But our acquaintance did not make headway until September, an evening with thefirst ripple-chills of autumn running through it. Id been to a movie, come home andgone to bed with a bourbon nightcap and the newest Simenon: so much my idea ofcomfort that I couldnt understand a sense of unease that multiplied until I couldhear my heart beating. It was a feelingId read about, written about, but neverbefore experienced. The feeling of being watched. Of someone in the room. Then: anabrupt rapping at the window, a glimpse of ghostly gray: I spilled the bourbon. Itwas some little while before I could bring myself to open the window, and ask MissGolightly what she wanted.
Now and then I ran across her outside our neighborhood. Once a visiting relativetook me to "21," and there, at a superior table, surrounded by four men, none ofthem Mr. Arbuck, yet all of them interchangeable with him, was Miss Golightly, idly,publicly combing her hair; and her expression, an unrealized yawn, put, by example,a dampener, on the excitement I felt over dining at so swanky a place. Anothernight, deep in the summer, the heat of my room sent me out into the streets. Iwalked down Third Avenue to Fifty-first Street, where there was an antique storewith an object in its window I admired: a palace of a bird cage, a mosque ofminarets and bamboo rooms yearning to be filled with talkative parrots. But the pricewas three hundred and fifty dollars. Onthe way home I noticed a cab-driver crowdgathered in front of P. J. Clarks saloon, apparently attracted there by a happy groupof whiskey-eyed Australian army officers baritoning, "Waltzing Matilda." As they sangthey took turns spin-dancing a girl over the cobbles under the El; and the girl, MissGolightly, to be sure, floated round in their, arms light as a scarf.
"Ive got the most terrifying man downstairs," she said, stepping off the fireescape into the room. "I mean hes sweet when he isnt drunk, but let him startlapping up the vino, and oh God quel beast! If theres one thing I loathe, its menwho bite." She loosened a gray flannel robe off her shoulder, to show me evidence ofwhat happens if a man bites. The robe was all she was wearing. "Im sorry if Ifrightened you. But when the beast got so tiresome I just went out the window. Ithink he thinks Im in the bathroom, not that I give a damn what hethinks, the hellwith him, hell get tired, hell go to sleep, my God he should, eight martinis beforedinner and enough wine to wash an elephant. Listen, you can throw me out if youwant to. Ive got a gall barging in on you like this. But that fire escape was damnedicy. And you looked so cozy. Like my brother Fred. We used to sleep four in a bed,and he was the only one that ever let me hug him on a cold night. By the way, doyou mind if I call you Fred?" Shed come completely into the room now, and shepaused there, staring at me. Id never seen her before not wearing dark glasses, andit was obvious now that they were prescription lenses, for without them her eyes hadan assessing squint, like a jewelers. They were large eyes, a little blue, a littlegreen, dotted with bits of brown: vari-colored, like her hair; and, like her hair, theygave out a lively warm light. "I suppose you think Im very brazen. Or très fou. Orsomething."
Also, she had a cat and she played the guitar. On days when the sun was strong,she would wash her hair, and together with the cat, a red tiger-striped tom, sit outon the fire escape thumbing a guitar while her hair dried. Whenever I heard themusic, I would go stand quietly by my window. She played very well, and sometimessang too. Sang in the hoarse, breaking tones of a boys adolescent voice. She knewall the show hits, Cole Porter and KurtWeill; especially she liked the songs fromOklahoma!, which were new that summer and everywhere. But there were momentswhen she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, whereindeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked ofpineywoods or prairie. One went: Dont wanna sleep, Dont wanna die, Just wannago a-travelin through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her themost, for often she continued it long after her hair had dried, after the sun had goneand there were lighted windows in the dusk.
But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbellconvenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. Idiscovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regularreading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that shesmoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese andmelba toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same sourcemade it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were always torn intostrips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing.
Of course wed never met. Though actually, on the stairs, in the street, we oftencame face-to-face; but she seemed not quite to see me. She was never without darkglasses, she was always well groomed, there was a consequential good taste in theplainness of her clothes, the blues and grays and lack of luster that made her,herself, shine so. One might have thought her a photographers model, perhaps ayoung actress, except that it was obvious, judging from her hours, she hadnt timeto be either.
Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were thewords that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love.
