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body at all — except that I liked him better than any man I'd ever met and had felt with him, for the first time in my life, that strange and exciting sense of promise.
I couldn't see his face clearly in the darkness but I knew he was looking at me. And waiting. I could sense it. It wasn't aggressive or defiant. It was just — waiting.
"Oh," I said. "No, I didn't know." We had reached my house by that time and had stopped on the sidewalk leading to my door. And right there, in that moment, I knew something. I knew I wanted to see Robert Lesser again and that he wanted to see me. But he wasn't going to ask, unless I gave him an opening. It was all part of the waiting that had started in the little silence after he'd said, "I'm Jewish, you know."
And so I said, "I hope you're going to like Newtown. And I hope you'll come to see me."
He smiled then, and the curious, selfaware tension in each of us relaxed. It had barely existed but now that it was gone, I knew that it had existed. "May I come Saturday?" he said. 'Would you like to go to a movie or something Saturday night?"
"I'd love to," I said. And after the goodnight, after I'd walked up the steps and into my little apartment, I felt again the promise that trembled on the verge of something — the promise I didn't quite dare look at . . .
Saturday night I dressed carefully. I wore my newest dress. I brushed my hair until its latent reddish highlights shone, and then piled it up on top of my head, fastening it in back with an old-fashioned comb that had been my mother's. I even opened my carefully hoarded bottle of expensive perfume and used it lavishly. And I knew I must have been successful in my efforts because when little Max Miller knocked at my door to bring me a message from his mother, he said, "Gee, Miss King, you don't look a bit like a schoolteacher!"
CO I felt good when Robert Lesser ^ came. I felt — eager. And I saw the same, though unspoken, admiration in his eyes that had been in Max's. Just as we were getting ready to leave, the telephone rang. It was Louise Humphries, my best friend.
"Jack's taking a bunch of us out to the Club tonight," she said. "Come on and go."
"I've got a date — "I said tentatively.
"Bring him. We'll need an extra man anyway."
It would be fun to dance with Robert, to introduce him to my friends. I turned from the phone and asked him if he'd like to go.
"I'd like to very much — if you would," he said.
"Then we'll come by for you about nine," Louise said when I told her. "By the way, who is he?"
"Robert Lesser."
There was a moment's pause. I could feel Louise's embarrassment like a tangible thing. "He's Jewish, isn't he?" she said (Continued on page 64)
Robert smothered a furious exclamation.