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“Oh, no. No trouble at all.” I jammed my left hand into my pocket and backed toward the door.
“See to it you’re gone in the morning.”
“Yes, we will be. I promise.”
“We don’t want any trouble.”
I started out the door and then stopped. “Say, can you tell me, does a bus come through here?”
His eyes bore in on me from both sides. A stupid question. Why didn’t I think? “I thought you said your husband was coming back,” he said.
“Oh, he is, but he’s got to get his truck fixed, and I’m supposed to be in Chicago tomorrow for my mother’s birthday. She’s turning sixty, and all her kids are coming from all over the Midwest. I can’t miss it, and I thought, just in case.…” So simple. He didn’t believe a word of it, but even before I’d finished, his eyes were drifting back to the paper.
“Down the road half a mile. In Fullerton. A bus depot.”
Back in room twelve, I sat on the bed, propped up against the headboard, and smoked a Lucky. I sucked the smoke in and swirled it around my mouth. It was hot and sharp and tasted bad, but I liked the look of the cigarette between my fingers. With my wrist bent and my fingers straight, I practiced sweeping my hand through the air, leaving a thin trail of smoke. I’d never been pleased with my hands, but, holding a cigarette, they looked almost pretty, I thought.
After a while, the smoke made me dizzy, so I put out the cigarette and chewed off a piece of the Turkish Taffy. Then I took the old, ankle-high shoes out of their box. I ran my fingers along the shiny sides and over the smooth, leather soles. Finally, I slipped the shoes on. All the lacing took several minutes. When I’d finished, I stretched my legs out on the bed to admire the results. I hadn’t really noticed before, but the shoes didn’t quite fit. They were long enough, but very narrow—left over, I guess, from a time when feet, like people, were more delicate. I took the shoes off and set them beside me on the bed. They were best for just looking at.
Then I sat back and puffed on another cigarette. I’d go to Milwaukee, I decided. I’d take the bus in Fullerton, and when I got to Milwaukee, I’d find find a room at a cheap hotel, and I’d get a job as a waitress. I’d live alone, and they’d never find me. I’d be too quiet. They’ve probably stopped looking for me anyway, I told myself. I was gone now, and that was what mattered. Bunny would care, of course, but she’d bury herself in Eddie or some other man, and I’d become a distant memory, a light bill she forgot to pay, an old book she’d read once. She was right—she was like a drinker that way, a love-aholic, loving away her memories. Tom might care, maybe Tom. Maybe I’d see him again sometime. But as for the others—it was funny, really. In re M.C. was supposed to be about me, and yet, in the end what happened was that I got to know them: Mrs. O’Brien, the Vernons, Sergeant Tony, Reverend Vaughn, Sissy, Elro, even Ruth, poor Ruth, with her two heads touching—it seemed I saw them all so clearly now.
I stubbed out my Lucky. I’ll go to Milwaukee, become a waitress like Bunny. Live alone. I’ll always be alone. That’s the way, the only way.
THIRTY-FIVE
It didn’t happen that way, of course. Nothing turned out as I’d expected, though, for a time, for a couple of weeks, I thought I’d managed to work it out. Everything went by so quickly, however, that now it hardly seems worth mentioning.
Early the next morning, I slipped out of the motel and walked the half mile into Fullerton. I found the bus depot in the center of town and caught a nine o’clock bus heading east. Shortly after noon, I stepped onto the streets of Milwaukee. I remembered Reverend Vaughn’s talk about his first moments in Chicago—about his feeling that a whole new world had opened up. Nothing like that happened to me. For one thing, Milwaukee didn’t look like Chicago; it didn’t even look that different from Katydid. The buildings were small and the streets quiet. There was none of the honking and pushing and yelling I think of when I think of the Loop. Mostly, Milwaukee just looked neat and empty.
I wandered for a while and passed a hotel. I paused, but some men were standing around the doorway, and one man was sitting in a chair on the sidewalk. I decided to walk on. Later, I came to the Viking Hotel. A sign said “$6 A NITE—WEEKLY RATE $35. The lobby was barren, but clean, so I went in. A boy not much older than I stood behind the front desk. His face was scarred with terrible acne, and as he talked to me, he looked down at the counter with his chin tucked into his right shoulder. I gave him $35, almost half of w
hat I had left, and signed the register “Lily Richards,” a name I’d thought of on the bus. The boy gave me the key to room 43, on the fourth floor. The elevator was run by a very old Mexican named Will who had snow-white hair and dirty white stubble on his chin. He rode up and down on a little round seat that folded out of the elevator’s wall. At each stop, he hopped up and opened the elevator’s grate door, which moved with an incredible clatter.
Room 43 was toward the end of the hall. A single bed with a prominent valley in the middle took up most of the space. There was a bureau, a chair, and a wash basin to go with the toilet and shower in the tiny adjoining bathroom. A window looked out on the tops and backs of several plain, brick buildings. I could lie in bed and watch pigeons dive and swoop from one rooftop ledge to another.
The second day I was there, Will saw me carrying a newspaper folded open to the want ads. There were only a few ads for waitresses, and the places I’d called were looking for people with lots of experience.
“Yob?” asked Will. “You wanna yob?” He pointed at the paper and I nodded. “My son restaurant, very beeg.” He shrugged. “Maybee wash deeshes, maybe wash floor.” With his arms held out, he bounced from foot to foot, doing an imaginary dance with a mop.
“Okay,” I said.
He stopped the elevator between floors and taking the ballpoint pen and the newspaper out of my hands, he scrawled an address over the newsprint. “Numero seex booss,” he said.
I thanked him, and after going back to the bus station to find the address on a map I took the number six bus to Will’s son’s restaurant. The ride took almost an hour and led, finally, to an industrial area of big, windowless buildings and smokestacks puffing out grayish fumes. The restaurant turned out to be the American Diner, one of a couple of diners on the block. It had a long counter and booths along the windows.
I got there in the middle of the afternoon, when the only customers were a couple of men, sitting far down the counter, whispering together and sipping coffee. Will’s son, Lou, was behind the counter, going over figures in a book. He was dark and compact and wore a white counterman’s shirt. I told him that I was looking for a job and that Will had sent me.
“Will? How the hell do you know that old man?” he asked in perfect English.
When I explained, his eyes narrowed. “Do you have a Social Security card?” he asked.
“No.”
“Ever waited tables before?”
“Yes, at a country club.”
“Summer job?”
