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A week after my return I was back in the Dakota, back in the clothes that seemed almost more natural to me now than those I'd left behind in my apartment. I'd spent last night here and most of this next day, not because I any longer needed them to reach the state of mind necessary to step out into what I thought of now as Julia's time. It was because I was even more alone here than I'd been in my apartment, and more free to try to think through the most important decision I'd ever make, here in a limbo between two worlds and times.
It didn't snow but it was a drab February sky all day, visibility low, as though it might snow soon. And finally, well after dark this time, I walked out of the apartment, down the stairs, and turned toward the street and the park just ahead. There were cars on the street, their tires sounding wetly on the pavement, and I stood waiting at the curb. Then the traffic light clicked green, and I crossed, walked far into the park, found a bench to myself and sat down. I waited then, deep in the park, in the silence, and — simply allowed the change to happen, almost to accumulate. And when finally I stood up, looking around me at the bare trees visible by the light of the night sky reflected from the snow, the park looked no different. But I knew where I was with absolute certainty, and when once again I walked out onto Fifth Avenue, a light delivery wagon rattled slowly by, the horse tired, his neck slumped, a kerosene lantern swaying under the rear axle. On the walk a woman in a feathered black hat, a fur cape over her shoulders, walked past me, holding her long dark skirt an inch above the wet paving stones.
I turned south, down narrow, quiet residential Fifth Avenue, glancing into yellow-lighted windows as I walked, catching glimpses: of a bald bearded man reading the evening paper, the light from a fireplace I couldn't see reflected redly on the windowpane; of a white-aproned, white-capped maid passing through a room; of a month-old Christmas tree, a woman touching a lighted taper to its candles for the pleasure of the five-year-old boy beside her.
I walked a long way, not thinking but just waiting to see what I felt. Then I stood across the street beside the iron railings of the park fence staring over at the tall lighted windows of 19 Gramercy Park. I stood for some minutes, and once someone passed quickly by a lower front window, I couldn't tell who. I stood till I was cold, my feet numbing. But I didn't go in; after a while I walked quickly away.
And then, north on Broadway from Madison Square, I walked along the Rialto, the theatrical section of New York when Broadway was Broadway. The street was jammed with newly washed and polished carriages. The sidewalks were alive with people, at least half of them in evening dress, the night filled with the sound of them, and the feel of excitement and imminent pleasure hung in the air.
But I wasn't a part of it. I hurried past the lighted theaters, restaurants, and great hotels, until I reached the Gilsey House between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth. There, at the lobby cigar counter, I bought a cigar, a long thin cheroot, and tucked it carefully into the breast pocket of my i
I glanced out through the glass door panels then; the woman I was waiting for still wasn't there, and I stood to one side by a wall, listening to the excited hum of the lobby, but apart from it. Minutes passed, maybe four or five; then I saw her, back bent, feet shuffling. She was white-haired, wearing a buttonless man's overcoat tied at the waist with a rope, her shoes split at the sides, a rag of a scarf tied under her chin. On one arm she carried a small basket two-thirds filled with polished red apples, and she stopped in the middle of the walk and began an endless cackling spiel: "Apples, apples, apples. Get your apples, get 'em now. Apples, apples, Apple Mary's best! Hurry, now, hurry. Apple Mary says hurry." I stood watching; only one man of the three or four that I saw hand her a coin actually took an apple, and he didn't come into the theater but walked on, eating it. The others came in or stood on the walk.
Carriages had been steadily dropping off their parties at the curb. Now another stopped, and a family got out, all in evening dress: a bearded father, a ruby stud in his stiff white shirtfront; the mother, a pleasantly smiling woman in pink dress and gray cloak; and two girls, one in her twenties, the other younger. Each girl carried her cloak folded over an arm, shoulders bare; one wore a gray dress trimmed with red bows, and the younger wore a marvelous velvet gown of untrimmed, unrelieved spring-green velvet. When she smiled, as she did now, passing through the door her father held open for the party, she was lovely.
In the lobby they met friends, and now they stood talking, laughing, and I wanted to eavesdrop but couldn't: I stood staring out at Apple Mary chanting on the walk. And in less than a minute here he came, in evening dress, clean-shaven except for a mustache, moving deftly through the groups on the walk, a slim, very tall, handsome man in his twenties. The lobby doors beside me opened and closed steadily, and as he stopped out on the walk beside Apple Mary I heard him speak the words I could almost repeat with him. "Here you are, Mary. Good luck for you and good luck for me!" and I saw the wink of gold as the coin dropped into her hand. She stared at her palm, then looked up at him. "Bless you, sir; oh, bless you!" she said aloud, and then my lips moved silently, almost in unison with hers. "This evening will be blessed for you; mark my words!"
I glanced quickly to my left. The family party were saying goodbye to their friends, turning slowly toward the staircase as their friends turned toward the main-floor doors. And the man I'd watched on the sidewalk was striding toward my door, his hand reaching out for the handle. My own hand was lifting from the breast pocket of my suit coat, the other pushed open the door. I said, "Excuse me, sir," smiling, blocking his way, and I slowly raised the cigar in my hand to my mouth. "But do you have a light?"
"Certainly." He brought out a match, lifted one foot to strike it on the dry part of the sole, then raised the sputtering match, shielding it with one hand, to my cigar. Sick at heart, I ducked my head, unable to meet his eyes, and puffed my cigar into light.
"Thank you," I said then; from a corner of my eye I could see the far stairway to the balcony, and the girl in the pale green dress was climbing it. "You're welcome" — the man just outside the door shook out the match, then stepped past me into the lobby, glancing around it. But there was nothing now to catch his interest. On the staircase there was a last flick of pale green velvet but I don't think he even noticed it. Taking a ticket from his white vest pocket, he crossed the lobby on into the theater.
As I walked along the dark side-street east of Broadway, my hands shoved into my overcoat pockets, it was queer to realize that if I were again to — though I knew I would not — walk into the great brick warehouse labeled Beekey's, it would be into an interior of six concrete floors filled with stored household goods, nothing else. And that if, through the army, I were to track down a major named Ruben Prien, I might eventually find him, a tough little former football player with a wonderful smile. He'd be at a desk somewhere, in his neat khaki uniform, pla