. What shall I ask first? Oh, yes. Don’t you get terribly cold in winter?”
He repeated a reply he had first made to an elderly lady, obviously a visitor in the city, whose curiosity had prompted her to cross-examine him for over twenty minutes on one of the busiest days he had ever known.
“No. When I feel chilly, I stop a car and lean against the radiator.”
His present interviewer rewarded him with more laughter than was deserved.
“That’s wonderful!” she said. “And I suppose when your ears are cold, you stop another car and borrow its hood.”
“I’ll remember that one.”
“Now what next? Do you ever get hit?”
“Right along, but only glancing blows. I very seldom get knocked down and run over.”
“Doesn’t it almost kill you, standing on your feet all day?”
“It ain’t near as bad as if it was my hands. Seriously, Madam, I get so used to it that I sleep that way nights.”
“Don’t the gasoline fumes make you sick?”
“They did at first, but now I can’t live without them. I have an apartment near a public garage so I can run over there any time and re-fume myself.”
“How tall are you?”
“Six feet ten.”
“Not really!”
“You know better, don’t you? I’m six feet four, but when women ask me, I tell them anything from six feet eight to seven feet two. And they always say, ‘Heavens!’ ”
“Which do you have the most trouble with, men drivers or women drivers?”
“Men drivers.”
“Honestly?”
“Sure. There’s fifty times as many of them.”
“Do lots of people ask you questions?”
“No. You’re the first one.”
“Were you mad at me for calling you cute the other day?”
“I couldn’t be mad at you.”
A silence of many blocks followed. The girl certainly did drive fast and Ben might have been more nervous if he had looked ahead, but mostly his eyes were on her profile which was only a little less alluring than her smile.
“Look where we are!” she exclaimed as they approached Fordham Road. “And you live at a Hundred and sixty-fourth! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Don’t get out. I’ll drive you back.”
“No, you won’t. I’ll catch a ride. There’s a fella up this way I want to see.”
“You were nice to take a chance with me and not to act scared. Will you do it again?”
“Whenever you say.”
“I drive in once a week. I go down to Greenwich Village to visit my sister. Generally on Mondays.”
“Next Monday I’ll be on the late shift.”
“Let’s make it the Monday after.”
“That’s a long ways off.”
“The time will pass. It always does.”
It did, but so haltingly! And the day arrived with such a threat of rain that Ben was afraid she wouldn’t come in. Later on, when the threat was fulfilled and the perils of motoring trebled by a steady drizzle and slippery pavements, he was afraid she would. Prudence, he knew, was not in her makeup and if she had an engagement with her sister, nothing short of a flood would prevent her keeping it.
Just before his luncheon time, the Cadillac passed, going south. Its top was up and its squeegee flying back and forth across the front glass.
Through the rain he saw the girl smile and wave at him briefly. Traffic was thick and treacherous and both must keep their minds on it.
It was still drizzling when she reappeared and stopped for him at four.
“Isn’t this a terrible day?” she said.
“Not now!”
She smiled, and in an instant he forgot all the annoyance and discomfort of the preceding hours.
“If we leave the top up, you’ll get stoop-shouldered, and if we take it down, we’ll be drowned.”
“Leave it up. I’m all right.”
“Do you mind if we don’t talk much? I feel quiet.”
He didn’t answer and nothing more was said until they turned east at Mount Morris Park. Then:
“I could find out your name,” she said, “by remembering your number and having somebody look it up. But you can save me the trouble by telling me.”
“My name is Ben Collins. And I could learn yours by demanding to see your driver’s license.”
“Heavens! Don’t do that! I haven’t any. But my name is Edith Dole.”
“Edith Dole. Edith Dole,” said Ben.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s pretty.”
“It’s a funny combination. Edith means happiness and Dole means grief.”
“Well,” said Ben, “you’ll have plenty of grief if you drive without a license. You’ll have it anyway if you drive fast on these kind of streets. There’s nothing skiddier than car-tracks when it’s raining.”
They were on upper Madison and the going was dangerous. But that was not the only reason he wanted her to slow down.
Silence again until they were on the Concourse.
“Are you married?” she asked him suddenly.
“No,” he lied. “Are you?”
“I will be soon.”
“Who to?”
“A man in Buffalo.”
“Are you stuck on him?”
“I don’t know. But he wants me and my father wants him to have me.”
“Will you live in Buffalo?”
“No. He’s coming here to be my father’s partner.”
“And yours.”
“Yes. Oh, dear! Here’s a Hundred and sixty-fourth and I mustn’t take you past it today, not in this weather. Do you think you can extricate yourself?”
He managed it with some difficulty.
“I don’t suppose I’ll see you again for two weeks.”
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
He choked down the words that wanted to
