Read Online Listening to Billie by Alice Adams - Free Book Online Page A

Geminis,” she said. “I think maybe he’s coming up this weekend. I got another see-you-soon card.”
    “I reckon he could be coming.”
    “God, the crumbs I live on! And after that last no-show trip. I
know
I should dump him.”
    Kathleen had this idea that she, Miriam, understood everything she said, but Miriam did not; nothing about Kathleen made any sense to Miriam. There she was, white and over twenty, been to college, making good money being a supervisor, but she never bought any clothes, just paid rent and spent money on her little car, and all hung up on this guy who had no money and moved to Los Angeles and only came up every four or five weeks to see her, and then half the time didn’t show.
    Even Eliza made more sense to Miriam than Kathleen did; she missed Eliza, and didn’t understand about her getting fired. “I made him fire me so I could get unemployment,” Eliza had explained, seeming happy about the whole thing. Kathleen did not miss Eliza, and said mean things about her all the time.
    “Tonight I’ll have to wash my hair and bake bread, in case he comes,” Kathleen said, as she so often had before. “God, why can’t I just tell him to shove it, will you tell me that?”
    “You like him.” She did not say—of course not—that Lawry called her; not postcards—phone calls, from Los Angeles. Said he had to meet her. But she refused.
    “Oh, I guess.”
    It was hard for Miriam to listen to Kathleen all day. Miriam felt that her own life was terrible, but at least it was familiar to her; she knew all her own troubles even if she couldn’t lift them off. But Kathleen’s pinched and furious world was strange. And so sometimes Miriam talked just to make Kathleen be quiet.
    “There was this guy talking to me on the way to work,” she said. “And he looked real good, in these bad pants, but I don’t know if he be a pimp. He had on these far-out clothes?”
    This was of course not a question, but Kathleen chose to answer. “Miriam, you stay away from people like that! Like that guy who said he was going to take you to Vegas. Don’t you read the papers? Girls beaten up, stabbed to death?”
    “I know, but he
might
not be one. He did look good. There anything you’d like for me to do?”
    Kathleen sighed. She would rather have gone on talking,but she was conscientious, in her way—or, rather, terrified of being caught lacking. And so she said, “You can go to the cath lab and see if the caths on Gonzales and Hardy are ready. And have them copied. You know.”
    Miriam walked out of the research building and across the street, to the hospital. Some people didn’t like her and they frowned whenever they saw her. Mr. Graham, who was head of something in the business office. Or several of them didn’t know what to do and so they pretended she wasn’t there. Several of the doctors did that: Dr. Branner, Dr. Stern. But there were a couple of interns who were pretty nice, and they liked her and kidded around with her. “Hey, Miriam, you look like you’re high!”
    “Oh, I wish I was!”
    What would it be like to have a white boyfriend? She had wondered about that sometimes. She thought that she would like to. But you didn’t see near as many white boys with black girls as black men with whites. One of her brothers had a girl friend who was Spanish.
    Kathleen hated everyone in the hospital, and sometimes Miriam thought she had been hired by Kathleen to make them all mad. The only other black people who worked there were orderlies or maids, and they looked at Miriam funny as she walked past in her white lab coat, with her black, black hair.
    She got the typed cath reports and crossed the street back to the copying room, where a girl from the business office was using the machine, so Miriam had to wait. The girl had on this little short skirt and a bright yellow sweater; she was dressed in a hip way but you could tell she wasn’t. Miriam did not know how. She was friendly—Lord, so friendly