The bartender shot her an ugly glance but he kept his temper. “Maybe three, but that’s all. And if they didn’t get it here, they’d get it some place else, or the boy would steal a bottle from his old man and they’d drink it in a car parked in a lane. You gotta be reasonable about these things.”
“I don’t like your kind of reasoning,” Steve said. “It makes me want to call in a policeman.”
“No!” Laura said, with the first hint of real panic in her voice. “Don’t you dare!”
“You’ll ruin the kids’ reputations,” the bartender put in smoothly. “You wouldn’t want to do that.”
“I’ll tell Charley!” Laura cried. “I’ll tell Charley what you’ve been doing behind his back. You and Martha... you... you’re dirty! Dirty!”
She put her hands over her eyes. “You do dirty things.” Tears slid down between her fingers. “Oh, God! Oh, Bill!” But Bill was a man, he, too, could do dirty things. Oh, the despair, the loneliness, there was no one, no one. The horror, the dirt, the fascination...
Steve was silent. There were no words to bridge the gap of years and experience, none even to relieve his own melancholy.
Martha, I love you.
Dirty.
You are my wife.
You do dirty things.
In dark corners and parked cars, behind drawn blinds, on davenports and benches and musty mattresses, between sheets of grey cotton and white linen and striped flannelette, in lanes and doorways and murky halls, dirty things were being done.
Flesh of my flesh.
“You’ve ruined my life,” Laura whispered. The boy sprang off the stool and made a beeline for the door. No one paid any attention.
“His life, too,” she added. Two beautiful young lives ruined, and nobody even looked up. What a waste to have a life ruined without any witnesses except Steve and the bartender, neither of whom would be likely to talk about it: Ah, yes, I was there the night young Laura Shaw’s life was ruined. Where is she now? Ah, no one knows. In a nunnery, perhaps, or a degraded dive. Her name is spoken only in whispers.
Degrading dive. That sounded better.
“Are you ready to go home now?” Steve asked.
“I have no place else to go.” Her tragic tone was marred by a yawn. Her eyes slid to the clock. Eleven. What a night! Wait’ll she told Susan and Becky. They’d die, they’d simply die. As for that drip Bill...
Steve gave the bartender two dollar bills. “See that she gets into a cab.”
“It’d be a pleasure.”
He looked at Laura once more. She had the resilience of a pup, and the gift of melodrama found in the adolescent. A few minutes ago she faced real despair — she had been betrayed by the man she was infatuated with and her own sister, and betrayed in a way she couldn’t understand, that seemed to her dirty and evil. But at sixteen, despair is too bleak and naked a thing to face in a room by itself. To be bearable it must be staged and costumed and made unrecognizable by greasepaint and spotlights. Then you could sit back and enjoy the show, and you had the satisfaction of being creator, narrator and audience all at the same time.
He went outside. Martha was standing on the sidewalk just outside the door. She wasn’t tapping her foot, but she looked as if she’d just stopped or was about to begin.
“Well?” she said.
He gave her his best smile, knowing in advance it wasn’t going to do any good.
“Well, what?”
“You might at least have taken me home first. Then you could have come back and picked her up later.”
“What?”
“The girl. The girl you were so anxious to pick up.”
“She’s the daughter of an old friend of mine. I wasn’t picking her up. I was telling her to go home, she’s just a kid.”
A streetcar roared up and hissed to a stop like a well-trained dragon. It opened its mouth, swallowed a few people in a good-natured way, dropped a few more as leavings from its other end, belched, and bolted on again. Its antenna shuddered and gave off fiery crackles. The cars scurried past, trying to get ahead of it before it stopped and swallowed them, too.
Steve thought he saw the old lady who’d been on the bus with them. She was smiling, happy in captivity in the dragon’s bowels.
But of course he couldn’t be sure.
“If she’s just a kid, why is she in a place like that?”
“For a thrill, maybe.”
“I don’t believe it.” She began walking away from him. She had nice hips and good legs, but she didn’t walk gracefully. She was too businesslike about it: Let’s have no shilly-shallying. Walking is putting one foot in front of the other. Well, let’s get on with it.
He followed her without hurry. He didn’t care whether he caught up with her or not. If he did catch up, he might be tempted to tell her the girl had been Laura, and that wouldn’t do anybody any good.
She stopped, waited for him.
“I’m beginning to think my mother was right about you. You’re a lady-killer.”
He saw a cruising cab and whistled for it. They got in and sat carefully apart.
“You can’t help yourself,” she said. “You’ve got to chase skirts, and as soon as you grab one, you have nothing but contempt.”
“If it’s sleazy material, yes.”
“And I am, I suppose?”
“No, darling. Sleazy implies cheap silk. You’re not cheap and you’re not silk. You’re all wool, finest grade, tightest weave, hand-loomed. A nice piece of goods, but you make me sweat, darling.”
“Stop calling me darling.”
“All right.”
They both looked blindly out of their respective windows.
She’s a jealous woman.
He’s a skirt-chaser.
She distrusts me in every way, even when I tell her the truth.
He’s a liar. Charley at least isn’t a liar or a skirt-chaser.
Martha and I never have anything to talk about. Even Bea and I can talk together, and Bea laughs when I’m funny, which is something, which is a great deal, in fact.
Charles would never humiliate me in front of a waiter by trying to be humorous.
But I couldn’t go to bed with Bea. There’s something sexless about her.
But Charles would humiliate me at home. I admit that.
Martha isn’t sexless, God, no.
If Steve had some of Charles’s good qualities...
If Bea looked like Martha.
If...
If.
“Martha.” He held her hand, stroking the long white fingers. “Do you still want to marry me?”
“What?”
He repeated the question, aware that she had heard it the first time, but didn’t have an answer ready.
“I... of course I do.”
“I thought perhaps you’d changed your mind.”
“Did you?”
“Didn’t you, a couple of times tonight?”
“Not exactly. I mean, sometimes you confuse me. I don’t know what you’re going to do next. I think I understand Charles better than I do you.”
“Does that matter?” Her hand still lay in his. Sometimes, when they were making love, her hands seemed boneless and soft as cotton, fragile as a bat’s wing. But now they were heavy as lead, big capable hands useful for scrubbing or gardening or wringing a chicken’s neck. They gave the lie to the softness of her eyes and the gentle molding of her mouth. Here, the hands implied, is what Martha is really like — practical. She will never do what won’t be best for herself in the long run. She’s no passion’s child. Going to bed with you was a novelty, a banquet after a series of sketchy lunches with Charles. But don’t kid yourself — Martha prefers her food real. Spaghetti’s more filling than sex. Both were nice, though.
“If we’re going to be married,” he said, “we’d better make a few plans.”
“Plans?”