Chapter 18 Breakfast at Tiffany's-18

I went straight upstairs, got the bird cage, took it down and left it in front of herdoor. That settled that. Or so I imagined until the next morning when, as I was leaving for work, I saw the cage perched on a sidewalk ash -can waiting for the garbage collector. Rather sheepishly, I rescued it and carried it back to my room, acapitulation that did not lessen my resolve to put Holly Golightly absolutely out of mylife. She was, I decided, "a crude exhibitionist," " a time waster," "an utter fake": someone never to be spoken to again. And I didnt. Not for a long while. We passed each other on the stairs with loweredeyes. If she walked into Joe Bells, I walked out. At one point, Madame SapphiaSpanella, the coloratura and roller-skating enthusiast who lived on the first floor, circulated a petition among the brownstones other tenants asking them to join herin having Miss Golightly evicted: she was, said Madame Spanella, "morally objectionable" and the "perpetrator of all-night gatherings that endangered the safety and sanity of her neighbors." Though I refused to sign, secretly I felt Madame Spanella had cause to complain. But her petition failed, and as April approachedMay, the open-windowed, warm spring nights were lurid with the party sounds, the loud-playing phonograph and martini laughter that emanated from Apt . 2.

It was no novelty to encounter suspicious specimens among Hollys callers, quite the contrary; but one day late that spring, while passing through the brownstones vestibule, I noticed a very provocative man examining her mailbox. gray forlorn eyes. He wore an old sweatstained gray hat, and his cheap summer suit, a pale blue, hung too loosely on his lanky frame; his shoes were brown and brandnew. He seemed to have no intention of ringing Hollys bell. Slowly, as though he Were reading Braille, he kept rubbing afinger across the embossed lettering of her name. That evening, on my way to supper, I saw the man again. He was standing across the street, leaning against a tree and staring up at Hollys windows. Sinister speculations rushed through my head. Was he a detective? Sing friend, Sally Tomato? The situation revived mytenderer feelings for Holly; it was only fair to interrupt our feud long enough to warnher that she was being watched. As I walked to the corner, heading east toward the Hamburg Heaven at Seventy-ninth and Madison , I could feel the mans attention focused on me. Presently, without turning my head, I knew that he was following me. Because I could hear him whistling. Not any ordinary tune, but the plaintive,prairie melody Holly sometimes played on her guitar: Dont wanna sleep, dontwanna die, just wanna go a-travelin through the pastures of the sky. The whistling continued across Park Avenue and up Madison. Once, while waiting for a traffic light to change, I watched him out of the corner of my eye as he stooped to pet a sleazy Pomeranian. "Thats a fine animal you got there," he told the owner in a hoarse, counted drawl.

Hamburg Heaven was empty. Nevertheless, he took a seat right beside me at the long counter. He smelled of tobacco and sweat. He ordered a cup of coffee, but when it came he didn't touch it. Instead, he chewed on a toothpick and studied me in the wall mirror facing us. "Excuse me," I said, speaking to him via the mirror, "but what do you want?" The question didnt embarrass him; he seemed relieved to have had it asked. "Son," he said, "I need a friend." He brought out a wallet. It was as worn as his leathery hands, almost falling toppieces; and so was the brittle, cracked, blurred snapshot he handed me. There were seven people in the picture, all grouped together on the sagging porch of a starkwooden house, and all children, except for the man himself, who had his arm around the waist of a plump blond little girl with a hand shading her eyes against the sun.

"Thats me," he said, pointing at himself. "Thats her . . ." he tapped the plumpgirl. "And this one over here," he added, indicating a tow-headed beanpole, "thatsher brother, Fred." I looked at "her" again: and yes, now I can see it, an embryonic resemblance to Holly in the squinting, fat-cheeked child. At the same moment, I realized who the man must be. "Youre Hollys father." He blinked, he frowned. "Her names not Holly. She was a Lulamae Barnes. Was," he said, shifting the toothpick in his mouth, "till she married me. Im her husband.

Doc Golightly. Im a horse doctor, animal man. Do some farming, too. Near Tulip,Texas. Son, why are you laughin?" It wasn't real laughter: it was nerves. I took a swallow of water and choked; hepounded me on the back. "This heres no humorous matter, son. Im a tired man. Ive been five years lookin for my woman. Soon as I got that letter from Fred, saying where she was, I bought myself a ticket on the Greyhound. Lulamae belongs with her husband and her churren." "Children?" "Thems her churren," he said, almost shouted. He meant the four other youngfaces in the picture, two bare-footed girls and a pair of overalled boys. Well, of course: the man was deranged. "But Holly cant be the mother of those children.

Theyre older than she is. Bigger." "Now, son," he said in a reasoning voice, "I didnt claim they was her natural-bornchurren. Their own precious mother, precious woman, Jesus rest her soul, shepassed away July 4th, Independence Day, 1936. The year of the drought. When Imarried Lulamae, that was in December, 1938, she was going on fourteen. Maybe an ordinary person, being only fourteen, wouldn't know their right mind. But you take Lulamae, she was an exceptional woman. well what she was doing when she promised to be my wife and the mother of my churren. She plainbroke our hearts when she ran off like she done." He sipped his cold coffee, and glanced at me with a searching earnestness. do you doubt me? Do you believe what Im saying is so?"