He stood at the table, looking down at the handkerchief case and stud box, and was afraid. Upstairs was a girl who was a person. That he loved her seemed unimportant compared to what she was. He only loved her, which really made him a lot less than a friend or an acquaintance. Other people saw her and talked to her when she was herself, her great, important self. It was wrong, this idea that you know someone better because you have shared a bed and a bathroom with her. He knew, and not another human being knew, that she cried “I” or “high” in moments of great ecstasy. He knew, he alone knew her when she let herself go, when she herself was not sure whether she was wildly gay or wildly sad, but one and the other. But that did not mean that he knew her. Far from it. It only meant that he was closer to her when he was close, but (and this was the first time the thought had come to him) maybe farther away than anyone else when he was not close. It certainly looked that way now. “Oh, I’m a son of a bitch,” he said.
II
In the middle of the front page of the Gibbsville Sun, the morning paper, there was a two-column box, decorated with Santa Claus and holly doo-dads, and in the center of the box was a long poem. “Well, Mervyn Schwartz finally got it.”
“What?” said Irma.
“Shot in a whorehouse last night,” said her husband.
“What!” exclaimed Irma. “What are you talking about?”
“Here it is,” said her husband. “Right here on the front page. Mervyn Schwartz, thirty-five, of Gibbsville, was shot and killed at the Dew Drop—”
“Let me see,” said Irma. She took the paper out of her husband’s hands. “Where?…Oh, you,” she said, and threw the paper back at him. He was laughing at her with a high, soft giggle.
“Think you’re funny,” she said. “You oughtn’t to say things like that where the children might hear you.”
He continued to laugh and picked up the paper and began to read Mervyn Schwartz’s Christmas poem. Mervyn Schwartz formerly had contributed his holiday poems (Christmas, Washington’s Birthday, Easter, Memorial Day, July 4, Armistice Day) to the Standard, the afternoon paper; but the Standard had not run his Armistice Day poem on the front page, so now he was in the Sun. Lute Fliegler read the first verse aloud, very sing-song and effeminate.
“What time do you want dinner?” said Irma.
“Whenever it’s ready,” said Lute.
“Well, you only had breakfast an hour ago. You don’t want dinner too early. I thought around two o’clock.”
“Okay by me,” he said. “I’m not very hungry.”
“You oughtn’t to be,” she said. “The breakfast you ate. I was thinking I’d make the beds now and Mrs. Lynch could put the turkey on so we could eat around two or ha’ past.”
“Okay by me.”
“The kids won’t be very hungry. Even Curly was stuffing himself with candy a while ago till I hid the box.”
“Let him eat it,” said her husband. “Christmas comes but once a year.”
“Thank heaven. All right. I’ll give them the candy, on one condition. That is, if you take care of them when they have stomach ache in the middle of the night.”
“I’ll be only too glad. Go ahead, give them all the candy they want, and give Teddy and Betty a couple highballs.” He frowned and rubbed his chin in mock thoughtfulness. “I don’t know about Curly, though. He’s a little young, but I guess it’d be all right. Or else maybe he’ll take a cigar.”
“Oh, you,” she said.
“Yes-s-s, I think we better just give Curly a cigar. By the way, I’m going to take Teddy out and get him laid tonight. I—”
“Lute! Stop talking like that. How do you know one of them didn’t come downstairs without you hearing them? They’ll be finding things out soon enough. Remember what Betty said last summer.”
“That’s nothing. How old is Teddy? Six—”
“Six and a half,” she said.
“Well, when I was Teddy’s age I had four girls knocked up.”
“Now stop, Lute. You stop talking that way. You don’t have any idea how they pick things up, a word here and there. And children are smarter than you give them credit for. You don’t have to go anywhere today, do you?”
“Nope. Why?” He lit a Camel, taking it out of the package in the lower right pocket of his vest.
“Well, no reason. Last Christmas remember you had to drive to Reading.”
“That was last Christmas. Damn few Caddies being given for Christmas presents this year. I remember that trip. That was a sport job. A LaSalle, it was, not a Caddy. That Polish undertaker up the mountain, Paul Davinis. He wanted it delivered Christmas and he didn’t want his kid to see it so we asked to keep it in Reading. And then when we did deliver it the kid knew he was going to get it all along. His mother told him beforehand. He smashed it up New Year’s Eve.”
“You never told me that,” said Irma.
“You never asked me, as the snake charmer said to her husband. By the way, did Mrs. Lynch say she’d mind the kids tonight?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, then I better phone Willard and tell him we’ll go along. I’ll get that Studebaker sedan. We can get six in it comfortably. It’s a seven-passenger job, but we can sit three in the front and three in the back and we won’t have to use the extra seats. How many are going?”
“I think twelve. Ten or twelve. It depends. If Emily’s father and mother come down from Shamokin she and Harvey won’t be able to come along, but it won’t make any difference. They were going in Walter’s car, so if they don’t go, that makes two less in that car.”
“I better call the garage and make sure about the Studebaker.” He went to the telephone. “Hello, this is Lute Fliegler. Merry Christmas. Listen, that Studebaker sedan, the black one. The one we took on a trade-in from Doc Lurie. Yeah. Doc Lurie’s old car. Well, listen. Don’t let anybody take it out, see? I asked the boss if I could use it tonight and he said okay, see? So I just wanted to make sure none of you thieves took it out. If you want to go any place you can use my Rolls. Seriously, Joe, you want to do me a favor, you can put the chains on the Studie. Okay? Swell.” He hung up, and addressed Irma. “Well, that’s settled.”
“You can call Willard later,” she said. “I told him we’d call if we couldn’t go, so he’ll take it for granted we’re going.”
“What about liquor?” said Lute.
“Well, it’s Willard’s party. I should think he’d supply the liquor.”
“Oh, yeah? Do you know how much liquor costs at the Stage Coach? Seventy-five cents a drink, baby, and they won’t sell it to everybody. I don’t think Willard intends to supply the liquor, not at six bits a shot. I think I better make some gin and take a quart along, just in case. It wouldn’t be right to expect Willard to buy all the liquor and everything else for a party of twelve people.”
“Maybe there’ll only be ten.”
“All right. What if there is only ten? They have a cover charge of a dollar and a half or two dollars, and there goes twenty bucks already, not including ginger ale and White Rock, and sandwiches! You know what they charge for a plain ordinary chicken sandwich at the Stage Coach? A buck. If Willard gets away under forty bucks he’s lucky, without buying a single drink. No, I better make some gin. Or on second thought, there’s that quart of rye the boss gave me. I was going to save it, but we might as well use it tonight.”