I am a woman
of the night.
Laura walked out on the street. People hustled by, lights shone, cars
honked. But it all seemed far away, not very real. Her senses registered
only half of what they perceived.
_Where shall I go? I’d better not try to go home for a while. Not till
Burr leaves. Another hour, at least._
She looked at her watch: eight-thirty. She walked slowly, gazing ahead
of her like a sleepwalker. _I’ll go somewhere where I can sit down and
read_, she thought. She bought a magazine from a corner stand and
sauntered on another couple of blocks until she saw the McAlton on the
next corner.
She almost exclaimed aloud, as if the hotel had been sneaking up on her
while she marked time on the sidewalk. She stopped in her tracks to
stare at it and then looked self-consciously into a shop window. After a
few minutes she moved on to the hotel.
_If I just sit in a corner, as if I’m waiting for somebody, they can’t
do anything. I’ll just read this thing till nine-thirty or so._
A tiny unworded excitement knotted itself around her heart and stuck
there, prepared to stay for as long as Laura stayed in the lobby. She
didn’t go over to the desk. She just sat down in an alcove on a leather
covered sofa next to a fat middle-aged woman. She read until
nine-thirty.
Then she got up and walked halfway across the lobby to the phone booths,
entered one, and dialed the penthouse. Marcie answered.
“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 what I’m doing
here,” she said brokenly. “I’m a stranger in this world.”
“Well, now,” said the woman, “Everybody’s a stranger when you look at it
that way. But everybody got a chance to find a little love. That’s the
most important thing. When you got a little love, the rest don’t seem so
strange or sad no more. There now, honey, there now.”
Laura suddenly shied away from her. “Don’t call me honey!” she said, her
face twisted with misery.
The Negro woman let her go, shaking her head. “You pretty sick, girl,”
she said. “You need a doctor, and that’s the truth.”
Laura turned and walked out of the rest room on shaking legs. Outside
she looked warily up and down the waiting platform. Only a handful of
people were there. A train had gone through just after she entered the
rest room and had taken most of the crowd with it. She waited in silence
for the next train.
The woman came out of the rest room after Laura. She stood some distance
from her, staring at her with a mixture of distrust and pity, until the
train arrived and the crowd separated them.
* * * * *
Laura came home too exhausted to talk about it, to be embarrassed with
Marcie about the fight with Burr. She was so full of her experience, so
absorbed in her father, that nobody else seemed real. She almost fell
into her bed, with hardly a word to Marcie, and lay there wrapped up in
herself, crying quietly for a long time.
Things were no better in the morning. Somehow the enormity of Burr’s
accusation hung between them like a curtain. They could look at each
other only furtively; they couldn’t speak. They were embarrassed, a
little afraid of each other, and it made them overly polite. All they
said was, “Excuse me,” “pass the cream, please,” “I’m sorry.” Laura had
the additional burden of her terrible flight from her father to keep her
both silent and preoccupied.
She was unable to figure it out. She knew she didn’t want to talk to
him, to show him any forgiveness at all, to satisfy his curiosity about
her—if he had any. She only wanted a glimpse of him; she wanted to
reassure herself that he was still in New York, even though she knew he
was. And she knew he might see her if she hung around his hotel. And she
was ashamed that he should see her and know how important he was to her,
even after his cruel denial of her. All these things were plain to Laura
and yet when she looked back on the night before it seemed incredible.
Especially her own terror.
* * * * *
They parted for work without more than a perfunctory goodby. Laura knew
it was going to be a rough day. She had had almost no sleep. And for the
first time since she took the job she didn’t even give a damn what
happened. She was too engrossed in herself and the urgent unnameable
feelings that plagued her. Not even the head start she had given herself
the night before encouraged her. It only reminded her of Burr and the
ugly quarrel they had had. The thought of her father, which usually
spurred her on, even on the darkest days, now filled her with a shaky
apprehension and so engaged her mind that it was hard for her to think
about anything else.
Bombshells fell around her all day. Marcie called in tears at ten to say
she couldn’t stand it any longer and wouldn’t Laura forgive her. And
Laura was forced to take time out, while Dr. Hagstrom was in the room,
to reassure her. Marcie wouldn’t be put off; there was no help for it.
Sarah reminded her that they were all going out for dinner that night.
They had arranged to meet Jack and Carl Jensen at a small bar a couple
of blocks away for cocktails and to go on from there. It wasn’t until
Sarah mentioned it that Laura even remembered it, and then she was
dismayed.
Just before lunch, Jack called.
“Laura,” he said firmly, “what the hell are you trying to do to me?”
“Nothing. What’s the matter, Jack, can’t you make it tonight?”
“Tonight be damned. I’m liable to get skinned alive. Right _now_.”
“Did something go wrong with Terry?” Laura was startled into attention.
He paused a minute before answering, taken aback to hear his lover
mentioned right out on the phone. “No,” he said. “I spoil him rotten,
but that’s nothing new. Guess again.”
“Well, Jack, I don’t have time for guessing games, we’re—”
“I know, you’re behind. Burr told me you stayed late last night to catch
up.”
“Burr told you? Oh!” Suddenly she remembered. “What’s the matter with
me?”
“You tell me. I’d like to know. Burr was real sweet. He told me I was a
lousy bastard and no friend of his, and I could take my psychoanalysis
and cram it. Oh, he told me some very interesting things. He told me