66
PARTISAN REVIEW
tossed it away. "No, ma'am," he said. "I guess it wasn't important."
She sipped her coffee. Is there nothing more to ask without
committing myself, she wondered. And then, remembering vividly the
dream, stark as winter, why should I have chosen him, she asked
herself, why should it be he.
"It was good of you to remember me," he said. "I was afraid
you thought I was rude that day."
"Yes," she admitted. "I remember you," and then, "Rude? Did
you mean to be rude?"
"No, ma'am," he said. "I didn't mean to be rude. But I thought
you thought I was."
"Yes," she said. "Yes, at first I thought you were rude..."
He nodded. "It's always that way with me," he said. He paused.
Then he looked at her directly. "With white folks I mean," he added
slowly.
But now she must deny it, quickly and kindly, hearing her own
voice exclaim, "Oh, no! I didn't feel that way at all!" protesting,
deprecating, and her own voice sounding remote and unfamiliar, like
the voice of a faulty connection. "I didn't feel that way at all!"
"It does not matter," he said. "I should not have said that at all."
And beneath her discomfort, she was thinking it is his fault,
it is their fault, pummeling one with the issue, slapping at one with
it .as though it were a soiled and brutal rag, their inept weapon. But
he had remembered; she was not the stranger taking a seat in a
public place. She was not a cipher now; nor he. And she found her–
self talking to him, listening to him, the words coming easy-"What
college are you in?" "Where do you come from?" "Oh, so you play
basketball-No, I don't very much follow sports, but... "-the words
spilling into superficial questions, half-heard .answers. For she was
mostly observing his face, a face of gravity she thought now, and
even handsome, and she was comparing it with the face of her dream;
and as she saw his hands- how well she knew those fingers !-she
could almost sense their touch about her cheeks, their dry coolness on
her flushed face .
And now, more than ever, she watched for him, damming
away the question of who was the pursued, who was the pursuer,
ignoring the question of why have I chosen him, why is it he. And
out of the abundance of trivialities, out of the superfluity of expres–
sions on the almost immobile face-the rare grin, the integument of
