Waiting for love

With an impatient flick of her wrist Audrey let her cigarette holder fall. It clattered against the pewter ashtray. She drew back the sleeve of her silk jacket and looked at the wrist again. Six thirty. Walter was late. It wasn’t the first time. On the other side of Broadway, opposite O’Donoghue’s café, the lights of the theatre were diffused by the rain in splashes of red and blue. They spelled out, Waiting for love. Audrey sniffed back the irony and lifted a white gloved hand at the passing waitress. Did Walter love her? He always said so, but he started saying that the very first evening they met.

The waitress set a fresh cup of coffee in front of her. As Audrey looked up to smile her thanks, a gentleman across the room caught her gaze. He immediately averted his eyes, looking back down at his newspaper. But Audrey could always tell when men were looking. They were not good at hiding that. The gentleman had a serious, intelligent face and a straight jaw, as proud as the prow of a cruise liner. He wore a neat suit and had a cashmere coat folded beside him with his hat resting on top.

There was no sign of Walter. This really was his last chance. She could still hear the words that morning, from Jayne, who shared the apartment. You deserve to be treated better. Audrey resolved to turn Walter off. She would do it as soon as he arrived, before he tried to sweet-talk her, before he took her anywhere, before he ordered Champagne.

When they first met, three months ago, she had thought him charming. Walter always grinned like the sun. Three girls at the party had been clucking around him when he stepped clear of their circle and introduced himself to Audrey. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, he’d said with that smile exploding all over his face. And soon he had whisked her off to meet his friends, saying, I have to tell them I’ve fallen in love. He never showed the slightest doubt that Audrey would follow. Well, tonight she would show him.

She looked up and was surprised to see the gentleman standing in front of her. She raised her eyebrows a touch.
‘Excuse me, Miss, might I borrow your lighter?’
‘Gladly.’
She pushed the silver Colibri across the table and then quickly withdrew her hand. He reached down and picked it up. Audrey stared out of the window. There was a crack of flint and a flare. She tried to focus on the droplets that trickled down the pane, but the man was reflected in the glass against the street lights. She could feel his tall presence standing close, standing over her. She felt as if she were sitting too stiff and upright. The gentleman slid the lighter back across the table and thanked her. Then he went to the phone booth in the corner of the café. Behind the panel of windows, she could see him with the cup held to his ear. He looked sad.

Audrey left her coffee unfinished. The last dregs of her romance with Walter. She stood and pulled on her coat. Then she noticed that the gentleman was adjusting his hat. If she lingered until he left it might look rude, but it would be worse to arrive at the door at the same time. Bother. He looked at her again and smiled shyly. It was like a deliberate act where he had to stretch the smile across his face, so unlike Walter who couldn’t stop himself. Audrey nodded to him and walked to the door with her long heels clicking on the tiles. The gentleman held it open for her, but she stopped in the entrance and pulled her headscarf out of her purse. He appeared uncertain about whether it was polite to wait and hold the door or whether he should leave. She tugged hurriedly to free her umbrella and end the awkward moment.

Outside, she stood in the soaking street. The gentleman pulled his collar up and peered from side to side, as if he were trying to dodge the droplets. There was no sign of a cab amid all the bleating traffic. She cast about hopelessly for one.
When a yellow sedan finally emerged at the end of the block, Audrey waved her gloved hand frantically. She and the gentleman shouted the word taxi, in unison. Then they both froze and stared at each other.
‘Please take it,’ he said.
‘But you’ll be left waiting in the rain.’
‘I insist.’
‘Come on lady,’ said the cabbie, leaning across to the window.
Audrey ignored him and jiggled her umbrella at the gentleman. ‘But I have this and you have nothing.’
‘I have this,’ he said, tipping his hat to her.
‘I’m off,’ the cabbie grunted. A Cadillac trapped behind him honked.
‘No, wait!’ Audrey said, stepping towards the taxi. But she turned on an impulse and addressed the man one final time, ‘Which way are you going?’
‘Brooklyn,’ he said, pointing away to his left.
‘Well then won’t you share the cab with me, or we’ll both have to walk?’
‘How could I refuse?’
In the taxi she laid her umbrella on the floor.
The gentleman said, ‘May I introduce myself? I’m Clark Easton’. Audrey gave him her hand. ‘It seems we were both drinking coffee solo this evening,’ he said.
‘And why did you choose to be alone in O’Donoghue’s?’ she asked.
‘I was supposed to meet a friend to go to the theatre. I had to be there early to pick up the tickets.’
‘But she didn’t turn up?’ Audrey thought of Walter.
‘No, his two year old has gone down with chicken pox.’
She noticed a slight stress on the word, his. Clark asked if she had been waiting for someone and Audrey said, ‘Nobody important.’ She didn’t want to lie. And Walter was nobody important, not to her, not now.

They both fell silent. She looked out of the window at the blur of the New York evening rushing by. It was the same awkward moment as when he lit his cigarette or when they stood in the café door. But now the rain had eased. It had washed the colour out of the scene and left a world in shades of grey.
She told herself not to think of Walter. If she hadn’t escaped in the taxi would she have had the strength to end it? She wished she were not wearing his silver bracelet.
Suddenly Clark said, ‘Ah!’ It made her jump slightly. He plunged his hand into the pocket of his coat. She looked down at the cashmere on his sleeve. It seemed to radiate warmth into the taxi. He pulled out two slips of card.
‘Why don’t you have these?’ he said, ‘I’ve no use for them.’
Audrey looked at the tickets and thought of Jayne. She blotted out the thought and clasped her hands on her knee. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’
‘Sure you can. I bet you’ve someone you could invite.’
Again, she felt the fingers of temptation drawing her towards the tickets. Jayne had read out a review of Waiting for love, said how she wished she had someone to take her, someone like Walter. Audrey said Walter showed no interest in the theatre. He’d promised to take her to the ball game. To go would be a treat for the two girls. It would cheer Audrey up. She deserved it. Would it be such a terrible thing to accept?
‘No, I can’t,’ she said peremptorily, to Clark and herself. She tried not to let the disappointment show. ‘After all, you might decide you still want to go yourself.’
He appeared uncertain again. He was still holding out the tickets, looking imploringly at Audrey. She had to stifle a giggle. He put his hand back in his pocket, but when he brought it out again there was still one ticket. ‘Then perhaps you would consider taking just one of them.’
She thought about it for a second. His other hand moved up and down the piping on the leather seat between them. Then she patted his sleeve with her glove and slipped the ticket from between his fingers. He let out a sigh and smiled.
‘Alright, but you simply must let me pay for it.’
‘I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible.’
‘This time, I insist.’ Paying for the ticket would mean that she had definitely not accepted a date.
‘You can’t pay me. I didn’t buy the tickets.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘They were a birthday present from Howard, the father of the chicken pox.’
‘That leaves me in a very awkward spot,’ said Audrey, looking at the ticket for some way out of her predicament. Clark leaned forward and tapped on the glass. He told the driver to take them back to where he had picked them up.
‘For God’s sake!’ said the cabbie.
‘Really, you would think he should be pleased,’ said Audrey. ‘And anyway, we’ve only been going two minutes.’

They pulled up outside O’Donoghue’s and Audrey stepped out. Then she remembered to argue about who should pay the fare. As she turned back towards Clark a voice rang out.
‘Hey doll! There you are.’
Walter came bounding over and flung his arms around her. He kissed her forcefully and then said, ‘Where you been? I’m waitin’ half an hour.’ Walter stepped back from her and gawped at the taxi where Clark was climbing out. ‘Who’s the fella? What’s going on?’ Clark stopped completely still in the taxi door, his hat in his hand. ‘Who the hell are you, guy?’ said Walter. Clark didn’t answer; he sank back into the taxi and pulled the door closed. His eyes touched Audrey’s through the damp glass for a second and then the sedan pulled away. Audrey just stood on the sidewalk, with both her fists clenched.
‘You better have a good story, baby.’ Walter stood there in a cloud of self-satisfied indignation.
‘No,’ said Audrey, ‘I don’t ever want to see you again.’
‘What d’ya mean?’
‘You lie and you cheat and you don’t care.’
‘But I love you baby.’
‘That’s a lie too. Now please go.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Please leave me now.’
‘You’ll be sorry; you’ll come crying back for more.’

She was close to crying, but not for more. Walter was striding away along Broadway. She suddenly felt cold. From her bag she took a neatly pressed square of cotton and dabbed her face. She gazed up to blink back the rain that was now threatening to start in her eyes. The troubled sky showed above the city haze with clouds hurtling. As she looked back down to street level the theatre lights came into view. At least the theatre would be warm and somewhere to clear her head before she went home. If she saw Jayne now she would weep uncontrollably, a thought that appalled Audrey. She slipped her hand into her coat and closed her fingers around the ticket, then walked towards the neon sign.

As Audrey took her seat in the dress circle she saw the cashmere sleeve.