The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [73]
“Why are you crying?”
“Oh Jesus,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t be here crying in front of strangers, but the boss just came in and found me smoking a cigarette and he gave me hell. There wasn’t anybody in the store. It’s always slow this late on rainy nights, but he can’t blame me for that, can he? I don’t have anything to do with the rain and I just can’t stand out there in the rain asking people to come in. Well, it was slow and there hadn’t been anybody in for nearly twenty—twenty-five or thirty minutes—and so I went out back and lighted a cigarette and then he came right in, sniffing like a pig, and gave me hell. He said these awful things about me.”
“You shouldn’t pay any attention to what he says.”
“You English?”
“No,” Coverly said. “I come from a place called St. Botolphs. It’s a small town, north of here.”
“The reason I asked was you don’t talk like the others. I come from a small town myself. I’m just a small-town girl. I guess maybe that’s the trouble with me. I don’t have this thick skin you need to get along with in the city. I had so much trouble this week. I just took this apartment with my girl friend. I have or perhaps I should say I had this girl friend, Helen Bent. I thought she was my true-blue friend; true-blue. She certainly led me to believe she was my best friend. Well, since we were such good friends it seemed sensible for us to take an apartment together. We were inseparable. That’s what people used to say about us. You can’t ask Betsey unless you ask Helen, they used to say. Those two are inseparable. Well, we took this apartment together, my girl friend and I. That was about a month ago; a month or six weeks. Well, just as soon as we got moved in and settled and about to enjoy ourselves I discover that the whole thing is just a scheme. The only reason she wants to share this apartment with me is so she can meet men there. Formerly she was living with her family out in Queens. Well, I don’t have any objections to having a boy friend now and then but it was only a one-room apartment and she was having them in every night and naturally it was very embarrassing for me. There were men going in and out of there so much that it didn’t seem like home to me. Why, sometimes when it was time for me to go home to my own apartment where I was paying rent and had all my own furniture I’d just feel so heavyhearted about busting in on her with one of her friends that I’d go and sit in a late movie. Well, I finally spoke to her. Helen, I said, this place doesn’t seem like home to me. There’s no sense in my paying rent, I said, if I have to take up residence in a movie house. Well, she certainly showed her true colors. Oh, the spiteful things she said. When I come home the next day she’s gone, television set and all. I was glad to see the last of her, of course, but I’m stuck with this apartment with nobody to share the rent and in a job like this I don’t have any occasion to make girl friends.”
She asked Coverly if he wanted anything more. It was nearly time to close and Coverly asked if he could walk her home.
“You sure come from a small town, all right,” she said. “Anybody could tell you come from a small town, asking if you can walk me home, but it so happens I just live five blocks from here and I do walk