He thrust himself angrily to his feet. What the hell; they were just two people who’d met one day. But by Christ she was lovely.

He would go home through the steamy, polluted evening and take an Alka-Seltzer, and in the morning he’d go and see Elliot Judd, and maybe, in the clean open solitude of the desert, he’d be able to sort himself out and decide what the hell to do with himself from here on, to justify his existence.

19. Anne Goralski

At the kitchen table, Anne had the telephone at her ear; she was listening with a hollow, sinking resignation to the endless unanswered ringing on the line.

Steve had come to her desk at five o’clock and told her he couldn’t see her tonight. She had whispered, pleading, “When am I going to see you?”

“I told you, darling, I have to go out to my mother’s. I always do on Friday evenings. No telling when I’ll be back-I may stay over. But we’ll be together tomorrow-we’ve got the whole weekend.”

She had come home and sunbathed in the last sunlight on a towel on the buckling tarpaper roof. Her mind was full of Steve. She longed for him to return tonight; love had transfigured her existence-he had become the center of her world; without him she was wrenched from life. She had started ringing his number at nine o’clock, wanting him tonight; she was dressed and ready.

She put the receiver down in its cradle and stood up to open the window wider. The heat was grotesque. She was beginning to turn away when she saw her father’s figure come in sight at the corner.

Barney Goralski’s heavy shoes thudded and echoed on the pavement. Isolated pedestrians swirled by, their faces as gray as the smoggy air. He was tramping the well-worn route from the taxi garage home, not hurrying, reluctant to arrive, and his head was ducked because he didn’t need to look where he was going.

She sat down by the phone and dialed Steve’s number quickly, and listened to it ring. She tensed at the heavy sound of her father’s tread in the hall; she watched the door furtively. When the knob turned she cradled the phone.

His looming hulk filled the doorway; he came straight through into the kitchen shaking his head. “Rotten miserable day. How’s your mother?”

“She had a headache-she’s gone to bed.”

“Yeah,” he said, and opened the refrigerator. He took out a beer and pulled the snap-ring top; it came off with a pop and a hiss. He sat down at the tiny oilcloth-covered table and said again, “Rotten miserable day. Hot days like this the stinkin’ commuters all bring their air-conditioned cars in. Been a puking jam all day long. Crawl all the way. Some clown didn’t give himself enough time, wanted to make a train at Penn Station, naturally we missed it, and the sonofabitch blames me. I got the fare out of him, but not a nickel for a tip. Then I pick up some egghead professor insists we go the hard way, straight uptown through the traffic jam all the way to Columbia University, fifty minutes, for a twenty-cent tip. Big puking spender. Don’t these guys know the stinkin’ Internal Revenue assumes you make tips that amount to twenty percent of what shows on the meter? I gotta pay taxes on them tips whether I get it or not.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. She could hear the abrasive scratch of his beard stubble when he rubbed it. His black, entrenched eyes came around to lie against her, and he said, “You ain’t listening.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m waiting for a phone call.”

“Yeah? How long you been waiting?” He loomed forward, scowling at her. “Gotchaself a boyfriend, hey?”

She couldn’t keep from flushing; she felt her cheeks heat up. She nodded briefly.

Goralski said, “You look like you got hit with a ton a bricks. What’s the guy’s name?”

She shaped her mouth around the word: “Steve.”

“Whyn’tcha bring him around here sometime?”

“I–I-”

His scowl darkened. “Ashamed of the way we live, ain’tcha? Christ, I can’t blame you.” He opened the refrigerator and lifted out another can of beer, yanked the ring-top opener off, and glugged out of the can, throwing his big head back to drink. He sat down opposite her at the little table, both huge hands wrapped around the can of beer while he brooded. He seemed to be lost in his own miseries, but suddenly, without looking up, he said, “You all dressed up like that for a date tonight? Kinda late for it, ain’t it? Whatsa matter, he won’t phone?”

“He’s gone to his mother’s for dinner.”

His head shot back, and he glared. “You’re ashamed to bring him here, let him see this slum we gotta live in, that’s okay. But he’s ashamed to take you home to meet his mother?”

“Poppa, he-”

“What kinda sonofabitch is this guy? Hah?”

“He’s wonderful,” she said. “He’s the best, Poppa, and I won’t have you-”

“You won’t have! That’s rich! This bastard don’t mind keeping you out nights till the sun comes up-you think I ain’t noticed? — but he won’t interduce you to his mother, hah? Christ, honey, y’unnerstand what I’m saying?”

Hot, stiff, eyes flashing, she said in a taut low voice that trembled, “I understand perfectly well, and I don’t want to listen to any more of-”

“You don’t? Christ, honey, you gotta listen to somebody. You got it sticking out all over you-you think you’re in love with this bastard, you’re taking it seriously, but he ain’t, he won’t even interduce you to his precious mother, right? You want love and marriage, and he wants something else, right? I know these guys, believe me-all he wants is sex.”

“That’s not so!”

“You think about it, honey. And while you’re with this guy, you see if you can tell yourself it ain’t just sex. You think I don’t know the way you kids carry on nowadays? Hell, I’m a broad-minded old sonofabitch, I don’t carry no horse whip, you know that. But this guy-Christ, I never even met the bastard, and I can read him like a book.”

“It’s not so! It isn’t!”

Her father lowered his eyes to the can of beer. He said softly, “Don’t try to persuade me, honey-see if you can persuade yourself first. Y’unnerstand what I mean?”

“All right,” she snapped viciously. “Maybe he is just toying with my affections. Maybe I’m just in a mood to have my affections toyed with.”

He murmured, “Don’t talk like that, Anne. Not to your old man.”

Wound up, she said with glittering anger, “Loving is more important than being loved, anyway. Isn’t it? What does it matter if-”

“It matters, honey. You think about him not taking you to meet his mother, and you think hard, and you see what you come up with.” He leaned forward suddenly and gripped her wrist. She tried to jerk back, but he held her in a tight fist; he said earnestly, “You really love him, Anne? You really want the guy? Then make him marry you before he leeches his way out!”

“What? How?”

“How have women done it for five thousand years?”

“Poppa!”

He released her and slumped back in his chair; his jowls seemed to sag. He said, “Forget that. I take it back. Christ, I got troubles of my own, honey, half the time I don’t know what I’m saying myself, y’know what I mean? It’s only, well, hell, I’d like to see you get yourself a good husband, get out of this rat hole here. Nothing’s ever gonna get any better here. You gotta get out of it while you can, honey. You gotta grab any chance you can get. And don’t worry about me and her. We’re all used up anyway-I don’t want you throwing your whole life away on a couple old wrecks like your mother and me. We got nothing left to look forward to. You have. You got your youth, which is a precious thing, y’unnerstand what I’m tryna tell you?”

“Stop talking like that, Poppa. I don’t know what to think.”

He said slowly, as if thinking it out with great care, “Listen to me, honey. When you’re in love the way you are, you seem to lose a lot of your self-respect. Maybe you get to thinking, ‘I’m gonna have him, marriage or no marriage, it don’t matter.’ But it does matter. You gotta have something to show for it, or you’ll find out the world’s full of bastards that’ll use you up and throw you out. You gotta fight that, honey-you gotta grab your chance when you can.”