He finished the bed and pushed it back into the closet. She noticed that he had cleaned the whole room; the chairs had been dusted and the ashtrays washed and he had polished his shoes. He had even tried to press his own pants — the new crease didn’t quite coincide with the old one, and through the open door of the kitchen she could see the ironing board that he’d forgotten to fold away.
“Steve,” she said. “Steve, I wish... I wish...”
“Let’s get out of here. I need a drink.” He buttoned his coat and ran his hand over his hair to smooth it. “Coming?”
She hesitated. “Where can we go?”
“We have a couple of hundred bars to choose from. We can go to one, or we can go to them all, if you like.”
He opened the door for her but she continued to stand there.
“Come on,” he said, “and I’ll show you some real tarts so you’ll understand the difference.”
She touched his coat sleeve timidly, as if she were about to make an appeal. But she didn’t make it; he had moved away from her with a trace of impatience and was halfway down the steps before she caught up with him.
“Aren’t you forgetting your manners?”
“Look,” he said. “Let’s just pretend for once that you’re not the great lady you really are, you’re just an ordinary girl. And I’m an ordinary guy, see? — and we’re going out together. We haven’t much money, so we walk up to Jane Street to catch a bus. You’re sure riding a bus won’t be too much for your delicate constitution?”
“You don’t have to be so sarcastic. I’ve ridden on lots of buses with you before.”
“B.C. Before Charles. By the way, you don’t have to be afraid any of Charley’s friends will see you. They don’t ride buses, except maybe once a year, to keep in touch with the common man.”
“I’m sick of talking about Charles,” she cried. “And I’m sick of talking about buses!”
He wagged his finger at her. “Tut, tut. If you’re going to lose your temper, we’ll talk about trains.”
She began to walk down the driveway toward the road with swift angry strides. He kept up with her effortlessly.
“I adore trains,” he said. “Don’t you?”
She tossed her head in reply.
“When I was a boy — and a charming little chap I was, too — I used to call them choo-choos. Pretty damn original of me, eh?”
They reached the road and she turned left without slackening her pace. He stood still and talked to her retreating back.
“Matter of fact, H. L. Mencken gives me credit for the word. Choo-choo, an onomatopoetic disyllable coined by little Steve Ferris, aged one year, three months and six days. Incidentally, you’re going in the wrong direction.”
She stopped and came slowly back to where he was standing.
“You make me furious,” she said. “You...”
“I hope to God so.” He looked at her somberly. “Any reaction is better than no reaction.”
Chapter 19
When they got on the bus at Jane Street, he took her hand and held it. She tried to withdraw it, but he whispered, “Ordinary people always hold hands on buses. It’s a rule.”
An old lady in the opposite seat eyed them with deep suspicion, as if all whispering was about herself and to her disadvantage. At the same time her face had a scared, intent aspect.
“She’s frightened,” Martha said. “Perhaps she’s not used to being alone in a city.”
Steve laughed. “My bet is, she’s heading for a movie and she’s trying to sneak away without her grandchildren.”
Clutching her purse, the old lady got up and changed to a seat at the front of the bus.
“See?” Steve said. “Look at the death-grip she’s got on her purse. That’s her Humphrey Bogart money in there, her ticket to the past. For two hours she’s going to look like Lauren Bacall. Her withered breasts will ripen again like grapefruit, her false teeth will miraculously start growing onto her gums, and the varicose veins will drop off her legs like dead blue worms.”
His gaze shifted from the old woman to Martha, and he was surprised by their similarity of expression. Martha was afraid, too, not of being alone in a city, but of being seen out with him. Or perhaps simply of growing old.
He thought of Beatrice and her continual references to her age, as if the monotony of repetition would obscure the fact. Martha was four or five years younger than Beatrice, and maybe she’d talk the same way when she was Beatrice’s age. Maybe, too, by that time, he and Martha would be married and have a child or two. They’d sit around the house every night, not doing much talking because Martha wasn’t much of a talker, she seemed to have a contempt for words as if she thought they didn’t solve anything, they merely created new problems — and not doing much love-making, either, because Martha would be used to him by then, and when he made a pass at her she’d have a backache or a cold, or she’d be too tired.
“What are you frowning about?” she asked.
“Time,” he said with a false grin. “He’s waving that damn scythe of his at me. But watch me duck.”
“Sometimes I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
“You wouldn’t like it if you did, my darling.”
They got off the bus at the corner of Madison and College. The five o’clock rush was on. A stream of cars moved north, in rhythmic jerks like a typewriter ribbon. Shoppers plunged headlong out of the dress shops and department stores, as if afraid the doors might close on them and leave them locked there for the weekend. Even those who were not eager to get home hurried there anyway because they were used to hurrying.
He felt, as he usually did when he saw a lot of people on a city street, a profound excitement. He wanted to watch them all at once, follow them all home and have supper with them and listen to their talk and their troubles, solve their problems, go to bed with the best-looking daughter, and run like hell for home.
“It’s wonderful,” he said, the excitement audible in his voice. “I haven’t been going out enough. Come on, let’s get drunk! Come on, Martha!”
He grabbed her hand and began steering her expertly through the crowd. She dragged like a stone. She said he was going too fast, they were attracting attention, the streets were dirty, she had dirt in her shoe, and people were bumping into her.
He headed for the nearest bar, and they went inside.
There were a great many people in here, too, and they were just as noisy as those in the street, but the noise was different, and the people themselves seemed to be invisible, subtly divided from the street people by rows of bottles containing the pickled ghosts of Carrie Nation and General Booth. The lights were sparse and lurid, for reasons of economy and glamour. They had the added effect of flinging a veil of intrigue across the room, so that the most ordinary talk seemed like secrets spoken aloud. To the untutored eye, the most commonplace men could have passed for financiers or pimps, and the women for duchesses or dykes. But Steve sorted them out immediately — he’d seen them all before in different bars, different countries and different lighting.
There were the two men talking business. Nervous, tense, they drank Scotch or Bourbon, preparing to relax for the weekend, but reluctant to depart from a world made intelligible by neat mathematical boundaries. Beside them was the inevitable lady who waited. Her eyes made direct trips from the drink in front of her to the door, seeing nothing between. She may have been waiting for a man, a girl, or a bolt of lightning, but whatever it was, he, or it, never came. Eventually she would toss off her drink and set her course straight for the door, as if neither the gloom nor the interfering bodies bothered her because she was guided by radar.