The Tin Horse A Novel - By Janice Steinberg Page 0,111

a hospital—well, as far as I knew, since I developed the ability to go on sleeping when she tiptoed into our room in the wee hours. As the summer went on, she and I almost never saw each other awake. When I quietly dressed in the morning, she sprawled unconscious in a tumble of sweat, stale cigarettes, and Shalimar cologne. I didn’t smell alcohol, though. She may have had a drink or two, but there was nothing that hinted at wild parties after hours.

Our paths might have crossed between the time my job ended (when I had a day shift) and hers began, but she went out hours before she had to report at the club. She was taking dance or singing classes, she said, or making the rounds of film studios. She showed me the photos she’d had taken, glossy head shots, to leave at the studios. There were two different photos. In one, she projected a youthful wholesomeness “for ingenue roles.” The other was a glamour shot with a teasing half smile that reminded me of Paulette Goddard. “Weren’t those expensive?” I asked. She replied that a friend—whose name, Alan Yardley, was printed with an ornate stamp on the back of the photographs—had done them for almost nothing, as a favor. Certainly that wasn’t impossible. Nor did it mean anything that she’d never before mentioned Alan Yardley; had I heard her talk about anyone she’d met at the Trocadero? Maybe it was only that we’d gone so abruptly from living in tandem for eighteen years to barely seeing each other that made me uneasy, that made me sense she had a secret life.

Not that I devoted much thought to Barbara. I was immersed in my life, scared and excited about entering USC in September, avidly following the news from Europe … and intoxicated by love. The thrill was sexual, of course. Things I had once said no to—when I was just fifteen, and when I was Danny’s second choice—I craved now. His hands and lips on my breasts. His fingers slipping beneath the edge of my panties and inside me, the first time a man ever touched me there. And my hand in his trousers, until he groaned and twisted away. Touching and kissing were as far as we went. He carried a rubber in his wallet—all the boys did—and he sometimes asked wouldn’t I, please? But he didn’t pressure me. For one thing, we were in constant danger of being caught, whether we were outdoors in a park or on the sofa in my house with my parents sleeping across the hall. And for all our ardor, neither of us lost sight of what we wanted to do with our lives. If I got pregnant, it would ruin everything—for both of us, since Danny would do the right thing and marry me. Of course, we wanted to get married someday—we didn’t discuss it, but it was understood—but first I had to go to college, and Danny had to make his way in the world. (Another thing we didn’t discuss: I hoped that by the time we were ready for marriage, he’d have come to his senses and decided to live in America, not Palestine.)

The most exciting time, we didn’t touch at all. We were in the living room late one night in July, necking on the sofa, and Danny sat back and said, “Let me look at you.”

“All right,” I said, lying in my disarray of opened blouse and unhooked brassiere. I wasn’t wearing a slip; it was too hot.

“No, let me see you.” Gently, he edged my blouse toward my shoulder.

I sat up. Moved to the end of the sofa. Took off my blouse but not my bra. Danny had seen my breasts, of course, pushing aside my clothes as we clung together, but this was different. My shoulders hunched forward protectively.

“Please?” he said.

I slipped off my bra. Glad that, a few feet away from him, I was too nearsighted to see his face clearly.

This was all he’d asked for, I knew. But a strange boldness seized me, and I walked into a pool of moonlight coming through the window. I stepped out of my skirt. My panties. I stood before Danny naked.

Neither of us spoke for a minute. Then he said, “Elaine Greenstein, I will always love you.”

“Danny Berlov, I will always love you,” I responded.

I returned to the sofa and put my skirt and blouse back on, though I didn’t bother with underwear. But