“What? That’s not fair,” Lily said.
“Flora said I’d win with my speech,” Shirley said gloomily.
Lily doubted that, but she wasn’t about to make Shirley feel even worse. “It’s going to be fine,” Lily said, trying to sound positive. “I could still go to the hospital—maybe Papa will help me get the hospital board to buy a bunch.”
“Two thousand?” Shirley said doubtfully.
Lily winced. “Maybe not that many. But you never know. Do you want to come with me?”
“No, I can’t. Thank you for what you’ve been doing, really, but I’m not going to win by selling tickets.”
After Lily hung up, she lingered for a minute on the landing, wondering whether she should call Kath. Her afternoon was free now that she didn’t have to go to the hospital for Shirley. Before she could lose her nerve, she went back to her room to retrieve her math notebook, where Kath had written down her telephone number a few days ago. Lily had done the same in Kath’s notebook, but neither of them had called the other yet.
She ran back to the telephone and dialed with nervous fingers. Each rotation of the dial seemed to take forever, but at last she heard the call go through and begin to ring. She imagined the telephone in Kath’s house coming to life, but it rang and rang, and nobody answered. Finally Lily hung up.
“Who were you calling?”
Lily started, and turned to face her mother in the kitchen doorway. “Just a friend—Mary,” Lily said, and instantly wished she hadn’t said a name.
“Are you still going out to sell raffle tickets this afternoon?” her mother asked.
“Yes,” Lily lied.
“Will you stop by Dupont Market for me on your way back? I need some ginger and your father needs more coffee.”
Her mother held out a five-dollar bill, and Lily took it wordlessly. She was afraid her mother would realize somehow that she had lied, but her mother simply went back into the kitchen, leaving Lily standing by the phone.
* * *
—
After lunch, Lily walked up Grant Avenue toward North Beach. She turned onto Jackson Street and went into a few of the shops, idly looking through display cases full of cheap jewelry. She had no real plan for the afternoon now that she didn’t have to go to the hospital, but she was filled with a restlessness that made her twitchy and anxious. In one store she found an inexpensive rhinestone comb and impulsively bought it, thinking that she might wear it to the Telegraph Club one night, for Kath to see.
The thought lodged in her like a hook, and she began to consider what else she could buy. A new dress, perhaps. New stockings—grown-up ones. A new bra—and that made her imagine Kath seeing it, which made something clutch in her belly.
She went north, going into a couple of Chinatown boutiques and finding nothing she liked, and then continued past Broadway, up Columbus and into North Beach. The cafés were lively this afternoon, and as she walked past their big glass windows she looked inside at couples sipping espressos and nibbling on Italian pastries. Boys and girls, men and women, smiling at each other or talking animatedly, hands touching, unafraid to be seen together. She felt a growling jealousy in the pit of her stomach at the unfairness of it.
Before she knew it she had arrived at Washington Square Park, and she crossed Columbus and stood at the edge of the grass. It was chilly, and not many people were lingering outside. She catalogued them one by one: Caucasian man and woman; three Caucasian men （maybe Italian） smoking on a bench; two older Negro women walking slowly together; a Chinese girl of about ten with a woman who was probably her mother, holding her hand. Lily had been hoping she might see Kath, but there was no sign of her.
She glanced at her watch. It was time to go to Dupont Market and then home. She turned back toward Chinatown and decided to walk down Powell before cutting across to the grocery store. At the intersection of Powell and Green Street, she stopped to wait for the traffic before crossing, and on the corner diagonal to her a car pulled up to the sidewalk. The car was familiar, but she wasn’t sure why until the passenger door opened and Shirley got out.
Lily almost raised her arm to wave at her, but something stopped her—perhaps the furtive way Shirley was moving, the way she drew her hat down as if to hide her face. But Lily would know Shirley anywhere; she had gone with her to pick out that powder-blue coat she wore. It had been her favorite purchase of the last year. Shirley came around to the driver’s side of the car, and the window there rolled down, and a man’s face appeared in the opening. Lily recognized Calvin Chan with a faint shock.