“You swell thing!” I gasped.
“Thank you,” she said briskly. “Good-bye!”
I was mopping my forehead when I came out, the bulb had heated the booth until it felt like an incubator, but I was happy, all right. I even went back to my table and almost left the waiter a fifty-cent tip. Almost, but not quite. I changed it to a thirty-five-cent one at the last moment. If a man has no more ambition than to be a waiter, why encourage him by letting him think there’s money in the game?
So I left that little restaurant I’d never been in before and never went to afterward, like so many other places I’ve only gone to once in life. But afterward, whenever I heard the word “restaurant,” my mind saw that one place and not any of the others, saw the phone booth lighted from within and the napkin lying on the floor and the glass case full of cigar boxes with a cash register sitting on top of it.
Then immediately afterward, it seemed as though I had hardly stepped out of the door, I was in another phone booth and it was Wednesday.
“This is me, honey,” I said.
“Well, Wade,” she said, “I don’t know what to say to you. I’m going out.”
Forty-eight hours’ anticipation went smash. “You told me you’d be in tonight,” I answered. “What kind of a chiseler are you!”
“Don’t get fresh, Wade,” she suggested docilely. “It isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
“It’s going to get me where I want to be,” I told her, “and that’s with you.”
“I doubt it,” she said.
I gave my necktie a tug. “If you don’t want to see me, well—”
“I didn’t say that I don’t want to see you. I said I’m going out. This came up all of a sudden, and — there it is.”
“Business before pleasure,” I said poisonously.
“I’ll hang up if you say anything like that to me again,” she threatened.
I waited a moment to see if she would, afraid that she would, but she didn’t.
“When do you expect to get back?” I said finally.
“I may get back at twelve — and I may get back at dawn. Why?”
“Make it twelve. Leave the key with the doorman, and I’ll wait up for you. What’s your favorite flavor sandwich? I’ll bring some in with me.”
“Just a minute!” she protested. “Not so fast. How do you think that’s going to look?”
“Swell to me.”
“Yes, but to the doorman?”
“I’ll tell him I’m your big brother.”
“You’d better think up a better one than that,” she said sharply. “This isn’t 1910.”
“Well, how about it, lovable?”
“Wade, I’d like to see you awfully,” she assured me, “but I’m afraid — suppose someone insists on seeing me home?”
I knew that was what was really troubling her, not the doorman at all. She probably had him well fixed. “Oh,” I said negligently, “if any one does, tell him you’re having the place repapered, tell him anything, lose him in the lobby. You’re probably good at that, anyhow.”
“Well—” she said.
“If you don’t leave the key,” I said, “I’m going to wait for you downstairs anyway, so take your choice.”
“Now see here,” she flared, “who do you think you’ve got here? You can’t order me around like that! If I feel like leaving the key, all well and good. And if I don’t, you’ll stand for it and like it. You made enough trouble for me the other night as it was.”
“We can get away with murder, honey,” I assured her dreamily, “we’re both young and have our health. Oh, how I wish this phone were out of the way and there was nothing between your lips and mine!”
She sighed good-naturedly and said, “I’ll leave the key. But, Wade, please be careful what you do. I don’t want to have to go around looking for a job.”
“You’re as sweet as you are good-looking,” I groaned elatedly. “You can count on me, I won’t go near the phone, I won’t even light the lights if you don’t want me to—”
“All right,” she said, “then that’s that. What you’re really doing is spoiling the whole first part of my evening, but I know that doesn’t cut any ice with you as long as yours is all set.”
“Oh,” I said, “so that’s where I stand! Just knowing that I’m waiting for you up at the place is enough to spoil your evening for you, is it? I sure stand in thick with you and no mistake.”
“Now wait,” she said, “don’t jump down my throat like that. What I meant was simply this: if I let you wait for me up at the place, you’ll be on my mind. I’ll be afraid something’ll go wrong, that you’ll give yourself away or give me away; I can’t relax with something like that on my mind.”
“Suppose you save your relaxing until the end, when we’re alone together,” I suggested.
“I’ll think about it,” she said, and laughed. “Let’s get this straight now — you want me to leave the key with the downstairs doorman and tell him that a gentleman will call for it, Then you want to go upstairs and wait for me in the place until I get in. Is that it?”
“That’s the ticket.”
“Okay, then,” she said by way of good-bye, “and try not to get ashes all over the rugs, will you? I’ll be seeing you.”
And then, where her voice had been there was only silence and insulated wire and an invisible gum-chewing individual with earpieces clamped to her head, and I was alone once more. I dropped another nickel in and had Maxine.
“Oh, is that you?” she said at once. “It’s ten after six; hurry up, will you? I’ve got the chops on already. Where you talking from?”
“You mean where’m I listening from, don’t you?” I corrected. “I haven’t had a chance to say a word so far. Shut up a minute and I’ll explain where I am and why I’m not coming home.”
“Not coming!” she squalled. “Well, this is a fine time to let me know about it! I just got through spending seventy-nine cents at the butcher and the grocer—”
So I didn’t go home that Wednesday evening, but I went to a barber shop and got a shave, and the setting sun shining through the plate-glass window struck gleams of emerald, garnet, topaz, and amethyst from the bottles of tonic standing in a row on the counter and made the barber shop seem a jewelry shop to me. And the radio over the door hummed ever so softly about love, the world’s one great interest, saying, “Here I am with all my bridges burned, just a babe in arms where you’re concerned; oh, lock the doors and call me yours—”
And I kept thinking, “Yes, make the part straight, her eyes are going to look at it. Yes, put talcum on the back of my neck, her fingers may rest there for a minute. Yes, wipe my forehead clean with your towel, it may lean against hers. Sure, hold up the mirror in back of me, so I can see what she sees, and wonder if the love shows through the way it should, like a candle in a paper lantern.” All this and more. And to him I suppose I was just another customer, not the man who loved Bernice Pascal!
So I came out of there smelling sweet, looking neat, and striding wide, one hand in my pocket jingling coins, the other at the back of my neck to make sure he hadn’t overlooked any little hairs. He hadn’t, but what difference did it make? A few days from now they’d all be back there again anyway. But tonight was tonight, and it was sure a sweet night, that was all that mattered. The whole city seemed full of others like me, coming out of barber shops all dolled up to keep their dates with their little loves. Men in gray suits, men in blue suits, men in brown suits, all looking alike, all in love with someone, all heading for where that someone was. And some were whistling, and some were intent on the ground before them, and some glanced into every mirror along the way to catch their own reflections, and some bumped into you and apologized with a friendly smile, others bumped into you and gave you a scowl, still others bumped into you and didn’t even know you were there at all — all according to their various temperaments. And out of all the beauty parlors came an endless stream of those little someones whom this was all about, with brand-new permanent waves and glistening water waves, with shimmering manicures and rose-leaf facials, with orange lips and cherry lips and mauve lips, all wearing little skullcaps and little kilts for skirts — some looking at their wristwatches and some at their mirrors and some at the heavens above (as though to judge just how long he had been waiting by now). All the players were ready for the game of love, and the endless file of taxicabs bobbing through every street, so repetitious in all their motions, were like a chorus of unlovely but agile Tiller dancing girls to the rest of the proceedings.