Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1950)

alien — apartment that had once been mine. "I feel silly playing host," he said, taking my fur scarf from my shoulders and laying it across the white leather chair in the foyer. "It still is your home — your furniture. Everything." I went before him into the softlycarpeted living room and looked around. I shook my head. "No, it isn't mine. Just the outside. You've put your stamp on it now. Chairs moved a little, cushions placed as I never placed them . . . little things." Bill said with a kind of desperate stubbornness, "It's Rosemary's stamp, not mine. All this — " his arm swung out to include the room and, accidentally, me as well — "all this is none of my affair." I waited until the possible double meaning of his own words came back to him. Then, very softly, I said, "Isn't it, Bill? Are you so very sure of that?" I could count my heartbeats as his worried, tense eyes held mine. He took a step toward me, and abruptly swerved and sat down before the littered desk. My hands clenched in disappointment. "Not yet," I told myself fiercely. "Be careful — not yet. Don't frighten him away." Moving toward the bedrooms, I said lightly, "I'll be gone in a minute. I know just where to find my things in the guestroom closet. Please go on with what you were doing." From the corner of my eye I saw that he was simply sitting there, staring at the folders before him, seeing — I was sure — not a single thing that was really there. There really were things I wanted in the guestroom closet. An old tweed suit, a satin housecoat that had reminded me too unpleasantly of my honeymoon for me to want to take it to Reno. I draped them over my arm and came out into the living room to get the small suitcase Bill had taken from me and placed in the foyer. The silver-colored satin caught his eye as I passed. He reached out with one finger and smoothed it. "What's that thing?" he asked. "It looks like . . . like moonlight." "This?" Shaking out the sleek folds, I draped them against me, one hand at my shoulder and one at my hip so he could see the way they fell. "It's a housecoat. Elegant attire for madame when she is receiving intimate friends." Suddenly, shockingly, Bill's arm swept his desk clean of papers. They cascaded to the floor in a flutter. 'Before I could catch my breath he seemed to loom over me, his face dark and unfamiliar with tension. "Blanche," he said. "Blanche, Blanche . . ." The housecoat slid to the floor so that when he took me in his arms and kissed me we stood in a pool of silver. Time stopped. There were no ticking clocks, no walls, no floor, no world . . . nothing but the reality of Bill's mouth on mine, his arms binding me to him, his voice in my ear saying the things I'd wanted him to say. The pulse pounding in my throat said ecstatically You've won! You've won! But slowly the pulse died down, and something deep within answered guardedly No, wait. It's not what you think it is. It's not the way it ought to be. Wait. I was breathless and unsteady when he released me. We stood silent for a moment, and then he took my hand and drew me out to the darkness of the terrace. We stood, just touching, and let the damp spring breeze wind lightly around us. Far below, yellow street lamps gleamed through a blanket of mist; there were no stars. Nothing to interfere with our togetherness, out there. Bill's voice was very low. "Here we are," he said. "What are we going to do about it?" "That's quite a question." I figured myself to speak lightly, but Bill's miserable look reproached me for it. His hands gripped the terrace rail. "Every minute, every second since I met you," he said. "I haven't been able to work. I haven't been able to think. I haven't been — me. It can't go on. Something's got to give." "It's been the same for me." Fascinated, I listened to my own words, knowing suddenly that they were truer than I'd realized. Every minute since we'd met his face had been with me ... a blinding obsession, impelling me along a path I thought I had chosen, but along which in reality I had moved as helplessly as a puppet drawn by invisible steel wires. ... A strange, wordless fear stirred in my veins. What had I done to Bill ... to myself? Lifting his head, Bill said flatly, "There's Rosemary, you see. I don't understand it. Up to now we were happy together. But now — " he let go the rail and turned to me. "Now there's you. Thunder and lightning and you." The desperate longing that underlined his words beat against me like a fist. I put my hands to my head to steady it. Somewhere, somewhere the game had gone wrong. This wasn't the way to play it. He should have come %/i ■■■':":■ ? m/^^-mY///W+; ^ :::;:>: : . ... . _ .,,,, ■ ■""■:,■:■;■ ■:.. •■'•;' ' '' ■■■""-■■''■■■:■'' : R IYI 104 Friends of a feather are flocking to GARROWAY AT LARGE By and large the most unique personality on TV EVERY SUNDAY NIGHT NBC-TV For the hilarious true story of Dave Garrotvay's life and career, read the current issue of TRUE STORY Magazine now on newsstands. Fullpage color portrait of Garroway, too! to me gaily, with laughter, with kisses. And afterward . . . well, afterward it would have been a remembered interlude, come and gone with the spring, something delightful to stir between us whenever we chanced to meet . . . it would never have hurt anybody, that way. But not like this! This was no game. Somewhere it had gone off the track for me as well as for Bill. He wasn't the man to share moments like this with me and then turn a bland, husbandly face toward his wife when she came back. He was suffering, and because of that I was suffering too. But you didn't suffer when it was just a game. You suffered only when you loved. . . . Wonderingly, unbelievingly, I said it aloud. "I love you. I love you." He moved toward me and I put a hand against his chest to hold him back. I said almost hysterically, "But that's not allowed! Don't you understand? That's not part of the plan — " "The plan is changed." Not understanding what I was talking about, Bill's thoughts moved steadily along their own tormented path. "All the old plans . . . we'll have to start again, all of us." My breath caught in my throat as I realized what he was going through. He was thinking of Rosemary, of leaving her to come to me, of the things he believed must be done before he and I could be together . . . Oh Bill, Bill dearest, it will never happen, I told him silently. Don't you see? The very fact that we're here like this is proof that I'm no good for you. It's because I schemed and planned and intrigued that you're standing there, wretched and torn . . . and I beside you, like you. . . . He moved my arm aside gently and drew me close to him. "Don't keep me away," he said against my hair. "If you knew how terribly I've wanted you here in my arms . . ." If I knew. My hands curved around the back of his head, pressing it closer. I knew everything about us, everything that had happened, everything that was to come. Thought and instinct worked together, giving me a kind of insight into the future. My eyes were wide open as I stood there in Bill's arms, looking over his shoulder into the mist-veiled night. Bill must not leave Rosemary. However he felt about me now, it wasn't what he felt for Rosemary I had stirred him only because I had worked to do it, not because there was any basic reaching out in him for me. How could there be, for a woman like me? I wasn't honest. And because I wasn't, because I had set such a guileful trap for him, it was fair enough that I should be caught in the trap myself. For Bill didn't love me. But I — as 1 knew the word — loved him. Loved him too much, now, to let him wreck his life. I'd have to move but of his arms, out of the apartment, out of the city. I knew that; I accepted it. I'd have to give up that job — that flimsy subterfuge—and pack my bags and disappear. Bill might follow me, of course. But then I'd have to disappear again. And again . . . until the tempest I had stirred up died down and he became Bill Roberts once more. Like the pieces on a chessboard, we could only follow our inevitable patterns. Rosemary must move toward Bill, and I must move away. There was no room in his life for a woman like me.