I got so lonely standing there thinking about her that I had to get out of the moonlight. I went back into the depths of the room, with its two funnels of sapphire blue spilled across the floor, and I felt weak all over and my knees begged me not to move any more and my blood felt like honey that is about to run over the edge of a saucer, so sweet, so lazy, so slow. I threw myself face downward on the divan where I had found her handkerchief before, and took the handkerchief out of my pocket and pressed it between my shut eyes and groaned, I think, aloud.
When I had quieted down, I lit a cigarette and stayed there like that for a long, long while, with just a spark of red in front of me that ebbed and glowed again as I drew upon it. And when the heat began to reach my nails and I knew that I better drop it, I found something to drop it in, and then I got up and found the radio and fumbled with it until I had it going and its midget amber bulb shone through the dial into my face. And while it was warming itself up, I felt my way to the telephone and got the downstairs operator on the line. “What time you got down there?” I asked him.
“Twenty to ten,” I heard him say. That was what my watch said too, hut I had been praying that it would be slow. Gee, there was a long time to go yet.
“I want some sandwiches sent up to Miss Pascal’s,” I added. Might as well do that now, I thought, and have it over with in case she really did come home early. “Is there a delicatessen handy?”
He told me there was a drugstore right in the building. “Good,” I said. “Send them up with the elevator boy,” and then I told him just what kind I wanted. And I thought, “If she doesn’t like olives and pimento, I can always send down for some other kind. In that way I’ll find out exactly which kind she likes most, and I’ll always remember it.”
I hung up and decided to mix some drinks for the two of us, and turned off the radio because it was singing a sad love song and this was going to be a night for happy love. I found that the serving pantry didn’t have any window, so after shutting its two doors I could light the light in there without any danger. Its flashy brightness blinded me for minutes, and I had to shade my eyes until I got used to it. Then I pulled a couple of trayfuls of ice cubes out of the Frigidaire, found the Gordon Dry where Tenacity (no doubt) kept it — on the floor of the broom closet — and began to peel oranges and lemons with my cuffs rolled back. I was happy and I was whistling with my head bent over my task.
After a while the bell rang, and the fellow with the sandwiches was standing at the door. I took them from him and, happening to lift up a corner of one, found that it was spread with crescents of cucumber. “I ordered olive and pimento,” I told him with repugnance.
He had a wearied air, I thought, as of some one who had gone through this trial many times before. “Yessir, half of ’em are olive and pimento,” he explained. “The others are for Miss Pascal; they’re the only kind she eats. They weren’t all for you, were they?” This last had a matter-of-fact intonation to it, as though no answer were really required.
“Oh, so your counterman has what kind she likes down pat?” I said grimly. “She must send down pretty often.”
He smiled out of the corner of his mouth. “Yessir, she does,” he said.
“For two, I s’pose.”
“Always,” he said, and if he had winked I was going to run my hand into which ever eye did it, but he didn’t wink, just looked worldly-wise and bored.
I paid him and closed the door, and went back to the serving pantry not so happy, as I had left it. For one thing, I had stopped whistling. I was in there quite a while, because I kept tasting the drinks as I mixed them, and consequently I had to keep making them over again. When I had finally accumulated two braces of two each, I quit and carried them inside and set them down next to the sandwiches. Then I put the lights out and sat down there in the dark, with just me and the moon. “Boy, how you’re getting wasted!” I remarked to it aloud. After about five or ten minutes, I started to munch one of the sandwiches; that made me thirsty, so I had to sip one of the drinks along with it. By the time I put the empty glass down, the drink had made me hungry, so I had to start munching a second sandwich.
My arm was beginning to ache a little by now from lifting it to my face to look at the time so much, so I unstrapped my wrist-watch and laid it down in front of me among the glasses. The whole dial of it vanished at that distance from my eyes, and just the twelve little glowing numbers arranged in a circle remained, with the two little glowing hands aiming at 9 and at 12. Not that that meant nine, it meant quarter to twelve. “She’ll be here before midnight,” I told myself. “Maybe she’ll come in on the hour, like Cinderella.” And I had another drink. But they moved so quick, those hands! The minute hand deliberately skipped 10, 11, and 12, and took a flying leap down to I under my very eyes. So she hadn’t come in on the hour, after all. And now it was a new day. But it was the same old night.
A vagabond cloud about the size of a fist passed over the moon and immediately turned silver all around the edges as though it had caught fire. “Sure,” I encouraged it, “hide the damn thing! What good is it doing me?”
Oh, I was sore at everything right then: the moon, and the night, and myself most of all! “Here I sit,” I mumbled, “when if I was a man I’d get up, slam the door, and never come ’round her again. Who does she think she is?” But something inside me whispered, “Maybe you love her because she treats you this way. Maybe she’s wise, maybe she knows you better than you know yourself.” So I went to the window, and I went to the door. And then I sat down again. And I had another sandwich. And I had another sandwich. And I had another sandwich.
Then, when there was only one left, it occurred to me too late that that wasn’t enough to offer her with any propriety. I should have thought of that before when there were two, but now there was only one, and offering her one would be a slight. It would look much better if there weren’t any in sight, than to have just the remaining one staring her in the face, seeming to say, “Take me or leave me.” So I reached out and picked it up and ate it, slowly, thoughtfully, mournfully — and the little dream of a midnight snack to be shared by the two of us dissolved in crumbs and went the way of all my other dreams, big and small. I know it would have made a swell comedy scene, but I wasn’t looking in a mirror, and so my heart sang a blue song while I sat there and chewed.
Then I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, and I dusted my knees, and I heaved a deep sigh that seemed to come up from my feet. And still she didn’t come home. I had given up believing that she would ever come home; I was almost beginning to doubt that there was a Bernice.