“Thank you, Mr. Bobby,” Andy said. “This is four.”
“I wish it was a hundred,” Bobby said. “You’re the pride of my heart.”
“What do you say we get out of here, Hal,” one of the men said to the man who wanted to buy the picture.
“I’d like to pick up that canvas,” the other told him. “If I can get it for a decent price.”
“I’d like to get out of here,” the first man insisted. “Fun’s fun and all that. But watching children drink is a little too much.”
“Are you really serving that little boy gin?” the nice-looking blonde girl at the end of the bar toward the door asked Bobby. She was a tall girl with very fair hair and pleasant freckles. They were not redhead freckles but were the sort blondes get when they have skins that tan instead of burn.
“Yes ma’am.”
“I think it’s shameful,” the girl said. “It’s disgusting and it’s shameful and it’s criminal.”
Roger avoided looking at the girl and Thomas Hudson kept his eyes down.
“What would you like him to drink, ma’am?” Bobby asked.
“Nothing. He shouldn’t have anything to drink.”
“Hardly seems fair,” Bobby said.
“What do you mean fair? Do you think it’s fair to poison a child with alcohol?”
“See, papa?” young Tom said. “I thought it was wrong for Andy to drink.”
“He’s the only one of the three who drinks, ma’am. Since Sport here stopped it,” Bobby tried to reason with her. “Do you think it’s fair to deprive the only one in a family of three boys of what little pleasure he gets?”
“Fair!” the girl said. “I think you’re a monster. And you’re another monster,” she said to Roger. “And you’re another monster, too,” she said to Thomas Hudson. “You’re all horrible and I hate you.”
There were tears in her eyes and she turned her back on the boys and Mr. Bobby and said to the men with her, “Won’t any of you do anything about it?”
“I think it’s a joke,” one of the men said to her. “Like that rude waiter they hire at a party. Or like double talk.”
“No, it’s not a joke. That dreadful man gives him gin. It’s horrible and it’s tragic.”
“Mr. Bobby?” Tom asked. “Is five my limit?”
“For today,” Bobby said. “I wouldn’t want you to do anything to shock the lady.”
“Oh get me out of here,” the girl said. “I won’t watch it.”
She started to cry and two of the men went out with her and Thomas Hudson and Roger and the boys all felt quite bad.
The other girl, the really lovely-looking one, came over. She had a beautiful face and clear brown skin and tawny hair. She wore slacks but she was built wonderfully as far as Thomas Hudson could see and her hair was silky and it swung when she walked. He knew he had seen her before.
“It isn’t really gin, is it?” she said to Roger.
“No. Of course not.”
“I’ll go out and tell her,” she said. “She really feels awfully badly.”
She went out the door and she smiled at them as she went out. She was a wonderful-looking girl.
“Now it’s over, papa,” Andy said. “Can we have Cokes?”
“I’d like a beer, papa. If it wouldn’t make that lady feel bad,” young Tom said.
“I don’t think she’d feel badly about a beer,” Thomas Hudson said. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked the man who wanted to buy the picture. “I’m sorry if we were too stupid.”
“No. No,” the man said. “Very interesting. The whole thing was very interesting to me. Fascinating. I’ve always been interested in writers and artists. Were you all improvising?”
“Yes,” said Thomas Hudson.
“Now about that canvas—”
“It belongs to Mr. Saunders,” Thomas Hudson explained to him. “I painted it for him as a present. I don’t think he wants to sell it. But it’s his and he can do whatever he likes with it.”
“I want to keep her,” Bobby said. “Don’t offer me a lot of money for her because it would just make me feel bad.”
“I would really like to have it.”
“So would I, goddam it,” said Bobby. “And I’ve got it.”
“But Mr. Saunders. That is a valuable canvas to have in a place like this.”
Bobby was getting angry.
“Leave me alone, will you?” he said to the man. “We were having a wonderful time. As good a time as I ever had and women have to cry and ball up everything. I know she meant right. But what the hell. Meant right gets you quicker than anything else. My old woman means right and does right and it beats the hell out of me every day. The hell with means right. Now you’re here and you think you can take my picture just because you want it.”
“But Mr. Saunders, you said yourself you wanted the picture out of here and that it was for sale.”
“That was all balls,” Bobby said. “That was when we were having fun.”
“Then the picture is not for sale.”
“No. The picture is not for sale, rent, nor charter.”
“Well,” said the man. “Here is my card in case it ever is for sale.”
“That’s fine,” said Bobby. “Tom may have some up at his place he wants to sell. What about it, Tom?”
“I don’t think so,” Thomas Hudson said.
“I’d like to come up and see them,” the man told him.
“I’m not showing anything now,” Thomas Hudson answered. “I’ll give you the address of the gallery in New York if you’d like it.”
“Thank you. Will you write it here?”
The man had a fountain pen with him and he wrote the address on the back of one of his cards and gave another card to Thomas Hudson. Then the man thanked Thomas Hudson again and asked if he might offer him a drink.
“Can you give me any idea about the prices of the larger canvases?”
“No,” Thomas Hudson said. “But the dealer will be able to.”
“I’ll see him as soon as I’m back in town. This canvas is extremely interesting.”
“Thank you,” Thomas Hudson said.
“You’re quite sure it can’t be sold.”
“Jesus,” Bobby said. “Stop it, will you? That’s my picture. I had the idea for it and Tom painted it for me.”
The man looked as though what he had thought of as “the charades” were beginning again so he smiled with much good fellowship.
“I don’t like to be insistent—”
“You’re just about as insistent as a goddam loggerhead,” Bobby told him. “Come on. Have a drink on me and forget it.”
The boys were talking with Roger. “It was pretty good while it lasted, wasn’t it, Mr. Davis?” young Tom asked. “I didn’t overdo it too badly, did I?”
“It was fine,” Roger said. “Dave didn’t have much though.”
“I was just getting ready to be a monster,” David said.
“You’d have killed her, I think,” young Tom said. “She was hurt pretty badly already. Were you going to come up as a monster?”
“I had my eyelids inside out and all ready to come up,” David told them. “I was bent down fixing myself to come up when we stopped.”
“It was bad luck she was such a nice woman,” Andy said. “I hadn’t started to let it have any effect on me yet. I guess now we won’t have any chance to do another one.”
“Wasn’t Mr. Bobby wonderful?” young Tom asked. “Boy, you were swell, Mr. Bobby.”
“Sure was a pity to stop,” Bobby said. “And Constable hadn’t even come in yet. I was just beginning to get worked up. I know just how those great actors must feel.”
The girl came in through the door. As she came in, the wind blew her sweater against her and blew her hair as she turned to Roger.