Dustin Lee (Sheppard) Harper
The snow was almost blinding as I pulled the beat-up old Mercury alongside the curb. The weather forecast had predicted a regular blizzard. I guress that's what we got, I thought to myself as I opened the car door. An icy blast hit me in the face and I longed to get back into the car and drive away, forgetting whatever it was that had brought me this far. I turned away, through, and started toward the apartment building. It was a poorer section of town and the building showed it.
I started up the steps, little swirls of snow kicking up around my heels as I went. The ancient door moaned as I opened it and stepped into the dimly lit hallway. The building smelled of musty newspapters and decay, mingled with a more potent, more suble smell--despair. I began to wonder whether I had done the right thing in coming to this place. Finally, my instinct got the better of me and I turned around, grasping the door handle, intent on leaving. Someone down the hall heard me, though. As I started to open the door, there was a rattle somewhere behind me and somewhater down the hall, a door opened. I heard whispering, then a laugh. I didn't turn around. I just stood, fixed, listening. Silence.
The chill night air struck me once again as I opened the door, ready to leave. Just as I did one of the voices from behind the open door called, "Phil? Phil? Is that you?"
I turned, wondering who had called my name. It was in that moment that I saw her. Something about her, I never knew what, exactly, struck me. She was not particularly attractivein the usual manner. She was dressed in a faded plaid skirt and old shoes that were probably worn through in the soles. There was something almost angelic in her face, though, but still unremarkable. I stood, frozen, everything running through my mind at once: her, the snow, an earlier phone call.
I walked toward the open door and the girl who stood behind it.
We stood there in the dim light and our eyes met. I cast my glance away from here, inside the apartment, then to a nearby window where snow was forming a halo around a streetlight.
"Well, aren't you going to come in? You are Phil, aren't you?" she asked.
"Yeah, I guess I am," I said, a little nervously, not really sure which of the questions I was answering. I followed her inside, shutting the dorr behind me. The apartment was too warm and in addition to the smell that the rest of the building exuded, the semll of stale cigarette smoke hung in the air. I looked around myself and felt a little depressed. THere was a lamp on, in what I assumed to the the living room, but it only lent to the atmosphere of gloom. The walls were a dirty shade of pink and the room was mostly barren, except for a few magazines and newspapers scattered on the floor. The only pieces of furniture were an aging red art deco couch and a small, battered Coronado TV. In the cornere closest to the lamp, I noticed an old portable with records strewn about it. I went over to the record player and kneeled down to see what the records were. I picked up three or four of them, glanced at the labels and almost dropped them--it was like a roll call of Colored singers--the Clovers, the Drifters, the Crows. My God, I thought, if my parents caught me listening to anything like this they'd kill me.
Just then, my thought was interrupted by a shrill scream from the next room. I went to see what it was and just as I did, the angel who answered the door and another girl came running out of the kitchen, chased by a younger boy holding an electric mixer. Before I could even ask what was going on, the boy cornered the girl I hadn't met and leveled the mixer at her hair. I knew what he was doing then and I started laughing, although, there was noting so inherently funny about the situation.
At once the other girl said, "Jimmy get that thing back in the kitchen, NOW, before I kick your ass." Jemmy apparently wasn't about to argue with here. "Now, let's all sit down and be civilized and introduce ourselves."
I took a seat on the couch and the new girl plopped down next to me. I rolled my eyes nervously towards here and saw that she looked rather sluttish. She was wearing make-up, although she couldn't have been more than fifteen, and a pair of pedal-pushers with black flats. I looked away quickly.
"I'm Frances," she said, "And I suppose you've already met Lucy. Oh, and the kid with the mixer, that's my brotyher, Jimmy."
"Uh-huh," I said. "I've been wondering ever since you called me, where do you know me from?"
"You went out with Sandra Dyer last year, didn't you?"
There wasn't much else I could do but say "Yes."
"Well, she gave me your number and said you were really nice, so we thought we'd like to meet you," Frances continued.
"So I see. Does anybody have a cigarette? I left mine out in the car and I'm not too crazy about the idea of going back out and getting them."
"Yeah, just a minute," the girl, whom I now knew to be Lucy, spoke up. She returned to the kitchen and in a few moments came back with a Hit Parade carton. "Here," she said. "Help yourself. They're my mother's but she'll never notice. She's always either at work or out somewhere drinking."
I started asking myslef silently once again why I had ever come here, to almost slum-like conditions, a place where they listen to Negro music, where parents could be alcoholics, where society had gone bad. Yet something . . . as I lit my cigarette and gazed up through the smoke and caught Lucy's glance one more. . . I almost knew.
