“You’ll ruin your eyes looking at that thing all the time,” he told Sol when he came in. The old man lay on the bed propped up by pillows, watching a war film on TV. Cannon fire thundered scratchily from the speaker.
“My eyes were ruined before you were born, Mr. Wiseguy, and I can still see better than ninety-nine per cent of the fogies my age. Still working union hours, I see.”
“Find me a better job and I’ll quit,” Andy said, turning on the light in his room and digging through the bottom drawer. Sol came in and sat on the edge of the bed.
“If you’re looking for your flashlight,” he said, “you left it on the table the other day. I meant to tell you, I put it in your top drawer there, under the shirts.”
“You’re better than a mother to me.”
“Yeah, well, don’t try to borrow no money, son.”
Andy put the flash in his pocket and knew that he would have to tell Sol now. He had been putting it off and he wondered why it bothered him. After all, this room was all his, they shared food rations and meals because it made things easier, that was all. It was just a working arrangement.
“I’ve got someone coming to stay with me for a while, Sol. I’m not sure how long.”
“It’s your room, buddy-boy. Do I know the guy?”
“Not exactly. Anyway it’s not a guy—”
“Hoo-ha! That explains it all.” He snapped his fingers. “Not the chick, Big Mike’s girl, the one you been seeing?”
“Yes, that’s the girl. Her name’s Shirl.”
“A fancy name, a fancy girl,” Sol said, heaving to his feet and going toward the door. “Very fancy. Watch out you don’t get your fingers burned, buddy-boy.”
Andy started to say something but Sol was out of the room and closing the door behind himself. A little harder than necessary. He was looking at the TV again when Andy left and did not glance away from it or say anything.
It had been a long day and Andy’s feet hurt and his neck hurt and his eyes burned; he wondered why Sol was being sore. He had never met Shirl — so what did he have to complain about? Tramping crosstown through the slowly falling rain, he thought about Shirl and, without realizing it, began to whistle. He was hungry and he was tired and he wanted to see her very much. The turrets and spires of Chelsea Park rose before him through the rain and the doorman nodded and touched his cap to Andy as he hurried across the drawbridge.
Shirl opened the door for him and she was wearing the silver dress, the same one that she had been wearing that first night, with a tiny white apron tied over it. There was a silver clip holding her copper hair in place and a matching silver bracelet on her right arm, and rings on both her hands.
“Don’t get me wet,” she said, leaning over to kiss him. “I’ve got all my good things on for the party.”
“And I look like a bum,” he said, peeling off the dripping raincoat.
“Nonsense. You look like you’ve had a hard day in the office or whatever you call that place where you work. You need a party. Hang that thing in the shower and dry your hair before you catch a cold, then come into the living room. I have a surprise.”
“What is it?” he called after her receding back.
“If I told you it wouldn’t be a surprise,” she said with devastating female logic.
Shirl had the apron off and was waiting for him in the living room, standing proudly by the dining table. Two tall candles reflected highlights from the silverware, china plates and crystal glasses. A white tablecloth hung in thick folds. “And that’s not all,” Shirl said, pointing to the end table where the neck of a bottle projected from a silver bucket.
Andy saw that the bottle had wires over the top and around the neck, and that the bucket was full of ice cubes and water. He took out the bottle and held the label to the light so that he could read it aloud.
“ ‘Frenchwine Champagne — a rare, selected, effervescent beverage of great vintage. Artificially colored, flavored, sweetened and carbonated.’ ” He placed it carefully back into the bucket. “We used to have wine in California when I was a kid and my father let me taste it, but I don’t remember it at all. You’re going to spoil me, Shirl, with this kind of stuff. And you were kidding me — you said that we had finished all the drink in the house — and all the time you had this tucked away.”
“I did not! I bought that today, special for this party. Mike’s liquor man came around, he’s from Jersey and didn’t even know what had happened to Mike.”
“It must have cost a fortune—”
“Not as bad as you think. I sold him back all the empty bottles and he gave me a special price. Now open it, for goodness’ sake, and let’s try it.”
Andy wrestled with the wire over the cork. He had seen them open bottles like this on TV, but it looked a lot easier than it really was. He worked it off finally and there was a satisfactory bang that shot the cork across the room, while Shirl caught the foaming wine in the glass that she held ready, just as the liquor man had instructed her.
“Here’s to us,” she said, and they raised their glasses.
“This is very good, I’ve never tasted anything like it before.”
“You’ve never tasted anything like this dinner before, either,” she said and hurried to the kitchen. “Now sit down and sip your wine and look at TV, it’ll only be a few minutes more.”
The first course was lentil soup, but with a richer and better flavor than usual. Meat stock, Shirl explained, she had saved it from the steak. There was a white sauce on the broiled tilapia, which were scattered with green flecks of cress and served with dumplings of weedcracker meal and a seacress salad. The wine went with everything and Andy was sighing with contentment and a pleasurable sense of unaccustomed fullness when Shirl brought in kofee and dessert, a flavored agar-agar gelatine with soymilk on it. He groaned, but he had no trouble eating it.
“Do you smoke tobacco?” she asked as she cleared the table.
He leaned back in the chair, eyes half closed and utterly relaxed. “Not on a cop’s salary, I don’t. Shirl, you are an absolute genius in the kitchen. I’ll be spoiled if I eat too much of your cooking.”
“Men should be spoiled, it makes them easier to live with. It’s too bad you don’t smoke, because I found two cigars left in a box that Mike had hidden away, he saved them for special guests.”
“Take them to the flea market, you’ll get a good price.”
“No, I couldn’t do that, it doesn’t seem right.”
Andy sat up. “If you want to do something, I know that Sol used to smoke, he’s the guy I told you about, who lives in the adjoining room. It might cheer him up. He’s a pretty good friend of mine.”