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been out of kitchenware except for spot deliveries, sold the day they arrived, ever since late
September!
Heinemann called me into his office. "George," he said, "I just checked your backlog. The
unifiled order list runs a little over eleven thousand. I want to tell you that I'm surprised at
the way you and your department have-"
"Now, Mr. Heinemann!" I burst out. "That isn't fair! We've been putting in overtime every
night, every blasted one of us! Eleven thousand's pretty good, if you ask me!"
He looked surprised. "My point exactly, George," he said. "I was about to compliment you."
I felt so high. I swallowed. "Uh, thanks," I said. "I mean, I'm sorry I--"
"Forget it, George." Heinemann was looking at me thoughtfully. "You've got something on
your mind, don't you?"
"Well--"
"Is it that girl?"
"Girl?" I stared at him. "Who said anything about a girl?"
"Come off it," he said genially. "You think it isn't all over the store?" He glanced at
his watch. "George," he said, "I never interfere in employees' private lives. You know that. But
if it's that girl that's bothering you, why don't you marry her for a while? It might be just
the thing you need. Come on now, George, confess. When were you married last? Three years? Five
years ago?"
I looked away. "I never was," I admitted.
That jolted him. "Never?" He studied me thoughtfully for a second. "You aren't--?"
"No, no, no!" I said hastily. "Nothing like that. It's just that, well, it's always seemed
like a pretty big step to take."
He relaxed again. "Ah, you kids," he said genially. "Always afraid of getting hurt, eh?
Well, I'll mind my own business, if that's the way you want it. But if I were you, George, I'd go
get her."
That was that. I went back to work; but I kept right on thinking about what Heinemann had
said.
After all. . . why not?
I called, "Lilymary!"
She faltered and half-turned. I had counted on that. You could tell she wasn't brought up
in this country; from the age of six on, our girls learn Lesson One: When you're walking alone at
night, don't stop.
She didn't stop long. She peered into the doorway and saw me, and her expression changed
as though I had hit her with a club. "George," she said, and hesitated, and walked on. Her hair
was a shimmering rainbow in the Christmas lights.
We were only a few doors from her house. I glanced, halfapprehensive, at the door, but no
Father Hargreave was there to scowl. I followed her and said, "Please, Lilymary. Can't we just
talk for a moment?"
She faced me. "Why?"
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"To-" I swallowed. "To let me apologize."
She said gently, "No apology is necessary, George. We're different breeds of cats. No need
to apologize for that."
"Please."
"Well," she said. And then, "Why not?"
We found a bench in the little park across from the subway entrance. It was late; enormous
half-tracks from the Sanitation Department were emptying trash cans, sprinkler trucks came by and
we had to raise our feet off the ground. She said once, "I really ought to get back. I was only
going to the store." But she stayed.
Well, I apologized, and she listened like a lady. And like a lady she said, again,
"There's nothing to apologize for." And that was that, and I still hadn't said what I had come
for. I didn't know how.
I brooded over the problem. With the rumble of the trash trucks
and the roar of their burners, conversation was difficult enough anyhow. But even under those
handicaps, I caught a phrase from Lilymary. "-back to the jungle," she was saying. "It's home for
us, George. Father can't wait to get back, and neither ~an the girls."
I interruped her. "Get back?"
She glanced at me. "That's what I said." She nodded at the Sanitation workers, baling up
the enormous drifts of Christmas cards, thrusting them into the site burners. "As soon as the
mails open up," she said, "and Father gets his visa. It was mailed a week ago, they say. They tell
me that in the Christmas rush it might take two or three weeks more to get to us, though."
Something was clogging up my throat. All I could say was, "Why?" Lilymary sighed. "It's
where we live, George," she explained. "This isn't right for us. We're mission brats and we belong
out in the field, spreading the Good News. . . . Though Father says you people need it more than
the Dyaks." She looked quickly into my eyes. "I mean-"
I waved it aside. I took a deep breath. "Lilymary," I said, all in a rush, "will you marry
me?"
Silence, while Lilymary looked at me.
"Oh, George," she said, after a moment. And that was all; but I was able to translate it;
the answer was no.
Still, proposing marriage is something like buying a lottery ticket; you may not win the
grand award, but there are consolation prizes. Mine was a date.
Lilymary stood up to her father, and I was allowed in the house. I wouldn't say I was
welcomed, but Dr. Hargreave was polite- distant, but polite. He offered me coffee, he spoke of the
dream superstitions of the Dyaks and old days in the Long House, and when Lilymary was ready to go
he shook my hand at the door.
We had dinner. - . . I asked her-but as a piece of conversation, not a begging plea from
the heart-I asked her why they had to go back. The Dyaks, she said; they were Father's people;
they needed him. Alter Mother's death, Father had wanted to come back to America . . . but it was
wrong for them. He was going back. The girls, naturally, were going with him.
We danced. . . . I kissed her, in the shadows, when it was growing late. She hesitated,
but she kissed me back.
I resolved to destroy my dreamster; its ersatz ecstasies were pale.
"There," she said, as she drew back, and her voice was gentle, with
a note of laughter. "I just wanted to show you. It isn't all hymnsinging back on Borneo, you
know."
I reached out for her again, but she drew back, and the laughter was gone. She glanced at
her watch.
"Time for me to go, George," she said. "We start packing tomorrow."
"But-"
"It's time to go, George," she said. And she kissed me at her door; but she didn't invite
me in.
I stripped the tapes off my dreamster and threw them away. But hours later, after the
fiftieth attempt to get to sleep, and the twentieth solitary cigarette, I got up and turned on the
light and looked for them again.
They were pale; but they were all I had.
Party Week! The store was nearly bare. A messenger from the Credit Department came
staggering in with a load of files just as the closing gong sounded. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]