“How about a drink?”
“Not right now, Johnny.” She leaned back against me and I could feel the heat of her body through the silk shirt I was wearing. She closed her eyes and said, “I just want to sit here for a while Johnny. I don’t even want to think.”
“Suits me, baby,” I said. I pulled her head down closer to me and kissed her hair and her ear and the tip of her nose. Soft little kisses the way you’d kiss a baby. The room was almost dark and it seemed perfect just to sit there holding her and kissing her a little.
Finally she stirred and raised herself so she could look at me. She was smiling. “Hello, Johnny.”
“Hello, baby.”
She leaned forward and kissed me on the lips, softly at first and then she pressed closer to me and my arms went around her as tight as I could make them.
We didn’t talk any more. I picked her up and carried her to the bed.
She kept saying my name over and over, and then she began to cry a little and her head was rolling from side to side.
“Johnny, I’ve got to have you. I can’t stand things this way.”
“It’s going to be all right, baby.”
“Promise me, Johnny. Promise me.”
“I promise, baby.”
She stopped rolling her head and looked at me for a moment with her dark shiny eyes and then she began to laugh, a soft little laugh.
“You promised, didn’t you, Johnny?”
There was never anything in the world like that afternoon.
Afterward we just lay there and smoked cigarettes and watched the little glow they made in the darkness of the room.
She got up on her elbow after a while and put her cigarette out. Then she ran her hand slowly over my chest and shoulders.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“I’ll send down for some stuff,” I said.
“You’ve got such a nice skin, Johnny. Almost like a girl’s.” She laughed and lay down beside me again and began humming to herself, some song we’d listened to together on the radio.
“...When do you have to go?”
She stopped humming and was quiet for a long time it seemed. “He’s going to be furious anyway so it doesn’t make too much difference. I told him I had some work to do for Mr. Lesser this evening, but he didn’t like the idea. I’d better leave about nine.”
“Make it ten, baby.”
“All right.” She looked at me and smiled. “An hour won’t make any difference to him but it might to us. Funny thing, Mr. Lesser did want me to work tonight.” She laughed. “When I’m old and nobody wants me I think I’ll have to fall back on him.”
“Is that old goat still bothering you?”
“He’s not that old,” she said. “He never really bothers me, you know that. He just hangs around and lets me know that he’s willing to liven up my life any time I feel in the mood.”
“Does he know Frank is back?”
“I forgot to tell him, but I will tomorrow. I don’t want him calling me now. Frank is angry enough as it is without having Mr. Lesser carrying on an affair with me by phone.”
Lesser was Alice’s boss. He was about forty, a bachelor, one of those sharp dressing little guys who like to imagine they’re lady killers. He’d had a yen for Alice ever since she’d worked there, but it had never gotten him anything that took more than a pair of eyes to handle.
He used to call her every week or so and suggest that he come out for a drink. Probably he thought it was very romantic and glamorous just the way it was; if she’d said yes it might have scared him to death.
“I’d better get some food up here,” I said. I called room service and told them to send up the special dinner for two. Onion soup, shrimp cocktails, sirloins done rare and all the trimmings.
“That sounds wonderful,” she said. “How long will it take to get all that ready?” She turned her head and looked at me and her eyes were shining in the dark.
“About forty-five minutes. There’s lots of time.”
She turned on her side and stretched her legs slowly and then she made a funny little noise in her throat.
“I love you, Johnny,” she whispered.
We didn’t do any more talking. When I heard the knock on the door I got up and took a dollar from my wallet. I put my robe on and went to the door. A bell hop was standing in the hall behind one of those tables on wheels and there must have been a dozen dishes with silver lids on top of the tray.
I gave the boy the buck and pulled the thing into the room and closed the door. Alice sat up in bed and said, “I’m starved. Everything smells too good to be true.”
I pushed the thing over to the side of the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress.
“Shall I turn the light on?” she asked.
I took the silver lids off the food and put them out of the way on the floor. “We don’t need any light,” I said.
“We might eat the steak first and the salad last,” she said.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It sounds wonderful.”
“Okay, have some steak?”
I cut the steak and we started eating. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and everything tasted good. After we finished the steaks the soup was cool enough to drink out of the cups and we drank it without taking a breath.
The room was dark and there was a little breeze coming in the window. We didn’t talk much until we finished eating and then Alice stretched out on the bed and lit a cigarette.
“I wish I could go to sleep,” she said.
I put the silver lids back on the tray and shoved the things out of the way. I lit a cigarette and stretched out beside her.
We smoked in the darkness and didn’t talk. After a while I put my cigarette out and turned on my side and kissed her as soft as I could on the lips. She turned her head and looked at me and her eyes were big and shining.
“Johnny, what did you mean when you said everything was going to be all right?”
“I don’t know, baby. I wish I did.”
“What are we going to do about him, Johnny?”
We looked at each other for a long time without saying anything. Something was building between us, something that scared me and made me cold all over. We knew what we were thinking but we couldn’t put it into words.
“I don’t know what we’ll do,” I said.
“I’m scared, Johnny. I’m afraid of him and I’m afraid I won’t be able to be with you.”
“What are you scared of Frank about?”
Her voice was low, so low I had to lean closer to hear.
“He knows something is wrong. I didn’t tell you this, but Lesser called the night Frank got home. He asked to talk to me and it worried Frank. The next night you called and then hung up when he asked who it was. That made him furious. He came in and asked what was going on and who these men were that always were calling. I told him it was probably a wrong number but I knew he wasn’t fooled. He’s been watching me ever since with a sort of strange look. I’ll be reading the paper or something and when I look up I’ll find him watching me. It’s getting on my nerves.”
“It’s not easy, I can see that,” I said.
“And I don’t like to have him touch me,” she said. “That’s caused trouble. I’ve lied to him about not feeling well so far, but he is my husband and I can’t go on lying forever.”
“Would he give you a divorce?”
“No. It’s against his religion for one thing, and if I asked him he’d know then that I’d been seeing someone else while he was gone. I think that would drive him insane. I think he’s insane right now. Last night he took a gun out of his army bag and loaded it and when I asked him what the idea was he just said he liked to have a gun around the house.”
We didn’t talk any more for a long while. I was thinking about what she’d said and I knew we couldn’t go on this way. Things were heading for an explosion and I didn’t like it.