“I’m glad that being a reporter for The Bugle entitles you to psychoanalyze me.”
March opens the door, and without a look back, she heads off down the street. She’s furious, but when she really thinks about it, she’s angry because Susie is right. March is drawn to the Lyon Cafe, only a few steps away now, in hopes of seeing Hollis. Susie knows her far too well, although March herself isn’t certain whether or not she’ll really have the courage to act on her impulse, until Susie honks her horn, trying to get her attention. That’s when March walks through the door.
When March was growing up, the Lyon was a place other people’s parents went to, and only occasionally. It was an embarrassment to be a regular here, something no one wanted to admit. The draw of the Lyon certainly wasn’t the decor, which is still Naugahyde and wood paneling, with three deer heads attached to the wall above the rest rooms and public telephones. You came here to get drunk, simple as that.
Tonight, the place is packed; there isn’t a table to be had, so March makes her way to the bar, excusing herself politely, and when that does no good, finally pushing her way through. She signals to the bartender, and once she gets his attention, shouts her request for a glass of red wine.
It takes a while to adjust to the noise level. There’s a Celtics game on the TV above the bar, and a loud, cheerful argument going on right next to her-something to do with borrowing a motorboat-which may well turn nasty as the night progresses. There’s a jukebox going too, although all anyone can hear of the music are the drums and the bass, pounding. March grabs a stool when one of the guys next to her finally leaves, and at last, she can sit down and look around. Maybe Susie’s wrong; March can’t imagine Hollis in this drunken crowd, playing darts or debating the merit of the Celtics’ back court.
Susie has come into the Lyon, and she easily makes her way to the bar, since she knows most of the people drinking here tonight. “Hey, Fred,” she says to the bartender. “I’ll have what she’s having. What is it you’re having?” she asks March. “An anxiety attack? Sheer lunacy?”
“Red wine.” March grins.
“That’s what I’ll have,” Susie tells Fred. “You know,” she says to March, “if you had your own car, I would have left you here. For spite.”
“You could, you know,” March says. “I’m perfectly fine. And besides, he’s not even here.”
“Oh, yes he is.” Susie nods to a comer. “He’s right there.”
Be careful what you wish for, Judith used to say to March all the time. But it seems that March has already decided not to be careful. At least, not tonight.
“At the last table.”
He’s got his chair propped up against the wall, and although there are five other men sharing the table, he doesn’t appear to be in the same universe. Certainly, he’s not listening to those men. He’s been watching March Murray ever since she walked through the door.
March turns away so quickly that she knocks over her glass, then has to wipe at the spilled wine with a cocktail napkin.
“It’s not too late to leave,” Susie urges.
March would have missed him entirely if he hadn’t been pointed out to her, but now that he has been, she realizes that the difference between him and the other men at his table, most of whom are employed by the Department of Public Works, is not so much in what can be seen. Those men are also wearing old boots and jeans, and like him, they haven’t bothered to remove their coats, since people who come to the Lyon like to pretend they won’t be staying, even if they’ve settled in for the night. The difference is that the air around him seems charged, perhaps by anger, by heat and light. The difference is the way he can look at someone, the way he’s staring at her right now. One look from him is more substantial than the wooden bar she’s leaning her elbows upon. It’s realer than the bottles of whiskey lined up behind the counter; realer than the pull of fabric as Susie tugs on her jacket.
“You don’t want to finish this game,” Susie shouts, because the argument next to them concerning the motorboat is getting more heated. “Let’s get out of here.”
At the moment, March doesn’t need much convincing. She’s shaking, she really is. She’s putting something on the line, and she’s frightened by her own actions. Wanting to see Hollis and actually being in the same room with him are two different things entirely. Now that they’ve decided to leave, it’s not easy trying to make their way to the door. The place is packed, incredibly crowded and smoky. Susie is waylaid by Bert Murphy, the sports editor at The Bugle, and while Susie is enmeshed in some newspaper gossip, March looks back at the far end of the room where Hollis had been sitting, in spite of her resolve to get out of the Lyon with no damage done. But he’s not there, and the effect of his absence is that her heart drops into her stomach, where it stays until she realizes that he’s walking right to her.
It is sometimes possible to look at a person and see inside, although this happens so rarely it’s always a shock, like a form of electricity traveling from one soul to another. It can only be glimpsed for an instant, but in that instant you can see the core of a person, even in the middle of a crowded barroom, as he comes up beside you, while the jukebox is playing a country-western song you’ve never heard before and will never forget. It happens quickly-seeing all that hurt and disappointment-it’s as fast as a breath drawn and released. Just as fast, he closes up; you couldn’t get inside Hollis for anything now. Not with a hammer or a chisel; not by begging on your knees.
“I never thought I’d see you here,” Hollis says. For some reason, March can hear him perfectly above the din. “Not your kind of place, is it?”
“Maybe it is,” March says. “It’s not as bad as I thought it would be.” She wishes she had thought to wear something other than this dreadful black sweater and an old pair of jeans; she wishes she had combed her hair. “I hear you’re letting my daughter ride one of your horses.”
“Is that your daughter?” Hollis acts as though he hadn’t the faintest idea.
“As if you didn’t know.” Why is it that he still has to look so good? What gives him the right to talk to her with such arrogance, as though after all these years he continued to be the most important thing in her universe, the single shining star?
“Did she tell you I was still waiting?”
“Oh, sure.” March tries to be lighthearted, but that’s not the way she feels. “And I’ll bet you never looked at another woman again.”
People are pushing by them and there’s absolutely no privacy, so when Hollis nods March follows him over to a less populated space, beneath the mounted deer heads. The only people who crowd them over here are those weaving past on their way to the rest rooms. One guy, who’s quite loaded, greets Hollis and thanks him for his support on the town council, but Hollis doesn’t even acknowledge the council-man’s existence, and March is so distracted that if she were ever asked to identify the guy in a court of law, she wouldn’t be able to. She didn’t even glance at him. Standing there, she can feel the reverberation of the jukebox in her legs. Susie is right-she’s crazy. She’s completely deranged.
“You’re the one who didn’t wait,” Hollis says.
Over by the door, Susie spots March and she waves like mad, but Hollis has moved closer, blocking Susie from view.
“Me?” March says. “Why didn’t you write or call after you left here? Why didn’t you come back for me?”
She’s done it without thinking, and there’s no way to take those words back. She should have said, Screw you, I waited plenty, I waited years, and even that was too long. Instead, she has admitted some sort of defeat; she can tell because Hollis still smiles the way he used to whenever he won.