فصل 05

CHAPTER FIVE

A Gift from Tiffany’s

Late one afternoon, I was waiting for a bus on Fifth Avenue when I saw a taxi stop across the street. A girl got out and ran up the steps of the library, through the doors of the building. Suddenly I realized it was Holly. I was surprised because the idea of Holly in a library was very strange.

I followed her inside the building. She went into the reading room, where she sat at a desk in front of a pile of books. She was wearing her dark glasses. She turned quickly from one book to the next, sometimes reading a page more carefully. She held a pencil above a piece of paper but didn’t write much. When she did write, her pencil moved slowly.

I remembered a girl from school, Mildred Grossman. Mildred was a serious girl with thin, straight hair and dirty glasses. She never dreamed of a more exciting life. Mildred and Holly were very different but in my mind they were similar. Most people change every few years; their ideas and even their bodies change. But these were two people who could never change. For this reason I looked at Holly Golightly and thought about Mildred Grossman.

I imagined them in a restaurant in the future. Mildred will read the menu carefully. Then she’ll ask the waiter, “Is this food healthy? Is it good for me?” Holly will want to try everything on the menu.

It was after seven o’clock. Holly put on more lipstick and some jewelry. She was preparing to go to a night club. When she left the library, I walked over to her table. Her books were there; they were all books about Brazil.

The night before Christmas, Holly and Mag gave a party.

I arrived early. “Look in the bedroom. There’s a gift for you,” Holly said.

I had a gift for her, too. There was a small package in my pocket.

On the bed I saw the beautiful bird cage.

“But, Holly! That’s terrible!” I said.

“I agree. But you liked it.”

“The money! It cost three hundred and fifty dollars!”

She laughed. “It cost a few trips to the bathroom. Promise me, though. Promise you’ll never put a living thing inside it.”

I started to kiss her but she held out her hand. “Give me that,” she said, touching the package in my pocket.

“It isn’t much,” I said. It was a very small piece of jewelry - but it came from Tiffany’s.

Holly couldn’t keep anything. I’m sure she has lost that piece of jewelry by now. She’s probably left it in a suitcase or a hotel closet. But I still have the bird cage. I’ve carried it to New Orleans, Nantucket, Europe, Morocco, the West Indies. But I often forget that Holly gave it to me. One day, we had a fight. We fought about the bird cage, and about O.J. Berman. And we fought about my story, when it was printed in the college magazine.

In February, Holly went on a winter trip with Rusty, Mag, and Jose Ybarra-Jaegar. Our fight happened soon after she returned. Her skin was very brown and her hair was almost white from the sun.

“I’ve had a wonderful time,” she told me. “First we were in Key West, Florida, and Rusty was angry with some sailors. Or maybe the sailors were angry with him. He went to hospital and now he’ll have a bad back for the rest of his life. Dear Mag went to the hospital, too - she was badly burned by the sun. She looked terrible and the doctors put something on her skin. We hated the smell of her. So Jose and I left them in the hospital and went to Havana.

He says I’ll love Rio more. But Havana is wonderful. Then we went back to Key West. Mag was sure I was sleeping with Jose. Rusty was, too, but it didn’t matter to him. Mag was very unfriendly until I had a long talk with her.”

It was March and we were in the living room in Holly’s apartment. There was a new piece of furniture: a small bed. Holly was lying on it under a sun lamp.

“And she believed you?”

“That I didn’t sleep with Jose? Yes. ‘I’m a lesbian,’ I told her. ‘I don’t sleep with men.’”

“She didn’t believe that!”

“She did. That’s why she bought this bed. You know me - I can always tell a good story. Darling, put some oil on my back.”

I put the oil on her skin. Then she said, “O.J. Berman’s in New York. Listen, I gave him your story in the magazine. He liked it. He wants to help you. But you’re writing about the wrong subjects. Blacks and children: who’s interested in them?”

“Mr. Berman isn’t?”

“I agree with him. I read that story twice. Kids and Blacks. Lots of descriptions. The story doesn’t mean anything.”

I was still putting the oil on her skin. Suddenly I was very angry. I wanted to hit her. “Give me an example,” I said quietly, “of a story that means something. In your opinion.”

“Wuthering Heights,” she said, immediately.

That made me more angry. “You can’t compare my story with Wuthering Heights. That’s one of the greatest books in the world!”

“It is, isn’t it? My wild sweet Cathy. I cried millions of tears. I saw it ten times.”

“Oh,” I said. “The movie”

She lifted her head and looked at me. Her eyes were cold and angry. “You think you’re better than I am,” she said.

“I don’t compare myself to you. Or Berman. So I’m not better than you. But we want different things.”

“Don’t you want to make money?”

“I don’t think about the future,” I said.

“That’s how your stories sound. You write them without knowing the end. But I tell you: you need money. You like expensive things. Not many people are going to buy you bird cages.”

“Sorry.”

“You will be sorry if you hit me. You wanted to a minute ago. I felt it in your hand. You want to hit me now.”

Yes, I did. My hand and my heart were shaking as I put the top on the bottle of oil.

“I’m sorry you spent your money on me,” I said. “You worked hard to earn it.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, quietly.

“Spending time with Rusty Trawler,” I said. “That’s a hard way to earn money.”

She sat up on the bed. Her face and her shoulders were blue in the light from the sun lamp. “It takes about four seconds to walk from here to the door,” she said. “You have two seconds to get out.”

I went upstairs and picked up the bird cage. I took it down and left it in front of her door. That, I thought, was the end of that. But the next morning, when I was going to work, I saw the cage on the sidewalk with the trash.

I picked it up and carried it back to my room. It was too beautiful to throw away. But Holly Golightly was out of my life. She wasn’t important. I didn’t need to speak to her again.

And I didn’t speak to her again for a long time. I passed her on the stairs but I didn’t look at her. If she walked into Joe Bell’s bar, I walked out.

One day Mrs. Sapphia Spanella, the tenant on the first floor, sent a letter to the other tenants. “Miss Golightly must leave this building,” the letter said. “She has late-night parties and brings strangers into the house. We are not safe while she is living here. Please sign this letter and I will send it to the owner of the building.”

I refused to sign but secretly I agreed with Mrs. Spanella. But her letter failed. In early May, the open-windowed, warm spring nights were noisy with the sound of parties from Apartment 2.