The room was growing darker. Bessie sang, The blues has got me on the go. They runs around my house, in and out of my front door. Then the needle scratched aimlessly for a second, and the record player clicked itself off. Eric’s attention had painfully snagged itself on the memory of those unloved, but not wholly undesired, girls. Their texture and their odor floated back to him: and it was abruptly astonishing that he had not thought of that side of himself for so long. It had been because of Yves. This thought filled him with a hideous, unwilling resentment: he remembered Yves’ hostile adventures with the girls of the Latin Quarter and St. Germain-des-Près. These adventures had not touched Eric because they so clearly had not touched Yves. But now, superbly, like a diver coming to the surface, his terror bobbed, naked, to the surface of his mind: he would lose Yves, here. It would happen here. And he, he would have no woman, and he would have no Yves. His flesh began to itch, he felt himself beginning to sweat.
He turned and smiled at Cass, who had moved to the sofa, and sat very still beside him in the gloom. She was not watching him. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, busy with thoughts of her own.
“This is one hell of a party,” he said.
She rose, smiling, and shook herself a little. “It is, isn’t it? I was beginning to wonder where the children are — they should be home by now. And maybe I’d better turn on some lights.” She switched on a lamp near the bar. Now, the water and the lights along the water glowed more softly, suggesting the imminent night. Everything was pearl gray, shot with gold. “I’d better go and rouse Richard.”
“I didn’t know,” he said, “that it would be so easy to feel at home again.”
She looked at him quickly, and grinned. “Is that good?”
“I don’t know yet.” He was about to say something more, something about Yves, but he heard Richard’s study door open and close. He turned to face Richard as he came into the room; he looked very handsome and boyish and big.
“So we finally got you back here! I’m told it took every penny Shubert Alley could scrape together. How are you, you old bastard?”
“I’m fine, Richard, it’s good to see you.” They clung together, briefly, in the oddly truncated, shrinking, American embrace, and stepped back to look at one another. “I hear that you’re selling more books than Frank Yerby.”
“Better,” said Richard, “but not more.” He looked over at Cass. “How are you, chicken? How’s the headache?”
“Eric started telling me about Paris, and I forgot all about it. Why don’t we go to Paris? I think it would do wonders for us.”
“Do wonders for our bank account, too. Don’t you let this lousy ex-expatriate come here and turn your head.” He walked over to the bar and poured himself a drink. “Did you leave many broken hearts over there?”
“They were very restrained about it. Those centuries of breeding mean something, you know.”
“That’s what they kept telling me when I was over there. It didn’t seem to mean much, though, beyond poverty and corruption and disease. How did you find it?”
“I had a ball. I loved it. Of course, I wasn’t in the Army—
“Did you like the French? I couldn’t stand them; I thought they were as ugly and as phony as they come.”
“I didn’t feel that. They can be pretty damn exasperating — but, hell, I liked them.”
“Well. Of course, you’re a far more patient sort than I’ve ever been.” He grinned. “How’s your French?”
“Du trottoir—of the sidewalk. But fluent.”
“You learn it in bed?”
He blushed. Richard watched him and laughed.
“Yes. As a matter of fact.”
Richard carried his drink to the sofa and sat down. “I can see that traveling hasn’t improved your morals any. You going to be around awhile?”
Eric sat down in the armchair across the room from Richard. “Well, I’ve got to be here at least until the play opens. But after that — who knows?”
“Well,” said Richard, and raised his glass, “here’s hoping. May it run longer than Tobacco Road.”
Eric shuddered. “Not with me in it, bud.” He drank, he lit a cigarette; a certain familiar fear and anger began to stir in him. “Tell me about yourself, bring me up to date.”
But, as he said this, he realized that he did not care what Richard had been doing. He was merely being polite because Richard was married to Cass. He wondered if he had always felt this way. Perhaps he had never been able to admit it to himself. Perhaps Richard had changed — but did people change? He wondered what he would think of Richard if he were meeting him for the first time. Then he wondered what Yves would think of these people and what these people would think of Yves.
“There isn’t much to tell. You know about the book — I’ll get a copy for you, a coming-home present—”
“That should make you glad you’ve returned,” said Cass.
Richard looked at her, smiling. “No sabotage, please.” He said to Eric, “Cass still likes to make fun of me.” Then, “There’s a new book coming, Hollywood may buy the first one, I’ve got a TV thing coming up.”
“Anything for me in the TV bit?”
“It’s cast. Sorry. We probably couldn’t have afforded you, anyway.” The doorbell rang. Cass went to answer it.
There was suddenly a tremendous commotion at the door, sobbing and screaming, but Eric did not react until he saw the change in Richard’s face, and heard Cass’ cry. Then Richard and Eric stood up and the children came pounding into the room. Michael was sobbing and blood dripped from his nose and mouth onto his red-and-white-striped T-shirt. Paul was behind him, pale and silent, with blood on his knuckles and smeared across his face; and his white shirt was torn.
“It’s all right, Cass,” Richard said. quickly, “it’s all right. They’re not dead.” Michael ran to his father and buried his bloody face in his father’s belly. Richard looked at Paul. “What the hell’s been going on?”
Cass pulled Michael away and looked into his face. “Come on, baby, let me wash this blood away and see what’s happened to you.” Michael turned to her, still sobbing, in a state of terror. Cass held him. “Come on, darling, everything’s all right, hush now, darling, come on.” Michael was led away, his hand in Cass’ trembling hand, and Richard looked briefly at Eric, over Paul’s head.
“Come on,” he said to Paul, “what happened? You get into a fight or did you beat him up, or what?”
Paul sat down, pressing his hands together. “I don’t really know what happened.” He was on the edge of tears himself; his father waited. “We had been playing ball and then we were getting ready to come home, we weren’t doing anything, just fooling around and walking. I wasn’t paying much attention to Mike, he was behind me with some friends of his. Then”—he looked at his father—“some colored — colored boys, they came over this hill and they yelled something, I couldn’t hear what they yelled. One of them tripped me up as he passed me and they started beating up the little kids and we came running down to stop them.” He looked at his father again. “We never saw any of them before, I don’t know where they came from. One of them had Mike down on the ground, and was punching him, but I got him off.” He looked at his bloody fist. “I think I knocked a couple teeth down his throat.”
“Good for you. You didn’t get hurt yourself? How do you feel?”