As the elevator door closed behind Phil and he started the weary climb
from twenty-eight to twenty-nine, he was already tormenting himself for
having turned down Phoebe Filmer's invitation to have a drink in her
room. When she had accosted him in the lobby, babbling about how he had
rescued her at the Tan Jet, he had felt the last thing he wanted to be
with was a human being. But now, with nothing separating him from the
loneliness of his room but an echoing flight of stairs and an empty
corridor, he suddenly realized that he needed human companionship above
everything.
He remembered how boldly he had set forth just yesterday afternoon
from his room to look at life and plunge into any adventure that came
along. And as it happened he had seen so shockingly much of life and
been buffeted by such vast oceans of adventure, that his brain still
buzzed from it. At times during those incredible twenty-four hours, it
had seemed to him that his whole character was changing, that he was
becoming the daring yet sympathetic adventurer and lover he had always
dreamed of being.
Yet here he was, dragging himself miserably back to his room, having
just pulled his usual craven trick of saying "No," when he desperately
wanted, at least ten seconds later, to say "Yes." Why, from the speed
with which he was falling back into his old habit patterns, he'd
probably spend the evening spying on Miss Filmer from his darkened
window.
Oh, he could tell himself there was no reason to give a second thought
to an ordinary pretty woman when he'd just met such a wickedly
desirable girl as Mitzie Romadka and seen such a beauty as Dora
Pannes, not to mention sharing the society of such grotesque but
attractive characters as Juno Jones and Mary Akeley. But that was just
rationalization and he knew it. Phoebe Filmer was more his size, and he
wasn't even big enough for her.
Or he could once more tell himself that if only Lucky were at his side,
he would be brave and bold again. But even that was no longer quite
true. Fact was, that everything had become much too big for him. He
wanted the green cat, yes, but he wanted him as his own special pet,
his mascot, his good luck cat, something to sleep at the foot of the
bed--not as a mysterious mutant monster that kept getting him involved
with male and female wrestlers, religious crackpots, gun-toting
psychoanalysts, girls with claws, hep-thugs, world-famous scientists,
espers, vice syndicates, FBL raids, national and international crimes,
and a whole lot of other things that were much, much too big for Phil
Gish.
He coded open his door, stepped inside, and had almost closed it behind
him when he realized that he was not returning to loneliness.
On her hands and knees, apparently to look under his bed, but now with
her face turned sharply towards him, was the black haired, faun-like
girl whose window was opposite his. He froze in every muscle, his hand
locked to the barely ajar door, ready to jerk it open and run.
She got up slowly, with a smile. "'Allo," she greeted in a warm voice
with a foreign accent he couldn't place. "I have lost something and I
think maybe he hide in here." She smoothed out the black pied gray suit
he'd watched her take off last night. Then she leisurely ran her hand
back across her head and down the pony tail in which her hair-do ended.
"Something?" Phil croaked gallantly, his hand still glued fast behind
him. He couldn't help it, but every time he looked her in the eye his
gaze had to travel fearfully down her figure to her 10-inch platform
shoes.
"Yes," she confirmed, "a--how you call him?--pussycat." Then, after a
bit, "Say, you act like you know me." Her smile widened and she shook a
finger at him. "'Ave you been peek at me, you naughty boy?"
Phil gulped and said nothing, yet that remark did a great deal to
humanize her for him. Hallucinations don't make one blush.
"Thas all right," she reassured him. "Windows across, why not? Same
thing--windows across and both open a little--make me think maybe my
pussycat jump over here. So I step across to see."
"Step across?" Phil demanded a bit hysterically, his gaze once more
shooting to her legs.
"Sure," she said smilingly and indicated the window. "Take a look."
With considerable reluctance, Phil unstuck his hand from the door and
gingerly walked to the open window. Spanning the ten feet between it
and the one opposite, was a flimsy looking telescope ladder of some
gray metal.
Phil turned around. "Is it a green cat?" he asked reluctantly.