Eyes in the Fishbowl Read online

  When I managed to get my sight back, I saw what looked like a girl’s face, upside down in a pool of dark hair. As a rule I don’t even have the nerve to be nice to girls, but I guess a hard bump on the nose can really affect your personality, at least temporarily.

  “Oh sure,” I growled. “Except for a concussion and a broken nose. What do you think you’re doing anyway?”

  The face disappeared for a minute. In the meantime the pain began to fade, and I began to get back to normal. When the face came back, I kind of quavered, “What do you want?”

  That’s the kind of stupid remark that’s my usual speed around people my own age, but at least this girl didn’t make things any worse by laughing or making a crack. She didn’t try to answer my stupid question, either. What she said was, “I’m Sara.” Actually, she didn’t say Sara, exactly. At least not the way it’s usually pronounced. The “r” was softer and sort of swallowed. But Sara is as close as I can get to it.

  After a minute I said, “Hi” or “Hello” or some such remark.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “I’m Dion. Uh—Dion James. What are you doing here? Did you get shut in, too?”

  She just went on looking at me for a while without answering, and then she said, “You’d better come out from under there. They always look under the beds.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I was afraid they would. But I didn’t have much time to pick a place.” I remember that right about then I was getting a surprised and hopeful feeling that maybe she wasn’t going to turn me over to the guards—that maybe she even meant to help me.

  “Can you get out?” she asked.

  I began to try to scoot out, but the bed was awfully low. It’s really amazing what you can do if you’re scared enough. I couldn’t remember having any trouble getting under the bed at all. I wiggled and puffed for a minute without making much progress until the girl reached under and got hold of my foot. She pulled and I pushed and before too long I was out.

  It wasn’t until then, when I saw her face right side up, that I realized who she was and where I’d seen her before. The light was dim where we were, but it was bright enough for me to be pretty sure it was the same girl I’d seen Rogers chasing a few days before on the main floor. She was dressed differently, but I was sure I remembered the eyes and the smile and the long black hair. Instead of the suede jumper, she had on a short shiny skirt with a low belt and a matching blouse with long tight sleeves. She looked very expensive and stylish, except that around her shoulders there was something white and pink and frilly that didn’t seem to go with the rest of it. The frilly thing had slid around while she was helping me, and when she noticed that I was looking at it she started straightening it out. She had very small hands—very brown—and there was something about the careful way she touched the lacy stuff that made it obvious she really liked the way it looked. When she got it straightened out, I could see it was one of those little jackets that women wear in the hospital or when they’re having breakfast in bed—I’d seen them in the movies and places like that. This one was one big mass of ribbons and lace and little pink flowers.

  She said, “Isn’t it beautiful?” The way she said it wasn’t the way most girls would talk about something they were wearing. It was more the way you’d talk about a sunset or something.

  “Yeah, nice,” I said. “But look. Hadn’t we better be getting out of here before we get caught?” But then all of a sudden it occurred to me that maybe she belonged there in some way. She looked too young to be an employee, but maybe she was the daughter of one of the big shots who was working late or something like that. She certainly didn’t seem as worried as you’d think a young girl, trapped in a closed department store would be. As a matter of fact, she didn’t seem anywhere near as worried as I was.

  She finished fixing the jacket and smoothed her hair down before she answered. Her hair was very thick and almost to her waist, and when she moved her head it slid around on her shoulders—soft and heavy like black silk. Her face was smooth and even, the kind that looks best with straight plain hair. In the half-light it seemed to have a kind of patterned perfection that was almost weird, like a planned design or a face seen through crystal. After a minute she said, “We’ll have to find you a place to hide.”

  She looked all around and then she nodded and said, “Stay there a minute.” She ran out of the display room and disappeared around the corner. She was back before I even had a chance to start worrying; and she was carrying a comforter, one of those fluffy satin quilts stuffed with feathers. She turned back the top of the bedspread and took out the pillows and told me to lie down across the bed where the pillows had been. It was a king-size bed so I just about reached across it from side to side without hanging over. She folded the quilt into a long fat roll and tucked it over me and patted it into the same shape the pillows had made. Then she pulled the spread back where it had been. “It looks just the same,” she said. “Lie still.”

  “Hey,” I said, but I heard her running again, out of the room.

  For a minute or two I lay there in an absolute panic. It had all happened so fast and the girl had seemed so sure of what she was doing that I just went along with her, but suddenly I began to see the loopholes. It was a good hiding place, all right, if it weren’t for the dogs, but they wouldn’t be fooled for a minute. And what was going to happen to the girl? I was about to jump up and make a run for it when all at once she was back.

  “Shhh,” I heard her whisper. “I’m back. I had to put the pillows with the others so they wouldn’t be noticed. Are you all right? Can you breathe?”

  “Pretty well,” I said. “But what about the dogs? And what are you going to do?”

  “I have another hiding place. I’ll go there in a minute. Don’t worry about the dogs. They won’t find you. There are ways of making them go other places. They’ll come soon with the men, and then they’ll go back downstairs. When it’s safe, I’ll come back and show you how to get out of the store. Just remember not to move until I come back.”

  She was quiet then and I wasn’t sure whether she was still there. I whispered, “Sara.”

  She said, “yes,” from very nearby. I decided she must be sitting on the floor near the head of the bed.

  “You’d better go. They’ll find you there.”

  “I’ll go soon, when it’s time. The others will tell me.

  I was thinking about that, wondering if she’d said what I thought she said and what it meant, when suddenly I felt her touch the spread over my head. “I’m going now. Don’t move.”

  I lay there, trying to listen through the thick quilt and stuff over me. It seemed like years but it probably was only a few minutes before I heard voices. There were two or maybe three men, and they were going back and forth across the floor. They came closer and I heard another noise—a sharp whining bark. It was quiet for a while, and then there was more whining and voices giving commands. The dogs went on whining and whining, but they didn’t seem to be getting any closer—and then I heard someone walk right into the room where I was hidden.

  I held my breath and hoped that the quilt would muffle the sound of my heart pounding. I could hear a man moving around, but no dogs’ sounds, up close at least. In fact, the dogs were still whining now and then someplace quite a ways off on the other side of the floor. Finally the bed moved a little as if the man had put his hand on it as he got down to look underneath. “No sign of anything here!” he called a minute later, and then I heard him go on to the next display room.

  Things had been quiet again for quite a while when I heard Sara’s voice saying, “All right, you can come out now.”

  After we’d fixed the pillows back the way they’d been before, I said, “Okay, how do we get out?”

  “Do you want to go right now?” Sara asked.

  I guess I stared at her. The way she said it, it was like she thought I might want to sit down and play a hand of cards first or something.

  “Well, I’m n
ot exactly looking forward to the trip downstairs,” I said. “But waiting around isn’t going to make it any better. No telling when they’ll be back with the dogs.”

  Sara thought a minute. “They’ll go to the employees’ room now and drink coffee. In an hour they’ll take the dogs around again. But you’re right. Now is the best time. Come on, we’ll go this way.”

  She started towards the emergency staircase, so I told her that it was locked. She only said, “I think it will be open now.” And it was.

  At the top of the stairs we stopped and stood for a while listening. All of a sudden she said, “Now—hurry.”

  We ran all the way, and when we got to the ground floor we stopped and listened again, and then she led the way through a storage room that I recognized as one Rogers had dragged me through once. At the door that led out into the alley, she stopped.

  “Aren’t you coming, too?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said, “because of the others.”

  Chapter 6

  IT WASN’T EXACTLY the kind of thing that happens to just everybody, and for several days I thought about it a lot. I went over it and over it in my mind—the scream, getting locked in, the dogs and why they hadn’t found me, and the girl.

  Sara was a real puzzle. Who she was and how she happened to be in the store after closing were the biggest questions; but I also wondered about why she bothered to help me, and how old she was, and if I’d ever see her again. The way I remembered her, she was really beautiful—dark and foreign looking, with perfect skin and teeth and eyes like something from outer space. She had that way of moving some girls have, soft and bendy, like their bones have some rubber in them. But, she did look awfully young at times, as if she might be only twelve or so—more of a little kid than a girl.

  The next few days I dropped by the store every afternoon and took a quick look around; but I didn’t see anything new. And I didn’t see Sara, either. And meanwhile, something turned up at home that gave me something else to think about for a while.

  The thing that happened at home had to do with a letter, a letter about a job that my dad could have had if he’d wanted it. Well, actually it wasn’t entirely a sure thing. Nobody gets handed a job they haven’t even applied for. That was what really burned me up, Dad didn’t even intend to apply. In fact, I wouldn’t even have found out about it if I hadn’t just happened to run across the letter. But I did find the letter and I read it and I made a scene about it; not that it did any good. Afterwards I wished I’d never even seen the letter, and I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Grover’s nervous headaches.

  When the Grovers moved into our downstairs flat, they made an arrangement with Dad for Mrs. Grover to clean our apartment once a week, and in exchange they got a big hunk taken off the rent. Well, the Grovers still pay the low rent, but recently Mrs. Grover’s headaches have gotten worse, especially on Tuesdays when she’s supposed to be cleaning our apartment. Oh, she usually makes it up, all right, but she’s discovered what a good listener my dad is. I’m not there on Tuesdays, but the guys upstairs are in and out and they say that any minute Dad isn’t busy with a student, Mrs. Grover corners him and starts crying into her dust cloth about her headaches and life in general. Anyway, the result is the house isn’t much cleaner at the end of the day, so once in a while I try to straighten things up.

  That’s what I was doing that Sunday morning when I ran across the letter from the Wentworth School. It was lying there wide open, on top of the usual pile of debris that covers my dad’s desk: unpaid bills, unsharpened pencils and unfinished symphonies. So I read it, and at first I was all excited.

  Wentworth is a private high school out in the suburbs on the north side, and John Hubell, who is one of Dad’s oldest friends, has taught music there for years and years. There was going to be an opening in the music department, so John had recommended Dad. And the headmaster was willing to consider him. The salary wasn’t terrific, but it would be steady and a lot better than promises and stale doughnuts; best of all, we’d have to move. At least that’s the way I looked at it. I charged into the kitchen where Dad was making a pot of lentil soup, waving the letter over my head.

  “Hey,” I babbled, “why didn’t you tell me? Did you get it? When do you start?”

  Dad looked at the letter and then he looked at me and then he went over to the table and sat down and started lighting his pipe. Lighting his pipe slowly and thoughtfully while you wait for an answer is one of the most maddening things he does. Finally he got it lit and took a deep puff and let it out slowly before he said, “You’d like for me to teach at Wentworth?”

  It occurred to me just about then that John was always complaining about what a lousy place it was to teach. It’s a private school for girls, and according to John the girls are mostly spoiled brats and the administrators are a bunch of two-bit tyrants.

  “Well, it’s a steady salary,” I said. “And if it’s as bad as John makes out, why doesn’t he quit?”

  “John has a family, and he doesn’t have his degree,” Dad said. “It would be hard for him to find a job anywhere else. Besides, the time for John to break away has passed. He’s been at Wentworth too many years….” Dad took the pipe out of his mouth and put it down on the table, where he’d probably forget it and let it go out. “I have a great deal of sympathy for John’s situation, but not enough to make me want to share it, I’m afraid. And the salary is really not a consideration. By the time I paid for transportation, it would be very little more than I’m making now. But I certainly didn’t realize that you’d be so enthusiastic. It didn’t occur to me—”

  There were a lot of things that didn’t occur to Dad where I was concerned. I shrugged and mumbled something about thinking maybe we could move to the north side. But I didn’t wait for an answer. It was pretty plain that Dad had already turned down the chance to teach at Wentworth, so that was that. He was starting in on some of his reasons for not wanting to sell the house as I left the kitchen. I’d heard them all before.

  Out in the hall I stumbled over Charity, so I picked her up to put her out. The window at the end of the hall opens on the fire escape, and the cats always use that route to get to our floor. When I opened the window and dumped Charity out, I decided to climb out, too. I hadn’t done that for a long time, but when I was younger I had used the fire escape landing a lot. It was one of my favorite places to sit with my guitar and make up songs and sing them. It’s on the south side of the house, sheltered from the wind, and on sunny days it can be warm there even in the midst of winter. The trapped sunlight warms your skin, but the thin air stays as cold as ever in your lungs. If you stay too long the air wins out, but for a little while it feels wonderful.

  Charity had started down the fire escape, but when she looked back and saw me, she came right back up and climbed into my lap. I’m not crazy about cats in general and Charity in particular, but she made a good hand warmer so I let her stay. Prudence and Charity are Dad’s cats. At least he was the one who brought them home because somebody was about to drown them. They’re real nothings, as cats go, scrawny black-striped alley cats, both of them; but at least Prudence has enough originality not have kittens two or three times a year.

  Charity was so surprised to have me hold her that she started purring up a storm, and it felt good on my hands, warm and vibrating. I leaned back against the sunwarmed shingles and vegetated. I tried not to think about anything, but in a couple or minutes I was thinking about the job at Wentworth and what it would have been like if Dad had taken it.

  First of all, if we had moved it would have meant no more Randolph High. There were a lot of reasons why I would have been glad to see the last of Randolph. I felt then that it was really a lousy place to go to school—unless you happened to be part of the “in” group that ran everything. And if you weren’t a part of it, there was nothing much you could do about it. I knew because I’d tried.

  A year and a half before, when I had started in
at Randolph I’d had high hopes. I’d never felt like I really belonged to a school before—I’d always been a real outcast at Lincoln—but I’d decided that things were going to be different at Randolph. All the time at Lincoln I’d had this vague idea that everybody else, all the other kids, had some kind of secret that I wasn’t in on—something that made them able to talk and laugh and kid around together. And I was so sure that I couldn’t find out what the secret was I didn’t even try. I just did my work and left. But then in the eighth grade I began to see things differently.

  I was noticing a lot of things along about then. I began to watch people—I mean, really watch them—and I decided that nearly everyone was afraid, at least a little, and there wasn’t any big secret. Only a lot of little ones. One of the little secrets was to dress like everyone else, or just a little bit better. And another was to talk like everyone else and about the same kinds of things. Another one, for a boy, was to be a good athlete. Of course, that was out for me, but I decided there wasn’t any reason why I couldn’t work on the other things. I knew I was smart—everyone said so and my grades were always good—so why couldn’t I learn how to be just like everyone else? Only at Lincoln it was too late to start.

  So I concentrated on getting ready for Randolph. I saved money for clothes and practiced remarks and wisecracks that might come in handy. I even dropped out of orchestra because the violin didn’t fit my new image. Dad didn’t like my quitting, though he didn’t try to make me change my mind, but Mr. Cooper, the orchestra teacher, almost had a fit. It was too bad, I guess. But it couldn’t be helped.

  Then I’d started high school and things weren’t anything like I’d planned. Oh, it was better than Lincoln and I made a few friends, but not anything like I’d been counting on. I did get to know this one kid in my English class right away. His name was Jerry Davidson and he was almost as quiet as I was, but he had a good sense of humor when you got to know him. He lived up in Hill Groves and he asked me up to his house a few times. His family had this terrific place with a swimming pool and a rumpus room and the whole bit and they were all very nice and friendly.