“Where’s a towel?” I grumbled, with my eyes still shut.
“Now don’t start that,” she said. “I laid one out for you.”
I got up, leaned sleepily against the wall for a minute, then went out, jumped under the cold water, and began hitting myself from all directions. It was only when I was all through that I realized I had forgotten to take my pajamas off. They were clinging around me like wet elastic. So I knew by that what kind of a morning it was going to be. I felt sorry for her for a moment, and wondered if it wouldn’t be kinder and more advisable to walk straight out as soon as I was dressed and swallow a glass of orange juice at the corner drug store instead of raising hell for the next half-hour. But she wouldn’t have understood if I had, and what’s the use of being self-sacrificing when the motive isn’t made clear to the bystander?
But when I was dressed and went in and sat down, I kept the fingers of my right hand crossed.
She laughed charmingly, poor Maxine. “It’s cleared up beautifully,” she said. “I was terribly scared when we were having that storm last night.”
“I know,” I said briefly.
“Well, you didn’t do much about it,” she went on good-naturedly.
“What did you expect me to do, lay a hot-water bottle at your feet?”
“Well, you don’t have to look so awful, Wade.”
“Well, don’t look at me, then.”
She got off the subject in a hurry. “The lightning turned the milk sour. We’ll have to use some of the evap., I’m afraid.”
“I knew that was coming,” I said.
“Why, you must be a mind reader.” she suggested gently.
I thought, “It’s a good thing you’re not. If you could read mine right now, you’d dive under the bed in a hurry.”
“Lousy,” I said in reference to the coffee.
“It would be,” she sighed, “no matter what was in it. If I hadn’t told you, you wouldn’t know the difference.”
I enlarged on the subject.
“Well, don’t take it, then,” she said indifferently. “You don’t have to, you know. Nobody’s going to make you.”
“Yeah!” I barked, “and I’m going to feel swell by the time I get to Forty-Second Street, you didn’t stop to think of that, did you?”
“Oh,” she moaned, “what am I going to do with this man?” And glanced entreatingly at the clock.
“Don’t worry, affectionate, I’m going,” I laughed grimly. And I looked down at the coffee cup for a second.
She saw me and forestalled me. She had learned by experience what I was thinking. She quickly took it off the table and emptied it down the sink. “No matter what happens to me now,” she said, “at least it won’t be another scalding.”
That turned the trick, somehow. She probably expected it to as little as I did myself, but nevertheless it did. I laughed, went over to her, put my arms around her, and pressed my face against hers. “You poor kid,” I droned, “why don’t you go out and get yourself a pair of brass knuckles one of these times and rearrange my front teeth?”
“I’m just a dumb frail, like you say when you’re drunk,” she said. “I wouldn’t hurt a tooth in your head. It’s funny,” she added thoughtfully, “in this life, one of us always has to do the bossing. Upstairs it’s Mrs. Greenbaum, to judge by the sounds we hear, but in this family it’s you.”
“Since when?” I said. “It’s news to me. I’m afraid you’re taking me for a sleigh ride.”
She came to the door with me, and then when I got down to the street she came to the window to say good-bye some more. I didn’t bother looking up, so she tapped on the pane. When I turned my head, she threw up the sash and leaned out to call down that old one of eight years ago. “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”
“Sure I will,” I answered, “so I can pass ’em on to you.” And waved, and went away.
For a little while everything was all right. I even stepped up on a high rickety chair under an awning to have my shoes shined. All my life, that, and a haircut, and a shower, have been barometers of well-being to me. Then my newly glistening shoes, gleaming like burnished bronze, carried me down into that twilight grotto they call the subway. The turnstiles made a continual popping sound, like machine-gun fire in that faraway war I so blissfully missed. Then a red comet and a green one, side by side, came hurtling out of the gloom, and behind them, like an accordion, a long row of lighted cars expanded and came to a standstill. I took my place before a seated lady with a little boy on her lap, tilted my chin, and stared down my nose at a gaudy placard showing a girl with what looked like a strip of gelatine pasted over her mouth. The little boy started to wipe the soles of his shoes on my trousers. The lady noticed it and said indulgently, “Put your feet down, Stefan.” “Or else put your hands up,” I thought, “and fight like a man,” and moved away from there.
Then it was five o’clock and I was still standing in the crowded car aisle, only now the train was going in the opposite direction. And the luster had been trodden from my shoes and I had about sixty kilowatts less energy, that was all. I got out finally and pulled my clothing after me. Luckily, it still stayed on. Going up the steps, still in a crowd, the man in front of me missed a step and went down on his knees. I picked up his hat for him. A girl on the other side of him picked up the halibut steak he was bringing home to his wife. I could tell it was halibut steak by the smell. And the impact against the steel-rimmed step didn’t help it any, either. “Maybe,” I said to myself unfriendly, “that’s some of your business too. Are you going to eat it?”
She wasn’t in when I got there. There I was, back where I had started from. “Now, what the hell did I get out of that?” I thought morosely. “Just so they won’t cut off the gas and electricity on us at the end of the month!” I picked the gin bottle up from the floor of the broom closet, poured two inches into a glass, went in and took a shower. One that could be heard out on the street, I’m sure. I thought I heard the doorbell ring, but wasn’t sure. But when I was through toweling and had my shirt on, I went out to see, and Maxine had come in. She had deposited a big brown-paper bag full of stuff on the kitchen table and was sitting on a chair alongside of it, elbow on the table, holding her head in her hand. She lifted it to remark, “You couldn’t even let me in, could you? I stood out there ringing away for fully five minutes, doing a juggling act with this stuff in one hand and my key in the other!”
“How was I going to open the door?” I said. “I was all wet.”
“What was that?” I thought I had heard her say, “You always are.” “Anyway,” I went on, “you believe in giving delivery boys a swell break, don’t you? What are they getting paid for?”
“Oh, don’t bother me,” she groaned. “I’m too tired to answer any deep questions right now.”
I turned to leave the room; at the door, though, I turned a second time to answer this, hands in my back pockets. I evidently felt it needed answering. “Tired from what?” I sneered, “sitting around on your fanny all day? That’s about all you do, as far as I can make out.” Which, I figured, should have held her for awhile. Expecting me to answer doorbells in the nude! Even if she was my wife, there might be other people using the hallway at the same time.
“That’s consideration!” she said. “How do you know what I’m doing? Television hasn’t come in yet, has it?” She walked very close to me, and there wasn’t much friendship in our glance. “So you think I’m sitting around all day doing nothing. Who do you think washes up the dishes after you’ve gone?”
“What’s there to that?” I assured her. “Park ’em in the sink, turn on the water, and let evaporation do the rest—”