“The things we made last night, remember? You were to go out and ask Charles for a divorce. You screwed up that little plan, so let’s make some more.”
“You use some of the vilest language.”
“If you were really a little lady, darling, you wouldn’t know it was vile.”
“I never swear, and you know it.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, darling. Do you honestly think in that cute little brain of yours that it’s a virtue not to swear?”
“If you’ve got such a great brain why don’t you go and make something of yourself?”
“Like Charles?” he said dryly.
“You needn’t be so contemptuous of Charles. His position requires a great deal of intelligence.”
“Charles’s position would bore me to death. Besides, you’re forgetting I was away for a few years, a little matter of a war. I thought I’d better take a long rest. In bed.”
“You’ve got your rest. Now what?”
“Now I take my fifteen hundred dollars and twenty-two cents and buy an old car and get my job back on the paper. I’ll make enough to support us if you’re careful, and maybe we can afford a child next year. If we get a two-bedroom apartment, your mother and Laura can live with us. It’ll be a bit crowded, but then we’re so crazy about each other, I’m sure a little crowding won’t matter.”
She was silent.
“Nothing will matter except that we have each other, eh, Martha?”
He wasn’t certain whether he was being serious or ironic or both. But Martha was. She swooped down with a magnet in each hand and picked out the irony.
“Oh, stop your fooling,” she said harshly.
“I’m not fooling. What did you expect when you married me? — that we’d live with Charley and call him uncle?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Look, Martha, you wanted to marry me before on any terms...”
“You backed out.”
“And now you’re backing out.”
They had reached the end of Jane Street. Steve said to the driver, “We’ll get out here.”
While he was being paid, the cab driver looked them both over without curiosity. He realized vaguely that they’d been quarreling, but he hadn’t heard a word of the quarrel. He saw too many people to have any real interest in them. People were, after all, just people. They all did the same things. They got up in the morning, dressed, ate, talked, worked, undressed, made love, slept, and finally died, leaving room for some more people. No matter how hard they tried, their distinctions were slight because they had so many necessities in common. There was only one real difference: some people were women. And that was all right.
“Hot night,” he said, for a tip.
A dime. A nickel a word.
He headed back to town.
He cruised a bit, took a couple of old ladies home from a bingo game, picked up a shabby big guy about forty who was looking for a clean house. He didn’t know of any. No sir, he didn’t. You do. I don’t. You’re lying. You must be nuts. Come out here and say that, you son of a bitch. You’re goddamn right I’ll come out there and say that.
He ended up in jail. His wife bailed him out at 3 A.M. She had her hair in curlers and she was mad. She nagged him for hours. He got mad, too. He threw a lamp. The lamp cost $12.95. He cried like a baby. Never you mind, what’s a lamp anyway, his wife said, and fried him four eggs.
The big guy found a house all by himself.
The old ladies had won a blanket at the bingo game.
Laura went to bed without washing her face.
Charles dreamed he got sheet burns on both his knees.
The bartender put a dab of Lash-Lustre on his mustache.
The dragons roared amiably back to their sheds with empty bowels.
The string of beads broke as the lights went out.
An old but ever-stimulating monosyllable had been added to the walls of Luigi’s.
The night cooled off suddenly. To hell with the sun.
Chapter 20
He made love to her though neither of them intended it to happen. In fact, Martha said, “Don’t touch me, don’t come near me,” as if he were a wild beast that had to be kept at bay.
“Don’t worry,” he said wearily. “I won’t.”
“I just meant that I...”
“Whatever you meant, it’s okay with me. Shall I take you to the front door?”
“No, thanks.”
“Well, good night, then.”
The pebbles of the driveway were moist and slippery with dew. He reached down and scooped up a handful.
“When I was a kid I used to like throwing rocks,” he said. “Usually at windows. But sometimes I’d throw them at the moon. If I didn’t hear them fall some place, I figured they must be on their way to the moon. It made me feel pretty powerful. Once, though, I imagined that one of my rocks hit the king of the moon square in the eye. He was pretty mad, naturally, and came over to get me. But he got lost in space or else he’s still on his way.”
He laughed softly. “Maybe that’s the reason I don’t like to go to bed alone. It’s not that I like women. It’s because I’m afraid the king of the moon is still after me, and a woman is a magic charm for my protection.”
“Any woman, any time?”
“No, you. Now.”
He tossed the pebbles and they fell in a spray on the lawn.
“I heard them fall,” she said.
“No, you didn’t. I’m sure you didn’t.”
She was staring at the grass, trying to discern the pebbles. He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face him.
“You mustn’t look for them, that’s not fair. You must take certain things on trust.”
Her eyes were black and somber in the faint light.
“Must I?” she said.
“Certain things, for a certain length of time. When I tell you the pebbles are on their way to the moon, you must believe me, if only for a minute. Tomorrow morning when the sun is up, you can crawl around on your hands and knees and gather them all up and throw them in the garbage. You can do it now if you want to. I have a box of matches.”
She stirred in his arms. She had heard the pebbles fall, and what difference did it make anyway?
“Martha,” he said, “if you asked me tonight if I would die for you, I would say, yes, gladly. But tomorrow morning, when the firing squad comes in, I’d say to hell with it. The important thing is that right now, this minute, I love you enough to die for you.”
“Words,” she said.
“Certainly, words. I can love you two ways, by actions and words. You don’t want me to touch you, so I’m telling you.”
“Well, I’d rather...” She stopped and bit her underlip.
He was regarding her dryly. “So would I rather. Will you come into my parlor?”
“No!” She stepped back out of his reach. “It wouldn’t seem right, not now.”
“It used to.”
“Well, it doesn’t now, not tonight.”
“When did it suddenly stop ‘seeming right’? When you saw Charles this morning?”
“That was the beginning.”
“And then when your mother told you what she thought of me? And again when I took you to all those nasty, nasty bars and tried to pick up a girl behind your back?”
“Did you?”
“What?”
“Try to pick her up.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I suppose you never tried to make love to Beatrice, either?”
“That’s right. I kissed her once in a rather uncousinly fashion. She liked it all right, but I didn’t. That’s all.”
“It isn’t all. She’s crazy about you. You only have to look at her face to see that.”
“Well, you only have to look at my face to see I don’t give a damn about her. What in hell started you worrying about Beatrice?”
“I’m not worried about Beatrice. She’s just a symptom, like Laura. There must be dozens of women whose names I don’t know who are crazy about you.”