Listening to Billie by Alice Adams Read Free Book Online Page B

Lord, he could be here in an hour.”
    “No, he say he got business to tend to there. He be on along this afternoon.”
    For an instant Kathleen’s radiant face was dimmed, but then, “That’s better, really,” she said. She laughed softly. “If I know him, which I certainly do, I’ll have plenty of time for everything.” And in an excited but at the same time methodical way, she began to organize her desk. She picked up her bag, got up and headed for the door; then she turned, and her voice had reverted to its old anger as she said, “Now don’t you girls think you can leave just because I’m gone. And if anyone calls or comes in, you figure out something to say, you hear?”
    They both nodded.
    “And, Miriam, when Eliza goes don’t you spend the afternoon asleep or talking on the phone. Don’t you dare!”
    She opened the door, then smiled in a tentative small way, and in quite another voice she said, “And wish me luck.”
    Left alone, Eliza and Miriam smiled weakly at each other—both burdened with the warring emotions that Kathleen always produced. Miriam said, “Let’s us pray,” and they both laughed a little.
    When Miriam and Eliza had first met, the previous fall, Eliza had made a few efforts to talk seriously to her, or at least to mention some of the things that were happening to black people at that time. She spoke about the Freedom Riders, Dr. King. But she soon understood that while Miriam thought it was wrong for people not to get to go where they wanted, she did not understand the fuss about registering voters; she could barely be persuaded that people should vote—she never had. Her ambition was to be a Secretary, not a File Clerk. She had neverheard of Billie Holiday. She was crazy about Elvis Presley.
    Finally, Eliza understood that Miriam liked her for being “rich” and well-dressed, the owner of a house. Which was not exactly how Eliza saw herself, but those were things that Miriam hungrily aspired to, that were even beyond her aspirations.
    Then one afternoon, in her usual soft conversational voice, Miriam told Eliza this brief story: a couple of years ago (she would have been sixteen) she had this boyfriend, Thomas, and they got along real good, she really liked Thomas. And she and Thomas had this friend, a white fellow who lived on Pine Street, near the Project. Jasper. They used to fool around together, smoke some grass, drink beer. And one time they were fooling around with this gun that Jasper had. And Jasper put it up to Thomas’s head and it went off. Thomas fell down and brains and blood spilled out. It looked so—
terrible.
    They had an inquest. Jasper was acquitted. An accident.
    Miriam thought it was an accident too; she couldn’t really blame Jasper. Still, she had wondered how it would have been if it had been Thomas with the gun, blowing off the head of Jasper, a white person.
    (Eliza wondered too.)
    What was most devastating to Eliza was Miriam’s acceptance; this was the sort of thing that could happen, any time. At any moment the friend you love could get blown up right in front of you.
    Miriam even seemed anxious not to make too much of it. “I felt real bad for a long time after that,” she said. “I don’t know—”
    “
Christ
, Miriam, of course you did.”
    Miriam never referred to this story again, nor to Thomas, and neither, of course, did Eliza.
    And so, when left alone, when not complaining or sighing over Kathleen, Eliza and Miriam generally talked about clothes.
    “I was to the Emporium last night,” said Miriam, “and there was these make-believe fur coats?” Miriam’s observationsoften came in the form of questions, as though she doubted the evidence of her senses. “Oooh, they was pretty, I’m telling you.
Real
pretty.”
    “Miriam, you’d be paying for one of those coats for a year. And long after you got tired of it. You buy too much stuff.” Of course this was true, Eliza had said it before, and it would never take effect. “Why