The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [118]
“So,” he said quietly, “you found luck with the job?”
“Oh, Zev, what luck. And what a job!” She laughed gaily and people turned to stare curiously at them as she began to tell him all about it. “Of course,” she ended, “I haven’t actually done a real fashion parade yet, and to tell you the truth I’m scared. I mean, it’s one thing doing it for Madame Elise, but quite another with all those smart women watching. Besides, the other mannequins are jealous. I can see it in their eyes. It’s because Madame Elise is paying so much attention to me and because a newcomer is replacing Barbara instead of one of them.” She sighed. “Still, there’s nothing I can do about that.” He nodded silently and she eagerly. “Now I can give you ten dollars each week until my debt is paid in full, with the proper interest of course.” She sighed happily, “Oh, Zev, you can’t imagine what it will mean to me, not being in debt. Soon I can begin to look for a new apartment, maybe move farther uptown, put Azaylee in a good school!”
He stared at the ten dollars on the table. In three more weeks she would have repaid her debt and a few weeks after that she would be gone, back to the world from which she came. He felt a tugging at his heart as if a great weight were dragging him down. Missie was going to leave him. She was going to a carefree world full of light and laughter, a world he didn’t understand but where he knew she belonged.
“Zev?” Her eyes held a question and he stared back down at the ten dollars, the symbol of her freedom.
“You are not happy for me?” she asked, puzzled.
“I am happy for you,” he admitted, “but it means you will go away from here and I will never see you again.”
“But of course you will.” She took his hand across the table, gazing at him earnestly. “I looked forward all week to seeing you tonight, Zev. I wanted to share my good news with you. You and Rosa are my dearest friends.” She smiled tenderly. “I’ll never forget you, Zev Abramski, and ‘uptown’ is not a million miles away. We shall still keep our Sunday night dates here at the café. Why, they even save our table for us now, and they play my favorite songs.”
He knew she meant it, but he knew it was not the answer to his problem. The gap between Missie O’Bryan’s life and his own was immense. She was poor by circumstance, he was poor because he was born to it. She was educated, he was ignorant; she was tall, beautiful, any man would adore her; he had never been loved by anyone. And what was there to love in a young unattractive immigrant pawnbroker from Orchard Street?
Zev stared silently down at the sidewalk, seeming lost in his own thoughts as they walked back to Rivington Street. “Don’t worry so,” she whispered, touching his cheek tenderly as they said good night. “After all, I’m still here, aren’t I?” She kissed him lightly and ran into the apartment house. “See you next Sunday,” she called as she closed the door.
Zev waited until he saw the lamp go on in her room and then he walked slowly around the corner to Orchard Street. The shop door tinkled with the same sound he had been hearing for the last thirteen years, and for the first time the bell didn’t sound like the ring of security. Instead it sounded like the knell of bondage.
He walked through to the small, dark, silent rooms he called home, turning up the gas lamps and noticing how worn and dreary everything was. There was no expression of a person in here, he thought, no one could tell it was Zev Abramski’s home. He was just an ignorant immigrant Jew plying a mean trade, and all his dreams of sharing his solitude, his reading, his music, were gone; they lived only in his head. It was all meaningless. Missie was a lady, and once she had repaid her debt he would have no place in her life.
After taking off his coat, he sat at the piano and ran his fingers tentatively across the keys, playing a Chopin etude. He had always thought of this piece as Missie’s