“There’s plenty of money in galvanized iron,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, “and look how much I got out of it.”
After dinner they sat smoking and relaxing. Taffy had gone off by herself, probably back to her room. She seemed to be a quiet child, resourceful, not minding having to be by herself. The house was warm and peaceful. It smelled of pot roast.
“Am I enough of a cook for you?” Susan said.
“You certainly are,” he said. What a pleasure it had been, compared with the restaurant and roadside café meals he had endured for the last two years. None of the fried greasiness. The overcooked vegetables, watery and tasteless.
“I’m excited,” Susan said.
“So am I.”
“I know we’re going to be successful. And I’ve told Zoe; that’s a terrible load off my mind. As soon as you left yesterday I began preparing myself for it. And this morning when we opened the office I said, ‘Zoe, I want to talk to you.’ And I told her.”
“Good,” he murmured, feeling sleepy.
“Is it heartless?” Susan said.
“No,” he murmured. “That goes on all the time.”
“Now I’m having misgivings.”
That roused him. “It’s done,” he said. “I’m up here; I quit my job and gave up my apartment.”
She nodded in agreement. “And it’s going to be wonderful. We’ll go in together tomorrow, and I’ll start showing you around. Or actually we could drive over tonight. No, we can wait.” And then a thought struck her. “Bruce, maybe we should wait until Zoe is out. I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to have to bump into her; we’ll wait. How are you fixed for money?”
“How do you mean?” he said. “I have a two weeks’ paycheck they gave me. And I have some cash.” He did not know what she was driving at.
Considering at length, Susan said, “Where are you staying?”
“At the Jack Rabbit Inn Motel,” he said.
“How much is it?”
“Six bucks a day.”
She winced. “That’s forty-two dollars a week.”
“I’ll start looking for a room,” he said. “I don’t intend to be there as long as a week. If I’m not coming into the office right away I can start looking.”
Susan said, “But I want you to come in right away. I want to get started.” She fooled irritably with her cigarette. “I don’t want to wait—what do you think? Would it bother you to have to be there while Zoe’s there?”
“I don’t care,” he said. He doubted if it would bother him. After all, he did not know the woman; he had nothing to lose by her animosity.
“I want to start paying you,” Susan said, “but I can’t until the legal papers are signed and she’s officially not connected with the business. That means not until she’s received the money from me, for her share. So you won’t get paid anything for at least a week.”
That jolted him. “Okay,” he said, hoping he would be able to get by.
“That puts you in a bad spot,” she said. “I can see it does. I’m sorry, Bruce; I didn’t think of it until after we’d decided and you’d already started back to Reno.”
They both were silent.
Suddenly she said, “Listen, why don’t you stay here?”
He felt as if the top of his head had come loose.
“Of course,” she said, reaching out and tapping him urgently on the hand. “you can sleep here and eat here; there’s two spare bedrooms, and plenty of closet space. Why not?”
Struggling, he said, “If nobody minds.”
“The neighbors, you mean? I don’t think they’ll even notice. I hope not. Why should they? Anyhow, we have a lot to get settled. I want you to start working right now; we can go down together to the office at night, after dinner. After Taffy goes to bed. And I’ll have a key made for you. And the weekend’s coming up.” She put out her cigarette and leaped up. “Let’s go carry your things in from the car. Do you have everything you need?”
“Yes,” he said. He hadn’t left anything at the motel. “But are you sure you want to do this?” To him it seemed a big step.
“I know I do,” she said, opening the front door. “It’s perfectly natural; I’m surprised we didn’t think of it earlier.” Pausing, she said over her shoulder, “Unless you feel squeamish about it.”
“Squeamish,” he echoed. “How?”
“I guess you don’t. Embarrassed, maybe I mean. We’re going to be together all the time anyhow. In a small business with just two people—you’re used to a big outfit, aren’t you? A small business is much more personal, almost like a family.”
At one time he had worked for a drugstore that employed only one clerk, in addition to himself as stockboy. So he knew.
“I’m pretty easy to get along with,” he said.
“I hope so,” she said, “because I’m not. I have moods. I get depressed. When you came here yesterday I was having one of my depressed periods. But you snapped me out of it.” In a spontaneous flurry, she caught hold of his sleeve and tugged him along with her, down the path to the car. “You’re good therapy for me,” she told him over her shoulder.
Within the hour he found himself installed in a high-ceilinged bedroom, his suitcases and boxes piled up on the floor off to one side and his clothes hanging in the closet. His shaving gear was put away in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, along with his squeeze bottle of deodorant, hairbrush, toothbrush, and all the rest of the little bottles and tubes and tins.
By now Susan’s child had gone to bed. The TV set was off. The house, with just him and Susan up and about, had become informal to a degree new to him; he had never known such an absence of pressure on him.
The two of them sat in the living room, relaxing. Presently Susan started hearkening back to her days as a school teacher. It seemed always in the back of her mind.
“I was still teaching when I met Pete,” she said. “Taffy’s Dad. That was in 1949. He wanted me to quit, and I did when Taffy came along. And we moved from Montario to Boise.” From a bureau drawer she brought forth a huge scrapbook. Seated beside him she turned pages, showing him snapshots and documents from the near past. “My sixth grade class at Garret A. Hobart in 1948,” she said, pointing to a print.
At last he got to see the class picture for the fifth grade of 1945, his class. Sure enough, his fat round face peered from the second row. There he was, one of a number of grumpy, stodgy-looking small boys, lost among his peers and certainly so different in appearance from now that no one would make the connection. In fact, had he not known this print, he would have failed to recognize himself or even be aware that he was somewhere among the faces. Both he and Susan studied the class picture. There she was, quite easy to spot; she stood to one side, rigid and formal, with a smile, her eyes partly shut because of the bright sun. Wearing her suit with the big buttons … astonishing, he thought, to see this picture again. A copy had belonged to him but his mother had gotten it years ago; he had not seen it since that time.
And, in the photograph, Miss Reuben as she was then, in 1945, but not as he remembered her. He saw only a very pretty, muscular young woman, smartly-dressed, somewhat thin, with anxious lines around her eyes and mouth. A worrier, he thought. Tense, ferociously conscious of the responsibility of managing a class. Perhaps too tense. Too concerned. He remembered that one day a boy had been cut badly on a broken pop bottle during recess; Miss Reuben had run for the nurse, and although she had brought the nurse at once, and managed to get the other children to return to their business, she had been forced to go off by herself for awhile, and even then, even as fifth graders, they had been aware of her near-hysteria. She had stood gripping her handkerchief, her back to everybody, poking at her eyes and nose. At that time, of course, it had made them all giggle. They had barely been able to restrain their mirth.