Read Online Nothing That Meets the Eye by Patricia Highsmith - Free Book Online Page B

though he had never been lonely or inadequate.
    The museum had been enchanted by her presence when he had run up the steps at three o’clock to search the lobby. Now the place was melancholy. He found himself staring at a man who walked down the steps with a small boy on either hand, and only when they reached the sidewalk did he remember he had seen them go in at three o’clock. He paced slowly back along the broad step.
    Even in the outdoors, with the collar of his black overcoat thrown up carelessly, his tapered face below the gray homburg stiffened against the cold twilight, he was the gentleman-at-the-bar, the anxiety of waiting but externalized upon his face by the discomfort of chill. There was a finicalness in the rigidity of his arm, the gloved hand that held the other glove, and in the precise click of his heels. He might have been impatient at having been delayed in reaching his bar at his usual hour.
    He could not endure the scene any longer. The gap between three and five on the face of his watch seemed enormous. He ran down the steps and began walking south on Fifth Avenue, still watching both sides of the street, still turning to inspect taxis that drew up.
    He tried to outstrip the darkness, for it seemed if he should reach the hotel before dark, it would be still afternoon, still conceivable she had been only delayed. She might, as he walked into the lobby, be coming from an elevator to meet him.
    When he turned the corner and saw the hotel, he began running toward it. He expected at every second to see her. He glanced around the lobby, then went to the desk.
    â€œListen,” he said to the clerk, “can you tell me the name of a woman who’s staying here whose initials are H.C.? Miss H.C., I think. Matter of fact, I’m not sure of the C.” He began to feel embarrassed. “She’s from San Francisco.”
    The clerk came back from the registry. “Would that be Miss Helvetia Cormack?”
    â€œYes, it might. What room is she in, please?”
    â€œMiss Cormack checked out this afternoon, sir.”
    â€œThen it isn’t she. Look again.” He gestured impatiently to the registry, but suddenly he knew it was she and that she was gone.
    â€œNo other from San Francisco by those initials, sir,” the clerk said, scanning the book. “Checked out at one P.M. ”
    â€œA blond woman? Tall and slender?” Hildebrandt persisted.
    â€œYes, sir. I remember her. Have you got something of hers? She may write us and ask for it.”
    â€œNo. She left no forwarding address, either?” he asked desperately, on a wild last chance.
    â€œNo, sir.”
    Hildebrandt sank back on his heels and slapped his glove into his palm. “All right. Thank you.”
    Outside, under the marquee of the hotel, he stood a moment as he did each night beneath the marquee of the Hotel Hyperion, while he decided what direction to take, what to do. And suddenly, realizing it was not the Hotel Hyperion, that the circumstances were quite different, he felt loneliness spring up like a dark forest all around him. The odd thing was, he felt no impulse to hurry after her, to find her somehow. What would he have to offer her except the history of weakness, loneliness, and inadequacy, the decline and fall of himself? He himself was the core of the loneliness around him, and its core was inadequacy. He was inadequate even in love.
    His eyelids trembled, but he raised his head indifferently, pushed his gloved hands into his overcoat pockets, and walked toward the avenue.

MISS JUSTE AND THE GREEN ROMPERS

    M iss Juste’s police whistle rent the air with two awful blasts. The two hundred little girls in green rompers stopped dead in their tracks. Two blasts meant line up. Line up like at the beginning of the period.
    Obediently the green rompers milled about and found their appointed places in regular lines the length and breadth of the gymnasium. With grim pleasure Miss Juste