“Would you like to come up for coffee?” she asked routinely when he pulled up in front of her apartment house. She did not look at him, and her tone indicated that she did not expect him to accept the invitation.
But because he genuinely liked her and wanted to bury the uneasiness between them, he did not, as usual, start looking for some excuse to beg off. “Sure. For once I don’t have a thing to do when I get home.”
She looked at him quickly, almost surprised. “Let’s go then, before you have time to change your mind.”
Her apartment was on the second floor in the back. The building was clean, although the carpeting in the hallway was slightly worn. Denise seemed nervous as she unlocked her door. “The place is a mess,” she apologized as they went in. “I haven’t had time to clean this week.”
It was cool and dim inside, the drapes drawn against the blast of the summer sun. The air was faintly scented with the light fragrance she wore a virginal, almost little-girl perfume that he noticed only when he was very close to her. The apartment was small and very clean. Probably every woman alive has declared that “the place is a mess before escorting someone into her living quarters for the first time. Denise had a surprising number of books, Raphael saw, and they ranged from light fiction to philosophy with a fair smattering of poetry thrown in. She also had a small record player, and he saw a record jacket. Rather strangely, Denise seemed to have a taste for opera-Puccini in this case.
She led the way into the small kitchen, turned on the light, and pulled a chair out from the table for him. “Sit down. I’ll put the pot on.”
Raphael eased himself down into the chair and set his crutches against the wall behind him.
At the sink Denise was nervously rinsing out her coffeepot, holding it in her left hand and leaning far forward to reach the faucet handle with the dwarfed hand. She dropped the pot with a clatter and stepped back quickly to avoid the splash. “Damn. Please don’t watch me. I’m not very good at this. I don’t get much company.”
He looked away, smiling.
She put the pot on the stove, came over, and sat down at the table across from him. She carefully turned so that her right arm was hidden. “I’m going to say something. Don’t try to stop me, because this is hard enough to say without being interrupted.”
“Okay,” he said, still smiling at her.
“I want to apologize for last week. I was being bitchy and there wasn’t any excuse for it.”
“Forget it. Everybody’s cranky right now. It’s the heat.”
“The heat didn’t have anything to do with it. I was jealous it was just that simple.”
“Jealous?”
“Are you blind, Rafe? Of course I was jealous. As soon as you started talking about that girl, I turned bright green all over-I know, there’s never been any reason-I mean, there’s nothing-no hint or anything that gives me any excuse to feel that way, but I did. I can’t help it. It’s the way I am.”
“Denise-” he started.
“Don’t patronize me, Raphael. In spite of everything I’m a woman. I’m not experienced at it or anything, but I am a woman, and I do get jealous.”
“There’s no reason to feel that way. There’s nothing like that involved. There couldn’t be, of course.”
“Don’t be stupid. Do you think that”-she gestured vaguely at his crutches-“really makes any difference at all? You’re intelligent; you’re gentle; and you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.” She stopped quickly. “I’m making a fool of myself again, aren’t I?”
On the stove the coffeepot started to percolate.
Raphael took a deep breath. It had been bound to happen, of course-someday. It was one of the risks he had taken when he had decided to try to live as normally as possible. Sooner or later it had been bound to happen. “Denise.” He tried to keep his voice as neutral as possible.
“Don’t try to smooth it over. It’s your life, after all. I was stupid even to build up any hopes or anything. Look at me. I’m a freak.”
Her tone was harsh. She was punishing herself. She turned and laid the tiny hand on the table in plain sight. “Like I say, it’s your life. If that girl’s attractive to you, go ahead. It’s none of my business. I just hope we can still be friends after all my stupidity.”
“Denise, there’s no real point to all of this. In the first place you’re not a freak, and I don’t want to hear any more of that kind of crap. In the second place I’ll be your friend no matter what. You’re stuck with me. You’re one of the few people in the world I care anything about. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d still be hiding from the world in that apartment of mine. Before I met you, I’d managed to cut myself off from everybody. I was pretty well down the road toward becoming one of those bitter, reclusive cripples you see once in a while. At least I’ve managed to get past that part of it.”
“All right, that’s something, I suppose. Now that you realize that a leg more or less doesn’t have anything to do with what you really are, you ought to be able to pick up your life where you left off before the accident. Why don’t you go back to school? I’m sure you don’t plan to spend the rest of your life fixing shoes. You’ll be able to have a career, a wife, a family-the whole bit.”
“Denise-”
“No. Let me finish. I knew from the start that you’d get over it-adjust to it-and I knew that when you did, you’d go back to being normal again. I just let myself get carried away, that’s all. I had you all to myself. A girl like me can’t really compete with normal girls-I know that. I’ve never even tried. Do you know that I’ve never had a date?-not once in my whole life? No one has ever taken me to the movies or out to dinner or any of it. Anyhow, I began to think that because we were both-well, special-that somehow, when you got over it all, you’d look around and there I’d be. It was foolish of me, of course. If you really like this girl you met, do something about it. Just please don’t stop being my friend is all.”
“Denise, I don’t think you understand. I’m not going to go back to being what you call `normal’ again. There was never any question about that part of it. I lost more than just a leg in that accident, so all the things you’ve been talking about just aren’t really relevant. I’m interested in that girl for exactly the reasons I said I was-I want to salvage one human life. I don’t want her to become a loser. And I’ll always be your friend-but that’s all. Maybe I should have told you earlier, but it’s not exactly the sort of thing you go around bragging about.”
She was staring at him, her face stricken and pale. Suddenly she was out of her chair and was cradling his head in her arms, pressing him tightly against her body. “Oh, my poor Angel,” she sobbed.
Why was it always “Angel”? Why was that always the first word that came to people’s lips? Why that and not something else?
She held him for a long time, crying, and then she turned and fled into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. He could hear her still crying in there.
After a few minutes he took his crutches, got up, and went to the closed door. “Denise?”
“Go away. Just go away, Rafe.”
He went back into the kitchen, turned off the coffeepot, and then quietly left her apartment.
When he got home, old Tobe was sitting on the porch of the shabby little house across the street. A half-full wine bottle sat beside him, but he did not seem to be all that drunk. More than anything right now Raphael did not want to be alone. He went across to the little man. “How’s Sam?” he asked.
“He’s dyin’, Rafe. Ol’ Sam’s dyin’. They found out he’s got the lung cancer, too.”
“Aw, no. I’m sorry, Tobe.”
“They got ‘im in a nursin’ home out in the valley,” Tobe went on quietly. “I went out there an’. seen ‘im today. He told me he don’t want me comin’ to see ‘im no more. We been together for damn near twenty years now, an’ now he says he don’t wanna see me no more.” The little man shook his head.
“I’m really sorry, Tobe.”
Tobe looked up, his eyes filled with tears. “How come he done that, Rafe? How come of Sam said a thing like that to me after all these years?”