A Special Providence by Richard Yates Page B

the bill? No, no; the girls would never have let them get away. How old were they? Seventeen? But what kind of girls that age would be in a place like this, allowing themselves to be passed around like merchandise?
    “… I’ll always be near you, wherever you are; each night, in every prayer. If you call I’ll hear you, no matter how far – just close your eyes, and I’ll be there …”
    And where had the sailors found them? Probably they were what the newspapers called “V-girls”; and here he was briefly troubled: would they be carriers of venereal disease?
    “… Please walk alone; and with your love and your kiss-es to guide me—” Arlene closed her eyes and allowed a little tremor of sentimentality to wrinkle her forehead at the climax of the song – “till you’re walk-ing beside me – I’ll walk alone.” Then she opened her eyes and took a dainty but deep drink of beer, leaving lipstick on the glass and foam on her lips. “God, I love that song,” she said. “Where you from, Bob?”
    “New York.”
    “You have any brothers and sisters?” This seemed wholly outof character for her: it was a standard conversation opener for the kind of girls who came to prep-school dances. He tried to put things on a more worldly plane by telling her that he and Quint were at Meade and due to go overseas any day, but that didn’t seem to impress her: she had evidently met a good many boys from Meade. Soon the conversation threatened to dry up altogether, and he looked across the table for help, but Quint was red-faced and cramped with laughter at something Nancy had said, and Nancy, laughing too, was wearing Quint’s overseas cap. Then suddenly Arlene squirmed closer and dropped her hand on Prentice’s thigh, massaging it in a light, rhythmic way that sent delightful waves of warmth from his knees to his throat. It was a very small, childish hand with bitten-down nails, and it wore a high-school ring.
    “Look,” she said. “It’s getting kind of late. You want to take me home?”
    She lived so many miles from the center of town that her home could be reached only by riding a bus for great, winding distances and then transferring to another bus. He was uneasy about finding his way back and made her repeat the directions several times, until she began to look tired and bored with him as they jolted along in the second bus. Her boredom made a light sweat break out inside the woolen slant of his overseas cap; he pictured her giving him one limp hand to shake at her door and saying something awful – “So long, stupid; it’s been real,” or something like that – and in an all-out effort to avert such a disaster he settled his arm more closely around her, bravely working his hand up and somehow around inside her open coat until it held the meager shape of her breast. This caused her to nestle against him with a little purring sound, rearranging her coat to hide his hand; and after bending to touch his lips to her powdery forehead, he rode on into theBaltimore night feeling like the very devil of a soldier.
    But his boldness fled him when they got off the bus at last to walk up a silent block of looming, close-set, ominously dark frame houses. “You live with your parents?” he inquired, and he suddenly hoped the evening might end in a family kitchen scene: a jovial father in suspenders who would want to tell him about the last war and a soft, smiling mother who would thank him for bringing Arlene home safely, who would wish him luck and kiss his cheek and send him on his way with a warm paper bag full of homemade cookies.
    “Yeah,” she said. “But it’s okay. My father works the night shift and my mother sleeps like the dead. Here, it’s this next one. Now for God’s sake be quiet.” She led him down an alley and through a side door, up a creaking flight of stairs, and down a linoleum hall to the door of her family’s apartment. Her key scraped in the lock, and then, saying “Sh-sh!”, she