Verne moved back into the living room. One wall was a bright blue, a solid dark sheet. She had painted the apartment herself. On the walls were prints, Modigliani, Kandinsky, Hieronymus Bosch. A phonograph and records, jazz and chamber music. Mobiles, three of them.
He eased himself slowly onto the couch, crossing his legs. After a while Teddy came into the room and stood by the door, leaning against it, her arms folded.
“Want anything to drink?” she said.
“Nothing. I’m about to leave.” Verne got his pipe out and poured tobacco into it. He lit up silently.
“What do you think of the place?”
“It’s all right. Those are nice mats.” He got up and went over to some Chinese mats, hanging down the side of the wall. From where he stood he could see into the kitchen. The sideboard was covered with dirty dishes, cups and glasses. He wandered away, hands in his pockets.
“It’s cold in here. Maybe it’s the colors.” He fingered the burlap drapes.
Teddy watched him without expression. She had put on a scarlet wrapper, fastened with a knotted cord. And slippers. She lit a cigarette and smoked, long and austere in her flamboyant silk robe. Her face was haggard; she looked more like a bird than ever, her nose like a beak, her eyes black and sunken. She walked toward the couch.
“I did the painting. The walls.”
“I thought you did.”
Verne sat down again, on a chair by the door. Teddy sprawled out on the couch, one foot up, waving her toes back and forth. Neither spoke.
“It’s getting late,” Teddy said finally.
Verne stood up. “I know. Well, it’s been nice.”
“You’re going?”
“I’ll see you.”
“Thanks for coming.”
He went to the door, taking hold of the knob. Teddy was still sprawled out, long and bony, her hair dark and lusterless, damp hanks against her neck.
“You look pretty washed out,” Verne said.
Teddy smiled. “Look, baby. You’ve been a dear. Now run along. I’ll see you again soon.”
He laughed. “All right.”
He went downstairs slowly, out onto the street. The air was cold and full of vitality There was no sound at all except for a dim murmur that came from the entrance of a bar, at the foot of the hill.
He got into his car and drove away.
Don Field came stumping around to the station, when Verne was off his shift the next day. He carried a magazine under his arm; he had on dark glasses and a sports shirt.
“Greetings,” Verne said, as they walked away from the station building, toward his car. “How goes it?”
“Medium. You?”
“All right.” Verne got into the car. Don stood outside. “Do you want a ride?”
Don thought for a moment. He got slowly inside. “Okay,” he said resignedly.
They drove along with the other cars, going home from work.
“Nice evening,” Verne said.
“Uh-huh.” There was a long silence. At last Don cleared his throat. “What did you think of Teddy?”
“Seemed intelligent.”
“Uh-huh.”
Verne looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason. I’m getting kind of tired of having her around. They’re all the same, after a while.”
“Going to let her go, eh?” He thought, You great arrogant gargoyle!
“Well, of course, I hate to give up a good thing. But I have been toying with the idea.” He fooled with the cover of the magazine he was carrying. “It costs money.”
“Well, do what you want. You’re old enough now.”
“You going to eat at home?”
“Why?”
“Just wondering. I thought maybe I’d stop down at Jamison’s for a French dinner.”
“That’s nice.”
“You don’t want to come along?”
“No thanks.” He added: “But I’ll be glad to drive you there and let you off.”
He let Don off in front of the restaurant and then went on. After a few minutes driving he found himself in his own neighborhood. He drew up in front of his apartment building and turned the motor off. Sitting in the car he lit his pipe and began to smoke.
He did not want to go upstairs just yet. It was still early; not even seven. He had come off work and driven Don to the restaurant, and that was all. Now he was in front of his own building. In a moment he would go upstairs, enter the apartment, take off his hat and coat, and begin preparing himself something to eat.
And after that?
Outside the car a few people hurried along in the semi-darkness. Dark, similar lumps that moved quickly past his car and out of sight. One shape turned in at a doorway. A flash of warm yellow light revealed a middle-aged woman with an armload of groceries. For a moment she stood framed in the light. Verne saw into a living room. A man sitting in a deep chair with a newspaper. A boy playing on the rug. He could almost smell the warm air that drifted out, to be dissipated by the cold night.
He thought about it. He and his brother had sat on the rug like that, playing. Sometimes they went into the piano room and played duets together until dinner was ready. In the early evening, with the sun just down and the sky still brighter than the earth, in the warm piano room filled up by the massive old piano, with the stacks of music tossed everywhere, he and his brother played silly things by Grieg and MacDowell and Cui. Suddenly there would be their mother, filling up the doorway with her bulk, telling them dinner was on the table.
More people hurried past. Some newspapers blown by the wind rolled by in a heap and swept up against a mail box. Were there drops of rain beginning to show on the pavement? At the corner, the Italian who owned the little grocery came out with a bent metal rod and began to roll up his awning, slowly, with great elaborate turns.
Verne put out his pipe and switched the motor back on. He drove down the street and around the corner. He drove aimlessly, not paying any particular attention to the houses and cars that filled up the darkness.
When he saw a neon sign Club Twenty-One he pulled over to the curb and stopped. He rolled up his windows and got out. The night air was cold; a mist pressed against him, carried by the wind. He slammed the car door and walked across the sidewalk to the club, pushing the heavy plush doors open with his shoulder.
In the dim light he saw a long row of glasses and black onyx, and tall red columns of distorted light, wavery and subtle, that surrounded the mirror behind the bar. The rows of half-transparent glasses broke up the red light; it seemed as if the light came from inside each glass. The light slithered around the bar, appearing everywhere, mixing with the green coming from a Gold Glow neon sign in the window. On the left, in deep chairs around a table, three men and a woman were sitting. Their table was a litter of bottles and cigarette stubs. The other tables were vacant.
Verne walked over to the bar and sat down. The bartender put down his rag and turned toward him.
“Scotch and water. No ice.”
The bartender nodded and went away. Verne sat, hearing the thud of the counters at the shuffleboard table at the back. A little way down the bar two men were talking loudly.
“So if this god damn nag could have got in—”
“Listen! I told you if a horse could get its ass over the wire long enough—”
“Will you let me finish? I want to say—”
“I thought you were finished.”
“I wasn’t. You know I wasn’t. Don’t shit me.”
“Sixty-five cents, mister,” the bartender said. He put a small glass on the bar in front of Verne. Verne took a dollar bill and gave it to the bartender.
He drank the liquor slowly. As he drank he stared into the thousands of rows of bottles behind the bar. They were dully lit by the same red light, now more intense as it issued past the bottles, coming from behind them and around them, spreading out in a wave of motion.