Chapter 6 Breakfast at Tiffany's-6

Of course wed never met. Though actually, on the stairs, in the street, we oftencame face-to-face; but she seemed not quite to see me. She was never without darkglasses, she was always well groomed, there was a consequential good taste in the plainness of her clothes, the blues and grays and lack of luster that made her, herself, shine so. One might have thought her a photographers model, perhaps a young actress, except that it was obvious, judging from her hours, she Hadn't time to be either. Now and then I ran across her outside our neighborhood. Once a visiting relative took me to "21," and there, at a superior table, surrounded by four men, none of them Mr. Arbuck, yet all of them interchangeable with him, was Miss Golightly, idly, publicly combing her hair; and her expression, an unrealized yawn, put, by example, a dampener, on the excitement I felt over dining at so swanky a place. Another night, deep in the summer, the heat of my room sent me out into the streets. I walked down Third Avenue to Fifty-first Street, where there was an antique store with an object in its window I admired: a palace of a bird cage, a mosque of minarets and bamboo rooms yearning to be filled with talkative parrots. But the price was three hundred and fifty dollars. On the way home I noticed a cab-driver crowdgathered in front of PJ Clarks salon, apparently attracted there by a happy group of whiskey-eyed Australian army officers baritoning, "Waltzing As Matilda." they sang they took turns spin-dancinga girl over the cobbles under the El; and the girl, MissGolightly, to be sure, floated round in their, arms light as a scarf.

But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders that shesmoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese andmelba toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same sourcemade it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing. Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were the words that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonely and love.

Also, she had a cat and she played the guitar. On days when the sun was strong, she would wash her hair, and together with the cat, a red tiger-striped tom, sit out on the fire escape thumbing a guitar while her hair dried. Whenever I heard the music, I would go stand quietly by my window. She played very well, and sometimessang too. Sang in the hoarse, breaking tones of a boys adolescent voice. She knew the show hits, Cole Porter and Kurt Weill; Especially she liked the songs from Oklahoma!, which were new that summer and everywhere. But there were moments when she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, where indeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked of pineywoods. One went: Dont wanna sleep, Dont wanna die, Just wannago a-travelin through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her themost, for often she continued it long after her hair had dried, after the sun had gone and there were lighted windows in the dus k.

But our acquaintance did not make headway until September, an evening with the first ripple-chills of autumn running through it. Id been to a movie, come home and gone to bed with a bourbon nightcap and the newest Simenon: so much my idea of ​​comfort that I Couldn't understand a sense of unease that multiplied until I could hear my heart beating. It was a feeling I read about, written about, but never before experienced. The feeling of being watched. Of someone in the room. Then: anabrupt rapping at the window, a glimpse of ghostly gray: I spilled the bourbon. It was some little while before I could bring myself to open the window, and ask MissGolightly what she wanted.

"Ive got the most terrifying man downstairs," she said, stepping off the firescape into the room. "I mean hes sweet when he isnt drunk, but let him startlapping up the vino, and oh God quel beast! If theres one thing I loathe, its menwho bite." She loosened a gray flannel robe off her shoulder, to show me evidence of what happens if a man bites. The robe was all she was wearing. "Im sorry if Ifrightened you. But when the beast got so tiresome I just went out the window. I think he thinks Im in the bathroom, not that I give a damn what he thinks, the hell with him, hell get tired, hell go to sleep, my God he should, eight martinis before dinner and enough wine to wash an elephant. Listen, you can throw me out if you want to. Ive got a gall barging in on you like this. But that fire escape was damnedicy. And you looked so cozy. Like my brother Fred. We used to sleep four in a bed, and he was the only one that ever let me hug him on a cold night. By the way, doyou mind if I call you Fred?" She d come completely into the room now, and shepaused there, staring at me. Id never seen her before not wearing dark glasses, and it was obvious now that they were prescription lenses, for without them her eyes hadan assessing squint, like a jewelers. were large eyes, a little blue, a little green, dotted with bits of brown: vari-colored, like her hair; and, like her hair, they gave out a lively warm light. "I suppose you think Im very brazen. Or tres fou .Orsomething."