You're All Alone (illustrated) (5 page)

Carr laughed. “Taft’s Great Lakes fountain is a minor obsession of mine. I always try to figure out which of the five sisters is which lake. And of course that’s just around the corner.” He instantly grew serious again and moved closer to her. “I want to ask you a question,” he said.

“Yes?” she asked guardedly.

“Do you think I’m insane?”

Headlights from Adams swept across her gray eyes, enigmatic as those of a sphinx. “That’s hardly a question for a stranger to answer.” She looked at him a while longer and shook her head. “No, I don’t,” she said softly.

“All right,” he said, “grant I’m sane. Then answer this: Do you think it’s reasonably possible for a sane person to meet eight or ten insane ones, some of them people he knows, all in one day? And I don’t mean in an asylum.”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. Then, unwillingly, “I suppose not.”

“All right,” he said. “Then comes the big question: Do you think . . . (He had trouble getting the words out) “. . . that most people are really alive?”

She seemed to shrink in size. Her face was all in shadow. “I don’t understand,” she faltered.

“I mean,” he said, “do you really believe there’s anything behind most people’s foreheads but blackness? Do they really think and act, or are they just mindless parts of a mindless pattern?” His voice grew stronger. “Do you think that all that—” (He swept his hand along the boulevard and the towering buildings and the darkness) “—is really alive, or contains life? Or is all Chicago just a big machine, with people for parts?”

SHE FAIRLY sprang at him from the shadows. The next instant her hands were gripping his together and her strained and apprehensive face was inches from his own.

“Never think that!” she told him rapidly. “Don’t even toy with such crazy ideas!”

“Why not?” he demanded, his prisoned hands throbbing as if from an electric shock. “If you’d seen what I’ve seen today—”

Without warning she laughed gayly, loosed his tingling hands, and spun away from him. “Idiot!” she said in a voice that rippled with laughter, “I know what’s happened to you. You’ve been scared by life. You’ve magnified a few funny things into a morbid idea.”

“A few funny things?” he demanded, confused by her startling change of behavior. “Why, if you’d seen—”

“I don’t care!” she interrupted with triumphant gayety. “Whatever it is, it’s foolishness.” Her eyes, dancing with an infectious excitement, fixed on his. “Come with me,” she said, “and I’ll show you that all that—” (She swept her hand, as he had, at the boulevard) “—is safe and warm and friendly.”

“But—” he began.

She danced toward him. “Is it a date?” she asked.

“Well—”

“Is it, Mr. Serious?”

He couldn’t stop a big grin. “Yes,” he told her.

She held up a finger. “You’ve got to remember that this is
my
date, that I pick the places we go and that whatever I do, you fall in with it.”

“Like follow-the-leader?”

“Exactly like follow-the-leader. Tonight I’m showing you Chicago. That’s the agreement.”

“All right,” he said.

“Then come on.”

“What’s your name?” he said, catching her elbow.

“Jane,” she told him.

“Jane what?”

“You don’t need to know,” she replied impishly.

“Wait a minute,” he said, pulling them to a stop. “Is it Jane Gregg?” He couldn’t tell from her face whether that question meant anything to her. “I won’t tell you,” she said, pulling at him.

“Do you know Tom Elvested?” he continued.

“I won’t answer foolish questions like that,” she assured him. “Oh come on, you’ve got to get in the spirit of the thing, what’s-your-name.”

“Carr. Two R’s,” he told her. “Then we turn north here, Carr,” she told him.

. “Where to?” he asked.

She looked at him severely. “Follow the leader,” she reminded him and laughed and raced ahead. He had to run to keep up with her, and by that time he was laughing too.

They were a block from the Institute when Carr asked, “What about your friend, though—the small dark man with glasses?”

“I don’t care,” she said. “If he comes now, he can have a date with the five sisters.”

“Incidently,” Carr asked, “‘what’s his real name?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Are they after him too?” Carr persisted, his voice growing somber. “Who?”

“Those three people you warned me against.”

“I don’t want to talk about them.” Her voice was suddenly flat. “They’re obscene and horrible and I don’t want to think about them at all.”

“But look, Jane, what sort of hold do they have on you? Why did you let that big blonde slap you without doing anything?”

“I tell you I won’t talk about them! If you go on like this, there won’t be any date.” She turned on him, gripping hi§ arm. “Oh Carr, you’re spoiling everything,” she told him, close to tears. “Do get in the spirit, like you promised.”

“All right,” he said gently, “I will, really.” He linked his arm through hers and for a while they walked in silence. The wind and the gloom and the wide empty sidewalk seemed strange and lonely so close to the boulevard with its humming cars and its fringe of people and lights on the other side.

Her arm tightened a little on his. “This is fun,” she said.

“What?”

“Having a date.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d have any trouble,” he told her.

“Oh? You don’t know anything about my troubles—and we’re not going to talk about them tonight! Here we turn again.”

THEY WERE opposite the public library. She led him across the boulevard. It seemed to Carr the loneliness followed them, for they passed only two people as they went by the library.

They squinted against blown grit. A sheet of newspaper flapped against their faces. Carr ripped it away and it swooped up into the air.

Jane led him down a cobbled alley choked with fire escapes, down some steps and into a little tavern.

The place was dimly lit. None of the booths were occupied. At the bar two men contemplated half empty glasses of beer.

“What’ll you have?” Carr asked Jane.

“Let’s wait a bit,” she said, steering him instead to the last booth. Neither the two drinkers nor the fat and solemn bartender looked up as they went past.

They looked at each other across the splotched table. Color had come into Jane’s cheeks. Carr found himself thinking of college days, when there had been hip flasks and roadsters and checks from home and classes to cut.

“It’s funny,” he said, “I’ve gone past this alley a hundred times and never noticed this place.”

“Cities are like that,” she said. “You think you know them when all you know are routes through them.” We’re even beginning to talk about life, Carr thought.

One of the beer-drinkers put two nickels in the jukebox. Low strains eddied out.

Carr looked toward the bar. “Maybe they don’t serve at the tables now,” he said.

“Who cares?” she said. “Let’s dance.”

“I don’t imagine it’s allowed,” he said. “They’d have to have another license.”

“I told you you were scared of life,” she said gayly. “Come on.” There wasn’t much space, but enough. With what struck Carr as-a grave and laudable politeness, the beer-drinkers paid no attention to them at all, though one beat time softly with the bottom of his glass against his palm.

Jane danced badly, but after a while she got better. Somewhat solemnly they revolved in a modest circle. She said nothing until almost the end of the first number. Then, in a choked voice—

“It’s been so long since I’ve danced with anyone.”

“Not with your man with glasses?” Carr asked.

She shook her head. “He’s too scared of life all the time. He can’t relax—not even pretend.”

The second record started. Her expression cleared. She rested her cheek against his shoulder. “I’ve got a theory about life,” she said dreamily. “I think life has a rhythm. It keeps changing with the time of day and year, but it’s always there. People feel it without knowing it and it governs their lives.”

“Like the music of the spheres?” Carr suggested.

“Yes, only that makes it sound too nice.”

“What do you mean, Jane?”

“Nothing.”

Another couple came in, took one of the front booths. The bartender wiped his hands on his apron, pushed up a wicket in the bar, and walked over to them.

The music stopped. Carr dug in his pocket for more nickels, but she shook her head. They slid back into their booth.

“I hope I didn’t embarrass you,” she said.

“Of course not.”

A TELEPHONE rang. The fat bartender carefully put down the tray of drinks he had mixed for the other couple and went to answer it.

“Sure you don’t want to dance some more?” Carr asked.

“No. let’s just let things happen to us.”

“A good idea,” Carr agreed, “provided you don’t push it too far. For instance, we did come here to get a drink, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did,” Jane agreed. The impish expression returned to her eyes. She glanced at the two drinks standing on the bar. “Those look good,” she said, “Let’s have those.”

He looked at her. “Seriously?”

“Why not? We were here first. Are you scared of life?”

He grinned at her and got up suddenly. She didn’t stop him, rather to his surprise. Much more so, there was no squawk when he boldly clutched the glasses and returned with them. Jane applauded soundlessly. He bowed and set down the drinks with a flourish. They sipped.

She smiled. “That’s another of my theories. You can get away with anything if you aren’t scared. Other people can’t stop you, because they’re more scared than you are.”

Carr smiled at her.

“What’s that for?” she asked.

“Do you know the first name I gave you?” he asked.

“No.”

“The frightened girl. Incidentally, what did startle you so when you sat down at my desk this afternoon. You seemed to sense something in me that terrified you. What was it?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. You’re getting serious again,” she warned him.

He grinned. “I guess I am.”

More people had begun to drift in. By the time they finished their drinks, all the other booths were filled. Jane was getting uneasy.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” she said abruptly, standing up.

Carr started to reply, but she had slipped around a couple approaching their booth and was striding toward the door. A fear took hold of him that she would get away like this afternoon and he would never see her again. He jerked a dollar bill from his pocket-book and dropped it on the table. With nettling rudeness the newcomers shoved past him and sat down. But there was no time to be sarcastic. Jane was already mounting the stairs. He ran after her.

She was waiting outside. He took her arm.

“Do people get on your nerves?” he asked, “so you can’t stand being with too many of these for too long?”

She did not answer, but in the darkness her hand reached over and touched his.

Don’t let on you know the secret, even to yourself. Pretend you don’t know that the people around you are dead, or as good as dead. That’s what you’ll do, brother, if you play it safe . . .

THEY EMERGED from the alley into a street where the air had an intoxicating glow, as if the lamps puffed out clouds of luminous dust which rose for three or four stories into the dark.

They passed a music store. Jane’s walk slowed to an indecisive drift. Through the open door Carr glimpsed a mahogany expanse of uprights, spinets, baby grands. Jane suddenly walked in. The sound of their footsteps died as they stepped onto the thick carpet.

Whoever else was in the store was out of sight somewhere in the back. Jane sat down at one of the pianos. Her fingers quested for a while over the keys. Then her back stiffened, her head lifted, and there came the frantically rippling arpeggios of the third movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

She didn’t play it any too well, yet she did manage to extract from it a feeling of wild, desperate wonder. Surely if the composer had ever meant this to be moonlight, it was moonlight illumining a white-pinnacled ocean storm or, through rifts in ragged clouds, the Brocken on
Walpurgis Nacht.

Suddenly it was over. In the echoing quiet Carr asked, “Is that more like it? The rhythm of life, I mean?” She made a little grimace as she got up. “Still too nice,” she said, “but there’s a hint.”

They started out. Carr looked back over his shoulder, but the store was still empty. He felt a twinge of returning fear.

“Do you realize that we haven’t spoken with anybody but each other tonight?” he asked.

She smiled woefully. “I think of pretty dull things to do, don’t I?” she said, and when he started to protest, “No, I’m afraid you’d have had a lot more fun tonight with some other girl.”

“Listen,” he said, “I did have a date with another girl and . . . oh, I don’t want to talk about it.”