The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [61]
"Oh, Miss Ferguson!" he called softly, leaning forward in all his confidence. He reached up, ready to remove his hat, but she went on typing.
"Oh, Miss Ferguson!"
A woman who did not know him at all came into the room.
"Did you receive a card to call?" she asked.
"Miss Ferguson," he repeated, peering around her red arm to keep his eye on the typewriter.
"Miss Ferguson is busy," said the red-armed woman.
If he could only tell Miss Ferguson everything, everything in his life! Howard was thinking. Then it would come clear, and Miss Ferguson would write a note on a little card and hand it to him, tell him exactly where he could go and what he could do.
When the red-armed woman walked out of the office, Howard tried to win Miss Ferguson over. She could be very sympathetic.
"Somebody told me you could type!" he called softly, in complimentary tones.
Miss Ferguson looked up. "Yes, that's right. I can type," she said, and went on typing.
"I got something to tell you," Howard said. He smiled at her.
"Some other time," replied Miss Ferguson over the sound of the keys. "I'm busy now. You'd better go home and sleep it off, h'm?"
Howard dropped his arm. He waited, and tried desperately to think of an answer to that. He was gazing into the water cooler, in which minute air bubbles swam. But he could think of nothing.
He lifted his hat with a strange jauntiness which may have stood for pride.
"Good-bye, Miss Ferguson!"
And he was back on the street.
He walked further and further. It was late when he turned into a large arcade, and when he followed someone through a free turnstile, a woman marched up to him and said, "You are the ten millionth person to enter Radio City, and you will broadcast over a nationwide red-and-blue network tonight at six o'clock, Eastern standard time. What is your name, address, and phone number? Are you married? Accept these roses and the key to the city."
She gave him a great heavy key and an armful of bright red roses. He tried to give them back to her at first, but she had not waited a moment. A ring of men with hawklike faces aimed cameras at him and all took his picture, to the flashing of lights.
"What is your occupation?"
"Are you married?"
Almost in his face a large woman with feathery furs and a small brown wire over one tooth was listening, and others were waiting behind her.
He watched for an opening, and when they were not looking he broke through and ran.
He ran down Sixth Avenue as fast as he could, ablaze with horror, the roses nodding like heads in his arm, the key prodding his side. With his free hand he held determinedly to his hat. Doorways and intersections blurred past. All shining within was a restaurant beside him, but now it was too late to be hungry. He wanted only to get home. He could not see easily, but traffic seemed to stop softly when he ran thundering by; horses under the L drew up, and trucks kindly contracted, as if on a bellows, in front of him. People seemed to melt out of his way. He thought that maybe he was dead, and now in the end everything and everybody was afraid of him.
When he reached his street his breath was gone. There were the children playing. They were afraid of him and let him by. He ran into the courtyard, and stopped still.
There on the walk was the clock.
It lay on its face, and scattered about it in every direction were wheels and springs and bits of glass. He bent over and looked at the tiny little pieces.
At last he climbed the stairs. Somehow he tried to unlock the door with the key to the city. But the door was not locked at all, and when he got inside, he looked over to the window and there was Marjorie on the little trunk. Then the roses gave out deep waves of fragrance. He stroked their soft leaves. Marjories arm had fallen down; the balance was gone, and now her hand hung out the window as if to catch the wind.
Then Howard knew for a fact that everything had stopped. It was just as he had feared, just as he had dreamed. He had had a dream to come true.
He backed away slowly, until he was out of