“And I swear, it never crossed my mind about Holly. You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who’s a friend.”
Two men came into the bar, and it seemed the moment to leave. Joe Bell followed me to the door. He caught my wrist again. “Do you believe it?”
“That you didn’t want to touch her? ”
“I mean about Africa.”
At that moment I couldn’t seem to remember the story, only the image of her riding away on a horse. “Anyway, she’s gone.”
But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese and melba toast; that her varicolored hair was somewhat self-induced.
But there were moments when she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, where indeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked of piney woods or prairie. One went: Don’t wanna sleep, Don’t wanna die, Just wanna go a-travelin’ through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her the most, for often she continued it long after her hair had dried, after the sun had gone and there were lighted windows in the dusk.
“Oh, you get used to anything,” I said, annoyed with myself, for actually I was proud of the place.
“I don’t. I’ll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead." Her dispraising eyes surveyed the room again.
I […] asked her how and why she’d left home so young. She looked at me blankly, and rubbed her nose, as though it tickled: a gesture, seeing often repeated, I came to recognize as a signal that one was trespassing. Like many people with a bold fondness for volunteering intimate information, anything that suggested a direct question, a pinning-down, put her on guard. She took a bite of apple, and said: “Tell me some thing you’ve written. The story part.”
“If I do feel guilty, I guess it’s because I let him go on dreaming when I wasn’t dreaming a bit. I was just vamping for time to make a few self-improvements: I knew damn well I’d never be a movie star. It’s too hard; and if you’re intelligent, it’s too embarrassing. My complexes aren’t inferior enough: being a movie star and having a big fat ego are supposed to go hand-in-hand; actually, it’s essential not to have any ego at all. I don’t mean I’d mind being rich and famous. That’s very much on my schedule, and someday I’ll try to get around to it; but if it happens, I’d like to have my ego tagging along. I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“Rusty thinks I should smoke marijuana, and I did for a while, but it only makes me giggle. What I’ve found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.”
“Fred’s that boy upstairs? I didn’t realize he was a soldier. But he does look stupid.”
“Yearning. Not stupid. He wants awfully to be on the inside staring out: anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid. Anyhow, he’s a different Fred. Fred’s my brother.”
[…] Holly wanted to know about my childhood. She talked of her own, too; but it was elusive, nameless, placeless, an impressionistic recital, though the impression received was contrary to what one expected, for she gave an almost voluptuous account of swimming and summer, Christmas trees, pretty cousins and parties: in short, happy in a way that she was not, and never, certainly, the background of a child who had run away.
When I married Lulamae, that was in December, 1938, she was going on fourteen. Maybe an ordinary person, being only fourteen, wouldn’t know their right mind. But you take Lulamae, she was an exceptional woman. She knew good-and-well what she was doing when she promised to be my wife and the mother of my churren.
“The night I proposed, I cried like a baby. She said: ‘What you want to cry for, Doc? ’Course we’ll be married. I’ve never been married before.’ Well, I had to laugh, hug and squeeze her: never been married before!”
“Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell," Holly advised him. “That was Doc’s mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That’s how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.”
[…]
“Good luck: and believe me […]: it’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.”
Or, and the question is apparent, was my outrage a little the result of being in love with Holly myself? A little. For I was in love with her. Just as I’d once been in love with my mother’s elderly colored cook and a postman who let me follow him on his rounds and a whole family named McKendrick. That category of love generates jealousy, too.
“Certain shades of limelight wreck a girl’s complexion. Even if a jury gave me the Purple Heart, this neighborhood holds no future: they’d still have up every rope from LaRue to Perona’s Bar and Grill— take my word […]. And if you lived off my particular talents. Cookie, you’d understand the kind of bankruptcy I’m describing.”
Flanked by potted plants and framed by clean lace curtains, he was seated in the window of a warm-looking room: I wondered what his name was, for I was certain he had one now, certain he’d arrived somewhere he belonged. African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too.
